After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  “So what happened?”

  “They dropped it, quite abruptly. Bert turned it around on the guy, filed a complaint that he was using his office for a private vendetta, and the guy got reassigned. Bert told me it wasn’t hard to show there was no money, not from Papa. Barry Speers.”

  “What?”

  “That was the guy’s name. I hope he got fired. But it’s out there, Rachel. Still. It’s like this big cloud, or this thing that’s going to fall on me. I can’t bear for Hamish to know, even though it was before I met him. I’m so ashamed. I’m ashamed in a way I wasn’t when it was going on, and I was plenty ashamed then.”

  “Bert didn’t tell Mama any of this, did he?”

  “No. He was my lawyer. He can’t tell. I made sure of that.”

  “Mama’s pretty sophisticated in her way, Michelle. She would be okay with it, now that we know the story has a happy ending.”

  “Does it?”

  “It does,” she said, putting her hand on her sister’s stomach. “Everything will be fine, Michelle.”

  To her amazement, Michelle burst into tears. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. If you knew, Rachel—”

  “But I do know, Michelle. You just told me. It will be okay.”

  And it would be, Rachel thought, putting her arms around her sobbing sister. Everything always worked out for Michelle. No, not everything. She had never known their father, not really, and it must have been hard, growing up in that household, to be indentured into the family practice of Keeping Up Appearances. It was funny how things worked out. Linda had become a professional spinner of stories. Rachel had become almost pathologically honest, with one vivid exception. And now Michelle was Bambi Junior, finding a man who promised her the world. Maybe this one could deliver it.

  Please, Rachel prayed to the god she didn’t believe in. Please let Michelle have her happy ending. And she felt better about herself. Bad fairies want to do the right thing. It’s just so hard sometimes.

  Hamish Macalister III was born four weeks later. When the nurse came out, she handed Rachel a piece of paper with the exact time, 20:02, the numeric rendering of the date, 6-12-6, and his weight, 8-13. “For the lottery,” she explained. “A lot of people like to play the time, date, and weight.”

  Rachel thought that was hilarious, someone instructing Felix Brewer’s daughter to play the lottery. Yet the next day she went to a Royal Farms and placed several straight bets: 2002, 6126, 813. This is what my father did, she thought, standing in line, waiting for her chance to play, as uncertain and tongue-tied as she might have been ordering a meal in a foreign country. How do I word this? What is the custom? Am I holding everyone else up? At the last minute, she added a Powerball ticket and found she enjoyed fantasizing about that big jackpot for a few days. Had her father sold people joy, after all? Was there something noble about the way he made his money? Because while it was disappointing not to win, it wasn’t unexpected, and the daydreams had been lovely, worth a few dollars. Where else could you buy a dream for two dollars?

  And perhaps it was the haze of her lottery dream that carried her forward, because the next time she visited her new nephew, she asked Hamish Junior for a loan, so she and Joshua could adopt a child from China. It was not the first time that Rachel had asked someone for money. But she was keenly aware that it was the first time she had asked for herself.

  The agency told them it would be eighteen months. It was more than five years before they brought home Tatiana, a twenty-month-old girl who required two cleft palate surgeries. On an unseasonably cold March day in 2012, the Brewer family gathered in the hospital to keep Rachel and Joshua company during the second, simpler surgery—Bambi, Michelle, Linda, Hamish, although not Henry, who couldn’t get the day off. Linda’s girls were in school, but Noah, now twenty-five, skipped work, a testament to all those Friday night suppers, Linda’s insistence that family was primary. Michelle and Hamish’s two children were there, too; Helena had followed Hamish III by less than three years.

  The Brewers took over the waiting room, but it was such a happy scene, compared to much of what happens in hospital waiting rooms, and they were such gracious, lovely people that the hospital staff indulged them, even Michelle’s constant use of her cell phone, which wasn’t officially permitted. (She said she needed it so Helena could play Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, although Helena was happy moving beads along the wire paths of a children’s toy.) It seemed natural when Bert arrived, old family friend that he was, still natural when he took Bambi aside for a hushed conversation. Bert had been taking Bambi aside for hushed conversations as long as her daughters could remember.

