The Last Day

by John Ramsey Miller

  “No. But I appreciate your genuine concern.”

  “I didn't mean anything, but if he doesn't make you feel any better, why do you keep going to him twice a week?”

  “You can take one of the sessions.”

  “Did he tell you again that I'm in denial?”

  She glared at him reflexively for a second before looking away.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked, changing the subject.

  She shook her head.

  “Good,” he told her, handing her the glass. “I'll whip us up a little something.”

  She frowned. “Like what? Peanut butter on rye?”

  “How about pasta with garlic butter and a delightful Caesar salad?” Ward had already checked the fridge when he had been trying to decide if he had the energy to make himself dinner.

  “Sure,” she said, smiling quizzically. “You make the salad while I boil the water.”

  “You don't trust me to boil water?” he asked. He gave her a reluctant smirk. “God, you have an impeccable memory, Natasha.”

  “How about because you make a great salad,” she replied, a smile gracing her face for the first time in days.

  Twenty minutes later, Natasha and Ward were seated at their dining table with the lights dimmed. Although he'd brought the bottle to the table, her wine was untouched.

  “How was your day?” she asked, taking a mouthful of her salad and chewing slowly.

  “I had lunch with Gene,” he told her.

  “Did you?” She looked down at her plate as she rolled linguini onto her fork delicately.

  Ward took a sip of his Scotch, savoring it before swallowing. He wasn't hungry. “He told me you're willing to settle with Lander. He seemed to think you'd sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

  Natasha set her fork down. “I don't want this dragging out for years over that one point.”

  “I thought we agreed on that point.”

  She lifted her glass of wine and stared at it. “Barney's gone. Nothing will bring him back, but we have to go on. I have to go on.”

  “He's not gone anywhere,” Ward said quickly. “He's dead.”

  Natasha's eyes filled with tears. “You imagine I don't know he's dead. He was killed by the actions of some idiot and I'm mad as hell about it. Beyond mad. I just want to stop feeling so mad, so damned empty, or whatever it is I'm feeling all the time. Maybe if this suit was over we could get on with our lives.”

  Natasha looked out through the windows. “I can't keep hating faceless electricians.”

  “Natasha,” Ward heard himself saying. “I'm dead set against settling. This is not something we're doing to be vindictive. This suit is supposed to be for Barney, not us. So they'll remember. So some good can come from this. The money from this suit is going to help children who need helping. Kids who will have a chance to live longer lives because of Barney.” Instead of Barney living longer.

  Natasha said, “I know all of that. Can we please change the subject?”

  Ward finished his Scotch and set his glass down. Natasha took a sip of her wine.

  “Flash Dibble raised his offer for the company,” Ward said.

  “The amount hardly matters, does it?” she said.

  “The idea of selling the company to the Dibbles makes my skin crawl,” he said honestly. “I don't know how much clearer I can make that to Gene. Trey was there and I told him to his face that he'd never get his hands on the company. I think even Gene understands, but I doubt it.”

  “Gene's a lawyer,” she said.

  “He's my best friend.”

  “Yes, he is. But he is seeing the fees attached to a twenty- million- dollar transaction he'll handle.”

  “That's true enough. Can't blame him there.”

  Natasha took another sip. “What does your uncle want to do?”

  “We haven't discussed it lately, but Gene told me he'd sell. Unk stands to make seven million dollars. I'm sure Bunny knows.”

  “Well, couldn't you buy Unk out?”

  Ward hadn't thought about that, but he imagined he could get a loan to buy Unk's stock. “I suppose I could.”

  Natasha put it into words. “It wouldn't be the same company without him. No offense, but he is the people person. He has the close relationships with the clients.”

  Ward tried to imagine the company without his uncle, and couldn't, because he knew that his uncle was such an integral part of the business that his absence was unimaginable. It would take a team to replace him, and Mark was RGI in the minds of most of their client base.

