The Deepest Secret (36 page)

So she’s not upset about his being there. She doesn’t know that Melissa’s in trouble. She’s just worried about the skunk. She crouches and stabs at the grass with her trowel. “I’ve been trying to dig them up. Do you know what they look like?”

“Like white worms.”

“That’s right.”

She’s curved up like a
C
, her chin almost touching her knees. The bones of her spine poke up a line of bumps beneath the tautness of her dress. Her feet are bare, blades of grass standing up between her toes.

“Do you want me to help?” He looks around for a fallen tree branch. Grubs don’t dig in deep. He can poke them out for her with a sharp stick.

“Can you see with those sunglasses on?”

She’s not being mean, just matter-of-fact. “Sure.” He can see lots of things with his sunglasses on. He has his eyes checked every six months, even his eyelids are flipped up and examined. His doctor says the reason he has good vision is because he wears shades all the time.

He squats beside her. Her dress is tight around her calves, and there are small irregular patches of polish on her toenails, silver, like moonlight. They work for a while. It’s too dark to see much, but she seems intent on the process so he tries to see into the dark earth for the telltale pale gleam of a grub.

“They say the hardest thing in the world is losing a child,” she says. “They say you never get over it. Do you think it’s true?”

“I guess.” His mom gets quiet sometimes, looking at him.

“Do you think it’s worse when your kid’s little or when they’re older?”

“I don’t know.” He’s never once thought about it. Does the age of a person matter?

“It’s got to be worse when they’re older. I mean, they’re lumps when they’re babies. It’s not like they can talk or anything. They just lie there and cry.”

This is a weird way to talk about a baby, especially when you have one. He’s splashing around in a big deep pool and can’t see the sides.

“Maybe she’s relieved,” Holly says.

Charlotte’s not relieved, though. He knows that for certain. “I think she’s just sad.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe Amy’ll be born to another family and have a different life.”

“You mean like reincarnation?” He jokes about this with his XP friends all the time. Although, sometimes, they’re not joking.

“What if you could come back as someone different? What if you could have a do-over, not make the same mistakes again?”

What if he could come back as a kid who didn’t have XP? “What kind of mistakes?” he asks, feeling brave.

“All of them. What if you could live a perfect life? You wouldn’t have to worry about money, or love, or responsibility. You could be happy. You could be free.”

“You’re not happy?”

“Mark says I should be.” She’s angry, but what about? Did he say something to upset her?
I was going to be an actress
, she’d said.

Dirt is just the mashed-up pieces of rock. It’s soft and yielding, but it once was hard. This dirt is limestone and shale. Way below it, deeper than man has ever gone and probably ever will, lies enormous
reservoirs of sandstone, metamorphic and igneous rock. He used to think that he could reach them with his little plastic shovel. He and his mom would carve out holes in their backyard and they wouldn’t get too far before he’d give up. Probably, all told, he’d only gone a few inches beneath the surface.

“Holly?” he says, and shivers at the warmth of saying her name. “A new detective came by today.”

“Detective Irwin? He talked to me, too.” The muscles of her arm are tight as she punches the ground.

“Do you think he’ll find out who did it?”

“Probably.”

He focuses hard on the hole he’s digging, churning up small chunks of dirt. “What if it turns out to be a kid?”

“That won’t change anything. Anyone who’s old enough to drive is old enough to be tried as an adult.”

He bashes the point of his stick into the soil, tearing up pieces of grass, and spies something small, smooth, and light-colored. A grub? He scrabbles at the dirt around the soft gray shape and pulls out a flower bulb. A long scrape marks where the edge of his stick cut into its flesh. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Still, he pushes the bulb back into the ground and presses the soil all around it. “It’ll be okay,” he promises.

She doesn’t answer. She’s stabbing at the ground over and over with her trowel, and if there are any grubs lying there, they’re probably being smashed to pulpy pieces. He supposes that’s just as good as pulling them up and dropping them into a bucket. “I don’t think you have to worry about the skunks anymore,” he tells her. “Someone’s poisoning them. I saw a dead one the other night.”

She nods. “Good.”

He doesn’t know why this bothers him. Skunks are pests. He jabs the stick into the dirt and sees the telltale pale curve. “Here’s one.” He pincers the fat creature from its hiding place.

“Kill it.”

He looks at the grub coiled in his palm. It had given no resistance to being plucked from its home. It lies there with its shiny little brown head and its miniature antenna, its front legs curled peacefully by its round tail, as though it’s sleeping. How can he kill something that has no idea its end is so near? He nudges it with his finger to wake it up and give it fair warning, but it lies perfectly still. Is it feigning death, or is it really and truly dead? Amy had been alive one moment, then dead the next. She would have appeared to be sleeping, too.

He heaves the grub into the air. It lands on the sidewalk, tiny legs churning. The grass is coming alive, every blade defining itself, turning greener right before his eyes.

The rocks that line the flower bed are rosy; birds are singing. Colors begin to emerge from the darkness: the blue of Dr. Cipriano’s shutters, the red of the Farnhams’ car, the green of Sophie’s mailbox. This is the world hidden from him.

The sun’s coming up, the earth rolling toward it like a marble across the floor.

EVE

D
etective Irwin had been on his way out the door when he stopped and looked as though a thought had just occurred to him.
Mind if I look in your garage?
She had answered right away.
Sure
. Later she wondered if she should have protested out of feigned innocence, but instead she had led the man meekly through the house and out to the garage. He had crouched and studied both cars, shined his flashlight all around. When he stood up his face showed nothing at all.
Just a formality
, he’d said.
We’re checking everyone’s vehicles
. Thank God she’d been driving her car around. Thank God the fender had some wear on it.