  It was unnatural, though, when Bambi came back to them, picked up her purse, and said: “I must be going.”

  Rachel couldn’t leave that be. “Is something wrong? Has Nana Ida—” The old woman was still alive at one hundred one, improbably. Or quite probably, given her tendency to hold on to anything she had, whether it was money or years. She likely had her own shoeboxes of condiments.

  “No. I mean—it’s not for you to worry about.”

  “Mother.” Where once only Linda and Rachel would have spoken in unison, now Michelle added her voice. Marriage, motherhood—she was part of the club.

  “Well, it’s the strangest thing. But it seems that the police want to talk to me.”

  “What?” But only Linda and Michelle asked this question.

  “It’s nothing,” Bert said. “They’re just spinning their wheels. But if we go now, on our own, it will be over sooner and we can put it behind us.”

  “What?” Linda and Michelle repeated. Rachel tried to make eye contact with her mother, but she wouldn’t look at her.

  “Oh, don’t be so obscure, Bert,” Bambi said. “Girls, it looks as if I might be arrested.”

  “For what?” Linda asked.

  “The death of Julie Saxony.”

  “It’s bullshit,” Bert said quickly. “She’s not going to be arrested. They want to ask her a few questions. It won’t take long at all.”

  “Oh, no. It shouldn’t take long at all because I’m going to confess. Does Tubby still write bonds, Bert, or is he quite out of the business?”

  “Mama.” Rachel wrapped her arms around Bambi. It was less a hug than an attempt to hold her in place. Bambi gently removed one arm, then the other, much as she might have peeled a clinging toddler from her. She used to do just that when Linda and Rachel were very young, and Bambi and Felix headed out to the club, over the girls’ protests. Their father was home so rarely in the evenings, it was a double blow to watch him come home and head out again, their mother at his side. They would wrap themselves around his legs and their mother would peel them off, one arm, one leg at a time, laughing all the while.

  No one was laughing now.

  “Tatiana will be fine, Rachel. I’ll be fine. I promise you that everything’s going to be okay.”

  And with that, she was gone.

  Tell

  Me

  July 3, 1986

  Saks. Why had she said Saks? She was flustered, too flustered to lie. “I’m going to Saks,” she told Chet. Why? he had asked. In a mild, curious way, but they were fully booked for the holiday weekend and they were doing dinners for the guests, testing out Chet’s recipes.

  “To buy bras,” she blurted out. Why? Why did she say bras? Perhaps she thought the very word, “bra,” would keep him from following up. But Chet was not a man who was easily embarrassed.

  “Is this urgent?” Teasing her. “You’re dressed to impress, I see.”

  “It’s just that the ones I have are all too big.”

  “Yes,” he said gravely. “That is a problem.” And then he let it go, although he asked her to make a stop at the restaurant-supply place and she agreed, because what else could she say? They had a teasing rhythm, not quite brother-sister, more like a boy who ha
s a crush on an older girl but knows it won’t go anywhere. It had developed very quickly, a by-product of their mutual animosity toward Bambi Brewer, who, Chet reported, had nickel-and-dimed the catering company to death over costs for Michelle’s bat mitzvah. Julie, in return, regaled Chet with stories about Bambi’s extravagances during the marriage. Not that Felix had ever told her such stories, but he told Tubby, who told Susie.

  Michelle. Julie still remembered the shock of her birth thirteen years ago. Julie had been Felix’s girl for a little more than a year, and while she assumed he still had sex with his wife, it had never occurred to her that they would have more children. Then, one day, she had come into the office and there they were, the three amigos, puffing on cigars, drinks in hand, and when Julie had asked what was up, they had shared a look among themselves before Felix said: “And, lo, the Lord has delivered unto me another girl. What are the odds? Well, I’ll tell you. They were one in two, even after having two girls. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. The odds, each time, are one in two, while the odds of getting the same result three times in a row are one in eight. Longer, but not improbable.”

