Unbroken

by A. J. Matthews

  “What? You think I was there?” Kiera asked, astounded.

  “She hasn’t left here since the surgery yesterday,” Nate said.

  “My license was in my purse, which I left at home when I came in yesterday for the surgery,” Kiera said.

  “Then how did it get into Mrs. O’Keefe’s car?” Fielding asked, taking a step closer to the bed.

  “Whoa, hold on a second there,” Nate said, turning on the detectives. “What the hell are you suggesting? There’s no way Kiera had anything to do with this.”

  Fielding turned and regarded Nate with a steady, blank expression. “I’m not suggesting anything,” he replied in a low, controlled voice that slammed into Kiera’s ears like a hammer on metal. “I’m simply following up on a lead that might help us find out what happened to Mrs. O’Keefe last night.”

  Nate’s face flushed with anger as he looked back and forth between the detectives and Kiera.

  “She had goddamned brain surgery yesterday, for Christ’s sake.” His voice was tight with anger. “She’s been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since.”

  Tears filled Kiera’s eyes as she leaned her head back into the pillow and tried to process what was happening. Fragments of her dream last night came back, but they were only fragments. She couldn’t put them together to make sense. Her pulse was beating so fast her neck ached. Worried that she was going to faint, she clenched her fists and struggled to stay conscious.

  How can Liz be dead? . . . But there was something . . . I saw it . . . but that’s not possible!

  “Ms. O’Keefe is married,” Fielding said, ignoring Nate’s outburst as if it hadn’t happened. “We found her home number on her cell phone, but her husband’s not answering. Do you have any idea where he is?”

  It took Kiera a few seconds to realize he was talking to her. Blinking her eyes, she stared at him blankly as she struggled to catch a single, rational thought through her confusion and panic.

  There’s no way Liz can be dead, she kept telling herself, even though she had the weird feeling that—somehow—she had seen it happen. The cold emptiness in the pit of her stomach told her it was true. This wasn’t a dream or some flight of imagination. These detectives were real, and what they were telling her had really happened.

  “Mrs. Davis?” Fielding had a sympathetic look in his eyes as he looked at her. “Do you know how we can get in touch with Mr. O’Keefe?”

  “He’s at a . . . a conference . . . for real estate agents,” Kiera said distantly. She was still too stunned to focus clearly. “He—ah, sells properties . . . here in town. I thought he . . . he left . . . I’m not sure. A couple of days ago.” She raised her hand to her head, applying pressure to the bandage as if that would help her remember. “I—I’m not really sure, but he’s supposed to be gone all week. I think he said he was going to Denver . . . or maybe was it Boston?”

  “Thank you very much,” Fielding said. “You’ve been a big help. I think that’s all we need right now.” He glanced at his partner, who simply nodded. “Would it be okay for us to come back if we have any follow-up questions?

  Still stunned by the news, Kiera stared blankly at him before nodding and saying,“Yes, yes . . . Of course.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Davis,” Fielding said. “Sorry to trouble you.” Without a word to Nate, the two detectives turned to leave.

  “One question?” Kiera asked in a broken voice.

  The detectives stopped in the doorway and turned back to her.

  “My license . . . When can I have it back?”

  “We’ll return it after we dust it for fingerprints,” Fielding said without emotion.

  “If it’s mine, I . . . I have no idea how it got into Liz’s car.”

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her bandaged forehead. Mentioning her friend’s name drove home the grief again, and tears filled Kiera’s eyes, turning everyone and everything in the room into a watery blur. Once the detectives were gone, Kiera settled down in bed and listened to the receding click-click-click of their shoes on the linoleum. After a long silence, still struggling to process what had just happened, she looked at Nate.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  Her voice choked off, and a thick, salty taste filled her throat. She looked helplessly at Nate, who was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “I can’t either. What gives them the right to come in here and grill you like that?” Nate’s face flushed with anger, and his eyes twitched from side to side as though he didn’t know where to focus. “Can they do that? Can they just keep your license?”

  Kiera shrugged even though the slightest motion pained her neck and shoulders. “But Liz—” she whispered, her voice twisting off again. “How can she be . . . dead?”

  Nate sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand, giving it a firm squeeze as he stared into her eyes and sadly shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly, but Kiera thought she detected a distance in his voice. For whatever reasons, Nate had never liked Liz or Jon. Maybe he just didn’t like that she had friends she did things with while he only socialized with other teachers, usually on poker night. He always complained about how boring they were because all they ever talked about was work.

  “And Jon . . . He doesn’t even know yet? He’s gonna be devastated when he finds out.” Kiera’s eyes were brimming with tears.

  “I know,” Nate said, still squeezing her hand. “I can’t imagine . . .” He shivered. “But you can’t let this get to you. You have to rest and get better yourself.”

  Looking at him, Kiera realized just how wide the distance between them was. A volatile mixture of grief and rage flared up inside her, but she had no idea what to say or even where to start expressing to him how she felt.

  At that instant, a nurse Kiera didn’t recognize poked her head into the room. She was tall and thin, and she was smiling as she walked over to Kiera.

