Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  He had never understood it—what she meant. Until now maybe.

  What was all for nothing?

  It was Hilary who first put it in his mind. “Who the hell doesn’t have a cell phone today?” she asked. And then bits and pieces just began to come together. How his father had been acting at the end. The calls he had made.

  Who came, and who didn’t come, to his funeral.

  “He would have given anything for his neighbors, and he did, right, Mrs. O’B?”

  Patrick went down the block and knocked on the door of the blue Victorian at the end of the street.

  It took a while before he heard the footsteps coming to the door. Mrs. O’Byrne answered.

  “I thought you might want some.” Patrick smiled and showed her a warming dish of baked ziti. “I got it at Romano’s.”

  “How could I turn that down?” She smiled. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Sure.” Patrick stepped through the door. “Just for a minute.”

  “It’s very sweet of you,” she said, taking the dish and placing it on a table, “how you’re always thinking of me. I don’t know how I would have made it through this without you. With Rich moved away . . .”

  “It’s been my pleasure, Mrs. O’B. You know how fond my dad was of you. You and Mr. O’B both. He was grief-stricken over what happened.”

  “As was I,” Sheila O’Byrne said, “about Joe. I miss him every day. Almost as much as I do Tom.”

  “I know you do. I know how close the two of you got after the storm. After . . .” After Tom was killed, he meant to say, but stopped.

  “Don’t worry.” Mrs. O’B smiled. “You can say it. Yes, your father and I talked almost every day. He was like an anchor for me. Both of you. You Kelty men have good bones.” She grinned.

  Patrick laughed. He had grown up looking at her as if she were an aunt and Tom an uncle. “You mind me asking something?”

  “Of course not. Come in the kitchen. I’ll put this on the counter. I’ll warm it up tonight. All I had were some leftovers in the fridge.”

  Patrick followed her in. Her kitchen was far less rebuilt than his own, though he had pitched in wherever he could, run power from a generator, as the city hadn’t completely restored the wiring yet. He didn’t know how she stayed here in the cold. Inner fortitude or some kind of devotion. The back of their house was still open to the bay, with only a weatherproof tarp holding back the wind and the cold.

  He asked, “How come you never came to the funeral, Mrs. O’B? I looked for you there. I even brought you up, about how Dad was always there trying to help rebuild the neighborhood. Especially for you.”

  “Even in his condition,” Sheila O’Byrne nodded. “He didn’t say much. But he was tireless.”

  “He was. But I looked in the book after I couldn’t find you at St. Barnabas’s. I didn’t see your name anywhere.”

  Sheila put down the warming dish on the counter. “Would you like a drink, Patrick? Listen to me, I sound like some lush. I’ve known you since you were three.”

  It was true, he’d grown up in this house as much as his own. “Maybe a Diet Coke.”

  “Coke? I’m having a gin and tonic. Tom always had one and we’d watch the news together. A beer? You’re old enough.”

  “Sure.” He laughed. “A beer would be even better.”

  “I couldn’t be there,” she said. “To your question, at my age a woman doesn’t want to deal with more death than she has to, and I’ve had my share, wouldn’t you say? I’m sorry. I know I was his friend. But it’s haunted me. It’s haunted me for a lot of years, Patrick. Then the storm, and Tom and everyone else around here. Then Joe being killed . . . I just couldn’t mourn another person. Not so soon. That’s why I didn’t come. I know I should have been there for him. But I think your father would understand.”

  He looked at her and something he saw told him she wasn’t telling him the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. Sheila had twice the inner strength of anyone else he knew. She was in this house when anyone else would have been in a hotel the city put them up in or with their family. His father had called his mother’s cell phone four times the week he died. And there were five calls in return. Whoever had it now.

  I’m on my way back wi—

  Something was going on.

  “I’ll grab the beer out of the garage,” Mrs. O’B said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went out through the mud room. Patrick took his father’s phone out of his pocket and pressed the number he knew by heart. His mom’s old number: 917-904-9991. He could recite it in his sleep.

