SORRY CAN'T SAVE YOU: A Mystery Novel

by Willow Rose

  Isabella sits down, and Ryan serves her a plate, then pours syrup on top of her pancakes and drizzles them with chocolate. Just the way she loves it. He then winks at me, grabs a cup and pours coffee in it, then hands it to me, leans over, and kisses me.

  “Thank you,” I whisper and hold it between my hands. I feel like I am blushing like a schoolgirl—like when we first met.

  “No, thank you,” he whispers back. “For last night.”

  I chuckle and sip my coffee while he prepares a plate for me and serves it on the counter. I stare at him, thinking, if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a dream. Has he really returned to being himself? The way he’s goofing around with the kids, the pancakes—it’s almost like he’s back to his old self.

  I should be happy. I should be thrilled. This is what I have waited for…what I have dreamt about.

  Then how come I feel more terrified than ever? How come the hairs in my neck rise every time I see his smile?

  We eat breakfast together, just like in the good old days before Ryan’s last deployment. The kids get into a fight about something silly, and Ryan and I exchange looks—just like we used to. It all feels so familiar and pleasant…if only there hadn’t been that stupid lie last night.

  I can tell the kids are excited to have their dad here, especially Damian, who gets almost ecstatic. I hear Ryan promise to play ball with him later in the yard before the boy runs to his room to take care of the bunnies. He’s in charge of making sure they’re fed and have water while I clean out the cage. Our dog, Rosie, lays at Ryan’s feet and refuses to leave him. She has always been very fond of Ryan and might be the one enjoying his return the most.

  When he’s done eating, Ryan leans back in his chair and stretches. “It feels good to be home.”

  I sip my coffee. I don’t know how he does it, but Ryan’s coffee always tastes better than any other coffee out there. I close my eyes and sigh, taking in the moment, trying to push that feeling of dread away. I don’t want to feel this way. I want to be happy. I deserve to be happy.

  As I open my eyes, I accidentally glance out the window across the street at Sandra’s house. Immediately, she’s on my mind again, and I remember the messages they sent one another. I can’t stop thinking about them, even though I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. I risk ruining this moment.

  Yet, I can’t help it. I have to know.

  I sip my coffee, looking at Ryan over the rim of the cup. He is staring at me, head slightly titled, his tongue playing with the inside of his cheek. He saw me looking at Sandra’s house. I wonder if he knows what I’m thinking about. It feels like it.

  “It’s kind of odd, don’t you think?” I say.

  He squeezes his eyes almost shut. “What is?”

  “That there weren’t any signs beforehand. I mean, I saw her almost every day, and I couldn’t feel that she was even depressed.”

  Ryan frowns, places his right elbow on the table, and cups his mouth. “I guess you can’t always tell when people are depressed. A lot of times, they put on a show and pretend to be happy. The suicide comes when they can’t pretend anymore.”

  I nod. He’s right. That’s what they always say. It often comes as a surprise to the people who are close to them. It frightens me greatly. “But she didn’t even leave a suicide note. Don’t they say that people usually leave a note for those they leave behind?”

  Everything inside me is screaming to let it go, to stop talking about it, but I can’t. Ryan fiddles with his cup. He doesn’t look at me when he answers.

  “I don’t think there’s like a rule for that. Clarice didn’t leave one either before she shot herself at the base.”

  He suddenly lifts his glance and looks directly at me. It feels like he’s looking straight through me. His hand is gripping the table.

  “Why are you asking about this?”

  “I don’t know. I was just wondering,” I say, my face reddening. I sense I have overstepped a line here and made him uncomfortable.

  “You can’t do this,” he continues. “You don’t have any right to ask these questions, do you hear me? You weren’t there. You don’t know what it’s like to come home. You don’t have any idea what we’re all going through, what I’m going through. Geez, Laurie. I really thought you were smarter than that.”

  I shake my head, feeling ashamed. He’s right. I haven’t been to war. I don’t know what it’s like to be a depressed soldier with PTSD. I don’t know the weight of what they’re carrying around. But I am married to one, and I would like to know just a little more about what signs to look for, what to be aware of, so I can act before he might kill himself. I don’t find it that strange to ask these questions. But I have angered him. I can tell. This is his territory, and I am not allowed to enter.

  I don’t say another word. I don’t want to ruin his mood, but I do keep thinking about it for the rest of the weekend—especially about Clarice, Vera’s sister, the girl who killed herself while they were deployed. When Ryan mentioned her, I suddenly remembered something that Vera had told me at the funeral.

  I ignored it then, but not anymore.

