by Angie Kim
No one spoke for a minute, and Matt felt the fog around his brain dissipate, the world righting itself, just a little. Yes, she’d lied. But so had he. And somehow, finding out about Janine’s wrongdoing came as a relief; it eased his guilt about his own sins, the two deceptions canceling each other out.
Abe said, “So that means—”
Just then, someone knocked and opened the door. One of Abe’s assistants. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Detective Pierson’s been trying to reach you. He says someone called claiming to have spotted Elizabeth Ward outside, by herself.”
“What do you mean? She’s here, with my team,” Shannon said.
“No,” the guy said. “Pierson just talked to them, and they said she left. Something about you giving her money?”
“What? Why would I give her money?” Shannon said as she and Abe ran out. Behind them, the door creaked closed before clicking shut.
* * *
JANINE PLACED HER ELBOWS on the table like tripod stands and covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God.”
Matt opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know what. He looked down at his hands and realized: he’d been clutching them together, the scars on his palms sliding and pressing against each other. He thought of the fire, Henry’s head, Elizabeth on death row.
“You should know,” Janine said, “Pak already paid back twenty thousand dollars before the explosion, and he promised he’ll pay the eighty thousand back as soon as insurance comes through. And if that doesn’t happen, I’ll pay you back from my retirement fund.”
Eighty thousand dollars. He looked at his wife’s face, the earnestness in her eyes and deep furrows between her brows, and he wanted to laugh. All this fucking drama over eighty fucking thousand dollars, which (she was right) he’d never even noticed was gone, in the aftermath of the explosion. Instead, he nodded, said, “All this is making me rethink everything. I didn’t get a chance to tell Abe, but I saw Pak and Mary burning something today. I think maybe cigarettes. You know, in that metal trash can they have?”
Janine looked at him. “You went over there today? When? When you said you were going to the hospital?”
Matt nodded. “This morning, I realized I needed to tell Abe everything, and I figured Mary deserved a warning. But I got there, and they were burning stuff, and it made me wonder if maybe…” He shook his head. “Anyway, I came straight here, grabbed you, and—”
“And fucking ambushed me. With no warning.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I just needed to come clean, and I was afraid I’d lose my nerve if I didn’t do it right away.”
Janine didn’t say anything. She just frowned at him, like he was a stranger and she was trying to figure out why he looked familiar.
“Say something,” he finally said.
“I don’t think,” she said—slowly, word by word, with each syllable separated—“that it’s a sign of a good marriage that we’ve both been hiding stuff from each other for a year.”
“But we talked about this, last night—”
“And I really don’t think it’s a good sign that even after we said we’d tell each other everything last night, we still didn’t.”
Matt took a deep breath. She was right. He knew that. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” She swallowed and covered her face again and scrubbed hard, like she was rubbing off dried-in grime. Something vibrated in her purse, and she reached in for her phone. She looked at the screen and smiled, a crooked, tiny smile of sadness and fatigue.
“What is it?”
“Fertility clinic. Probably confirming our appointment.” He’d forgotten; they were supposed to go after court today, to start in vitro fertilization.
She stood and walked to the corner, facing it, like a kid in time-out. “I don’t think we should go.”
Matt nodded. “You want to reschedule? Tomorrow?”
She leaned against the wall, her head on it as if she was too weak to hold herself up. “No. I don’t know. I just … I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. He’d braced himself for her pushing him away, but she didn’t, just leaned back into him, letting him spoon her. They stood like this for a while, his heart thudding her back, and he felt something tingly—sadness, but peace, too, and relief—spread through his chest and permeate through to her skin. They had a lot more talking to do—to each other, the police, Abe, maybe a judge. There would be many more questions to ask and answer, of each other and of themselves. And there would be no fertility clinic—not tomorrow, not next week. He knew that, could tell in the way their embrace felt like good-bye. But in the meantime, for the present, he savored this: the two of them together, alone, not saying anything, not thinking, not planning. Just being.
The door opened behind them, and footsteps rushed in. Janine jerked, like someone drifting to sleep being startled awake. Matt turned. Abe was grabbing his briefcase and running out.
“Abe? What’s wrong? What’s happening?” Matt said.
“It’s Elizabeth,” Abe said. “We can’t find her anywhere. She’s gone.”
ELIZABETH
A CAR WAS FOLLOWING HER. A boxy silver sedan, the nondescript type she imagined undercover cops drove. It had been behind her in Pineburg, and she’d told herself to relax, it was just someone leaving town after lunch, but when she turned onto a random road, it also turned. The car kept its distance, so she couldn’t see who was in it. She tried slowing down, speeding up, then slowing again, but the car maintained the same distance, which seemed like something, again, that undercover cops would do. There was a clearing ahead. She pulled off and stopped. If she was caught, so be it, but she couldn’t keep this up. Her nerves were frayed and fried.
The car slowed but kept coming. She thought for sure it’d stop and the window would slide down to reveal guys in sunglasses holding up badges, Men in Black–style, but it rolled by. It was a young couple, the guy driving and the woman studying a map. They turned off onto a large driveway marked by a grape sign.
