Nine Years Gone (6 page)

“You really have something to tell me about Rachel?” I asked.

Vince shook his head. “No, but I’m concerned. Dominique wasn’t the only one who hurt Tess.”

You ruined my life.

That’s what she had said to me before leaving.

“You think she’d go after us?”

He cocked his head to the side. “I was thinking her mother, but you know her better than I do. You tell me.”

I looked down at the concrete, noticing the trawl marks and subtle swirls. “If I get even an inkling that she’s trying to hurt us or her mom or anyone else, I’ll go to the police. I’ll take the blame.”

“Before we consider that, I want to see her. Together we might be able to talk some sense into her. Meantime,” he said, motioning toward the door with his eyes, “I say we keep this from numbnuts. We don’t need him doing something stupid.”

“Agreed,” I said, nodding.

Vince stayed still for a moment, but then he nodded and stood straighter. “I’m going to drive Isaac home. You need anything else?”

I looked over my shoulder at my kitchen door. “Not unless you can teach a little girl that swearing isn’t ladylike.”

“You’re on your own for that. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said, standing and walking him to the door. “And tell numbnuts that I’ll see him later.”

After Vince left, I went into the dining room and sat beside my wife at the table. She immediately asked me to change into something that didn’t smell like smoke, so I put on some pajamas upstairs. Ashley had come to us with more than a few rough edges, her foul mouth principal among them. Katherine and I had talked before about how we could prevent her from swearing so often, but I hadn’t had many good ideas, then or now.

Had I cursed like Ashley, my father would have slapped me and told me to shut up. When he came home after work some days, he came with the eyes of a porcelain doll, as if he left his soul elsewhere. I liked those days. Other days, though, lightning flashed across his brow, and hate bubbled up inside him like I’ve never seen in another human being. Those days, I knew someone would get a beating. As a boy, the bruises were easy to explain—my teachers believed me when I said I fell out of a tree or that I had gotten hit while playing football—so I took the beatings as often as I could.

It was harder for my sister to pretend that everything was all right, harder still for my mother. I don’t know what hurt worse for them, though: being hit, or seeing me intervene on their behalf so Dad would hit me instead of them. But no matter whom Dad chose, those beatings always ended the same: after he was done with us, after his anger and emotions were slaked, he’d apologize and say it wouldn’t happen again. I was about eight the first time he said that, and I actually believed him. When it happened again, and then again, I learned that my dad couldn’t keep a promise any more than my mother could stay sober or protect my sister and me from him. Dad had a need for violence that I never understood. I hated him for it. Even three years after his death, I still do.

Katherine and I went to bed at eleven, but I tossed and turned so much after turning out the lights that my wife went to the guest bedroom about an hour later. My thoughts kept coming back to one undeniable conclusion: my friends were right. If Tess walked into the wrong building; ran into the wrong person; got her picture on the Jumbotron at an inopportune moment at the ballpark, we were screwed. The more I thought about the situation, the more I felt sick to my stomach.

Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, because Ashley and Simon simultaneously woke me up the next morning. She shook my shoulder, and he licked my hand.

“Uncle Steve, I have to go to school.”

“That’s what the government tells me,” I said, nodding and yawning.

“You have to take me.”

Before looking at my clock, I coughed, clearing my throat. Evidently I hadn’t set the alarm before, because I had overslept by half an hour. “You go have breakfast. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

She hesitated before leaving. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Aunt Katherine’s mad at me.”

I sat upright and adjusted my shirt. “Did she talk to you this morning?” Ashley nodded. “She’s not mad at you. She’s . . . disappointed. Little girls shouldn’t say certain words.”

“Like fuck.”

She said it without qualm or hesitation, causing me to grimace.

“Yeah, like the f-word. Maybe you can use another word.”

“Like what?” she asked, fidgeting.

“Well,” I said, tilting my head to the side and wondering the same thing. “I guess you can just leave it out. People would still understand what you mean.”

She shook her head. “Mommy lets me say fuck.”

Her mommy would probably also let her play on the interstate.

I kissed her forehead. “I know, honey. Why don’t you go get breakfast?”

She twisted her torso left and right but kept her feet still so that her arms swung at her sides. “Will you still take me to school?”

“Of course,” I said. “Now go, so I can get dressed. And take Simon with you. He doesn’t need to be up here right now.”

She and Simon left the room, and I put on a robe before knocking on the bathroom door and stepping inside. Droplets of water clung to my wife’s body, dripping between the swells of her breasts and staining the navy towel she had wrapped around her chest. She smiled once I shut the door, and opened her towel to flash me. I could think of worse ways to start a day. Her skin felt damp, soft, and warm as I pulled her close to me to kiss her good morning.

