Page 13

13

SHELBY

I sit on a wooden pew in the dark hospital chapel. The room is small and a candle burns on a wooden altar in the front. I’m the only one here, my soft crying piercing the eerie silence. I watch the red light flicker against the stained glass images, making Jesus and a white dove look lifelike on the window above me.

She’s okay. She’s fine. She was only in the water for a few seconds and could probably go home tonight if we wanted, but will stay just one night to be safe. Thank God, yes…but this does little to lessen the rage burning inside of me. And then, somewhere in the chaos of nurses and visitors I hear that word again. “Grateful.” We should be so grateful it wasn’t worse. I don’t know who said it, and whoever it was I know they only meant well, of course they did, but I still feel the urge to punch them in the throat. So I do a couple of Hail Marys and whisper a short prayer and on my way out, I pick up the Styrofoam cup of stale hospital coffee I left on the ledge by the door and flick away the tears that are starting to form in the corner of my eyes.

I asked Clay to bring Juju to my mother’s house for the night so we could stay with Poppy without traumatizing her any further, and I’m surprised when he’s not back after an hour. I call and it rings through, and so I call again and he answers in a hoarse whisper.

“Sorry,” he says. “June is upset. She doesn’t want me to go. She keeps asking if Poppy is gonna die.”

“Jesus,” I say. “She seemed okay when you left. She talked to Poppy. She knows she’s okay,” I say, confused.

“I know. She’s just tired, and it was a lot.”

“My poor baby,” I say. “Well, just stay, then. I’m sure Mom won’t care if you crash in the downstairs guest room.”

“Well, we’ll be back at the hospital to get you both first thing,” he says and we say our goodbyes and everything just feels dreamlike and off, and it’s more than just the trauma of it all. I can’t really put my finger on it, but my spine tingles and I don’t know if it’s the ghostly halls of this prehistoric hospital or something else.

I forgot I promised Poppy her Little Mermaid blanket because Christmas is over so she doesn’t want her reindeer one, and how can I say no to that right now?…and her Yoda doll, damn. I need to get home and back here, and I could really use a toothbrush and something that’s not tight jeans to sleep in at the hospital, so I guess I’ll have to call a cab.

Even though I know Poppy is in a deep sleep, I go up and check on her one more time before I run over to the house. Inside the room it breaks my heart to see her hooked up to a heart rate monitor and blood pressure cuff. Of course I’ve been sitting here all night in this environment, but walking in with fresh eyes and seeing my sweet baby surrounded by tubes and plastic and metal and beeping sounds is still jarring.

She’s so warm now, the rise and fall of her chest rhythmic and peaceful. I kiss the damp curls on her forehead and quietly close the door, making a mental list in my head of the things I need to pick up at home and I’m so lost in my thoughts I almost miss it, and then I stop, back up a few steps and peer into room 309.

“Bernie?” I say, tapping my knuckle against the door in a courtesy knock. He’s sitting in a hospital bed, eating a plate of rice and beans and watching an old episode of Matlock .

“Oh! Hey, Shelby,” he says with a wide smile.

“What the hell?” is all I manage to spit out.

“I’m just fine. Just some palpitations.” And he must register the concerned look on my face because he adds, “Promise.”

“Okay,” I say. “Good.”

“Coleslaw?” he offers, holding out a paper cup covered in a thin plastic cover. I sit in the chair next to him and take it.

“Sure,” I say, unwrapping a plastic fork and eating the waxy slaw.

“I’m glad she’s okay,” he says. “You gave us all a fright.”

“Thanks, Bern,” I say, and he turns down the volume on the TV.

“Did you know Andy Griffith used to get upset on the set of this show because the crew would always steal his apples and peanut butter and it was his favorite food? All the greats are gone. It’s a shame.”

“Yeah,” I agree, and we watch the episode in silence for a few minutes. A scene unfolds—it zooms in on a swimmer in an indoor lap pool with goggles and a swim cap. He is swimming laps alone when the back of a man in a suit appears. We only see the suited man’s back and arms as he catches the swimmer before he can push off the wall to swim back the other way—he holds the swimmer’s head under water forcefully until his body goes limp. Bernie scrambles for the remote and switches it off as quickly as he can. I don’t react.

“So tell me, what do you think about this podcast? I was surprised to see you involved.”

“Me?” he asks.

“Yes, you.”

“I’m not used to getting asked what I think,” he says with a smirk.

“Well, you’re around a lot of strong personalities, I suppose,” I say.

“I suppose I am.” He chuckles. “‘When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw,’” he says and I stare at him.

