Good Girl

by Alan Lee

  “The weeks leading up to the divorce finalization, you acted out of character. Aggressively so. And you’re essentially asking me to go digging into that time period. You need to decide if you want that man’s secrets unearthed.”

  “I had secrets.”

  “At least one.” The paramour.

  “So it’s not just about the dog.”

  “Georgina Princess is merely the tip of the iceberg, I think.”

  “Georgina Princess.” His face paled. “That…that tugs at me. You know, sometimes I almost remember it.”

  “Her.”

  Ulysses didn’t hear. He smiled sadly. “Alex always wanted a dog.” He made some slow scratches on the paper. “Do you have guesses about things you might discover?”

  “I have guesses. But I don’t want to tell you yet.”

  “Is money involved?”

  “I suspect so. But maybe don’t write that down.”

  “Hmm.” He stood and stared at the fire. He kept talking to himself under his breath, probably to keep things fresh in his mind. He paced the room, glancing again and again at the whiteboards. Sat back down and read in his journal. “This is a lot to absorb and I’m not sure how to do it. Or how to proceed or what to say.”

  “Understood. It comes down to this. I can quit now and give you the simple answers and it might bring you peace. Or I can keep going and get the truth.”

  “If…if the truth you uncover implicates my ‘past self’ in some sort of crime, are you obligated to alert the authorities?” He spoke the words slowly, like trying to pull them out from fog.

  “No. And I won’t.”

  “Are you obligated to tell anyone else?”

  “No. And you’ll need to trust my discretion and my promise that I have the best interest of you and your family in mind.”

  He stared at his journal for a long time, resting his cheek in his hand. Big sigh. “I need the truth. I want to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “But, dammit, I have no idea how to document this.” He wiped at his eyes and sniffed, and he was dealing with emotion hitherto I hadn’t noticed. I sat patiently and soon his pen began scratching.

  He wrote, Trust Mackenzie. He’s still working at the truth. He has the best interest of you and Alex at heart.

  For reasons I couldn’t immediately identify, his words went straight into my inner recesses and suddenly I was dealing with emotions hitherto unexpected.

  I wondered why he wrote Alex’s name. Habit? Subconscious slip?

  I cleared my throat. “Did you ever like to get away, Dr. Steinbeck? Before the accident. Escape to nature to clear your mind? Cabin in the woods, maybe?”

  He sniffed. “I wish. Too late now."

  Rose came in, carrying a tray. She said, “Mind if I eavesdrop a moment? I have coffee and tea.”

  Ulysses straightened and wiped more at his eyes and set his pen down. “Yes of course, Rose. Thank you. I can’t quite remember why I’m so damn emotional at the moment.”

  28

  A dim realization hit me the following morning as I drank coffee and watched Ronnie leave in her Mercedes for the office. The topic of our future still felt nuclear, too hot to touch directly and we danced around it, enjoying each moment like there wouldn’t be another, but with looming dread. As our bonds deepened, the stakes raised, and Ronnie wobbled like an amateur poker player suddenly betting with big money. She’d never cared about tomorrow until she was with me and she worried she would ruin it all. Suffering anxiety about future events which would probably never happen.

  Kix and I watched her from the door and she blew kisses from her car as she left.

  My first car, father? A red Mercedes and I’ll accept nothing less, said Kix and he laughed at Georgina Princess.

  A strange thought, my son driving one day—leaving in my car and me having nothing to drive, being stuck at home.

  Stuck at home.

  “Huh,” I said to myself. “How about that.”

  Okay, fine. I’ll take a Lexus, if I must.

  Light bulbs flashing between my ears. “The Jeep, Kix. That’s the answer. The Jeep and the Audi.”

  Yes yes. Either will do, sure. Maybe I’m not as picky as I thought. But I’d still prefer the Mercedes, Pops.

  I drove to Virginia Tech and parked near Owens Dining Hall. The wind blew harder here today than in Roanoke but temperatures were above freezing and I wasn’t forced to reevaluate my life choices, and that was nice.

