Picture Me Gone (15 page)

A
ll pretense of happiness has drained out of our journey. We have settled into our motel room and I feel tired and young. Too young to do what Marieka has asked me to do. Too young to look after my father.

Also, I miss Honey. Why is she so loyal to Matthew but not at all loyal to me?

Gil has come back from another conversation with Matthew. He smells of wine.

What did you find out?

I’m not a very good cross-examiner, he says.

You could just ask him what’s going on.

I tried. He doesn’t seem to know himself. He says he didn’t want me to see him this way.

What way?

Oh, I don’t know. Gil shrugs. All of it. It’s a complicated corner he’s backed himself into. Whichever way you look at it.

I think about this. And then I think about Catlin.

Maybe he can’t bear not turning out better than you.

I can see the cogs in Gil’s brain turning. This won’t be the sort of thing he’d think of. I wouldn’t have thought of it either, without Catlin.

Maybe you remind him of when he was young and hopeful. Before everything went wrong.

It didn’t have to be such a mess, Gil says. If it had been just—

But he stops himself. He realizes that saying
just Owen
is impossible. Yet I know what he means. It may be possible to lose a child and survive. But to lose one child and possibly be the reason he’s dead? And to have another you’ve kept secret? And then to leave the third? Even with my incomplete understanding of life I can tell that it’s too much. You would begin to twist, like a floorboard cut against the grain. And keep twisting, until it was impossible ever again to be straight.

And
now
to have the friend come to visit. The one whose life you saved. The weaker one.

Gil goes out to find dinner and Marieka picks up on the first ring.

Hello, my dear heart. How are you?

We’ve found Matthew, I say. Gil was in touch with him all along.

My words hang in the air.

I knew, she says.

Yes.

Oh, my love, she says softly. There is silence on the line and it crackles a little.

I’m fine, I say out loud. But really? I don’t feel at all fine.

My sweet girl, she says. Mila, please don’t cry. She speaks so softly now that I can barely hear her. Please, sweetheart. Matthew seemed so . . .

Desperate?

She sounds a bit surprised and says, No, adamant. Do you want to come home?

I want to go home, of course I do. I want to go home more than anything I’ve ever wanted ever. But I also want to stay with Gil and see this thing through. Maybe now that Matthew is found, our job will be over and we can go home together. Maybe now that Matthew is found he will go back to Gabriel and Suzanne and they will all live happily ever after. Maybe it could all still work out.

Marieka’s voice interrupts my thoughts. Tell me what you saw, she says. Tell me what you noticed about Matthew.

He looks like Dad.

Yes, Marieka says. Yes, I remember that.

He’s very intense.

What else?

But I do not know how to explain what I see—the scribbly signals, the intelligent face, the stiff shoulders, the eerie calm, the dark dark feeling flowing off him. The wine.

He drinks a lot.

Oh, she says. I wish we hadn’t let you go. I should have said no.

We’re coming home soon, I say. It’s nearly over.

Gil bustles in with bags full of Chinese takeaway, so I send Marieka kisses and hand him the phone. They talk softly for a few minutes. I hear Gil say, Yes. No, we haven’t talked about it. And then, I know, I know. Soon. I’ve had enough of this. His voice sounds tired and he rubs his head as if trying to rub thoughts away.

When he hangs up the phone, we talk about Marieka. She sounds worried, he says, and I nod.

She may as well join the club.

Yes, says Gil. She may as well. Let’s go home, Perguntador, it’s time to go home. We’ll leave tomorrow.

But as it happens, we don’t.

M
atthew does not come to breakfast until we are the last people left. He only has coffee and I can see his point. The food is awful, even the toast. Fake jam, fake juice, fake bread. Honey, at least, seems relieved with the outcome of our hunt. She never strays more than a few inches from Matthew’s side. When he stands, she stands. When he paces the room, she pads behind him.

Dogs inhabit a world full of different information. Matthew is in the foreground of Honey’s life, throwing everything else into shadow, like Big Ben or the Andromeda Galaxy. She fears separation, can smell it hovering around Matthew. If Matthew goes, she will have nothing. Being without him makes her life impossible.

How could he leave her behind?

The receptionist comes in and asks Matthew to move his car to let the snowplow through. I watch from the window as he opens the door for Honey and she jumps in beside him.

Matthew rejoins us, fetching more coffee for himself and Gil. I don’t like the look in his eye; it is oddly fixed. He stirs fake milk into the fake coffee but doesn’t drink it, instead filling a small glass from a flask he keeps in his pocket. Gil watches, his expression neutral.

The funny thing about Matthew is that he never seems drunk. He seems the same as yesterday. He does not slur his words or fall over or anything.

I take my book and go to another table so they can talk, but it is close enough to hear most of what they say.

Look, Gil says, leaning in toward his friend. It’s not too late. You can start again.

Matthew looks up at him. Shakes his head.

You have to want to. Don’t you want to?

A loud flat noise makes me jump. Matthew has slammed his hand down on the table. Of course I want to, he says. It’s. Too. Late.

There’s a long silence and then I hear an awful noise. It’s Matthew crying.

There’s not another woman? Gil’s voice is low.

Matthew actually laughs. No, he says. Not another woman.

Matt, says Gil, there’s always a way out.

This time Matthew looks up at him, interested, amused. I know, he says.

The two men sit unmoving, each coming to the separate realization that he has misunderstood the other.

