Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  There was nothing here that the kids would want, not really, and it was all priced too high. Besides, Thomas was going through a nosy stage. Sneaking anything past him into the luggage would be difficult, probably not worth the effort.

  But there was a gorgeous array of irresistible sun hats. The aisle was empty, the store about to close, its off-season hours limited to daylight, and Clara took her time choosing a black woven one with a wide, curved brim that conveyed more glamour than whimsy. She fitted it onto her head and surveyed herself in the wall-mounted mirror, arranging her newly bobbed hair—the unfamiliar result of having accompanied her mother to her salon yesterday—to curve smoothly around her chin. She slipped on her sunglasses and nodded at her reflection once, in brusque approval, before striding to the register.

  “It suits you,” the cashier said, smiling, and Clara thanked her, wondering if it was true. She wasn’t sure what suited her these days, but she could already see Benny’s reaction to the hat, placing it on his own head and posing, making some wisecrack about the Kentucky Derby. Maybe they’d go this year—it was only a few hours’ drive away. She hoped to return from this trip with a weight shed, and who knew what surprises the lighter, freer Clara might have in store?

  The shop door closed behind her with a familiar wind chime jingle, and she caught herself imagining what sort of boutique Randi and Rhoda might own if Yellow Springs were seaside. She liked to think they’d shun the pressure to trend toward the tacky, instead finding a beachy variation on the homespun offerings they curated so well back home.

  The pier beyond the shops stretched over the water in a long, wide T, its odd hybrid structure formed from sections of traditional wooden slats reinforced by concrete slabs. Clara wandered out, her eyes on the spot where the glassy water met the sky. A mass of clouds had gathered, but the ethereal glow around the perimeter signified that somewhere beyond them, the sun was about to set. She made her way to the left tip of the T, wrapped her arms over the railing, and peered down to the water below, looking for signs of life.

  “Nice hat.”

  Clara turned, her poker face fading in spite of herself, a smile already playing on her lips. Kristin was wearing a clean white tennis visor, her dark curly hair gone sleek and auburn blond, her mirrored sunglasses impenetrable from the outside. But there was no disguising her voice, smooth and sardonic as ever, thick with a blend of amusement and emotion.

  “One can never be too careful,” Clara said, her voice confidentially low. “The good doctor may have hired his own investigator, though I’m not entirely sure if he went through with it. He ended up getting a bit … distracted.”

  Kristin nodded. “Well, we figured as much.”

  “Where are the twins?”

  She pointed, and Clara squinted in disbelief at the pair of kids pushing for turns at the rotating metal binoculars at the far end of the pier. She’d been prepared for Kristin’s disguise, had even had fun playing along with one of her own, but seeing two four-year-olds rendered unrecognizable made the reality of their running away snap into focus. Even with their baseball caps, she could tell their hair had been chopped and dyed.

  “I gave them a whole pocketful of quarters,” Kristin said. “It’s not the end of the world if they see you, but it’s probably best if they don’t. They’ve finally stopped asking endless questions.”

  “How are they?” she asked, fighting the urge to run and hug them.

  “Really good. It was hard at first. But I think on some level—a very primal level—they know we’re better off.”

  Clara nodded, unable to take her eyes off the twins. They were smiling, laughing. The force of the relief might have knocked her back—all three of them safe, within reach.

  “I miss their curls,” Kristin said, sighing. “And mine. But keratin is pretty amazing. And they don’t even bat an eye at doing it to a kid. Really, other parents ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

  “But not you,” Clara said firmly.

  “No. Not me.” She shook her head. “I took your advice—I didn’t look back. No Internet, no TV. But I have to ask: How did it go over?”

  “About like you thought it would. Everyone was mystified—no one saw it coming. No one heard anything or saw you go. And he was angry—about the money, at least.”

  “He was under suspicion?”

  Clara nodded. “But that was as far as it went.” It was a small lie of omission, and out of kindness. Clara tried not to think about how many of those she’d been accumulating. There was no point in telling her what she’d missed. Her missing it was the point.

  “You managed to stay out of it?”

  “I did my usual bang-up job.” Clara tried to laugh. “Nice touch, by the way, not actually telling me anything. The life insurance money, the kids not being Paul’s, how the two of you met, what he was really like, the rift with your family…”

  Kristin’s eyes took on a familiar stance, between defensive and apologetic. “You were genuinely surprised when you needed to be, weren’t you?”

  Clara nodded. “I wasn’t being sarcastic. It was a nice touch.” They watched together as a pair of pelicans rose from the water’s surface in a quick, graceful splash and glided, with a few effortless wing flaps, low and parallel to the shore. A nervous energy crackled in her throat, and she had to work up a bit of courage to speak again. “If you want to know the truth, I was terrified. The broken window, the Internet search, Abby’s I Can Do It! cover—I didn’t know what to think. I was legitimately worried that our plan hadn’t gone off.”

  “I’m sorry. It had to be that way.” Kristin hesitated. “The window, he’d broken it two nights before. I was terrified, but in the morning, the kids were barely even fazed. When I realized shattered glass was becoming normal to them…” She shook her head.