“Uh-huh,” I say, wondering if he hit his head.

“Nelson Mandela,” he says, and I understand now that it’s a quote.

“I see,” I say, but I don’t really see. I put the coleslaw on his dinner tray and pick at the fork prongs.

“Maybe Florence isn’t an outlaw exactly, but taking the pursuit of justice into our own hands when nobody else is working to do so to protect you…it’s something along those lines. You’re being forced to live in fear. I can’t say we’re cracking the case, but it’s getting people’s attention,” he says. He pats the corners of his mouth with his napkin and sets it down.

“I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing yet,” I say.

“Me either,” he agrees.

“How exactly the hell did it go viral? Who’s listening to this? I mean—these listeners have to be all over, not really local… I thought about it, but it doesn’t really make sense that it could do any good—do anything but stir shit up.”

“Well, as you know, Mort has a podcast,” he says, and I grunt in hesitant agreement, because as it turns out, he really does.

“And for some reason, people like listening to him make literary references nobody gets and talk about his bunions, I guess. Evan says he’s actually charming, but I didn’t take the time to actually listen, so what do I know? I guess we just pig gybacked off of his popularity and folks liked listening to five old goats sitting around arguing with one another about the facts of the case, and people also like true crime,” he says, and I wince. I’ve just never thought of it that way—heard anyone call my life and Mack’s life “true crime.”

“Sorry,” Bernie says.

“No, it’s okay…”

“So, I think an unsolved case got everyone worked up and probably nobody in this little frozen town listens to Mort’s Literary Musings , but it only took one person at Frannie’s Cut & Curl or the Trout to hear about the whole viral thing, and now everyone in town knows about it. Florence is opening a tip line.”

I think about this for a moment—about how the police are probably still at the lake examining the ice that somebody purposefully drilled into to try to hurt my family. And I think about how that’s what it took to get them remotely invested in this again—in the constant, looming threat I’ve been fearing since it all happened over a year ago. Maybe getting people whispering about it a little louder than they usually do will actually prove helpful. Maybe a person who knows something will slip up, maybe the more facts that leak to the public, the more it could unearth some information somebody doesn’t even know they are holding on to. What do I have to lose at this point?

I don’t respond out loud. I just nod, because I don’t really know what else to say and I’m so very exhausted. So I change the subject.

“You still seeing your daughter this weekend?” I ask.

“Yes, ma’am. The church is having a potluck and she made spicy cornbread,” he says, and I notice him twisting some sort of necklace or locket chain hanging around his neck—one I hadn’t noticed before, but I guess he’s always in a turtleneck and scarf and not a hospital gown.

“That looks fancy,” I say, and he looks down at it and smiles. He rests the pendant in his palm and leans over for me to get a closer look. It’s the image of a border collie etched into the metal.

“My Cynthia gave this to me over twenty years ago when our sweet Roxy went over the rainbow bridge. It opens up and there’s a little clipping of her fur in there,” he says, a look of pride across his face as he shows me. Just the very thought of this makes me instantly tearful, but I hold back. Bernie talks about that dog to this day like it was the greatest loss of his life. Not more than Cynthia of course, but a close second. I touch the little tuft of white hair and then my hand flutters to my heart.

“Oh, Bernie, that’s lovely. I didn’t even know you had this.”

“Haven’t taken it off in a few decades…except for an MRI once. I tried to fight them on that, but they said the magnetic force would pull the chain so hard it would tear my head off.”

“Nobody wants that,” I say.

“Well, it was Lucy Singletary working that day and I think she exaggerated, but still. Haven’t parted with it except those thirty-five minutes,” he says and slips it back under his gown.

“Say hi to Ginny for me,” I say, standing to go. “And I’ll see you back at the Ole on Monday. Gus will be very excited.” He smiles at the mention of Gus.

“I’ll save a couple of cornbreads in a Tupperware for ya,” he says.

“Can’t wait,” I say, moving to the door.

“Shelby.” He stops me and his face has changed. A shadow flashes across it and he pauses as if he’s about to say something important. “Please be careful out there. I wanna see you Monday,” he says, and I know he means it with fatherly concern, but it scares me—the words from someone else’s lips articulating that I have to be extra careful just existing in order to make it to Monday. That the threat of not making it is real.

I pull a woolen hat over my ears and shrug on my parka. “I will, Bern. Tell ’em to get ya outta here.” I smile and hold my palm up to wave goodbye, checking in on Poppy one more time before I head out to run to the house.

