Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  Eric stared at her. “He came to the funeral?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “That’s strange, Robin. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “I thought maybe he was reporting on it.”

  “Still.”

  “I saw him talking to Nicola Crane.”

  “Your babysitter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, listen. When she came to our house for your dad’s gathering, she told me she’d just had a very disturbing conversation with someone. A reporter. That he’d taken her out to interview her about the shootings and she couldn’t leave soon enough. She said he scared her, Robin.”

  Robin exited the radio station’s website, the back of her neck tingling. “You think it was Garrison?”

  “She didn’t say, but, I mean who else could it have been?”

  “Do you think he went to my parents’ house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he got into some kind of argument with them and lost control?”

  “I’m just saying, he’s not exactly looking like an objective reporter.”

  Robin’s phone buzzed—a text message. “Probably Eileen,” said Robin. “We need to figure out when I’m going back to work.”

  She picked up the phone. Looked at the text.

  I’m sorry for any pain I’ve caused you and your family. I am not a good person.

  Robin felt weak, her head spinning, an uncomfortable feeling spreading through her.

  Eric said, “Who texted you?” A question she would have found surprisingly invasive a week ago, four days ago. But not now.

  “Quentin Garrison,” Robin said. Then she showed it to him.

  “I think we should talk to the police,” he said.

  Twenty-One

  June 17, 1976

  6:45 P.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  The police are onto us. I don’t know whether someone saw me shoplifting at Mervyn’s and put two and two together or if we got recognized from a composite sketch or what, but when we got back to the Drop Inn, there were three police cars in the parking lot. I don’t know if I’ve ever been as scared by the sight of anything, and you need to think about that, Aurora Grace. Think about what I’ve seen.

  I’m changing. Faster than I ever imagined I could. Three days ago, I would have felt nothing but relief at the sight of the flashing lights. I would have opened the car door and run for those police cars with everything I had. But now I’m telling Gabriel to drive away faster, faster. My voice is hoarse from screaming. “Fast as you can,” I tell him. “Don’t look back.”

  We are close to the freeway now. My heart is pounding so hard I feel like I may pass out from it, but I know Gabriel is more nervous than me. I can’t see his eyes behind the mirrored aviator sunglasses and baseball cap, but his skin is a deep red and there are sweat rings on the collar of his T-shirt and under the arms and he keeps saying “Oh shit,” over and over again.

  I just told him we’ll be okay. I said it in a calm, steady voice. He asked me what I was writing in this notebook. I told him it’s lyrics to a song about the two of us and that I’ll show him later. He believes me. He asks me what the song is called. I tell him “Outlaws.” “I like that,” he says. It seems to calm him, and I need him to be calm. I wish I could drive.

  Now we are on the freeway, the 134. I think we are safe, but Gabriel is still driving superfast just to make sure.

  “We’ll have to buy new clothes and shit,” Gabriel says. It makes me think of everything we left behind. All the clues and evidence. Gabriel’s marked-up map. Papa Pete’s wallet, his driver’s license in the little plastic window, clear as day. That damn Starsky and Hutch mug. And buried deep at the bottom of my suitcase, between the pages of Once Is Not Enough, the knife I’d planned to kill Gabriel with.

  A scene runs through my mind: Gabriel has been arrested. He’s in one of those brightly lit interrogation rooms, like on the cop shows Papa Pete and I used to watch. There is nothing in this room but a table and some chairs, two mean and angry detectives on one side, Gabriel on the other. One of the detectives takes out a plastic evidence bag. He shows it to Gabriel. “Do you know anything about this?” He smirks when he says it. Inside the bag is my knife. “Your girlfriend had it hidden away in her things. What do you suppose she intended to do with it?”

  Oh, Aurora Grace, if we are caught, I will lose Gabriel. They’ll show him the knife. They may even show him my letters to you. He will no longer stick up for me. He will never let me know where Jenny is. I’ll have no one and I will die alone.

