A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  Headlights played for a nanosecond upon Cody’s terror-stricken face, then a dark vehicle sped away with tires squalling, leaving us tip-tip-tipping as the weight of the engine slowly shifted us forward to a certain icy death.

  The Pittsburg Press

  Pittsburg, PA

  Tuesday, October 18, 1910

  SIX MONTHS WITHOUT A TRACE OF MISSING MOTHER AND SUSPICIONS GROW

  [Special Telegram to Pittsburg Press.]

  A veiled woman who called upon Cecile Cianfarra, secretary for the Women’s Equal Franchise Federation and Woman Suffrage Red Cross Auxiliary, is believed to be Mrs. Alvera Fields. Wife to the millionaire importer Robert Fields, and mother to daughter Olivia, Alvera disappeared from her home on the evening of April 16 and has not been seen since.

  Mrs. Fields is believed to have been seen at the Hacke building sometime after April 16, as nearly as the clerks can recall. For some time there was an earnest talk between Miss Cianfarra and Mrs. Fields. What was the nature of the talk the clerks do not know. From what they observed, however, they were of the opinion that the veiled woman was greatly agitated and that it was she who was particularly concerned about the visit.

  The call upon Miss Cianfarra appeared to be a stormy one. Robert Fields, assuming the veiled woman was his missing wife, took the lead and demanded that Miss Cianfarra give up all the correspondence she had with Mrs. Fields and all the telegrams that might have passed between them.

  GIVEN UP AS DEAD

  Despite sightings of Mrs. Fields circulating, relatives and the attorneys who have been assisting in the worldwide search for her cast aside all theories of her disappearance and came out flatly with the announcement that they believe the woman is dead.

  Chapter 17

  Felicity

  I was afraid to breathe. I was afraid to move. I was afraid even the slightest shift in the environment would send the car plummeting down the cliff face into the river below. One fallen leaf, one rain droplet, could snuff out our lives Just. Like. That. I imagined clambering over the seats trying to redistribute the weight toward the back of the car where the tires still clung to the road. But in every scenario, the car succumbed to gravity and tumbled over the precipice, flipping end over end, tossing us like rag dolls, knocking us cold. The car would smack the water nose first, bobbing like a fishing float for a minute, then righting itself. Then the water would seep into the wheel wells and cracks and crannies, and down the car would go with a slow rocking horse motion, gurgling and bubbling, while Cody and I pounded the windows and kicked the doors until the air gave out and we lost consciousness. Once fully submerged, in ten minutes tops we’d be goners. Tomorrow a search-and-rescue would pull the car from the river, and when the doors were pried open and the muddy water and muck had finally drained, they’d extract our sodden bodies, entwined in a farewell embrace.

  That creative writing course I took in high school finally paid off, I thought sardonically after composing the scene in my mind.

  Upon impact the engine had stalled and the dashboard lights were extinguished. Dangling over the ledge, the front wheels had spun crazily with a whucka-whucka-whucka sound for a good minute until they slowed and finally stopped. Underneath the chassis a small avalanche of rocks tumbled over the embankment with a dry rattling sound. The car shifted with a groan, then settled. The rain-swollen river churned below. In the far distance a buoy light winked. A fingernail moon, peeking out now and then behind the clouds, provided the only light. I heard Cody’s disembodied voice next to me in the gloom.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with eerie calmness.

  “I think so,” I whispered, as if the sound waves could lurch the car forward. I couldn’t feel anything but terror, but I assumed any bodily pain would come soon enough. All I wanted to do was call for help. But it was too dark to see my cell phone, probably somewhere at my feet; I dared not lean forward to search.

  “Don’t move.”

  “No joke.”

  “Can you see what’s outside of your door? Is your side on stable footing, or…?”

  I barely turned my head to check. It looked like I could make it to safe ground if I jumped far enough.

  “I think so. Are you suggesting we make a jump for it?”

  “I don’t see any other way to get out of this thing before it falls.”

  “Okay.” It sounded like a ridiculous plan that would definitely kill us, but all I had to offer was okay.

