One More Day (10 page)

When Ben first went missing, John had researched criminal lawyers for Carrie, just in case. Everyone had told him to do this, from his parents to his boss to his friends. And Carrie had been incredulous.
How is it possible
, she had asked,
that they could ever suspect me? What motive could I possibly have? There was no life insurance policy, no chronic illness to save him from, no desire to not be a mother anymore, to dance on top of tables at night clubs. What evidence suggests I wanted to get rid of my son?
And people had said,
Well, the terrible twos. It happens.
And she'd think about Ben's miniature rebellions—a few tears because he wanted a second cookie, throwing a sippy cup once when it was empty—so small you couldn't call them tantrums. Potty training, they'd say. Most people who beat their children do it over potty training. Ben hadn't been ready for that at two, so she didn't know from experience. But still, she'd think, really? When they'd been changing diapers for years, people suddenly balk at doing more of the same?

But even though Forrester and Nolan had questioned her vigorously then and perhaps doubted her abilities as a mother, she had believed the focus of the investigation was always on the man at the Y. There were too many witnesses who corroborated Carrie's statement—they saw her and Ben at the Y, and Carrie again outside Starbucks. The time frame was short—minutes. And no one the police had interviewed, driving the same route at the same time, saw a woman giving a child to someone else or taking a baby out of a car. No one. But John had kept the lawyers' names in his phone, and Carrie was incredibly glad he had.

When they got back to their house from the pond, Carrie shivering and John holding her tightly, John said he'd call them all and see who was available. He said they should interview them, meet with them to see which one Carrie liked best, and make a decision quickly.

“Like speed dating for criminals,” she said.

“Yes,” he said and smiled. She sounded like herself.

She went upstairs to change clothes. Her yoga pants and socks were still sodden from the knees down; a blade of silvery spartina stuck to the bottom of her short leather boot. She unzipped her boots, pulled them off, then swapped her yoga pants for dry jeans. She looked at her feet in her green socks and started to cry, thinking of Ben's feet without shoes. She sat down on the corner of the bed and tried not to look through the half-open closet door.
I have all my shoes
, she thought,
and he has none now.
She cried harder, letting the waves travel through her.
He has nothing, nothing anymore. And we don't have him.
She would never be able to wear sneakers again. Just thinking of the delicacy of canvas and laces, their cheap impermanence, broke her heart.

Finally, she stood up and grabbed a tissue, blew her nose. She threw it away and gathered up her jacket from the floor. She reached inside the front pocket, taking out the swatch of the dog's hair, lifting it to her nose. The salty, sugary smell that was so hard to explain to people who have never loved a dog. She opened her top bureau drawer and buried the small bundle in the corner, wishing she had a lock of Ben's hair too. But he had been too young; he'd never even had a haircut.

She blew her nose again and went downstairs.

John sat in the living room, his arm dangling off the edge of the sofa, his phone in the suspended hand. His eyes were focused on something far away.

“Are you sure,” he said slowly, “there's nothing more I need to know?”

“Know?”

“Something else you haven't told me, maybe?”

“John, what are you saying? God, I just can't believe—”

“Were you having an affair?” He blurted it out, this set of words he'd never spoken before, despite his worries, his flashes of jealous concern. A nice way of putting it, not “Were you fucking some guy at the Y?” That was the way another man would say it. Another man who wasn't careful about what he said to his wife.

“Affair?”

“That guy at the Y who no one can pinpoint,” he said slowly, struggling to swallow. “A couple of the women the police interviewed said he was handsome. Young. That's what they remember: not the color of his hair, or how tall he was, but that he was good looking.”

“John, don't start thinking like this again,” she said slowly. “Please don't believe that every guy on every street is after me.”

“I don't.”

“Good. Because the last time a man chased me down a street, it was to tell me I had toilet paper on my shoe.”

He managed a small smile for his wife. His pretty wife who didn't even need makeup or highlights, with her long lashes and hair that boasted golden threads every summer.

“You didn't answer my question.”

“John,” she said, grabbing the hand that didn't hold the phone. “No.”

“That guy was kind of good looking. In a hipster way. That Neil guy.”

“No. No, no, no, no. Please don't think such a thing.”

“He lives right around the corner too, and he has a dog, and he—”

“John, no. Please don't worry about this. Not now.”