  So that was what had made Kristin finally crack. Friday after work, she’d stopped by to drop off some things Clara was borrowing for the next night’s patio party—a platter, an ice bucket—and burst into tears. As Clara had taken in her awful confession, she wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised, more horrified.

  “The Internet search started as a last-minute freak-out,” Kristin admitted. “I think I was trying to convince myself there had to be another way. But all it did was affirm that you were right.”

  You have to go, Clara had told her. You have to go now. Tonight, or tomorrow … A divorce sure as hell wasn’t enough. Her experience in Liv’s sad case had raised questions no one had been able to answer. Namely, what anyone might have done to prevent the whole mess.

  “And don’t even get me started on the damn book cover.”

  Clara and Kristin had shared the language of motherhood long enough for her to recognize that there was a story there, one to do with a stubborn child, and just the idea of it calmed her, that the reason it was left behind had been something as ordinary as all that. The flash of anger that she’d been worried over nothing was easily checked, disregarded. But still …

  “You could have told me some of it—I mean, along the way,” she said quietly. “I feel like a horrible friend.”

  “You would have thought differently of me.”

  “I wouldn’t have.”

  “You wouldn’t have felt sorry for a desperate widow who’d gotten herself into something scarier than loneliness, something emptier than grief? I’d already had enough pity, which was why I allowed myself to be brought to Yellow Springs in the first place. Though I’ll grant that I was a little too eager to leave everything behind. By the time I knew deep down it was time to leave again—farther and faster and forever—I was doubly scared to do it.”

  Clara tried to ignore the bruise of her hurt feelings, dulled but still tender to the touch. She nodded with what she hoped looked like understanding but kept her eyes on the water. It was impossible in this light to guess at how deep it was.

  “I did tell you the one thing I never told anyone else,” Kristin said more softly, her voice breaking.

 
; “You told me the one thing that was important to tell.” It was true, and it was all that mattered. Glancing sideways at her friend, she caught her look of concern. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It worked. You did it. You’re officially a cold case, until and unless Paul manages to turn something up.”

  Kristin nodded. “I don’t know if this feeling of looking over my shoulder will ever go away, but that’s one less thing to worry about, I guess.” She pushed her sunglasses tighter up on her nose and stole a glance back toward the beach, for good measure. “It’s been hard, not feeling guilty—even about that last night. I still can’t believe we actually went through with drugging everyone. I couldn’t stop thinking about Randi and Rhoda, sleeping through the baby crying.”

  “A baby never died from crying,” Clara said almost automatically. “The same could not be said of your situation.” They fell into a companionable silence, and somber as it was, Clara couldn’t help smiling. She’d been imagining this meeting for months, wondering if it was really going to happen—if she’d ever see Kristin again—and worrying how, if it never came to be, she’d ever deal with the not knowing.

  They’d predetermined this last checkpoint standing in Clara’s kitchen, just before the bonfire that night, as Kristin nervously watched Clara crush the pain pills and carefully distribute the powder into the wineglasses awaiting their guests.

  “I’m not sure—Randi is nursing…” Kristin had begun to protest.

  “These are left over from my C-section recovery. So I know they’re safe for the baby.”

  “But maybe the wine by itself would be enough?”

  Clara had been the firm one. She had seen firsthand what kind of crash could occur at the intersection of so-called love and simmering anger. She wasn’t going to see it happen to anyone else. She’d shaken her head fiercely. “This is what we agreed. Randi and Rhoda are up at all hours with Adele, and Izzy’s job has made her half nocturnal. We can’t risk anyone seeing anything, and you need the biggest possible head start. This is the only way.”

  Seeing the look on Kristin’s face, she’d softened. “Where will you go?” But then she’d recovered herself, shaking her head. “Never mind. It’s better that I don’t know.”

  Kristin’s eyes had filled with tears. “I’m ready to walk away from Paul. But leaving the rest of my life—and the kids’ lives—that’s going to be the worst part. Never seeing you or Thomas or Maddie again…”

  Clara poured a splash of wine into a clean glass. “I know we decided on grape juice for you tonight, but a little this far in advance won’t hurt.”

  Kristin downed it all at once.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to just tell the police when they come asking, assuming you’re long gone by then? Yes, he was violent. Yes, she ran. No, I don’t know where.” It wasn’t an entirely unselfish question.

  But that’s where Kristin was adamant. “If you do, they’ll focus the investigation on me. What kind of wife I’ve been, what kind of mother, what right I had to disappear, what I should have done instead.” She’d already made this argument, that the uncertainty about where she’d gone and why would focus the scrutiny on Paul, where it belonged. “I’ve covered his tracks—and mine—too well. I don’t want him to get away with a simple he said–she said dismissal. I want there to be doubts about him, real ones. I want him to sweat it out. I want him to be branded with a warning.”

  Clara wouldn’t press her again. “It’s going to be awful, not knowing for sure that you’re okay.” Once they’d been released into the kitchen air, the words seemed incredibly insensitive. “I mean, you will be. I know you will be. I just won’t be able to see it.”

