by Merry Jones
“At least we’d outnumber her.”
We’d argued. But I had to stop depending on my friends. Becky looked exhausted, pale. She needed to stop worrying about me and rest in her own bed. Finally, I’d promised to double bolt the doors. And keep a hammer under my pillow. And have my phone ready on the nightstand. Even then, Becky had been reluctant to go home.
But she did. I closed the door after almost forcing her down the front steps, and leaned back, embracing the stillness of my empty house.
For a while, I stood in the entranceway, listening to the quiet. Letting go. And then, slightly tipsy from the Scotch, I wandered from room to room, reclaiming my house, my privacy. Feeling the air settling, the scents fading. Turning the light out in the kitchen, letting it sleep. Making my way down the hall, passing the powder room, stopping at the door to the study. Drawing a breath.
Maybe I wouldn’t go in. Maybe I’d wait until the next day. But why was I so hesitant? Charlie was not, would not, be in there. He’d been buried. He was gone.
I probably shouldn’t have been drinking with so recent a head wound. But a drink was exactly what I wanted. Not Scotch. Wine, this time. Just one glass to help me sleep. Shiraz, finally, was what convinced me to go into the study. The bottles were in there, on the rack above the bar. So, I ignored the fine hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck, the ones that stood up and danced out warnings. I paid no mind to the shiver of air that chilled me as I stepped into the room. I was determined. Despite what had happened there, I marched in, straight to the bar, where visitors had left an open but not empty bottle. And poured.
Something moved in the periphery of my vision. But I didn’t react, knew that whatever I’d seen wasn’t really there. Couldn’t be.
The wine splashed around in the glass as my hand trembled. But slowly, I turned around, lifted the glass, silently toasted Charlie, and drank.
Okay. I’d done it. Gone into the study again. Not seen a ghost or had any hallucinations. Reclaimed it. Now I could leave.
I drained the wine. Rinsed out my empty glass. Recorked the bottle, tossed an old cork into the jar where we—where I collected them.
And noticed that one of the corks looked odd.
Because it wasn’t a cork.
It was a flash drive.
And it had no business being in my cork jar. Actually, it was Charlie’s cork jar. After he’d left, I’d just kept filling it.
“Why do you save corks?” I’d asked him way back in the beginning.
“Well, you can’t just throw them out.”
I couldn’t?
“Wine isn’t like soda pop.” Charlie had been impassioned about wine. “It’s alive—it’s living and breathing right up until we consume it. Wine dies for our pleasure, and the cork? Well, the cork is a reminder. A marker of the life sacrificed to our enjoyment.”
I’d found his concept macabre. But we’d been drinking and he’d probably been half in the bag when he’d said that. Not entirely serious. Even so, we’d kept the corks. A row of full jars lined a shelf beneath the bar. And a not quite full one sat on the bar’s end. Holding not just corks, but a flash drive.
I heard Derek, pressing me. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary? Maybe a flash drive?” And after the funeral, he’d come back to the house, wandering around, looking into vases and behind books. He’d gone into the kitchen, ostensibly for ice cubes, but ice had just been an excuse. He’d been snooping. Probably opening drawers and cabinets, checking canisters. Looking for the client information he claimed Charlie had taken.
And now, there it was, in the best hiding place of all: right out in the open. I had no doubt I’d found what Derek had been searching for, what Charlie had been hiding when he’d died.
I looked at the jar, but didn’t reach inside. Something held me back, though I didn’t know what. After all, the flash drive was nothing to me. Whatever was on it concerned some rich client of Derek’s whom I didn’t even know.
So why was I wary? The flash drive was small. Innocuous. The size of a car key or a lipstick.
Maybe I’d just leave it there. Pretend I hadn’t seen it.
In fact, that was probably the best idea. I had enough problems without Derek’s flash drive. The thing didn’t affect me, wasn’t my business. Whatever was on it was between him and Charlie and some client. I wanted no part of it.
I was still telling myself that as, up in my bedroom, I opened my laptop and plugged the thing in.
A password? It wanted a password.
