Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  “Babe, I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t, okay?” You wipe your eyes with the sleeve of yesterday’s shirt, dismissing me with familiar indifference.

  Whatever pain you’re in, you want to endure alone.

  Whether or not I’m affected is not of concern, now or in general.

  “Bert—”

  “Didn’t you hear me say I can’t talk about this?”

  I don’t know if you mean not now or not ever, but I don’t press. I’m stunned by how distant you’ve become so quickly. How sad you are about the loss that feels no different today than a week or a month or a year ago when Matthew wasn’t dead but not speaking with us. You convinced me you didn’t miss him. Now that the estrangement is permanent, you seem to feel differently. You want to shut everyone out, but I can’t let you, because this won’t go away. Unlike so many things you’ve hidden in our lives, situations that eventually blew over, this won’t. This one’s complicated, inescapable, and while I want to provide you comfort, I can’t help feeling things are only about to get worse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NOW ISN’T THE TIME to tell you so, and I give you the privacy you’re looking for, not because I think leaving you to wallow is best, but because there is something I must attend to. Something you never will.

  Something I pray you never find out about.

  You don’t ask to where I’m headed or for how long I’ll be gone. You have bigger concerns than my whereabouts, and as I drive, the cold air through the wide-open vents does nothing to alleviate the nervous sweat warning me that what I’m about to do is a terrible, if not the worst, idea.

  I’m at a loss for another one.

  If I don’t handle this, the calls won’t stop. She’ll show up at our house and demand things from you, because that’s what she does. She insists.

  I close in on the exit ramp to your old life, to Ella’s current life, where she lives in the past, blaming us for everything that ever has or will go wrong in her life.

  Pulling into the cracked driveway, I’m struck that this existence could have ever been yours. The porch roof sags, the grass is overgrown, and this place needs to be completely redone, renovated in the way that Ella, too, needs some kind of reinvention or she’ll live her entire life as a victim.

  I leave the car running because I don’t intend to stick around. The shorter this conversation is the better for everyone. My muscles clench as I ring the bell then back up and out of reach in anticipation of being met with hostility.

  “You’ve got some fucking nerve.” Ella answers the door wearing cut-off sweatpants, slippers, and a tight tee that proves how into fitness she is. How shallow and vain and unlike me she is. I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t attractive, but her meanness overrides anything physically appealing about her.

  “We need to talk.” I show her the checkbook, stealing a glimpse inside the house, which appears to have been ransacked. Pictures lean against a wall rather than being hung on it, a wooden chair is reduced to matchsticks, and there’s a hole in the drywall the size of a fist. I think of Vern whiffing paint in our house when her home—Matthew’s home—looks so obviously like a crime scene.

  I hope Vern’s notes about this place are as thorough as the ones he took at ours.

  Ella pulls the door closed behind her.

  While I’m aware Ella isn’t much of a housekeeper, this can’t be the usual state of things.

  “What do you want?” She crosses her arms.

  “To talk about the calls you keep making to Bert.”

  “He should be here, not you.”

  I don’t disagree. Final expenses should be worked out between parents, but since nothing ever has been, I don’t know why she expects this to be any different.

  “Bert’s upset.” I make an excuse when there should be none. “And I’m here to make sure things aren’t any more uncomfortable than they have to be for any of us.”

  Ella almost laughs.

  Me as the peacekeeper is laughable, but I’m trying.

  “I said I want him to stay away, and I mean it,” she says.

  “I understand you’re angry with him—”

  “Him? You think it’s just him? You have no idea what I’ve been through! How hard it’s been!”

  I sense she isn’t talking only about Matthew’s passing, but about what she might have endured before it.

  Whatever I may be culpable of as second wife.

  Arguing is pointless, so I instead state the obvious. “Bert is Matthew’s father.”

  Ella scoffs. “Tell him that.”

