Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  Suddenly all my grief for Patrick fell away and I knew I couldn’t let it happen like this. “What about Brandon?”

  “The boy? I’m sorry.” He stood there, smiling, stroking Brandon’s hair. “But I’ll be doing the world a favor when they find him here. He’s just like me.”

  “Mommy!” Brandon tried to pull away, but Landry yanked him back.

  “He’s not like you!” I glared at him. “Here . . . take them!” I took a step and held out the diary pages to him. “Do what you want with me. Just let me have my boy. Please . . . please . . .”

  Landry didn’t bite. He just stood there.

  “Here,” I said, again. “Take them. All of them.” I opened the clear folder and hurled the pages at him.

  Instinctively, he reached out to grasp them.

  I’m not sure the thought occurred to me even as much as a second before; it was just instinct.

  But that’s when I spun.

  With a loud grunt, I whirled into a perfect roundhouse kick that I’d executed in the gym at least a thousand times. It completely surprised Landry, catching him on the upper chest and shoulder, knocking him backward into the stone hearth, the gun clattering to the floor. He staggered for a second in shock, and I followed it with a powerful forward-thrust kick that sent him reeling over the love seat and onto the floor.

  I yelled, “Brandon, get away!”

  I searched frantically on the floor for the gun. It was like a race, who would find it first. I didn’t see it, and didn’t know whether Landry had landed on it or if it had been swept under the love seat. I didn’t have the time. I leaped and took the iron poker from the fireplace stand and came at him with the point down into his chest, not knowing if he had the gun and it would be the last thing I would ever do.

  He didn’t.

  With a scream I drove the poker into his chest. Landry put his legs up and blocked it away, the tip slicing into his leg. He let out a roar. He thrashed his hand about, trying to locate the gun. I lunged at him again.

  “Brandon, run!” I shouted. “Just get out of here. Run to one of the neighbors. Then call the police. Go!”

  I tried to drive the poker into Landry, but he wrapped his hands around it and tried to twist it out of my grasp. He was stronger than me by far.

  “Run!” I yelled again to Brandon. I felt Landry guiding the point away from his midsection. Brandon hadn’t moved.

  “Please, Brandon, run! Get out. Now!”

  He just stood there, seemingly transfixed.

  I didn’t know how long I could keep Landry at bay. I kept begging Brandon, “Please, go to the neighbors! Tell them to call the police!”

  Landry was gradually wrestling it away from me. I strained with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough. I was losing. Soon he’d have it from me.

  “Please, honey, go now. I’m begging you, go!”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy.” Finally Brandon took off.

  I heard him run to the foyer and open the front door. A part of me felt uplifted, that no matter what happened here, at least my son would escape. That maybe in the end Landry wouldn’t get away with it.

  “You don’t actually think he’s going to get away, do you?” Landry mocked me, his eyes ablaze. He pulled me to him, one hand releasing the poker, and the next thing I felt a punch to my face. My head shot back, blood bursting from my lip. He hit me again. I kept pushing with everything I had, trying to ignore the blood and the pain, but I knew it was futile. Again he hit me. I was almost done. Finally he drove my arms to the side and rolled on top of me, ripping the poker from my grasp. My head hit against the coffee table and I almost blacked out.

  I tore at his face, trying to rip off whatever I could take hold of. Lips, cheeks, eyes.

  Landry screamed in pain.

  Blood streamed down his face. He had reversed it now and he was over me on the floor, pressing the shaft of the steel poker into my larynx. Forcing the air out of me. I fought back, sucking air into my lungs.

  But I couldn’t hold him off any longer.

  “You really think I’m going to let that little toad just get away? I’ll find him. I will. How does that feel?” He dug the iron rod into my throat. “How does it feel, knowing I’ll get him as soon as I’m done with you? Enjoy it to the max, please . . .” His voice crackled with rage. “ ’Cause it’s the last thing you’re ever going to feel.”

  I tried to squeeze air into my heaving lungs. I felt my arms grow weak, no longer able to fend him off.

  Run, Brandon, please, I said to myself. Angry. Angry that Landry had won. Angry that he had killed Deirdre and Mrs. O’Byrne. And Patrick. The only prayer I had was that my son would get away. Just run . . .

  I felt my strength waning.

  Then I looked past Landry over me and my one remaining prayer was dashed.

  It was Brandon. He was there. Behind Landry.

  No, no, no, no, no!

  I wasn’t sure if it was real or if this was some kind of near-death delusion they say happens at the end of life.

  I was almost crying. Why are you here? Why are you here . . . ? You have to get away. Get away . . .

  “Mommy,” he said, his arms in the air. “Don’t be afraid.”

  The next thing I knew he brought his hands down and the tip of something sharp and shiny came through Landry’s neck. He uttered a garbled scream, not a scream really, more of a strangled gasp.

  It was the tip of the large cow’s horn coming through him.

  His face twisted in shock and anguish, his eyes grew angry and wide. So wide I could see the blood vessels in the whites like swelling red rivers.

  He threw his arms back and flailed at Brandon, who stepped back, the horn stuck through Landry’s throat. Landry’s hands wrapped around it. He grabbed the exposed tip, gargling in agony, not sure how to remove it. His eyes fell on me as if somehow I would help him.

