Buried Secrets

by Kate Anslinger

  “Oh, yes, yeah…I do,” Grace was overcome with sadness at Michael’s downfall and heartbroken to see a life go so bad in just an instant. “Does your dad still have his boat?”

  “Yeah, he does, believe it or not. It’s parked at one of the yacht clubs. Every now and then he takes it out. I remember there was a day late last spring. I’ll never forget it because it was one of the first times in a long time I had seen him smile a real, genuine smile, ya’ know…at least since my mom died. He took me and my son out and the day started out great… of course, it was only like 8:00, so he was sober. We were just enjoying being out in the sun, and my son actually learned a few tips from the captain himself. Jared hadn’t seen his grandfather in his realm where he was happy on the boat for a couple years, which is a lifetime for a kid. But that day, my dad glowed. It was about noon when I realized he’d been sneaking booze. After he had gotten so bad right after my mom died, I told him he couldn’t be around Jared while drinking. But he promised he’d stay sober that day to spend some time with us. As soon as I smelled the booze on his breath, I knew it was all over, and our chance at a nice day was gone. I took the rein and started guiding the boat back to shore. By the time we pulled up, my dad was in a full-blown stupor. It was a bad ending, but it was nice to just see him smile like that for that one moment, ya’ know?”

  “Wow, I can’t imagine how hard that must be, to see him go downhill like that and not get to share your son with him,” Grace said, feeling like she had turned into more of a therapist than a client.

  “Well, enough about me… Let’s get you looking good.” She lifted her somber mood and led Grace to one of the dryers. “Fifteen minutes here, and then we will trim.”

  By the time Grace left the salon, she felt like a new woman. Usually flat and unmoving, her hair now bounced when she walked, and her ends no longer grew tiny ends of their own. A surge of sunshine hit Grace’s face when she pushed the salon door open. While she’d learned a little bit about Miriam, she knew she had a major hill to climb in figuring out exactly what the woman had done. A few young kids on scooters flew by, nearly knocking her over, followed by a woman talking animatedly on her phone while walking a chocolate lab. By the time the woman was in front of her, Grace realized that it was Dina Woodward, the outgoing girl from the parade meeting. She swayed her hips as she managed to keep her eyes on the two kids in front of her, maintaining a conversation while having some control over the dog. Grace didn’t know how these moms did it, but they made their job look easy. Across the street was a guy and a girl walking out of the gym with yoga mats in hand and healthy glows on their faces. Grace made a beeline for the gym to see how things were going for Mark.

  “Welcome to Imperial Fitness…. Oh hi, Grace…”

  “How’s business been going?” Grace asked Faith, the newly appointed receptionist.

  “So far so good, and the Bridgeton Press even came in to interview us,” Faith said as she smoothed down the front of her thin, hooded sweatshirt with the gym’s logo emblazoned on it. Grace could remember how selective Mark had been when he went through the many résumés for the position. It had to be someone who exuded energy and wasn’t afraid to smile, he would say with his feet resting on Brody’s rump while flipping through the pile of résumés on his lap. And he’d gotten what he wanted with Faith. She was the epitome of fitness, with a warm smile and engaging eyes that allowed her to be welcoming without being intimidating. Trained as a certified group fitness instructor, Faith could teach classes when Mark wasn’t busy with clients and could cover the front desk.

  “That’s great. Did Mark do his classic pose?”

  “Of course. Shoulders back, core tight, and head slightly tilted to the side to prevent any type of double chin from appearing.” Faith mimicked Mark’s pose, jutting her chin out ever so slightly in a method used by celebrities during photoshoots. “He’s out back training…. let me see…Scott Caverly.” She looked down at the calendar before planting an index finger on the date and time.

  “Oh.” Grace was partly excited for the instant connection into Miriam’s world and partly confused. She didn’t peg Scott for the type to hire a trainer. While nice enough, he seemed like one of those guys who chose to work out on their own.