  I called Alex. She answered brightly and I said, “I’ll be driving near Blacksburg soon. Can I buy you a coffee and update you about the dog and get your thoughts on something?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. August. Is my father okay?”

  “He’s dynamite. Saw him yesterday.”

  “Any reason we can’t talk now over the phone? I’ve got time.”

  Argh. Think fast, Mackenzie. “I gotta take another call in a minute, so I can’t. Meet you at Owens Dining Hall later today? Pick a time.”

  “Does thirty minutes work? Or an hour?”

  “Yes. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Where are you now?”

  Argh. Think faster, Mackenzie. “Interstate 81, heading…north.”

  “See you then!” and she hung up.

  I enjoyed the youth and their energy. Very little of my daily interactions could be described as vibrant exclamations.

  Twenty-five minutes later I spotted her trotting across the street and into Owens. I waited three minutes and followed her in.

  She waved to me from a line and dramatically pointed at a table where I should wait, amidst a sea of other youths. I obeyed and got a thumbs up from her and askew glances from kids who looked vaguely like her but less shiny.

  She returned with two coffees and two boxes of Chick-fil-A nuggets and she gave me half. I remarked, “It is not you who should be supplying the food.”

  “You’re helping my dad, and each semester I have meals going to waste, so…” She shrugged.

  She looked bright and sparkly, as though at any moment she might take a selfie for Instagram and get ten thousand hearts or likes or favorites or whatever the hell they were.

  We ate and drank some and I said, “I found Georgina Princess Steinbeck and I’m now her owner. More or less.”

  “Oh good! Does Dad know?”

  “Yes. Or he did, temporarily. Part of the reason why I’m currently her owner is that he doesn’t want to be.”

  She laughed and quickly squeezed my wrist. “I figured. Does this put the issue to rest? In his mind? I hope so.”

  “Not yet. I’d like to talk to you about the ongoing questions.”

  “Okay. Absolutely I want to help.” She nodded, less eager though.

  “Three things to discuss.” I held up three fingers—my pinky, ring, and middle fingers. “The first thing I know. The second thing, I got a guess. The third, I’m clueless.”

  She ate a nugget and looked a little nervous.

  I said, “First, I know you were at the crash. Presumably you were in the car when it went off the road. You used a fake name, but you were there. I spoke to the officer. No biggie—you panicked. I’m not sharing that with anyone.”

  She didn’t respond but gazed into her coffee. Her face lost some color the same way her father’s did. If I’d mentioned this over the phone, she might deny it; lying is harder face-to-face.

  I said, “It’s been bugging me—why were you there? Whatever the reason, it was worth lying to the police. And then I found the shed in the woods with your father’s Jeep.”

  Her breath caught and the surface of the coffee in her cup trembled. “You know about that place?”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “I do this for a living. I snoop and learn. The Jeep is still up there.”

  She nodded.

  I said, “The Jeep helped me divine the reason you were in the wrecked Audi that night. That, and a photograph I saw at your father’s house.”

&
nbsp; “Which photograph?”

  “The photograph of you getting your first car. Know the one? In the kitchen on the wall?”

  She nodded.

  “You smiling with the Audi, with the big red bow.”

  She nodded more.

  “So this is the second thing, Alex. I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess. You were driving the night of the accident. Ulysses didn’t drive off the road—you did. The Audi was registered to him but it was your car. That’s why the Jeep is still up there, because it had to be left—”

  She stood suddenly. “I don’t…” She walked away. Not a storm off but close. I waited. She got near the exit and paused. Some students went around her and gave her second looks. After a minute she moved to a nearby table and sat. Her shoulders hunched and her head bowed and she cried. Twenty-five feet away from me.

  Mackenzie August, you charmer, you.

  I waited five minutes while she cried and sniffed and blew her nose in a napkin. Her friends saw her and checked, and they talked and then her friends left.