  Cody reached his hand slowly to his waist and unbuckled his seat belt. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to carefully open our doors, then jump as far as you can. Be ready to grab onto anything you can to haul yourself up to the road. Got it?”

  My “yes” was barely audible as it floated from my mouth.

  I unbuckled my seat belt, unlocked the door, then together we counted down:

  Three. The age of my youngest child.

  Two. The number of children waiting at home for me to get out of this alive.

  One. The number of breaths I took before I leapt as far as adrenalin would carry me, until my body slammed against rock and broken asphalt. The impact shot a grunt from my throat. Dirt stung my eyes. Sticks jabbed my legs. Sharp pebbles cut my hands. But never had dirt and sticks and pebbles felt so good. I clawed my way up the hill, nails digging into the earth, the keratin ripping as I hauled 134 pounds of bone, fat, and muscle to the safety of the flat road. My cheek scraped against the ground, and my forehead throbbed like it had split open. But I was alive!

  The car wobbled beside me, blocking my view of the driver’s side.

  “Cody?” I screamed. “Did you make it?”

  Only the long call of a whippoorwill answered. I waited for a reply. Any sign that he had survived.

  “Cody?” I called again.

  The car’s rear shocks squeaked ominously as the nose tipped a little further, then leveled out again. My arms had moved past pain as I pushed myself up, rose to my feet, and stumbled my way around the trunk of the car.

  Cody was nowhere to be found. I ran to the car, but it was too dark to see inside it. A rustle of leaves somewhere along the ground joined my heavy breaths.

  Then a voice, just below my feet as Cody yelled, “I’m okay!”

  I dropped to my knees and grabbed at his wrists, anchoring my feet and legs to drag his body weight up the cliff. One last tug propelled him to my side.

  We were safe…for now. Or else we were in very real danger.

  Chapter 18

  Marin

  I hadn’t seen Felicity for two days. While the bruises she had left on my arms were fading, her vitriol toward me was fully charged. She refused to speak to me, and I couldn’t blame her. I only heard bits and pieces from Cody about the investigation into the dead body the police had found. No one else would utter a word. Too many suspicions were growing, too many secrets unearthed, too many harsh words exchanged. Pain feasted on the family like a flesh-eating bacteria.

  I couldn’t let this go on any longer, the growing chasm between us. My dad always said, if there was one thing that could heal just about anything, it was food. His go-to remedy: Grandma’s homemade lasagna. Oliver had requested it when I asked what I could bring over, since even picky Eliot would eat my lasagna if it had enough melted mozzarella on top. It took over an hour to find my grandmother’s pasta-maker in the basement among the musty boxes and rat droppings, then another hour to deep-clean the metal contraption of the spiderwebs clinging to the gears. By then I had Grandma’s recipe book opened to the right page and all my ingredients ready for the all-day process of mixing and kneading the pasta dough, feeding the dough through the slits, and cranking it down into thin slices that would be layered between sauce and meat and cheese. Let me tell you, this exhausting effort was the fullest extent of my love.

  After knocking on Felicity’s front door and waiting for several minutes, I checked the handle. Unlocked. I let myself in and headed straight to the kitchen. Not a soul in sight.
The generations-old Corning Ware cornflower blue casserole dish I set on the counter looked tacky amid her classy modern kitchen décor.

  The first floor was empty as I checked each room for the kids. A full-body hug from Eliot and wet kiss from Sydney soothed all manner of ailments, and I was ailing today. Especially after a sleepless night replaying Felicity’s wrath and my interaction with Austin and his psycho mother. I paused at the foot of the steps, staring up at the creepy stained-glass couple, leering snootily at everyone passing by. Upstairs the chatter of small voices drifted down the stairwell as I overheard Sydney’s Barbie doll reprimanding Eliot’s Doctor Strange action figure about how to properly treat a lady.

  “No, Doctor Strange. You’re supposed to hold the door open!” Sydney squeaked in her best grownup lady impression.