“You should probably get going,” she said, winking and looking down to my pants. “Before anything comes up.”

“I think Ashley can wait fifteen minutes.”

“I think you’re overestimating your stamina,” said Katherine, biting her lower lip and squeezing my butt with a still-damp hand. “And Ashley might wait, but school won’t. Get out of here.”

I reluctantly took a step back. My wife may have suggested I leave the bathroom before anything popped up, but certain parts of my anatomy are quicker than others. I had to wait at the top of my steps for a minute and a half as the tent in my pajamas slowly relaxed. I took Ashley to school just a few minutes later, and when I got back to the house, Katherine was just leaving for the hospital, giving me the morning to walk the dog and go to work.

The world disappeared for a few hours until a little after noon, when my cell phone rang. My family and friends know that I hate interruptions while I’m at work, so they rarely call in the middle of the day. Had Ashley been home, I would have let the call go to voicemail, but I decided to answer on the off chance that it was the school calling to say something had happened. I pulled the phone from my pocket and looked at the caller ID.

Katherine.

I ran my thumb across the screen to answer and put the phone to my ear.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“I need to see you.”

Her voice sounded taut with anxiety, and any thought I had about work evaporated.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but I need to see you right away.”

Since I write crime fiction, worst-case scenarios dominate my thought processes. When Katherine is late coming home from work, my mind skips past the mundane explanations—heavy traffic, last-minute errands, late appointments, whatever—and automatically jumps to the macabre. I picture her in a car accident or as the victim of a crime, or something equally grotesque. The list of things that could go wrong at work was comparatively short, but one stood out above the rest: my wife was pregnant, and not for the first time. She’d miscarried at ten weeks a couple of months back, and it broke her heart.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I ran the dog home and then took the interstate east, exiting near Forrest Park, just a couple of blocks from my wife’s hospital. Cars whizzed by me as I parked on a side street just off of Kings Highway Boulevard, but I couldn’t think about anything but Katherine. As soon as I got into the hospital and introduced myself to the receptionist on my wife’s floor, a nurse whisked me back to an unoccupied exam room. Katherine wasn’t there yet, so I leaned against the exam table and closed my eyes, bracing myself for the bad news and trying to think of something comforting I could say.

Katherine opened the door about five minutes later wearing a black pencil skirt and white shirt beneath her lab coat. I stood.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She crossed her arms but stayed in the doorway. A neat ponytail held her dark hair away from her face, accentuating the redness of her cheeks and eyes. I walked toward her, but she brought a hand up quickly before I could get within arm’s length.

“Don’t touch me.”

I took a step back and tilted my head to the side, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

She closed the door and then pushed past me to drop a manila folder on the exam table.

“You tell me,” she said.

She crossed her arms again, and I reached for the folder. At one time, it had been taped shut as if it had gone through the mail, but only a stamp from TopFlite Courier Services and the hospital’s address adorned the exterior. I slid my finger along the top edge, unsettling the glue, before reaching inside and pulling out a stack of photographs of Tess and me at the gun range, including one of her kissing me goodbye. Whoever had taken the shots had smudged out Tess’s face, obscuring her identity, but my face was clearly visible.

I put the pictures down and looked up.

“Is this what you’ve been doing while I work late?” Katherine asked, her face growing redder.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No. I . . . I don’t . . .”

“Who is she?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“Then what is it?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Are they pictures of you and another woman or not?”

“That’s what they are, but it’s not what you think. Can we talk about this at home?”

Katherine raised her eyebrows and then pointed to the ground. “We can talk about this here.”

I admire a lot of things about my wife, not the least of which is her willingness to stick up for herself and those she cares about. The pictures hurt her—I knew that—and had we been at home, I would have come clean with her about everything. But admitting that I had framed someone for murder didn’t seem like the smartest move in such a public setting.

“We need to talk about this at home,” I said. “Trust me. I’ve got a good reason for not talking here.”

“Who is she?”

“I understand that you’re upset,” I said. “But this isn’t the place to discuss this.”

“I’ve got a picture of you sticking your tongue down some bimbo’s throat,” said Katherine, her eyes sharp. “Do you really think you’re in a position to tell me that my behavior is inappropriate?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then how did you mean it?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Enlighten me as to appropriate workplace decorum based on your extensive experience.”

“Now that’s unfair.”

Katherine cocked her head to the side. “If you think my behavior is unfair, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what the word means.” She pointed to the picture. “Who is she?”

My wife has a tongue like a scalpel, but rarely has she turned it upon me, and never has it been mean-spirited. Then again, never before had anyone sent her a picture of me kissing another woman. She deserved the truth, but I didn’t know what I could tell her in public.

