No One Knows

by J. T. Ellison

“No way, sexy lady. You can’t go in there. Men only.” He looked a little more sober now, and Aubrey shook her head. God knew what Sulman was up to in there—or Josh. Was that why Arlo was blocking her way? Was Josh doing something he shouldn’t have been? She had a flash of anger and jealousy so intense that she felt like if she didn’t scream she’d explode.

  No. No way. He would never. Not after . . .

  She shouldered Arlo out of the way and flung the door open. His slurry voice followed her down the dark hallway.

  “Aubrey. Aubrey, really. You don’t want to go in there.”

  She stormed into the corridor and followed the noise. A heavy bass beat thumped in time with her slamming heart. She pulled the double doors open and strode into the bacchanal. Her eyes took a few moments to adjust to the gloom. When they did, her first emotion was relief. What she saw wasn’t terribly shocking. Not great, but it could have been worse.

  Kevin Sulman, the groom, was being kissed and groped rather forcefully by a random stripper, and looking like he was enjoying her attentions. A few of the boys had their hands and mouths in places that they shouldn’t have, but no one was naked but the hired girls.

  And there was no Josh.

  What the hell?

  Arlo was right behind her. He grabbed her by the waist and yanked her from the room.

  The doors swung closed, but the music barely faded. Arlo pulled her by the hand down the corridor and into the parking lot. He was humming under his breath. Once they hit the tarmac, he put both hands on her shoulders. His breath was sour on her face.

  “Aubs, you can’t say anything to Janie. She will roast Sulman on a spit.”

  “She won’t, Arlo, but I don’t care about them. Where is Josh?”

  “I told you. He didn’t show.” He stepped back, fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “We thought he either felt bad after the accident or y’all decided to go home.”

  “In our imaginary car?” Aubrey heard the note in her voice. Heard it, and it scared her. She’d gone up several decibels and an octave, all at once. Arlo heard it, too. He stopped fumbling with his smokes.

  “Don’t freak, Aubrey. Have you called him?”

  “Yes. He’s not answering.”

  Her breath started to come short. What if Josh was dead? An intracranial bleed caused by the accident? A collapsed lung? A pneumothorax? All those terms she’d been helping him study for the past three years tumbled around with the threatening panic inside her head. Maybe he was in the emergency room right now, intubated, unable to talk, unable to call her and let her know.

  As she rang Josh’s phone again, she asked Arlo, “Do you know the way to the main hotel?”

  “Yeah. It’s through the back of this place. You came the long way around, I take it?”

  “Yes. I want to check the room. Show me the fastest way back.”

  He tossed his cigarette on the ground and pulled the door open for her. She followed, phone to her ear. Josh’s voicemail clicked on. She left him a message. Followed Arlo past the thumping walls of the party, out into a long corridor that attached back to the hotel lobby. Damn concierge had sent her the wrong way, but she didn’t care about that now. They found the first elevator up, and she hit the button for the fourth floor.

  It took forever. Aubrey thought she’d lose her mind. She had her key in one hand and the phone, steadily redialing, in the other. The doors finally dinged open, and she took off at a run toward their room.

  She wrestled with the keycard but got the door open.

  The room was empty.

  Aubrey knew then something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Like that sixth sense that tells you when something bad is going to happen, and the phone rings with news that someone you love is sick, or has died.

  She tried to stay focused. Maybe he’d gone back to the house for something. She rang their home phone, but the machine picked up—with that stupid, goofy message they’d recorded one night when they’d both had too much to drink. Individually: “This is Aubrey.” “And this is Josh.” Together: “These are the voyages of the Starship Hamilton. Our mission: to bodily go where no married couple has gone before. Which means we’re really busy right now. You know what to do!”

  No one but friends had the home number—all their business was done on their cell phones—but she really needed to change that message.

  At the beep, she said, “Josh? Hon, where are you? I’m at the hotel looking for you. Call me as soon as you get this, okay?”

