Into the Dark (24 page)

“Oh my God, Brenna.”

“She told a desk clerk her name is Clea.”

“Oh . . . man . . .”

“And . . . and now she’s gone
. . .” Brenna’s vision blurred. Her voice felt choked. “Someone is
messing with my mind, Nick. Someone out there knows all these stories about my
family and they’re making performance art out of it and this . . .
this . . . this freak of a girl is somehow involved but I don’t have
any idea how to track her down so whatever it is you have to tell me that’s so
damn important . . .”

“It can wait.” His voice was soft, kind.

“Forever?”

“Yes.”

Brenna heard a car whiz by on the street beneath
her window, the thudding bass of the stereo within, and she wanted so badly to
escape—not from her apartment but from her own mind. A few tears spilled down
her cheeks.

Morasco said, “How do we feel today?”

More tears. Brenna swatted them away. “I don’t
know.”

“Tell me,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Lost,” she said. “Confused, scared, unsafe.” She
drew another long, shaking breath. “Lonely.”

For several seconds, Morasco said nothing. Neither
did Brenna. They just stayed where they were, both of them breathing into their
phones.

“Brenna?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“Yes.”

He hung up before she could change her mind.

Chapter
19

T
hey didn’t
talk things through, didn’t speak at all. There was no discussion about what
this meant or how they were feeling about this or where they were going with
this or what was on their minds regarding this or even what they would say to
each other once this was over.

There was just this.

Brenna opened the door for Nick and fell into him,
her lips on his, on his neck, his chest, inhaling his soap smell and yanking
open his shirt, his hands in her hair, on her body . . .

She went for his belt buckle.

“Wait,” he said. “Maya.”

“She’s not here.” But still, she was pulling him
down the hall, leading him by both hands into her bedroom. She was closing the
door behind them and she was locking it. She didn’t want to be out in the
open.

Brenna pulled him to her. His glasses were fogging
up, and when she took them off, there was a look in his eyes she’d never seen
there before. No softness, no sadness, no pity . . . The opposite of
pity, actually. Her pulse raced.

“My walls are thin. We have to stay quiet,” she
whispered. More to herself than to him.

And then he was pushing her up against the wall,
both of them tearing at each other’s clothes. There were buttons flying and
zippers ripping open, there were hands and lips and tongues searching and so
much breath, breathing together, and such exquisite closeness in that
breathing . . .

Nick’s hands gripped Brenna’s wrists, forcing her
back, her legs wrapped around him. She broke free, but just for a few moments,
just long enough to guide him in with one hand, both of them breathing, still
breathing like that, breathing and moving together and then . . .
this. Just this. Just now.

“T
hanks, I needed that,” Brenna told Nick as they lay in bed, drifting
to sleep after round two. It was probably the first time either of them had said
a coherent word to each other in the two hours he’d been there.

He leaned in and kissed her gently. “It was the
least I could do.”

Brenna grinned. “The least? Really?”

“Brenna. I think—”

“Sssh.” She put a finger to his lips. “Let’s not
talk. Please.”

“I was just going to say that I think my arm fell
asleep.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t want to talk, either,” he said. “Just so
you know.”

Brenna pulled him closer, smiled.
You may be the nicest person I’ve ever met
. She fell
asleep. She didn’t dream.

N
ick
left early to go to work. He could have snuck out without Brenna even
knowing—that’s how soundly she’d been sleeping—but instead he stopped by the
bed, kissed her awake. “Bye,” he said.

She smiled. “Bye.”

“Look, I know we’re not talking. But can I just ask
you one thing?”

She sighed.

“Last night.”

“Uh-huh?”

“You didn’t . . . You didn’t seem to go
anywhere.”

She looked at him. “I didn’t.”

“Not once? Really? You didn’t have one single
memory?”

“Not one.” She smiled, realizing it herself. She
and Nick had made love twice—and as fast and urgent as the first time had been,
the second had been quite lengthy. It was probably the longest she’d ever been
awake in the past few years without lapsing into at least a brief memory—and
that included times she’d been with other men. “You’re like an anti-nootropic,”
she said.

“Awesome.” He put a hand on her cheek, and for a
moment, she saw a hint of it—that sorry, sad feeling . . . But then he
pulled away and grinned at her. “I always wanted an FDA classification.”

She kissed the palm of his hand and closed her eyes
again, falling asleep as he left.

