If I Die Tonight

by Alison Gaylin

  Mason Marx I’d cut more than his tires.

  Brittany Thomas He looks like a perv.

  Dylan Rogers he should fry in the chair

  Mason Marx I’d waste him myself #GoodGuyWithAGun

  Brittany Thomas Who is he??????

  Hailey Adams MURDERER

  Maddie Riley His name is Wade. He’s Connor Reed’s brother.

  Close to three hundred messages followed. The post was ultimately removed after Wade Reed’s mother, Jacqueline, reported it as abusive.

  Eighteen

  Mason Marx was short and squat, with mean little pig eyes and the personality of bad cheese. He hadn’t even gotten his voice change yet, but a lot of kids thought he was hot shit—especially the younger ones. Mason’s dad was a big-time record producer who worked in the city and only came up on weekends, and so he was superrich, with a mansion outside of town that had an infinity pool and a screening room, a professional recording studio, and an arsenal of high-tech guns straight out of James Bond. That house was Mason Marx’s only redeeming quality, but it worked for him. He had a little group of buddies—seventh graders who would follow him around, agreeing with everything he said and laughing at all his lame jokes. For the school talent show last year, Mason had tried to rap like Jay Z and it was literally the stupidest thing Connor had ever heard, but he’d still gotten a standing ovation.

  Mason and Connor didn’t have any classes together, mainly because Mason was in all the dumb-kid classes and Connor was in the smart ones, so they rarely crossed paths. But when Noah and Connor tried to get in line at the cafeteria, Mason and his brigade of asshats power walked up to Connor and stood in front of him with crossed arms, not letting him pass.

  Noah smiled at them, because Noah smiled at everybody. “What’s up, guys?” he said.

  But Mason ignored him. His eyes stayed fixed on Connor. “Saw your brother today.”

  Great. That was just what Connor needed, especially now. More cat-sacrifice stories. He stared straight back into Mason’s nasty eyes, because that’s what he’d learned to do with kids who mocked his brother. Don’t back down. Don’t act embarrassed. Act like they’re the ones who should be ashamed and wait for them to walk away. “Saw your mother last night,” he said.

  One of Mason’s friends gasped.

  “Oh boy,” Noah whispered.

  But Mason kept staring at Connor, breathing through his nose like a bull. Connor started to feel a little nervous. It wasn’t Mason’s size—he was bigger than Connor, but in a slow, lumbering way. Connor could probably take him in a fight, but what made him uneasy was the look in his eyes, as if he knew something. Mason licked his lips. “I saw your brother,” he said again. “Video of your brother.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t hear me?” Mason gave his shoulder a push. “Or are you just a retard?”

  “Are you a Satan-worshipper like your brother?” It was one of Mason’s buddies who said that, a spiky-haired little dork who looked like an elf.

  Connor said, “What video?”

  “Yeah,” Noah said. “What video?”

  “He knows,” Mason said.

  “No I don’t,” Connor said, confusion turning to anger.

  Mason pushed Connor again. And this time Connor pushed back, hard enough to make him stumble. “It’s on, bitch,” Mason said.

  And then Coach Grady, the gym teacher, came barreling up to the two of them. “You boys cut it out or I’m taking you to the principal’s office.” He said it too loudly. By now, a group had gathered around them. Grady glared at Mason, then at Connor, as though he was actually trying to figure out who had been in the wrong. “We have a zero tolerance policy here for bullying,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  “Sorry, coach.” Mason Marx nodded at his pathetic crew and the three of them left, the little pointy one purposely bumping into Connor.

  Noah started talking fast. “We weren’t doing anything, coach, I swear. We were just standing here.”

  “I saw pushing,” Coach Grady said.

  Noah said something about Connor’s hand “bumping into” Mason’s shoulder “by accident,” which was about as pathetic an excuse as anything, but that’s not what Connor was thinking about. When he’d left, Mason had grabbed Connor’s arm when the coach wasn’t looking. He’d whispered in his ear. “Your brother’s a murderer,” he had said. “He killed Liam Miller and everybody knows it.”

