Just Fall (18 page)

“No, no, no,” he mutters. Ellie has to jog to keep up with his long strides as he hurries away from her.

“Please,” she says, putting her hand on his arm. “Why not? Tell me.”

Crazy B pivots and stops. He had known Marianne; she had gone to school with his sister. She had been a stunning girl, full of life, blessed with the warmest heart. But then seduced by a rich American and murdered by his jealous wife. Who then killed her husband and herself! Now Marianne is a tortured soul, haunting that twisted place, searching for her lost lover. Strange things happen to the people who dare to go there. There is no way he will.

Ellie digs into her beach tote and counts out ten crisp American hundred-dollar bills.

Crazy B stares at the money, torn but tempted.

“This is just a down payment,” she promises. “We’ll split the money and drugs fifty-fifty.”

Later. The siren call of cash successful, Ellie clings to Crazy B’s broad back for dear life, as his battered motorcycle wends its way up the one famously bad road that encircles all of St. Lucia. He turns off this main road onto a new one, which is in an even sorrier state. The bike shudders up the rutted, winding dirt path, hitting rocks, lurching into potholes. Glimpses of the ocean flash in and out of view as they climb higher and higher. In the distance, Ellie can see the Pitons, the two huge outcroppings featured in virtually every St. Lucia promotional photo, stunning in their abrupt rise from the sea. The sky is sapphire blue and cloudless, the sun hot; a sultry breeze perfumes the air. Another fucking day in paradise.

Abruptly, Crazy B pulls the bike off to the side of the road. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere. Ellie shivers with panic. Her body will never be found here.

But Crazy B tilts a crooked smile at her as he dismounts. “We best walk from here,” he intones, as he gestures up the hill. “So they don’t hear us coming.”

Crazy B parks the machine off the path. Makes sure it’s hidden by foliage. The sun beats down on them as they creep around the next bend. A wrought-iron gate half off its hinges creaks open into a long crushed-shell driveway.

Crazy B stops at the gate. “Maybe I leave you here.” His huge body seems to shrink in his fear of the place.

Ellie pretends a nonchalance she doesn’t feel. “If that’s what you want. The money and the drugs, though, they’re all mine, then.”

Crazy B hesitates. Then murmurs a prayer and crosses through the gate. They trudge up the driveway without speaking, the crushed shells crunching beneath their feet. As they go, Ellie wonders if she should have let him leave. After all, who is to say he is less of a danger than Quinn and Gold Tooth? Her mind races. She’s anxious; face it, she’s terrified. Of both the known and the unknown. Operating on instincts that she’s not at all sure she can trust.

A massive house with soaring arches and vast planes of glass looms into view. It’s perched on what looks like the edge of the world, positioned to best exploit the view, designed to look as if it is soaring off the cliff and about to take flight. The vista is shockingly beautiful: dramatic mountains, lush green tropical plants, drooping flowers like yellow bells, hot-pink blooms, the deep blue ocean meeting the horizon of the pale blue sky. A covered porch encircles the house, empty of furniture except for one weather-beaten teak deck chair, snapped in half.

A majestic marble fountain sits smack in the center of the circular drive. The fountain is dry.

Ellie scans the house. There don’t seem to be any signs of life. No cars in the driveway. It looks like the abandoned house Crazy B described. She fights back tears. What if she is wrong? What if her overheard reference to Maison Mary Ann meant nothing? What if she heard wrong?

She reassures herself that at a minimum it’s the clue she has left for Rob’s trusted friend Matt Walsh. Walsh will find her here. If he’s coming. If he’s smart enough to retrace her steps and decipher the scribble left for him. Despair overwhelms her. She has done everything exactly as Rob had instructed. Ignored Quinn’s instructions to get Carter out on his boat and kill him there, tipping the body overboard. Left him in a high-end hotel where he would be found, so that the police would be looking for her. Sliced off his fucking lip, for Christ’s sake. She shuddered. Barbaric. Mailed it to Walsh, her supposed savior. Changed her look and tried to hide until Walsh arrived. And all of it was futile. An innocent woman who had tried to help her was dead. Walsh could be a phantom.

What will she do when Crazy B wants his piece of the $100K she has promised but can’t deliver? Why on earth did she think it was a good idea to use false assurances to enlist an armed drug dealer? It was the only alternative that occurred to her, but now she berates herself. She is a fool.

Panic swamps her. And fury at Rob. This is all his fault.

Crazy B shifts from side to side, uneasy. “What do we do now?” His eyes dart to the colossal house, and Ellie follows his gaze.

She sees a shadow cross one of the upstairs windows. Someone is here. Crazy B sees it too. He bounces back and forth on his heels, skittish. “We best be going. No one here but that ghost.”

With a conviction in her voice that masks her deepening well of uncertainty, Ellie decides, “No. We wait.”

The first time Ellie killed someone she was twenty-three. She didn’t actually kill him, although the coma was likely to be permanent, and so he was really as good as dead, wasn’t he? He would never again walk or talk, fight or laugh, love or hate. He lay suspended, not really dead and never really alive, maintained by complicated machines that inflated his lungs and pumped his heart. His parents couldn’t let him go, even after the doctors had strongly advised turning off the life support.

Of course she hadn’t meant to kill him. She hadn’t even meant to put him in a coma. It was all a horrible accident. That’s what everyone said—“a horrible accident,” as if those words could explain away the fear, rage, and remorse that tormented her still, all these years later. When she didn’t keep all those emotions in a little box, tucked away in a corner of her mind, a box that rarely opened. Everyone said that she was not to blame, but she knew it was her hand that had pushed him.

