Pictures of You (8 page)

Isabelle eagerly led him into the living room, nearly toppling, and he quickly offered a hand to steady her, holding her tightly. He helped her to sit and then pulled up the black leather chair of Luke’s for himself. “What happened to the other people?” Isabelle blurted. “Please, you have to tell me.”

He looked at her mildly. “Let me get some information down, first,” he said. Her stomach twisted. He pulled out a dime-store notebook and a black pen that had chew marks on the tip, and Isabelle was suddenly conscious of her matted hair, and she wrapped it into a clumsy knot. “Your husband gave us your insurance information,” he said. “So we don’t need to go there.” He nodded at her, expectant. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

She looked at her hands, which were still jeweled with bruises. There was a thin white band of flesh where her wedding ring had been. She wanted to get it over with, so she started to talk. Every once in a while he asked her a question, but she kept noticing how bored he looked, and more than a few times he glanced at his watch. “What was your speed?” he asked. “What was the visibility?”

“There was so much fog,” she said. She swallowed. “I was only going about thirty.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened to the woman and the boy?” Isabelle said.

He looked up at her and for the first time she noticed that his eyes were a soft, mild blue, like cat’s eyes. “I thought you would know. The woman died instantly,” he said.

The air around Isabelle turned to ice. Her skin prickled. The detective was still talking, his words swimming toward her. “The boy’s okay,” he said. “Scratched up, but he’ll live.” He tapped his pen against the pad. “From all we could gather so far, looks like you’re in the clear. Appears that you did nothing wrong and the other woman was negligent.” He told her they checked the skid marks and saw that Isabelle wasn’t speeding. They’d seen how heavy and dense the fog was firsthand, and it was clear that no driver could see through the soup of it. “You did everything right, to my mind. You weren’t talking on your cell phone, being distracted?”

“There was a hornet in the car,” Isabelle whispered.

“A hornet?” He looked at her, but he didn’t write anything down.

“It wouldn’t leave.”

He glanced down at his notes. “The coroner’s report isn’t in yet,” he said. “If she was dead already before the accident, or on drugs, that would rule out homicide charges.”

“Homicide!” Isabelle cried. “She was alive! I saw her standing in the middle of the road!” She wept into her hands and he shut the notebook. She grabbed for a tissue on the table, blowing her nose.

“You weren’t speeding,” he said. “You didn’t flee the scene and you weren’t drunk or on drugs. I’m filing the case as a formality, and I’ll tell you what. I know what’s going to happen before I even do it. The DA’s going to reject it. The woman’s car was pointing the wrong way and the lights were off. She was in the middle of the
road. She was negligent. There’d have been no way you’d have been able to see the car in all that fog, no way you could have stopped. We didn’t even see the smoke from the cars at first because of all the fog. Worst that’ll happen is your insurance rates’ll jack up.”

Isabelle tried to keep track of everything he was saying, but his words seemed to be slurring.

“Forget wrongful death,” he said. “There’s not enough evidence for even a civil suit. And for a criminal case, we’d have to have witnesses.” The detective stood up.

“The little boy—”

“He doesn’t count as a witness. He was deep in the woods when we found him. Sick with asthma. Highly unlikely he saw anything.” He stood up. “We’ll be in touch,” he said. “Don’t get up. I’ll let myself out.”

Isabelle felt frozen to the chair. Wrongful death. She heard the door open and then close.

The woman died
. She covered her face with her hands. She wouldn’t kill flies. When Luke had found a mouse in the kitchen, she wouldn’t let him call an exterminator and insisted on getting one of those humane traps and freeing the mouse outside after they had caught it.

She had killed a woman.

She cried harder, great tearing sobs that made her feel as if someone had punched a hole in her heart. They had all known. Luke. Her friends. She’d call them and they’d deny it, or they’d tell her they were just protecting her.

She managed to stand up, though her legs had turned to water. She should have known, too. She went into the kitchen, where her laptop rested on the table. She turned the computer on, found the local paper, and went back three days, to Friday, when the accident had happened. Nothing. It had probably happened too late to make the evening edition. She swallowed and hit the link for Saturday’s paper and there it was, spilled across the front page.

Was Mysterious Murderous Crash
a Snap Judgment of Local Photographer?

