Secret Girl

by Terri Elliot

  It is Sunday morning, and later I think I may drive over to the farmer’s market beside the grocery store and pick up some strawberries, kale, homemade kombucha. There’s little to be done around the house, Henry may trim the bushes, clean the pollen off the porch. Maybe I’ll buy a new bottle of wine for us to try with dinner. I’m thinking salmon, if Henry is up for it.

  A vibration rattles against the wooden bench and sneaks along its surface to my toes. I shift and plant my feet on the floor again, turning to view my cell phone buzzing beside me. I peer down at the screen. No name. Just a number. My brow furrows a moment before I realize.

  I snatch it up and look over at Henry, who turns the page without a glance my direction.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, and quickly rush along the floor barefoot to the back of the house. I slide open the door and step out onto the deck overlooking a hill of similar Silver Lake properties. They blur together out of focus as I lift the phone before me. I read the digits and search my memory. It is.

  I answer before the last ring takes the call to voicemail with a breathless, “Hello?”

  “Emily,” he says, his voice low, deep, serious. I recognize it immediately, despite having just the one encounter with him. It’s the private investigator. Geoffrey Benson.

  “Yes?” I say, then hard swallow against the rising tide of butterflies batting wings up towards my throat.

  “I have some information for you. Is now a good time?”

  I throw a quick glance over my shoulder through the glass door. The half of our home I see is motionless, save the record wobbling beneath the needle of the player. It’s tune is muffled through the door, the whole house seems distant through the glass. Or flat. Surreal. “Uh, yes, yes, now is fine.”

  I listen to him inhale, then push the breath quickly through his nostrils. “Alright. Well, I’ve got to say, it’s crazier than you thought.”

  “Crazier?” I repeat, turning away from the house. My eyes fall to the boards beneath my feet, my toes treading the morning dew laid upon the wood. I don’t feel the chill. Instead, I feel heat, all throughout my body.

  “Let’s start with what we still don’t know. The episode regarding Joey Franks.” He grunts a bit, I hear the creak of his chair as he shifts in position. I can see him in his office, alone, his notebook laid against the crook of his bent knee, scratching at his stubble while the phone sits pinched between his cheek and his shoulder, his blue eyes reading back his notes. “I couldn’t verify the connection between the diary’s story and the one you found in the paper. The man from the news was a Gerald Morrison, no known aliases. Now, he was a known criminal, but petty crimes, seems he didn’t have a permanent residence, made do with abandoned homes around town. There used to be a few like him back in the day, before Atwater, East LA changed. Not quite homeless, industrious, but troubled.”

  “Huh,” is all I muster. It could be Joey Franks, I think to myself, but with equal odds it could be entirely unrelated. I feel the heat swell in my gut.

  “Strange thing about Morrison is how hard it was tracking down his name. Ordinarily, I could use my connections with LAPD to view the case file, but the damnedest thing is they’ve got it redacted. Took speaking with the responding officer to get that bit of information, only reason he remembered was from booking him on a drug charge that didn’t stick. Strange, very strange…” I listen to his voice trail as he ponders it.

  “That’s the crazy part?” I ask, forcing him back on track.

  He inhales sharply through pursed lips before responding, “No.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Then what’s the crazy part?”

  I hear the chair squeak again, Geoffrey groans as he resettles his imposing frame into another position. I envision him leaning forward on his desk, peering forward through the chair on the other side, into the trouble he sees ahead. The pause illustrates his reticence, a throughline from our first meeting. But then he was convinced to proceed. I can convince him again, if I have to go and see him in person, I know I can get him to push on with whatever he’s found for me.

  “The crazy part,” he utters. He sighs.

  “What is it, Geoffrey?”

  “Are you sure you…” he trails off. “No use,” he says. “Same spiel, same results. No one ever turns back.”

  I correct my posture and change my expression as if I’m seated before him again, in hopes that he’ll hear it when I speak. “I can assure you, Mr. Benson, I am prepared to follow this thread to wherever it leads.” I can hear my composure in my voice, I trust he does, too, an expert of people reading. I feed him what he needs to hear. I feel it, though, confident with each passing word. I’m in control of this. “Whatever Casey Simpson was up to with my husband before she passed away--”

  “She’s alive.”