I lowered my voice and leaned toward her. “It’s Tess Girard. She kissed me. I didn’t want her to. Okay? I’ll tell you the rest at home.”

“No, Steven, you’re not going to bullshit your way out of this. This isn’t some lost picture from college,” said Katherine, shaking her head, not modulating the volume of her voice in the least. “This was recent. I saw you in that outfit yesterday.”

“This was taken yesterday, which is why we need to talk about this at home.”

She started to say something, but stopped mid-word and leaned forward, her eyebrows raised. “Tess died nine years ago.”

I lowered my voice still further. “No, she didn’t. That’s why the police never found her body.”

As Katherine reached to the exam table and picked up the picture of Tess’s goodbye kiss, someone opened the door and one of the nurses, a plump woman with dyed blonde hair, brown roots, and blush the color of pink cotton candy, stuck her head through the crack. She looked at me and then to my wife.

“Is everything okay, Dr. Hale?”

“It’s fine, Jackie,” said Katherine, softening her tone. “Can you shut my door, please?”

Jackie, the nurse, shut the door and left, cutting off the sound of a busy office behind her. Katherine’s eyes drilled into me. “Tess Girard was one of the nicest girls I’ve ever met. If this is her, why didn’t she stop her stepfather’s execution?”

Leave it to my wife to ask the hardest question first.

“That would take some explaining.”

Katherine’s face reddened. “I’m all ears.”

I hadn’t spent that much time in the Children’s Hospital, so I didn’t know how well soundproofed its walls were, but obviously the nurses could at least hear that we were fighting, even if they couldn’t make out exactly what we said.

“I’ll tell you everything at home, I swear, but I can’t get into it here. If someone overhears me, there could be serious ramifications for a lot of people.”

“If you don’t start talking, there are going to be serious ramifications for you right now.”

One look at my wife’s eyes and I knew I wasn’t getting out of there without saying something, not if I wanted to avoid damaging our relationship permanently.

“Tess didn’t stop his execution because Dominique deserved what happened to him. He hurt her.”

Katherine blinked once and then twice before the muscles of her jaw relaxed and the sharp, angry expression left her eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I’ll tell you at home.”

“What did he do?”

“It’s bad, probably worse than you think.”

Katherine paused and blinked as if she were thinking. “You’ve never lied to me before.”

“And I’m not lying now. This is Tess Girard. I swear.”

She stared at me for at least a minute, making up her mind, but then her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and all at once, it was like the light dimmed from her eyes. “In college, I heard rumors about Tess’s stepfather, but I didn’t know if they were true.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Just that he had hit on girls in our sorority. He even offered to buy books for a girl if she spent an evening with him.”

That sounded like Dominique.

“He can’t hurt anyone again.”

“No,” said Katherine. “He certainly can’t.” She paused. “How long have you known that Tess was alive?”

“That’s one of those questions I wanted to answer at home.”

She lowered her chin. “A long time, then.”

I nodded.

“Jesus, honey,” she said, closing her eyes. She took a couple of steadying breaths and rested her hands flat against the exam table. “I need you to be honest. Do you still love her?”

“No.”

“Do you love me?”

“With all my heart.”

She leaned against the exam table. “I feel a little dizzy.”

I stepped around the table and put my arm around her shoulder. She reached across my back and grabbed a fistful of my shirt to steady herself.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She nodded, her eyes closed and her face drawn. “Just give me a minute.”

I waited while she regained her composure.

“This isn’t some kind of mean joke, is it?” she asked. “That’s really Tess?”

“Unfortunately.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off.”

I looked at the door. “You want me to go?”

She hesitated, but then nodded. “I need some time alone to process this.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” She looked. “We’ll talk tonight. I’ve still got a lot of questions.”

“I’ll answer them.”

“Please take those pictures with you. I can’t look at them.”

I gathered the photos into a neat pile but didn’t put them back into the envelope. “We’ll talk tonight. I’ll tell you everything.”

She nodded. I left her there and walked out of the hospital with my head held low. The people in the waiting room gave me a wide berth, probably believing I had just received some bad news about a loved one.

I could only think of two possibilities for what had just happened: Tess had hired the photographer, or someone really was after her—and that someone, for some absurd reason, decided to break up my marriage. As much as I wanted to believe my former girlfriend’s hands were clean, that didn’t make any sense. I’d deal with her when I could. First, though, I needed to find the photographer and make sure he destroyed those pictures before they sent me to jail.

With every step I took, I found my anger building. Tess had intentionally hurt my wife. Despite our history, I had a hard time forgiving that.