  Arlo was finally catching her concern.

  “Maybe he went home?”

  Aubrey looked at him sharply. “I just called. He’s not answering there, either. Let’s check with the hotel staff. Maybe he left a message for me downstairs.”

  She wrote a note and left it on the bed. They went to the front desk. She fought the urge to run, carefully placing one heeled foot in front of the other. She ignored Arlo’s occasional assurances that things would be fine, that they’d find him. With every step she said a little prayer, which quickly became a loop in her head: Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay.

  When she knew in her heart things were never going to be okay again.

  CHAPTER 5

  Aubrey

  Today

  That was the moment. The moment that changed During into After. Where the seven and seventeen ended and the five began.

  A beeping car horn pulled Aubrey back from her reverie. She looked up to see the intersection crowded with drivers, all of them heading into their own worlds, their own lives. Stars of their own plays.

  What did all those people do? Strangers who passed her each and every day—did they have sorrow and pain and loss like she did? Surely she wasn’t the only person in the world who suffered, by whatever means.

  Her therapist had once tried to get her involved in a group therapy grief program. It had been a complete disaster. The people in group were just so . . . damaged. There was a dizzying array of loss on parade, from the woman whose young daughter had drowned in the bathtub while she went to answer the phone, to the man who’d run his car into a tree and killed his girlfriend, to the quiet teenager who’d shared some bad Ecstasy with her best friend, resulting in the girl having a heart attack on the dance floor of their favorite club.

  Aubrey didn’t fit into their construct.

  They all had answers. Funerals to attend. Bodies to bury. Self-flagellation to attend to, especially seeing as everyone in the group was somehow responsible for the death of their loved one.

  Now, Aubrey. Responsibility and accidents are different beasts entirely. You know that.

  Bullshit.

  Aubrey had no anchors. She had no body, no closure, and certainly bore no responsibility for Josh’s death. For a time, they didn’t even know for sure that he was truly gone. For a time.

  Two things were certain: Aubrey hadn’t killed her husband. And she knew Josh had sent her the gin and tonic that night.

  It had to be him.

  But he never came to her rescue. Through the weeks of investigation, police harassment, the legal proceedings, the trial, the months that turned into years, through the moments when During became After, when Aubrey could finally sleep through the night without thinking about the handcuffs being slapped around her wrists and the hard metal of the county jail pallet they called a bed under her body, when she was set free and came back to their empty home and startled dog and faced his mother’s decision to petition the courts to declare Josh dead so she could steal away the insurance money, he never came.

  He never came.

  She had to reconcile the silly romantic she’d married with the concept of a man so callous, so vengeful, that he would allow the woman he claimed to love to be dragged through the mud, accused of his murder, hounded by the press, the police, without stepping forward to save her.

  She couldn�
�t. Josh would never let that happen.

  And that’s why she knew, without a doubt, that he was dead.

  More traffic noise, and she jumped. How much time had she just lost? Her lizard brain reacted. Run more. She did, running away from the tree, away from the happy and the sad, up the hill into the darkness.

  One foot in front of the other.

  Again and again and again.

  CHAPTER 6

  Daisy

  Today

  Daisy Hamilton ran her finger along the icy tumbler of vodka, her third in as many minutes. She tossed the freezing alcohol against the back of her throat, filled the glass to the brim one more time, shoved the bottle back into the freezer, and took the shot onto her back deck. She sat hard in the Adirondack chair that faced the gardens and lit a Virginia Slim. The letter from Rick Saeger sat on the table next to her, mocking. The promise of the money, mocking. The promise of closure, mocking.

  When the phone call came this morning, rapidly followed by the letter, Daisy went into overdrive. She needed someone to share in her sadness, her horror, her fear. Aubrey was the first person who came to mind. The first one who always came to mind. The loss of Josh wasn’t enough punishment for that girl. Daisy wanted to tear her open and watch her bleed on the pavement.

