Shadow Garden

by Alexandra Burt

  Get on with it, a voice said in his head.

  “Penny,” he said and stroked her cheek until she opened her eyes. “Penny, I need you to listen to me.”

  “Don’t yell at me.” Her speech was slurred.

  “I’m not, I won’t.”

  “Mom doesn’t understand.”

  “I know, Pea, I know.”

  “This will never go away.”

  “Everything goes away, Pea.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this. I just know it, it will never go away.”

  “You can’t go to the police, you just can’t.”

  “I have to, you don’t under—”

  “You can make amends, Pea. We’ll figure it out. But you can’t go to the police. You can’t.”

  “We’ve been over this. Over and over—”

  It went on for a while, neither one of them making any headway.

  “This is madness,” Edward said. Madness. Madness. Madness.

  “I’m going to go to the police. With or without you,” she said.

  Penelope never wavered, and the amalgamation of things, her steadfastness and his fear combined, made him edgy, his heartbeat accelerated when she said with or without you.

  “They’ll crucify you,” Edward said but what he meant was us. They are going to crucify us.

  “Everyone is going to do what they’re going to do,” Penelope said, in a tone that was so matter-of-fact, so final.

  “Go to sleep, Pea,” he said. He stroked her cheek like he had so many times when she was a child as he watched her eyes close.

  Her breathing slowed and everything shrunk into nothingness, his throat constricted, he began to choke. What else could he possibly do? Waiting this long to call the police had been a mistake but maybe, maybe he could still remedy it? He ought to try. That’s all he could do. Try.

  Edward hugged Penelope and told her he loved her. He tiptoed past Donna on the couch. He got into the jeep and drove off with the dead woman next to him.

  * * *

  • • •

  He didn’t so much as wipe away the blood. He draped a blanket over the body, tucked it underneath the woman’s chin so she appeared as if she were sleeping. He didn’t speed, he stopped at every stop sign.

  His heart was beating out of his chest. He had been taught to react because seconds make a difference between life and death and he recalled once a healthy young body going into V-fib; recalled the hearts of vigorous men deciding to be temperamental on a moment’s notice just when he performed the simplest of procedures; recalled a bleeder hidden so deep in the body that he had hoisted an entire colon out to find the source. He had kept composure all those times but this was different. The images played on repeat like a broken record but the blood was what got to him, his training in bodily fluids and the contamination, the impurity of it all.

  Before he knew it, the park sign appeared. The parking lot was deserted but for a car abandoned with the front tires over the white line. A pack of gum in the street, a comb. A travel-size hairspray. An inhaler. A plastic casing that more than likely contained a mirror, more items women carry in their purses. To the careless eye it was just stuff but he knew better, he knew those were the woman’s belongings. He looked around but there were no clues as to what had transpired here, what had happened. If he were forced to render a conclusion he couldn’t come up with an explanation. While he tried to connect the dots, he imagined the headline.

  Disturbed socialite . . . fails to render aid . . . stores body in wealthy parents’ garage . . . parents cover up . . .

  He looked down onto the asphalt. He hadn’t brought a flashlight, hadn’t thought that far, but had left the headlights on. There was no blood, not a single drop. Judging by the jeep’s interior, the woman had entirely bled out in Penelope’s car. The police would find a bloodless body and they’d scramble to explain that but that was none of his concern.

  Edward moved quickly. He hoisted her body over his shoulder, didn’t want to pull it along the asphalt, didn’t want to leave drag marks on her. His spine curved under the weight of the body and he had to stop from time to time, gauging the distance to the spot where he wanted her to end up. He dropped her next to the package of gum, the compact, and the comb. He hadn’t thought about anything beyond that. Not fingerprints. Not hair. Not fibers. There was blood all over his hands. What sprang to his mind were the dangers of infectious bacteria, like enterococci and vancomycin-resistant strains. He had watched all the TV shows, he was knowledgeable in DNA and the many ways this could go wrong, the evidence the smallest of pieces could render.

  He stepped back to a vantage point where he could view the scene with ease. His eyes zoomed in on the lighter. A cheap and disposable lighter among the blades of grass by the curb. He stared at it. An accelerant. He needed an accelerant. The hairspray. Spray cans contain propellant chemicals, a liquid solution held under pressure within the can, butane and propane, two flammable chemicals. If it was still full, it might work.

  He was cold, standing there. Must be the sweat drying, he thought, but then a flash ripped across the sky and Edward looked up. Rain. A fine mist like the faint spray of a sprinkler but judging by the sky it would come down hard any moment.

  He saw it as a sign—not from God, he was a scientist and as a scientist he had no room for divine powers—and the fitting of shapes into place the way a silicone bag fit into a breast cavity. Something had pity on him, saw to it that the rain would wash away his daughter’s sins and on and on he went in his head, justification after justification, and then the realization that he’d done something pretty awful when he had to argue so hard to justify it.

