by Adam Mitzner
“Yeah. Why not?”
Gabriel considered the possibility. That it might be right only highlighted how little evidence they had at the moment.
“So that means we need to add to our suspect list a skinny, short-haired woman not named Allison?”
Ella laughed. “I would.”
“Thanks for making more work for me.”
“Anything to help.”
They ordered in pizza, but Ella lit candles for the table, commenting that she wanted to take full advantage to make it a date night. Still, 95 percent of the conversation concerned Annie, so it wasn’t quite like a date.
Watching his wife through the candles’ glow, Gabriel realized just how lucky a man he was. His days were usually spent among people whose lives were in ruins, more often than not as a result of their own bad choices. Jessica Sommers was a case in point. Either she had lost her husband in the worst way imaginable, or she had killed him, which meant that she’d end up living out her days in the penitentiary. Either way, she was staring at years of darkness ahead. By contrast, Gabriel saw nothing but light in his future. With Ella, he had filled that space he hadn’t even fully realized was empty, and with Annie’s arrival, his cup truly runneth over with joy.
“What?” Ella said, although her tone suggested she knew what he was thinking.
“I love you, Ella,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said back. “Prove it.”
“Give me fifty years, and I will.”
She smiled the same full-on smile that Gabriel had first fallen in love with. “Deal.”
Owen couldn’t sleep. He kept touching his scalp, feeling the soft skin that had been hidden for the last few years.
Of course, that wasn’t the reason he was still awake in the middle of the night. To say that he had a lot going on at the moment would be the understatement of all time. Tomorrow was James’s funeral. In a week’s time, he would undergo an operation that would determine whether his own funeral would follow shortly.
Before they said their good-nights, his mother let him know that she hoped he’d say a few words at the funeral.
Owen would have preferred not. Truth be told, if given the choice, he would have spent tomorrow in bed. The chemo already had him feeling sick to his stomach. So much so that he was worried he might puke if he had to give a eulogy.
He’d asked if he could perform a violin piece instead. He always thought he was more eloquent when playing someone else’s composition than when trying to express his feelings verbally. His mother said that he could do both, but she still thought someone from their family should speak, and she didn’t think she could summon the strength.
“You don’t have to talk long,” she’d said. “Five minutes would be more than enough. But I think, in light of the fact that James was paying for your treatment, it would be appropriate for you to tell everyone that he lives on in you.”
He nodded. His mother was right. James would live in him for the rest of his life. The least he could do was offer up some platitudes about his stepfather at his funeral.
16
James Sommers was laid to rest three days after his murder.
There had been some last-minute procedural snafus that threatened to delay the funeral—the medical examiner’s office hedged on whether they could release the body on time, and the funeral home thought it had double-booked. But in the end, James’s body was released and a vacant chapel was procured.
Jessica and Owen arrived early to the chapel. Owen was wearing the same outfit he had put on for the party, but without Jessica asking, he had worn a pair of James’s work shoes to replace his Nikes.
She held her son’s hand, which she could not recall having done in years. Not since the start of the chemo the first time. Even then, her recollection was that at some point during the treatment, he had stopped. That had been her son’s rite of passage into adulthood—chemotherapy. He began it as a boy and finished it a man (albeit one who was still in ninth grade).
The minister did a slight double take at the sight of a bald teenager but didn’t otherwise comment. He didn’t look the part either. Short, stout, and also bald.
“Would you like to see your husband?” he asked.
For a moment, Jessica thought he meant that James was alive. Then it clicked that he was asking whether she wanted to see his corpse in the casket before the ceremony began.
“Some loved ones find it comforting to say goodbye one last time,” the minister said. “Others, however, prefer to remember how they looked in life. It’s entirely up to you.”
“Yes. I think so. Owen, do you want to?”
“No,” he said. “Is that okay?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s totally up to you. There’s no right way to do this.”
She followed the minister through a door that led into a small room that contained only the casket. Her first thought was that the coffin was too small for James.
“I’m going to lift up the lid, and then I’ll leave you to be alone with your thoughts,” the minister said.
Without waiting for a response, he did exactly that, lifting the lid, then leaving Jessica alone in the room. She couldn’t see into the casket until she was standing right beside it, peering down. When she did, James looked less like her husband than a wax figure of him.
It was his expression that made the most indelible impression. It looked as if the undertaker had tried to give him a peaceful smile, but the end result made it appear as if James had been on the verge of saying something right before he was killed.
What would he say now? she wondered.
Would she be able to bear it?
“I love you so much, James. And I always will. I’m so sorry that our time together was so short. Please believe that I love you. More than you can even know.”
She waited a beat, even though she knew that he wasn’t going to answer. She’d never hear his voice again.
Wayne took a seat in the back of the chapel. He had considered sitting up front, to be closer to Jessica and Owen, but he worried it might look like he was pushing too hard.
He spotted Jessica at the front. She’d always looked her best in basic black.
