by Nicole Baart
Maybe she could join Gabe on the couch, close her eyes for a few moments.
“Mom,” Gabe croaked when she came into the living room. “Can I have some sugar toast? I’m hungry.”
“Baby, I just put soup on. Toast won’t feel good on your throat.”
“Gatorade?”
“I have 7UP.”
Gabe swiveled his head to look over the back of the couch. His lips were dry, his eyes a pair of dark, shiny buttons. He was perkier than he had been all afternoon, but Jess knew it wouldn’t last. She could see the fever hiding behind his earnest gaze. “There’s a cupcake in my backpack. Can I have that?”
“There’s a cupcake in your backpack?”
Gabe jiggled his head on the pillow. It was close enough to a nod. “It was Ella’s birthday and I missed her treat because my throat hurt. Mrs. Rosalind let me take it home.”
“Let’s save it for after chicken noodle soup, okay? I’ll get you some 7UP.”
Gabe shrugged and turned back to his show. Jessica longed to join him, to cram herself into the space between his warm little body and the back of the couch, but there was a cupcake in her son’s backpack. She had found one too many forgotten water bottles toxic with unidentifiable sludge to simply let it go.
Gabe’s backpack was hanging on his hook in the entryway, beneath the placard with the chalkboard paint and his artfully written name. Jess had been so proud of the redesigned space, the sleek, black bench and locker-style cubbies. But it had nearly taken an act of God to convince her boys to use the proper hooks, and she often wondered if an old-fashioned closet would have made more sense—though she would’ve never admitted that to Evan. They had spent a small fortune on the remodel.
Unzipping Gabe’s Pokémon backpack, Jess extracted the cupcake. It was in a plastic bag, thank goodness, but the frothy swirl of pink frosting was mashed and melting just a little. It belonged in the garbage can along with the other odds and ends that Jessica found in the dark recesses of the backpack.
A used glow stick, a single sock, and a stack of bent and folded papers that had somehow not made it into Gabe’s take-home folder. How long had it been since she had riffled through her son’s bag? Clearly way too long.
Jessica upended the backpack and sorted through the mess, hanging a sweatshirt on one of Gabe’s hooks and making a pile intended for the trash. Rummaging through the detritus, Jess worked quickly and unemotionally, deciding what to keep and what to toss with little consideration. Until she found something she wasn’t expecting.
Wedged in the very bottom, half-hidden beneath a flat panel that was torn and flapped open, Jess’s fingers met a dog-eared paperback. It was worn soft, the pages gently waved as if it had once been left out in the rain. When Jess worked it free, she realized she was holding an old copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. It was the same edition she had read in high school, a pale lavender cover with a night scene in a framed square. A crow flying, a tree with a knotty hole containing a ball of yarn and a stopwatch instead of an owl. Just holding it in her hands, Jessica could remember the feeling in Mr. Defoe’s classroom. The way he stood with one foot propped on a chair, pretending he was indifferent to the many distractions that made it nearly impossible to discuss Harper Lee’s legendary book. The titters of the girls at the back of the class, the damp fug that lifted off the boys who had just finished PE and elected to reapply deodorant instead of braving the wall of showers in the locker room.
Jess was fifteen again and listening to Mr. Defoe with her heart in her throat, even if she pretended to be as unaffected as the rest of her tenth-grade classmates.
Where in the world had Gabe gotten this book? He was in kindergarten, not high school.
Jess stood up and patted herself, wondering if she could fit the paperback in the back pocket of her jeans. But as she looked down she realized she was wearing one of Evan’s old cardigans, an oversized sweater with leather buttons and pockets big enough to contain all her secrets. She didn’t even remember putting it on. Jess slid the paperback into one of the cardigan’s pockets, then gathered up the rest of the garbage.
“Gabe?” she called, coming into the living room with her arms full. “Can I ask you about something?”
But the second she laid eyes on her son she knew. “Mom,” he whimpered, his skin gray, tears beginning to leak from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t feel so good . . .”
