by Rea Frey
Grace chomps through the crispy leaves and bramble, praying for a miracle. She marches past hushed whispers, officials, and walkie-talkies spouting off commands. The air grows cooler as she nears the start of the path, snarled with overgrown trees. Just yesterday, she was giggling and joking with her friends, only thinking of vacation. Her baby. Luca. Noah. Her confession. Their growing family. Her best friend being mad at her.
Now, near a batch of trees, she spots a corpse under a dark rubber sheet. The outline of a petite body rises beneath it, all the swells and bumps that compose a human. She halts, steadies herself, and swallows the cottony dryness of dread. How many times has she seen this exact scenario on television? How many nights have she and Lee spent together, sprawled on her crumb-infested sofa, eating snacks, not even blinking as someone gets murdered or dies from some untimely accident? They’ve all been desensitized to scenes like this, and yet, this is real. This is happening.
The officers talk as Grace edges forward. She waits for someone to tell her to stop, or that she can’t be here. She drops to her knees at the edge of the sheet. The earth soaks through her running pants.
An arm appears out of nowhere to peel back the sheet, inch by inch. Grace holds her breath. The face is marred and covered by dark hair and blood. At first, despite the horror, she exhales. This former person can’t be Lee. The features are almost indistinguishable, the neck broken, the body’s limbs crooked and limp. The coroner or whoever it is—detective? investigator?—pinches the saggy flesh of the corpse’s cheeks and turns its face upward, and that’s it: beneath all that death, there she is. The eyes, the locket that bears a picture of Mason, bunched in knotted chain around her neck, the black fingernails angled back, as if she’d been clawing for help, and the green hoodie, now blood-soaked, hiding fragments of her dear, dead friend.
She nods, mouth behind cold hands, the tears coming before she can talk, scream, or wail. She bobs her head once, twice. Her friends riot toward her, a stampede of fear, emotion, and disbelief exploding beneath the soles of their shoes.
Alice skids to a stop next to Grace, tossing out a primal scream. She collapses over Lee’s chest and squeezes. Grace hears things pop and squish as the investigator pulls her off and tells her she cannot touch evidence. Lee isn’t Lee. She is evidence. Carol stands at the edge behind them, unable to move, her face a ghost of surprise.
Grace replays the previous night’s events. Only Grace knows about Lee’s confession, but what about the rest? Had her disappointment about Noah caused her to drink, to hike, and ultimately fall? The sobering question slams into her before she can stop it: could she have jumped?
The contrasting thoughts clamp down, and she doesn’t know what to say or how to abate the guilt. As Grace stands, her body stiffens, and a dreaded truth repeats itself over and over in her head: You told her about the baby. You told her about Noah. You told her everything, and now Lee is dead.
35
noah
Mason eats chicken straight off the bone. Noah studies his movements, the way his small teeth gnaw at the warm flesh. Since they discussed how chickens were killed, skinned, sprayed with chemicals, and processed in factories, Mason prefers they buy whole chickens, so they pass through fewer hands.
This is Mason’s second rotisserie chicken in forty-eight hours, and Noah, never a fan of messes, has offered him a pair of latex gloves and a trough of paper towels, which he folds into a parallelogram. Mason dissects the bird with the precision of a surgeon, already having peeled back the oily top layer of skin. He pushes through twiggy bones, snapping a few like toothpicks, and then organizes the meat into neat little stacks: dark, light, pink, and purple, staring down into the bowl of the carcass, not disgusted but intrigued. He envies Mason’s hyper focus.
Noah pours himself another cup of coffee and glances out the window. God, he misses Grace. He hates that she told Lee alone and that it did not go well. He knows their friendship will weather the storm, but he never should have let Lee think, even for a moment, that she had a romantic chance. He hadn’t told Grace about what happened on the couch; how she took his face in her hands, how he was so reminded of …
His phone rings, and Noah rushes to pick it up, so as not to disturb Mason. He looks at the number, expecting it to be Lee or one of his clients.