  “And how are we this morning?” the nurse asked, apparently oblivious to what had just happened. She went about her business, checking Kiera’s blood pressure and vital signs without saying much, and then she left after informing her that Dr. Martindale would be by soon to check in on her. Kiera forced a smile and watched as the nurse left, but the coldness that had wrapped around her heart made her shiver. She didn’t like being alone with Nate. When he started to speak, she cut him off sharply.

  “I don’t want to talk right now,” she said. “I really . . .” She took a deep breath. “Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?”

  Nate started to say something, but then he stood up and stretched, rotating his shoulders. He remained silent as he regarded her.

  “I really need to . . .” but she couldn’t finish the sentence as fresh tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face. Nate moved closer, but she waved him away.

  “Please,” she whispered, turning away from him and burying her face in the pillow. “I need some time alone . . . Please?”

  Without another word, Nate left the room and closed the door behind him. For a long time, Kiera just lay there as she cried. How could she accept that one of her closest friends was dead? Here she had been so worried that a brain tumor was going to kill her or that she would die on the operating table, and then . . . just like that . . .

  Out of the blue . . .

  Liz O’Keefe was gone.

  And I saw it happen, she thought, even though that made no sense at all.

  2

  “Out of the frying pan and into the fire, huh?”

  The voice—it was Jon’s—wafted like cool morning mist into Kiera’s sleep. She stirred in bed but didn’t open her eyes. She was too comfortable where she was, floating in a soft, cushiony haze.

  “We’re really in trouble now, aren’t we?” Jon said after a pause. “But I can count on you, can’t I?” His voice reverberated with an odd echo effect that made him sound faraway.

  Without opening her eyes, Kiera grunted and nodded. She had a vag
ue idea what he meant but couldn’t bring herself to deal with it directly. After getting past the first jolt of shock and grief over Liz’s death by falling asleep, she’d had dreams that, distorted as they were, filled her with a gnawing sense of uneasiness. Echoes of the dream she’d had the night before where she had seen what had happened to Liz still haunted her. She wished she had been able to see the face of the person who had attacked Liz, but the figure had been lost in shadow.

  “I have no idea what I’m going to do now,” Jon said, his voice catching as he sobbed.

  And then—even with her eyes closed—Kiera looked up and saw him looming over her. His skin was drawn and pale, almost white; his eye sockets were dark hollows, and his eyes were wide and glistening with an unnaturally bright sheen. His mouth was set in a firm, bloodless line, but when he spoke, his teeth looked huge and white, almost too big for his mouth.

  “What can we do?” Kiera asked as she struggled to push back the rushes of fear inside her. Jon was, after all, probably her best friend, and she had to help him get through the hard times she knew were ahead. “We should have done something about it a long time ago.”

  His face hovered in front of her like a huge balloon. It seemed to inflate, expanding as his anger boiled up. She had never seen him like this.

  “You see?” he shouted. Spittle flew from his lips, and his voice strained almost to breaking. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You can’t talk like that! You can’t think like that!” He took a breath, but his anger didn’t seem to abate. “What’s done is done. We have to move on, so get used to it!”

  “Okay. Sure. We can move on . . . but Billy can’t.”

  Kiera was trying hard not to say what she’d been thinking. Maybe the pain meds were making the words tumble out of her before she could censor them. She cringed and waited for another outburst from Jon, but the eyes in his balloon face regarded her with a flat expression that was almost impossible to read. It seemed to be part concern, part rage, and part . . . something else that she couldn’t quite grasp.

  “After all these years,” he said, “I hoped I could count on you.” There was a wistful trace of sadness in his voice now, but Kiera could feel the rage just below the surface. “With everything else I have to deal with, I was sure you’d be the one person I could count on.”

  “I am . . . You can,” Kiera whispered. She rolled her head from side to side, but it was impossible to get away from the face that loomed in front of her.

  “Whoa . . . Take it easy,” a voice said.

  It took Kiera a while to realize Jon was still speaking, but now his voice sounded closer and clearer, and much calmer. She opened her eyes—had they been closed all this time?—and saw Jon standing beside her bed. His face was flushed, but not with anger. Tears glistened like mercury in his eyes, and his lower lip was trembling with repressed emotion.

  “Hi,” Kiera said weakly, and seeing him instantly brought back the tragedy of what had happened to Liz.

  “I’m sorry,” Jon said. “I didn’t mean to wake you, but I—”

  “Oh, Jon . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Kiera started to cry as she raised her arms to hug him. Jon leaned down and hugged her, smothering his hot face in the crook of her neck. His body shook, and he was making a strangled animal sound deep in his throat. His tears dropped onto her skin and ran down her neck, making her shiver. Desperate with grief, she clung to him, trying to think of something she could do or say, but nothing came.

  “I can’t believe it . . . I can’t believe she’s . . . gone,” Jon said in a strained and muffled voice. Sobs wracked his body. Kiera was surprised how small he felt in her embrace.