  That had been a shock. Almost as shocking as the first time she had seen Bambi. She had expected her to be attractive, but not that attractive. She was older than Julie, of course. But not as old as Julie would have liked. And so very beautiful. Possibly more beautiful than Julie, an assessment that she was not in the custom of making. Julie had the better figure, though. No contest there.

  Then. She had the better figure then. Would Felix mind that she was skinny now? Chet had been joking about the bras, but it was a problem. Felix remembered a different body. The weight loss had taken a toll on her face, too. Susie thought it was hilarious that Julie had this hot-shit chef and barely ate anything all day. But food tasted like dust in her mouth.

  For ten years, Julie had sleepwalked through her days, yet not slept at all at night. He had promised they would be together, but he didn’t say when. She had filled the waking hours—what the rest of the world believed to be waking hours, all her hours were waking ones—with work. First the coffee shop. Walking up and down, back and forth, walking, walking. Clean the counter. Check the inventory. Write the schedule. And as her savings grew, she looked for something else, a business even more demanding. Innkeeper. If she had to take care of others, she wouldn’t have time to think about herself. So she bought the house on the water in Havre de Grace and spent her days, most of them, making breakfasts, changing linens, taking calls, overseeing her bookings. And when that became too automatic, she decided to open the restaurant, knowing there was a spectacular failure rate, but that was part of the lure. She wanted to succeed. With everything she did, she imagined Felix’s approval and admiration. She was as good at business as he had been. She wasn’t extravagant. She worked.

  And still she mourned, stuck in time, forever trapped in her sister’s truck as Felix walked across the tarmac to the little plane that took him away. She couldn’t believe he didn’t want her to come with him. Bert had thought he would. Bert had made the fantasy possible, getting her a passport so quickly. She had assumed he knew something. But, in the end, Bert had been as in the dark about Felix as everyone else.

  Everyone else. Including Bambi.

  But now he had sent for her. Ten years later, but he had sent for her and she was still young. Younger than Bambi had been when he left her, and if Julie looked a little harder, a little worse for wear—that would change. She would sit in the sun with him, although perhaps in a hat, and eat whatever they ate there, fish and fruit.

  I won. He loves me, he loves me, he sent for me. Not you. Me.

  She was honest enough to concede that Bambi could not go, given that Michelle was only thirteen. Plus, she was a grandmother. The oldest girl had to have given birth by now, given her size at the bat mitzvah. Still—Julie had won. He had chosen her.

  She wanted Bambi to know. That was mean of her, and Julie was not, by nature, a mean person. But she was meaner than she used to be, hardened by ten years of living with a heart that was not so much broken as shredded.

  She was almost to the exit for Saks, near Reisterstown Road, an exit she knew well, for it led to Felix’s house, not that she had ever been inside it. How many times had she driven past the house in Sudbrook Park? It had started early in the relationship with Felix, when she still lived with Andrea. She would sneak out in the middle of the night, get in the VW bus despite not having a license. Just seeing the house had stoked her fury—and her longing. It seemed like a castle to her, its circular driveway a moat. A castle for the queen and the two princesses, then three. Bambi had to share Felix with Julie, but no one could get between Felix and his daughters. It was the daughters that had kept her from him.

  Daughters. At least Julie’s surveillance had been respectful, undetectable. When Felix’s daughter showed up at the inn last week, she had broken the rules in this game. Calling her a thief, a whore. As if Julie had two hundred thousand dollars, just sitting around. Why had Bambi told her daughters such outrageous lies? Worse, what if Felix heard these stories? She couldn’t bear the idea that he would think her so low, so craven. Her only thought was to make sure that Felix didn’t believe these stories.