“I was just thinking of you.”
Ringing phones and voices converge in the background. Grace’s voice crackles in and out over the line. He sticks one finger in his ear and ducks into Lee’s studio. He attempts to string together the words into something he can comprehend.
“Wait. Slow down. What’s happened?”
“It’s Lee. Lee.” Grace begins to cry.
“What are you saying?”
She starts spewing information between sobs: there was a fallen hiker. Or maybe a jumper? And Lee. Lee, Mason’s mother. Lee, Grace’s best friend. Lee, Noah’s employer. Lee, the woman who likes him.
“She’s dead, Noah. Lee is dead.”
Her beautiful face flashes through his mind. “What?” It is an idiotic thing to say, but he can think of nothing else. His knees buckle, and he collapses in her styling chair. Grace says his name, but he can only focus on the word dead.
She tries to explain between sobs, but the dial tone thrums in his ear, and he realizes he’s the one who ended the call. He looks in the mirror, his reflection pale and uncertain. Dead, dead, dead. His brother’s death swoops back into focus—his last and largest loss.
“Please God. Not again.” He drops his face into his hands. His entire body convulses. Sweet, hopeful Lee. He whips his head upright and catches sight of his own green eyes in the mirror. She’d been so hesitant to go … had she had some sort of gut feeling that something bad would happen?
“Noah! You have to see this!”
Mason. How the fuck is he going to tell Mason?
He replays Grace’s words again, and they rip right through him. He spins away from the mirror, but he can’t escape. Lee. How many times has he sat here, drinking a cup of coffee, as Lee massaged his scalp with oils and held a razor to his neck? She’d washed, dried, cut, hummed, and moved around him, rotating the chair to face the slim horns of her hips. They’d decided on free haircuts in exchange for his reduced fee, and he looked forward to his time in this chair. He liked her. He knew the floral scent of her skin and adored the way her fingernails tickled his forehead when she was styling him. Had he been leading her on? Had he had feelings he didn’t want to admit, even to himself?
He rotates back to the mirror. The glass is smudged, as if one of Lee’s clients smeared their fingers across it to get a better look at their hair. Noah searches for an explanation as his phone tumbles to the rug. Grace told Lee about them. And now Lee is dead. The truth scrambles in his head until he can’t make sense of it. Lee can’t be dead. He just texted her. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through until he gets to their text exchange. He reads them through his tears. The last text was right before Grace’s confession.
Why hadn’t he checked on her? Why hadn’t he called to explain himself after Grace had told her the truth?
“Noah, come here!” Mason’s chair scrapes against the floor in the next room. His heart slams around in his chest. Is he supposed to be the one to tell him? They hadn’t gotten that far on the phone.
He wipes his eyes and clears his throat. “Coming, buddy!” He tries Grace back, but it goes straight to voice mail. He reenters the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water from the tap. His hands shake as he gulps it down. Emotion brims behind his stoicism, but he can’t break. Not here. Not like this.
“Look at the rib bones compared to the leg bones. I have separated them into width and height.”
Noah takes a step closer and observes the pile of bones. He closes his eyes and gathers himself. All he can think about is Lee. During months of working here, he’s gotten intimate with her surroundings. He knows what Lee reads before bedtime, what magazines she subscribes to, what shampoo sh
e buys in bulk. He knows what bills go unpaid, left in a stack on the kitchen counter, what type of dish soap she prefers. He’s seen her razor, bits of stubble caught in the blade, her brand of tampons, her vitamins, and her vibrator, which Mason sometimes slips from her nightstand when she isn’t looking and uses to massage the bottoms of his feet after a long day. (He and Mason had a long talk about that one.) In some ways, he knows Lee better than he knows Grace.
Mason mumbles something to himself and kicks his feet under the table. Noah studies the back of his head, his posture, and, as always, feels like he is shuttled back in time to his own childhood. To Wyatt.