  My breath catches in my throat, words lodged in my windpipe, turning rotten. The flavor overruns the savory vegan bacon, spoils the sweetness of the granola and the morning along with it. My whole body turns over to a sickly feeling and the chill breaks through my body. It cracks me in half and my confidence leaks through.

  No, it can’t be true. Henry wouldn’t...

  “She’s alive?” I question solemnly, my voice shrunk to a meager whisper. “How can that be? Are you certain?” I look out over the edge of the porch. The hill descends, houses and trees swirl together towards the street below, I imagine them spiraling towards a hole like water from a bath.

  “Trust me, Emily. Casey Simpson is alive.”

  15.

  The day passed in a fog, and now I find myself lying beside Henry in bed, in the dark, while the clock ticks on the wall opposite me. I stare at its dark silhouette, I listen to its rhythmic beat. I feel imprisoned in time’s march, as if its seconds have locked arms in rows both before and behind me, refusing my passage between either barrier. I try willing it to slow its pace, to tick at longer intervals, to arrive at a frozen moment, then, slowly, but with growing pace, slide backwards and reverse itself, returning me to a time before all of this.

  Geoffrey said Casey Simpson wasn’t dead. He was sure of it, but he couldn’t tell me how he knew, just to trust him. How can I trust him? What have I to go off of? The truth in the comforting tone of his voice? The integrity of his posture? The altruism of his gaze?

  I groan and beat my fist against the mattress near its edge. Henry breathes softly, sleeping soundly on the other side of me. I could drop a bowling ball beside me and he wouldn’t stir. That’s in part due to his ability to attain deep, steadfast slumber, in part due to the three thousand dollar mattress. It provides me no comfort tonight, its softness made irritating by my thoughts. Sweat collects along my forehead, I feel it slick along my thighs, under my breasts, along my back soaking the top sheet. Geoffrey’s voice replays for the hundredth time. I listen to him tell me the whereabouts of the very alive Casey Simpson. There’s a little camp of RVs and tents, a small makeshift town of temporary residences for outlaws, meth cookers, drug dealers. White trash. Just beyond the tourist destination of Idyllwild, the cute mountain town I’ve personally been to a number of times, out along the road leading east, where no one would think to look or travel, past the edge of the serenity of cabin getaways and cute shops. That’s where this cesspool exists, and apparently there is where Casey Simpson has landed.

  How does Geoffrey know? He can’t say, but assures it is of no consequence to me. What does he know of consequence? Exposing everyone else’s consequences as a third party, insulated from their outcomes. Separated from consequence, voyeuristically exploring consequence.

  I sigh. I don’t know anything about Geoffrey Benson. I know that I trust him. I can’t see a reason not to, I’m fairly intuitive, the shop owner at the crystal store in Silver Lake once felt my energy and claimed to see my clairvoyant capacity. I don’t believe in that, but I don’t think he was wrong. I have a strong sense in situations for right and wrong, good, bad, trustworthy, untrustworthy. I’ve followed that instinct my whole life. That’s h
ow I know Henry is ultimately a good man. I look over at him, dreaming something sweet, the hint of a grin tells me so. I run my hand along the side of his face. Cold to the touch. I feel my brow furrow, a bead of sweat roll along it, down the bridge of my nose.

  I roll over and throw the sheet away from my body. I slide my sweaty legs over the side of the bed and plant my feet against the dark wooden floorboards. The diary. There is something in that diary, clues, inconsistencies, which will expose her. She never stole a thing in her life. Murder? Ridiculous. She probably wasn’t even pregnant. I’ll find the flourishes, the indulgent nonsense. I’ll sense it. I’ll read through her.