  I wonder if, at some point, she reached out to you for help, you refused, now you’re paying dearly. Whether or not you deserve Ella’s wrath, we have the right to grieve, to pay final respects, and to gain the kind of closure one does from attending a funeral. Nothing I say will convince Ella of our rights, our needs, or our belonging, so I take a different tack, speaking in financial terms that are the last vestige of this bargain.

  I flip open the leather check book cover. “How much will it take?” I’m asking not only about what the services will cost, but about how much compensation Ella needs to quietly accept our presence.

  “Nine thousand.”

  I expected Ella to pretend she didn’t know what I was getting at, but now I wonder if she hasn’t added a thousand or two for her cooperation.

  “Nine thousand dollars?” I wasn’t prepared for much over five.

  “Matthew deserves the best,” she says, and I wish I could say this was the first I’m hearing this from her.

  My hand skips as I make out the check, calculating how to cover the funds between now and when the check is cashed, and she will cash it rather than deposit it. We can’t cover this without creative financing, but some things are worth incurring debt for. I fold and tear the check from the checkbook, holding it up and out of reach because this money needs to buy certain assurances.

  “Nine grand, and you’ll back off? You’ll drop this talk about Bert being banned from the funeral?” I can’t believe I have to say this, but it is Ella I am dealing with, and I leave nothing open to interpretation. Her eyes fix on the paper that to any decent parent would be meaningless right now, and she nods. For clarity’s sake I add, “I mean all of you.”

  Family, friends, everyone.

  “No one will say anything.”

  What she means is no one will say anything to our faces, and I can live with that. I’ve swallowed my pride for years, tonight maybe for the last time, in order to keep the peace. We’re coming to the end of an obligation, and though it’s the worst possible end, it isn’t any less finite. That Ella hasn’t shed a single tear during this negotiation speaks to the lack of maternal instinct you’ve long asserted as a root cause of Matthew’s problems, but to say so would only fuel that which I’ve somehow managed to, at least temporarily, defuse. Even if I was the only one to do so, I put Matthew’s needs before my own, sacrificing all I should have been to raise him, and yet still I say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” never expecting her to be sorry for mine.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I RETURN HOME NINE grand lighter to find Deon Fitzsimmons, the lead detective on the Hannah Harman case, sitting nervously on the edge of our living room chair. One doesn’t need to be intimately involved with someone to know when they’re uncomfortable, but that he and I share a past you don’t yet know about, allows me insight into the extent to which he’d rather be anywhere else. My entering the room does little to alleviate this, serving instead as a fleeting distraction from the awkwardness of you turning the tables and questioning the police.

  “Harper!” Deon holds his arms out for a hug, which is a bit too grand a gesture, but I oblige to keep from drawing suspicion. His being here doesn’t feel right and hasn’t in years. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says, the first to acknowledge my pain and probably the only one who will.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, as if I didn’t already know.

&nb
sp; You sit, pen in hand, with a notebook opened to a blank page in front of you.

  “Bert asked me to come.”

  I doubt Deon’s here for this reason alone—if at all. He’s here to check on me, for which I’m as appreciative as I am uncomfortable. After all the women you’ve cheated with, I shouldn’t feel bad, but what Deon and I had, what I broke off, wasn’t only a physical connection but an emotional one, which feels like the bigger transgression.

  I don’t know how to be with the two of you in the same space without giving something away.

  Right now, you’re too focused on Matthew for it to be an issue.

  “If anyone would tell me what happened to my son without treating me like a suspect, I wouldn’t have had to,” you say.

  “You shouldn’t have,” I argue, though I considered making this call myself with reservations stemming from far more complicated reasons.

  “Give it to me straight,” you say to Deon. “Everything. How, exactly, did my son die?”

  You’re asking for grim details no sane parent would want, and I would intervene if it weren’t for the fact that I’m sure the imagining is worse. Over the years of your writing, we’ve seen too many crime scene photos to count. I hadn’t thought until now what Matthew’s might look like, what the condition of his body was, given the unrelenting heat spell we’re in. We were too unsettled by Vern’s presence, too uncomfortable with the scrutiny, to ask him. I wonder if that, too, doesn’t hint at our involvement, that you never asked where and by whom Matthew was found.