Minutes later I’m in the lobby waiting for Cecil’s Taxi Service to pick me up. I recognize Howard Lutsen behind the wheel when the car pulls up, so I sit in the front seat. He turns up the heat for me and offers me a stick of spearmint gum, and then we pull away and I watch the hospital building shrink in my rearview mirror. The shapeless brick building against the backdrop of wispy falling snow swirling in around the lampposts in front of the building. I’ve always thought it looks like an abandoned insane asylum you’d see on a ghost hunter show. I think about all of the pain that has been felt inside of those walls, all of the wailing after the loss of a loved one, all of the death, and it makes me ill to leave my baby there even though it’s just for a quick run to the house. I almost tell him to stop. I don’t know why, but something just feels wrong.

I tell myself I’m letting it all get to me and I need to stay calm. Howard plays a Queen song and smokes a cigarette out the window, and between the cold air and the loud music he’s singing along to, I feel like I’ve entered some sort of temporary hell and I just want this day to be over.

When we pull up to my house, I hoist my bag onto my shoulder and let myself out the passenger’s door.

“So you can wait like ten minutes, right?” I ask because I was told that my ride would wait when I called.

“Oh, you’re going back? They didn’t tell me. I got a pickup at O’Leary’s Pub. It’s just Brenda Levinson, but she mixed some of her meds with shots of J?ger at the bar and I guess she’s puked all over the snow in front of the building. Dave don’t want her back inside puking up on the customers and stuff, so I gotta get back over there before she freezes to death outside. I can be back here to get you in twenty, though,” he says.

“Twenty is fine, How, but please no longer. I need to get back,” I say and he gives me a salute.

“I will do you one better and make it nineteen minutes. You can time me,” he says looking at his watch and pushing some stopwatch feature. I don’t indulge him, I just give him a thumbs-up as he pulls away and screeches down the snow-covered dirt road.

I put my bag on the front step and fish around for my keys and then open my front door, but before I can punch in the code to turn off the alarm, I realize it wasn’t armed. The blue light isn’t flashing on the console. I freeze for just a moment before closing the door behind me because what if someone broke in and I’m walking into danger. The door was locked though, and in these few seconds I take to decide what I should do, there is a sound behind me—the shuffling of feet in the snow approaching me, and it’s so fast and out of nowhere that I’m just paralyzed in fear and can’t register what’s happening.

And then I’m suddenly very aware as a plastic bag is forced over my head from behind and someone is pulling it tight across my face. I don’t even have time to take in a sharp breath to hold, there is just suddenly no air, the plastic sucking into my mouth with each desperate gasp. I can’t scream. I just flail my arms to try hit or punch whoever it is, but they’re behind me and I…can’t breathe. I bang at the buttons on the security system next to me wildly, trying to hit the emergency alarm, but nothing happens. I start to feel my head float and I see colors like firecrackers behind my eyes. My fingers are starting to tingle and I can’t even scream. I can’t scream .

I’m going to die like this.

And then I think about the Phillips screwdriver I left on the console table next to the front door when I was installing more security cameras around the house yesterday, and I silently beg God to let it still be there. I have seconds before I collapse to the ground, so I swing my hand and feel for the table, my fingers touching yesterday’s junk mail and a glass jar for keys, which I feel break as I slam the items on the table around blindly. I feel a shard of glass slice the side of my hand and I panic more, but then I feel it. By the grace of God, I feel the handle of a screwdriver I’ve had for years, and I grip it as tightly as I can and reach behind me with all the force I have which is quite weak, but it’s enough. My surging adrenaline and rage is enough to swing and…not miss. The long metal end sinks into flesh.

I hear a gasp and a moan, and the grip around my neck loosens. I faintly hear footsteps crunching over icy snow, running in the direction of the woods far behind the row of houses. It takes me a few moments to pull the plastic off and gulp in air between shaky sobs. I’m on my hands and knees just trying to get my breath back, but my whole body is trembling violently and my heart is beating in my throat. I try to take in a few steady breaths, and I will myself to stand so I can catch who it is before they’re gone.

I run only as far as the edge of the house and look out across snowdrifts and boney trees. All I can see is a dark figure, too far away to make out anything, just a moving shadow. Then I look down to see a drop of blood. And another. They’ve left a trail of blood like breadcrumbs on top of the freshly fallen snow.

I run back inside my front door and lock it behind me. I slide down the back of the door and let the hysterical cries escape me. “Why?” I scream over and over again until my throat is hoarse and raw and I can barely speak. I stand and push everything off of the console table in one violent swoop, screaming as loud as I can one more time.

And when I’m done, I reluctantly call Detective Riley, because now we have DNA.