His Other Wife (12 page)

Hilary wondered. Were there parents who imagined this feeling before it happened? Did they prepare themselves in some way
for this news in the night?

Did they pray as they listened to the officer’s voice on the other end of the telephone, describing the incident, listing
the details without emotion? Did they imagine how their ears would buzz, how the adrenaline would settle into their fingers
as they tried to make sense of what was being said? Did they know they wouldn’t be able to find their car keys in the nurse’s
bag, that they would struggle with the arms of a sweater, trying to put it on?

When she’d been a girl at the state fair, she used to beg her parents for carnival tickets. Her father had to pay money for
her stomach to be pitching this way. Like nothing was beneath her for a thousand miles. Like the bottom had dropped out and
everything inside her was going with it. At the same time Hilary’s insides were riding the Kamikaze, she heard herself at
the graduation picnic, reassuring Abigail Moore:
They’re responsible kids. They know how to take care of each other. I asked plenty of questions, believe me.

She shouldn’t be driving. Gina had offered to take her, but Hilary had gotten away too fast. She’d been wrong not to take
her friend up on the offer. In spite of the arcing headlights, the painted lines along the shoulder, Hilary couldn’t see
the road.

Hilary replayed what had happened at the hospital as she’d been running to her car, frantic to get to Seth, to help him. The
ambulance pulling up, the Moore family tumbling out at the same time. Abigail crying over and over,
It isn’t Laura; it’s
not
.
Abigail shrieking as the paramedics unloaded the stretcher and she barely recognized Laura. Abigail retching and sick in
the parking lot. Abigail blocking Hilary’s way, staring at her with pure hatred.
Look what your son did to
my daughter.
Look what he’s
done.
If she dies, it’s going to be on his head.

Hilary had already been flying toward the jail before she thought she ought to phone Eric. Any other weekend, he would have
been across the country instead of at a hotel near the Loop. This was the type of emergency that, had it happened the past
few years, she would have dealt with solo. This was the type of thing Eric had left her to take care of alone.

Of course it was being discussed now, all over town. The kids were texting. Jefferson High parents were clustered blearily
around kitchen counters everywhere, squinting into the unwelcome overhead light, hanging on to mugs of fresh-brewed coffee
as if they could hang on to the innocence their children had lost since yesterday.

Beyond the pools of streetlights, beyond the early-morning trash truck that was beeping and lifting a trash receptacle on
its rusty arms, the sky was still onyx dark. She pulled to the side of the road and sorted through the business cards she’d
never bothered to clean out of her purse. She found the card, its edges frayed because she’d been carrying it so long. And
she could still read the name: Roundtree, Gates, and Mulligan, Attorneys-at-Law. She dialed this number first.

She made her second call, this one to Eric. After several rings, Eric’s phone switched to voice mail.

You’ve reached the voice mail of Eric Wynn, financial advisor with Stearns, Madison, and Levy. I’ll return your call as soon
as possible. If the call is time sensitive or you’d like to buy or sell holdings, contact my assistant Mary Woods at…”

Up until now, Hilary hadn’t given any thought to how she would tell Eric what had happened, let alone what to say in twenty
seconds or less. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. No list of events in sequential order. No details of Laura
Moore.

“Hello? Call me when you get this. Please.” She hated herself for being this honest. She hated herself for the many times
she’d longed to say the same words before. She hated herself because it was a one-sided conversation and somehow that made
it easier to be intimate. “Eric. Seth and I need you.”

W
hen Seth had returned to the campsite, gasping for breath and exhausted, he found Laura gone and the clearing cordoned off.
Every police car, and there had to be at least seven of them, had a spotlight trained on a different area of the campground.
A detective approached him the moment Seth stepped into the light. “Do you mind answering a few questions for us, son? Would
you consent to that?”

Here I am
, Seth had almost said.
No need talking to anyone else. I can tell you anything you need to know.

The guy’s badge read:
Detective John Taylor, Unit 109. Felony Crime Division
. “What kind of questions?” Seth asked.