  “Maybe you can,” Kristin had said. “Once everything has died down. Name a time and place. I’ll be there.” Clara could tell she was bluffing. Not that Kristin herself wouldn’t want to arrange to meet, but that she didn’t believe Clara would care enough to travel so far, to risk so much, just to see her again.

  How low Paul had managed to knock her sense of self-worth.

  “My mother lives in Florida,” Clara said. “Not that you’ll be there, as far as I know, but you could treat the kids to a little vacation. Early December would be three months out.”

  But then Clara had been so nervous she’d ended up drinking more than she intended that night. It went fuzzy—and nothing after it was clear, either.

  Not until that letter had come in the mail before Thanksgiving, bearing only two cautious yet hope-filled words: We’re on. She’d wanted to cry from relief right there on the curb, but instead she’d let the tide of emotion sweep her into action. All along, Clara had dreaded the necessary excuse of visiting her mother, but by the time she’d found herself breathless in the kitchen, trying to seem cool as she floated the idea by Benny, she almost meant what she said, about making amends.

  “Your sister misses you,” she blurted out now.

  “She came to see you?”

  She nodded. “I know she regrets pushing you away, judging you…”

  Kristin didn’t say anything. Finally: “She’s used to me being out of the picture. She’ll be okay.”

  “If you can think of a way you’d feel comfortable with me relaying a message…”

  She shook her head. “I can’t risk it. I’ve come too far. I just wanted to survive, but Clara, it’s the most wonderful thing—we’re happy.”

  Clara watched as Aaron put his arm sweetly around Abby, both of them perched on tiptoe at the binoculars, to steady her on the circular rail. What a good example he would have been for Thomas. Just last week she’d heard him complaining to Hallie that he still had to “train” Maddie. “We miss you,” she said softly. “Me, the kids, everyone.”

  “Has Benny ever suspected, do you think? That you know more than you let on?”

  She shook her head. “Much as I’ve hated keeping this from him, I never actually lied,” she said. “To him, the police, anyone. I was careful with what I said. But he’d be furious with me if he knew. He hates secrets. Also, he thinks I need to learn to mind my own business.” She laughed. “Which, in a way, I probably do.”

  Kristin’s fingers circled tightly around her wrist on the railing between them. “I needed help,” she said. “And I’m glad I wasn’t flawless at making sure no one could tell.”

  Clara clapped her own hand over her friend’s and squeezed.

  “Breathe that sea air,” Kristin said, her smile broad, her eyes wet. “If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know if I’d ever have gone through with it. Who knows where I’d be. Or if.”

  The twins came running, then, a mass of bare arms and legs, and Clara turned away, the wind off the Gulf whipping her hair and chilling the tears that had come into her eyes. She took one step away, then another.

  “I’m glad we did this,” she said softly, not sure if Kristin could hear.

  “Me too,” Kristin replied, her voice a hush from behind. “All of it.”

  Clara forced herself forward, toward the opposite corner of their end of the pier, where she could look back toward the shore, and watch Kristin go.

  “Who were you talking to, Mommy?” Abby asked, just as Aaron called out, “Can we get ice cream?”

  “Someone I used to know,” Kristin said, the false nonchalance in her tone failing to disguise the emotion beneath it. “And yes. Ice cream sounds great.”

  “When, Mommy?” Abby’s sandals made little scuffing sounds as they retreated down the pier, and Clara had to resist the almost panicked urge to turn, to throw her arms around them all, to say what the hell, she’d go grab the kids, and they could all have one last cone together—with sprinkles—just like old times. Their secret.

  “Right now, sweetie. There’s a parlor over there—see the lit-up sign?”

  “No, I mean when did you know her?”

  Such a long beat passed that Clara thought maybe they’d moved out of earshot.

  “In another life,” she said finally.

  Clara turned her back t
o the beach in time to see the clouds on the horizon pull apart in the middle, two divided, billowy clumps of atmosphere, alike but not the same, revealing the brilliant pink-orange of the sunset in between. One moved slowly toward the curve of the coast, a dense, hovering mass seeking land, and the other churned and allowed itself to be blown out to sea. Soon, both would all but disappear in the fast falling night, but they’d show themselves again tomorrow, taking form at first light over another place, where with any luck someone might be undistracted enough to stop, turn her eyes upward, and look—really look—and see the beauty that Clara saw now.

  There were so many ways to begin again.

  Author’s Note

  While most of the excepts at the start of the chapters are fictional, a few bits draw from real sources.

  In depicting Yellow Springs, “Everyone’s Favorite Place!” is indeed the tagline of the chamber of commerce, and www.yellowspringsohio.org is a wonderful resource for anyone planning a visit. The narration of the walking tour at the start of Chapter 9 was adapted from the tour housed here, and the copy beginning Chapter 15 is not in fact from a real estate brochure but is drawn from the “Explore” page of this helpful website as well.

  The National Domestic Violence Hotline Path to Safety does include the quote cited at the start of Chapter 13, and can be found in its entirety at www.thehotline.org/help/path-to-safety. If you or someone you know is in a dangerous, concerning, or uncomfortable situation at home, know that resources like this one save lives. Readily available help ranges from hotlines to escape plans to shelters. Telling someone, even anonymously, is the first important step. You don’t have to do this alone.