  Three words went through me: Make him pay.

  He thrashed around like some wounded animal, his hand slapping the floor until his hand found the poker. He wrapped his fingers around it and almost had it up to strike. Me? Brandon?

  Then a heavy wheeze came out of him, his breaths short and hacking. He looked toward Brandon and dropped the rod. And if you didn’t know it was death taking hold of him, his final act, you might have sworn he had uttered a laugh.

  He fell over. He let out two or three more resigned, hacking breaths.

  Then he was quiet.

  I lay on my back, too exhausted, too in shock, to even feel a thing. I sucked precious air back into my starving lungs. And then my gasps turned into sobs. Tears alternating between exhalations of joy and grief.

  “Brandon . . .” I pulled him onto me. I brought him close with everything I had, but my arms were so weak and heavy, all I could do was just feel him close to me and laugh.

  You made him pay, darling. You made him pay.

  Then I noticed that he wasn’t even looking at me. He was just kind of staring blankly. His head on my chest. His gaze fixed on Landry.

  Not crying as I would have thought, after the horror of what had happened. Or aghast. Or even with joy that we were somehow alive and he had rescued me.

  But something more detached. Staring at him with those transfixed blue eyes.

  “Brandon, baby, he’s gone. He’s gone,” I said. “Don’t worry anymore.” I squeezed him. “He can’t hurt you now.” I pushed myself up. “I know that was terrible.”

  He just remained there, staring. His eyes calm, almost pleased. Then finally he turned to me, and said in a way that he might have if he was playing a video game. “It wasn’t terrible. I cut off his head, Mommy. I cut off his head.”

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later.

  The air never smelled so sweet or the sky seem so blue as the day I walked out of the minimum security prison in Beacon, New York, and back into the arms of my family.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Brandon shouted, running up to me as I came through the gates. My folks, who had b
een taking care of him these past months, came up and put their arms around me as well. They’d brought him up to visit most weekends during the time I was inside. Which surely made it easier for me. But it wasn’t the same as having him in my arms and knowing no one was going to separate us for a long while.

  “You’re coming home now?” Brandon looked up at me. “For good?”

  “I’m coming home, guy.” I picked him up and kissed him on the cheek. “For good.”

  Home. That was something else that was no longer the same since I’d been inside.

  I’d served three months of a negotiated two-year sentence, after pleading guilty in New York state court to two counts of grand larceny and trafficking in stolen property. Because of what we had been through, and for my help in bringing to light the murders of Deirdre O’Byrne, Rollie McMahon, and Kathi Landry, the U.S. government declined to prosecute, though they could easily have added various federal charges ranging from money laundering to defrauding the banking system.

  In addition, I was given a thirty-six-month window to repay the sixty-three thousand dollars that I’d actually spent by making restitution to a state-sponsored victims’ fund. Brandon’s school agreed to return next year’s tuition, and even more helpfully, allowed him to remain in school.

  I willingly agreed to the terms.

  So much had taken place while I was inside. First it was just dealing with the people I’d lost. Patrick. Robin. Poor, poor Robin. We put the house in Armonk up for sale. Jim had tried contacting me several times before I went in, but I never called him back. Instead, I served him with papers under the state’s “deadbeat” laws for back alimony and child support, and it ended up he had a few more dollars tucked away than he had let on, so as part of that settlement he committed to paying for Brandon’s school at least through the next year, and all the house payments and taxes until it was sold. He even restored my alimony for one year.

  Which meant that the second-best call I got while I was inside was about a buyer who had put a no-contingency bid on the house for a hundred grand above the mortgage. Which would barely put $20,000 in my pocket, after commissions, but what it did do, at long last, was get me out from under it. I rented an apartment in Stamford where Brandon and I were going to live once the house closed.

  The best call I got while I was away was from Steve Fisher of my old firm, who said that Ralph Gelfand, the company’s CFO who’d been with him for twenty years, advised him he was planning to retire in three months’ time and would I be interested in the job?

  I almost didn’t have the words.

  “You know you’d be hiring a felon,” I said from the phone bank in the visitors’ center, at the same time grinning from ear to ear.

  “As long as you promise not to steal the staplers and the coffee mugs,” he replied. “The job opens up in October, Hilary. By then, you’ll have done your time. I can’t think of anyone who would do a better job for us.”

  “Yes . . .” I sat down and thought of all that had happened in the past six months. “I have done my time, haven’t I?”

  And Brandon . . . I mussed his silky blond hair in the parking lot and smiled into those dusty blue eyes.

  He’d undergone a round of counseling after the incident with Landry, both concerning the trauma of what had happened and the thing I saw inside him that I feared.

  All the psychologists said he was handling it well. When I brought up what he’d said, staring at Landry’s body, they all told me it was just his way of compartmentalizing such a harrowing event. That it was nothing to worry about.

  Still, after the lights went out, in my bunk at night I must have relived that moment a million times. That dissociative, clear-eyed stare. And what Landry had said about him. Brandon and I, we’re two of a kind. I read whatever I could on the subject. Books, clinical studies. On trying to identify the patterns of psychopathic behavior in a child. Wondering, worrying . . . Was that what Landry’s dying smile was about?

