A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  “I’m sorry I never told you about them, but I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “You don’t give me much credit, do you?”

  The man in the bed coughed, smiled wanly. “You remember me?”

  I stood up, straightened my back. “Of course I remember you, Bennett. You’re the man who abandoned his newborn daughter on the side of the road. Then took her away from me for six months, allowing me to think she was dead.” I wasn’t going to play polite at this reunion. This man threatened to send me to jail while he abducted my child.

  “Mom, stop.” Vera stepped in front of me, forcing me to look at her. “I’m the one who pursued Bennett and asked to meet him when I found out he was dying. I’m the one who suggested coming here. I wanted a chance to know my biological father before it was too late. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Except for abandon his baby on the side of the road, I didn’t say. I wasn’t letting that tidbit go.

  I studied the sick man, so clearly close to death. His body was emaciated, his face and eyes badly jaundiced. His pale skin was mottled with swollen blood vessels radiating outward like spider webs. The palms of his hands were unnaturally red. He itched himself absently, his arms covered with scratch marks. His breath came in ragged gusts. A trash can by his bedside reeked of vomit.

  I noticed how Vera called him Bennett, not Dad.

  “You’ve raised a beautiful kid. Compassionate too,” Bennett said.

  “Yes, I know. She’s amazing.” I wanted to kiss her forehead, tell her how amazing she was. Instead I gave her space. “Six months, though, Vera? That’s a long time to make me worry about you.”

  “It wasn’t about you, Mom. It was about me. And my own closure.”

  I nodded. She was right—only about that, though.

  “I’m sorry I kept her from you for this long,” Bennett wheezed. “But she insisted on staying with me until the end. I didn’t expect it to take so long.”

  “Cancer?” I asked.

  Bennett chuckled. “Not this time. Believe it or not, I beat prostate cancer. This time it’s liver damage. The drink finally caught up to me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Though I didn’t know this man, it was heartbreaking to watch anyone—even the man who abducted my daughter—die like this.

  “We can get you proper medical care. This isn’t where you should be, in an old abandoned house. Which is freezing, by the way.” I shivered under the harsh chill. “You should be in a hospital getting medical attention.”

  Bennett waved me off with a brittle hand. “Nah. I’ve spent the last several years in and out of hospitals. This time I was ready to go. I got to spend time with my daughter—your daughter—and that’s all I wanted before I died. But before I go, kiddo, I’ve got one last joke for ya.”

  Vera ambled to his side, held his hand. Her love inspired me as I watched her care tenderly for a man who had fifteen years ago cast her aside to die.

  “In a classroom, a professor asks his brightest student, ‘What would a peaceful death be like?’ ‘The same way my grandfather died,’ the student replies. ‘And how did your grandfather die?’ the professor asks. ‘He fell asleep,’ the student answered. ‘And what would be a terrible death?’ the professor asks. ‘The way that my grandfather’s friend died,’ the student replies. ‘And how did your grandfather’s friend die?’ the professor asks. ‘He was in the car with my grandfather when he fell asleep,’ the student says.” Bennett chuckle-coughed and I could see his charm.

  “Did you know that people often see a light at the end of a tunnel in many near-death experiences?” Vera asked solemnly.

  Bennett cocked his head.

  “They should really get off of the road,” Vera added with a shaky smile that released her tears.

  “Oh, you’re my best student yet, kiddo! Even better than Marin.”

  “I learned from the best. Speaking of Aunt Marin, where is she?” Vera asked, her voice unsteady. “She should be here to say goodbye to her stepdad.”

  “I’m afraid…I’m afraid she’s gone,” I replied. The words weighed too much. It only occurred to me now that Vera was losing a father and a half-sister today.

  “Gone? What do you mean?” Her voice was full of fear.

  “I mean she had an accident and…didn’t make it.”

  “What kind of accident?” Vera’s voice trembled, rose a pitch. From fifteen years raising her, I knew the sobs would come next.

  I didn’t know what to say. How to explain it. But I didn’t need to.