  Which is the real Jon? she wondered as she struggled to sort out what was happening. She must have been dreaming at least part of their conversation, but she wasn’t sure when she had awakened. She must have imagined or dreamed him saying those terrible things about Billy.

  “I just got home and came right over,” he said, his voice choking on almost every word. “If I hadn’t gone away . . . if I had been here . . . this never . . . would’ve happened.”

  “Don’t say that,” Kiera said as she raised her hands and tried to soothe him by rubbing his back. He was practically vibrating in her arms. “You can’t know for sure.”

  “And do you know what the worse part of it is? The police . . . they’re treating me like I . . . like I might have had something to do with it. Christ!”

  Before he could continue, Jon broke off the embrace and leaned back so he could look at her. His face was pale and slick with tears.

  “I know the spouse . . . the spouse is . . . is always a suspect, but how could they . . . ? How could I . . . ?”

  His voice choked off, and he couldn’t finish. At a loss for words, Kiera decided the best thing was just to wait. He had to know how much she cared for him and how devastated she was over Liz’s death. Still, she couldn’t get rid of that mental image of him looking at her with such rage when she talked about what had happened with Billy. It frightened her even though she knew she had to have imagined it.

  “They have to follow up everything,” she said, trying her best to sound reasonable. “They found my driver’s license in Liz’s car and actually interrogated me, like they thought I might have been involved. Someone reported seeing a woman with red hair in the parking garage.”

  “Really?” Jon’s face drained of blood, and he looked like he was about to collapse.

  “I assume they have to follow up on any leads they get,” Kiera said. “I know you didn’t do it, but . . . but someone did, and they—”

  Before she could finish that thought, Jon’s expression suddenly crumbled as if his face was made of sand that was blowing away. He blinked his eyes rapidly and looked up at the ceiling as he struggled to stem another flood of tears, but he lost control and, covering his face with both hands, let out a long, heart-rending sob.

  “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” he wailed, his voice muffled by his hand. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

  Kiera’s hands were trembling as she reached up and touched his arm.

  “You have friends . . . You have me,” she said. “Somehow, we’ll get through it.”

  “I wish I could believe you,” Jon said, looking at her and shaking his head. His expression was silently begging her how, but he didn’t say a word. He couldn’t, and Kiera found that she couldn’t speak, either. After a long silence, Jon took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

  “Jesus Christ almighty,” he said in a shattered voice. “And you have this to deal with.” His expression suddenly softened, and he forced himself to smile. “How are you feeling? I mean, the surgery and all. It wasn’t anything serious, was it?”

  Finding it odd to be talking about something that seemed almost mundane in comparison, Kiera simply shrugged.

  “It was benign . . . the growth. They went in through a little hole here—” She touched the left side of her head, tapping the thick wad of bandage. “—and sucked it out. There’s no sign of any other tumors, and the doctor says there’s no evidence of any permanent damage.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Jon whispered, his eyelids fluttering rapidly. “I . . . I just don’t know what I would have done if I . . . if I had lost you, too.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” Kiera said. “Trust me.”

  It broke her heart to see him shattered like this, but she also couldn’t feel comfortable because the more she thought about it, the more she believed it didn’t matter if she had dreamed what had happened earlier or not. She had seen a side of Jon, a frightening, angry side of him that really unnerved her, mostly because she hadn’t seen it since that night when Billy died.

  3

  “We have to talk.”

  It was late afternoon. Although the shades were drawn, narrow bars of slanting golden sunlight cast thin shadows across the floor. A faint yellow haze fille
d the air like thick dust. Vases of flowers and get well cards from friends, and a stuffed bear from Trista were lined up on the windowsill. An eerie silence filled the room, and Kiera, who had been dozing off and on all day, pinched the back of her hand to make sure she was awake and had actually heard the voice.

  “I know we do,” a voice said.

  She’d been expecting to hear Nate and was startled to realize it was Jon’s voice again. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the corner of the room where a dark shape was slouched in the chair. After a second or two, she realized she was the one who had said they had to talk. She moaned as she dragged herself closer to consciousness.

  “Have you been here all day?”

  “No,” Jon said. “Just the last half hour or so. I had to go to the morgue and identify Liz.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “Then I met with Mark Steensland at the funeral home to start making arrangements.”

  The chair creaked as Jon shifted his weight forward and clasped his hands in front of him between his knees. He looked bigger now. Kiera thought it was because of the darkening room . . . or maybe it was her nervousness because of what she knew she had to tell him.

  “We have to talk,” she said again. “There’s something I need to tell you.

  “And what would that be?” Jon sounded absolutely drained. It must have been a terrible day for him as well as her. Kiera hoped he’d had a chance to doze while she was sleeping.

  “You know,” Kiera said. “It’s about Billy.” She licked her lips to moisten them before continuing. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened back then, and I need to talk about it if only to get it off my mind.”

  The room was so silent that Kiera thought for a moment that she might have imagined Jon there. She blinked her eyes, trying to make him out in the gathering gloom. The hazy yellow light gave his skin a sickly cast. Even his clothes looked like they were covered by a fine, yellow dust.