One More Day (17 page)

Carrie took a bath, just as John had suggested. She ducked her head under the water and didn't think about the dying bees, the buzzing she sometimes heard at night when she couldn't sleep, the honey-sweet smell of a dead one soaring back, aiming at her heart. And she tried not to think of Ben or of Ethan or the baby, the baby she hadn't thought about in so many years, the baby she would get around to, get back to, someday, when the time was right. All that time she'd wasted, thinking she had plenty. When she had had nothing—nothing—all along. She tried to just focus on the water, on getting clean.

As she went downstairs into the kitchen, the smell of garlic wafted up. The room had been erased of her grandmother. Gone were the cinnamon notes of cookies and vanilla tea. Now the smell was savory, dark, meaty. She was still queasy; the last thing she wanted to do was eat.

John stood over the chopping board, wrestling with an onion and winning. His strong capable way of doing everything he did. She used to love the way he peeled it in one go, then stacked up the rings as he cut them, in quick, even piles.

“What are you making?”

“Steak surprise.”

His pet name for fajitas, which was the only thing John really knew how to make. Cut things up, grill them, put them on a tortilla. A
grilled
tortilla. She supposed men liked to grill because they were impatient. No stirring or simmering. Flame, color, branding. Evidence they had made their mark.

Her face was on the verge of a frown. John put down his tongs.

“What's wrong?”

“It just seems odd to celebrate,” she said softly. Her throat was still sore from screaming at him, her breath sour from throwing up earlier. Didn't she look as terrible as she felt?

“It's not a celebration. It's just…” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it's been so long since we had anything good happen, right?”

“Right.”

“And it
is
good news for you, for us.”

She wanted to nod but couldn't. How could they have good news when their son could not?

John added the onion to the griddle, turned up the overhead fan. He'd already grilled the meat and the peppers, which lay curled on a platter. He did it in a logical order, according to the way his brain worked, but Carrie believed he'd done it backward. Weren't you supposed to caramelize the onions first?

He left the onions sizzling and folded Carrie into a hug. His wide chest, his big heart. She'd always thought they correlated. Now he felt almost too big, twice as wide as Ethan's narrow hug.

“Carrie, I have to tell you something, honey,” he whispered.

“What?”

“What you said, about Forrester playing me, suspecting me?”

Her tongue throbbed inside her mouth, and her answer came out cottony, cloaked. “Yes?”

“Before I met you, you remember me telling you about Lyndsey?”

“Your old girlfriend? The one who transferred?”

“Yes.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I don't know if I ever told you, but…she was really a reckless girl.”

“Reckless?” That was a word of someone else's generation. She'd never heard anyone their age say it.

“Wild, you know. Loved to party and loved to argue. A real drama queen.”

Carrie winced. She'd always hated that phrase. It always seemed it was a way for men to dismiss women who wanted to talk, to say their piece.

“I could never…trust her to do the right thing. And she didn't understand me, you know, like you did.”

“Why are you telling me this, John? Did you look her up on Instagram and then go visit her, fall in love a—”

“No! No. I would never want to see her again. She…she got me arrested one summer.”

“Arrested? For what?”

“For stalking.”

Carrie felt queasy, her knees threatening to give out.

“I didn't do anything except, you know—”

“Follow her?”

“She basically needed a bodyguard, Carrie! She did! If you had seen her… I—I saved her on a few occasions. Three guys, four, on the path by the river, you know? God knows what would have happened. But she didn't get it. She just didn't get it.”

“Do Forrester and Nolan know? God, they must know.”

She thought back to Nolan. Working off a theory, following up on a lead. They were playing him! Was this the theory?

“That's just it—it was a week before I turned eighteen. So the records were sealed.”

“But couldn't they still find out, John? Is that why you never told me? Why you're telling me now? Before you get caught?”

“No! I just, well, I wanted you to know. The police could always talk to her or her parents, I guess. But I don't think they will now.”

“So you must feel relieved,” she said.

His hands on her shoulders, sliding down to her waist, pulling her in tighter, like they were dancing. Swaying side to side in that dark expanse of a hug. Safe, but also enveloped. Hidden. And sometimes smothered.

“Yes.”

“So we're celebrating your relief. Is that it?”

“Carrie,” he said. “Seriously. I do feel like it's a good thing, finally. And maybe the beginning of a fresh start, a clean slate. It's like our mothers say,” he whispered into the hair he loved so well. Golden and shiny, always clean looking. Even when she was at her lowest points, she always took care of herself. She smelled a little dusty now, like old fruit, but he didn't care. “We have to remember we're still young. We can go on. We can try again. Start all over. We can.”

Bile bubbled and burned in her throat. She elbowed her way out of the cage of his embrace, ran to the sink, tried not to gag.

“What? What's wrong?”

“John, I—I don't know if I can.”

“Well, not…now, honey. I didn't mean now. Oh, geez, I mean…you misunderstood.”

“No, John, that's not—”

“I meant not now, but soon. Eventually. We'll get past this and then, you know, later—”

“I said I don't know if I can!” she cried.

“Okay, okay. I just thought… I… Oh crap, Carrie, I don't know what I was thinking. I just was looking for something…happy. And feeling bad that I didn't tell you about Lyndsey a long time ago.”

The onions sputtered, demanding attention. He picked up a spatula and started to stir.

“John,” she said in a voice she didn't recognize, “I have to—I have to tell you something too.”

“What? Did you remember more? Should I call Forrester? They're still building the case, so—”

“No, I—John—I…I've kept a secret from you as well.”

“A secret?”

He smiled initially, but it faltered a little on the edges, like he didn't know how long he could hold on to happy. A secret sounded like it could be good or bad or anywhere in between, kind of like his. John was hoping for good. He really needed good. But the look on her face! He steeled himself; he'd already asked if she was having an affair—could she have lied to him?