  “It’s my fault Marin is dead.” Cody’s words hung like lead weights in the sick room’s stifling air.

  “How?” Bennett asked. The single word seemed to sap what spark of vitality he had left.

  No one spoke. Then Cody opened his lips, and I could hear the grief oppressing him as he began. “It was six months ago,” he turned to Vera, “shortly after you left, Vera. Marin and I had been fighting when she first told me that you were with Bennett. I stormed out in anger, and that was the last time I saw her alive…I’ll never forgive myself for leaving like that, or that Marin had to die alone.”

  Bennett broke through Cody’s memory, tugging Vera’s hand upward, pointing. Veins bulged beneath paper-thin skin, his grip tightening.

  “It’s Marin! She’s here!” His eyes widened as he stared at the empty space beside me. A cool rush of air fluttered my hair, and for a moment I sensed her. The laughter, the fights, the joy, the betrayal, all of it slid over me like a breeze. Although Marin’s ashes were scattered to the wind, she had scorched my earth. And yet my love for her rose from those flames.

  “And Marin didn’t die alone,” Bennett rasped, then he muttered something in Vera’s ear before he exhaled his last breath.

  Chapter 44

  Marin

  APRIL

  A breeze carrying the spring chill swept through the kitchen.

  It indeed had been a long, complicated story as I poured all the details out into Cody’s ears. I fed him every sour detail, every bitter blow. While Vera had only been missing for six days now, it felt like six months. Sipping vodka between confessions, I told Cody everything, starting with the day my father dropped my mother off at the hospital to OD and die. Sip. How I found the huge sum of money in his wallet when he got back and my baby sister gone, and the name Felicity Portman scribbled on a $100 bill, then stamped on my brain. Sip. My father’s cancer. Sip. The day I met Vera in the park. Our matching eyes. Sip. The instant connection I’d felt with Cody. The velveteen rabbit and the missing photograph I had freaked out about. Vera’s questions. My answers. My father’s last text message. It was my confession. My secrets unfurled. My last hope at coming clean and reconciling everything, fixing everything, bringing Vera home. Sip, sip, sip.

  Cody stood in the exact same spot while I doled it all out, elbow propped on the orange counter with the metal trim while I recounted every sordid moment. Then I begged for his forgiveness, for his understanding. But Cody wanted none of it. He accepted none of it. Forgave none of it.

  He slammed his fist on the counter, rattling the forty. “You lied. You deceived me. You betrayed all of us. Was our marriage also a sham?” Vodka spittle sprayed from his lips.

  “No, it wasn’t a sham, Cody. I didn’t marry you to get to Vera. I married you because I fell in love with you, and with your family. I wanted to be a part of this beautiful life with you. I never meant for Vera to find out we were sisters. But she’s smart, she’s clever, and that’s how I know she’s okay. She’s with our father, and he would never hurt her.”

  Cody paced back and forth on the scratched linoleum floor, shoulders hunched like he was carrying the heavy information on his back. “You know I have to tell Felicity and Oliver everything you told me, right?”

  “No!” I grabbed his arm, pulling him to a stop. “They can’t ever find out. If they do, not only will my dad probably go to jail and die there, but he’ll tell the police
about what Felicity did too. Technically she took a baby and never reported it. He just wants to spend his last days with his daughter. Please, Cody. However angry you are at me, don’t punish my dying father or Felicity. Because they are the ones who will pay for the lies. They’re the ones whose lives will be ruined.”

  “I don’t know, Marin. I feel like all this time you’ve had a secret identity, and not telling anyone you were the last person to see Vera alive…or that you’re her sister… I don’t know the real you from the person you pretend to be anymore.”

  I couldn’t believe he was pinning everything that had desecrated our life all on me.

  “What about your lies, Cody? You owe me this! You cheated with your brother’s wife, my best friend. You betrayed both me and Ollie. My past may have hurt you, but your present hurt me. I can’t change what I did before I met you, but you hurt me while you were married to me. Don’t forget that.”