  “I'd need at least two people to take his place. We have other salesmen, but he's the closer. He makes sure the contracts are fair to us, and to the customers.”

  “Gene could help you with the contracts,” Natasha said. “He looks them over and passes on them anyway. And I'm sure Unk would still help you out. You could pay him, pay for his entertaining the clients.”

  “I hired the guy who's been dating Leslie.”

  “For what? I thought he was a private investigator.”

  “I hired him to be a private investigator.”

  Natasha's eyes grew large with disbelief. “Why would you hire a private detective?”

  Ward told her the story about the stolen prototype, and how Todd had already located the girl who took it.

  “Why did you take it with you?” she asked. Precisely the question he didn't want her to ask, because she knew the answer. It was Barney's favorite toy.

  He shrugged. “Just an impulse. I shouldn't have. Maybe the same reason you took Barney's baseball out of his room and put it in the bowl in the den.”

  “What are you talking about? I found that ball where you put it.”

  Ward couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Where I put it?”

  “Under the other pillow in my bed. The one you used to lay your head on. Remember that pillow?”

  “I'm pretty sure I would have noticed taking the ball out of Barney's room. Why the hell would I put it under your pillow?”

  “Your pillow,” she said angrily. “Just like you didn't take Barney's watch from my jewelry box, or any of the other things you don't want to or can't remember. I'm sick of these games, or whatever they are.” She looked at him with genuine concern. “Maybe you should see someone to make sure it isn't …” She didn't say it.

  “It is not early Alzheimer's,” he said defensively, but he'd sure as hell wondered the same thing over the past three months.

  “I never said it was. You're way too young. You're just under a lot of pressure. We both are. But it worries the hell out of me, and it should worry you. I have no idea what it is, but it's sure something. Maybe it's your nightly Scotch consumption.”

  “Maybe it's not all me,” Ward said.

  “Ward, you have to see a professional. If not Richardson, then someone else. Find out what this memory loss is. Deal with your grief. The sleeping late is probably because you don't sleep at night.”

  “Don't sleep! I sleep like a dead man. Is this going to be the grief counselor discussion?” he said. “Someone who can help me forget about Barney? I don't want to forget about him like you seem willing to do.” He immediately regretted saying it.

  “I'm not sure what I want,” she replied sadly. “But I can't keep going like this. I just can't. It's killing me, Ward.”

  “Natasha, do you still love me?” He wished he hadn't asked the question, but there it was, hanging like a cloud in the air between them.

  “What kind of question is that?” she asked, looking at him angrily.

  He shrugged. “One that has been on my mind lately.”

  “You honestly have to ask me that?”

  “I saw the letter from your doctor friend in Seattle.”

  She didn't accuse him of snooping, nor did she say it was an old letter that was of no consequence. What she said was, “I was seriously considering his offer, but just as an alternative. I'll tell you the truth. I don't honestly know how I feel about anything or anybody at this po
int. I have feelings for you, but you're a different person. I never know how you are going to react to anything. You forget things and you do things you say you didn't do, things only you could have done. Maybe you're walking in your sleep. That might explain things. Who else could be moving things around?”

  “You blame me for Barney,” he said. Natasha rolled her eyes. “The only person who blames you is you. It was a horrible accident. That's what accident means. If one of us blames the other, it isn't me.”

  “But you could have saved him,” he said, an anger growing. “Don't tell me you haven't thought a million times that if you'd just been here instead of me, he'd be alive. You would have resuscitated him. Admit it. You think I killed him.”

  “Your feelings of guilt are self- induced. You're projecting what you feel inside onto me.”

  “I can't talk about this,” he said, feeling nauseated.

  “Then what else can we talk about?” she asked, throwing her napkin on the table. “You want the truth? My son is dead and now I feel like you want me to get into his grave with you. Maybe you want to die, but I don't. I won't.”

  Natasha stood and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Right now, I just want to take a hot bath and go to sleep.” She started to leave, her eyes filled with fury, perhaps disgust, but definitely tears.