Again, I told myself to leave the flash drive alone. My instincts agreed, warning my body to stop. My mouth went dry. My stomach churned out warnings: Stop. Leave it alone. Don’t mess with this. My fingers trembled as they typed out guesses. Missed keys as they tried to produce the magic minimum six digits that would unlock the drive and reveal its contents.
What was wrong with me? Why was I so afraid to find out what Charlie had hidden?
Well, that was a stupid question. I’d lived with Charlie for over a decade. Knew that, while he dressed like a gentleman, he loved playing dirty. Taking risks. Pushing limits. And, according to Derek, the information Charlie had put on the drive was seriously limit-pushing. Bad enough to merit blackmail.
Maybe bad enough to merit murder?
And, if I opened the drive and saw the information, would my murder be merited, too?
Ridiculous. No one would know that I’d seen it. No one even knew I had the flash drive. Besides, I had no proof that the flash drive was connected to the murder. I thought again of Sherry McBride. She might have stalked Charlie, tailed him to the house, gone inside, and fought with him. Killed him.
I tried another password: Jehosaphat, the name of Charlie’s favorite tropical fish. It didn’t work. Nor did his birthday. Nor our anniversary, no surprise. The password wasn’t Cornell, his university. Or Ithaca, its location. It wasn’t Cape Cod, where he’d once had a beach house. Not Florence, his mom’s name. Or Nathaniel, his father’s. It wasn’t Multicor, the name of his investment business. Or its address. Or Beemer, like his car. Or “money” or “profits” or “finances” or “funds.” I tried all kinds of wines, at least the ones I could think of, like Zinfandel. His favorite: Shiraz. Pinot Noir. Cabernet. Nothing. I tried team names. Charlie always bet on sports. But it wasn’t Eagles or Broncos or Saints. Also not Flyers, Phillies, or Sixers.
I knew I should quit. No question. It would be better not to know what was on the drive. And even if I saw it, the information might be highly technical, or financial. Or encoded. After all this effort, I might not even comprehend what I saw.
I gave myself just three more tries. Three only, and then I’d stop.
Okay. The password had to have at least six digits. And something that would have been second nature to Charlie, something that he wouldn’t have trouble remembering. His first car? Mustang. No. It didn’t work.
Two tries left. I closed my eyes. Felt a nervous flapping in my chest. Shivered. Heard Charlie swear, “You were the love of my life.”
I didn’t need the third try. Elf was too short, so I typed it again. ElfElf.
And I was in.
ElfElf? He’d used his private pet name for me as a password? I didn’t want to think about why. We’d been finished. Over. Almost divorced. He’d simply chosen that password because no one else except maybe Derek knew about that nickname. It was a practical choice, nothing else. Still, the name felt personal. As if he’d called me to look at the drive.
The screen showed a menu of folders, labeled with initials and dates. I stared at it, hesitating to open anything. Why? What was I afraid to find? Records of embezzlement? Of bribery? Of illegal trading? Even if I saw those records, I doubted I’d understand them. But my hands were cold and damp, my fingers stiff. Difficult to move.
It’s just a list of file folders, I told myself. On a flat, two-dimensional screen. What’s wrong with you? Get on with it. My stomach twisted, but I clicked on the first file in the list.
The file opened to an array of photos. Initially, I felt relieved. Glad not to see technical writing or spreadsheets or complex financial records. Just photos. I clicked on one, enlarging it.
And went on to the next.
And the next, and the next.
And then, unable to take any more, I ran to the bathroom, heaving.
I didn’t throw up, just wanted to. Leaned over the toilet, feeling sick.
Children. Charlie had dirty pictures of children.
Children the age of my second graders. With baby soft skin, wide open eyes. Innocent minds. Only these children weren’t innocent. These were posing naked, doing things to themselves.
And, oh God—to each other.
I hung my head over the bowl for a while, gagging, trying not to think. But the images wouldn’t go away. What hellish secret life was Charlie into? Had Derek known? Had he been covering for him? Or was Derek into naked kids, too? Is that why he wanted the flash drive?
Oh God—I stood up too fast, dizzy, breathing shallowly. “Charlie,” I dared him to face me. I called him names, cursed at him. “Where are you? Come out, you sick fuck.”