  Grace ran her hand over the countertop and made her way back to the small section dedicated to one-on-one training. She found Mark hunched down with his hands resting on his knees as he cheered Scott through an easy-looking move that, from the look on Scott’s face, was terribly hard. He was in a squatting position up against the wall and held a 25-pound plate out in front of him, as if he were reaching for something. Grace saw a vein bulging from his head, a blue snake winding down his forehead and ending just over his left eye. Surely this was the same vein that popped out when he got angry, although Grace had a hard time seeing Scott as someone who got angry.

  “You got this, thirty more seconds.” Mark cheered him on, completely lost in the moment and unaware of Scott’s eyes diverting up and landing on the figure behind him. If anything, it was a distraction from the pain he was experiencing. For a second, Grace could see him as an angry Hulk, his eyes protruding so far out that they looked one second away from popping.

  “Done!” Mark shouted as Scott’s legs gave out and he slid down to the floor. He dropped his head into his lap as a bead of sweat slid off his forehead onto the mat that he sat on.

  “Geez, why don’t you just beat him up there?” Grace said, startling Mark, who was still lost in the moment. He whirled around so he was facing her, surprised by her presence.

  “Hey….wait….heyyyyyy,” Mark said when he noticed her hair. “Well well, your hair.”

  “Settle down, it’s only a few highlights and a little trim.” Grace absentmindedly tugged at the ends of her hair, feeling the smooth ends.

  “Well, it suits you,” Mark leaned in for a kiss.

  “Hey, get back to your client. I just wanted to pop in and see how things were going over here.”

  “You came just in time, this guy is off the hook,” Mark extended his arm out, gripped Scott’s hand and pulled him up.

  “Thank God! Are we done?” Scott pulled a towel out of the elastic band of his gym shorts and swiped it across his forehead. Grace was happy to see the towel labeled with the Imperial Fitness logo, since it had been one of her ideas. She’d had to convince Mark to go with towels for the new members instead of the water bottles his heart had been set on.

  “Scott, have you met my beautiful and newly highlighted girlfriend, Grace?”

  As if Scott’s heartbeat had finally gone down to a steady enough rate to allow him to see what was going on around him again, he recognized Grace.

  “Oh yeah, I met you at the grand opening.”

  “Yes, and Mark… Scott and I have a lot in common, evidently… You didn’t tell me you and Christie were high school sweethearts.”

  “Oh boy.” A wave of red crashed across Mark’s face, and he let out a boisterous, one-syllable laugh. “Just can’t escape my past around here, can I?”

  “Not when you are training your exes’ husband,” Grace taunted him.

  “Yeah Mark…weren’t you guys prom king and queen?” Scott giggled and clapped Mark on the shoulder with a large hand, holding it for a moment before he started to walk slowly toward the locker rooms. “So, Friday, same time?”

  “You got it. And tell Christie I said hi,” he joked. “Oh, and drink a lot of water.”

  “Yes sir!” Scott saluted him and kept walking.

  “So, are we still on for tonight?”

  “Of course. I should be home around… 5:30, just in time to start our evening, unless you want to show off your new highlights.”

  “Nah, I’d prefer to overeat pizza and watch Lifetime movies with my two men.”

  “You got it,” Mark grabbed her hand and walked her to the front, where they passed a gaggle of giddy girls with yoga mats in tow. He pushed open the glass door and she slipped out in front of him. “I’ll walk
you to your car.”

  “How romantic,” Grace said as they walked along the rutty sidewalk, their feet catering to the many bumps and dips of the concrete in need of a touch up. A few sidetracked seagulls took turns pecking at a greasy paper bag until a measly couple of French fries spilled out. Their squawks turned into screeches as they tackled the fries.

  “So, what’s up?” Mark asked as they approached her car.

  “What’s up?”

  “Yeah, what’s up? Something’s on your mind.”

  “What are you talking about? Is it the highlights? You don’t like the highlights?”

  “Grace Ellen McKenna, it will never be about the highlights. I don’t care if you have purple streaks running through your hair, you know darn well it’s not about the highlights. I may have only known you for a little over six months, but in those six months a lot has happened. And right now, this,” Mark swirled a finger around her face and head, “is sidetracked and the last time I saw you look like this, you were dealing with a perfectionist little teenager named Mackenzie Waterford.”

