by Amy Stuart
“Oh.” Clare’s heart flips, her mind scrambled. She straightens her leg to ease the bathroom door closed with her foot. “How do you know that?”
“By accident. Sometimes I’d go through her stuff. I found a pregnancy test in her drawer. Positive. Two lines. And there were other signs too. Before she disappeared she refused to eat half the stuff Helen gave her. Even barfed a few times. She was sleeping a lot. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to—”
“Why were you going through her stuff?”
For a moment they watch each other, Ginny’s eyes defiant. “I go through everyone’s stuff. Except yours. You know, because of the lock.”
Clare thinks of her duffel bag under her bed, her phone, the letter from Jason, the file on Sally at the bottom. The lock Clare had picked up at a gas station and looped around the zipper. A lock that would give easily under the force of pliers.
“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Clare says. “It’s not right.”
“Your friend was pregnant. Don’t you get what I’m saying?” Ginny takes hold of Clare’s forearm and squeezes until her knuckles whiten. “Scold me about this another time, okay?”
“Okay.” Clare clears her throat. “Sally’s been here for a few months. Could she have been pregnant when she arrived? Maybe that’s why she left her husband in the first place. No. That doesn’t make sense.”
“She’s been here since March.” Ginny gestures to her bare belly. “She would have been out to here by now. And why would she be taking pregnancy tests if she already knew?”
“So she got pregnant here? How do you know that?”
Markus. Ginny mouths the name without saying it aloud. She puts her finger to her temple and forms a gun with her hand, mimicking the pull of a trigger.
“What?” Clare says.
“Markus knew about the pregnancy. Rebecca doesn’t. Or didn’t, apparently. Maybe she found out.”
“How do you know that?”
“I confronted Sally. Confronted isn’t the right word. I told her I knew she was pregnant. That it had to be Markus, right? They were together all day while Rebecca was at work. I’d come out here for the day to study during exams and they’d be out there by the river, basically frolicking. It was gross. But then William got sick and Sally wasn’t coping. So, you know. I’m well connected in the city. Basically half the girls in my first year of college had the same . . . problem. I told Sally I could help her deal with it.”
“What did she say?”
“She flipped out on me. Lost her mind. Sally had a real temper. She was all about the father wanting to keep it. About me not knowing shit. That I needed to mind my own business.”
“How do you know she meant Markus?”
“Let me repeat: They were always together. Their kids playing. Coffee at nap time. Laughing at each other’s jokes while his wife was working. I remember this one dinner we all had maybe a month after Sally and Raylene showed up. It was Jordan’s birthday. Helen always wanted to make sure everyone felt included, so Sally and Raylene were there. At the dinner. And Sally and Markus were laughing it up, already with all these inside jokes. It was so awkward. I swear I thought Rebecca was going to take the antique salad tongs and jam them into Markus’s eyes. He’s so disgusting.” Ginny shakes her head. “I don’t know why Helen defends him—”
“You haven’t told anyone this, not even Jordan?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because he’s your uncle and you two seem close.”
“I would never trust him with a secret like that.”
“And Rourke? You didn’t think to tell him?”
Ginny crinkles her nose. “Rourke thinks I’m a kid. He’d accuse me of making it up. And there’s no body to prove she was pregnant. It’s not like they can do an autopsy. And Rourke would ask Markus about it, and guess what? All fingers end up pointing back at me, saying I’m a drama queen.”
The new spark in Ginny’s tone mystifies Clare. A minute ago she’d been stricken, but now she looks at Clare without a hint of sadness. Her nakedness feels like a ploy, Ginny so unselfconscious, Clare averting her eyes.
“You need to tell the police,” Clare says. “You can’t withhold this. It’s not just a gossipy secret anymore. It’s evidence.”
“Markus knows.” Ginny drops her voice. “Did he tell them? I’m pretty sure Helen knows too. Did she?”
As if on cue, the door opens and Helen squeezes in.