When Jason had shown up at her apartment, she had been surprised—first that he was there at all, and second that he was very drunk. It was two years after they had broken up and they hadn’t been in touch. Or at least Jason hadn’t been in touch with Ellie. She had sent him Christmas cards, and an ecard on his last birthday; he replied to none of them. Ellie had decided, finally, to let it go. There was the occasional wishful thinking on her part—the “what if” game she played with herself late at night after she burrowed into loneliness. “What if” Doug hadn’t killed himself? “What if” Ellie had let Jason go to him that night when he called instead of slamming the door shut? “What if” she and Jason had been able to move past what happened to Doug and continue on with their relationship? Would they be married? Would she be happy?

She liked living in Manhattan and was building a community of friends, shaping her career, doing all the things she was meant to be doing, but there remained a hollow space in her. She missed being in love. She liked the automatic status a boyfriend gave her, the steady movie-night date, the regular sex, the sense of certainty that walking in anywhere with a handsome man provided. She dated sporadically, sure; as a young beautiful blonde in New York she had a plethora of suitors, but she hadn’t clicked with anyone the way she had with Jason.

Sometimes she got angry. Angry at Doug, that selfish, stupid weakling who through the narcissism of his suicide had destroyed her first love. Sometimes she got angry at Jason. When he had to choose between Doug and Ellie, he’d chosen Doug, the freaking dead guy! Over her, a live, loving woman. Mostly, this anger stayed buried, rising up in a crushing red tide only after a deep loneliness hit. Then, weeping and inconsolable, she would beat her pillows or smash a plate, one time stepping on a leftover shard the next morning and ending up in the emergency room with four stitches in the ball of her left foot.

But the day Jason showed up, two years later, stinking drunk and wholly unexpected, Ellie was cheerful. She’d come back from a run, feeling invigorated. It was a clear autumn day, crisp and golden. She planned to make soup and as she sprinted up the steps to her apartment, she thought with pleasure of the onions, carrots, and celery that needed chopping, the beans that had soaked overnight, the organic chicken she had splurged on, the fragrant fresh herbs that lay waiting. It seemed a very grown-up thing to do, cooking soup. She planned to make a big pot and eat it all week, adding noodles one night, maybe rice the next.

When she reached her floor, she saw the hunched body in front of her apartment door and instantly turned wary. Had some homeless person gotten into the building? An addict? But as she cautiously neared the huddled form, she recognized something in the shape of the hand cradling the man’s forehead.

He looked up when he heard her and she could see that he had been crying. His clothes stank of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose dripped. He wiped the snot on his sleeve as she approached, sending another waft of whiskey in her direction.

“Jason! What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

He hauled himself unsteadily to his feet. “I needed to see you, El.”

Her heart surged, she felt her face go hot. Was this the moment she had been dreaming of? The day Jason realized, declared his love for her, came back? She was suddenly and painfully aware of her sweaty running clothes and flushed face.

“Of course,” she said. She stepped past him and unlocked the door. “Come on in.”

Once inside, Ellie cast a quick look around and was pleased with what she saw. She had created a warm, welcoming home out of her little apartment. She sat Jason down at one of the two chairs flanking the café table in her tiny kitchen. She gave him a glass of water and a box of tissues. She excused herself and went into the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and combed her hair. She studied her reflection in the mirror and added a quick slash of lip gloss. No time to shower and change, but at least she looked more presentable.

In the kitchen, Jason had drained his water glass. He held the glass out for a refill.

She was determined to let him guide whatever conversation they were about to have. To keep her nerves under control, she set about her plan to make soup, pulling the cutting board from the drainer by the sink, taking the carrots and celery from the refrigerator. She allowed herself a small smile as she decided to wait on the onions, too pungent for the tantalizing scent of romance and reunion she felt in the air. Then she set to work on the celery, chopping and dicing in a smooth, methodical rhythm.

“When did you get to New York?” she asked as he continued to look off into some distant place.

“I’ve been here a couple of days.”

“So what is it that’s brought you to town?” She kept her tone light.

Jason mumbled something.

“You’re meeting who?” she asked, confused.

Finally he looked at her. “My fiancée’s family.”

Fiancée. He had to be kidding. This was not how this was supposed to go. And if he had a fiancée, what was he doing showing up at her place unannounced?

Still, Ellie kept it light. “Well. Congratulations. But if that’s what you’re doing here, then what are you doing
here
?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Douglas.”

“What is there to talk about, Jason? We’ve gone around and around this a hundred times. You’re not responsible. I’m not responsible. The stupid fool killed himself! And over what? One failing grade in college? Frankly, I never even understood why you two were such great friends.”

Another mumble. Ellie’s patience was eroding. “What is it you are trying to say?”

This time Jason said it loud and clear. “We were lovers. Doug and I. That’s why he killed himself.”

“What are you talking about? You’re not gay.” Ellie gripped the handle of her knife so hard her knuckles ached.

“No, I mean, I don’t know…”

“You have a fiancée.” She said it as a statement of fact. Then, “A woman?”

“Yes, a woman. Olivia.”

“And does she know?”

“She knows I…experimented. So has she. She doesn’t think it means anything.” Jason grimaced. “She doesn’t know it was Doug. That he was the ‘dead best friend’ and the ‘male lover.’ She thinks it was nothing.”

“But it was…something?”

Jason was silent. Ellie stared at him. He had put on a little weight; it suited him. He looked less the boy and more the man. Jason looked quickly at her, then down at the table. He began to run his thumb across the grain, and Ellie suppressed an involuntary shudder of, what?—lust? revulsion?—as she suddenly remembered him running his thumb down her naked spine in the same manner.

“It was everything.”

He said it simply and quietly and Ellie felt a chasm crack open deep inside. She had long suspected something ugly about herself. This admission confirmed her worst fears.

“Everything? What the fuck do you mean it was everything?”