And Now She's Gone

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  How soon would Dominick be there?

  Would Sean find her first? He always did. And when he did, he would explode, though maybe not immediately. Waiting for him to explode exhausted her. It was like waiting for a single bolt of lightning to strike the tallest tree. It was like waiting for the storm of the century to destroy a weak roof. On those days, she was so anxious, so dread-filled, that she nibbled at herself like a nervous rabbit, chewing through her lipstick and breaking the skin on her bottom lip.

  How had she dealt with that all day, every day, for two years and without snapping?

  But she had snapped. The blood on her clothes—the blood that hadn’t come from her—told her that she had snapped.

  In room 303, she perched at the end of the hard bed as the colors of the silent RCA television made shadows dance across the walls. Her bladder ached but she didn’t dare … Because what if …

  A groan caught in her throat, and tears burned in her eyes, and she sent her attention back to Matlock, and then Murder, She Wrote, and then Matlock again.

  Footsteps clomped up and down the walkway outside of her room. Shapes and shadows in the curtains sometimes lingered too long at her window.

  Her eyes hurt, but then so did the rest of her. Her bladder was so full that she feared drowning. Fear of catching a urinary tract infection sent her to the bathroom. There, she pulled down her jeans, and that’s when she knew: it was over. And as she released her bladder, realizing that it was over, she prayed that Sean had died in a pool of blood just like their baby had. And if he hadn’t, she’d make sure that he would one day.

  Numb, she returned to the edge of the bed and to The Andy Griffith Show. She returned to those lingering shadows and lingering doubts of her worth, back to Dominick’s promise and Sean’s condition. And just as she thought of leaving the motel room, just as she thought of calling Sean to apologize, just when she’d found her resolve not to call him—Fuck him. Go back and kill that motherfucker—someone knocked on the door.

  Dominick Rader stood there, just as he’d promised.

  “I want to leave this place,” she told him. “Leave it forever. I need to die.”

  “You sure?” he asked, as they pulled out of the motel parking lot in his rented Audi.

  “Yes.”

  He would help Natalie Dixon die. It wouldn’t be complicated. She had no kids, little credit history, no family. She had a house near Monterey Bay, but Sean didn’t know about that. Nor had she told him about her small trust, left by Faye and Victor Grayson.

  Natalie had also kept her Tiffany journal in a post office box at the busiest post office in Las Vegas. She’d written in that journal several times a month and, after every Sean Storm, had hidden in its creases pictures of her injuries.

  “We’ll need that,” Dominick told her. “But first we need to get you to a doctor.”

  During a previous visit, Nurse Anderson at Rapid-Care had offered Natalie her phone number, and now Natalie called her. They met at the clinic, and after performing an ultrasound, Nurse Anderson told Natalie what she already knew. “You miscarried, honey.”

  Shame and guilt washed over her and she cried into the nurse’s bosom.

  Back in the Audi, Dominick stared at her with tear-filled eyes as she sifted through the newest pictures of her injuries. “Nat?” he whispered.

  “I don’t wanna be here. He’ll kill me if he isn’t dead. I know he will. I wanna disappear.”

  “You sure?”

  She had asked herself this and other questions:

  Are you really in love with him?

  How could you be in love with him, truly in love with him, if he scares you?

  Don’t you hate him for embarrassing you, for belittling you, for beating you?

  What would Mom and Dad think?

  She had never answered those questions honestly. She told herself that Sean’s anger didn’t scare her. She told herself that she didn’t flinch every time he raised his voice, even though she had just stopped trembling from his last outburst.

  If she had answered those questions honestly, she would have had to admit that her relationship with her friends, with the world, had changed because of him. She would have had to admit that she’d put up with whatever he did to her, and that she had reasoned it away, no matter how bad it got, all because she had a Cartier bracelet clipped to her wrist, a big house with a succulent garden, and a red Jaguar.

  Dominick had asked, You sure?

  Her bones ached. It hurt to blink.

  You sure?

  “I’m sure.” And she closed her eyes, ready for her change.