  Grace took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wasn’t ready to tell Mark about her vision. He already had too much on his plate with the opening of the gym, and she didn’t want to rope him into another one of her mysterious murder cases.

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “Not buying it.”

  “Listen, we can talk tonight. But let’s not get into this right now, you’ve got to get back to work,” Grace gave his hand one last squeeze and opened the driver’s side door before slipping into the seat.

  “Fine, but I’m not going to ease up until you give me some details,” Mark said as he started walking backward, nearly running into a little boy on rollerblades with

  a hockey stick in tow.

  Chapter Six

  By the time Grace made it home, she had a whole list of things in her head that she needed to search on the Internet. She’d start by looking up Miriam. What exactly did this meek, yet assertive little grandma do? And then the giant fish tank. Surely that was at an aquarium. A search of the New England Aquarium would show photos or at least lead her to a visit there for some research.

  Just as Grace was trudging up the front steps to her house, Ellen pushed open the screen door, nearly knocking her over.

  “Woah, where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “I got a dinner date with the gals from yoga. Don’t wait up.” Ellen hopped down the steps with a slight limp and turned to blow a kiss.

  “Mom…wait… Do you really think you should be going out with how you’ve been feeling?” Grace let the door slam shut and stood on the front step as Brody sat patiently waiting, his wet snout pressed up to the screen.

  “Last I checked, I gave birth to you.” From the driveway Grace could see the bags under her mom’s eyes, and she knew Ellen was putting up a front, covering her poor health with a serving of sarcasm. A bright red Mini Cooper pulled up just as Grace was about to lecture her on choosing the right friends and making good decisions, as if the roles were reversed.

  “Au revoir! And nice locks, by the way!” Ellen slid into the passenger seat of the car. Grace had every right to be concerned about the company that her mother kept considering her last vision was from a man that Ellen had invited to their Christmas gathering. Grace could remember his face and the visions like it happened just yesterday. Ellen’s so-called friend, Bill, left Grace with a vision of a girl with black curls, framing a face that was streaked with blood. Grace got rid of him then and she hadn’t seen him since, but she was convinced that Bill would make an appearance in her life at some point again.

  “Brody, your grandmother is crazy.” Grace dropped her bags on the floor and cupped his face in her hands, absorbing his all-knowing eyes. He followed so closely behind her that his paws clipped her heels. “Did your crazy grandma feed you?” She looked into his sweet, brown eyes, well aware that he wasn’t about to give away whether he had eaten. There was always room for more, as far as he was concerned. “How about some leftover Chinese food, buddy? But don’t tell Mark.”

  Grace opened the fridge and pulled out the container of leftover lo mein, dumping it into the metal bowl that sat in a wooden stand made by Mark. Amid the gym’s construction, Mark had come by a few pieces of leftover wood and decided to make Brody an elevated stand to replace his old, rusty one. He’d even painted it bright red to match his collar and took a stab at a few white paw prints on the bottoms of the legs. Mark wasn’t a fan of giving Brody anything but top-of-the-line dog food, so Grace had to sneak leftovers and handouts to Brody when Mark wasn’t looking.

  “Here you go, buddy.” Grace made a beeline for the office that also served as Ellen’s part-time bedroom. The futon was pushed back up to a sitting position and the blankets were folded nicely. The only sign that someone had been sleeping there was an empty glass on the makeshift nightstand—an upside-down crate from the closet.

  Grace flipped open the laptop on her desk, the screen coming to life much slower than the one she traveled with. Google looked at her, as if daring her to search. She typed in “Miriam Haskell” and waited patiently as Google thought hard about the inquiry, spitting out a few lines beneath the search bar.

  “Damn it,” Grace said as she saw the limited results. A link from a local newspaper showed a photo of Miriam with her parade cronies from last year’s 4th of July parade. Miriam, in all her glory, held up one end of the sign for the PTA, surrounded by kids of all ages, moms holding babies and some teachers Grace knew from working at the school so often.

  Brody, who had moved from the kitchen to the office after his meal, suddenly perked up from his position sprawled out on the floor. He used every ounce of energy he had to pull himself up to all fours, his nails slipping on the hardwood surface. He picked up speed on the Oriental rug that anchored the coffee table in the living room and slammed into Mark just as the screen door swung open.