And then Gabe threw up all over his pillow.
* * *
February 7, 2018
I met LaShonna Tate this morning. At a Starbucks in Mankato. I’m recording the meeting here for legal purposes. For times and dates, details. Things we discussed.
Jessica doesn’t know because she doesn’t want to know. I’ve tried to bring it up with her a couple of times, but she shuts me down. I even asked her what she would do if we found out that Gabe’s birth mom had been writing letters, and she acted as if the mere suggestion was obscene. I think her exact words were: I’d burn them.
I’ve backed myself into a corner.
LaShonna told me that there is going to be another baby. Gabriel is going to have a sister.
Darcie M.
28, Latina, HS diploma
Long hair dyed blond. Quiet (mute?), homesick.
Friend knows.
DWLR, 20m pp
CHAPTER 8
THE CHAMBERLAINS WERE sick for the rest of the week. Even Max caught the bug, though he only suffered from the stomach flu, while Jessica and Gabe had to contend with strep throat, too. Meredith wanted to sweep in and help, but Jess barred the door and refused to let anyone inside. Not even her father was allowed to cross the threshold. “We’re fine,” she told everyone, but it was a lie. They were falling apart at the seams. But that particular process had begun months ago. Their slow unraveling was ongoing, not the direct result of a bacterial infection.
“Was it something you ate?” Henry asked through the safety of the telephone. It was Monday morning and Jess had just dropped the boys off at school. Gabe had been fever-free for over forty-eight hours and they had both kept three solid meals down. Well, solid was a relative term. They managed toast and crackers, a Pop-Tart or two. Jess wasn’t in the mood to squabble about nutrition. They had survived. That was enough. Her father continued, “It could have been food poisoning.”
Jess thought back to her hurried attempt at chicken noodle soup. After Gabe threw up, she had completely forgotten about supper until she could smell it burning to the bottom of the pot. The stench of burnt chicken was enough to make her nauseous, but she didn’t start vomiting until much later that night.
“No, Dad,” Jess said. “I didn’t poison my kids.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you did.” Henry sounded smug, but he often sounded that way. “Lots of people brought food for you. Who knows what kind of hygiene standards people have? I have friends who don’t believe in washing their hands.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I know.”
“Either way, it wasn’t food poisoning. We got sick, fair and square.” Jess put the final crease in the towel she was folding and tucked it into her laundry basket.
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better. Anything I can do for you?” There was a lilt in his voice, the tiniest shift up as he asked the question, and Jessica felt herself soften immediately. He was hurting, too. Her father had loved Evan in his own way, but even more so he loved his daughter, his grandsons.
“We’re fine, Dad. Thanks for asking.”
Jessica left her phone on the kitchen counter and settled the hamper on her hip. She was supposed to go back to school today, and she would have if they hadn’t been waylaid by illness. “One more day,” she told Alexa Hastings, the principal at Auburn High School. She was younger than Jess, a hipster former teacher in gray pencil skirts and graphic T-shirts that she dressed up with fitted blazers. Really, she was new and untried. She would have given Jess more time.
It felt good to fill the linen closet with fresh towel
s. Jess had practically doused the house in bleach and scrubbed down every single door handle with Clorox wipes, but nothing was quite so satisfying as the feel and smell of crisp, white linens. Their sickness was a cleansing of sorts, a scouring that left Jess feeling hollowed out inside. She was purged, empty, as lifeless and starched as the laundry she had just finished. It wasn’t necessarily unwelcome, for there was little to grieve in the barren landscape of her heart. Jess was sad, but quietly so.
Her bedroom was stripped bare, sheets still in the washing machine and comforter hanging over the clothesline in the bitter November air. It would smell of frost when she took it inside, bracing and just a little dangerous. A reminder that the world could not be tamed, that soon it would snow. Blanket the world in white.