  As they were getting their food, Connor felt eyes on him, dozens of them. Across the cafeteria, he saw Jordan staring straight at him. A friendly face. Thank God. But when he smiled and raised a hand, Jordan didn’t wave back.

  “There’s Jordan,” Noah said, and started to head toward his table.

  Jordan picked up his tray. He left the cafeteria without looking at either one of them.

  “What’s up with him?” Noah said. But Connor knew. It was the avalanche, closing in.

  “AREN’T THEY INVESTIGATING Aimee En?” Helen said. “I mean, honestly. I couldn’t imagine any of our kids doing that, least of all Wade. That whole story of hers sounds made-up to me.”

  They were back at the office, for which Jackie was glad—a reason to be out of the house, the dead quiet of it with Connor still at school and Wade locked in his room, Jackie listening hard for the rustlings within it, just to make sure he was alive. Without asking, she’d made him a grilled cheddar cheese sandwich—his favorite. She’d put it on a plate with a pickle slice and some potato chips and a note that read “I believe in you” and left it on the kitchen table because she wanted to believe in him. She needed to. “I assume they are looking into Aimee En,” she said. “They’re looking into everything.”

  “I am so sorry about Wade’s car, honey.”

  “So do you think Garrett can represent him? I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. But if the cops want to question him again.”

  Helen’s phone rang. She held up a finger and answered it—a potential client. Jackie knew before Helen said very much because she was speaking to the caller in her professional voice, smoother and slower than the one she used in real life, the voice of an on-air shrink from a radio call-in program. After she finished the call, Helen turned to Jackie. “He’s not a defense lawyer.”

  “I know that. I’d just rather have someone I can trust.”

  Helen exhaled. “I’m sure he’ll be able to,” she said. “But I don’t think it will be necessary.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Look,” Helen said. “I know this is tough, but you’re in the worst of it now. The truth will come out soon, and you’ll look back on today and think, Thank God that’s over. I know that, Jackie. I know it with all my heart.”

  “Why?”

  “Because life only gives us as much as we can take.”

  Jackie looked at Helen, her coiffed, cared-for hair, her skin dewy and unlined even at their age from regular facials in the city and so very little stress. In youth and in adulthood, Helen had been blessed with a happy family, a lovely home, friends who adored and supported her. She’d never had to worry about money, never lost a loved one. Hell, she’d never even broken up with anyone, and so of course she believed in something as simple and childlike as the fairness of life. Ask someone living on the street if they’ve only gotten what they can take. Ask Sheila and Chris Miller.

  Jackie was annoyed with Helen, who seemed to sense it. She turned back to her keyboard, began clicking away. “We used to listen to Aimee En,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Remember those racy songs of hers? Those outfits she wore in her music videos? The drug busts? She’s no angel.”

  Jackie bit her lip. She remembered Stacy’s face at the assembly, that look she’d given a mother who believed life had a way of working out the way it should, that good always won in the end, that grief was not worth missing school over and only temporary, even if it crushed you. “Please talk to Garrett,” she said.

  THE MILLERS’ HOUSE was huge, pal
atial even. It reminded Amy of a mansion she’d been to in Holmby Hills once back in the day—the home of a music-industry exec whose name she could no longer remember. She and Vic had gone to a party there as guests of Rodney Bingenheimer on an L.A. night when the hot Santa Ana winds kicked up her short skirt as she stood on the doorstep, a night that now seemed like centuries ago, a different lifetime.

  Amy had been invited here. Sheila Miller had contacted her via Facebook Messenger last night, giving her the address and asking her to please stop by tomorrow if it isn’t too much trouble. (So very polite, these people with old money.) Amy had said yes, of course, arranging for Jacinta and settling on a time before hopping into her rental car. But on the whole ride over she’d felt this terrible apprehension, as though the invitation were a trap. And even now, she couldn’t quite shake that feeling. She knew what people were saying about her. She’d read TMZ, and she was sure Sheila had too. Who didn’t read TMZ? Her knees weakened, just thinking about those comments, the idea of Sheila reading them and taking them to heart.