  “Don't forget your Ambien.” He knew better than to say that, but he'd said it anyway.

  “Go to hell,” she said, storming from the room.

  After she slammed her bedroom door, he stared at her plate, her nearly full glass, and for a second Ward had the strangest feeling that Barney was watching him. He stared out through the dark window and he could almost see his son standing there, staring at him. His look would be asking, Why are you being mean to my mama?

  I don't know, Barney, Ward thought. He was sure Natasha had put the ball under the pillow. Why would anyone else do such an absurd thing? It wasn't the first time in recent weeks; either she'd moved things around and accused him or he had done so and didn't remember. Sure, he had felt oddly detached from the real world, but not that disconnected. If one of them was losing his mind, he didn't think it was only him.

  Ward walked down the hall and stood frozen outside Natasha's door. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hold her, to be in her arms again the way it was before. He raised his hand, but he couldn't force himself to knock. He imagined her lying alone in their bed. He wanted to comfort her, to make love to her, to make her feel something for him, but somehow he couldn't make the leap.

  He thought about the last time they'd made love, seven months before, and how mechanical and unsatisfying it had been. Love with a stranger, but who had been the stranger? Filled with the fog of uncertainty and perhaps insecurity, he just could not make himself open the bedroom door.

  He moved silently into the guest bedroom and, without taking off his clothes, lay awake in the dark for what seemed like hours after getting into bed. Something he couldn't understand, or didn't want to admit, was keeping him from reaching out and trying to make things right.

  Ward couldn't imagine life without Natasha, but forgetful or not, he wasn't going to pay some pompous, two-hundred-dollar-an-hour asshole to make him let go of Barney.

  EIGHTEEN

  After leaving Ward at the dinner table, Natasha took a long warm shower, brushed her teeth, and toweled off her hair.

  She was still upset—more upset than angry— and mostly because she'd blown an opportunity to really talk with Ward and resolve their problems. Her psychiatrist had suggested that she give Ward an ultimatum of sorts, force him to understand what he was about to throw away. Barney was dead, and she'd accepted that. She knew Ward knew it as well, but he couldn't put it aside and move on with what was left of his life—of their life together.

  She often wondered how she, Barney's mother, was trying so hard to come to terms with Barney's loss and her husband wasn't. She had carried him in her womb, had given birth to him, nursed him, and loved him beyond rationality or description. Yes, Ward had seen him die, had held his cooling body as he waited in immeasurable anguish and pain for the ambulance to arrive. Yes, Ward alone had suffered that, but she certainly felt the same horror and grief even so.

  Due to the demands of her career, Ward had spent more time with Barney than she had, and in the last years had been closer. She couldn't compete with the father/son contact and shared interests that became more and more important to them both. As a woman she'd been the odd one out, and she'd accepted that—had welcomed watching their bond strengthen, even at the expense of her own. She knew she loved Barney every bit as much and missed him every bit as deeply. How could it be otherwise?

  Ward appeared to be in more pain, and it most bothered her that there was a wall between them that kept them from sharing the pain, the grief, from talking about their lives, and how they would go forward together. She wanted nothing more than to be in Ward's arms, to feel him against her, his warmth to fight away the cold, his strengths to shore her weaknesses, to lessen her fears, maybe even somehow mute their emptiness.

  Natasha climbed into bed and turned off the lamp. She reached for the familiar stuffed bear, and after not finding it where she'd left it, ran her hands top to bottom and side to side over the bed, seeking it. Turning on the lamp she got on all fours and, from the bed, looked around the floor. Panicked, Natasha slid off the bed to peer under it, but the bear was not there.

  She climbed back into bed, cut the light off, and tried to decide what to do. She didn't want to confront Ward and demand the toy's return. That was impossible after she'd made the point about him taking the little blue car to Las Vegas to be close to something Barney had treasured above all of his other possessions, even the bear.

