by Lou Berney
“For no more than a month or two. She seemed lovely, though. Didn’t she?”
“She did. Just lovely.”
The two men huddled over the screen of Julianna’s phone. They weren’t smiling, but they seemed no longer quite so mournful.
“Her name was Genevieve,” Julianna said. She supposed it should come as more of a surprise that two elderly men who’d known Genevieve twenty-six years ago, in passing, for only a month or two—two men who were probably gay!—would still remember her. But that was Genevieve for you. She made an impression.
“Genevieve,” Lawrence said, giving it the French pronunciation—Zhawn-uh-vyev. Julianna would do that sometimes, when she wanted to tease Genevieve.
Chester looked up at Julianna. “You say your sister, she just . . . disappeared? Oh, that’s just terrible.”
“Is there anyone else here who might have known her?” Julianna said.
The two men removed their reading glasses and studied each other.
“Was it Howard B.?”
“I believe it was.”
“Sure. I believe it was Howard B.”
“Howard B. He was her sponsor.”
Julianna’s heart was pounding again. Chester—or maybe it was Lawrence, Julianna had lost track—took a puff of his Parliament and sighed. He turned to her, fully mournful again.
“Howard B. was your sister’s sponsor in the program,” he said.
The other man took a puff of his Parliament and sighed, too. “Howard B.”
Julianna wanted to know what their sighs meant. “And?” she said.
Both men sighed again.
“Howard B. was something of a boor. A jerk. I’m sorry, but he was.”
“No, it’s true. He was. He was an attorney, though I don’t mean to imply that all attorneys are boorish.”
“Howard B. certainly was. Ever tedious, never brief.”
“With a certain charm, though. To be fair. He was a partner in one of the big firms downtown, as I recall.”
“A certain charm at times. Yes. Though I don’t know why anyone would deliberately choose him to be their sponsor. I suppose Howard B. did the choosing, don’t you?”
“I do. One bowed to Howard B.’s will. He was very pushy.”
It wasn’t difficult for Julianna to imagine why Howard B., why a man like Howard B., would have chosen Genevieve.
“Was,” Julianna said. “You keep saying was.”
The two elderly men seemed mildly, mournfully surprised to realize she was still there.
“Howard B. died a few years ago. Five or six years ago?”
“Five or six, I believe.”
“You should talk to Pauline. His wife. I believe she’s still alive. Isn’t she?”
“Sure. I believe so. The last I heard.”
CHESTER AND LAWRENCE had forgotten, or had never known, Howard B.’s last name. Julianna drove to the nearest branch of the public library, in Warr Acres, and told the librarian at the reference desk what she was trying to find. The librarian lit up: the highlight of her day. She started clicking the mouse before Julianna stopped talking. Five minutes later the librarian had located an obituary printed in the Daily Oklahoman on March 31, 2006.
“Howard Neil Bridwell, 65, prominent Oklahoma City attorney.”
A graduate of the Northwest Classen Class of 1959. President of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at the University of Texas. A juris doctorate from UT in 1966, after which he moved back to Oklahoma City, passed the bar, and joined the firm of Kirkland and Nash. Senior partner of the firm from 1984 until his death.
Devoted father, loving husband. Survived by his wife of forty-one years, Pauline. Two daughters, one son, four grandchildren.
No photo of the deceased.
The librarian was beaming at Julianna, as if to say, What else you got for me?
“Can you find contact information for his widow?” Julianna said.
The librarian seemed disappointed, the task beneath her. But she turned back to her computer and quickly found a phone number for Pauline Bridwell, an address. Julianna entered both into her phone.
“Thank you,” she told the librarian.
Pauline Bridwell lived just off Western, on one of the streets in Nichols Hills where the houses were expensive but older, smaller, less aggressively landscaped—homes, not compounds. She answered the door wearing jeans, an oversize wool cardigan, and a pair of garden gloves.