  “Matthew was stabbed.” Deon lets the sentence hang, giving you the opportunity to recant, to go a while longer without knowing more. “Twelve times,” he says, “in the chest, neck, and back. The neck wound likely rendered him unconscious.”

  What he doesn’t say is the order in which the injuries were inflicted. Until now, the possibility existed that Matthew’s death might have been quick or painless. As Deon tells it, Matthew exsanguinated, and bleeding out takes time.

  You deflate, the air leaving your lungs in an impossibly long sigh. You bury your face in your hands. You want to appear strong, but it’s probably best you don’t. Even with Deon.

  “Did they find the weapon? Forensic evidence? Blood that didn’t belong to Matthew?”

  A killer’s hand might have slid down the blade, especially with twelve penetrating wounds. You’re holding out hope for foreign DNA, for blood that is not a familial match.

  “Not as far as I know,” Deon says, “but this isn’t my case for obvious reasons, and it’s early. Everything is preliminary.” He leaves wiggle room to claim ignorance for things he knows but would rather not say. “We don’t even have a primary crime scene.”

  Matthew’s bloodless body was recovered from a popular hiking trail. Dumped, though to use that term feels heartless. Of the few things the police do know: he wasn’t killed where he was found, rather he had been moved postmortem. There was no sign of a struggle. I almost admit where I’ve been, telling you both about the scene at Ella’s place, but there wasn’t blood visible there, either. To say there might have been would be lying, and lying is a last resort for me always.

  I prefer omission.

  “What about Matthew?” you ask. “When will they be finished with him?”

  We’ve been waiting for the all clear so the funeral home can claim him.

  “Released,” Deon says, which is a mixed blessing.

  The investigation needs for the autopsy to have been completed to move forward, but that the medical examiner has already done so makes facing Ella and the public imminent. There will be speculation, supporters, detractors, and ultimately a consensus. The presumption of our guilt is pressing. Our behavior will be scrutinized. Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living, and we will be judged not on the circumstances—us doing our best to coexist peacefully with people who hate us—but on the sincerity of our actions, something that cannot possibly play in our favor. I consider the bargain between Ella and me and wonder if I shouldn’t have left well enough alone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE CALLS FROM ELLA have stopped. I have to believe I did the right thing—the only thing—to alleviate some of the friction. I’ll eventually tell you how I paid for her cooperation with money we can’t afford, taking cash advances from not one but three credit cards to cover the check, but not today, and maybe only if I have to.

  We arrive at the church to find Matthew’s casket closed. Whether for spiritual or practical reasons I can’t say, but my mind wanders, considering the extent of his decomposition. It’s the craziest thing to think when I’m emotionally gutted and petrified, but it’s how I cope—focusing not on the lingering stares or the constant whispers between funeral attendants, but on an article I read last week in a forensics journal about body farms.

  “I can’t believe she had the nerve to show up!” a woman two pews ahead of us says to her neighbor.

  “Her? What about him? Hasn’t he put Ella through enough?”

  I have no idea who these people are or why they’re here, but it’s clear whose side they’re on. If ever there was a time to avoid confrontation, this is it, though this isn’t what I paid for. I take your hand in mine, flashing an uncomfortable smile, which Deon, a row ahead, mistakenly thinks is for him. He returns it and I’m dying inside, terrified that today of all days is the day you finally notice. I wonder what these women would think if they knew about him and me, about the affair I’m not certain is truly over.

  Deon looks at our clasped hands and returns to facing forward.

  An organist plays “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” the uplifting hymn that sharply contrasts “Amazing Grace,” which came before it. The selections suffer from the kind of identity crisis one might expect when the deceased was neither fully child nor completely adult.