“There’s tea downstairs,” Helen says. “Time to get out. You’ll catch a chill.”
Ginny buries her face in her knees and cries again, but this time her tears seem feigned. Helen shifts her weight, impatient, yanking a towel from the hook on the door. For someone whose life work is about offering refuge to women, Helen does a poor job of comforting her crying daughter.
“I should go find Raylene,” Clare says. “I don’t know where she went.”
“She’s in your room.”
In the hallway Clare leans against the wall to catch her breath. When she closes her eyes she sees herself in the bathtub at home, Jason on the floor next to her, his arm submerged in the water, his rough palm cupping the growing roundness of her pregnant belly. She can see it precisely, feel the weight of his hand. The gentle splash as he retracted his arm, the smile on his face. Clare feels a wave of nausea. That might have been exactly one year ago.
“Stop it.” Clare can hear Helen through the bathroom door. “Don’t even say that.”
“You promised this wouldn’t happen.”
“There’s nothing you could have done. Okay?”
Clare stands frozen, waiting for more. But all she hears is the swirl of a body stepping out of water. Before Helen and Ginny emerge from the bathroom Clare ducks into her room and finds Raylene cross-legged on her bed, bent over an open journal.
“Raylene,” Clare says. “Are you okay?”
“I’m trying to record the details.”
“The details?”
“What I noticed. In case anyone asks.”
The pen moves furiously, Raylene’s writing in diagonal across the journal’s page. Frantic. Clare moves to the window. An ambulance is parked on the lawn next to the body still under the sheet. Next to it Rourke and Somers flank Markus, all three frowning, hands on hips.
“Did Rourke or Somers interview you?” Clare asks Raylene.
“Not yet. They told me to wait inside.”
“Did you tell them you’re a doctor?”
“They don’t care who I am or what I am. The body will go straight to the coroner.”
“So what are you writing?”
Raylene puts down her pen and looks to Clare.
“His lungs. They seemed empty.”
“What does that mean?” Clare asks. “You said he was heavy.”
“He was. But that could have been . . . He was in wet pajamas. But I’m telling you, William was dead before he went into the water.”
“What? How can you know that?”
“I know what drowning looks like. How it presents in a body. That boy didn’t drown.”
When Clare goes to speak, Raylene waves her off, then resumes her writing. Out the window, the paramedics lift the stretcher and set it through the rear doors of the ambulance. From this distance she cannot read the expression on Markus’s face. Clare’s gaze shifts to Rourke. Behind him, the sky is black with clouds. He looks up and spots her in the window, smiling as hello. A smile though a dead child just lay at his feet. Why does the sight of Rourke tighten Clare’s chest, make it harder to breathe?
“You should tell the detectives what you just told me,” Clare says.
“I don’t trust that guy.”
“Rourke? Why not?”
“I guess I should,” Raylene says. “But I don’t.”
Neither do I, Clare thinks. She turns away from the window and lies down on her bed, her body too sore. How can she be so tired? She closes her eyes. There he is. Jason. They are sitting together in a field of shorn h
ay. Far ahead is the bonfire, its orange flames licking up, black silhouettes milling around it. Clare looks for Grace’s form among them, Christopher’s too. They were both here a minute ago. Why did they let her walk away with him? Jason takes her hand and pries it open. Put this on your tongue, he says. Let it melt. Clare does as she’s told. The paper tastes bitter. After a few minutes the light of the fire is stronger, higher. Too high. Does it go all the way to the sky? It is too hot. Too many colors. How do you know what’s real? It feels like a thought, but she must have said it aloud, because Jason answers her.
This is real, he says. We are real. You and me.
Her eyes pop open again. Clare sits up, her mouth dry. The room is empty and the light through the window has shifted. A dream. How could she have fallen asleep? Out the window the ambulance is gone, the sheet where the body had been left in a rumpled pile. Rourke and Somers are no longer in sight but their squad car is still parked askew to the house. Clare grabs her phone and wanders to the hallway. The other bedroom door is closed. In the bathroom Clare clutches the sink, afraid she will vomit again. When the wave passes she sits on the edge of the bathtub and stares down at her phone, unsure of what to write.