“General information. You know. Name. Age. You tell us what you witnessed here tonight.”

“I don’t know if I should,” he said, doubtful. “I’m Seth.”

“Have you been drinking at this party?” the officer asked. “Can you tell me where you were earlier? Why didn’t you stay with
your friends? Where were you going just now? Did you see her fall?”

It didn’t matter, really. Seth knew he deserved everything that would happen to him after he told the truth. He would deserve
the condemning glares of his friends. He would deserve the cold bite of the handcuffs and the shove into the police car. “I
don’t think I’m supposed to talk to anyone about this,” he said.

“So you’re Seth, huh?” John Taylor held up two fingers and asked Seth to follow the fingers with his eyes. He jotted a note
on his report. “I’m required to give you a BAC test. Do you know what that is? A Breathalyzer?”

Seth shrugged. “I know what it is.” And it surprised him, but after he blew into a straw and Taylor recorded the results there
wasn’t a special armed unit waiting to take Seth in. They loaded him into the police van with the others.

He lost track of his classmates during the endless wait in the holding cell before they called his name, the assembly-line
search to make sure he wasn’t bringing in weapons, the threadbare uniform pressed within an inch of its life that they thrust
into his hands. He went through all that before a precinct officer about as big around as the John Hancock Building told him
his lawyer was on the phone.

“I don’t have a lawyer. I don’t want one,” Seth said.

“You expect me to feel sorry for you, kid?” the massive man said. “You’ve got somebody looking out after you. Deal with it.”

Seth jammed the ancient phone receiver against his head like it was a wall he could knock his head against. “Hello,” he said,
his voice a low growl. He had no idea who he’d be talking to.

John Mulligan introduced himself and the conversation went downhill from there.

“I don’t have to talk to you, do I? You’re just a crook out to get my parents’ money.”

“You’ll talk to me if you have an ounce of sense in your head,” the voice growled back. “I’m a friend of your mom’s, did you
know that? Do you know she hired me?”

But if the guy thought that would make it better, he was wrong. “I don’t have anything to say.”

It didn’t matter to Seth. The damage had been done. And the most bizarre part of all, Seth felt a strange sense of relief.
He didn’t have to
be
anything for his mom anymore. He didn’t have to feel guilty about not being what she expected. But this lawyer was throwing
a barrage of questions out there; he still didn’t get it.

Address? Birthday? You’re already eighteen, aren’t you? That poses a problem.

What happened last night when you and Laura Moore were together? Approximate time you started on the climb? How much alcohol
had you consumed? How much have you told the police?

Did the officer force you to submit to the Breathalyzer test or did you consent? To your knowledge, had Laura been drinking,
too? Has she ever mentioned being unhappy?

Did she seem depressed? Is it possible she was suicidal? Could she have done it on purpose?

Seth choked back a sound of grief halfway between a sob and a shout of rage. “You don’t get it.” He slammed his hand against
the cinder-block wall. His knuckles were bleeding again. “How can you make it sound like it was her fault? It was
me
.”

“Look, Seth. You may have already condemned yourself to a life behind bars. But like it or not, unless you go out and do something
else stupid, that isn’t going to happen. Other than an MUI, which is a pretty hefty problem, they can’t charge you with anything
else. It was an
accident
.”

“But it was my fault. I was the one who convinced her to climb with me.”

“You said so yourself, Seth: You were the one who convinced her. But she let herself be convinced, didn’t she? I know how
you feel, but she didn’t have to agree.”

Seth leaned his head against the cinder blocks. “I
did
it, don’t you see? If not for me, it wouldn’t have happened. Don’t tell me you know how I feel.”

“Oh, believe me. I do. My wife died four years ago. I know how it feels to deal with pain. I know how it feels to blame yourself
for something.”

When the lawyer added nothing to that, Seth asked, “How do you know what blame feels like?”

“Because my wife died in a car accident. I was driving.”