Owen sat beside her. Seeing the two of them together, Wayne felt as if he were looking at identical profiles.
There is an old wives’ tale, although some claim it as scientific fact, that newborn babies look like their fathers as a way of ensuring their survival, given that maternity is provable but paternity can be in doubt. Wayne had done some reading on this topic after Owen was born, purely as an intellectual pursuit. What he found was that the science was uncertain as to whether babies actually looked like their fathers, but the research was more definitive that fathers who believed their babies resembled them were more present in their children’s lives.
Wayne, however, had never thought Owen looked even remotely like him. When his son was an infant, Wayne joked that the male figure Owen most resembled was Elmer Fudd. As Owen grew, his maternal resemblance became pronounced. He and Jessica shared the same square jaw, straight nose, and large smile, as well as some other recessive traits, such as blue eyes and left-handedness. Whenever Jessica posted Owen’s picture on social media, the comments poured in. “He’s a little you!” they’d say. In fact, other than Owen and Wayne both having detached earlobes, Wayne was hard-pressed to note a single physical characteristic he shared with his son.
After Jessica’s infidelity was revealed, Wayne couldn’t completely banish the thought that, despite her insistence to the contrary, James had not been her first indiscretion. An unwanted pregnancy from another man might have explained why she had accepted his marriage proposal, an enduring mystery that Wayne hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around to this day.
Wayne had felt a modicum of relief when he’d been selected as Owen’s bone marrow donor. He viewed it as being akin to a paternity test. Of course, he knew that being a partial donor match for the stem cell transplant wasn’t that at all.
Indeed, if he hadn’t been selected, an anonymous donor would have been found. Still, the fact that he had been selected was enough for him to once again push away his deepest fear about his connection to his son. There are things you know about your child, and one of those things was that Owen was Wayne’s flesh and blood.
The process, it turned out, was not all that dramatic. All Wayne would have to do was go under general anesthesia while the doctors harvested his bone marrow through a syringe. The doctor said the only side effect he’d anticipate was general soreness. Wayne wouldn’t even have to stay overnight in the hospital. The procedure was scheduled to occur next week, the day before Owen’s transplant.
Wayne doubted Owen cared that he’d be the one contributing the stem cells as opposed to some anonymous donor. But he still hoped that somewhere, deep down, it would provide some tangible evidence to Owen that there was nothing he wasn’t willing to do for him, even to the point of putting his own life at risk.
Haley listened to the minister tick off the virtues of a man she had once loved, then hated. The biography being recounted was one she knew well. How James had been raised in a hardscrabble town, put himself through college, and developed a love for art. How his apprenticeship in some of the city’s finest galleries had led him to branch out on his own.
None of that sounded like James to Haley. He was not his work, at least not to her. When Haley shut her eyes to conjure James, he lay on the sand beside her on their honeymoon, looking out at an anchored yacht.
“You think you can swim that far out?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “The coming back might give me some trouble, though.”
“You won’t have to do it all at once. After we swim all the way out there, they’ll have no choice but to let us come aboard so we can gather our strength before swimming back.”
At first, she thought James was joking. But if he was, he wanted to maintain the illusion he was serious, because he stared at her without even the hint of a smile. The last thing Haley was going to do was show James that he had married someone who lacked adventure.
“Okay, then,” she said, and raced to the ocean.
The yacht was actually much farther away than she had imagined, perhaps because it was twice as large as she’d estimated from the beach. It took nearly a half hour for them to reach it. When they did, she wondered if her joke about being able to swim there but not back might have been too on the nose.
“Ahoy, ahoy,” James called out from beside the hull.
A man stuck his head over the rail and squinted down at them.
“We were wondering if you might like some company,” James shouted up.
Just like James had predicted, the man lowered the ladder, and they climbed aboard. It was a scene from a James Bond movie: James and Haley, dripping wet, walking on the finely polished wood floor of a hundred-foot-plus yacht. Also on deck were three women sunning on lounge chairs, each in her twenties and wearing a string bikini, sans top.
“Apologies for not bringing a gift,” James said with a grin, the way 007 might have if this were actually a James Bond movie.
“You know, we’ve docked in many places over the years, and this is the first time anyone has ever swum up to us and asked to come aboard,” their host said.
He was James’s age and dressed as if he was expecting guests, in white linen from head to toe. His accent was American.
“Is this your boat?” Haley asked.
“I wish, but I’m a guest aboard her.” He extended his hand. “Reid Warwick, at your service.”
As soon as the image of Reid on that Caribbean day left her head, she spotted the real thing sitting a few rows behind her at the funeral. Except for the fact that he was wearing black, he hadn’t changed a bit since their first meeting.
He smiled at her, that wolfish grin that was quintessential Reid. Like he saw you as prey, almost.
When Reid caught Haley’s eye, it seemed to him that she might truly be in mourning. The thought struck Reid as odd, especially after she’d shared with him some of her revenge fantasies, twisted tales of torturing James usually involving some harm to his manhood. He considered the things he could tell the cops about Haley, if he was so inclined, and what Haley might offer him to not be so inclined.