  “I used to think I had the strength for anything,” Mrs. O’B called out from the garage. “Whatever life threw at me. That I could take it, with good ol’ Irish moxie. And not hate the world back. With spite. But this time life has knocked me for a good one, Patrick . . .”

  The number connected. There was a pause. Then suddenly he heard a ring. Not a ring, but the trill of a familiar melody. Bach, he was told. But his mother knew it as a song from the sixties. “A Lover’s Concerto”: “How gentle is the rain . . .”

  The melody was coming from Mrs. O’B’s living room.

  “I hope this is okay.” She came in holding a can of beer. Budweiser.

  Then she suddenly stopped, noticing the ring. Looking toward the other room, where it was coming from. Then back at Patrick. Who held up his phone to her.

  “Budweiser was Tom’s favorite,” she said guiltily.

  “What did you mean that ‘it was all for nothing’?” Patrick asked, pressing the phone with his thumb and cutting off the call. The house turned silent. “When I told you my dad had died in that crash, that’s what you said to me, through the door . . . ‘Then it was all for nothing.’ ”

  “I knew I should have let that damn thing just die,” she said, placing the can of beer on the counter. “But I kept it charged. Foolish, right? Like maybe he would call me one more time. And what happened hadn’t taken place.”

  “My father was messaging you right before he was killed. It never went through, though.”

  “Messaging me? It’s no crime for a friend to give an old woman a cell phone, is it now? Or is that what this country’s coming to?”

  “He was letting you know that he was on his way back. At first I thought maybe it was me. My mom’s name was next to mine on his contacts list. But it wasn’t me. It was you. He gave you the phone. He was calling you. Right before he died. Why . . . ?”

  “Please, Patrick. He’s dead. The last thing you want to do is drum up—”

  “Drum up what, Mrs. O’B? I saw what he was texting. He was letting you know that he was on his way home. But more than that. That he had something with him. And you know exactly what I’m referring to, don’t you? You knew what was in the car and who he had gone to meet.”

  “Did you hear what I said before, Patrick? About spite. It’s not a way to live your life. I can attest. So tell me, do you want to live your life in that way too?”

  “For God’s sake, Mrs. O’B, he called you a half dozen times in the days leading up to the crash. What did the two of you have going on? I’m not talking as a cop now. But as his son. As someone who’s known you for his whole life. He was doing something for you. Something he couldn’t divulge. And it got him killed.”

  Sheila came to at the table. Her face was colorless; wrinkles around her mouth that just a moment ago weren’t even visible now seemed like deep canals. “You’re a good young man, Patrick. Joe loved you. He idolized you when you became a cop. Don’t get yourself involved in something that might tear him down now. And you. Something you’ll regret.”

  Patrick kept his eyes trained on her, his gaze burning. “Why?”

  She looked up at him. Her mouth twitched once or twice, or maybe she was just shaking her head.

  “I know about the money,” Patrick said.

  She sniffed, rolling her eyes at him with a scoffing smile as if he was crazy. “What money?”

  “T
he half a million dollars that was in the car. That he was on his way home with. But that never turned up, right, Mrs. O’B?”

  She still hesitated, pushing a dish in front of her to the side. “How . . . ?” Then she sat down on a chair. “How did you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I need to know what it was about. How my dad got involved.”

  “That money . . .” She sniffed again bitterly and looked at him. “You think I cared two shits about the money? For what . . . ? This . . . ? This hellhole I’m left with . . .” Her eyes darted around the house, dark with scorn. “All my memories, gone. Stolen from me. My life . . . It was never about the money, Patrick. Not for a second.” Her eyes grew scornful and Patrick saw something on her face he had never seen before. “It was about making him pay.”

  “Who?” Patrick stepped closer to her.