Charlie didn’t appear. Didn’t speak. I walked back into the bedroom, saw the bed, the dresser, the nightstands. Darkness out the windows. No Charlie.
I sat on the bed again, looked again at the screen in disbelief. Clicked forward. Saw things being done to children. By children.
I held my stomach. It hopped around like my mind. Had Charlie secretly been into children? A pedophile? I couldn’t believe that. But why else would he have these pictures?
Derek popped to mind—what he’d said about Charlie taking client information from the business. Clearly, Derek had been lying. The files didn’t contain client information; they contained child porn. So what did that mean? That Derek had lied to protect me from the truth? He might have been trying to contain the photos. To get rid of them and cover up Charlie’s perversion.
Charlie’s perversion? How was it possible that I’d had no idea? Not the slightest hint of his secret sickness. I recalled his scent, the meshing of our lips, his warm strength against me. Inside me. His gravelly whisper, “You’re the love of my life, Elf.” Oh God.
I raced back to the bathroom. When I finished heaving, my heart wasn’t racing anymore. I wasn’t even trembling. I was simply exhausted. Even so, I took a shower, scrubbing my body because I couldn’t scrub my mind. Couldn’t expunge my memories of the man I’d loved and married, or of the gut-twisting realization of how sick he’d actually been.
Some dreams are hard to wake up from. They are too vivid, too full of detail. They color waking life. The dream I had that night was like that. Too real. More real than real. Impossible to shake.
Despite how upset I was, I’d fallen asleep right away. Even in sleep, though, I was disturbed. I dreamed of a writhing pile of naked children with soulless eyes that didn’t cry. They surrounded Charlie, who sat on the sofa in the study, oblivious and dead.
“Dammit, Elle,” he croaked, “the plane’s taking off. You killed me, and now I’ll miss my flight.” I smelled his blood.
Then he wasn’t in the study anymore. He was underground on a black stream, sitting Indian-style on a raft with Somerset Bradley, who had a hanger sticking out of his eye. Rodents swam and swarmed, gnawing at Charlie. Dark slime was everywhere. “This is your fault, Elle,” Charlie’s mouth didn’t move. But I heard his voice. “Your fault.”
I woke up shaken. Repulsed, feeling slimy. Wondering about Somerset Bradley. Why had I dreamed of him with Charlie? Because they were both dead? Because I’d killed one and was a suspect in the death of the other? Possibly. But those answers didn’t feel true. My head was foggy. I looked at the clock, trying to rouse myself. Almost eight. Out the window, bright, blinding sun behind red and orange leaves. A car parallel parking. A pedestrian walking a corgi. Life as usual.
But inside, nothing felt usual. Brushing my teeth, I looked in the mirror. Saw the tangle of hair, the bruise on my head turning yellowish-green. And my eyes reflecting knowledge of something unbearable. Something too shameful to say.
Inside my head, bare children grunted. Charlie scolded. Inhabitants of my dream found tenements and took up residence, planning to stay.
You didn’t do anything wrong, I told myself. Whatever happened to those children wasn’t your fault. But my eyes contained the unacceptable truth, the culpability I’d somehow inherited from Charlie. I splashed my face with cold water, trying to shock the dream, the knowledge away. Then, avoiding the mirror, I hurried downstairs, trying to escape.
My newspaper at the door. The smell of brewing coffee. The sweet and tart tastes of granola and yogurt Morning routine comforted me; after a few minutes, I began to relax. I opened the paper, scanned the headlines. For a welcome change, saw nothing about anyone I knew. Skimmed the editorials. The advice column. Movie and book reviews. The gossip page. Apparently, there was still a world beyond my doorstep. It was comforting to see that, despite my personal havoc, life on Earth was continuing, basically undisturbed. I finished my yogurt, poured a second cup of coffee, turned to the obituaries. And saw a familiar face.
A listing for Somerset Bradley.
I put down my cup. Felt a jolt, sharp like a slap on the cheek. Hadn’t expected to see his face. His death notice.
Well, I should have expected it. They’d bury the man sooner or later.
I squirmed on my seat, uncomfortable. I looked away, then back at the page. Away again. Back again. Picked up my coffee cup. Put it down again. And, finally, I turned to the photo, bracing to face the man I’d killed.