  She looked at her phone. Scrolled the screen a while. Stood and came back.

  Her face looked swollen and blotchy and she said, “So? So what. So I was driving.”

  “So you feel responsible, even though you aren’t. So it’ll eat at you the rest of your life, Alex. I know how these things work. You wake up remembering it. You blame yourself. You hate yourself. You want to forget and you can’t, and the worst part is you can’t tell anyone. I bet I’m the first.”

  She hugged her elbows. “My father isn’t paying you to bolster my mental well-being.”

  “That’s free of charge. Because I like him. And I like you.”

  She sat, laid her head down and made a sobbing sound into the surface of the table.

  “The Jeep is still up there because you came to pick him up. In your Audi. Him and the mysterious woman.”

  She didn’t move her head.

  I said, “It’s not your fault, Alex.”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  “No. It’s not. I can prove it. Your dad called you because he’d gotten drunk and set fire to the shed and badly burned himself. Right?”

  She raised up. Reached for napkins to wipe her eyes and mop the pool of tears she’d left on the table. “Jeez, Mr. August. How do you know all this? All this awful shit I thought was long gone.”

  “Rose told me a nurse tended your father’s burn wounds. But I saw the pictures and the Audi hadn’t caught fire when it crashed. So why was he burned? Then I saw the shed. He’d burned himself. I’m amazed you found that shed at night and that your Audi made it up the trail.”

  “It didn’t.” She half-laughed. “They couldn’t drive because…” A pause to blow her nose. “You’re right, they got drunk. Knocked over a candle or lantern or something. My father never drank but he…he was blasted. Alcohol poisoning, I think.” All her words sounded funny, her nose too congested to articulate.

  Blood alcohol content that high can lead to amnesia, especially combined with additional head trauma.

  I said, “How’d you find the place?”

  “Somehow she had the GPS coordinates for the shed. She was drunk too, really drunk. A miracle she figured out how to find the longitude and latitude. The Audi got close but couldn’t get over a ridge. I had to help carry him half a mile.”

  I didn’t tell her, but it wasn’t a miracle—Ulysses had been up there before with the express purpose of nailing the GPS coordinates. And then tattooing them on a puppy.

  I said, “The women, his girlfriend?”

  “I guess. Sure. At the time.”

  “He was in bad shape.”

  She nodded, looking at the tissue and sniffing. “Awful.”

  “The alcohol and the burns.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were shaken and racing to the hospital and lost control of the Audi around the tight turns coming down Bent Mountain.”

  The structure of her face crumbled again and her lip quivered and she nodded more. “I nearly crashed at the top. I swiped a guardrail. He was blitzed and throwing up, and he said, ‘If we crash, tell them I was driving. Okay Alex?’ He kept saying my name over and over. ‘Okay, Alex? Alex? Right?’ And then he’d throw up more. And when we did crash…the woman insisted. She said, ‘Tell them your dad was driving so you don’t get in trouble.’ And when the police arrived, that’s what she said. So…”

  “Don’t you see, Alex? Not your fault. They needed a hospital but they called you, not an ambulance. It’s impossible to drive well when your father is dying in the passenger seat. You had to shoulder the burden of other people’s foolish mistakes.”

  She reclined in the chair, dropped her head back, and closed her eyes. “That was a bad night. I tried to forget it.”

  I said, “You gotta talk to someone about this. The weight crushes you.”

  “Like counseling? I don’t want to. Can’t afford it.”

  “You trust your mom enough to talk with her? She doesn’t know the truth, I don’t think.”

  “She doesn’t. But she’s with Gordon now. And I hate that guy. We all do.” She erected herself and cleared the tissues and took them to the trash. Returned and got another and blew her nose again but it didn’t help. Gave me a wry smile. “You want to know who the mysterious woman is. That’s the third thing you want to talk about.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not telling and I think you should let that part go. Dad doesn’t even remember her, and it wouldn’t help anything if you find out.”