  I peer back over my shoulder once to view my husband before rising quietly. As I stand, the only things I hear are the damn clock and my own thumping heartbeat, twice for each tick. I take a breath and shuffle out of the bedroom and into the hallway, softly shutting the door behind me. I think to myself it wasn’t necessary, that Henry would sleep through the next major earthquake SoCal is overdue for. But part of me is more comfortable with the notion of sequestering him from this behavior. If he’s out of sight, this will be easier to forgive myself for. I just can’t be in that room comfortably with him until I’ve unlinked myself from Casey.

  I pull the cord for the attic’s staircase and watch it fall, roll out until the last step rests on the hardwood. I look back to the bedroom door. Nothing, not a bedframe creek emanates. I ascend the stairs and move into the attic’s corner, towards the box marked ‘Old Nonsense,’ the words written in black marker unseen save for memory transposing them over the shadowed cardboard. I shoot my hand inside and find the petite volume immediately, the bends of my elbow and wrist a memorized orientation for its retrieval. It emerges into view, just barely, its silhouette a dark rectangle resting in my palms.

  I pivot and rush the journal towards the octagonal window at the front of the house, through which the yellow light of the streetlamp enters, enough to discern the words on the pages as they flip past my wide eyes. Dates, chicken scratch roll over one another, familiar strings of words I recall, read entries. I can almost hear her voice rising from them, a high pitch, persistent vocal fry that grates my eardrums. I flip faster, as if squashing her with the pages.

  February 26, 2009

  We’re going to kill Joey Franks tonight.

  Yes, yes, I think to myself. He’s despicable and you’re righteous, moving on.

  February 28, 2009

  Have we done a moral thing? I don’t know if I can stomach a retread of the play by play, I’ve spent thirty six hours with the imagery in my mind, the blood, the carnage, but now, as I clear the viscera away, what remains is that fucking question.

  “Viscera?” I repeat skeptically. Employing such a word, especially by an immature teenager, would require intellectual clarity, a stability from which a young woman would have the linguistic forethought to arrive at the word ‘viscera.’ A child who has just commited murder does not use the word ‘viscera.’

  My eyes continue scanning the entry hopping, skipping over her words, dismissing those I would ordinarily labor over deciphering through her abhorrent handwriting. The entry stalls, nearly repeats the question back to herself ad nauseum.

  Was this moral?...Did we do something horribly wrong?...Are we amoral?

  And the refreshingly more honest question:

  Will we get away with this?

  Which feels the true inquiry behind the entry.

  I pause. That would imply guilt, thus truth to the story.

  I shake my head, flip the page.

  March 13, 2009

  I still haven’t told Henry about this fucking thing growing inside me.

  How adult. Thing. A fucking thing, growing inside. I roll my eyes in the dark. Then they return to the page and feverishly race through the lines of Casey Simpson’s unadmirable prose stylings. March sixteen. March thirtieth. April fourth. Still pregnant. Still secret. Will she tell Henry? Moral confliction. All wrapped up in a child she refers to as a thing. I suppose it was, little more than tissue. I don’t know why the struggle with a decision, to me the answer is obvious. She wasn’t ready. But how would she know? So little of the world understood at her age, and all of it skewed by the prism of violence and deception, and a man untrustworthy.

  I’m beginning to read it like a trashy paperback. Perhaps that’s all it amounts to. The rough first draft of a wishful author vaguely interested in selling her adolescent fantasies of societal subversion and rebellion. Maybe she thought it was good. Maybe she thought she was clever, incisive, perhaps witty.

  Or all of this is real. Casey Simpson is alive.

  I see the date at the top of the last page.

  April 25, 2009

  I’m going to tell Henry about our child. I can’t do this alone anymore. Does he think of our future? Is he biding time, waiting for an answer to be delivered to us? Him alone? Does he want me anymore? Too many questions, questions for too long. I’m sick of this. It’s time to talk to him. Please, please let him see what I see for us. I fear he won’t.

  I flip the page and arrive at the back cover. I lay my hand over it. I’ve read all I can. Questions linger, the same she wrote of now as my own inquiry. What became of their relationship? Did she run like she mentioned earlier? Where is the baby? What did Henry say? What did Henry do? Where is my husband in all of this?