Boy’s body found, she types. Police here.
She waits for a response. A swirl of anger hits Clare. His small body, lifeless. A boy dead and too many secrets. What is she doing here?
Can you call? comes his response.
Yes, Clare thinks, but not here. She will have to leave the house. She peers out the window. Though the light has dulled as a storm moves in, it’s not raining yet. She will go for a walk.
Give me a few mins, Clare types.
Clare waits in the woods, her grip on her phone so forceful she must be careful not to crush it. When it vibrates she stares at it blankly for a second, her thumb hovering before finally tapping to take the call.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
The swell in Clare’s chest takes her aback. Malcolm’s voice feels far away, gruff.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“It wasn’t good,” Clare says. “It was pretty bad. He was so small. Just a little boy.”
“It’s already all over the news. I just read about it online.”
“What are they saying?”
“That the body of the missing boy was found. Mother still missing. Details to follow.” Malcolm pauses and lets out a long sigh.
“I haven’t seen any reporters,” Clare says.
“Tell me what you saw.”
Clare leans on a tree and looks back to the lawn where it all unfolded only hours ago.
“One of the women was out for a morning walk. Raylene. I told you about her. The doctor. She found him. She carried him back to the house. He was . . . he was clearly dead.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Clare bites her lower lip. She does not want Malcolm’s comfort. Sorry. How often did Jason utter that word? Often enough to render it meaningless.
“The police have a search warrant,” Clare says, working hard to steady her voice. “We can’t be in the house while they execute it. I may go to the city with Ginny. Helen’s daughter. She has a room on the college campus. A spare bed. Where are you?”
“In the city,” Malcolm says. “Not far from the college, actually.”
A silence passes between them.
“I could come get you,” Malcolm says finally. “We’re not obliged to finish the job.”
We, Clare thinks. We. What are we?
“You’re not obliged, I mean,” Malcolm says, reading her thoughts.
Clare walks along the path towards the eddy, the phone warm against her cheek. I could come get you. She thinks of Helen at the table this morning. The option on offer. The plan. Everything about Malcolm too distant, yet more familiar than anything else right now. A flash comes to Clare of Malcolm on the phone, pleading with someone. Who? Clare was watching him groggily from the motel bed. His voice was hushed and she could make out his words. Just the tone. The pleading. A name.
“Clare? Are you there?”
“No,” she says. “I mean, yes. I’m here. But no. I don’t want you to come get me. I want to stay. I want to finish the job.”
“Okay.”
“Just get me the information I asked for.”
“Yes. I’m on it.” Malcolm pauses. “Clare?”
“What?”
There is another pause. Clare was never one for talking on the phone, never able to dream up the other person as they spoke, never able to endure any silence that stretched on too long.
“What?” she says again.
“Nothing. It’s fine. As long as you’re sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
The words come out louder than she intends. When Clare looks up, she is surprised to see Rebecca sitting with her legs in the eddy pool, watching Clare from a distance with a curious frown. Willow sleeps pressed to her chest.
“I have to go,” Clare says, ending the call before Malcolm can respond.
“I was wondering whose voice I could hear,” Rebecca calls as Clare approaches. “You okay? You sounded upset.”
“I just was talking to a friend,” Clare says. “Letting them know about . . . about the boy.”
“Nice that you keep in touch with your friends. You must miss your life at home.”
What a thing to say, Clare thinks. Rebecca’s face is locked in a peculiar expression, a blank half-smile.
“Do you worry about holding a cell phone to your ear like that?” Rebecca asks.
“Pardon me?”
“The waves. High frequency. I’ve read they mess with brain composition.”