“I…had a baby in high school.”

“What?”

“With my boyfriend.”

He dropped his spatula. “What did you say?”

“I had a baby. Before. Before you, before Ben.”

He blinked, ran his hand across his face. “And you, what, you gave it up for adoption?”

“Yes.” She was on shaky ground still, she knew. Didn't dare tell him the rest. No. Dear God,
no
. “The detectives, they, um, they found the word
adoption
in my search history, so they found that suspicious. Like I wanted to…” Her breath caught in her throat.

“Wait a minute,” John said, running his hands through his hair. “A boy or a girl?”

She swallowed slowly, took a deep breath. Why on earth would he ask that particular question? She looked up at him and saw the pain in his eyes. He realized too what a stupid, inane question it was. He was simply buying time, and they both knew it.

“A boy,” she said quietly.

“A boy. You had another boy, before Ben.” He recited it back to her, but she didn't correct him.

“And that's why, you see, that's why it's been so hard for me. Psychologically. Because I—I've been grieving twice. Reliving the first loss.”

He nodded slowly. “That's what Dr. Kenney said?”

John's hands tingled. Had Dr. Kenney known this but not been able to tell John, because of client privilege? He was probably trying to convince Carrie to tell him, to choose the right time. But this—how on earth could this be the right time? What was wrong with her? Or had the police found out? Is that why? Did Susan Clark tell her to tell him, before he found out some other way?

“Not…exactly. It's…that's just—what is. What's true.”

“So—but you just—decided not to tell me or my family this? Like, ever? Even though our son had a brother out there in the world?”

“Half brother.”

“Doesn't matter, Carrie.”

“I suppose you're right. I should have told you. I know I should have told you.”

“This is…this is huge.” Unspoken:
This is bigger than my secret. This is worse.
“And Danielle was okay with this…this…deception?”

“John, I didn't even know you back then!”

“I can't believe your mother wouldn't understand how
my
mother would feel, how my family—how we all would feel. That she'd let you do this? Keep a brother from a brother?”

Carrie thought of John's younger brother Luke, their wrestling hugs, their bunk beds. She didn't have a sibling. She didn't understand. She searched his eyes, as if she could locate the source of his connection.

“John,” she said with a sigh. “My mother didn't allow it. Because she didn't know.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“How could she not know?”

“We were struggling. I needed a scholarship. I couldn't afford to lose that, so I—I hid it all from her.”

“Wait,” he said, contorting his face. “So you were one of those girls who give birth in, like, their garage? Or a public bathroom? And just…clean it up and don't tell anyone, even their family and closest friends?”

The look on his face, the sound of his voice, the words he chose, chilled her. She was one of
those girls
? The girls you read about in other towns? She was a grainy photo in a tabloid newspaper? He said it as if she were less than human. Hadn't he ever read a newspaper, learned about the backgrounds behind the headlines? Didn't John know anything about people other than himself? How dare he!

“Yeah, and you were one of those stalkers who ends up beating his girlfriends to a pulp?”

“I didn't beat her up! I didn't do anything to her.”

“John, I was sixteen years old! I was terrified. I was—”

“Carrie,” he said slowly, “that was only two years before we met.”

“Two years is a long time when you're a teenager.”

“Maybe,” he said. He took the onions and piled them on top of the food. He put down the tongs and walked into the foyer, picked up his car keys, his briefcase, his coat.

“John!” she called.

“Have some steak,” he said. “Or do you still like steak, Carrie? Do you even eat meat these days? Because I have to say, I feel like I don't know anything about you anymore. Anything.”

And then he was gone.

She leaned into the nearest chair. The arrivals and departures of the living were as abrupt as the dead. How was she supposed to know who was coming, who was going, what was real anymore? All she knew was she was alone. Completely, utterly alone.

She put her hands up to her face. It didn't feel any different than her grandmother's had. Flesh, bone, curves, lashes.
It never goes away
, she thought. The essence of a person is the same as the outline, the form. She held her hands over her eyes a long, long time, trying to decide who she was angrier with—her husband or her dead ex-boyfriend.

Before she went to kindergarten, Carrie used to wait every day for the mailman to arrive. As soon as she'd hear the sound of his Jeep coming up one side of the street, she'd run out to stand by the end of their short driveway, right where Danielle could see her. She'd wait as he made his rounds, up one side of the street and down the other, until he'd reach their bungalow.

Danielle had always thought it was because Carrie was an only child, lonely in this neighborhood of mostly empty nesters and bored with her mother by the middle of each day, glad to see someone new. The mailman seemed to understand his role; if he didn't have any promising-looking mail to deliver—a magazine or package, for instance, or a card or letter addressed to Carrie—he always included a lollipop or Hershey's kiss on top of the stack of letters. Later, when she was older, Carrie was surprised to learn from other people that their mailmen did not deliver candy. Surprised, but not disappointed. It was the others who were disappointed, not her.

The day the creamy envelope came in the mail from State, she'd heard the sound of the Jeep rounding the corner. Heard it right through the din of her earphones. She lifted her head off her bed, then shushed Jinx, who always startled when he heard a car.

Ethan had already been accepted to Brown, but he waited to celebrate, insisting that it was all or nothing. Both of them happy, her with her scholarship too, or neither of them.

When the mailman handed her the envelope, smiling, and she felt its heft, she knew it was a good sign. The rejections were always thin, the other kids had told her.
No
is a smaller word, much smaller, than
yes
.

When she opened it, not on the phone with Ethan, as he'd told her to, but alone, in the heat of her stuffy room, she had not felt joy. She had not felt pride, or righteousness, or belief that it had all been worth it.

She had felt something larger, and if she'd had to name it, she would have said relief.