After Charlotte left, Eve had opened a bottle of wine. She never drank when David was out of town—what if there was an emergency?—but she twisted the corkscrew in and pulled the cork out with a resounding pop. She stood at the kitchen counter and drank down
half a glass before refilling it, then went back in to sit with the children. They all felt bruised. Charlotte’s accusations spun around and around them, the conviction in her voice when she said,
That detective, he’s getting to the bottom of this. He’s close
. Thinking of it, Eve had gotten up and poured another glass.

After Melissa leaves for school, Eve goes into her daughter’s room, breathes in a feral tangle of aromas—the bitter tang of nail polish, sweet floral shampoo, baby powder deodorant. Papers lie in drifts across the floor, covered with her daughter’s tiny cramped handwriting. She picks up a sheet, an essay about President Lincoln. Melissa’s doodled in the margin, a series of interlocking hearts with her initials,
ML
, and
AB
. Adrian’s. Eve glances at the date scrawled at the top right-hand corner, sees this paper’s from last spring. Melissa and Adrian had only started dating over the summer, so these hearts were wishful thinking.

Clothes, slippers, the cookie-shaped pillow Melissa sewed in middle school, belts, purses, the rhinestoned shoes she wore to Homecoming freshman year with heels as thin as pencils. Her pony-printed umbrella, the huge floppy cloth doll with long yellow yarn hair that Eve’s mother had given her for Christmas ages ago.

Under the bed lie textbooks, more papers, shiny silver CDs.

Her dresser drawers hang open, overflowing with underwear and bras and shirts. She pokes around the back of the sock drawer—not one of them bundled into a matching pair—and feels the smooth surface of glass. It’s a bottle of hard lemonade. Four of them, all empty, fitted neatly into the drawer like puzzle pieces and covered up by the mishmash of socks.

She stands there, holding one, and thinks about this. Melissa had somehow gotten hold of alcohol, brought it into the house, and consumed it, all without Eve’s knowing. She’d been clever about it. She could have sneaked these bottles into the trash or the recycling, taken them somewhere else entirely, but she’d hidden them here, within easy reach. It’s as if she wanted Eve to find them.

Eve drives to school to pick up her daughter. When Melissa comes out of the school building and sees her standing there, her step slows. “What happened? Is it Tyler?”

Eve feels a wash of sorrow. Always this. Look what she’s done. “Tyler’s fine.” She has the impression of something hurtling toward her. Her daughter has needed her, and Eve has been absent.
That detective, he’s getting close
. “I thought we could spend some time together.” These past days have been a murky blur. She has no memory of them. She feels her grasp on her daughter’s life loosening. She wants desperately to pull her child close.

Melissa adjusts her backpack over her shoulder. Her face becomes implacable. “Why, so you can yell at me some more? Dad already did.”

“No, not so I can yell at you. Want to go to the barn? It’s been years since I’ve been there.” Taking Melissa to her lessons has been David’s purview, their special time together.

“You’re acting weird. What is it? Is it the police?”

That terrible scene with Charlotte. That terrible, terrible scene.
I thought you were my friend!
“No, I just want to meet that mean horse Sammy you’ve been talking about.”

“I don’t want to go to the barn.”

Eve holds up the remote and unlocks the door. “Are you sure? Didn’t you tell me one of the horses is about to have a foal?” This detail comes to her, bobbing amid a sea of disjointed impressions and conversations.

“You don’t even like horses.”

“Sure I do.” But it made Eve nervous, watching Melissa bounce in the saddle. She was always worried the animals would pick up on that.

“No, you don’t.” Melissa gets into the car and slams the door.

Eve takes a deep breath. “Melissa,” she says. “I talked to Brittany’s mom.” Nancy had been quick to leave work to meet Eve for
coffee.
I promised Brittany I wouldn’t say anything, but we mothers have to stick together
.

“So?”

“So I know Brittany’s been drinking.”
Brittany wouldn’t get out of bed. I thought she had the stomach bug. Turns out she was hungover. Can you believe it?
“I know you have, too. I found the empties in your drawer.”

Melissa straightens. “You were in my room? You went through my things?”

All those times Melissa kept her bedroom door firmly closed. Eve had had no idea. “How long has this been going on? Have you been drinking at other people’s houses?”

“Like it’s such a big deal. Everyone drinks in high school.”

“I don’t care about everyone. I care about you.” She reaches out to tuck a dangling strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear, but Melissa jerks away.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Of course you can’t. You’re only sixteen. I understand you think that’s all grown-up, but it isn’t.” Melissa scowls and crosses her arms. She looks the very picture of her toddler self. “I love you. I love you so very much. You know that, don’t you?”

Some kids clatter by; their laughter reaches them through the closed windows. Melissa scrunches down in her seat. “Mom, stop.”

“I know I focus on your brother. I know I don’t pay as much attention to you. I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m fine!”

But she’s not. “You’ve been so moody lately. Something’s bothering you. Tell me. Talk to me.”

“If we’re not going anywhere, then I’m going back to class.” Melissa puts her hand on the door handle, and Eve reaches out without thinking for her daughter’s arm. Melissa shakes her free. “Seriously, Mom?”

“Honey,
please
.”

“I had sex. S-E-X. Okay? You happy now?”

Eve sits back, stunned. She can’t speak. Melissa’s face is twisted with triumph.

“Adrian?” Eve manages, but this isn’t what she really wants to know. What she wants to know is,
Are you okay? Was he kind?
What she wants to say is,
This can never be undone
.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We have to talk about it. Are you using birth control? Please tell me you are.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business.”

“Sure it is.” Melissa is staring steadfastly out the window.
“God.”