How can her tone be so blithe? Clare watches as Rebecca swings her legs through the water, the little girl gripping at her mother’s shirt in her sleep, her hair wild around her small face. There is a slow gentleness to Rebecca’s movements. Clare feels a well of disgust at the scene, the doting mother cooling off in a river from which someone else’s dead child has just been pulled.
“We can speak in code,” Rebecca says. “In case she wakes up.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I see the look on your face. Is there something you’d like to say?”
“No,” Clare says.
“Because I can feel the weight of your judgment.” Rebecca cocks her head. “Do I seem indifferent to you?”
Clare shrugs.
“What am I supposed to do?” Rebecca looks down at Willow. “How do I explain such a thing? She loved that boy. He was her only friend. What am I to do but carry on?”
“I didn’t—”
“Of course it’s upsetting. But that kind of showy grief is a luxury I can’t afford.”
Showy grief? Clare remains silent, mystified. When the girl stirs, Rebecca hugs her tightly and shushes her until she drops slack in her arms again. At two, Clare’s nephew had stood as tall as her hip. This girl seems the size of a baby.
“You don’t want to sit?” Rebecca asks as though nothing has passed between them, as though it’s an ordinary day, an ordinary conversation.
“I should go back. See if Helen needs anything.”
“I tried to help her, you know,” Rebecca says. “You know who I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Will you sit? Please?”
Clare’s whole body aches. She approaches the eddy and lowers herself to sit cross-legged at the far side.
“The boy’s mother? Your friend. I tried to help her.”
“Yes,” Clare says, icy.
“I’m a teacher, not sure if you knew that. The only person here with an actual job. But I saw a lot of her in the evenings. Weekends. Our kids played. She seemed to idolize Markus and me, our life. The stability of it, I suppose. But right away, you could tell. From day one. She wasn’t right.” Rebecca taps her forehead. “And I’m not just talking about the blues. She would . . . see things.”
The swirl of nausea returns, Clare’s head th
robbing. She wants only to get away from Rebecca.
“Was she like that before?” Rebecca asks.
“No. She was not.”
“Here it seemed like she was always afraid. Or angry. Very paranoid.”
“Did she see a doctor?”
“No,” Rebecca says. “It never got to that point.”
“Didn’t you just say she was paranoid? Hallucinating?”
“I said she was seeing things. And they made her afraid. Aren’t you afraid?”
Clare doesn’t know how to answer.
“Anyway,” Rebecca continues. “We agreed we would try to help her here.”
“Who’s we?”
The wind presses Rebecca’s hair upward, her daughter stirring and opening her eyes. Clare remembers the seething way Rebecca had stormed off last night. How unwilling she’d been to discuss Sally. Now she seems almost giddy.
“Maybe she needed a doctor,” Rebecca says finally. “Maybe that’s something we’ll have to live with. Especially now. Look what she’s done.”
Clare stands and steps back to lean against the young tree behind her. It bends against her weight.
“It’s not uncommon,” Rebecca says. “This kind of thing. When a mother goes, she takes her child with her.”
The little girl now sits erect on her mother’s lap, quiet, looking across at Clare with saucer eyes. Clare feels a drop of rain hit her. She looks up to the dark sky.
“I’ll be glad if it rains,” Rebecca says, scrambling to stand with her daughter still in her arms. “I can’t think straight in this heat.”
For a moment they face each other in silence, Rebecca adjusting her daughter on her hip, her expression unreadable, sad or angry or neither. Blank. With a wave Rebecca turns and recedes in the other direction. Over her shoulder the little girl watches Clare as if expecting her to call out to them, as if to urge her back so that more might be said.
Somers stands alone by the willow tree. When she sees Clare, she nods in solemn hello, in acknowledgment of the terrible events that have unfolded since they last spoke. The rain has yet to unleash, only the odd drop threatening.
“I’m really sorry,” Somers says when Clare arrives beside her.
“It’s pretty horrible,” Clare says. “I guess it doesn’t bode well for Sally.”