  Dropping the envelope at that little bitch’s school had consumed her. She needed the girl to hurt, just like Daisy hurt, though she didn’t know why she bothered; Aubrey was as walled off as they came. Daisy had always thought Aubrey was one of those people who had no emotions, no conscience. A sociopath. But if that were the case, would Josh have married her in the first place?

  She’d never be able to ask him.

  When she pulled out of the Montessori parking lot, her pointless arrow slung, Daisy had driven aimlessly around town, looking at all the places Josh played as a little boy. She ignored the transparent ghost of the girl, stuck to him like glue, sapping all of his energy, pulling his attention away from the only woman who truly loved him.

  She’d stopped for a drink. Just one. Fortified, she’d driven through town to the Mount Olivet Cemetery office and given them the second date for the gravestone.

  An expiration date.

  She sipped the vodka. Thought back, the way she always did. Wondered if she would ever have peace.

  It started on a Tuesday. A Tuesday that should have been like every other Tuesday before, not like every Tuesday to come.

  Daisy had been making cookies, and the hour spent standing and stirring and bending before the oven made the crick in her back flare up, the one that started several years earlier after she’d fallen down the stairs. She knew she should stop and take some ibuprofen, but she wanted to get this last batch in the oven. Then she could rest. Then she could give in to the nagging pain that was her life.

  But the door to the garage slammed, and in came her son, calling like a frightened jaybird.

  “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

  Her heart had sped up for a moment, then calmed. She recognized the alarm in his voice, she who was so attuned to every nuance of her child: every cry, every smile, every tear, every tooth; the way the skin on the inside of his arms was silky smooth and the scent of his hair told her he needed a bath, and the after, when he bundled into the towel, wet and clean and sleepy in her arms. His voice was filled with distress, but he was not hurt or in physical pain. His concern was for another.

  Probably a squirrel hit by a car, or a bird flown into the window. Nothing to worry about. Nothing that couldn’t be soothed with a kiss and a cookie.

  How wrong she was.

  Josh had skidded into the kitchen, his rumpled hair sticking up in the back, the cowlick that refused to be tamed no matter what she did to it.

  “Mama!”

  She turned to him, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Josh, stop yelling. I’m right here.”

  “Mama! Something awful’s happened.”

  Awful. To a ten-year-old, that could be anything from dropping his toothbrush in the toilet to remembering the toad he’d left in the pocket of the jeans she had just put in the wash. Awful was running out of milk to go with his cookies. Awful was relative.

  “What happened, Josh?”

  Her voice was weary. She hadn’t meant it to be. She didn’t know exactly when it started, the lassitude. The first time Ed had hit her, maybe? When she asked for the restraining order? When she’d filed the divorce papers and he’d come screaming at the door, the police having to cart him away? When she’d remarried—Tom, good, steady, boring Tom, who didn’t drink, didn’t hit, and loved Josh like his own child? She was a good mother. She’d done all the right things for her son. Her happiness was irrelevant in the face of his love and joy. So what if she felt trapped?

  “Mama, Mrs. Pierce told us Aubrey’s parents went to heaven.”

  She’d set the wooden spoon she was using to mix the cookie dough on the sideboard and wiped her hands on the dish towel. Josh had stopped five feet from her, his eyes wild, tears threatening to spill over. He thought he was too old to cry, and was fighting his emotions so hard. She took him by the hand and went to the table, sat down, and pulled him between her knees.

  The accident had happened three days before. One of those things, her mind told her; one of those things that happened to other families. The Trentons, good people, town favorites, hired a babysitter for their young daughter Aubrey, had themselves a night out on the town, and managed to get sideswiped by a tractor-trailer on their way home. The story had made the late local news. Daisy had been drinking a glass of wine and stopped short when she saw the accident scene, the crushed car, the yellow drape. She hardly noticed spilling a bit of wine down the front of her shirt. Her mixed emotions.