  50

  Las Vegas in the morning was like the hot guy in a dark club who, in the light, had buckteeth, hair plugs, and smelled like a fifties-era bowling alley. Morning Vegas needed to stay in bed until dusk, until the neon and the glass and full-on commitment to the illusion worked best.

  The bald cab driver clicked hard candy against his teeth. “It’s supposed to hit one twenty today. People gonna be falling out all over the place.”

  Gray could still see traces of the moon, faint and white, like dissolving foam. It wasn’t supposed to be there, that moon. It was supposed to be on the other side of the world. Like her. She wasn’t supposed to return to Vegas. But here she was.

  Sean was supposed to be here, but he was in Los Angeles visiting his wife, ha ha.

  No one had walked into that house on Trail Spring Court.

  No one’s blood was now drying beneath the beds of Gray’s fingernails.

  You can try again.

  Hope warmed her like the sun now warming all of Clark County.

  Yeah, I can.

  “Here we are.” The driver pulled to the curb.

  Gray peered out at the motel, which looked as faded and lopsided as it had five years ago.

  Tourists on a budget still clattered in and out of the Gold Mine Motor Inn, which now boasted free Wi-Fi. The red Jaguar was no longer parked in that space where she’d left it. Sean had probably sold the car, like she’d sold her engagement ring and platinum wedding band.

  Sadness found Gray in the back seat of that taxi, and she wanted to cry. She wanted to kiss that lobby floor and the walls of room 303, her refuge for four hours. That bathroom. I bled in that bathroom. Her eyes burned with that thought.

  “You wanna get out?” the driver asked.

  “No. I’m good.” She sat back in the seat, then found that foamy moon again.

  Still sucking on candy, the driver pulled into the Cosmopolitan’s breezeway twenty minutes after ten o’clock. He reminded Gray to stay out of the sun.

  Gray said, “Yep,” then paid her fare with cash. Then she slipped into the hotel with its cold, perfumed air, where it was forever seven o’clock in the morning or evening. The chandeliers gleamed, but they didn’t mean it. The aromas of bacon and coffee from a nearby restaurant, that was true.

  Her stomach growled as she moved past empty banks of slot machines and covered gaming tables. Back in her room, Gray texted Jennifer. U up yet?

  Ellipses bubbled on the screen, and then:

  Just now. Meet at Cs for brunch @11.

  On the television, Gray found Guy Fieri eating hoagies in New Jersey. She popped her antibiotic—Good girl!—and then retreated to the bathroom for a shower. When she returned to dress, she saw that Tea had texted her.

  Can we meet? It’s very urgent.

  Gray responded, Out of town. Will be back late Sunday.

  At eleven, she met her companions in Clarissa’s room. She smelled fresh, looked fresh, and lied about how well she’d slept. Downstairs, they joined the college students, the feathered- and frosted-hair moms, and the NASCAR dads, everyone ready to eat, drink, and gamble.

  Gray took all of this in as though she were going to Mars instead of breakfast at a café. I miss this. Not the noise or the crowds but the simple living. She missed celebrating her birthday as a Taurus and not as a Scorpio. She missed vodka and signing “Natalie” on triplicate forms
and waiting lists at restaurants. She missed “Nat” and “Nattie.” She missed her. Whoever that was.

  If she had succeeded in killing Sean last night, she would never have had the chance to be her again. Now that her fear of Sean had diminished some, she saw “her” standing at the end of a long hallway, waiting on the top of the newest one-more-mountain, ready to reclaim Natalie Grayson once and for all.

  Soon.

  Today, though, Gray guzzled margaritas as she hooted at the male strippers in Thunder from Down Under. Today, she played video poker and got her fortune told. The fullback from the Los Angeles Chargers winked at her. And she clapped as nine red sevens popped onto the wheel of her one-dollar slot machine.

  “You are so freakin’ lucky,” Clarissa said.

  “I’d sleep with that football player if I were you,” Jennifer said.

  “I love it when you smile,” Zadie said.

  For the moment, being Grayson Sykes was like standing in a clean kitchen as light glinted off the fixtures. For the moment, being Grayson Sykes was like feeling new snow melt on her flushed face. Being Grayson Sykes right then felt … good. And powerful. And meant to be.