The news hit Seth like a fist in the stomach. He didn’t know what to say. The silence hung between them, as firm and solid
as the cinder-block jail wall. It took Seth awhile before he could even speak at all. “So are you doing this as some big favor
to my mom or something?” he asked at last. “No lawyer would want to take this case.”

“What I’m doing is this: We all have to deal with what we have to deal with. I don’t care that you feel sorry for yourself
because you aren’t perfect. So you made a big mistake that hurt someone. You don’t get to check out; I’m not going to let
you. Life doesn’t work that way.”

Seth didn’t have to take this. He hung up. The guy was lying. Seth slumped against the wall and tried to make the disembodied
lawyer voice fade into background noise.

Once Seth was finished at the phone, they dragged him back for the health check, when they went over every inch of him looking
for diseases and took his weight, his height, as if he were going to belong to the state forever. When they slammed the stethoscope
against his chest during the health exam, he felt so empty that it surprised him they even found a heartbeat. Seth’s biggest
fear wasn’t that Laura Moore would die. It was walking out of this place and knowing he didn’t fit into his world anymore.
It was walking out of this place and knowing the person he’d been didn’t exist anymore. A black hole had been ripped in Seth’s
universe and he’d been the one who’d fallen through.

Pam awoke to Lily’s voice from the adjoining doorway. “Mommy?”

She sat up in the bed and held out her arms to her daughter. “Lily? What is it? Little goose, come here. Did you have a bad
dream? Why are you awake?”

“Daddy’s phone was ringing.”

“Was it?” Pam patted the hotel mattress beside her. “Here. Climb up. I don’t think it rang. You must have dreamed it. We didn’t
hear anything.”

“That’s because it’s in Ben’s and my room. Daddy left it there when he tucked us in.”

Eric had rolled over and was surveying them through sleepy, squinted eyes. “Why are you two awake?”

“Honey. I think your phone rang.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“Lily said it woke her up. You left it in the kids’ room.”

“My phone? Really?” He rolled out, taking half the covers with him, and went in search of it. He came back, still bleary-eyed,
trying to read the screen. “Yeah. It says I got a call.” He punched a button and held it against his ear.

From her place beside him, Pam could hear the request for a password, the first words of a message. She sat up straighter
and hugged Lily against her chest. “Honey, who is it?”

His brow had furrowed. He held up his hand. After he’d listened, he punched it off. “That was Hilary.”

“Oh my word.”

“What’s she doing? It’s crazy.”

“Something could be wrong, Eric.”

He was already dialing Hilary back. “I know.”

Ben appeared in the doorway, too, scrubbing his eyes. “Mom? What is it?”

Pam certainly hoped Hilary had a good reason, disturbing them all. Yes, Hilary worked crazy hours on her nursing shifts. And
yes, she was the mother of a teenager. But surely the woman had enough sense of reality to understand that other people tried
to sleep during the night.

Pam’s next thought:
Seth
. Fear clawed the back of her throat.

“Your dad’s phone rang; that’s all.” Then, to Eric, touching his arm: “Honey. The party.”

When the central air turned on in the hotel room, the curtains opened a crack to reveal the high-rises of downtown Chicago.
Even so early in the morning, the buildings shone in a collage of silver and glass and light. Pam propped her head on the
top of Lily’s and absently scratched Ben’s shoulder.

“Hilary?” Eric asked when the call rang through. “I saw you called.”

Pam watched her husband as, in the light that fell in through the curtain, his face went the color of stone. With her children
wedged on either side of her, she waited for him to reveal clues about what had happened. The knot bulged in his jaw again,
the one she’d grown accustomed to whenever he was hurt and angry. He asked only a few questions, which Pam couldn’t decipher.

Do you know where they took him? How long ago? Has he called you? They brought her to your hospital? You talked to the mother?

When Eric hung up, he looked at Pam and said this one thing: “You were right, Pam. You were right all along.”

He sat on the side of the bed and stared at the clock as one minute escaped into another.