  Daisy had taken an instant dislike to Marie Trenton, who always managed to make her feel like an incompetent harpy. Marie was a fixture on the Montessori’s PTA, perpetually in charge. Always put together. Always gentle in her rebukes.

  She was sorry for their deaths; of course she was. But something in her couldn’t help but feel like Marie Trenton had gotten exactly what she deserved. But she couldn’t say that to Josh.

  “They had an accident. I know you must be scared, sweetie. But nothing is going to happen to your daddy or me. I promise.”

  “I know that. But why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Josh was going through an adult stage where he felt everything needed to be shared with him. He was right this time, though. She should have told him. He liked playing with the little Trenton girl, and the school was so small. Surely they were all talking about it today.

  She’d had a flash of anger toward Linda Pierce, Josh’s teacher. She should have called to warn Daisy she was going to share this momentous news with Daisy’s son.

  But how do you explain a sudden death to a child?

  Why hadn’t Daisy told him herself? Perhaps because Josh had lived through Ed, though he didn’t, couldn’t, remember, and she wanted to shelter him from more pain.

  “Sweetie, sometimes things that happen to grown-ups aren’t good for children to hear.”

  That answer wasn’t going to be good enough; she saw his mind begin to churn. He bit his lip and leaned in to her. She enveloped her son in a hug, and he whispered in her ear.

  “But Aubrey has no one. Where will she go?”

  This was more than a rhetorical, philosophical question. After the weekend, after fate had dealt this cruel blow, Aubrey indeed had no family. The Trentons, having left a lifetime of longing for their own child behind them, were older when they adopted Aubrey from some crack-addled teen mother who subsequently overdosed. The school had actually used their family as a model to help other young families struggling with infertility make the decision to adopt. But as only children themselves, with parents long dead, the Trentons were alone in the world. There was no one on record to take in small, orphaned Aubrey.


  Who would take Josh if I died? Dear God, not Ed. Please not Ed.

  She’d made a mental note to thank Tom again for adopting Josh, for his protection of her son and her sanity, forced aside the glum thoughts, gave Josh a quick squeeze.

  “Aubrey is going to be just fine. There is a system. They will take care of her, and give her a new family.”

  “No!” It was somewhere between a proclamation and wail.

  “Josh, honey. You’re going to have to trust me. This is hard for you to understand, but you’re my big man now. Sometimes grown-ups make decisions we don’t agree with, but they are the right decisions. Aubrey will go live with a foster family.”

  “Strangers. They’ll kill her.”

  “Of course they won’t kill her.”

  “It happens. I’ve seen it.”

  Seen it on television, some damn cop show she’d caught him watching in the middle of the night about a year back.

  “I told you, Josh. That was make-believe.”

  She could feel him vibrating in her arms, didn’t know if it was tears or fury. Josh didn’t like being told he was wrong. Even at ten, he got his back up.

  “But why can’t she come live here? With us? We could be her family.”

  He pulled back, staring at her, pleading with his eyes.

  “Oh, Josh. That wouldn’t be . . . I mean, we couldn’t . . . We’re not equipped.”

  For the briefest moment, panic filled her. Me, raise Marie Trenton’s daughter? Like hell I will. And then . . . He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.

  “But, Mama . . .”

  She stood, quicker than she’d intended, signaling the end of the conversation. She ignored the pain in her back—getting Josh off the subject of the Trenton girl was more important. She needed to finish the cookies and start dinner before Tom came home, exhausted from his long day at the university, ready to eat and watch some television and maybe wrestle with the bills in his office or tinker in his basement before going to sleep.

  There was no question of helping. They didn’t have the money to take on another mouth. And damn that kid for making her feel like less of a mother, a person. She should want to reach out to the little orphan girl, reach out and bring her to her bosom. But the idea of managing two kids made her queasy. Add to that she’d spend the rest of her life hearing Marie Trenton’s voice every time Aubrey spoke . . . Well, that just wouldn’t do. The girl would survive. She’d always struck Daisy as a survivor.