  And he didn’t. The call had come at last. It’s time. Time to disappear as he had, traveling light. Had Chet noticed her absurdly large purse? She would pick up a shift and a bathing suit at the mall, if there was time, but right now all she had was a cosmetic bag, the usual things. It had been stressed to her that she must disappear as if nothing had been planned. No trail, she had been warned. Some cash is okay, but it can’t appear that you’ve made any arrangements. People have to believe you’re dead.

  She had thought: No, I was dead. Now I’m going to be alive again.

  She had driven swiftly, foot pressed so hard against the accelerator that she had averaged seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. She was more than forty-five minutes early and she knew she mustn’t linger at the meeting spot, draw any attention to herself. She could run her errands, but that wouldn’t take fifteen minutes. Maybe buy a bathing suit, although she didn’t want to see her thin, pale self in a three-way mirror, didn’t want to think how sad Felix would be to see this wisp that used to be Juliet Romeo. Felix would probably make a joke about it, plying her with piña coladas and—she tried to make the dream specific. Conch? Shrimp?

  She would drive by the house one more time, say good-bye to it for Felix, say good-bye to the space it had taken up in her head, all these years. The brick inn by the water was a rambling version of this very house, not that anyone had ever noticed. Maybe she would even stop this time, park in the circular driveway, march up the walk and knock on the door, bold as you please, and announce: He chose me, Bambi. Me!

  March 26, 2012

  2:30 P.M.

  Bambi had known she was fibbing when she told the girls she didn’t expect to be away long, but even she was surprised to be sitting, three hours later, in an interview room at the downtown police headquarters, having yet to speak to a detective. The man who appeared to be in charge—such sad green eyes—had greeted them and said he was waiting for another detective before he could proceed.

  “They’re bringing someone in from the county because they think the case will end up there,” Bert told Bambi. “Only it won’t, because there is no case.”

  “How many years do you think I’ll get, Bert? If I confess and enter a plea?” She could do five, she thought, maybe even ten. Would they actually give a seventy-two-year-old woman more than ten? Especially if she claimed she was provoked, did it in—what was the phrase?—the heat of passion. Say she served ten—the number stuck in her head because Felix would have done no more than ten, probably less. She would be out at eighty-two and, based on her mother and aunt’s longevity, she could expect another decade, maybe more. Crummy for the younger grandkids, humiliating for the older ones, but it might not
be too bad. She could be like the woman who killed the Scarsdale Diet doctor, devote herself to good works while inside.

  “Stop it, Bambi. You are not going to confess, you are not going to enter a plea. You are going to sit here and let me talk while they do whatever stupid dance they’re going to do.”

  “Bert, I want to talk.” Could she order him to leave? If she told him everything, would he be obligated to do as she wished? Probably not. She had been impulsive, back at the hospital, but she had no regrets. After thirty-six years of limbo, it felt good to do something, anything.

  “Bambi, I know you couldn’t have done this.”

  “Bert, with all due respect, there’s a lot you don’t know. I appreciate your kindness, but—it’s time. It’s time to put things to rest.”

  The door opened.

  “Aw shit,” Bert muttered.

  “What?” Bambi realized there was a young woman behind Sad Green Eyes. Well, youngish, plump and blond, with a big sunny smile.

  “Nancy Porter,” Bert whispered to her. “I’ve seen her work before. She’s very good.”

  “They don’t need someone good when all you want to do is confess,” Bambi whispered back.

  She hadn’t considered the possibility of a woman detective, though, and it set her back. She had been counting on a man. Someone like Sad Green Eyes there. She could wrap him around her finger forty times and have enough left over to make curtains as Felix used to say. Two men would have been even better. She would have played them off each other. But not a man and a woman, and definitely not this cheerleader shiksa.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brewer,” the girl said, as if greeting her homeroom teacher on the first day of school. “We really appreciate you coming in today to discuss Julie Saxony with us. There are just a few things we’d like to go over, a few new facts that have come to light, especially since you granted us permission to search your apartment yesterday—”