  At Ward's insistence, she had recorded the bear's short message for her child's ears alone. She had imagined that anytime he needed to be comforted by his mother, and she wasn't there, he would have her assurance that her love was constant and he was safe.

  Ward had obviously taken it, and if he had, it was maybe because he had needed it as an anchor, since his own line to his dead child—the metal car—had been stolen from him. If he needed Buildy more than she did at the moment, she only prayed that if he pressed the bear's hand, her message would comfort him.

  Through everything, Natasha had fought to believe in God, and to believe that He had their son in His arms and loved him—as she had been taught since childhood—more than his parents possibly could. Hugging a pillow to her, she prayed to God to keep Barney in His arms so that he was never afraid, and that God would make sure the boy knew how deeply his parents loved him.

  NINETEEN

  From his hide overlooking the house, Watcher observed the couple through his binoculars as they ate dinner. The romantic tint to the evening was an unpleasant development, but his spirits soared when the meal was ended by an argument. Dr. McCarty stood up, had a few heated words to say—no doubt about what a limp- dick idiot her hubby was—and left the room. Seconds later her bedroom light came on. Ward remained seated at the table alone after she was gone. The man watched through the binoculars as Ward stared out through the window into the darkness—a beetle in a jar. Watcher knew McCarty couldn't see him, but he found himself holding his breath as their eyes met.

  Watcher waited until Ward was in the kitchen cleaning up like a housewife before he put down the binoculars. He pulled out his survival knife and the diamond stone and started sharpening the blade slowly and deliberately. The tip was the only part of the knife he had used in a long time, and it was the tip he concentrated on sharpening while he waited in the hole he'd dug into the earth.

  He looked at the blade in the moonlight, tested the edge with the sole of his thumb. He felt the notches he'd filed into the top of the blade near the hilt years earlier. Each represented a man killed in a war in a country whose landscape looked like the surface of Mars. He had liked doing it, more than that; Watcher had felt like he'd been born to end the lives of his enemies.
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  The luminous hands on his watch dial told Watcher it was nine- forty He gathered his binoculars, notebook, and camera, and packed them all away in the rucksack. That done, he lifted the hinged roof and slipped out of the hide, lowering the lid until it was flush with the ground. Slowly, he walked through the woods with the pack over his shoulder.

  Because tomorrow was going to be a very busy day he would sleep tonight. In the morning, he would go into the house to collect the tape and he'd find out exactly what it was they had been arguing about. Their marriage was at the breaking point, and that gave Watcher a decidedly warm feeling. If things were allowed to run their natural course, the once perfect couple would break up and go their separate ways. Time was too short for that to happen.

  TWENTY

  After Dr. McCarty left the house at five A.M. on Tuesday morning, Watcher went into the garage and removed the GPS from under Ward's BMW and dropped it into his rucksack along with the stuffed bear. Inside the house he collected his recorder, since he wasn't going to need video going forward from here. He moved silently through the house collecting the other cameras and microphones that were tied into the recorder, leaving only the ones that transmitted so he could access them remotely.

  He looked at the thrown- back covers and he leaned down so his face was inches above the sheets. Watcher drank in the scent of the doctor. Smiling, he made up the bed, pulling the sheets and spread tight enough to bounce a quarter on, and all the while wondering what it was going to be like to get a good look at her internal organs.

  He looked at the curtains and couldn't see the microphone that was pinned into the top seam. There had been no need to visually record people sleeping.

  He eased Dr. McCarty's door closed and crossed to the bedroom where Ward slept. He pressed his ear to the wood, and was rewarded with the sound of McCarty's light snoring. He pressed down the lever carefully, eased the door open. Watcher moved to the foot of the bed, studying the sleeping man's relaxed face. The man was still wearing the clothes he'd been wearing the evening before. Watcher put his hand to the hilt of the survival knife, and suppressed the desire to do something like slit the shirt off Ward's body. Watcher tensed when Ward suddenly rolled over onto his side, but he doubted he'd awaken yet. The Scotch should be good for another few hours.