  Later, she stood in the open window of her hotel room, with the lights of Vegas behind her and the Miyabi Evolution slicer clutched in her free hand. And she took a deep, deep breath, a breath that moved past her lungs and into the molecules that made her, and then she exhaled, slowly, deliberately … and imagined killing her forever love.

  Before leaving Las Vegas that Sunday, Gray received a text message from Ian O’Donnell. He had received a bill in the mail yesterday from Mail Boxes Etc.

  “Looks like Isabel Lincoln’s box is in Vegas,” Gray explained to her companions.

  “So…” Clarissa frowned. “We’re … stopping?”

  As the taxi sped east on Charleston Boulevard, Gray found the ribbon of keys Mrs. Tompkins had given her—the set that included a mysterious key that Gray hoped would open this mailbox.

  Clarissa pouted in the front passenger seat. Her face was swollen from all the alcohol she’d consumed, and her eyes looked like buttons on a rag doll. “I can’t believe you’re working.”

  The taxi pulled into a strip mall parking lot with a doughnut shop, a vitamin store, and a Mail Boxes Etc. Cars crawled in and out of parking spaces, and the driver lucked into a spot right in front of the bakery.

  “Dude,” Clarissa whined, “like, why are we here?”

  “Party’s over, Clarissa,” Jennifer said. “I know it’s like asking water not to be wet, but stop being a brat.” Her skin was flushed—two mimosas and a Bloody Mary had that effect. The all-nighter with Dylan, the hedge fund broker, had also pushed blood to her face.

  “I want a bear claw.” Jennifer tottered to the entrance of the doughnut shop.

  Gray shouted, “Chocolate glaze!” at Jennifer’s back.

  The blonde gave a thumbs-up.

  Every Mail Boxes Etc. looked the same—small stations for stationery, bigger stations for packing materials, a long counter, and mailboxes. This kingdom was lorded over by a bored-looking woman wearing glasses and a polo shirt flecked with tape, cardboard, and marker.

  Gray approached the clerk with a smile. “I haven’t been here in a while and I can’t remember my box number.”

  The woman turned to a computer, then asked, “Name?”

  Gray’s mind raced. “It could be under my name or my roommate’s. I’m Isabel Lincoln.”

  The clerk’s fingers punched at the keys, then paused.

  “My roommate is Elyse Miller,” Gray added.

  The clerk went back to punching keys, then said, “Box three nine one eight.”

  Box 3918, one of the larger mailboxes, sat at the end of the row closest to the packing tape. Gray stuck the mystery key into the lock and turned. “Yahtzee,” she whispered.

  On top of the pile of envelopes was a small spiral-bound notebook.

  Gray flipped through the pages.

  Belize … Belize City … apartment in Ladyville $650!! 2bd 1 bath but too close to police station … Buttonwood bay? $750 … Unclaimed b … 5k Ermond 501-223-0010

  Gray snapped pictures of these pages. Who is Ermond?

  Some of the envelopes in the box had already been opened. Like the envelopes from the State of Alabama and the City of Los Angeles. An envelope from Live Scan was still sealed—Gray didn’t open it because she already knew that the fingerprints belonged to Elyse Miller. Instead, she looked into the already open envelope from the State of Alabama.

  A birth certificate … for Elyse Lorraine Miller, born in Mobile, Alabama, on January 12, 1973 to Ruth Gaines and Walter Miller.

  The manila envelope sent by the Superior Court of California was thick with legal-looking documents.

  PETITION FOR CHANGE OF NAME …

  The Court Orders the name of the birth certificate OR the current legal name IS CHANGED TO …

  Isabel Lincoln. Gray’s hands shook. She knew about these types of documents; she had her own set. But her documents had a SEALED stamp across the top.

  So, who were Hope and Christopher Lincoln, the people listed on Isabel’s birth certificate? Adoptive parents? Gray’s amended birth certificate had become page two of her original birth certificate. The cabin in Idyllwild, that’s where the amended certificate was. Isabel had separated the pages. It was not an easy thing to petition for a new identity. How did any of this fit into Isabel Lincoln’s disappearance now?