B
renna
woke up two hours later, at seven-thirty. She slipped out of bed, tugged on the
oversized Columbia T-shirt she usually slept in, and headed toward the kitchen.
But when she passed Maya’s room, she stopped. The door was closed. She cracked
it open and saw her daughter asleep in her bed, the room sweet with the sound
of
her breathing.

She came back.

Brenna watched her for a while, hoping her return
had happened after Morasco had left. She wasn’t ready to have that conversation
yet. For one thing, she had no idea what to say that wouldn’t gross Maya out.
(
Turns out Detective Morasco is great in the sack,
honey. But we’ve made a pact not to talk about it
. . .)

“Mom?” Maya’s eyelids fluttered open. She sat up in
bed, rubbing her eyes.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Brenna said.

“Is Trent okay?”

“Yes,” Brenna said. “He’s fine.”

Maya stared at her for several seconds, her face so
flat, it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. “Must have been some
really bad fish,” she said finally.

God, what a dumb
excuse
. “You got my text.”

“This morning.” She lay back down and turned over,
onto her stomach. It was as though she was rolling her eyes with her entire
body.

Brenna looked at her. “Let me guess,” she said.
“You didn’t want to come back, but Faith convinced you to let her drop you off
here on her way to the show. She told you I mean well and that you need to cut
me some slack. I have an affliction. But you’re sick and tired of cutting me
slack—not to mention my affliction—and who the hell cares if I mean well? I left
you alone on the last night of Chanukah. That sucks, no matter how you look at
it. And while we’re at it . . . Bad fish? That’s seriously the best I
could come up with?”

Maya was sitting up now, watching Brenna.

“Am I right?”

“Pretty much.”

Brenna sat down on the edge of the bed. “Look,” she
said. “I’m not even going to try and make excuses for myself, other than to say
that Trent’s life really was in danger. And if I told you what actually happened
to him, you’d beg me to replace it with a story about bad fish.”

“Is he okay now?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Brenna put her hand on Maya’s. “I loved your
drawing, Maya,” she said. “I swear to God, you’re so talented, it takes my
breath away.”

She smiled a little. “I’m glad.”

“And I don’t blame you for being mad at me. But can
you just do me one favor?”

Maya frowned at her. “What?”

“Can you let me give you your Chanukah
present?”

Maya sighed. “A present isn’t going to make
everything better, Mom.”

“I know.”

“You need to think about who’s a real part of your
life and who’s a memory,” she said. “I’m tired of losing out to your job all
the
time. I’m tired of losing out to Clea.”

Brenna looked at her. “You’re right.”

Maya hugged her knees to her chest, brushed her
hair out of her eyes. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay,” Maya said. “I’ll take the present.”

Brenna hurried into her bedroom, and returned with
the wrapped iPod box.

Maya’s eyes lit up at the shape of it. Her voice
pitched up an octave. “Oh my God. Is this . . . is this what I think
it is?” She shut her eyes tight, took a few breaths. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh
my God.”

Brenna’s face twitched into a smile.
Who said a present couldn’t make everything better?
Maya jumped out of bed and flew at her, throwing her arms around Brenna’s neck.
“Thank you so much, Mom,” she said, and Brenna was glad for her memory. She
could hang on to this moment, keep it with her always. She could take it out
on
a bad day like a favorite sweater or a framed photo and relive it—these few
seconds of pure joy . . . “How do you know what it is?” Brenna
said.

“Oh Mom, it’s so obvious!” Maya ripped at the
wrapping paper—same way she had done at four years old, tearing into her Polly
Pocket Hangout House Playset on the last night of Chanukah 2000 . . .
“Yay, Mommy, yay!”

“Thank you!” Maya screamed, the unwrapped iPod in
her hands. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Brenna went back to 2000 again,
Maya hopping from foot to foot and hugging Brenna’s leg with all her might,
such a tiny bundle of happiness
.
So much love
. “I love you, Mom,” she said, both then
and now.

Brenna made breakfast for Maya as she played with
her iPod, making sure not to even think about work until 11:30
A.M.
, when her daughter was dressed and out of the
apartment and on her way to lunch and the nearby IMAX theater with her friend
Ruby, as per the plans she made with her via one of her brand-new apps.