  I want to feel like it’s over, as though the spell has lifted. Instead, the gloom of a realization washes over me. What lived in the journal has been made alive around me, a spectre arisen from the incantation of a nineteen year old girl’s inner monologue. My eyes widen and take in the attic around me. Everything is out of focus, my sight finds nothing to fixate on.

  “Em?”

  A shiver races through my spine and stiffens it. I twist my head to the stairs and listen to Henry’s feet approach. I rush to the other side of the attic and stuff the journal back into its place with a practiced maneuver. But why then am I up here? My head twists, my eyes search the boxes in a panic. Without thought, my arms act to save me. They find a dusty photo album and lift it before my chest, opening to a middle page of polaroids. Before I can perceive any of the images, Henry is here. He stands at the top of the stairs feet in front of me, the yellow glow from the lights in the hallway beneath him shining through his legs, between his fingers, dissipating around his waist. I have to stare into his face a moment before I can discern any of it.

  “What are you doing up here?” he asks.

  I give the photo album a little shake in my arms. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought about this old family photo album I found the other day.”

  It’s dark, but I can see a skepticism in his low brow, the way he draws back the corners of his mouth. “Really?” he says and steps forward. His body blocks out the light behind him. I begin to see the smaller features of his face. The dimple in his chin, the angles of his cheekbones. His eyes remain unseen in the center of two black pits. “I thought you hated your childhood?”

  I peer into the places where I know his eyes stare back at me. What do they see? Can he tell I’m lying? Can he read me better than I read him? “Trying to come around to them,” I reply. I look down at the book, the pictures stuck between transparent plastic and the sticky cardboard. I can’t remember putting it together, but it must have been me. There’s no order to the photos, randomly arranged, skipping years, doubling back. I did it for my mother, who insisted I hold onto them. I don’t have any interest in holding onto family photo albums. I don’t revisit these memories. Tonight’s probably the first time this has been opened in a decade. I feign interest as I flip the page. The plastic holds to itself, the pages nearly rip when I cleave them from one another with my nails.

  “Alright,” says Henry. “Can you even see?” His head swivels around. “Do we have a light up here?”

  “Your eyes adjust,” I tell him.

  He looks back at me, his body still, dark. He takes a breath. “I’m going back to bed. You alright?”
<
br />   I nod. He turns, then descends the stairs. I watch the light wash over him, the pieces of his body formerly hidden, now made golden for a brief moment before he disappears from sight down the hallway. My eyes fall out of focus, then drift. I strain to view the pictures beneath me.

  I stare at them a while until one comes into view. I see myself, young, probably nine-ish. My mother stands beside me, her arm wrapped around me. My face is twisted into a grimace, an uncomfortable, petulant child. She just wants to go home. Who is that little girl? Standing there, with a doting mother. From my vantage, I feel like the photographer, a distance away, five, eight feet or so. Holding up other tourists at the amusement park while I take a photo of this awkward pair, a smothering, maternal force engulfing a distressed child.

  16.

  I sit in the nook finishing breakfast while Henry scurries about the house ensuring he’s collected all the things he needs. I pick at the vegan bacon, which I’ve idly torn to bits on my plate. I haven’t any appetite, but I’m keeping up appearances. Henry is preparing for a trip. He’s meeting with some investors for the project Roger has tapped him to associate produce. Shortly after he drives away from our Silver Lake home, I will also take part in some business away from home.

  Weeks have passed since I finished reading Casey Simpson’s journal. Time spent pretending to be normal. Thoughts of her writing waded into the back of my mind to lie dormant. I tried keeping them there, and I was largely successful. Keeping up the house, cooking dinners, taking trips to the farmer’s market, having sex, good sex, rough sex. We’ve mostly been a happily married couple, even better than before I found the journal. But that’s appearances. Beneath that veneer lurks a lie, an insidious deception that’s come back around for a reckoning. It’s emptied me. My body is hollow as we go through the motions. I’m a shell floating through a painting of a life whose world fits together too cleanly.