Tourists. Of course. In a rental car, following the Virginia winery-trail signs. She slumped back and took deep, slow breaths to get her heart to stop fluttering against her rib cage the way it had ever since she decided to steal Shannon’s car. It was a minor miracle she’d made it this far, past all the near misses along the way. In the room, while she was transferring Shannon’s keys to her own purse, Anna had walked in and she’d had to tell a quick lie about needing tampons and Shannon having said to get change from her wallet. Thankfully, Anna didn’t insist on accompanying her to the bathroom, but two guards were manning the courthouse doors, so she had to wait for a big group to arrive and slip out while they were checking bags. Finding Shannon’s car was easy, but there was an attendant at the booth. She’d forgotten she’d have to pay—did she have cash?—and what if he recognized her and knew she wasn’t allowed to drive? She put on Shannon’s sunglasses and hat from the glove box, pulled the visor down, and looked away as she paid, but she definitely heard “Sorry, ma’am, but are you—” as she drove away.
Driving through town had been the worst part. She’d planned to take the back streets, but she saw a gaggle of autism moms, so she turned the other way, which led to the crowded Main Street. She pulled the hat down her forehead and drove at a Goldilocks speed—fast enough to blur by and escape notice, but not so fast as to draw it. She had to stop twice for pedestrians, and the second time, she saw a man carrying a big bag—a photographer?—squint in her direction, as if trying to make out her face, and she wanted to take off, but a mom was sauntering across the crosswalk holding a toddler and pushing a stroller, stopping every two feet to correct the stroller from veering. Just as the man started walking her way, the crosswalk cleared and she took off, praying he wouldn’t alert anyone.
And now here she was. Out of Pineburg, with no cars around. She had no idea where she was, but neither would anyone else. She looked at her watch. It was 12:46. Twenty
minutes since she left. Long enough for someone to have noticed her absence.
She set Shannon’s navigation system for Creek Trail, the road between I-66 and Miracle Creek she’d driven back and forth all last summer. It was somewhat out of the way, but it was important to get on a road she knew. Plus, no one would search for her there; even if the police guessed she was headed to Miracle Creek, they’d figure she’d take the direct route.
Creek Trail was a winding country road—barely two lanes of potholed asphalt lined by trees so thick they formed a protective covering high above, the trees reaching sixty, seventy feet. A tree-tunnel roller coaster, Henry had called it. It was strange, being on this road. The last time she’d driven here was, of course, on the day of the explosion, a day just like today—a sunny day following torrential rain, with swaths of sunlight slashing through the slits in the canopy of leaves overhead and pools of mud splashing up into tear-shaped stains on the car windows. Which meant that the last time she’d made that turn, Henry had been alive. This thought—Henry sitting and talking behind her, their breaths commingling, her lungs taking in the air expelled from Henry’s—made her grip the steering wheel harder, sending her knuckles spiking up.
A bright yellow sign with a U-shaped arrow came into view, warning cars of the hairpin turn—Henry’s favorite—ahead. On the morning of the explosion, suffering from a throbbing headache (she couldn’t sleep after the CPS visit the previous night), she’d said right at this spot how much she hated this road, how these curves made her nauseated. He’d laughed and said, “But it’s fun—it’s a tree-tunnel roller coaster!” The high pitch of his laughter had pierced her temples, and she’d wanted to smack him. She’d said in a frosty tone how insensitive he was being, and he should practice saying out loud, “I’m sorry you’re feeling sick—can I do anything to help?” He’d said, “I’m sorry, Mommy. Can I help?” and she’d said, “No. It’s ‘I’m sorry you’re feeling sick—can I do anything to help?’ Try again.” She’d made him repeat her exact wording twenty times in a row, starting over whenever he got even one word wrong, his voice quivering more and more each time she made him try again.
The thing was, there was nothing magical about her wording, no functional difference between his words and hers. She’d only wanted to torture him, bit by bit, as payback for her frustration. But why? That day, she’d been convinced he was still (after four years of social-skills therapy!) not reading social cues. But here, away from the moment, away from him, it occurred to her how she could as easily have interpreted his laughter as him trying to lift her spirits or just being playful, like any normal eight-year-old boy dealing with his crabby mom. In fact, his labeling the road a “tree-tunnel roller coaster” had been downright creative—why hadn’t she seen that? Was it possible that everything she’d regarded as a remnant of autism was nothing more than the immaturity inherent in kids, the kind that mothers could find either annoying or adorable depending on their mood, except that Elizabeth—because of Henry’s history, because she was so damned tired all the time—found everything he did irritating?
