The Deepest Secret (25 page)

“What happened to her, Mom?” Tyler asks.

“It must have been an accident.”

“But she could swim.”

“Even strong swimmers can be overcome by the current.”

“That river barely moves. A baby could walk into it and be fine.”

“Will you just drop it?” Melissa snaps. “Isn’t everything terrible enough?”

“Oh, sweetheart.” His mom pats Melissa’s knee.

His sister jerks away. “Don’t
touch
me!”

“Tell me the truth,” Tyler says to his mom. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

“No, you’re not.”

“There are things I want to do.”

“Like what?” Her eyes are shadowed.

Like everything. “Drive a car.”

“Ty,” she starts, and he knows she’s going to tell him he can’t.

“How could you get your learner’s permit?” Melissa demands. “They need to take a photo ID. What if you have an accident and have to go to the hospital? What if you run out of gas? What if …” Her voice trails off. Even Melissa doesn’t want to list them all.

He knows. There are so many things that it’s impossible to get around them.

He can’t even go to the funeral.

Rosemary told him funerals were for people who were still living, not for dead people, and she didn’t want him to feel bad because he couldn’t go to hers. She asked him to think of all the good times they’d had together instead, and so that’s what he’s been doing. But it’s been hard. It makes him wonder if all that’s left of people after they’re dead are the memories other people carry around. What happens when those people die?

He knows how it’ll be. After an XP loss, the forums are busy with virtual hearts and flowers, everyone commenting, their words piling up into thick stacks. But eventually it all stops, and everything goes more or less back to normal.

I’ll remember you, Amy. Until I die
.

He hopes someone will remember him.

EVE

T
hey’re finally gone, the well-meaning neighbors and friends crowding her house, asking the same questions over and over, trying to rattle loose some explanation for what had happened. No one can know. No one can know. And after everyone leaves and the house is quiet again, the truth comes roaring back, shouting at top volume.

She finds herself on her hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, the toilet, and the shower stall. She takes a toothbrush to the kitchen grout, and scours the baseboards, sponging away the dirt and dust.

She carries the bucket outside to wash the pavers. Dawn’s ninety-three minutes away. The air’s already thinning, the rounded shapes of the chairs, the trampoline, the hydrangeas along the fence beginning to emerge from the blackness and claim space.

The faintest sheen of pink is in the distance.

There’s the fort David built. It’s been years since Tyler played in it. Amy had loved it. She had jumped her baby dolls up and down on the windowsills, waving their plastic arms as Eve worked in the garden. Amy had been five or so the day she’d suddenly cried out with pain, and Eve had immediately risen to run over to see what had happened. A spider? Had she twisted her ankle? Amy had held out a grubby finger and wailed,
I got a splinter
.

Eve had pulled Amy into her lap and tilted the finger toward her. Amy had sniffled, collapsed against her, so slight, so small. So trusting.
I killed you
.

Her cell phone’s ringing, and she tugs it from her pocket. She flinches when she sees the name on caller ID, but answers it anyway.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, Evie, I just saw the story on the news. How terrible, how truly terrible. How’s Charlotte? I hope she’s not alone.”

“Her mother’s here.” Reproach creeps into Eve’s voice. She doesn’t mean to let it—it’s not as if it would do any good—but it’s there, anyway. Her mother doesn’t demand,
Why haven’t you called?
Her mother’s accepted this distance between them.

“How are you, sweetheart? I know how important Amy is to you.”

This is unexpected, this kindness. It reminds her of how it used to be, when she could tell her mother anything, when they would sit up late into the night, both of them wrapped in their bathrobes, talking. “Oh, Mom.” That small thump, her car spinning around and around, everything leaping at her in the bright stab of headlights.

“I bet you’re not eating, are you? Or sleeping.”

The sympathy in her mother’s voice reaches her. Eve presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. How did she get here, in the middle of this twisted nightmare?

“David’s not there, is he? You’re all alone?”

The truth of this forces her into the chair.

“How about the children? This must be so traumatic for them.”

“I’m worried about them.”

“Melissa’s being quiet, isn’t she? You know that’s the way she is. She’s just like you in that way. No matter what, if you didn’t want to talk about something, you wouldn’t. I never could pry a word out of you. I had to just wait for you to come to me. She will. You wait and see.”

Her mother’s right. This makes the world tilt back onto its axis.

“And Tyler.” Her mother’s voice trails off. She has nothing to offer. She doesn’t know Tyler. She’s afraid of knowing him. “What can I do?” her mother asks instead. “How can I help?”

“Could you come for a couple of days?” Two days. That’s all. She could let her mother take over and she could just put everything down for a while.

“Oh, Evie. I don’t know.”

No, of course she doesn’t. Eve’s parents haven’t visited in years.
What if we open the wrong door by mistake? What if he gets burned?

A clatter of the phone, and her father’s on the line. “Eve!” he barks. “Did your mother tell you? We’ve decided to sell the house. Move somewhere where I don’t have to take care of a yard. So if there’s anything you want, you need to come get it.”

She clears her throat. “Like what?”

“Well, I don’t know. Your bedroom furniture. You want that?” The four-poster bed that swayed when she climbed into it? Her nightstand with the chipboard back held on by one precarious screw, the glass lamp that had to have the key turned just so or the light bulb wouldn’t go on. Or something that holds no market value but is steeped in family lore and sentimentality: the duck decoy that had been her grandfather’s first attempt at carving, the framed sketch of the old family farm? Perhaps this is an invitation to think on a grander scale—the dining room set, her great-aunt’s china, her parents’ wedding silver. A rug, Crock-Pot, television set?