  With a careful stride, I avoided the creakiest steps as I headed up, hoping to surprise them. On my way to the kids’ playroom, I peeked into Vera’s bedroom, feeling the ache of regret all over again as my eyes grazed over where she had slept, studied, dressed. If only I could get her home safely, maybe Felicity would forgive me. Maybe the family could be whole again. I yearned to reach out and touch pieces of Vera, as if they connected me to her wherever she was.

  Slipping inside, I wandered over to her desk, still cluttered with notes she had written, homework she had never finished. Above the desk pictures were tucked into a black and hot pink French memo board. Christmases. Birthday parties. Nature hikes. A shot of me in a Mary Poppins costume, hugging her during an after-party for the closing night of the show, a community playhouse version of the enduringly popular Broadway musical. Lord knows I didn’t have Ashley Brown’s pipes, but I gave it my best shot. It was that night Vera confessed she wanted to study theatre like me, and it was that night I felt a connection to her unlike ever before.

  I missed her smile tremendously. I missed the way she imitated Alexis Rose’s “Ew” from Schitt’s Creek any time someone did something cringey—another Vera-ism, as the family called it, when she resorted to teen-speak, which was often. I missed her random texts asking for advice. I missed her laugh. We had gotten so close the past couple years as she turned to me for advice on womanhood, romance, friendship…and somehow that intimacy was the trigger that pushed her away. I had shared too much. She had discovered too much. I could never forgive myself, and soon, neither would Felicity once she found out what I had done.

  I meandered to Vera’s bookshelf, running my fingertip across the countless spines of thrillers, classics, and romance novels. She devoured pages and plots and characters like they were candy. A thin, gold-embossed book sparkled as dying sunbeams crossed the room. I pulled it out, noting it was this past year’s yearbook, which the police had leafed through as we all pointed out Vera’s friends. Sitting at Vera’s desk, I flipped it open, scrolling through the pages until I found her tenth grade class. I touched her face. Across the top was a note in the spidery handwriting that I recognized as Blythe’s, and I smiled as I read it:

  To the best friend I could ever ask for, even though we had our battles. Get ur butt home, biotch. We all miss u. The whole school. And u better not have gone on a multi-state adventure without me like Tom Sawyer—or was that Huck Finn? U would know the answer, book nerd. Luv u like a sister. Pls come home soon. – BS

  They had been such good friends, especially when Vera needed one back when she started high school. Sheltered, innocent little Vera had been terrified to leap from the nurturing bosom of middle school into the jagged terrain of high school bullies, peer pressure, and raging hormones. Besties, Vera had referred to her and Blythe. Until the fallout. A single fight that would launch a missile at their friendship.

  I didn’t know all the details, because despite my hunger for more, Vera had only grazed the bare bones of what happened between them, but I knew it had something to do with Vera breaking up with Austin and Blythe siding with him. Before the falling-out, the girls had been uber-close—hell, they’d even gotten matching Celtic tattoos—and I wondered if Blythe knew more about Vera’s whereabouts than she let on. No matter how much I played up my cool aunt persona, there were some secrets even I couldn’t tap into.

  After Vera’s disappearance, Felicity thought she had cornered the market on grief. She would never understand why, but it broke me just as much. Glancing around the room, I thought of all those secrets that had been dumped here, just waiting to be found. The tears that stained Vera’s pillow. The whispers into her cell phone. The fervent scrawls in her journal. I returned the yearbook to her bookshelf, where it caught a gap in the wood and fell between the shelves.

  “Shoot!” I mumbled.

  Unable to reach it, I decided I’d leave it for now, then I turned to her desk. I slid open the top drawer. My fingers rummaged, my eyes searched, my heart thrummed. I would unearth nothing new today, so I slid the drawer shut. Almost. It wouldn’t quite close all the way, as if a tissue or something soft was stuck in the gap. Opening it back up, I felt along the back of the drawer, sliding my fingertips across the smooth wood. Nothing there. I closed it again, but again it left a gap.

  I knelt down and crawled under the desk. Peeking up, I noted a long sliver of space where the leg met the base of the desk and a loose piece of wood normally created the seal. I jiggled the piece of wood free, exposing a hollow leg. No kidding.