Jessica deposited her empty hamper on the bench at the foot of her bed and began to put her room back in order. It had been less than a month since Evan had died, but she had amassed what seemed like a lifetime of stuff. She picked up shirts and sweatpants and deposited them in the laundry basket, then stacked books and magazines that well-meaning friends had brought her and that she had never touched. There were a few plates that contained the remains of old food, a half-eaten slice of toast, crackers and cheese that she had taken to bed one night, thinking that she would be able to stomach a few bites. Instead, the crackers went stale and the cheese turned moldy. Jess was ashamed of herself.
Her nightstand drawer was hanging half-open, and when she tried to push it shut with her thigh, she couldn’t because something was in the way. A book, its pages spread and curling at the edges. And tucked inside the book, a letter.
Jess sank to the bed and took the paperback in both hands. She barely recalled stuffing it there and didn’t remember at all sticking the envelope in the front cover. But here they were: the coroner’s letter proclaiming the cause of Evan’s death, and To Kill a Mockingbird, courtesy of her six-year-old’s backpack. She hadn’t even asked Gabe about it.
Slipping the letter out of the book unread, Jess put it on the bed beside her. Then she thumbed through the book.
Just inside the front cover was a penciled number: 2.50. Most likely the price. It was a secondhand book, then, purchased at a used bookstore or maybe a garage sale. There was no name written in the cover, but on the title page she found two words scrawled in blue pen: LOVE, DAD.
A gift from Evan to Gabe? Jessica doubted it. Two words were hardly enough to get a real sense of the handwriting, but it didn’t seem like Evan’s. He wasn’t like any doctor she knew, and his handwriting was far from the hen-scratch stereotype. Evan was slow. Thoughtful. Measured and kind. It was reflected in everything he did—including his handwriting. He typically wrote in a slanting cursive hand, the loops even and eloquent somehow, like amateur but heartfelt poetry. This was seven letters, capitals all. Jessica turned it around and then again. She just didn’t know.
Because sometimes Evan could behave opposite to everything she knew him to be. Sometimes he became frantic, obsessed. She remembered a few specific patients that had caused him to lose sleep and weight in tandem. He wanted to fix problems and diagnose every ailment and make the world right again. When Evan was buzzing with the need to mend what was broken, he was distracted and forgetful. He left his reading glasses all over the house when he forgot to take them off, and Jessica would find them between the couch cushions, on top of the refrigerator, inexplicably tucked into the mailbox. He also scribbled.
There was no way to know if he had written a note inside this book.
Jess flipped to the back but nothing grabbed her attention. Then she let her thumb graze the pages, fanning them slowly so the page numbers ticked by like an old film. Halfway through, the paper stuttered beneath her careful attention. Jess skipped back, trying to find the spot. Maybe there was something hiding there. An old bookmark that would indicate where the paperback had come from and why it had been hidden in the bottom of her son’s backpack.
Nothing. Not even an old receipt marked the spot. But as Jess turned each page individually, she found that one page was torn. Hastily, it seemed, and unevenly. A large chunk of the corner was missing, approximately the size and shape of a business card, though the edges were jagged. It was disappointing, really. The name “Atticus” was cut in half, and three lines were missing a swath of words. Jessica hated it when her students dog-eared pages in their books or wrote obscenities in the margins. It drove her crazy. And this ripped page pained her, but it wasn’t so unusual.
Since the book held no mysteries, Jess felt emboldened to reach for the coroner’s report. Putting To Kill a Mockingbird on the nightstand, Jessica grabbed the fat envelope and tore it open before she could consider what she was doing. Why not? She had nothing to lose.
Roughly a dozen stapled pages contained all the secrets of her husband’s death. It was clinical, unemotional, each sheet stamped at the top with Scott County and then Department of Medical Examiner—Coroner. Really, there wasn’t much to see. A series of boxes with seemingly innocuous checks. Yes, he was clothed. His sex was male. A few pages in there was a diagram of the human body documenting every old scar and each new wound. There were three black X marks. Neck, shoulder, upper back. Jess already knew that the carotid had been severed. It was over in less than a minute.