  Chapter 11

  I call Vera and ask her to meet me for lunch the following Monday. It’s her day off, and she can be a civilian for once, not wearing her uniform. We go to a café outside the base in downtown Dundee Beach. I have a salad and then a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. I also have a large latte and a strawberry smoothie. Vera has a ham and cheese sandwich with pesto sauce on sourdough bread. We sit outside since it’s seventy-three degrees out, and the air feels really nice. It took me a while to figure out, but January is probably the time of year you sit outside the most in Florida. From April to October, it’s too hot to be anywhere that isn’t the beach. Right when we moved there, I met people who’d say to me how wonderful it was when the temperatures dropped in January and February when the wind blows from the north, and I thought they were silly because why would anyone like that? But now, I get it. Once the temperatures drop, it becomes really nice, and even on the few days when it is in the fifties in the mornings, you learn to enjoy that because it’s so rare that you just can’t help but want to be outside and feel it nip at your skin. Usually, by afternoon, it’s back in the sixties, so you gotta enjoy it while it lasts. To me, temperature around the low seventies is just perfect—cool enough to wear jeans, and that is a treat when you live where I do. We usually say that by the time you find your winter clothes in the back of the closet, Florida winter has already come and gone.

  But I haven’t asked Vera to meet me in order to enjoy the weather. I am not there because I enjoy her company either, even though I really do. Vera is fun and always pleasant to be around. And even though she is enlisted, and has been deployed herself, she doesn’t have that thing where you can’t talk bad about the Air Force that most of the people on base have—at least the ones who are around me.

  “It’s like a cult,” she’ll often say. Then she’ll laugh, but you can tell she means it. “Or it’s like that song, you know…uh…you can check in any time…but you can’t leave, or something like that. You know which one I’m talking about?”

  Vera dreams of becoming an author one day when she’s done with the airforce and will often refer to famous characters in books or talk about stories that I have no idea about because I rarely read. Not that I don’t want to—I just don’t have that kind of time with the kids and all that. Especially not with Ryan gone so much. I, for one, think she’s gonna make an excellent author one day. She has that quirky mind, you know? Slightly crazy, and you’re never quite sure if she’s telling the truth or pulling your leg. She likes to exaggerate a lot, and everything is a potential plot. Everyone she sees or meets reminds her of some character from a book. She’ll often go: “Doesn’t that guy over there look just the way you’d think Rand from Gone Girl would look? He does to me.”

  Usually, I’ll just nod and play along, even if I have no idea who she is talking about. Again, I don’t
read as much as she does.

  “So, what’s up?” Vera asks as we’re halfway through our meal. She knows me well and knows something is going on with me. “I hear Ryan is back.”

  I nod, my mouth full. I chew, then wash it down with my smoothie. “Yes. He came back Friday night and has stayed home all weekend.”

  “I bet you’re happy about that?” Vera asks, her eyes scrutinizing me. “Or are you?”

  Vera is probably the sharpest mind around here. I can’t hide anything from her. She sees right through me.

  “I ought to be, right?” I say.

  “It’s what you’ve wanted for a long time,” Vera says, then shrugs. “But maybe it’s not what you wanted it to be? Just like when he came home? I, for one, am worried about you. Remember how it ended last time.”

  I feel my neck and can almost sense his fingers around it, tightening their grip. Fear rushes through me, and I shiver lightly.

  “But that’s not why you wanted to see me, is it?” Vera continues, finishing her sandwich. “Something is troubling you.”

  I tell her I’d rather talk to her somewhere a little more private. The café is a popular hangout for people from the base, especially around lunch, and there are more than a couple of others in uniform sitting near us. I don’t feel safe talking about this here. So, we pay and take a stroll through downtown till we reach the beach. We take off our shoes and walk across the warm sand, then plunge our toes into the blue water. It feels good, a little chilly, but good. I finally relax a little. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to relax at all, all weekend. I have been careful, constantly worrying that I might upset Ryan and ruin everything. I have been tiptoeing around him, trying so hard to keep him happy. I want him there; I want him to stay with us badly, mostly for the children’s sake, but also for my own. And I certainly don’t want to anger him. All weekend, I have been so careful about what I said, and even though I desperately wanted to, I haven’t asked him more about Sandra and their meeting. I haven’t told him I know.

  Not yet.

  “So, tell me what’s going on?” Vera asks as we begin to walk. The sand and water feel wonderful between my toes, almost like therapy. I look up at her, biting my lip.

  “It’s your sister.”

  Vera frowns. The sun hits her face as she turns to look at me.

  “Clarice?”

  “Yes. I can’t stop thinking about her ever since Sandra died. I talked to Ryan about it and about how she didn’t leave a note, either, and that was when it struck me.”

  “What did?”

  I stop and look at her. I place a hand on her arm, then look around us. I know there’s no one there, no one is listening in, but I feel like I need to check.

  “I remember you told me something at the funeral. Back then, I didn’t think anything of it, I just thought you were grieving, grasping for answers. But then, the other day, it struck me. You said she called from Afghanistan a couple of days before she died.”

  Vera nods. She knows what I’m getting at.

  “She did.”

  “Didn’t she say something about being scared for her life?”

  Vera looks at me, her nostrils flaring slightly. I hope I haven’t upset her by asking. I know she doesn’t like to talk much about it.

  “Well, it wasn’t as dramatic as that, but she did say she had concerns about something she had witnessed over there.”

  “But it was more than that, wasn’t it?” I ask.

  Vera sighs. She looks at her feet quickly, and I know it hurts to talk about it. She was close to her sister. They joined the Air Force together. I have a feeling Vera did it mostly to keep an eye on her younger sister.

  “She also said that if anything happened to her, then we should investigate it.”