  Sticking out from the gap in the leg was a clear plastic something or other. I grabbed it and ripped it out, replaced the wooden seal, and shuffled out from under the desk. Once back on my feet, I recognized the baggie of pot I’d given to Vera, turning it over in my palms. I opened the baggie and inhaled the floral tang of Pineapple Express. Good stuff. I’d gotten it from Brad, a friend since my early theatre days. Clever girl, Vera, hiding it behind her desk like that.

  Footsteps startled me into dropping the baggie on the floor. Shit! I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  I picked it up just as Felicity blocked the doorway.

  “What are you doing in Vera’s room?” Her question was terse, her anger palpable.

  “I was just dropping off a lasagna and wanted to say hi to Eliot and Syd Squid before I left.” I tried to tuck the baggie behind my back, but her senses were honed to razor sharpness from fifteen years of raising kids.

  “What’s that you’re hiding behind your back?” When I shrugged stupidly she slid toward me, grabbing my shoulder to physically pivot me. She yanked the bag from my grip, stared at it. “What is this? Drugs?”

  “Why are you getting your panties in a wad? It’s just pot, Felicity. Recreational marijuana’s legal now in a bunch of states.”

  “But not Pennsylvania. Where’d you find it?”

  “Hidden in her desk.”

  “I’m not going to ask why you were looking in her desk, but we need to turn this over to the cops. Whoever sold this to her may have been involved in her disappearance.”

  I absolutely could not let that happen. Involving the cops in something as trivial as a dime bag was just plain silly. “Felicity, stop. No pot dealer abducted Vera.”

  “How do you know, Marin? Maybe she owed them money or something.”

  “I’m telling you, this tiny amount is only worth $10. No drug dealer would abduct a kid over ten bucks.”

  “Well, I’m still turning this over to the police.” Felicity stepped toward the door, paused, and glared back at me. “And you—you need to leave.”

  She turned to leave. I faced a choice: watch the oncoming bus hit the stranger, or run into the traffic and sacrifice my own life. I ran into the traffic.

  “Wait! Felicity, I’m the one who gave it to her.”

  Felicity stopped, her back facing me. Then she slowly twisted around, ire in her eyes as she stormed up to me. “You gave drugs to my daughter?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I swear. She had asked me if I knew how to get some for a friend. I told her no, but when she said she’d find her own source, I got scared. If you don’t know the dealer, you hav
e no idea what the marijuana could be laced with. So I offered to get it for her since I didn’t want her getting something dangerous.”

  “So you thought it was a better idea to give drugs to my child than talking to me—her mother—about it?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “Exactly, Marin. You didn’t think! Instead you endangered my child.”

  “I’m sorry. You know how teens are—they’re going to do what they want, regardless of what a parent says. I figured at least if she was determined to try it, it was better off coming from someone I know and trust.”

  Felicity’s eyes circled in her sockets. “Wow, Marin, you’ve really crossed a whole new line. You were my best friend, my sister, but I don’t even know you. I don’t know why you have drug contacts, or how you think what you did was remotely okay, but I am about to turn you over to the cops for giving drugs to a child. I’m sure it’s illegal.”

  “Are you serious? You’d turn your own sister in to the police?”

  “Maybe then you’d think twice before handing out an illegal substance to your own niece.”

  “Felicity, I said I’m sorry! I was trying to avoid a big issue about it. You realize marijuana is less addictive than cigarettes, right?”

  “You may think I’m a prude, but you’re not a mother, so you don’t understand. It’s one thing if you were a child who didn’t know better, but you’re a grown woman who made a stupid decision for someone else’s child without asking. You should have told me! And what’s worse is that you don’t know that this doesn’t have something to do with her disappearance. If she was keeping this secret from me, what else was she hiding?”

  This was rapidly getting blown out of proportion. Turning me over to the police for an eighth of pot? I was family! For the past four years we’d been shopping buddies, made coffee runs, shared inside jokes, were soul sisters—and had matching T-shirts to prove it. How did it degrade to this? It would have been laughable if it didn’t shine a dangerous spotlight on me.