  Starting the car and leaving the parking lot was one motion. He didn’t need directions or instructions, as if the route was seared into his brain. Why his limbs worked, why his hands turned the steering wheel he couldn’t comprehend. There was so much toppling over in his head—cameras, what if there were cameras, didn’t parks have cameras?—and the phone, what if it was able to track the car, that was another risk he had to take. What if Penelope knew the woman, what if they had been seen prior to all this, what if—so many ifs and buts.

  Everything was at stake. That’s where they were at. There was a saying but he couldn’t get it quite right, the wording escaped him. We float, we don’t sink, was that it? Or was it we float and then we sink?

  42

  DONNA

  Edward’s made his case and he’s laid it out logically and supported by evidence and therefore it appears to be true. The question is, can I trust him?

  “She wrote letters, you know,” I say and pull them out of my purse. I watch his face as if to catch him in a lie, a sudden blink or widening of the eyes, anything that might give him away.

  “Where did you find those?” Edward asks as he stares at the letters.

  I press them tight to my chest and when he reaches for them, I turn away like a child not wanting to share a toy.

  “Penelope wrote them,” I say. “The therapist told her to write down what she didn’t want to talk about.”

  “I know what they are.”

  “You knew about the letters?”

  “Look around, Donna. What do you think I’ve been doing here? Renovating?”

  He wants the letters because he doesn’t know. He has gaps. He too needs answers. Answers only I can give him.

  “Let me see them,” Edward says. His hands are shaking or am I mistaken?

  “No. I want to keep them.”

  “You can keep them. I just want to look at them.”

  I relax my hands and allow the wads of paper to slip out of my grip. Edward lays them out on the foyer table, shuffles the pages around, rearranges them, puts some aside as if he can’t tell where they fit in.

  “Have you read them all?” Edward asks.

  “Yes.”

 
It’s all wrong in my mind, like one of those three-cup magic shuffle tricks where the dealer puts a coin underneath one cup and starts shuffling them around all the while speaking frantically to disorient and confuse the onlookers. Does Edward take bets? If I guess correctly, I’ll double the bet after that, if I don’t, I lose it all? Remember, I tell myself, remember the game is a scam. Never play against the house.

  “If you read them, you know what happened.”

  “What I know is that a woman died because of her, Edward.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  At the mention of the woman, his face turns ashen. I have never before looked at him in this light, I almost feel for him. My emotions are clouding my mind, I believe. That’s what emotions do, don’t they? They cloud everything and distort it and once you have time to give it a think-over, suddenly it all appears in a different light.

  “What happened after?” I ask.

  “After what?”

  “After you came home. After you took the woman back to the park.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened while I was gone?”

  I take a moment to think. My mind can’t do the heavy lifting quite yet.

  “Tell me now,” I insist.

  “Would you believe me?”

  I feel like I’m joining this conversation midstream. Edward is trying to confuse me with details, hoping I’ll miss the big picture.

  “You’re trying to distract me and I don’t trust you.” I stand close in front of him, so close we are almost touching. “Where is Penelope?”

  “I’m about to tell you.”

  Get on with it, I want to scream. Just say it.

  43

  EDWARD

  Edward had given it his best shot. Whatever will be, will be; what’s coming will come and he’ll meet it when it does. He turned down the car display. He was unable to see the clock on the dash, didn’t know what time it was but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. That very moment he made a pact with himself: if he was able to get away with this, if nothing led back to Penelope and this accident, he’d make amends. Somehow he’d make amends. He wasn’t sure what that entailed, but that’s where his mind was.

  He was spent. An eight-hour operation couldn’t have drained him more. He had tried not to think about death, had pushed it out of his mind, had gone on autopilot like he did when in the operating room. He just wanted to wipe out the last twelve hours, remedy his mind, go back to some state of order.

  The drum of rain on the window ceased suddenly as if he had driven into a tunnel. One minute the downpour was there, the next it was gone, and the street was dry. It wasn’t really that strange, he thought, rain must begin and end somewhere. Everything begins and ends somewhere.

  Edward parked Penelope’s jeep in the garage. Horrified, he sat and stared at the blood. The pool on the doormat had begun to set, the outer edges were clotted. It was on his hands, the cuffs of his shirt, under his nails. It was everywhere. Did they own a steam cleaner, one of those small compact carpet and upholstery machines? Do they even still make those? He didn’t know. He didn’t know who cleaned his house, who detailed his car. He didn’t know much, the genius he was in the OR, none of that mattered now.

  He didn’t know what to do about the car. He ran through the options, all of them came to him through movies he’d seen over the years: submerge in a lake, drive off a cliff, douse in accelerant and set on fire, and then . . . nothing. Those were his choices. Wherever he took the car, he’d need a ride home. There could be no trace of any taxi or even neighbors seeing him walk or drive by, he had to think ahead, not make any hasty decisions. Donna. Where was Donna? She would know what to do. She thought quickly on her feet, he had to give her that.