“I know in the grand scheme of things, it seems…small, but—”

“No, no, it's not small. And it's not true, all right?”

“Okay.”

She stood up. “I'm going to take a drive.”

“A drive? Babe, you shouldn't be driving. This has been a terrible day—”

“I'm fine. I need to clear my head.”

“Let me drive you then. We'll go together.”

She shook her head. “I want… I need…I need to go to Saint David's. Alone.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. To the…cemetery.”

He blinked. “How will that look?”

“
Look?
” she said, screwing up her face. “To whom?”

John didn't say “to the police,” who were likely following her. Didn't say “to the community,” who might be watching. “To him” would have been the correct response. It didn't look good
to him
.

When he opened his mouth to try to explain, nothing came out at first. His half-ruined voice failed him, and he struggled to clear his throat.

“So I guess maybe you, um, miss your dad? Ben being gone kind of reminds you of that?”

“I guess,” she answered. “My grandmother used to say that all loss was the same.”

“I don't know if I believe that.”

She sighed. “Well, I'm going to stop to get flowers.”

He nodded. The idea of the flowers soothed him; it was so like her to think of that errand, to remember the niceties. It proved to him that she was actually better, that she was stronger than he ever gave her credit for. And part of him liked the thought of Nolan watching her from a car parked on a distant hill and feeling guilty as she laid the flowers down and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
Let them see that. Let them see the good in the things she did and not the bad.

Carrie didn't drive the long way this time. She stopped at the grocery store for a mix of lilies and roses and headed east on the main drag. She parked her car in the corner of the lot, away from the cluster of cars. As she walked to the small, square cemetery, the old sycamores edging the driveway barely moved in the breeze. Their knotted silver trunks bulged like the calves of old athletic giants, looking vulnerable and sturdy at the same time. A leaf fell into her hair, and she brushed it out with her hand. Green leaves, gray sky. Only a few gravestones dotted with colorful exclamations of flowers. She opened the gate.

She'd been surprised when her mother had buried her father here instead of at their own parish. As it turned out, her father had been christened at Saint David's, had attended services off and on as a child, and had inherited a plot from his grandfather's estate. But he and Danielle had raised Carrie a few towns to the west, rarely returning. When she'd first met John's parents, she had mentioned her father's connection to their church, thinking perhaps someone might remember her last name—Griffiths—from their years there. But they hadn't. Carrie visited the grave perhaps once a month. And though she hadn't felt close to her father for many years—she'd been almost as angry at him as her mother was—she didn't feel quite that way when she was at his grave.

She arranged the buds in the small opening near the modest headstone, then stood up and looked around, inhaled deeply. Wet earth, some of it ancient, some of it recently turned. The loam of decomposed flowers, bodies, leaves. Was that what she had smelled on Ben and again on Jinx at the pond? No. Maybe. She didn't know. But she also knew that wasn't the question she needed to ask. That wasn't why she came.

“Dad,” she whispered.

She tried to picture him, not sick like the last time she saw him, not angry and drunk, always drunk, like the last few years with her mother, but an earlier version, the one in her childhood photos. He'd been happy then, surely. Thin but strong, a ready smile. He'd taught her to play soccer; he'd driven her to gymnastics. Once, she'd had a normal father just like everyone else, someone who earned money and put it away and slept next to his wife at night.

She closed her eyes. She didn't know how to meditate, how to chant, how to breathe. How many times had Dr. Kenney suggested yoga to her? And how many times had she tried to explain that she was a mover, a doer, not a sitter and a breather? But she knew this much—she knew how to pray. She thought if she could pray for her father, he might appear. And if she could see him, then she'd know. Then she'd know. And then she could ask.

She opened the small prayer book she kept in her purse and looked up the verse she remembered vaguely from funerals, from Easter services.

Your soul is in the hands of God, and no torment will ever touch you.

God tested you and found you worthy of Him.

Mercy and grace are upon you, watching over you now.

“Dad,” she whispered. “Is Ben there with you? Is he…” She stopped, her breath caught in her throat, and she started to cry. “Is he safe?”

She opened her eyes. The light had changed; a few rays of sun broke through the cluster of clouds, bathing the gravestone in a thicker, brighter light. The flowers were there, the close-cropped grass. But that was all. No person. No entity. She looked around her, as if he could still surprise her, find another way in. She sighed. No revisionist history. Her father wasn't going to bring her a present from one of his “business trips,” change his mind about the divorce, win the lottery, or be summoned from death on command.