  Amy hesitated before pressing the doorbell. She considered making a run for it and messaging Sheila some excuse—a sudden cold, an issue with Vic—before she noticed the security cameras aimed at her and realized that the visit was already documented. There was no turning back.

  She made herself push the bell and heard footsteps approaching, a female voice saying “One minute” that she assumed belonged to the housekeeper. But the woman who opened the door was Sheila, no housekeeper in sight. Amy recognized her from the pictures on her Facebook page, for she and Sheila were Facebook friends now, privy to each other’s memories, the musings of each other’s friends. Whoever is responsible for your dear son’s death, I hope he or she is brought to justice, someone had posted on Sheila’s wall today. And in the comments, someone else had responded simply: She.

  Amy cringed. She told herself to stop thinking.

  Sheila Miller looked so different in tragedy than she did in the glorious pictures on her Facebook page. Her chiseled, patrician features seemed gaunt in person, free of makeup or filter or a summer tan. Her highlighted hair was dull and unwashed, and though she wore jeans with a flattering cut and an expensive-looking cashmere sweater in a lush royal blue, it all seemed like something she’d thrown on moments ago—a last-ditch effort to look “presentable.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Sheila said.

  Amy hugged Sheila. She smelled too heavily of lily of the valley—perfume thrown on quickly rather than carefully applied. And she seemed more to lean into the hug than reciprocate it. “I’m sorry,” Amy said into Sheila’s neck. “I’m so, so, sorry.”

  “I know,” she said, once she pulled away. “For some reason, it makes me feel a little better, just meeting you in person.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Come with me.”

  They were standing in a great room with wooden floors and a crystal chandelier over their heads. The floors gleamed furiously and smelled of pine. There had to be a housekeeper around here somewhere, Amy decided. Sheila couldn’t be keeping this clean all by herself, especially in her grief.

  She followed Sheila down a hallway and into a parlor—a room with antique furniture and red silk wallpaper that looked as though it had been plucked from another era. Sheila sat on a straight-backed chair with clawed feet and gestured at a love seat, also in red silk and adorned with two adorable needlepoint pillows. She told Amy to make herself comfortable. “Chris is napping right now, I’m afraid,” Sheila said. “But I know he sends his best.”

  There was a coffee table of dark polished wood with a marble top, a tray of cookies at the center next to a teapot, two white china cups, and a stack of linen napkins the same blue as Sheila’s sweater. Amy sat down, her gaze traveling from Sheila’s haggard face to the small, cold fireplace, the framed photos on the mantel—almost all of them of Liam. “He was your only child,” Amy said.

  Sheila nodded. “Would you like a cookie?”

  “No thank you,” Amy said, that uneasiness again creeping through her. She started to ask why Sheila had contacted her—the one question she hadn’t wanted to ask, as it almost sounded accusing—but then Sheila spoke.

  “People have been telling me they think you did it.”

  Amy’s heart dropped. “Excuse me?”

  “A lot of people,” she said. “My friends. They think you ran over Liam and drove away. Just yesterday, a very close friend of mine was saying that you probably panicked and, knowing you’d be arrested for a hit-and-run, drove your car into the Kill to get rid of any traces of Liam that may have been on it. Blood. Tissue.” She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, an odd smile crossing her face. “Can you believe someone actually said that to me?”

  “No,” Amy said quietly. “That’s a thoughtless thing to say.”

  “They say you were probably drunk, that you walked all the way from the Kill to the police station, and it was that long walk in the cold and rain that sobered you up.”

  Amy’s cheeks heated up. She knew they were flushing red and she hated herself for that, the way her body was betraying her. Last night, she’d driven to the shrine and knelt at it and begged Liam’s forgiveness. In preparation for today, she’d let herself sob it out, the horror of that night, the guilt, until there was nothing left inside her. She had hoped it would stay that way. “I wasn’t drunk,” Amy said, which sounded evasive. She tried again. “When I wrote you about what happened, I was telling the truth.”