  Elyse Miller had been born in the south. Did her parents—birth parents?—know where she was? That she was now someone new? Had she changed her name because of Tommy Hampton and his family’s threats to kill her?

  Gray blinked to clear her head. “This. Is. Nuts.”

  Good thing she was already packed. Good thing she was already headed to the airport. She couldn’t take the knife on the plane to Alabama, but she stood in the middle of Mail Boxes Etc. So she shipped the Miyabi Evolution slicer to her UPS box in Los Angeles. Then she purchased a new notebook and a sparkly purple pen. The ink smelled like grapes.

  51

  The taxi smelled of doughnuts and coffee and Jennifer’s perfume. Clarissa’s face was covered in confectioner’s sugar and Zadie had fallen asleep and was now snoring. Gray plucked her laptop from the backpack, which was lighter now without the Japanese knife.

  “So, Detective Gadget,” Jennifer said.

  Zadie snorted awake. She smacked her lips and rummaged through her big purse for another bottle of Dr Pepper.

  “So, Isabel Lincoln is actually forty-six years old,” Gray said. “Not thirty.”

  “She doesn’t look old in the picture,” Clarissa said.

  “First of all,” Gray said, bristling, “forty-six ain’t ‘old.’ Second of all, black don’t crack.”

  Isabel’s age changed the dynamic—a middle-aged woman had disappeared, not a scared kitten just starting to “adult.” Taking the man’s dog had been a gangsta “grown-ass woman” move. Kenny G. might even be dead, since, after forty, women kinda stopped giving a fuck.

  Zadie asked, “Now what?”

  Gray logged on to the People Finder database. “Now, I need to learn more about Ruth and Walter, her biological parents.”

  Ruth and Walter Miller were alive and living on Till Street in Whistler, Alabama. He worked as a chief mechanic for Mobile County and she drove a bus for Mobile County Public Schools. They were both sixty-eight years old and they were still Negro, just like the clerk had recorded back in 1973, the year their daughter Elyse was born.

  “You guys are so wack,” Clarissa whined, arms crossed. “I shoulda taken a later flight with Haley and those girls.”

  Gray gaped at her. “Really? We just spent how much on you and—”

  “Fucking millennials. I swear,” Jennifer mumbled.

  “Why are you so goddamned pissy?” Zadie spat.

  Anger blew like hot wind around the car. Time to go home.

  Clarissa dabbed at her wet eyes. “We came together
, we leave together. That’s the girlfriend code.”

  Gray rolled her eyes. “Clarissa, it wouldn’t make sense for me to fly back to L.A., then turn around and fly to—”

  “You don’t have to explain diddly to this girl,” Zadie said. “And you…” She pointed at Clarissa. “You need to grow the fuck up. Toot-sweet.”

  Jennifer said, “Amen,” then enlarged the dick pic that Dylan had sent her. “Did I tell you guys he’s uncircumcised? A pig in a blanket. Yowzah.”

  At McCarran Airport, hundreds of bleary-eyed travelers trudged from TSA to Starbucks to departure gates. Some sat at scattered banks of slot machines while others stretched out on seats and on the carpet. Everyone was over Vegas.

  “You sure you don’t need me to go with you?” Jennifer asked Gray. “It’s not like you know what you’re doing in California. How will you handle Alabama?”

  “She’s totally right,” Clarissa said. “Alabama’s, like, another country. And you just found out that you should fill your gas tank every—”

  “Enough.” Zadie tapped Gray’s shoulder and winked. “You know where we are if you need us.” She paused, then added, “Well, where I am. Heckle and Jeckle here don’t have the sense God gave a goat.” She smirked at Clarissa. “Sorry, not sorry.”

  Gray told her friends good-bye and strolled to Delta’s ticketing desk. She didn’t want to catch the Millers totally off guard, and she also wanted to ensure that they were truly alive and still living on Till Street. So, after she’d purchased a one-way flight, she called the phone number listed for them in the database.

  The mechanic had never heard of Gray. He pressed the phone to his chest, then asked someone in his world, “You know some gal named Grayson?” His voice was thick as mucus.