When Secrets Die

by Lynn S. Hightower

  “No, it was leaked to the media on purpose, by the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, so there’s no reason I can’t leak it to you.”

  I clenched my fist. Joel had a mournful air that did not give me a good feeling about the future of my client.

  “There’s a videotape,” he said.

  “No no no.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Joel told me. “It’s a tape of Emma Marsden in the parking lot of a local restaurant having sex with her ex-husband.”

  Rick leaned forward. “Have you seen it?”

  “Bits and pieces. They were playing it in one of the interrogation rooms.”

  I sighed. “What does that have to do with Munchausen’s, Joel?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Except it was taken on her child’s birthday, the first birthday after he died. She and the child’s father—”

  “Clayton Roubideaux,” I said.

  “They’d evidently gone out to mark the occasion, and wound up in his car.”

  “So she’s guilty of what? Sex?”

  Rick took the cigar from Judith’s reluctant fingers. “Well, Lena Bina, you have to admit, on the anniversary of her child’s death—”

  “Is there anybody in this room who hasn’t had sex in a car?”

  I saw no hands. Certainly not my own.

  “Joel, is she going to be charged?”

  “On the basis of the tape? No, as far as I know she’s not. That’s why the information is going to the media, instead of before a grand jury.”

  “Trial by public opinion?” Judith said.

  “The doctor who treated the child is raising a lot of fuss,” Joel said.

  “What have you guys got on her?” I asked him.

  Joel shook his head at me. “That wouldn’t be what I was worrying about, if I were you.”

  “And what would you be worrying about?” I asked him.

  “Who took the videotape. From what I understand, it came in anonymously, through the mail, to the office of the Commonwealth Attorney.”

  “And you guys just take it on faith?”

  “It’s not my case, Lena, but the guy working it takes nothing on faith. If I know Jack Linden, he’ll be trying to establish whether or not it really is Emma Marsden in the tape, as the letter states—”

  “Oh, so it came with a letter,” Rick said.

  “Yes, but you’d need a court order to look at it.”

  Rick looked at me and rolled his eyes, but even though Joel and I were constantly dealing with professional boundaries in flux, this was one I knew I had no chance of crossing.

  “Joel, I assume you don’t have a problem with me letting Emma Marsden know?”

  “No—if the media knows, I see no reason for her not to.”

  “It’s mean not to go to her first.”

  “I won’t argue the point.” He glanced at the clock. “It’s late, though.”

  I bit my lip. “I know. But better now than first thing in the morning when she picks up the paper or turns on the news. She’s got a teenage daughter, you know.” I turned to Rick and Judith.

  “Would you guys want to know?”

  Rick nodded.

  “Call her,” Judith said.

  EMMA

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Emma had gone through all the motions. She had done everything required. She’d cooked Blaine’s dinner and cleaned up the kitchen. Read the newspaper and stayed up late watching a movie about Joan of Arc, and now she could not sleep. She got up out of bed, padded into the living room, which was almost icy cold now that the air outside had cooled, and the earth and foundations of the little worn-out house no longer released wave after wave of heat. The window air conditioner hummed away on the lowest setting.

  At first the noise of it had driven her mad. But now she didn’t think she would ever sleep without it, provided of course she ever slept. It was white noise, her background, her comfort. Part of the cocoon of the little house she thought of as a sanctuary. The little house that had belonged to her great-aunt Jodina, the little house that now belonged to her, legally, all the papers signed, a hug and a gruff kiss from the tall woman who was afraid of everything except responsibility.

  Emma went to the kitchen, poured herself half a glass of white wine from the jug of Chablis. She didn’t mind drinking wine from a jug. A box, that bothered her. But the jug of heavy glass had the right feel to it, and definitely the kind of price tag she needed these days.

  The wine was cold. She took her glass into the living room and curled up on the worn fabric of her couch, set the glass on the coffee table she had kept since her mother died. It had folding edges with hinges that could go flat or stand up, making a box out of the surface. She sat cross-legged and stared at the wall and the framed cover of the 1929 edition of Fortune magazine. Red background, the picture of a leaping stag with arrows whizzing through the air in pursuit. Not unlike her own life. She had bought it for eleven dollars at Wal-Mart and had carted it with her, move after move. The glass in the frame had broken two moves ago, and she’d just emptied it over the trashcan, then hung it on the wall. She ought to replace the frame and told herself she would, but knew in the back of her mind she probably wouldn’t. One of those small, easy, inexpensive tasks she never took care of.

  As always, the presence of her son rode the backwaters of her every thought. Emma smiled at him, her little baby boy, wherever he was. She took another sip of Chablis. Said a small prayer of thanks not just for wine, but for cheap wine.

  She missed her car already. She was not likely to own a BMW again.

  There were worse things.

  When she saw a homeless person, her first thought was always, When. Not Poor thing, not Get a job, not There but for the grace of God go I; she just thought, When. Her friends laughed the first time she said it out loud, and afterward, when it became one of her sayings, they just smiled and tuned it out. Dark humor was one of her specialties.