  The priest approaches the pulpit, glancing in Ella’s direction. Ella weeps into a pile of crumpled tissues, and I have to hand it to her. This isn’t the check-snatching, self-absorbed woman I’m used to. While I’ve never known her to be particularly religious, the familiarity between her and the cleric makes me wonder what else I don’t know about her.

  Someone behind me clears their throat, and I turn to see Vern sitting alone the back row. The empty pews between him and the nearest person make him stand out, his seat offering the perfect vantage point for monitoring reactions he’ll undoubtedly misinterpret. He’s wearing a navy-blue suit and an air of authority that others surely notice. His age, if not his isolation, gives him away as out of place, and while he doesn’t write anything down, he’s clearly taking mental notes.

  Two pews ahead is a distantly familiar person whom I cannot place but whom Vern, too, seems interested in. A small woman in her mid-forties wears a long-sleeve black dress and a dark hat with a veil that obscures her features. Considering how overdressed she is, I don’t know why I didn’t notice her sooner.

  You squeeze my hand as the priest begins to speak.

  “Welcome friends and family,” he says, as if any of us would be here if we had another choice. “We are gathered to celebrate the life of our beloved Matthew Stone, who has been called home to rest with his Lord, our savior Jesus Christ.”

  Ella cries louder, drawing comfort from those behind her. Hands settle upon her shaking shoulders. Voices can be heard consoling her, but everything stops when the doors at the rear of the church open and a disheveled girl walks in. She’s thin, with unwashed hair and an uncharacteristic crazed look, so I nearly don’t recognize her as Ansley Davis, Matthew’s former or maybe current girlfriend. She staggers a few steps over the marble threshold and freezes as if riveted in place. Tears stream down her face, and she hits her knees, her hands balled into fists full of dark hair. She wears a pair of tattered jeans that hang low on her hips and a T-shirt that I instantly recognize as Matthew’s.

  I stand. If no one else will go to her, I will. I know what it is to be on the outside, and, more so, what it means to be the one person dese
rving of sympathy they’ll never get.

  You pull me down to the seat next to you with a shake of your head.

  A woman I don’t know exits her pew, bending to take Ansley’s arm, only to be shoved away.

  “Don’t touch me!” Ansley shouts. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

  You cover your face, embarrassed that of course we know this girl who hasn’t a clue about church manners.

  I look around the room for others’ reactions.

  The priest stands, speechless, his breathing keying the mike.

  Ella continues crying, but it’s clear from the fact that she stays in her seat that she has no idea who Ansley is. I can’t imagine how or why that might be, other than Matthew leaving us wasn’t the only change in his life. He may have left Ansley too.

  “Bert, please.” I tug my arm free, nodding to Deon, who rises to my aid. He knows I need him without me saying it. You ought to take notes. I slide past those to my right and meet him in the aisle. “Ansley, honey?” We move slowly toward her as she gets back on her feet, me to soothe her, and Deon in case she needs physical restraining.

  Ansley throws her head back and screams, the high-pitched wail echoing against the cathedral ceiling, and when she’s finished you could hear a pin drop.

  “Ansley, honey, please look at me.” I gesture for Deon to stay back. “Sweetie, come on. Look at me, please.”

  The overdressed woman in the black hat stands, I think to offer help, which I’m neither interested in or in need of. But instead of walking toward us, she walks away, her cell phone trained on Ansley, recording video as she exits through the bank of doors at the rear.

  Ansley doesn’t so much as glance in her direction.

  “Harper, stop.” You stand and all eyes turn to you, Deon’s included.

  Vern watches the unfolding drama with piqued interest.

  I ignore the command and any notion I have about what might’ve prompted it, reaching instead for Ansley’s hand. As she did with the woman before me, she refuses my consoling gesture, stumbling past me and a flabbergasted Deon, past Ella and the speculative onlookers, past the priest who has finally stepped down to intervene but who, too, Ansley quickly dismisses. The room falls silent as she reaches Matthew’s coffin, nothing to be heard but her sobs. She places a hand upon the lid, doubles over, and vomits onto the floor.