Noah buries his own recollections and focuses on Mason. Though Mason has been comfortable in his mother’s absence, it’s only because he knows she’s coming back. Losing a parent, especially for someone like Mason, could cause a truly irreparable regression.
He shoves aside his grief as the obvious next steps begin to arrange themselves in order of importance. He has to be deliberate about the way he handles this in front of Mason. He can’t let on that anything has changed until he and Grace figure out what’s next.
He grips both sides of the sink and studies the garden. Lee loves her garden. Loved. God. A sob escapes his throat, and Mason turns in his chair.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, bud. Sorry. Frog in my throat.” Sometimes, when Lee was done with a client, she would slip outside and sift through the dirt—just to be connected to the earth. She loved watching something grow from a tiny seed. She’d even gotten Mason interested in what lay beneath the surface: the cool, wet dirt, the roots, and the worms that slithered and broke apart if he pinched too hard.
“A frog is not in your throat.” Mason snorts. “I don’t know why people say that. We should find the origin of that saying.”
“We should.”
The phone rings. Grace. “I just need to take this.” He retreats back to the studio. “Hey. I’m sorry I hung up. I tried you back, but it went to voice mail.” He scans the room, gutted with the realization that Lee will never set foot in her beloved studio again. “I’m in shock.”
“We are too.”
He can hear the pain in her voice and wishes he could hold her. He thinks about the stress to their unborn baby and her higher-risk pregnancy. He listens as she recounts what happened, starting with their arrival, the bonfire, the argument, the unplanned hike, the body, and the police station. He slides the pocket door closed.
“Noah, I have to ask, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but did she ever imply that she was depressed at all … or anything like that?”
He replays their texts and many conversations. Lee always skews a bit toward the cynical or sometimes pessimistic, but Mason keeps her grounded. “No, of course not. Why? Do you think she was suicidal?” The idea of Lee jumping off of a mountain willingly seems preposterous. But he knows all too well that sometimes people jump when you least expect it. Even when you think they’re happy. Even when they have so much to live for. Or lose.
“We don’t know yet.” The rustle of phones and voices escalates in the background. “But I don’t think so. I’m sure it was just a horrible accident.” Her voice breaks and drops to a whisper. “Is this entirely my fault?”
“Grace, hey. Stop. Listen to me. Your telling her about us has nothing to do with what happened.”
“But she was drunk, I think. I think she drank wine.”
“What?” He knows Lee clings to her sobriety like a badge of honor. She wouldn’t undo that for some petty jealousy, would she? “Look. Don’t get ahead of yourself. The toxicology report will probably tell you all of that. Just breathe, stay calm, and tell me what you’d like me to do. Do you want me to come there?”
“No, no. I don’t want Mason to know yet. Just keep everything normal, and please don’t tell him anything.”
“Of course not. I wasn’t planning on it.” He jots down notes as Grace rattles off a to-do list, and then goes back to Mason. Noah rearranges his mask of normalcy and helps clear away the tiny chicken bones and what remains of the carcass.
“Would you like to go outside and work in the garden?”
Mason nods and removes his latex gloves. Noah opens his hand and Mason deposits them there.
“Go wash your hands, and I will meet you outside.”
Mason obeys and Noah disposes of the gloves, paper towels, and bones. He sprays disinfectant onto the table and scrubs away the remnants, bringing order to the mess. Mason needs order. He needs to know everything is going to be okay.
Mason explodes out of the bathroom and into the backyard. He bounds across the expanse of grass and plunges his now clean fingers into the waiting dirt up to his wrists. Noah is surprised he doesn’t want another pair of gloves.
Noah looks around the house, clocking just how much there is to take care of. This house is a rental. They will have to sort through all of Lee’s belongings, her will, Mason’s guardianship. He’s certain these are things her friends haven’t even registered yet. All of the logistics of death. He will help take care of everything and allow them to grieve. Because he knows what happens when you don’t.