Isabelle stood up and then sat down again.

A terrible fog may have led to a mysterious two-car accident Friday that killed a local woman, say the sheriff’s investigators. The woman, April Nash, 35, of 134 Mayfield Street, a waitress at the Blue Cupcake, was apparently driving the wrong way on a one-way road. Her Mercury sedan was parked in the center of the road when it was slammed into by a Honda driven by local child photographer Isabelle Stein. Ms. Nash was instantly killed, and her son and Ms. Stein were both taken by ambulance to Hartford Hospital and later released in good condition. Friends say Ms. Stein was traveling to New York City, but what Ms. Nash and her son were doing on the road was unclear.

County Sheriff Lt. Bob Saldo said an investigation was pending. “We don’t have witnesses, but clearly something was out of the ordinary here and we intend to get to the bottom of it.” Saldo encouraged anyone with information regarding the crash to call 555-987-5940. An investigation is pending.

There was a black-and-white photo, as shocking as a slap, of two crumpled cars on a lonely road. There was her car, her little Honda, smashed like a metal toy. Pointed toward it was the other car, ruined beyond recognition. For a second, Isabelle covered her eyes. She forced herself to look again, and there was an inset of a beautiful woman laughing, her light hair artlessly cropped, her eyes big as dinner plates. Isabelle began to shake.

April Nash. Her name was April Nash and she was lovely and a mother and a wife and she was only thirty-five years old. Younger than Isabelle. She worked at the Blue Cupcake, where Isabelle sometimes went to get coffee. She had probably seen her lifting trays and chatting with customers. They could have passed each other on the street all the time. They could have been friends.

Isabelle touched the screen with her fingertips and started crying again.

When the phone rang, she almost didn’t answer it. She had fallen asleep on the kitchen table, her face pressed against the wood. The wall phone was so close, it seemed to be ringing in her ears. She sat up, reaching for the receiver, desperate for the sound to stop. “Hello?” she rasped.

“You’re all right?” The voice was sharp. It had been years and years of calls unreturned, letters come back in the mail. But she knew who it was and she gripped the phone. “Mom. It’s so great to hear your voice. You can’t imagine—”

“Your accident is in the Boston papers. Everyone is talking about it. I nearly died when I saw your photo. I called the hospital and they told me you were all right, so I didn’t have to come down there.”

“I’m all right,” Isabelle said. She felt a sudden tug. She felt ten years old, wanting her mother there to smooth her hair back and tell her that she was Nora’s baby girl. Her mother snorted. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder about this mess. That’s you all over, barreling ahead, getting into trouble, never thinking about the consequences. I tried to stop you when you got involved with Luke, but you wouldn’t listen. And now what? You’ve killed a woman and ruined your life.”

The floor was moving under Isabelle’s feet. Her tongue felt as if it were weighted with stones. “Mom,” she whispered. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what? You never understood anything that I was trying to do for you,” Nora said. “I’m glad you’re all right, but that doesn’t mean I approve of your life,” and she hung up the phone. Isabelle held the receiver against her forehead and shut her eyes.

T
HREE DAYS AFTER
April died, Charlie woke up on the floor of Sam’s room, a toy airplane cutting into his shoulder. He was drenched in sweat, still in the same clothes he had worn to the hospital. He hadn’t intended to sleep here, but last night Sam had shouted in his sleep and Charlie had raced in, switching on the light. “Mommy!” Sam had cried, and he looked so small and fragile that Charlie had held him until Sam fell back asleep. Charlie couldn’t bear to leave him. And more than that, Charlie couldn’t stand to be in his own bed alone.

For the past two days, the two of them had done nothing but sleep. He had left Sam only once, calling a sitter so he could go and take care of the paperwork for the funeral home to have April cremated. When they asked what he wanted to do with the ashes, he went blank. “Let us know,” the funeral director said.

Today, though, he had to get them back in a routine. He had to call people. And he had to tell Sam that April was dead.

He was about to stand when he caught a whiff of beach salt. His head reeled. The room smelled like April. For one crazy moment, he imagined her coming into the room. He heard footsteps and he glanced up, sickeningly expectant. “You big silly. It was a mistake,” she would say.