  “Yes, that’s it. That’s what I remembered,” I say.

  Vera sighs. “But Laurie, it’s not something we…”

  “But we need to investigate it,” I say. “At least in her honor. It was her last request.”

  “We tried,” she says with a deep exhale. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get any information out of the Air Force?”

  “You tried?”

  “Well, my parents did. They’ve tried everything. But all they ran into were closed doors.”

  Chapter 12

  Somehow, I convince Vera to take me to see her parents. I don’t know how I did it because she is very reluctant about it, and as we drive there together, two days later, she keeps glancing at me nervously.

  Her parents live in Orlando, in one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, which kind of reminds me of the housing on base, only more expensive with a small water fountain at the entrance. But just like on base, all the houses look alike, a little too much for my taste. I know that, once I leave base, I’ll want a unique house, preferably in a Spanish style. There’s one I keep looking at every time I drive to Publix. It’s located across the street from the beach and has beautiful arches around the windows and a cute red tile roof. I often dream that I live there and grow old there when I think about the future. I don’t know if Ryan and I will ever be able to afford one like that once he retires from the Air Force, but a girl has a right to dream, doesn’t she?

  “Please, be gentle with them,” Vera says as she stops the car in front of their house. The lawn outside is well taken care of, the flowers blooming. An orange tree in the middle of the lawn has fruit that is ready to be harvested. We have one similar at our house that we harvest from every January, then squeeze into juice. One orange can give enough for a big glass full, that’s how juicy they are.

  “They’re still very fragile, and talking about Clarice is tough,” she adds.

  I nod. “Of course. I’m not here to upset them.”

  “It’s not that they don’t want to talk about her, they do, but it’s just, well, my dad tends to get a little worked up about it, and he has a heart condition, you know? He takes pills for his high blood pressure. My mom tries to keep him calm.”

  I smile and think about my own parents. My dad has high blood-pressure but is otherwise healthy. Yet my mom does tend to worry about him anyway. It’s like she doesn’t have anything else to do, now that her kids are grown, and she can’t worry about us constantly. I often think it’s like she got into a habit of just worrying, and now she can’t stop; she misses it if she tries. I also often wonder if I will be the same. Right now, I am always worried about Ryan, and of course, my kids, but for different reasons than my mom worries about. Completely different.

  “I get it,” I say with a reassuring smile. “I’ll try not to agitate him.”

  Vera’s mother serves us coffee in the living room, while her dad shows us pictures of Vera and Clarice from when they were younger.

  “Those two were inseparable,” he says and points at a picture of them together. Vera is no more than four or five years old, her sister even younger. “They loved one another so much and always wanted to sleep together, often in the same bed. We tried to give them separate bedrooms, but they always ended up in the same bed the next morning. They were so close in age; they even had the same interests.”

  “How far apart are they?”

  “Only a year and a half. They’ve always acted like twins, doing everything together. Even sometimes dressing up to look alike so people couldn’t tell them apart. Vera doesn’t even remember that there was a time without her sister,” he says. “But they could also fight. No one could fight like those two, oh, dear Lord.”

  “No one loves and hates each other out of a good heart like sisters,” I say, thinking about my own childhood. There are three years between my sister and me, so I can relate. My sister and I are very different, though, and look nothing alike. I’m a redhead, whereas she has the most gorgeous long brown hair and blue eyes. She’s also much taller than me, which has always annoyed me.

  “We always told them that they had to remember that, once we were gone, they’d always have one another,” Vera’s mom, Hattie says. “That’s
how special it is to have a sister…and…” she trails off and doesn’t say any more. Her eyes drift off, and she looks down into her lap at her hands, rubbing them lightly on her pants.

  Seeing this brings a lump to my throat. I stare down at the table and my hands wrapped tightly around a mug.

  “Anyone want a cookie with their coffee?” Hattie says, her face lighting up suddenly. She rises to her feet before we can answer, then disappears. Vera’s dad, Samuel, or Sammy, as he told me to call him when he met us at the door, takes over. He closes the photo album, then says:

  “Anyway, you didn’t come here to hear all our silly stories. You wanted to know about the last call we had from her?”

  I nod, swallowing the lump. I feel awful for coming, and I wonder if it is even necessary. Am I just ripping open old wounds for nothing? Because I’m curious? I don’t even know what my deal is, what I expect to get out of this meeting. I can’t tell them how I think it is connected to what happened to Sandra. It’s just a feeling, nothing else. Why am I ripping open their grief over a feeling?

  “Well, Clarice called two days before we received the message that she had…that she wasn’t…” Sammy trails off, then exhales. He doesn’t seem to know I’m even there anymore. It’s like he’s talking to himself. “She sounded so different; I immediately knew that something was wrong. She was never happy over there. She didn’t like being there. She had told us this earlier, in other calls. It was nothing like she expected it to be, not at all.”

  “It was her first deployment, right?” I ask.

  He nods, still looking past me like I’m not really there. “I don’t know why she was so eager to go over there. It was all she ever wanted. Remember that, Vera?”

  Vera nods. She is not looking at him; she stares into her cup. “It was all she ever talked about. That was why she enlisted.”