A squirrel ran out, and she veered, easily avoiding it. She was used to critters here—she’d seen at least one a day last summer. In fact, a deer around this spot was what had prompted her decision to quit HBOT only hours before the explosion. She’d been driving home after the morning dive, distracted with thoughts about the protesters’ threats and her fight with Kitt, and she saw the deer too late and braked off the road into a rock, messing up the car’s alignment. Her car felt wobbly, and after she dropped off Henry at camp, she tried to figure out when she had time to take the car in, especially since she’d spent two hours researching HBOT fires from the protesters’ flyer before concluding that Pak’s rules (all-cotton clothing, no paper, no metals) were sufficient to prevent similar accidents. She had looked up at her schedule on the wall for that day:
7:30
Leave for HBOT (H breakfast in car)
9–10:15
HBOT
11–3
Camp (get groceries, make dinner for H)
3:15–4:15
Speech
4:30–5
Eye-tracking exercises
5–5:30
Emotion ID homework
5:30
Leave for HBOT (H dinner in car)
6:45–8:15
HBOT
9–9:45
Home, sauna, shower
Looking for a break in the schedule, it occurred to her for the first time how exhausting this must be for Henry, even more than for her. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually eaten at a table, not in the car on the way to or from one therapy or another. Everything from speech and OT to interactive metronome and neurofeedback: every waking hour packed with practicing speech fluency, handwriting, sustained eye contact—nonstop work on things that were hard for him. Henry never complained, though. Just did what he was told, making progress day by day. And she’d never seen how amazing that was for a kid because she’d been too busy seething with self-pity and resentment at him for not being the child she’d wanted: an easygoing kid who loved cuddling, with good grades and friends constantly calling for playdates. She’d blamed Henry for having autism, for the crying and researching and driving that came with it. And the hurting.
She looked up again and imagined tomorrow’s schedule with nothing but 9:30–3:30 Camp on it. A day with no rushing, no running late, no yelling at Henry to please, for the love of God, stop being spacey and move faster. A day when she could do nothing for an hour, maybe nap or watch TV, and more important, when Henry could play games or ride a bike. Wasn’t that what the protesters and Kitt were saying he needed? She wrote on her notepad NO MORE HBOT! and underlined it so hard the pen broke through the paper. Circling those words, she felt every organ in her body become buoyed, suspended in a glorious weightless state, and she knew: she needed to stop. Stop the therapies, the treatments, all the running around. Stop the hating, the blaming, the hurting.
The rest of the afternoon, she spent in giddiness. She called Henry’s speech therapist and canceled that day’s session (and a bonus: she’d called in time to avoid the two-hour-notice penalty fee). She picked up Henry at the regular camp dismissal time with the other kids for maybe the third time ever. They came straight home, and instead of coaching him through vision-therapy and social-skills homework, she let him plop down on the sofa with a bowl of organic coconut-milk ice cream and watch whatever show he wanted (within reason: Discovery and National Geographic channels only) while she looked up cancellation policies on the websites of all the therapists he went to—there were so many!—and sent e-mail after e-mail giving the required notice.
Miracle Submarine was the only problem. She’d gotten a discount for prepaying for forty dives upfront, and Pak’s “Regulations and Policies” document said nothing about refunds. What’s more, there was a full penalty for same-day cancellations. A hundred bucks, down the drain. She hated that (wasting money was her pet peeve). It wasn’t enough to change her mind, but it rankled her, deflated her bubble of excitement about her stop-everything decision, which was what led to Mistake #1, the first in the series of her decisions and actions that led to Henry’s death: calling Pak (instead of e-mailing) to try to work out a deal, maybe by finding someone to take over their contract for at least a partial refund. Strangely, though, when she called the barn phone, no one answered and the usual answering machine didn’t pick up. She hung up and was about to try Pak’s cell when her phone rang.
If she’d looked at caller ID, she wouldn’t have answered. But she didn’t (Mistake #2). She assumed it was Pak returning her missed call and answered, “Hey, Pak, I’m so glad I caught you. I’m—” at which point Kitt interrupted and said, “Elizabeth, it’s me. Listen—” at which point she said, “Kitt, I really can’t talk right now,” and went to hang up but Kitt said, “Wait, please. I know you’re mad, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t call CPS. I know you don’t believe me, so I spent all day onli
ne and calling people, and I found out. I know who it is.”
Elizabeth thought about pretending not to have heard and hanging up, but her curiosity got the better of her, so—Mistake #3—she stayed on the line and listened to Kitt go on and on about how she cross-referenced every autism chat board and managed to find a protester who disapproved of the group’s growing militancy and how she got her password to their message board and, voilà, there it was, a treasure trove of threads by ProudAutismMom complaining about Elizabeth’s dangerous “so-called treatments,” planning protests at Miracle Submarine and, finally, the smoking gun, bragging about her call to CPS last week.
Elizabeth listened to it all, didn’t say a word, and when Kitt finished, curtly thanked her, hung up, and went back to the special treat she’d been making for dinner, Henry’s favorite—“pizza” with fake “cheese” (grated cauliflower) on homemade coconut-flour crust. But putting a slice on the fancy china she’d laid out for their sit-down dinner, her hands shook with anger, with hatred. She knew that woman hated her. But an entire group talking about her behind her back and planning to bring her down—it burned her. Humiliated her. She pictured that silver-haired woman spewing venom, reporting her “abuse” to CPS, not caring how that might ruin her life or Henry’s, gloating that she’d stop Elizabeth no matter what. What would that woman think when Elizabeth didn’t show up tonight? Would she bring out the champagne? Pop the cork and toast to the group’s success in slaying an evil child abuser?