  I had him there, and he knew it. He ran a hand through his tar-black hair, slick and stringy with sweat. The tract of bare scalp stretched further back. He pinned me with a watery gaze.

  “How long do you think Vera will be gone? Felicity’s crumbling, Marin. Every time the police show up at the house, any time a body is found—it’s destroying her.”

  “A man is dying—my father! I can’t predict how long until he passes, Cody. But we have to wait as long as it takes. Please, for me.” I choked on the emotions. I couldn’t think of anything other than my dying dad, and me not being by his side right now. “I’m trying my best to find him. Don’t you think I want to be with him right now? I abandoned him during his time of need, and this is the only way I can make amends. I know it’s hard to have faith through this, but Vera will come home soon.” It broke my heart that there was only one home my father was going to…and it wouldn’t be with me.

  When Cody fumbled with his car keys, the conversation was over.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need a drink.” Except he was already drunk. “And I’m not able to look at you right now, Marin. I need time to think about this. I’m going out tonight and won’t be home. We’ll talk about it later.” Cody tottered into the cool spring night.

  I didn’t chase my husband down. I didn’t beg him to stop, although he was probably unfit to drive. As much as he needed space, I needed it too. On the counter, sitting on top of today’s newspaper, was the small brown mystery package. No postage or return address. I picked it up, glancing at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headline under today’s date, April 22: “Prominent Attorney Murdered and Inheritance Disputed.”

  It was a little shocking to see Mortimer’s death had made the front page. Skimming the article, I wasn’t surprised to see that the law partners were disputing my inheritance tooth and nail, just as Karen predicted, and dragging my name through the mud. I wouldn’t fight it, though. I didn’t have the battle left inside me. As Vera would have said, FML. Eff my life.

  I returned my attention to the package and the bottle of vodka Cody had been nursing while I was at the police station, based on the state of him. Ripping the packaging open, I saw a note that I recognized as Felicity’s handwriting:

  I know I haven’t shown it this past week, especially with Vera suddenly gone, but I appreciate how you were always there for her and how you’re trying to be there for me right now. You were more than an aunt to her. You were like a sister, and I’ll always cherish you as my sister too. I’m sorry for all the stuff coming between us right now. I’m not coping well, but I’m trying to stay as optimistic as I can. Maybe I should be trying that CBD to “chill” a bit, as Vera would say, huh? I hope this gift adds some sparkle in your life.

  Inside was a small black velvet box. No she didn’t. I flipped it open and gasped. The turquoise bracelet. A perfect match to the one Felicity had worn and the one given to Vera for her fifteenth birthday. I imagined the day the three of us girls could wear them together…soon…if I hadn’t already irreparably ruined my relationship with my family. Unless Cody was right. Maybe the lies were just too much to overcome.

  Grabbing the bottle of liquor, I turned off the kitchen light and headed upstairs. I didn’t need a glass. I’d be emptying the rest of the bottle tonight, enough to wipe out the memory of today. It was ironic that in the depths of my own personal darkness I did the one thing I had judged my parents for—turning to a destructive high. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. In my bedroom a breeze wafted through the open window. A clatter two stories below provoked a dog to bark. A chill dove down my spine. I never fully felt alone here, as if eyes were always watching, skimming across my skin. Nothing was ever there, but their presence was always felt.

  The rest of the forty-ounce and two episodes of This Is Us later, I could barely stand up when I heard the back door scrape open.

  Cody. He’d come home after all. Maybe we could have drunk sex and wake up hung over together, forgetting all the stuff in between. A crack shortly followed as something fell and broke, and I headed down the dark stairwell, barely making out the edge of each step as I gripped the handrail on my descent.

  “Cody?” I called out. My voice shook.

  As I rounded the corner to the kitchen, an unfamiliar shadow passed across the room, reaching for me.

  I screamed, my fingers fumbling for a weapon. Then suddenly everything went Clark Griswold Christmas lights bright.