  Emma was the last person in the world they would suspect might actually have such a fear. But Emma knew things that so many people don’t know. She knew how close she was to the edge financially and, frankly, emotionally. She knew how alone she was in the world. She knew that some of those people who wound up on the streets had started out with more than she’d ever had, achieved more than she ever would, and had more family and friends who loved them than she did.

  She was not a very good poor person. She would never forget her aunt Suki grimacing in genuine disillusionment and telling how she had gone with the church group to deliver Thanksgiving baskets to the poor families. She could still hear her aunt’s contempt for the way the children in one of those families had dug through the basket right there in the middle of their living room floor and actually opened the dessert and ate it right there—not waiting to eat it properly on Thanksgiving. Everybody in the family had shaken their heads in sorrow at the inappropriateness of some poor families, and Emma had thought at the time that she would not want to be a poor person and follow the poor person rules. And she’d been right. She did not like poor person rules. They ground her up on the insides. She figured that a lot of poor people had ulcers. She certainly had one. A big fat angry ulcer, or whatever it was that woke her up at night and made her throw up.

  Once you’ve had the fear, it changes you. Makes you aware. Appreciative. And sometimes, late at night, or when the bank account is overdrawn, it makes you afraid. Emma had learned years ago that fear was useful. Look it in the eye, and don’t waste time trying to convince yourself nothing is going to happen. Your subconscious will not let you sleep until you make a plan. That’s all it wants, the subconscious. A little notice and a plan to stick in the back pocket of the brain to handle the contingencies. People could save a lot of time and money spent on that last glass of wine, that Vicodin, that joint, the shopping trip that was unaffordable, the late nights on the Internet betting on football, if they’d make a deal with the subconscious. That’s all it would take for the people who were just trying to sl
eep—the ones who were into vice for the enjoyment were still free to dance in the dark.

  Emma was eighteen pounds over the weight on the charts given out by insurance companies. She didn’t worry about it. There were a lot of things she didn’t worry about. Her hips were rounded, her breasts were large, and she was tall. Besides, the weight charts did not have a category for voluptuous women who liked all sensuous things, including eating, and she never gave it a third thought. A second thought, well, yes. She was after all a woman raised in a culture that served guilt with every meal.

  One thing losing a child did, though, it swept all the crap right out of your life. It gave you perspective. The people who talk out loud about the good that comes out of tragedy are the ones who never had any—tragedy, that is. Of course, if you actually agreed, and brought up one possible good part, they enveloped you with an undertow of accusation for not grieving properly—a fog of judgmental disapproval that lurked darkly beneath the surface like a stage-four cancer. Next up came the conversation that began with “It’s a good thing it didn’t happen to me because I would have just not been able to handle it …”

  Ending with either “You are so strong,” or “brave,” which really meant You are an insensitive woman who just doesn’t have the depth of feeling and sensitivity that someone like me has, and likely God knows that, which is why it hasn’t happened to me and won’t happen to me … and I wonder what you did to deserve this.…

  Or I’m sorry it happened to you, but would you mind pretending it didn’t so that I don’t have to feel bad, I have enough stress in my life already. I’ll acknowledge your grief by staring at you when I think you’re not looking so I can SEE your grief, and make sure it is there, and suddenly stopping mid-sentence in case the remark I made was insensitive and not allowing you the face-saving option of pretending you didn’t notice and that what I said didn’t hurt, or worse, actually not noticing and not being hurt.

  Emma’s new perspective didn’t please people. She was supposed to rave over sunsets—and hell, yes, they were nice, and yes, she’d take a moment and look at one if the opportunity came up at a convenient time and not during Jeopardy!—but life wasn’t about sunsets. It was about breathing in and breathing out without a great deal of pain. It was about having a place to live—better still, one you actually liked. It was about having a job. It was about being able to feed your kids, and maybe even not sweat when you stood in line waiting for the grocery store total, balancing what was still on that slow-moving black rubber belt with the continuously rising total on the screen that was ever so conveniently turned your way. It was about curling up at the end of the day with a good book or a television show you actually liked, about affording cream to go with the coffee, about not worrying about having your utilities cut off, about not making funeral arrangements and healing healing healing. Fuck healing. Best not to mention that she was currently of a frame of mind that almost made it a pleasure to be cussed out by her teenage daughter because she was still by God alive, very much so if you judged by the level of dust the child could kick up. It meant that Blaine was there, alive and well, and that she was grieving, which was something she was going to have to do not to be in the unbearable pain that sibling loss inflicts. Emma was wise enough to have finally figured out that some teenagers grieve by torturing their mother. Because a mother was supposed to protect you. And it was a hard lesson—finding out your mother couldn’t protect you from everything.

  Emma had only one child to protect. Not two anymore, and the thought stabbed her in the mid to right quadrant of her stomach, way high, right where the liver was. She’d looked it up in an anatomy chart just because it seemed more logical for a pain like that to hit in the heart. Oh, God, little Ned. Two years and five months old, with a hold on her heart and soul and a smile that defined irresistible.

  And that somersault of thoughts that she would not think about. What had really gone wrong? Did the doctors do everything they should have? Why had she accepted such a vague diagnosis? What could she have done?