  Edward dug his thumb into the red square to release the buckle and as the seat belt snapped upward, his hand made contact with something soft and giving. It was a leather bag stuck between the passenger seat and the center console. It was the woman’s bag. Edward sat in the car, staring at it. With two bloody fingers he parted the opening and pulled out a black leather wallet. He unzipped it and looked at the driver’s license behind a plastic shield. Should he rummage through it, take her wallet, dump the rest in the trash?

  Here we go, he thought, the mistakes are already piling up. He had neither thought to look for it nor given it any deliberation, and come to think of it, what else had he forgotten to take into consideration? Should he drive back, back to the park, and dump the purse? It was too late now, daylight was looming. He assumed the heavy downpour that had fallen in chaotic waves with gusting wind had washed away all blood but to now drop a bloody purse there made no sense. Think, think, think, maybe, just maybe it was an advantage, some kind of confusion he could create once police began to investigate.

  He tried to think clearly, patted his forehead with the palm of his hand as if to speed up his thoughts. Maybe that’s why there was no perfect crime, no one can think of all the possibilities, go down every rabbit hole, it’s just impossible.

  All the wanting ceased and there was only room for one thought: to keep his family safe. He caught the peculiarity of the statement, the mockery not lost on him; they’d ever be safe again.

  44

  DONNA

  The conclusion is that I have become my memory. How to explain, I don’t know, but I’ll try.

  My memory is who I am. This isn’t about pictures playing inside my head—it’s a changing story, a story that conveniently fits into my narrative. What I’ve done is, I’ve picked and chosen memories. Like docking a boat and that’s where the anchor went down so that’s where I’m at. Am I explaining it right? I don’t know.

  First, a mediocre girl from an average town from a run-of-the-mill family, then Donna Pryor, wife of Dr. Edward Pryor. Then the part where Penelope crashed her car in the garage with a dead woman in the seat next to her. That’s the part that didn’t fit in the narrative. Depression didn’t belong either, that too I pushed aside. Shadow Garden is a narrative I embraced—a rich divorcée living in luxury with a daughter who won’t speak to her, that’s what I’ve been living for the past year. Stories are believable if I give them my all—is that how it works? Some memories I kept, some I discarded? Some just didn’t make the cut? Just like that? No wonder Edward is mad at me.

  “What did you see, when you came home? After you took the woman back?” I ask Edward.

  Those words hang between us.

  What did you see when you came back from dumping the woman’s body? That’s the part I don’t remember. I rest my hand against my hip. The accident. For so long I’ve been looking for answers and now he’s about to offer me the truth.

  “Tell me what you saw,” I insist. His eyes are so cold.

  I have to be careful. Memory is fickle. I’ve been saying it all along. But the truth is the truth. I think I’ve figured it out. There are Penelope’s letters, and there’s what I recall, and there’s Edward’s story. Once we put it all together, the puzzle will be complete.

  45

  DONNA

  Should I tell Edward that Penelope disappeared while he was gone? That I found her bed empty and that I had visions of her shouting the truth into the night? Should I tell him what I did after I found her?

  I have truths myself but I will not offer them to him. I will not tell him I found Penelope in the wet grass beside the pool house, the gentle raising and lowering of her chest the only assurance she was still alive. There was this sick feeling inside of me, a sickness that overpowered my thoughts, silencing my conscience, and a possibility opened up: we’d all live in a hole if anyone found out about what we’d done.

  I don’t know how I did it but I roused Penelope and dragged her back to the house. When she began to cry, I covered her mouth with my hands. I covered the mouth of my daughter so the world wouldn’t hear her scream. Wasn’t that what I’d done her entire lif
e? I believe that’s why it came so easy for me to do what I did next.

  * * *

  • • •

  There was no reasoning with Penelope. I tried from every angle. From you left the scene of a crime to I helped you clean up to a stern your father drove off with a dead woman in the car.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” she said, her eyes feverish. “I’m going to tell the police that you did this for me, that I lied to you, that you didn’t know. I’ll say whatever you want me to. We didn’t do it on purpose, it wasn’t planned. I’ll explain it to them, it was all me, all you did was try to help. And I begged you to, but you told me to do the right thing.”

  “No, Penelope, listen to me. What’s done is done. It doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t do this on purpose.”

  “I don’t care what you tell me,” she screamed. “I will turn myself in. I should have taken her to a hospital. I don’t understand why you won’t let me make this right.”

  “I understand how you feel but it’s not something that can be undone now.”

  “Mom, listen.” Her hands were shaking.

  Nothing. Not a thing I could do about it. And worst of all, I knew she was right.

  * * *