  We can’t get caught. We won’t get caught. We’ll keep moving forward and we won’t look back and I’ll never again think about what we’ve left behind.

  Here’s what we have with us: The stolen prom dress. Ed Hart’s wallet, which still has some cash in it. In the trunk, a duffel bag full of Ed Hart’s things: clothes that don’t fit either one of us, some props from the shows he’d worked on, a decent-looking transistor radio, two stereo speakers, and a watch Gabriel says is expensive. Also in the trunk: a six-pack of Coke; two bags of Lay’s potato

  Oh my God there’s a cop car following us. We just exited the freeway and he followed us off the off-ramp, a right turn, a left turn, and now he’s flashing his lights. Drive faster, Gabriel. Don’t look back. But he won’t listen to me. DRIVE FASTER GABRIEL PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DRIVE AWAY!!!!!

  We’re on a quiet street now and Gabriel is pulling over. The cop car pulls over too. It’s so dark outside, I can barely see my writing on this page. I ask Gabriel what he thinks he’s doing. He shushes me. He tells me to keep writing my song, which makes me feel sad for him. I am quiet and now the whole car is quiet. There’s nothing in the world but the two of us and the flashing lights and the slam of the police car’s door.

  Gabriel just told me to get ready—I don’t know what for. I think of home, of Hollywood. Of anywhere but here.

  Twenty-Two

  Robin

  MORASCO WAS AT Robin’s house less than twenty minutes after she called. As soon as he came through the door, she and Eric showed him the text. “I know who Quentin Garrison is, but I don’t understand,” he said.

  They told him everything, starting with that first phone call she’d received at work, leaving nothing out—well, nothing as far as Quentin Garrison was concerned. The old Polaroid of Robin’s mother stayed hidden, as did any dim suspicion either one of them had that Garrison may have been onto something. Through it all, Morasco watched them, his jaw flexing—an attempt, Robin thought, to maintain a poker face.

  When they were more or less through, Morasco said, “Any idea why he believed that your mother had a connection to April Cooper?”

  Eric jumped in before Robin could say anything. “There was a video of her on Robin’s site back in May. It got a lot of views. Maybe it was something she said, the way she looked.”

  “So . . . You think he could be obsessed?”

  “Well, I’m not a psychiatrist.” Eric winced, looking at Robin as though maybe he shouldn’t have said it. “But you know . . . if I’d had Kathleen Sharkey for a mother and I believed there was someone out there who was to blame . . .”

  “Yeah. I get it.” Morasco looked at Robin. “Can you do me a favor? Screenshot that text and email it to me?”

  Robin did, Morasco staying long enough to make sure the email had gone through.

  Once he left, Robin sat back down at the kitchen table. Eric came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs resting at the base of her neck. “Do you think we did the right thing?” she said.

  “No question.” His voice was firm. This was another thing about Eric, and it went hand in hand with the blind optimism. He never questioned a decision he made, whether it was the color swatches for their new kitchen or opting not to have kids or working for Shawn Labatoir or turning the cops on Quentin Garrison. Robin was more the type to agonize and second-guess, probably because she was an analyst’s dau
ghter. “What if Garrison’s innocent?”

  “Then the truth will out.”

  She looked up at him with flat eyes. “Sure,” she said. “That always happens in law enforcement.”

  Eric kissed the top of her head. “You’ve got to trust someone, Robin,” he said. “And given the choice between Nick Morasco and his partner . . .”

  “Good point.” Robin closed her eyes, a sense of calm sweeping through her. It helped, right now, to see the world the way Eric did—without self-doubt, questioning nothing. She thought back to what he’d said to her at the emergency room, just before she got word that her father had died and her entire life came apart at the seams. You aren’t the only one who’s pissed people off. He had said it without elaborating. Hadn’t brought it up again and, as far as Robin could tell, hadn’t given it another thought. Who had he pissed off? Had it been professional? Personal? “Eric . . .”