  Chapter 45

  Marin

  APRIL

  Murder, much like love, required the right person in the right place at the right moment. And also like love, it was a blurred line where passion ended and fury began. I had been lost in that fury for so long that it filled the hollow of my heart and poured into my veins. The problem was that I wasn’t the only one fueled on fury.

  As the overhead fluorescent light doused the kitchen, I saw a very different version of myself standing before me.

  “Mom?”

  It couldn’t be. She was dead. OD’d the day we fought, when my last scathing words—“we’d all be better off if you died and went to hell, where you deserve to go”—sent her to her drugs, and the drugs sent her to the hospital where she died that night. The last thing I’d watched was Gilmore Girls, the mom-and-daughter duo we would never become. We had made plans to binge on junk food along with the season finale of American Idol, which I couldn’t stomach watching without her. It was supposed to be ours, our Gilmore Girl moment together, until she simply ceased.

  And now Mom was back from the dead.

  “Hello, Marin.”

  The shock hadn’t settled yet, but I found a handful of words. “How are you alive?”

  “I know this must be hard for you to understand, Marin, but I didn’t die. Your father told me to leave and never come back. It was what was best for you and your sister. It took a long time before I was ready to face you again. I needed to be clean before you saw me. But it finally happened. I’m sober!”

  Was she expecting my congratulations? She’d left me to raise the baby that ended up sold on the side of the road for a wallet full of hundreds. And now, a decade and a half later I was supposed to throw a party for the neglectful bitch.

  “You dare come back into my life after what you did to me? I was traumatized! Bennett and I had a damn memorial for you at Dad’s gravestone, to which no one came, by the way. That’s how beloved you were—no one even cared that you were fake dead.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry for that. But at the time, I was as good as dead if I didn’t get space.”

  “Space? Space is doing a few months in rehab. It’s not disappearing and pretending to be dead for, oh, I dunno, a decade and a half. Do you know I blamed myself for killing you? I blamed myself that my sister was taken away, that our family was broken apart. All because of you. Get out of my house! Get out of my life!” My screams pulsed through me, buzzing from deep in my gut, up through my lungs.

  And yet Mom just stood there, arms open as if a hug could make everythi
ng better like when I was three years old.

  “Can we at least talk?” she asked, stepping toward me.

  “Stay away from me!” I swung my arms out, vodka and rage pumping through me as my hand made contact with her face, then her chest.

  The abrupt impact of bone on bone jolted my body backward and I felt the earth shift and slip under me. My arms circled like a cartoon character as I fell, then a sharp thwack crushed my skull. I blinked, but it wasn’t a blink. It was nothingness.

  **

  I couldn’t remember how I ended up on the dingy linoleum floor where flakes of dried food collected hairballs along the baseboard, or whose blood blossomed beside my head. Although it was bright—too bright—I could vaguely make out the details of the kitchen through the blur. The scene slowly focused, one piece at a time. The metal-rimmed counter with the dented corner. The fridge humming like an angry bee.

  Touching the place on my skull where it hurt the most—though everything hurt—my palm sank into a matted mess of wet hair. My fingers traced a gash a pinkie-length long. Trying to push myself upright, my hands slipped across the floor. A crown of discomfort pinched my head. I looked up. A shadow looked back.

  “Don’t move!” a voice ordered me from above.

  Cody? No, it was a woman caught in a fog.

  “Do you have a phone?” The voice was frantic and distant now.

  Pain swept across my temples. I fell limply back. My body thrummed with the pulse of blood seeping out. I closed my eyes, but they wouldn’t reopen. I felt utterly alone. Then footsteps. No, I wasn’t alone. I sensed more than saw a presence somewhere in the closed-eye murk surrounding me.

  Darkness had a way of hiding things. Like the dirt crusted in the corner where the peeling linoleum met the pine wood cabinet. Or the blood seeping out of my head into a puddle on the floor. Every bit of our poverty showed in the details of the house. It wasn’t until I heard the voice that I realized who knelt down beside me. I peeled my eyelids open. A streak of light crossed my resurrected mother’s face. A groan escaped from my lips as I tried to turn toward her, my headache worsening with the movement.