  “It might.”

  “Mr. August, this whole thing is so sad. Right? It’s awful. What good is this doing?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “So?”

  “The truth has a way of freeing us.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it. Are you going to tell anyone? That I was driving?”

  “Of course not. You suffered enough. But I think you should. Someone you can trust,” I said.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “You could tell your mother.”

  “She’s better at pretending than you think. We get along, but… I don’t know, it’s complicated. When they split, I stayed with Dad and she…she wanted money in child support and it hurt our relationship.”

  “Money has a way of doing that,” I said.

  “So are you done? Can you leave this thing alone now?”

  “I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”

  “What else is there?”

  “An excellent question,” I said.

  “You’re going to find out. You’re good at this, I can tell.”

  At the moment, watching her dab her eyes and sniff, I didn’t feel like it.

  29

  I had most of the puzzle finished. Over fifty percent. And the remainder was constituted by only two pieces.

  Who was the woman?

  Why tattoo the dog?

  I had guesses about both.

  Other than making beautiful young girls cry, I was having a ton of fun. I preferred this to cage matches in Naples.

  I waited in the woods behind Robin Hood, on a path leading to the Mill Mountain Star, and I watched Ulysses’s house at a distance of fifty yards.Temperatures fell into the forties and I shivered and stamped and waited for Rose to go somewhere.

  Less fun.

  Finally, about three in the afternoon, the garage door purred open and an old Mercedes A-Class backed out. Rose at the wheel. She motored down Robin Hood and out of sight. I waited ten minutes and knocked on his door.

  I wore cologne. But a starkly different brand and scent. Less musk, more fruit.

  Ulysses himself answered it. Wearing loafers and a black turtleneck and corduroy khakis.

  “Afternoon,” I said.

  He nodded politely. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes—I was a stranger. Fascinating. “Good afternoon. Help you?”

  I wore the blue shirt of a handyman and I indicated the bag of tools I carried.
“Sorry I’m late, Dr. Steinbeck. Here to check the thermostat. Heater’s acting funny, Rose said. She mentioned you wouldn’t remember I’m coming.”

  He nodded the nod of a man resigned to memory loss but not entirely crushed by it. “I forgot she called you.”

  “I’ll only be ten minutes and Rose said to let myself out. Sound good?”

  “She’s the boss,” said Ulysses and he stepped aside. “Thermostat’s in the kitchen. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”

  “Perfect. Thanks, Doc,” I said.

  Robbing this man would be hilariously easy. Should warn Rose.

  I deposited my bag down in the gourmet kitchen, salivated over the Wusthof knives, debated cooking a five course meal, decided against it, and moved into the living quarters beyond. Found a main hallway and staircase. My guess— they didn’t live upstairs; they took up residence on the main floor so there I searched.

  Rose’s bedroom was first. An open J.D. Robb novel rested on the nightstand, face down. Bed made. Laundry put away. A vase on the dresser with flowers three days past bloom. Two framed photographs with her son. Phone charging station. Thin necklaces hanging on the mirror.

  The bathroom Rose used was the bathroom across the hall. The usual stuff—a brush clogged with her long brown hair; shower with assortment of shampoos and conditioners; contact solution; hair dryer; a pill box. I could invade her privacy and inspect her prescriptions but that wasn’t why I came.

  I moved on.

  Ulysses’s bedroom was the master. Still orderly but less so. I found what I wanted immediately—notes on the wall for him to see as soon as he woke each morning. The largest was a decorative oil painting dominated by a sweet message—

  Good morning, Ulysses.

  The most important things for you to know are this:

  Your family loves you.

  You are not in debt. No one is mad at you.

  Your health is good. Your daughter is happy.

  Your schedule is clear. Your friends might drop by.

  And you have memory loss.

  You read this yesterday too, but you forgot already.

  You’re going to be okay. Take a moment to breathe.

  And don’t panic—today will be a good day.