Julianna didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Pearls? Howard B.’s widow was in her seventies and seemed appealingly unconcerned by that fact. Her face was lined the way a face should be lined, her hair a natural shade of silver-gray.
She smiled warmly at Julianna. “Sorry. I was out back with my pansies.”
“Pauline Bridwell?”
“Yes.” She took off her gardening gloves. “Can I help you?”
Julianna tried to detach herself from the moment, from herself. Pandora’s biggest mistake wasn’t opening the box, it was slamming the lid shut again before the last item could escape.
That was the curse Julianna wouldn’t wish on her worst enemies: May you always have hope.
“You husband, Howard,” she said, “was my sister’s sponsor in AA.”
“Oh?”
“A long time ago.”
“Howard was very active in AA, until the day he died. I think he must have sponsored dozens of people. He wanted to give back. He always said his life began the day he joined AA. You know he passed on, don’t you?” She reached out to touch Julianna’s arm, as if Julianna were the one who might need consoling. “A few years ago.”
Julianna nodded. “My sister’s name was Genevieve. Genevieve Rosales. Your husband was her sponsor in the summer of 1986. The summer and fall of 1986. Did you know her? Did your husband ever mention her?”
“Genevieve?” Pauline Bridwell considered. “I don’t think so. At least I don’t recall the name. I was in Al-Anon in those days, but not as regularly as Howard went to his meetings. I really only got to know a few of the people he sponsored over the years.”
“Can I show you a photo of my sister?”
“Of course.”
Julianna took out her phone. Pauline Bridwell studied the photo taken of Genevieve on her seventeenth birthday.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t recognize her.” She looked up at Julianna. “May I ask what this is about?”
That warm smile again. Her consoling hand again, on Julianna’s arm.
Why? Could she see that Julianna was doomed? Was the pain in Julianna’s eyes that obvious?
“It doesn’t matter,” Julianna said. “Thanks for your time.”
She started walking back to her car. Halfway down the flagstone path, though, she stopped. She wasn’t sure why. A sixth sense, a sudden chill in the wind. Or maybe it was the sound of Genevieve’s voice.
Juli, wow, she’s even a better liar than you.
She turned and saw Pauline Bridwell standing in the doorway of her house, watching her. The woman’s smile was gone, and her face—in the one instant after Julianna turned and before Pauline Bridwell shut the door—looked a thousand years old.
Julianna walked back up the path. She rang the doorbell again. This time there was no answer, so she went around the side of the house. The gate to the backyard was unlocked.
Pauline Bridwell was on her knees, next to a flat of amber and auburn flowers, stabbing the soil with a garden spade. She didn’t look up as Julianna approached.
“Did your husband kill her?” Julianna said.
The woman paused to dab sweat from her forehead with the back of her glove. She still wouldn’t look at Julianna.
“It was an accident,” she said.
“An accident.”
“He said it was an accident.”<
br />
Julianna felt light-headed but calm. There was an otherworldly glow to Pauline Bridwell’s backyard—the sun low, the leaves changing, the grass fading to a pale gold.
“What did he say happened?”
Pauline Bridwell gently tucked a plant into the hole she’d dug for it.
“She phoned him that night. The people he sponsored would phone at all hours, day and night. And Howard would always go. He would drop everything and go.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she stabbed so hard at the ground that the garden spade slipped from her hand. “Howard told her to meet him in the parking lot by the entrance to the fair. They sat in his car and talked. Howard liked to tell the people he sponsored about the dark before the dawn. How life is about progress, not perfection. Do you know how many people he helped over the years?”
Julianna understood now why Genevieve had left Crowley’s trailer so soon after she arrived—why she hadn’t stayed to get high with him. Temptation had drawn her there, but at the last moment she’d decided to turn away. She’d decided to find a pay phone and call the one person who could help keep her straight.
“He said she wanted him to drive her home,” Pauline Bridwell said. “There was an accident, and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. She hit her head.”