At that point, she went into the kitchen and brewed
another pot of coffee and drank a cup in front of her computer, accompanied by
two of the Twinkies she kept stashed at the back of the pantry. Yes, she’d had
eggs and tea with Maya, but thanks to Nick Morasco she was still starving. She
devoured the first Twinkie in two bites, her hunger only starting to fall into
place with the second.

She checked her e-mail. “Whoa,” she whispered.
She’d actually gotten a reply from [email protected] Brenna opened
it up:

If you want to talk about RJ, come by the
offices today (12/21) at 1
P.M.
We won’t be open
before then.

Sincerely, Charlie Frankel

PS Pokrovsky speaks very highly of you.

Brenna smiled. Now she
really
didn’t care how many bodies were in Pokrovsky’s window
box.

What do you wear to an
interview with a porn mogul?
This was a pressing and important
question, but Brenna had time to ponder it. It was more important right now to
download Tannenbaum’s police report, and so she did.

It wasn’t a large file at all. She opened it and
started to read, skimming the description of RJ and the location of the
break-in, then skipping straight to the testimony of the homeowner.

“We felt that it was just some kind of film school
campus dare,” the homeowner told arresting officers in the report of the
forty-two-year-old suspect. “Nothing of any note was missing from the house.
I’m
not a full professor, but I’ve taught courses at the school, and I’m also a
graduate. I’m sure that, in a way, RJ believed he knew me.”

Brenna sighed.
Maybe it’s
Spielberg
, she thought.

But when she skipped down to the homeowner’s
name—which was typed out in all caps directly beneath the testimony, over the
line that read
Case Dismissed
—Brenna’s eyes went
big. “Well how about that,” she whispered.

The homeowner was Gary Freeman.

G
ary
stared at the note in his lap. He’d read it so many times since this morning,
but he couldn’t stop himself from reading again—as though if he looked at those
words enough times, the letters would rearrange themselves and the note would
say something different, something better.

Gary:

DeeDee called. She says. “It’s done.”

Jill

He’d found the note on his nightstand this morning.
This, after a night of great sex with Jill and Gary waking up with an
honest-to-God smile on his face, feeling for the first time in months—or even
years—that all his troubles were behind him. His money problems would ease. The
recession would let up, his client base would build back. Life would get better,
and if it wound up being a life without Lula Belle, then so be it. He had his
memories. Maybe the past was finally through with him. Maybe he was allowed to
move on.

That’s what he’d been thinking. What a joke. He’d
even had that Bob Marley song running through his head,
Everything gonna be all right . . .

But then he’d reached out to touch Jill’s soft skin
and felt only the pillow. He’d checked the time: ten-thirty already—
Why didn’t anybody wake me up?
And that’s when he had
seen the note. Jill had folded it into quarters, as though it were some kind
of
gift, as though it would be a pleasant surprise for Gary, the unwrapping of it
. . . DeeDee’s name in his wife’s handwriting. What a punch to the
stomach.

That’d teach him to wake up smiling.

Now Bob Marley was long gone, and Gary had a
different song in his head—it had been stuck in there on continuous loop, ever
since he’d seen the note. “Oliver’s Army” by Elvis Costello—oh the cruel deejay
that was Gary’s brain.

“Oliver’s Army” had been her favorite song. She’d
named Route 666 in Utah after a line in it. The Murder Mile, she’d called it,
because she was scared of the numbers. But that was silly, and Gary had told
her
so. Numbers were nothing to be afraid of. People were.

“We could drive all night,”
the boy said, just him and me. “We could beat the murder mile and watch the
sunrise in the rearview . . .”

Gary shut his eyes tight
. You
close that door and you lock it. You throw away the key.
He folded up
the note again. He put it back into his wallet, but that didn’t make it
disappear, did it? It had happened. The note had been written. And just like
the
proverbial writing on the wall, there was no taking it back.

Oh DeeDee, why, why, why? How
could you do that? Why would you call my wife?

Jill was gone, and the girls were gone. Gary’s
life, as he knew it, was over. Would he ever be able to convince his wife that
DeeDee had been nothing? One bad mistake, never to be made again?
If I could just find her, if I could find The Shadow
,
he thought,
I could make things right
.

But did he really believe that?

Well, he had to believe it, didn’t he? If he
didn’t—if he honestly thought that he could lose it all that easily—and lose
it
for good—then what had the point ever been? Why had he worked so hard to build
a
life and a career and a family if it could be destroyed forever by one strong
wind?