  “What?”

  But she realized that she didn’t want answers from him, not now. She just wanted to be able to trust him, to lean on him a little. Let him have his secrets. It seemed like a fair trade. “I’m going to have a glass of wine. Do you want one?”

  “Sure.”

  Robin removed two glasses from the cupboard and got the sauvignon blanc out of the fridge. It had been a long time since she’d poured two glasses of wine. It felt good, as did the fact that he hadn’t checked his phone once—not one single time since they’d started dinner, and that was hours ago.

  She handed him a glass, and he raised it to her. “To your mom’s full recovery.”

  She smiled. Raised hers. “To new beginnings,” she said.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Robin headed to the hospital after dropping Eric off at the train station. He was no doubt getting an earful from Shawn today for “leaving his post” (for someone who’d lied his way out of Vietnam, Shawn Labatoir was awfully fond of military phrasing) but, he told her, he didn’t care.

  “Come home soon,” she had said. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  She was thinking those same words as a cheery nurse led her from the waiting area to the private room in the new wing where her mother had been moved. I can’t wait to see you. “Mom is really looking great,” the nurse said. “She should be able to go home soon.”

  Robin felt that spark of hope within her growing as she approached her mother’s room, guards stationed outside the opened door, the curtain drawn behind it. She could hear her mother speaking to someone—a man, a doctor probably, her voice stronger and clearer than it had been the previous day. “I think so,” Mom was saying. “But I don’t want to commit to anything if I’m not certain.”

  Soon, she’d be coming home with Robin and Eric. She’d stay with them for as long as she needed, and they could figure out their lives, postshooting, post-Dad. They could settle into their grief together, help each other through. It wasn’t a situation she would have imagined inspiring hope within her in the past, but that’s what life does. It throws things at you. You adjust and scar over because that’s how you survive.

  You bend, or you break. There are no other choices.

  She started to push the curtain when one of the guards stopped her. “Just a minute, ma’am.” She looked at him. He was young, with good posture and rosy cheeks. He was in full uniform, though his hat was off, revealing a light blond military haircut that sparkled under the flat hospital lights, as though someone had sprinkled glitter over the top of his head. “Mrs. Bloom is being questioned.”

  “She’s what?”

  “And this was around what time that you returned?” said the man in her mother’s room—not a doctor. She recognized the Jersey accent. Nick Morasco.

  “Probably eightish?” her mother said. “I was out for around half an hour. Not long.”

  “And you can’t be positive,” said a different voice, louder and higher pitched, “whether or not this handsome guy was at your house, talking to your husband?” Baus.

  “Oh hell no,” Robin said.

  “Robbie, is that you out there?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Robin moved the curtain and stepped into the room.

  “Ma’am,” the guards said in unison, but Morasco stopped them. “She can come in,” he said.

  Robin’s mother was sitting up in bed in her hospital gown, the color back in her cheeks. “Hi, honey.”

  Robin moved past the two detectives to hug her mother, Renee’s grip even stronger than it had been the day before. On the tray in front of her was Quentin Garrison’s headshot, pulled from the NPR website and blown up. Robin stared at it as she pulled away. She knew she probably shouldn’t say anything, but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you know him, Mom? Have you seen him before?”

  “He looks familiar, I . . . think?” Renee said it, not to Robin, but to Morasco and Baus. “I wish I could remember more of that night.”

  Baus said, “You’re pretty sure he came by the house, though?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “I understand,” Morasco said. “If you remember anything at all, call. Please. Any time of the day or night.”

  Renee tried to hand the photograph back, but Morasco shook his head. “Keep it. Maybe it will jog your memory.”

  They said their good-byes and left the room, and for a few moments, there was just quiet. Robin’s mother stared at the photograph.

  “You don’t remember?” Robin said.

