“Jayne, it’s not... it’s never going to come to that.”
“How can you know?”
I couldn’t come up with a reply.
Jayne said, “There’s no way this ends well, is there? I mean, if it’s Brie, then our life’s in total chaos. If it isn’t her, this detective never stops trying to prove you killed her. Either way, I could end up losing you.”
“No,” I said.
She turned her head away.
“We just have to see what happens,” I said.
“That’s your plan?”
“I don’t know what else to say. We can’t worry about things we’re powerless to change. Our priorities, as of this moment, are to make sure you and this baby you’re carrying are okay. And that we can make things work here for Tyler.”
I leaned in and hugged her. She put her arms around me but didn’t squeeze.
“Maybe I should... maybe this is the wrong time to bring a child...”
“No,” I said. “Don’t think that way.”
I stood, gave her the most comforting smile I could muster, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I stood there, looking into the mirror, I had to concede that maybe Jayne was right.
There’s no way this ends well.
The last thing I did before I turned off the light was mute my phone and plug it into the charging cord I left sitting on the bedside table. A second after I hit the light, my phone lit up silently with an incoming call.
On the screen, the word NORMAN.
I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to talk to less than Isabel’s husband. So I flipped the phone over and got under the covers.
Twenty-Five
Norman was sitting in one of the two family room recliners, in darkness except for a dull glow from the phone he held in his palm, when Isabel tracked him down.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” she asked, flicking on a light.
“Nothing,” he said, tucking the phone under his thigh. He was in his pajamas, wrapped in a housecoat, his legs propped up, his upper body tilted back.
“I woke up, you weren’t in the bed. I thought maybe you were sick. Are you sick?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Is it your stomach?” she asked, almost accusingly. “You buried your potato in sour cream. You know that can upset your stomach. I knew when you did it that you were going to have problems. Did you take some Pepto?”
“I told you, I’m fine,” he said.
“Maybe you should have some Pepto anyway, just to be sure,” Isabel told him.
He turned and looked at her. “Why can’t you ever just leave me alone?”
“I show some concern, and that’s what you say?”
“You’re never concerned,” he said. “You just look for opportunities to pick at me.” In a mocking voice, he said, “You had too much sour cream. Why’d you have that extra beer? Why didn’t you find a free parking space?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Isabel said. “And maybe, if you’d been through what I’ve been through, you’d understand if I’m a little on edge.”
“Six years of being a little on edge is about six years more than I can take.”
Isabel found herself momentarily speechless.
“I keep wondering what it is that drives you,” he continued. “At first I thought it was an honest desire to get justice for Brie. That you were hounding Andrew because you believed it was the right thing to do. But I’ve decided it’s more than that. I’m not even sure you think he did something to Brie, that he killed her. I think you just need to shift the guilt you feel onto someone else.”
“How dare you,” Isabel said.
“At first I thought you felt guilty because you weren’t here for her, that we weren’t part of the search for the first couple of days. That if we hadn’t gone to Boston that Saturday night, if you hadn’t canceled plans to see your sister, maybe none of this would have happened. I still think it’s guilt that drives you, but not about us being away.”
“Jesus, Norman, you’re embarrassing yourself. You think you’re Dr. Phil.”
“You wish you could take it all back. All the things you said.”
“I have no idea what you’re—”
“Oh please, this is me you’re talking to. It was always a competition to you. Who was the smarter sister, the prettier sister. The way you talked about her behind her back, putting her down. Kind of like you do with me. It’s how you make yourself feel superior. But then when Brie vanished, you felt badly about all those things you’d said, all those—”
“I’m not listening to any more of this,” Isabel said, and started to walk out of the room.
But Norman wasn’t finished. “You know what I think? I think you’re hoping it wasn’t Brie that we saw today. That’d be the last thing you’d want. So then you can go on blaming Andrew. If it’s really her, you’d have to face her, come to terms with the contempt you’ve felt for her.”
Isabel kept on walking, flicking off lights along the way.
When he heard the upstairs bedroom door close, Norman took his phone back out from under his thigh and brought it to life. Still on the screen was an image he’d been looking at when he’d had to hide the phone from his wife.
A picture of Brie.
Maybe Isabel wasn’t the only one burdened with guilt, he thought. And you could mix in a dollop of fear while you’re at it. Fear that one day Isabel might learn the whole truth.
Twenty-Six
The nights were long for Elizabeth McBain, especially when she couldn’t sleep.
After all, when you were in a hospital bed, and spent your entire day stretched out in it, why should anyone be surprised when you lay awake half the night staring at the ceiling?
It gave her time to think, of course. Way more time than she needed.
So much to think about, when you were eighty-one years old. A lot to reflect on. One tended to spend far too much time on regrets, and contrary to what the song said, not too few to mention.
Starting with her husband, Jackson. Gone eleven years now. A long, drawn-out decline after a diagnosis of lung cancer. A heavy smoker, starting in his teens, he’d maintained the habit right up until his diagnosis. Actually, even after, because his lungs were so riddled with the disease that stopping wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
He lived the better part of a year after they’d discovered the cancer, but it had been a long year, the last three months spent in the hospital. At the time, Elizabeth kept thinking that when it was her turn, she wanted to go fast. A massive heart attack, maybe. Something that would kill her before she hit the ground.
And yet, here she was. One miserable day dragging into the next.
Elizabeth had managed to get through the loss of her husband with the help of her kids. Albert and Isabel, and, at least for a while, Brie.
With the kids married and out on their own, and now without a husband, Elizabeth had no need for a big house, and keeping it going on a reduced income was going to present some challenges, although she did make a few extra bucks doing some freelance editing. As newspapers and magazines started cutting back — staff editors getting the cut before reporters, in most cases — Elizabeth found her expertise in occasional demand. She did a lot of work for a glossy real estate magazine that was distributed throughout parts of the state. It didn’t pay much, but it was nice to keep her hand in.
Still, she hardly needed a house, so she sold the place and moved into an apartment not far from the Post Mall so she’d be handy to everything she might need.
Her children came to visit when they could. Albert had always been the most attentive, taking her to lunch every week, often popping in unannounced to see her. Izzy and Brie came by less frequently, but tried to make up for that with weekly phone calls. And it was always nice to have a visit with the grandkids. Andrew and Brie had no children, but Albert and his wife, Deirdre, had two — Randy and Lyla — and Izzy and her husband, Norman, had two in their teens, who were a handful but good-hearted.