Here was the lie, finally, that Pauline Bridwell had chosen to believe twenty-six years ago.
“Why would she want him to drive her home?” Julianna said. “Her car was there. I was there.”
Pauline Bridwell stabbed at the ground. She continued as if she hadn’t heard Julianna.
“After she hit her head, Howard panicked. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t take her to the hospital, because she— It was already too late. Thirty or forty minutes after he left the house, he called me, crying. He said there’d been an accident.”
What had really happened? Julianna could guess. Genevieve’s sponsor had coaxed her into his car. He’d made a pass, and she’d resisted. Maybe he struck her in anger. Maybe she’d banged her head hard against the glass of the car window during the struggle and an artery in her brain ruptured. Maybe, in that sense, her death had been an accident. Or maybe her sponsor had been planning to rape and kill her for weeks and had just been waiting for the exact right opportunity to strike, to look into her eyes as the life drained from them.
Julianna realized she didn’t want or need to know what had really happened in those last few minutes. She didn’t want or need to know what Genevieve’s sponsor had done to hide her body. Or what, maybe, his wife had told him to do with it.
Pauline Bridwell set the spade down and turned, finally, to Julianna. Her eyes blazed.
“We couldn’t call the police,” she said. “Howard had a career, a reputation. A family. To throw all that away, what good would it have done? Would that bring her back?”
Julianna wondered if the woman kneeling before her really believed what she was saying, if the line of Pauline Bridwell’s jaw was trembling with defiance or with shame.
Julianna didn’t want or need to know that either.
All these years she’d hated Genevieve so much, for abandoning her at the state fair. Now, though, she pictured Genevieve standing on the dark side of the midway that night, outside Crowley’s trailer, feeling a pull that must have been almost impossible to resist.
But she had resisted, Julianna knew now. Genevieve had turned and walked away and called her AA sponsor.
Why? What opposing force at that moment was even more powerful than the temptation that had drawn Genevieve there? Was it maybe the thought of Julianna, alone and afraid on the curb outside the rodeo arena, waiting for her sister to come back for her?
Julianna heard Genevieve’s voice again, laughing.
Of course it was you, you dumb-ass. What else would it be?
Pauline Bridwell had bowed her head. Julianna couldn’t hear what she said.
“What?”
“He was a weak man.”
“Okay,” Julianna said, and walked out to her car.
Wyatt
CHAPTER 28
Wyatt dreamed he was in an old house, the light dim and the air thick with dust. He was going through cabinets and dressers and closets, sorting through what seemed like a century’s worth of worthless old junk. Broken alarm clocks, yellowed table doilies, chipped glass paperweights. He suspected he was dreaming, but he couldn’t quite convince himself of it. This is a dream, he would think, but then he would shake his head and think, No, this is real.
Back and forth like that, over and over, Wyatt arguing with himself and breathing dust and opening yet another drawer full of half-melted candles, of frames without photos. It was the world’s least enjoyable dream.
When Wyatt woke up, a big black guy was sitting in the chair next to his bed, leafing through a Disney Princesses coloring book.
This is still a dream, Wyatt told himself.
Definitely, he agreed.
“Mr. PI!” the big black guy said when he noticed that Wyatt was awake. “Mr. VIPI!”
Dark and sweet. What was dark and sweet? What could the girls never get enough of ? Wyatt almost fell back to sleep.
“Fudge,” Wyatt said. His mouth was dry. His mouth was the charred remains of a terrible fire. “Hello, Fudge.”
“You in the hospital,” Fudge said. “You been on some legit drugs.”
Wyatt nodded. The effort made him swoon. “I know.”
“You know it.”
He offered Wyatt a fist to bump. Wyatt felt a spike of panic. He couldn’t remember what had happened after he’d stabbed Chip. Chip had been alive. Chip’s expression had never changed. Had Chip pulled the knife from his throat? Had Chip managed to turn and grab Candace’s arm, to finish what he’d meant to start?