  She shook her head. “Your father and I,” she said quietly. “We had a disagreement. I left to get some fresh air. I remember driving home. After that . . . nothing.”

  Robin looked at her, thinking of her father’s sad voice on the phone, the ashtray full of cigarettes, the handwritten names on analyst’s notebook paper. Quentin Garrison. Kate Sharkey. April. Have we been good parents to you? “What was the disagreement about?”

  Her mother looked at her, her eyes pinkish, the color fading from her cheeks, as though that simple question had weakened her. “I don’t remember.”

  Robin moved closer. She took Renee’s hand in her own and squeezed it. “It’s all right, Mom,” she said. “You just rest.”

  Renee’s hand was icy cold, but of course they’d always been like that. Bad circulation, but Dad viewed it more romantically. Cold hands, warm heart, he used to say . . .

  Renee said, “You want to know something funny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When the detectives got here, I was waking up from a nap. One of them was talking to the guards, and I heard his voice . . . I assumed it was your father.” Renee’s eyes glistened. A tear escaped. Robin grabbed a piece of Kleenex from the box at her bedside and dabbed at it, as though she were a child. She didn’t know what else to do.

  “We had a fight,” Renee said in a small, choked voice. “We never fought, but we did that night, and it will always be the last thing we did together.”

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You can say good-bye to him. Make your peace.”

  “How?”

  “Once you’re out of the hospital, I’ll take you to the cemetery.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re supposed to wait a year. Then we have the unveiling.”

  “Who cares what we’re supposed to do? An unveiling is a Jewish tradition, and you’re not even Jewish.”

  “Dad is.”

  “I guarantee you, it doesn’t matter to him now.”

  Mom laughed a little. Then she started to cry. She cried silently, shoulders shaking, tears spilling down her face, her lip trembling like a child’s. Robin knelt next to her and put her arms around her, stroked her hair. She kissed her wet, salty cheek and wished she could think of the right thing to say, but there was no right thing.

  “I keep telling myself he’s just away on a business trip—at a conference,” Renee said. “I dream that’s where he is. Over and over, I have this same dream, where he walks through that
door and tells me his flight has been delayed. And then I wake up and there’s no one there, or maybe there’s a nurse, and my first thought is always the same. He’ll never walk through that door. I’ll never hear his voice. I’ll never see him again.”

  “I know, Mom. I know.” Robin grabbed more Kleenex—a big wad of it—and handed it to her mother. She let her dry her own tears.

  Robin said, “I spoke to Dad that night.”

  “You did? Did he sound angry?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “He didn’t even mention that you’d had a fight. He just said you went out to buy some coffee.”

  Renee blew her nose. “That was your father,” she said. “He never wanted you to hear anything bad.”

  “I should have come over and watched the Yankees with him. We could have waited for you to come home.”

  “I’m so glad you didn’t.”

  “No, Mom, no,” she said. “I mean . . . maybe if I’d have been around when it happened, I could have helped.”

  “Don’t even say that.”

  Robin looked at her mother. She was calmer now, her face dry, her breathing steady. “Mom.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you buy a gun?”

  Renee’s eyes clouded for a moment, then cleared again. “What do you mean?” she said softly, gently. “I hate guns.”

  “How are we feeling?” A freckle-faced nurse who looked about twelve stood just behind Robin, her timing horrible. “We just need to run a few tests and check our vitals.” The nurse peered at the screen by her mother’s bed and took her pulse and temperature, taking notes after each step. She was fast and efficient, but to Robin, it felt endless.

  At long last, she left. “Mom,” Robin said.

  “What?”

  “The gun you both were shot with. It was registered to you.”

  Renee exhaled heavily, twisted a piece of Kleenex between her fingers. Robin watched her, twisting it tighter and tighter. It was like watching a jack-in-the-box, waiting for it to pop open. “It was your father’s idea,” her mom finally said. “He bought it for me. He was going to a lot of conferences at the time, and he was worried about me being at home alone.”