The ashes of an old friendship flutter and settle in a delicate heap beneath the breakfast table.

Please, says Gil, and I can hear a rich chattering of emotions in the word. His
please
means
Please
let this all end,
please
let’s resolve this so I can go home.

Matthew smiles at him. It’ll all be fine, he says.

I want to help.

Oh, I’m well beyond help, Matthew says calmly.

I look over and see Matthew and Gil, their eyes locked across the table, concentrating like chess players.

You’re not, Gil says.

No? There is the ghost of a smile on Matthew’s face, as if behind the thick dull pain there is a funny side to all of this. I appreciate your faith, he says.

Suddenly I am frightened. My father’s faith in Matthew is one of the instruments of his destruction. It reminds him of what he was. How much he has lost.

Matt, come back with us. Come home. Please. Gabriel misses you.

Matthew nods. He looks exhausted.

I’ll stay as long as you need me to.

No, says Matthew. Go back to London. There’s nothing more you can do.

Are you sure? But I can hear in Gil’s voice that he’s relieved. No doubt Matthew can hear it too.

Matthew nods. I wonder if he is already drunk, always drunk, in a way that doesn’t quite show.

What happened? Ask him what happened that day, Gil, ask him properly, for god’s sake.
I edge closer, drawn by the dark tug of missing facts.

Gil is still talking, tentatively, saying all the wrong things. I’m sure you can sort things out with Suzanne. For Gabriel’s sake.

But Matthew has stopped listening. The very air around him has ceased to move. I look at Gil. Listen! I want to shout. Something happened that day. Something’s happening
now.

I am struggling, trying to read a story written in a language I don’t quite speak. Why can’t Gil translate?

Perhaps Matt chose a brother who would not see into his soul.

The puzzle pieces in my brain dance just out of reach. I turn to Matthew and focus hard.

Gil speaks of getting back to normal. Matthew stares out of fathomless eyes. He sits perfectly still but the hand that grips his glass trembles.

With an air of resignation, Gil gets up from the table and goes to check out, leaving the two of us together.

I focus harder. Gil has told me that in order to translate you need to be a chameleon, to put on the skin of another person, to creep inside his head. I have seen this transformation take place within him—his features and sometimes his personality seem to alter with each voice he takes on, with each book.

And then the pieces begin to line up. I am back on the day of the accident, the day Owen died.

It is dusk.

My head aches, my skin feels tight. Has Matthew been drinking? I can’t tell. Owen is sitting in the backseat.

And then I think of Matthew opening the car door for Honey and,
of course
!
Honey
was in front. Matthew took her everywhere, Suzanne said. She loved the car. So Owen sat in the back because his father’s dog was in front. If their places had been reversed, the child would have lived and the dog died.

With Honey in front, Matthew had to turn to look at Owen, to talk to him. At that hour, in winter, with ice on the road and everyone driving too fast, that’s all it would have taken. One backward glance. Or two. A lorry coming up from behind.

The picture comes together.
That’s
why Suzanne hates Honey. For surviving when Owen didn’t. And it’s another reason to hate Matthew. For putting Owen in the back. She knew the dog would have been in front.

Something else occurs to me.

What if Suzanne knew everything? What if she not only knew everything that happened that night, but
everything
? About Lynda and Jake. Matthew’s drinking. Maybe she sent him away after Owen died. She’d lost her son and wasn’t prepared to lose her husband to a manslaughter charge on the same day. What if she saved him from arrest on the day she was called to the hospital to identify her dead son?

I feel dizzy with the shifting ground of the story. Matthew is staring at me now.

Recalculating, says my brain. Recalculating.

I judged Suzanne to be angry and trivial, the sort of woman who drives people away. But what if she is the hero of the story, the one who has kept all of Matthew’s secrets? That’s why she never seems to be telling the truth, because it’s
his
lies she’s hiding. That’s why she looks angry all the time.

But now Suzanne has decided that she can no longer lie for him, or has fallen out of love or out of sympathy. Her impulse to protect him has expired. She has fallen in love with someone else.

I meet Matthew’s eyes. The contact seems to last forever. It sucks me down into a furious black fog, a muttering hell. I struggle in the cloying dark. Get me out of here, get me out!

And then suddenly everything clears and I tremble with the force of what I see.

Matthew doesn’t want some time away, he wants forever. He wants to die. I feel it so strongly it chokes me. He left Honey behind because he didn’t plan to come back.

His eyes are intense and serious. He seems surprised and—could it be?—slightly amused by what has passed between us.

I am floating up to the ceiling, looking down on this scene. I can’t speak.

Gil returns with the room key and a printout of our bill. His smile fades when he sees us and he looks from one to the other, puzzled. But Matt is a conjurer of moods and he sets questions for Gil to ease the moment: When will you return to London? How is Marieka? Will you see Suzanne?

I turn to leave and my chair slides back more violently than I intend, tipping backward with a crash.

Honey leaps to her feet, her whole body poised, a low noise in her chest. I wonder how far she will go to protect him. Would she tear out my throat?

Come on, Gil says to me, let’s pack up. I’ve got some calls to make, he says to Matthew, who nods assent. We’ll leave in an hour. You can follow us when you’re ready.

I text Jake.
It’s awful here.

And within seconds he texts back.
It’ll be over soon.

Which is true, one way or another.