“Candace,” Wyatt said.
“She been up here most the time. Lily, too.” Fudge held up the coloring book as proof. “Candace back at the Land Run now, now the doctor say you be all right. She say to tell you she got a damn business to run.”
Wyatt, smiling, was drifting off again. A nurse entered the room, a guy. He checked Wyatt’s IV. He checked the dressing on Wyatt’s hand, the dressing on his upper chest, the dressing on his collarbone, then handed Wyatt a Styrofoam cup full of ice chips. Wyatt shook an ice chip into his mouth and let it melt.
“How long have I been in here?” he said.
“You ask that every time you wake up,” the nurse said.
The nurse had a big handlebar mustache. He looked more like a gunslinging sheriff, more like a Wyatt, than Wyatt did.
“I do?”
“You do,” Fudge said. “Been almost two days now.”
The doctor came in. A woman.
“Hello, Mr. Rivers,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“As good as can be expected,” Wyatt said. “Under the circumstances.”
She smiled and looked over his chart. “Here’s where we’re at, Mr. Rivers.”
She went on for a while. About blood loss and the subclavian artery, about the subclavian vein and the very narrow space between it and the subclavian artery, about the difference between a grade-one concussion and a grade-two concussion. The gist, Wyatt gathered, was that he’d been lucky. For a guy who’d been rammed by a CRV and stabbed in the upper chest, he’d been lucky.
Wyatt remembered now waking up and asking the male nurse how long he’d been there. He remembered Candace sitting next to his bed. In the sunlight, in the moonlight. He remembered Lily gazing gravely at him, her small hand on his. And . . . Gavin. Gavin? Yes, Gavin, too. Sitting in the chair, shifting uncomfortably. Unless that had been a dream.
The doctor was saying now something about the probability, on all counts, of a full and successful recovery. And then she was saying something about a credit card.
“It’s in my wallet,” Wyatt said
.
The doctor looked up from Wyatt’s chart. She glanced at the male nurse.
“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Rivers,” the doctor said. She explained that a Good Samaritan with military training had known to seal the knife wound in Wyatt’s chest with the edge of a credit card. He’d probably saved Wyatt’s life.
A credit card, Wyatt thought. Crazy. But that was life for you, full of surprises. It never got old.
“So that’s where we’re at. We should be able to get you out of here tomorrow.”
“A farm boy from Oklahoma gets a scholarship to Harvard,” Wyatt said.
The doctor and the nurse, on their way out of the room, paused.
“First day on campus,” Wyatt said, “the Oklahoma farm boy goes up to a fellow student, an older student. And the farm boy says, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where the library’s at?’ The other student, he turns up his nose, and he says, ‘Here at Harvard, sir, we do not end our sentences with prepositions.’ ”
The doctor and the nurse waited. Fudge waited. Wyatt shook another ice chip into his mouth.
“So the Oklahoma farm boy says, ‘Okay. Where’s the library at, asshole?’ ”
The next time Wyatt woke up, a guy was sitting in the chair that Fudge had occupied. He wore a corduroy jacket and cowboy boots, a weary expression. It didn’t take a detective to know the guy was a detective.
Wyatt started at the beginning and walked the detective through everything. Almost everything. He left out the part about bashing Jeff Eddy in the face with a pumpkin. He left out the part about Jeff Eddy’s affair and how Wyatt was using it to keep him off Candace’s back. The detective didn’t want to know any of that. Wyatt was doing him a favor.
The detective nodded along, taking notes. He only asked a couple of questions, getting the timeline straight. Wyatt had a feeling the detective already knew from Candace most of what Wyatt was telling him.
Wyatt didn’t play it down, how dumb he’d been not to figure out sooner that Chip was the person harassing Candace and that Chip was her ex-husband. The detective declined to weigh in on the matter one way or the other.
“Why were you honking the car horn?” he said. “Get attention?”