  Was Brandon one like him?

  “We’ve got the car over here,” my dad said. “Let me take your bag.”

  I put my arm around Brandon. I would always worry.

  There’s this, poor Robin once told me. There’s love. Health. Family. And then there’s the other side of the road.

  I’d been on both.

  It was nice to be on this side for a while.

  And then there was Patrick . . .

  There wasn’t a day in the last six months that I hadn’t thought of him. That I hadn’t brought his face to mind. The way he shook his head and asked if I wanted a drink at Red’s, and how that cut right through my fears and made me soften inside. His inner goodness and gentleness. From the moment I heard him at the funeral speaking about his dad, I knew he was a good soul.

  I’d asked myself at least a thousand times, if I’d never gone there after my house was broken into, would Mirho have found him? Would he still be alive?

  And each time I asked myself, I couldn’t answer. He saved my life and got me back my son.

  He got me back everything.

  And it cost him his life.

  It took me another three weeks before I could gather up the nerve.

  I had to get Brandon back in school; get the house ready to close; put some of my things in storage. Get myself ready for my new job.

  But on a warm, clear day at the end of September, I drove back out to Baden Avenue.

  For the most part it looked as it had when I was there the last time. It was now nine months since Sandy and homes there were finally well under construction.

  I parked across from Patrick’s blue Victorian. There was a FOR SALE sign out in front. I knew how hard Patrick had worked to restore it, and it made me sad to think of someone else owning it. I went up the front stairs, recalling that coffee we’d had on the porch. “I can see you’re not a volunteer . . . ,” he’d told me, finally smiling at my shoes. I looked down now. My Tod’s knockoffs. I’d worn them especially for the occasion. I knocked on the freshly painted door.

  No one answered.

  After a few moments, I went around back. The deck was finished. It smelled of fresh pine. I went up and peeked inside the new glass doors. The floors were new too. The sliding door was open, so I stepped inside. There was no furniture. The kitchen was new as well. Nice. It was all nice. He would have liked it.

  “Oh, Patrick . . . ,” I whispered, at the fireplace hearth, the tears starting to come.

  Was it here? I looked at the front door. In the living room, as he came in? It had happened at six in the morning, as the sun came up over the harbor. He was found on the floor. Was that his last sight as he overlooked the bay?

  In a corner, perched as if it had been placed there just yesterday, I saw the little stuffed bear. Someone had put it here. “He watches over the place,” Patrick had said. He named him after his dad.

  “Joe,” I said, as if he could answer me. Now I couldn’t hold anything back.

  The tears came. They ran and ran and I mashed them against my cheeks. Tears for the little time I’d known him. And for how we’d been robbed of what might have been.

  How many people do you meet in your life who you knew would stand up to anything for you? Anything.

  I looked at Joe the bear and then out at the bay.

  I’d known one.

  At the end of the street, Mrs. O’Byrne’s house had been razed. What the storm hadn’t taken, the fire had. There was a construction sign in the front and a new wooden frame being raised. A couple of men were at work. I went up and asked one of them who was rebuilding it.

  “New owners,” the man replied. “It’s been sold.”

  New owners. I’d never met the previous one, but our lives had surely touched.

  “Mind if I go around back?” I asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  I went around the side. The house was at the end of the street, closest to the bay. The water was blue-gray and calm. The sun was gleaming off the towers of lower Manhattan, ac
ross the harbor. An American flag hung limply on the flagpole.

  I recalled how Patrick said it was during Fleet Week, as the ships came gliding past.

  Glorious.

  I went down to the seawall, the water lapping against the edge. I knew, knew as surely as that the tide would roll in tonight and another would follow tomorrow, that my life would hold together.

  Thanks to Patrick. And this woman I had never met.

  Mrs. O’B.

  I took out the diary pages from my jacket. They had caused it all, Landry had said. These three handwritten pages of a girl’s last dreams.

  Mrs. O’B said she never wanted anyone to be hurt again because of them.

  I took them out of the folder and I stared at the water for a while. Then I tore each one into small pieces. I held them for a second in my palm, like ashes, as if I had some prayer. Then I kneeled and cast them into the bay. For a while they just bobbed in the tide, almost reluctant to finally leave, then started to scatter and drift apart, some carried back in, others out to the bay.

  I stayed and watched, a hand above my eyes against the sun, hoping nothing brought them back this time. She pointed a finger at me, even from the grave, Landry had said.

  They had already done enough.

  And as I watched, I knew that hope, like dreams, sometimes hangs in the balance of an instance, a glint of light angling through skyscrapers, diffused over the water, under the span of a tall bridge, shining brightly for a moment, a moment you can’t get back, and then gone, and ultimately out to sea.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This story came about from a newspaper article on a man who admitted to killing his girlfriend and burying the body on Staten Island, New York, twenty years ago. Combine it with a magazine article on the subject of C-U (callous and unemotional) kids, and the many poignant stories that came out of Superstorm Sandy, some from friends, and the novel began to take shape.