  Sheila plucked one of the cookies from the tray—a powdery little thing that looked like a puff of smoke. She brought it to her lips and took the tiniest of bites, then carefully spread out one of the linen napkins and placed the cookie on top—a painfully slow ritual that seemed to have nothing to do with eating. “I asked you here because I wanted to look you in the eye,” she said. “When I look people in the eye, I can always tell whether they’re lying.”

  Amy nodded, unsure of what to say next.

  Sheila poured tea into the two cups and handed one to Amy, who raised it to her lips, the cool white china unexpectedly soothing. The tea was delicious and tasted of gingerbread, and Amy had the fleeting, shameful thought that maybe Sheila was drugging her. “I’m not a liar,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “I wasn’t drunk, and I would never, ever drive away after hitting your son or anyone.”

  “Tell me how it happened again.”

  “I was driving home from my gig—”

  “No,” she said. “No, please. Just the part with Liam.”

  Amy took another sip of tea and found Sheila’s eyes with her own. She didn’t want to be here. She hated being asked to relive that night, especially that part of that night. But Sheila Miller’s grief trumped her own discomfort. It trumped everything, really. For all Amy had lost in her life, she’d never had a child to lose, and sharing a room with Sheila Miller, she felt grateful for that. “Liam came from out of nowhere,” she said. “I was on the pavement—the carjacker had pushed me. I had been yelling and screaming and I thought no one would come, but there he was. He was calling out to the boy driving. He was yelling at him to stop. I think he knew him. I feel like he must have. But whether he knew him or not, his bravery was beyond my comprehension.”

  Sheila put her cup down. She wiped a tear from her eye.

  “He ran for the car, Sheila. I was on the pavement, and he rushed right at it, waving his arms.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “He was trying to save me, to save my car. He was willing to risk his own life in order to do a good deed for a stranger.”

  “He was a good boy.” Sheila said it almost like a question.

  “He was exceptional. He was a hero.” Tears sprung into Amy’s eyes. She wiped her face, her hand now streaked black from mascara, but she left the stains for fear of staining a lovely linen napkin, her stained hand blurring in front of her eyes from more tears, a flood of them.

  Sheila stood up. She moved over to where Amy was sitting. Amy stood
up too—another strange, shameful idea entering in her mind that Sheila was about to slap her across the face. But that didn’t happen. Sheila took Amy in her arms and the two of them hugged each other for quite some time, the first and last women to see Liam Miller alive, Amy staining Sheila’s beautiful sweater with her black, guilty tears. If I hadn’t played that gig. If I hadn’t gone home with that couple . . .

  When they finally pulled apart, Sheila took a breath. “I didn’t even know Liam was out that night,” she said.

  “You didn’t?”

  “I’d thought he was at home in bed, right up until we got the call from the hospital. As much as my heart’s been broken by this, I’ve been so angry at him too. Furious at him for sneaking out. Do you know what I mean? I keep scolding him in my mind. I keep saying, ‘See what happens when you go out walking at night?’ He didn’t even take his car.”

  Amy wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but she nodded anyway. Sheila had an odd look in her eyes, as though something behind them had come undone. “But now, after hearing this story, I think maybe it was a calling. Like . . . he knew someone was in trouble, and so he was just pulled there, by an unseen force.”

  Amy had seen the same look in Vic’s eyes when his mother passed away. “She keeps sending me signs,” he’d said. And the “signs” had been everywhere: stray pennies, birds on the ledge outside their bedroom window, an unexpected rain shower. In his mind, everything was significant.

  This type of thing happened with many people, she had heard—a type of temporary insanity in response to grief. A very specific type of magical thinking, though she hadn’t been close enough to her own parents to experience it herself. Amy put a hand on Sheila’s shoulder, and for a few seconds, she felt as though she were talking to Vic—not when his mother had passed away, for that was years ago, when he was all there otherwise and he was still deep down a self-absorbed jerk. No, she felt as though she were talking to the Vic of today, that poor, weak creature, undeserving of a single negative thought. Guilt tugged at her again, but she yanked herself away. Sheila’s feelings were more important. “I think you’re right,” she said.