“April?” he said. Every detail of that morning rushed back to him.
The smell of the coffee. The way April kept winding around him. They had argued and he’d been in a bad mood, but was that enough for her to snatch up their son and leave?

Sam coughed. The April smell vanished and Charlie looked at his son. Right now, he felt as if Sam were the only thing anchoring him to the earth, that without him, he might dissolve into a thousand pieces. You breathe, I breathe, he thought.

Charlie tucked Sam in and walked out of his room. He’d tell Sam after breakfast. He went to the kitchen and stood there for a moment. He drummed his fingers on the counter, and then he jerked open the kitchen cabinet to get plates for breakfast. When they fell out of his hands, smashing on the floor, he began to cry. April. Oh Jesus, April. His wife was dead and he didn’t know why.

“Daddy.”

He looked over. Sam was wavering in the doorway. Charlie crouched beside him. “Are you okay?”

Sam nodded.

“No asthma?”

Sam shook his head. “Where’s Mommy?” he asked, and Charlie gently pushed Sam’s bangs out of his eyes.

“Where were you going with Mommy in the car?” Charlie said carefully.

Sam didn’t move. “Is Mommy still at the hospital?”

“Did you pack clothes for winter or for summer? A lot or a little?”

“I didn’t pack anything.”

Charlie tried to swallow the panic rising along his spine. “Mommy packed for you?” he asked. “Where were you going? Why did she take you out of school?”

Sam stepped back. “I don’t know!” he said.

Sam shut his eyes and Charlie heard him humming, low and deep, the way he did when he wanted to shut people out. Today, it was one more closed door that made Charlie feel he was about to break into pieces. “Come on, Sam. You do so know! You were
there! What did your mother say? What did you talk about before you left? What did you talk about in the car? Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“You’re hurting me, Daddy!” Sam cried, and instantly Charlie loosened his hands. He stood up, his body shaking. Oh God, what kind of a man was he to grab his own child like that? What kind of a father? “Sam, I’m sorry. Sam—” he said, but Sam ran out of the room, back to his bedroom, and when Charlie got there, he wouldn’t open the door.

Never had Charlie hated himself so much. He stared at his hands and then he tapped on Sam’s door. When there was no response, he tried to open it, but the door was locked. “Please open the door,” he begged. “I’m so sorry. Please. I’m right outside.”

He waited outside Sam’s door for ten minutes and then finally tried the door again. This time it opened, but Sam was asleep again, sprawled on his bed. Charlie lifted him up and slid him under the covers. He bent down to kiss his son’s cheek.

Charlie went back into the kitchen and put the kettle on. He didn’t feel like coffee or tea. He didn’t feel like straightening the house. Sick with grief, Charlie called his parents. As soon as his mother answered, he started sobbing.

“Honey.” His mother never called him honey. She had never cared for April, but as soon as he told her, she got efficient, the same way she was with her garden clubs and book groups. “We’ll be there tonight,” she said. “We’ll help however we can.”

Charlie didn’t know what that meant. With his parents, it usually meant money—taking care of the bills, going out to eat, hiring help, all of it somehow under their rules, as if he were still a boy instead of a man. It always ticked him off, but right now, he was frankly too exhausted to be anything but grateful. Money wasn’t a problem, but he could use the help. And Sam could use the extra attention, two adults who weren’t tearing apart at the seams the way Charlie was.

Charlie picked up the broken plates; he swept and washed the floor. When he got to April’s clothes, he didn’t know what to do with them. He couldn’t hang them in the closet, but he couldn’t bear to throw them out, so he put them in a bag and stuffed it deep in the closet. In a few hours, the house was tidy, but Charlie still wasn’t tired. He was cleaning up the spare room when he heard Sam in the kitchen.

“Hi, Daddy.” Sam was setting the table, clumsily folding the paper napkins, anchoring them with forks, all the while his eyes glued to the little TV on the counter, which showed a cartoon hand wearing a pair of pants and dancing around. Sam moved his bandaged arm awkwardly. “I set the table, Daddy,” Sam said. Charlie saw the three plates, the multicolored cereal bowl April loved. His head reeled and he sat down. “You don’t have to do that,” Charlie said quietly. He cupped Sam’s head in his hands and tried to sit him down.