His mind turned from sex to money—his two most common thoughts, after all. In this case, from one beautiful woman (Haley) to another (Allison).
He had told Allison not to come today. “It’ll just raise a bunch of questions about who you are and what connection you have to James,” he’d said. “Send flowers or make a donation in his name with some charity. Better still, if you really want to pay your respects, let’s close this deal with the three remaining Pollocks so I can get some money to his family.”
Reid desperately needed Allison to make this deal happen. Without it, his cash flow difficulties would become far more serious in a hurry. In fact, even in the church, he couldn’t stop surveying the crowd to make sure that no one was here for him, rather than James.
All that looking over his shoulder would stop the moment he sold the last three Pollocks. Despite what he’d told Jessica about how the money was being split, the truth of the matter was that, with James now out of the picture, Reid’s take would be nearly a million dollars. Enough to keep the sharks at bay for a while.
He spied Owen in the front row, beside his mother. Poor kid. Despite what Reid had said to Jessica and to Allison, there was no way that he was going to share a nickel of his take with anyone.
Midway through the service, it occurred to Owen that, for all his preoccupation with his own death, this was the first funeral he had ever attended.
He couldn’t help but wonder what his own would look like in comparison. How many kids from school would show up? Would Mr. Taubenslag have the orchestra perform something? A requiem, perhaps? Would any of the girls cry?
His daydreaming ended when the minister called his name. “On behalf of the Sommers family, James’s stepson, Owen Fiske, would like to say a few words.”
His mother kissed him on the cheek, and he made his way to the podium. Once there, he looked out on the crowd and swallowed hard.
“Thank you all for coming here today,” he said, his voice sounding squeaky even to him. “I don’t like public speaking, so I’m not going to be up here very long, which I hope is okay.” The sea of faces before him seemed to be trying hard to smile. “I just wanted to say that James was my stepfather. And I don’t think I’m saying anything too controversial when I say that it’s tough being the stepfather of a sixteen-year-old, which was how old I was when I met James. I think my dad would say it’s tough being a father to a sixteen-year-old, period. But a stepfather? That’s got to be even harder because James didn’t know me at all. The only thing we had in common, really, is that we both loved my mom. And I kind of thought that James would leave me alone, and I wouldn’t talk to him much, and that would be our relationship. But it wasn’t that way. He actually wanted to get to know me. To be a part of my life. And I thought that was cool.”
Owen lifted his eyes from the paper containing his remarks. His mother was smiling at him. He looked back to his prepared speech.
“Some of you may know that I have a type of leukemia. I got it before my mom met James. The doctors thought I was cured, but I wasn’t. It came back, which is why I stand before you today bald once again. I’m going to have this transplant thing, and hopefully that will cure me.”
The smiles he had seen only moments ago were now all gone. Only a kid with cancer could make a funeral sadder.
“I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me, though. I’m telling you because James was there for me. One hundred percent. I’m not going to bore you with a rant about how expensive medical care is, or that treatments like mine aren’t covered by insurance. But James . . . he saved my life. There’s no other way to put it. He saved my life. So I guess that’s another thing we had in common. Not just our love for Mom
. But . . . my whole life.”
After the service ended and James had been interred in his final resting place, Jessica saw Haley walking toward her. She’d noticed Haley in the church and wondered about the etiquette of her attending. Then again, Jessica would attend Wayne’s funeral, so maybe it wasn’t so odd after all.
At the graveside ceremony, Haley had stood next to Reid. A little too closely, Jessica thought, but then again, perhaps those two deserved each other.
“Jessica!” Haley called out.
Jessica stiffened. “Hello, Haley.”
Haley stopped a foot before her, the distance from which someone else might have leaned in for a hug, or at least extended their hand. Neither woman did either.
“I know that this isn’t the time or place,” Haley said, “but I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.”
Jessica had intended to be friendly, but already she couldn’t spend another second looking at this woman. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this, Haley.”
Jessica turned away but made it only a single step before Haley’s hand on her elbow pulled her back.
“Make time for it, Jessica. I know who killed James.”
PART FOUR
17
So much for the procedure being akin to giving blood, with the doctors doing all the hard work. After the transplant, Owen felt like death warmed over. Not even that warm, in fact.
Eight days had passed since James had been laid to rest. During that time everything had followed just the way Dr. Cammerman had said: myeloablation was completed, Owen rested for two days, and then the transplant. As each day passed, Owen could feel his mother’s shift from the all-consuming grief she’d experienced at the loss of her husband to an equally overwhelming fear of losing her son. The look in her eye before the surgery told Owen that his mother simply would not survive losing him too.
He must have been wheeled from surgery to a hospital room, because when he woke up, that’s where he was. His room had a single window, and from the bed he could see a patch of sky. It looked to be a clear winter day. The kind he usually liked.