Jess took a shaky breath, surprised that she had made it this far, but determined to at least scan the entire report. She knew that she couldn’t move on until she had turned the last page. Afterward she could burn it in a memorial or put it in Evan’s safe. But really, what was the point of keeping such a horrific piece of literature? She shuddered at the thought of her boys discovering it someday, going through her paperwork when she was old and they had families of their own. It would be like setting a land mine in her home.
No, she’d read it and get rid of it. They all knew what happened.
But Jess paused at the very last page. It didn’t bear the Scott County emblem and only held a few spare lines. Addendum, it read. Evidence collected. Then: There was no identification on the body. A scrap of paper was found in the right back pocket of his jeans. It was torn from page 195 of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and contained the following number written in black ink: 5554403686.
* * *
Jess ignored her phone for the rest of the day. She had left it on the kitchen counter and there it stayed, emitting its silent beacon like a homing device. It was almost impossible not to pick it up and ring Deputy Mullen’s number. But what would she say? “I think I found the book that the paper in Evan’s pocket was ripped from.” So what? They were married. Separated, but still. They had contact with each other and shared kids. Things were passed between the family house (the mortgage was in both of their names) and Evan’s town house on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. It made perfect sense that if Evan has a scrap of paper in his pocket, it would have come from something that she was at the very least familiar with.
And yet, Jess’s world felt off. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the old book with the torn page and the addendum to the autopsy report felt just a measure wrong. A coincidence that was too intentional to be mere serendipity. The air was laced with suggestion, ripe as a plum that was starting to turn, skin firm and flawless—but the flesh beneath was soft and sickly sweet, just a hint rancid.
Jess had to do something. She grabbed the magnetic pad of paper that hung on the fridge and jotted a quick list of all the people who knew the Chamberlains left their garage door unlocked during the day. Weeks ago, Deputy Mullen had asked her if Evan had any enemies, but she had scoffed at the question. Evan? Enemies? It was impossible to believe. But she had to start somewhere and she still believed that someone had been in her house.
Max’s close friends were first: Trey, Lucas, Bradley, and Colin. They weren’t bad boys—Jess genuinely cared for them all—but they could be troublemakers. It was typical teenage trouble—innocent for the most part—but they were a good place to begin. Then came the neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, though they we
re painfully proper and would never dream of entering her house when nobody was home. However, Jake Holmes lived on the other side and he was a definite suspect. He was an older, single man with an obvious chip on his shoulder and an abrasive personality. Jess was a bit afraid of him, and even Evan had avoided Jake after they’d had a run-in about the apples from the Chamberlains’ tree that fell onto his property every autumn. Jake had become unhinged. Jess put a fine line underneath his name.
Half a dozen people rounded out the list, including some of Jess’s coworkers and a few of Evan’s, too. Then there was Trevor Albright, a friend that Evan used to go biking with who was also an avid hunter, and Lane Cameron, who was not only their financial advisor but also Evan’s beer drinking buddy.
With a start, Jess realized that there was another name to add to her list. Cody De Jager.
It had been a long time since Jessica had thought about Cody. He was a meth head, an addict in their relatively close-knit community that most people tried to ignore. But when he showed up in Evan’s exam room with pneumonia one day, Evan had taken him under his wing. Gabe was just a toddler when Cody began coming to the Chamberlains’ house for dinner twice a month on every other Wednesday night. At first, Jess had balked at welcoming a recovering drug addict to their table. But Evan was a fixer. He was insistent that Cody was on the upswing; it would be okay. And it had been. At least for a while. When Cody fell off the wagon, Evan retracted his invitation—and came home with a cut on his cheekbone and the swelling purple flush of a bruise.
“Did he hit you?” Jess had asked, incredulous. She snagged an ice pack out of the freezer and wrapped it in a tea towel. Pressing it to the side of Evan’s face, she kissed his opposite cheek. Whiskers from his five o’clock shadow tickled her lips.
“No,” Evan said, pulling away.
“What do you mean, no?”