Maybe this distance is Eve’s fault. She could have tried harder to
help her mother accept Tyler’s illness. Eve had urged them not to worry, that Tyler would stay in his room until it was safe for him to come out, that of course the lamps in the living room wouldn’t harm him or the solar ones lining the patio. That even if their schedules didn’t mesh, her parents being early risers, there would still be a few hours for them to get to know their grandson before he went into his bedroom for the day or before they went to sleep at night.
He’s eightieth percentile
, she’d tell them after a visit to the pediatrician, meaning
he’s not fragile
. Meaning
he’s normal in every way but one
. But after that disastrous visit when Tyler was five, her parents had refused invitations to spend holidays or birthdays, or attend Melissa’s riding competitions. They were okay Skyping, though reluctant, unsure of the technology and always worrying that Eve couldn’t hear or see them. And now, listening to her parents’ voices on the telephone, Eve realizes she can’t hear them at all.

The radio station is in a stolid yellow brick structure across from a strip mall. Inside, it’s not much better, plain beige hallways and the glass-walled room of the studio.

Eve and Gloria don’t sit in the upholstered chairs but stand by the glass and watch Charlotte on the other side, a microphone in front of her. Trish Armstrong is happy to give Charlotte fifteen minutes. She’s a mother herself, she’d said on the phone, and had been following this story with great sympathy. Of course, the police aren’t looking for Amy anymore, but Charlotte had insisted on doing the interview anyway, in hopes it jogged loose some clues.

The interview is being piped into the room.

“…  tell us what happened the night your daughter went missing.”

Charlotte straightens before replying. She’s described those last few minutes a million times in Eve’s hearing. Eve could recite them
all back, word for word, each one a nail hammered in. Charlotte turns her bracelet around and around. She’d removed her wedding ring the day Owen moved out, months before he filed for divorce. She’d known that their marriage was over right from the start. She’d understood that Owen would never forgive her, and maybe her acceptance of that had hastened her marriage’s demise. Charlotte’s talking, her mouth forming words, her eyes tracking Trish closely. Her need for Trish’s understanding and sympathy is naked on her face. It’s painful to see her friend stripped this way.

“What would have possessed your daughter to go down to the river in such a storm?”

They’ll never know. It’s cruel to wonder. Amy had dashed across the road in front of Eve’s car, and Eve had struck her and sent her tumbling down the ravine to her death. Amy had been a pale blur, unrecognizable. But had Amy seen Eve? Had she, at that last terrible moment, turned her head and seen Eve bearing down on her? Eve puts her forehead to the cold glass.
Please let it have been quick. Please let it have been over in an instant, peaceful
.

“We’re hoping the autopsy will give us some answers,” Charlotte says.

“They’re rushing it,” Gloria says in a low voice, though Charlotte can’t hear her through the thick glass. “That’s one good outcome from all this media attention, I guess.”

“Yes.” Eve focuses on Charlotte’s face, the way she holds her chin up, the line between her eyes. But still the thought slides in. Right now, just a few miles away, Amy is lying on a cold steel table, alone, covered with a sheet, waiting for the sharp tip of the scalpel blade.

What will the autopsy reveal? Will they discover some metal shard or paint flake? Eve’s hair, her saliva, her tears? It’s sickening to be thinking these thoughts. They crowd her brain and throb against her temples. No matter how much aspirin she swallows, pain pounds behind her eyes.

“The medical examiner says Amy’s neck was broken,” Gloria says. “He said he could tell right away. I hope that means it was fast. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

The loose feel of Amy’s head between her hands. Hot coffee slops over her fingers.

Trish is saying, “What else do you want us to know about your little girl?”

Eve’s thinking about this, about how it’s impossible to sum a child up in a few phrases, when Trish says, “I understand the police have been called to your house on multiple occasions.”

Gloria clutches her arm. “Once.
Once
.”

“That has nothing—” Charlotte begins, but Trish overrides her. “I understand you took a polygraph.”

“Yes. I did. So the police could rule me out.”

“How did that go?”

“Fine. It went fine.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, but I’m a little surprised.” Trish adjusts the microphone, brings it closer to her lips. Her voice changes, turns silky. “My sources say it was inconclusive.”

A moment of silence. “I don’t …” Charlotte says.

“You can see how things look, can’t you?”

“I …”

“Charlotte, did you harm your daughter?”

“Of course not!”

There’s something she’s not telling us
, Gloria had said.

“I’ve been told the police consider you a suspect.”

Charlotte sits back, her face blank. She scrabbles at the microphone clipped to her blouse. She yanks it free and stands. Eve’s got the door open for her when Charlotte strides through it. She doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t seem to see her or Gloria.

It’s in the car that Eve says, “Polygraphs aren’t reliable. Everyone knows that. They’re not even admissible in court.”

“It doesn’t matter. The police think I’m guilty. You heard that woman. I’m their prime suspect.”

“Maybe for now,” Eve says, desperate. “But not for much longer.” Not after they get back the autopsy results. No one will believe that Charlotte got into her car and ran down her child.
Ran down her child
.

“What makes you say that, Eve?” Gloria asks, and Eve glances in the rearview mirror to see Gloria frowning at her. With the cold suck of fear, she realizes she’s made a mistake. How can she explain herself?

It’s Charlotte who answers, her thumbnail to her mouth. “Eve’s loyal, Mom. She always sees the best in everything.”

Loyal
. All the good things are draining away, slipping through her grasp and splashing to the ground. She’s clutching air.

She looks at Gloria, holds her gaze in the mirror.

Gloria’s the first to look away. “Well, let’s hope you’re right,” she says.

DAVID

H
e can’t believe they’d found Amy in the Scioto. He’d searched up and down that river. Lots of people had. But she’d been underwater the whole time. Even the search dogs hadn’t been able to find her.