  “You heard what I said before . . .” Her eyes flickered like dying embers in a fire and she smiled thinly. “I held it in a long time. But a mother never fully lets it go. I’m talking about spite, Patrick. It’s been in there, it feels like forever, burning a hole in my belly.” She patted her chest. “Every day. Since the day it happened. You want to know? Then you have to know what’s been in my heart since the day my Deirdre never came home. It’s been over twenty years, Patrick. Twenty years . . .”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  The night had been windy and cold, two months ago, not long after Deirdre’s diary had come back, and she sat in the kitchen, wrapped in a blanket, switching channels on the small television set that an electrician friend of Patrick’s had jerry-rigged.

  She settled on this interview on NBC. Ann Curry talking to someone. She was about to move on—it was some official from Connecticut, that guy who was on vacation in South America or somewhere, and whose wife had been tragically killed in a fall, their kids right there.

  His name was flashed on the screen. Landry, Frank Landry. He was a state senator up there.

  Normally these stories did nothing but make her recall her own anguish, so she went to change channels, but her curiosity got the better of her and she put down the remote.

  “Senator, you’ve remained fairly silent since the incident.” Ann Curry looked at him empathetically. “But rumors are that you’re considering a run for governor and that’s why you finally consented to this interview . . .”

  “That couldn’t be further from the truth,” the senator said. He was nice-looking. Maybe a little coldness or remoteness in the small blue eyes. A narrow face and light sandy hair. “It was just important to respect our family’s privacy. For the sake of our kids.” She liked the way he still referred to them as that. Our kids, as if his wife was still alive.

  “You can only imagine what they’ve been through. But so many people have pushed, and maybe it can help avoid something else like this happening down the line. So the kids finally said, ‘Go ahead, Dad. Do it.’ In fact, they asked to be here now.”

  His two children came in and sat down next to him. A son and a daughter; both seemed in their early teens. He put his arms around them on the couch. They both looked a little awkward being there.

  Then Ann leaned forward. “So, Senator, painful as it is, can you describe what happened down there, the day of the accident?”

  Landry nodded, moistening his lips. He took his kids by their hands. “We hadn’t been away as a family for a couple of years. So we went on this cruise to Patagonia. Around the horn. It’s a place my wife, Kathi, always wanted to see. And it was beautiful. We were having the time of our lives, weren’t we, kids?” He squeezed his children’s hands and they both nodded, kind of numbly. “We were stopped at this port, Puerto Montt, in southern Chile. We took a shore excursion for the day, a boat ride on this beautiful lake in a national park. Emerald Lake. It was surrounded by stunning mountains. Here’s a picture we took . . .” Landry took out a blown-up photograph: the four of them, in bright-colored windbreakers and jackets; his wife pretty, in sunglasses, all smiles. “You can see how happy we were. We were having a great day. Then we went to visit this waterfall and rapids. It’s a well-known tourist site down there. The Petrohue Rapids. It had started to rain a bit, and I remember Kathi saying, ‘Maybe you guys should go ahead. I’ll wait by the souvenir counters.’ It seemed like the rocks could be pretty slick. But we convinced her.” He pressed his lips together and paused for a while.

  “But you’re not alleging it was unsafe in any way?” Ann interjected.

  “No. I’m not. Not in the least.” Landry shook his head. “There was this pathway leading to the overlook. There were people of all ages all around. Old people. Kids. Now and then you had to step from rock to rock, and some of them were a little tricky, right, kids? I mean, my wife, Kathi . . . she’s always had a bit of a fear of anything like that. We used to ski when the kids were young, but then she stopped. But this was easy.”

  “And there were guardrails along the path. And even fences in a few spots, right?”

  “Yes. There were.” Landry nodded. “All around. Except . . . Except we went out on one of the outlying pathways along the side of the river. The current was raging all around. The whitewater was pretty fierce, spraying up in our faces, even twenty or thirty feet above. And there were all these huge rocks and boulders, and the current slashing all around them, spray everywhere, and then the water went over these falls.”

  “The falls . . . ,” Ann asked, “how high would you estimate they were?”