I remembered the feeling of thrusting the hanger—the sound it made. His scream. Or wait—did I really remember? Or was I imagining it, filling in the blanks?
I didn’t know. Wasn’t sure. Hadn’t remembered stabbing him when I’d talked to the police, so why would I remember now? God. I needed to call Susan, to get the name of that shrink, make an appointment. Find out what was wrong with me, why my memory was so riddled with holes.
The bump on my head throbbed. And Somerset Bradley smiled from the newspaper. He’d been kind of handsome, had certainly looked better without a wad of metal in his eye—Oh God. Did the obit mention his cause of death? I scanned the listing, afraid that they’d name me and my twisted hanger. But no, they’d just written, “Suddenly.” Much more polite than “stabbed in the eye.”
I read on. “Aged forty-six. Beloved husband to Gwynneth. Father to Edmond (Heather), and Rupert. Also survived by a sister, Millicent (Haywood Reynolds) and three nephews. Memorial service at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Radnor, tomorrow at noon. Interment private. No mention of flowers or donations.
I closed my eyes, covered my face with my hands. Took a deep breath. Recalled being slammed against the floor of Charlie’s apartment, hitting my head. Seeing the shiv in my hand.
I put my hands down, opened my eyes, saw my hands. Studied the cut on my palm, the thin dark scab. Tried to remember how I’d cut myself. An orange? Slicing an orange? I pictured Charlie, dead on the sofa. The knife in his back. No—I hadn’t cut myself stabbing him, must have done it cutting an orange. I closed my eyes again.
Finally, I looked back at the paper and read the obit again. Somerset Bradley. Beloved husband. Beloved father. Beloved uncle and brother.
Gwynneth. Edmond. Rupert. Millicent.
Service at noon. Interment private.
Rupert. Edmond.
Gwynneth.
I’d made a wife into a widow. I’d taken their father from his sons.
I’d killed a man.
“This is your fault, Elle,” Charlie growled. I looked at the wound on my hand, remembered my knife in his back. Was it possible? Maybe I’d killed two?
I sat at the table, frozen, staring at the page.
Somerset Bradley, aged forty-six, smiled back. In the photo, he had two eyes.
The waiting room was small and indefinite. No way I’d be able to talk to a person wh
o’d created an environment of colors so neutral that they weren’t colors at all. Not definite enough to be labeled tan or gray or taupe or beige. Just blah. Blah-colored chairs, carpet. Blah walls. And a big blah piece of modern art that wasn’t even definite enough to serve as a Rorschach test.
I was four minutes early. In four minutes, if he was on time, I’d meet the doctor Susan had recommended. I’d casually asked her that morning if she knew any shrinks. I was careful to make it low-key, said I was thinking of following up on our conversation about my memory. But she must have heard urgency in my voice because, within minutes, she had me set up with an immediate appointment in a shrink’s swank Society Hill office, furnished in postmodern American blah.
Truthfully, it bothered me more than a little that this shrink had been referred by Susan’s friend Zoe, who, as an art therapist, knew lots of them. But Zoe—and this was the bothering part—Zoe was married to none other than Detective Nick Stiles. The very same Detective Nick Stiles who was investigating Charlie’s murder.
It felt too close. Worse than too close. It felt crazy to see a doctor who was friends with the wife of the homicide detective who considered me a person of interest, if not a suspect in a murder. But Susan assured me that doctor/patient privilege would prevail. That I could confide anything I wanted and the psychiatrist wouldn’t disclose what I said to anyone—not to the courts, not even to her.
The waiting room had no magazines. Not one. The lighting was bland, an off-white lamp on an end table. The only color in the room was from a potted fern. I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Two minutes. If he was on time.
“There’s a guy who can see you today,” Susan had called back, not ten minutes after I’d called her. “Zoe says he’s excellent. Smart. Teaches at Penn. And he’s no bullshit.”
“No bullshit?” I had no idea what she meant.
“He doesn’t play shrink games, like answering your questions with questions. Or letting you lie on a sofa talking aimlessly. Zoe says his approach is focused. He’ll tell you his thoughts, give you feedback, right then and there.”