She lowered her head and prayed an ordinary Sunday prayer. She stayed half an hour, hands folded, going through the mental list she used whenever she bowed her head. She started with Ben, then went to John, then to whomever she knew, whomever she'd said hello to, a random person on the street who'd looked sad. She called those faces to mind and prayed for them, and for good measure, she prayed for all the dead people she'd known too.

Behind her, the church bells rang, car doors closed, engines turned. The clouds covered the last hopeful finger of sun, and she shivered.

Finally, she looked up to the heavens. “Well, Dad,” she said, “you never showed up when we needed you before. I don't know why I expected it to be any different now.”

She left one last space in the air for an answer, but there was none. She stood there a while longer, thought of all the questions Dr. Kenney had asked her about her father. Questions she had trouble answering, more questions than she had ever had when he was alive. And how, at the next appointment, he had moved on to John. Why John drove her to the office. Why John made her appointments.

“I've noticed that John likes to be involved in your life,” he'd said.

“He's protective of me.”

“Well, those are two different things, Carrie.” He hesitated a moment. “Is he ever what you would call overprotective?”

“Sometimes,” she said softly, then told him. Told him what she shouldn't have told him. He'd asked her to describe the first time John had followed her. The time of day, what she wore, what he said. She struggled, coming up with details, squirmed.

“It's hard to remember?”

“Yes.”

“Because there were so many times?”

She shrugged.

“How did that make you feel, Carrie? When John followed you.”

“I felt angry at first. Not trusted.”

“And then?”

“Then…I felt love.”

“Love?” he'd repeated, cocking his head and frowning a little, as if he'd heard her wrong.

Carrie left the cemetery to walk back to her car. No other people, no other cars left in the lot. It had to be a coincidence, what Forrester had said about John watching her. Surely the doctor wouldn't tell the detective—or Maya Mercer. Surely there were ethics about that, laws.

She turned the key in the ignition and drove home. She instinctively looked in her mirror every so often, only half expecting to see her husband trailing behind her.

Only two of the five lawyers John called said they were available—one being Jeb Harris, who had been in the news for successfully defending two Philadelphia rap stars in a drive-by shooting despite an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence. John didn't like Harris's attitude on the phone; it was as if he'd interrupted him. John felt like a nuisance rather than a client who would be paying him an extraordinarily high hourly rate, money he'd have to borrow from his parents.

The other was a young woman named Susan Clark, a former prosecutor who had “seen the light” and who told John she was fascinated by Ben's case, that she'd been following the story all year. The decision was easy. John arranged a short call between her and Carrie when Carrie got home from the cemetery, then searched for other high-profile names he could call in New Jersey and New York, just in case Carrie hated her.

Within seconds of introducing herself on the phone, Susan told Carrie she thought she should agree to a police interview right away, as proof that “we have nothing to hide.” She said
we
like they were a team. They spent a few minutes exchanging information, but everything Carrie offered, Susan already seemed to know. She put her on hold and a few seconds later came back on to tell her she had cleared her calendar and arranged for the detectives to meet them at the precinct at eight o'clock the next morning.

Carrie hung up the phone in the kitchen. She felt queasy, exhausted, empty. She opened the refrigerator, took out a can of Diet Coke, and poured it over ice. John was upstairs changing his clothes. She swallowed the caffeine gratefully, felt the rush of bubbles as she heard the drawers above her open and close slowly, the clinking of a belt buckle, a clatter of change going in and out of a new pocket. Finally, he came down and sat across from her, his face pale.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Carrie, I—”

“What, John?”

He opened his hand and held out the dog hair from the bureau. “Are you sure you're not in love with that guy?”

Carrie closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “You went through my drawers, John? What's next, a cavity search?”

“I don't understand,” he said.

“John,” she said, “you have to stop doing this. I am not having an affair with that dog guy, okay?”

He looked down at his hands, suddenly ashamed. The same look he had the night she'd caught him on the path at college. Hiding behind the bushes. Strong but weak, vulnerable as a boy. She reached up, kissed him hard, and held him.

“I love you, John,” she said.

“I love you too.”

“Then stop going through the closets and drawers.”