  Emma took deep breaths, enduring the rising panic, breathing her way through. It wasn’t as bad as it used to be, the state of her heart. People said it a lot, sweet sadness. She had always wondered what it was about sadness that could possibly be sweet. She knew now. It was thinking about something that makes you unhappy because it made you happy a long time ago. Sweet sadness had always seemed to her a term of indulgence. But it wasn’t an indulgence if you were careful not to overdo. It was all about balance, really. Some sadness, some memories, but not too much sadness, and not too many memories. Too much would move you from nostalgia to a mood disorder.

  Clayton had told her to start going to church again. He’d told her to go to mass regularly until the business with the Munchausen’s accusation was over and done with. And she did, she did go to mass. But somewhere where she was not known, not in her own church, where people would be watching for her. She would go in private, for a religious need. Not in public, to make a statement.

  As always, the more she looked for answers, the more questions she found.

  What, for example, does one do with the sweep of anger, the sudden spin into rage, the very improper show of grief?

  Emma had not forgotten the sheer pleasure of looking at a blank wall. A blank wall, a blank mind. But she found, with surprise, that she no longer needed either. She did not feel bad about feeling good, and by God no one was going to get away with making her think that way. She wasn’t going to act grieved. She was grieved. She wanted peace of heart, she wanted to get better, she did not think it a sin or a betrayal of her son to heal. She would not conform, she would not pretend; she would not because to do so would be to deny her very real grief, to disrespect her very real strength, and to pretend that the spirituality and, believe it or not, happiness she had achieved by going through this terrible loss was somehow a wrong thing, when she knew it to be so right. She would teach her daughter, by example, the only real way to teach, how to handle the terrible things that life will throw your way, and survive to enjoy the very wonderful ones that make it all worthwhile. She had no patience for people who got mad at God when the horrors took over their lives, who threw grieving temper tantrums because they were petulant, childish, arrogant, and selfish enough to think they were immune.

  She had to laugh. Because there she was, doing exactly what she hated, judging the way someone grieved, and disapproving all to hell. Shit, she was just as stupid and intolerant as everybody else. The grief halo needed to go out with the rest of the garbage in the kitchen.

  She was asleep on the couch, balancing the half full glass of wine on her chest, when the phone rang. It took her a few moments to wake up. She almost didn’t answer. But she could never quite pull that off.

  “Yes?”

  “Emma? This is Lena Padget.”

  The name was familiar.

  “You hired me today? I have your car.”

  “Oh. Right.” Emma sat up. Awake, now. “You mean your car. Or have you called to tell me you’ve changed your mind?” Her stomach went tight. She would be all alone and in trouble, as usual, if this woman turned her away.

  “Not at all. No, I’ve got your back.”

  What an extraordinary thing for the woman to say. And what a wonderful feeling it gave her.

  “Look, I’m sorry to call so late, but I wanted to warn you about something.”

  Emma glanced down the hallway to Blaine’s bedroom, thinking she would like to check on her daughter, just to see she was safe, and she’d do so as soon as she was off the phone.

  “Someone has sent a videotape to the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.”

  “The commonwealth attorney?”

  “It’s like the district attorney. They’re the ones responsible for filing criminal charges.”

  Emma set the wine glass down. “Criminal charges? You mean for the Munchausen’s? Am I going to jail?”

  “No, not as far as I know. Let’s just say that there has been a
leak to the local media about some kind of videotape with you in it.”

  Emma chewed her bottom lip. “But what kind of tape could they have? Me scrubbing the bathroom toilet? Teaching mambo? I don’t do anything very interesting.” But what she thought was, I am not going to jail, not yet, not ever. Should she and Blaine run away? From their house that was all paid for? Move Blaine yet again to yet another school because some doctor stole her son’s heart?

  “The date of the tape is February twenty-seventh.”

  Ned’s birthday, Emma thought.

  “It starts out with you and Clayton Roubideaux at some restaurant parking lot.”

  “Oh. Oh, right, we had dinner together. It was our son’s birthday. We thought it would be nice to sort of make it a special day, so we had dinner. In spite of us arguing in his office this afternoon, we’re still friends. And we both miss our son. Is that against the law? Did I spill food or talk with my mouth full? Who made this tape anyway, were the police following me? Was I staked out?”

  “As I understand it, it was mailed in to the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office anonymously.”

  “Weird.” But her stomach felt like it was curling up, and the small of her back had gone cold. Who would do such a thing? Tape her eating dinner in a restaurant? And on that night. The night that marked the birth of her son who had died so sadly and so young. She hadn’t seen him, whoever he was, this creep with the video camera.

  “Most of the tape was filmed in the restaurant parking lot. When you and Clayton Roubideaux were … in his car.”

  The air went right out of her.

  “I just wanted to warn you in advance. In case there was something in the newspapers. Or on the news.”

  “Right.” Her throat was so tight. She felt like she was choking. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll look into this. I’d like to know who made the tape, for one thing. I’m going to—”

  Emma made very little sense of the words, but felt grateful that for once she did not have to think or take action because she wasn’t sure she would ever even find the strength to get off the couch. She was remembering, as best she could, what might be on that tape.