He washes his hands, grabs another pair of food-grade gloves, and shoves them in his back pocket. Then he opens the door and joins Mason in the garden, maintaining the mirage that this boy’s life, for at least one more day, is not about to fall apart.
36
grace
The girls sit at the station. They’ve answered every question they can about last night. Grace doesn’t mention her hunch about the drinking or about what Lee has confessed. She’s too consumed with their argument, for the horrible timing of telling her fragile friend such a huge secret and then leaving her alone to fester.
Grace can’t stop seeing Lee’s bloody corpse, how one body could be so dismantled. She drops her face into her palms, her eyes rubbed raw from tears. The officers continue to assure them that the way Lee came down the mountain is indicative of a slip. Her hands and wrists were covered in cuts, as if she’d been trying to grasp at anything to stop her fall. Grace can’t help but wonder if she’d been aware of her flesh being scraped across the rocks. If she’d been scared. If she’d died angry.
Tears splash onto her lap, and Alice smooths circles across her back. Poor Mason. Poor Noah at home with Mason. She would never be able to keep incoming news like this from a child; it would be written all over her face.
She glances around the unit, all of them unsure of what to do next. Alice and Carol appear as bewildered as she is. Steam drifts from an ivory mug, her fingers wrapped around it. When had she been offered coffee?
Alice clears her throat. “What did Noah say?”
“Not much. He was in shock.”
“He won’t tell Mason though, right?” Carol asks.
Grace wipes her nose with her sleeve. “Of course not.”
“Oh my God, Mason!”
Grace and Carol look at Alice. “Mason what?”
Alice’s eyes toggle between them, wild and wet. “Who will Mason live with?”
Carol turns to Grace. “Did she have a will? Or a guardianship arrangement should something happen? Surely, she did,” Carol continues. “She had to, right? She’s a single parent with no extended family, and the father isn’t in the picture.”
Grace nods. “She does. I encouraged her to put something on paper since she’s a single parent. Though I never thought…”
“So she has one?” Alice presses a palm to her chest. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“Yes.” Grace’s stomach clenches at the upheaval Mason is about to experience. She looks at the girls. “In the event of her death, Mason goes to me.”
Carol and Alice exchange looks. “That’s incredible,” Carol says. “When did that happen?”
“About a month or so ago.”
“A month?” Alice’s eyes widen. “Talk about a premonition. What would have happened if she hadn’t written that?”
Grace shrugs. “I have
no idea.”
“Well, thank God it’s you,” Alice says. “He adores you.”
“And she doesn’t have any other relatives?” Carol asks.
“No.” Grace sits up and rotates the coffee cup in her hands. “Her entire family is gone. Her mother died when she was young. And then her father died right after Mason was born. She’s never talked about any aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, or cousins. I don’t know if she even has any living relatives. She always said she didn’t.”
“Even if she did, we wouldn’t let Mason to go to someone he doesn’t know,” Carol scoffs. “He needs special education, therapy, someone he trusts.” She rests her hand on Grace’s back. “I’m so glad it’s you.”
“What about Noah?” Alice asks. “Do you think he’ll still be able to help?”
“Of course he will. Why wouldn’t he?” Grace asks.
“I don’t know. I’m all mixed up.” Alice drops her head into her hands.
“What about a funeral? Would Lee have wanted one?” Carol asks.
Grace massages her temples. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so. She wasn’t religious.” The truth is that Grace has no idea what Lee would have wanted in the unlikely event of her death, but she knows a church and graveside burial aren’t it.
An officer appears, the shorter one from the scene. Handcuffs, flashlight, and a gun hang from both hips. “Ladies, thank you for your patience. This looks like a pretty open and shut case.” He eyes each of them. “You can go back to where you’re staying until we call you, but we do need you to start thinking about how you’d like to handle the body.”
The body. What would they do with the body?
“So, we’re free to go?” Alice asks.