  “Hey buddy, how’s my boy?” Mark got down so he was eye level with Brody as he always did and patted the tuft of hair that spiked in various directions on his massive head.

  “I can smell it, but I can’t see it,” Grace said, taking in a big sniff of the pizza scent permeating the room.

  “You… Hold him,” Mark said as he guided a wiggling Brody over to Grace, taking a moment to drop a gentle kiss on her forehead. “And I’ll get the goods.” He opened the screen door with his back, bent down and reached for one large pizza box, then turned to come back inside. “I wasn’t about to let the drool monster knock it out of my hands when I walked in.”

  “More for us. I like your style,” Grace said. She grabbed the box and led them to the kitchen. Setting the pizza down on the island, she went to work gathering the supplies they would need to eat, a weekly tradition she had grown so accustomed to that she could do it in her sleep. “So, how was your last appointment?” Grace slid her hand under a vegetarian slice and dropped it onto a paper plate, sliding it over to Mark.

  “Good. It was just a thirty-minute shred, a new little express workout I invented, you know, for those working professionals and moms who don’t have a lot of time to get their fitness in.”

  “Wow, you sound like a commercial,” Grace giggled as she peeled a pepperoni off her half of the pizza and popped it in her mouth.

  “Speaking of commercials, the local station wants to interview me about the gym. Which side will look best on camera?” Mark asked as he angled his body on each side, using a hip to accentuate his pose.

  “Well, surely you will have a makeup artist and coach prepare you as you go on the local station in the town of, what, 10,000 people?” Grace joked. “What do you say… Want to move this party to the couch?”

  “You bet. By the way, I got this new organic red wine that is supposed to not give you headaches. Want to give it a go?” Mark said, as he pulled a bottle dressed in a paper bag out of his sporty man purse hanging off the kitchen chair. He went to work pouring them each a glass.
>
  “Does this mean I can drink the whole bottle without any repercussions?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s got less sulfites, so it should be better than the other stuff.”

  Grace accepted the glass of wine as she melted into the couch. Brody hunkered on the floor between the two of them, waiting for a pet or handout; any slice of attention would do.

  “Sooooo… What’s up?”

  “Oh, you’re going to try this technique again? It didn’t work for you earlier, so what makes you think it will now?”

  “Okay, what’s going on? What’s on your mind? Did you get one?” Mark asked all the questions he knew to ask when it came to her visions, like she had physically obvious symptoms from allergic reactions.

  “Gosh you make it sound like I had a seizure or something.”

  “Well…?”

  “It’s such an unlikely person, Mark, I don’t get it.” She slapped her thigh and took a sip of her wine. She remembered telling Mark about her visions for the first time just a few months earlier. Besides her mother and the many psychologists she’d seen over the years, he was the only one who knew about her ability to see the bad from those who committed crimes. He had responded so calmly when she first told him, as if it had been the most normal thing in the world. At first, she thought he was just a darn good actor and that he’d go running for the hills, but he embraced her and everything about her, and that included her rare gift to see into the eyes of criminals. And Mark, like her mother, considered this a gift, one she should use to help the world. A superpower, as he often called it.

  “Aren’t they always unlikely? Except, of course, that weird guy your mom was friends with. I felt like even I could see through that. There was just something off about him as soon as he walked through the door.”

  Grace tried not to think about her moment of insanity last Christmas when she forced her mom’s alleged friend Bill from pottery class out of the house. She did it with tact and without making a scene. Not wanting to ruin the holiday for everyone, Grace pulled Bill aside—all she had to say was, ‘Get out of my house now and stay away from my family.’ It was in that moment that Bill, having been arrested numerous times for traffic violations, remembered her from the police station and obeyed, simply leaving the house when Ellen wasn’t looking so she wouldn’t question his fleeing the scene. When Ellen asked, Grace said Bill had forgotten something at home and would be back. Bill, whose eyes revealed a tortured girl with bloodied, black, curly hair and smudged gray eyeliner, never did return and Ellen never heard from him again. Grace was just waiting for him to reappear in her life; she would be ready when he did.