  “Maybe forty, fifty feet. About the same width around. And the current fed down there and was incredible. Water slamming off the rocks. And if there’s one thing I do blame myself for, hold myself accountable for, it was ever going off on that trail, away from the rest of the crowd. The kids had gone up to this point where you can look over the falls with everybody else.”

  “So you were alone at that point. On this isolated path . . . ?”

  “Not exactly isolated. There were people around. You could see them in and out of the trees. Of course, Kathi said we should head back and stay with the group, but I wanted to make it out to this spot. On the way we saw another couple coming back and they said it was beautiful. I was hoping we could get a picture of the kids out there on the point.”

  “And there was a railing on the path? Something to prevent you from just falling in.”

  “Yes. And most of the way it was away from the edge so the rocks alone and even some trees would hold you back from falling. But the rain began to pick up and the rocks became slick. Kathi was having trouble stepping from one to another. She slipped once and almost turned her ankle. I told her, ‘Grab on to me.’ I gave her my hand.” Landry shook his head self-judgingly. “Believe me, it all seemed so benign.”

  “So what happened next?”

  Landry took a breath and wet his lips one more time, and went through it slowly, methodically. With each sentence he seemed to struggle for the right words.

  “What happened next was that she slipped. Off the side of this wet rock. The trail was kind of narrow there and there was a railing, but then she stumbled to the side and lunged for it to balance. But it was wet too and her hand slipped off and she went underneath it, on her side.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was a step or two in front. When I heard her gasp I spun around and ran to grab her. But her feet gave way on the loosened stones. I heard her go, ‘Frank!’ with a gasp. And it was like there was this exposed, unprotected spot with nothing to hold her back.”

  Landry paused. You could see a mix of emotions crossing in his pained blue eyes. The discomfort of having to relive this in front of his kids. To the world. The horror of what his wife would have gone through.

  Guilt.

  Sheila thought she saw a sense of something else as well.

  The camera focused in on Ann. “What did you feel then, Senator?”

  Landry’s eyes became opaque and he took a deep breath into his nose. “We were about thirty feet above the river. Kathi had manage
d to latch onto this branch of a small tree, but it was bending and about to give way. So I grabbed her. I screamed. For anybody. There were a hundred people not far from us, but the sound of the river was thundering and no one could hear. And where we were there was no one else around. I had her. It was wet. Suddenly her shoes started slipping on the rock. I could see the terror in her eyes. She said, ‘Frank, pull me up. I’m—’ ”

  “She was falling?”

  Landry nodded. “Yes. I said, ‘Okay, okay, get your feet over to that rock, I’ve got you!’ But it was wet and the spray was all over us and it was like she just panicked. Her feet began to slip on the rock as she tried to cycle herself back up. And it made it harder and harder for me to hold on. I could feel her slipping out of my grasp. I looked in her eyes.”

  “You were staring at her?” Ann asked. “You were looking into the face of your wife and you knew she was in peril.”

  He shook his head grimly. “I don’t ever want to recall that look again. She just said, ‘Oh, Frank, I think I’m going to fall. I can’t hold on.’ I said, ‘You have to, Kathi. You have to.’

  “And then suddenly I felt her just slip. She just fell out of my grasp. And I saw in horror there was nothing holding her back. Not the rocks. Not a tree. Not me. It was the worst feeling of my life. I don’t even know if there was a scream; no one could possibly hear it over the roar of the rapids. I just watched her. I saw her bounce off another rock and hit the water, and her red jacket came up. And then she was carried away. She hit against the side of the rocks. I think she was headfirst at that point. I was praying she would grab on to something. I was going, ‘Kathi! Please grab on!’ To anything. But then she was just gone. Over the falls . . . Like that. It was just seconds. I couldn’t do a thing.” His daughter squeezed him and then Landry looked back at Ann. “I’ve been at war. Shot at . . .”

  “You were awarded the Bronze Star,” Ann said.

  “Yes. But nothing prepares you for this. Nothing. Suddenly she was just out of my grasp. I’ll never forget her look. Thank God these guys weren’t with us and didn’t have to see. That’s the only thing in this horror I’m grateful for.”