The Guilty One (4 page)

“I'd . . . really rather not.”

“I know that, Ron, I do. But I think . . . I mean, and he's a professional, he knows.”

This shorthand they used, it had been a blessing at first, letting them skip over the most painful discussions, getting through them at a higher rpm. “What happened” was a placeholder for that horrible week last June. “Him” was what they called Karl; both of them avoided saying his name, though they'd never talked about it. “Panamint” was their shorthand for the state prison in Panamint County, on a bleak stretch of farm road 150 miles east of Linden Creek in the Central Valley. And for Calla and Maris and Jeff they had no shorthand at all, because they never, ever spoke of them unless absolutely necessary, which was why Ron couldn't even begin to tell Deb why he'd been on the bridge today.

He didn't need to, anyway. He was nearly positive that his wife thought she understood why he'd gone to the bridge. Deb believed she knew everything that mattered about her husband, inside and out, for all of the twenty years that they had been married. He wasn't going to let her find out now that she was wrong. He wasn't going to take that away from her. Let her think that he just couldn't go on, couldn't continue to face the people at the office, the familiar faces they ran into in the grocery, church, the neighborhood. Let her think, even, that it was his shame over the one failure she couldn't forgive him for.

She was right to blame him, even to despise him. But Ron couldn't bring himself to tell her that she had the wrong reason. It wasn't his inability to forgive his son that had caused him to toy with the idea of killing himself, but his dread of reliving the awful unfolding of events again, the slow and inevitable march to sentencing. The hopes that, despite his best efforts to quash them, clamored in his head until he began to believe that things could be different, that they could be all right again.

“Hey,” he said now as she lost her battle with her tears. He hated seeing her cry. Or rather, he hated seeing her cry like this. Deb cried all the time, over sad movies and Hallmark cards and when he sent her flowers and when she read Facebook updates about people losing their parents or going into treatment for cancer. But this was different. This was Deb breaking on the inside, and she'd already been breaking for far too long.

She held up her hand. “No, it's all right, I'm fine,” she said, and forced her mouth into a smile. “I mean, this might finally get you to take a few days off and stay home with me.”

Ron laughed—he actually forced out a fake laugh, but he meant it as a gift. “Sweetheart, I'm not sure that's something most people would consider a benefit . . .”

“Most people aren't us,” she said, her voice just a little lighter. Ron had the power to do that—her moods hinged on his, even after everything. Which made him all that much more of a bastard.

When they finally reached the entrance to Cresta Hills, he hit the clicker and waited for the gate to swing open, waving at the guard in his little shack. A month into the trial, they'd put their house on the market and received multiple offers within a week. He had no idea how many of those offers had something to do with their notoriety, and he forced himself to pretend not to care. They'd bought a new, slightly smaller house in Cresta Hills, the only gated community around where anyone couldn't just walk in through a pedestrian gate. The gate might provide only the illusion of security, but after months of battling the media and the protesters and the merely curious, Ron was willing to pay for that illusion.

Their house was on a premium lot on a cul-de-sac. Deb pulled into the garage, put the door down behind them, and turned off the engine. For a moment they just sat in the dim light of the car. Ron reached for Deb's hand, and squeezed it.

“I'm so sorry,” he said haltingly, the apology he couldn't begin in the daylight. “I hate myself for putting you through that.”

“Don't ever do it again,” she said in a strangled voice he'd never heard before. She turned her face to his and he saw the tears shining on her cheeks. But when she spoke again, she bared her teeth. “Don't you
dare
quit on me. I can't go through that now. I
can't
.”

“Baby, I swear to you, it'll never happen again.” He reached for her, meaning to pull her into his arms the way he had a thousand times before, to tuck her small blond head under his chin.

But she resisted him. Her shoulders were stiff, her arms pressed close to her body. “Ron,” she said, her voice hard, “now that Arthur's discredited, we have a chance. A real chance. It's not going to be easy, but I've already talked to Kami, and she's coming up with a list of attorneys. We have to act fast, while it's still in the news, and I need you to
promise
me you'll do everything you can. For Karl. And for me.”

Ron froze, his hand inches from her, his body turned toward her. “It's not that easy,” he whispered.

“I mean it.” Her mouth began to wobble, and then the tremor seemed to take over her whole body. “Ron. I'll never forgive you if you don't.”

With that she opened her door and got out of the car. She went into the house, letting the door close behind her. A moment later the car light went out, and Ron was left sitting in darkness.

THE NEXT DAY
was a Tuesday, the most ordinary of days. The inertia of the night before had dissipated when Maris got up. The packing that had seemed so daunting took no more than a few minutes, the selection of what to take for a stay at her sister's place seeming perfectly obvious. Clothes, toiletries, a few books and journals. Maris swept the little collection of precious keepsakes she had been collecting into her dresser, nestling the objects among the out-of-season sweaters; she would get them next time she returned, when the future seemed a bit less hazy.

She was out the door by ten, having outwaited the morning commute, and in Oakland forty minutes later. She attended to her errand with brisk detachment. When she came out again into the heat of another ninety-degree July day, blinking in the sun, she was buoyed by a sense of accomplishment.

Until she got back to her car. Standing with her hand in her purse, searching for her keys, her brain tried to make sense of what she was seeing: the jagged hole in the rear window, the sidewalk littered with broken glass. It was pretty, the way the shards sparkled in the sun, and some part of Maris's mind was having trouble making sense of what she was seeing, processing how this changed her circumstances and what she would have to do about it, even as she marveled at the broken bits sparkling like the pavé diamonds in the anniversary band Jeff gave her on their tenth anniversary.

Shit. The jewelry. She had forgotten to pack her jewelry.

Maris bent down and picked up one of the tiny little pieces. Safety glass—wasn't that a lovely turn of phrase? It had so many other uses. Like coffee table tops. And sliding glass doors. People were always accidentally crashing through those, weren't they? Like Jeremy Guttenfelder after the junior class prom. Calla had gotten blood on her dress trying to help clean up.

Maris stood and put the bit of glass into her pocket. Her fingertips touched the little slip of paper, the claim check. She hadn't even needed it. The man in the shop remembered her. In her other hand she held the package he'd given her, surprisingly heavy and wrapped in white paper over bubble wrap. Well. She couldn't leave the package in the car now, could she! A manic little laugh burst from Maris's lips. She peered in the backseat. Of course it was gone, all of it. The large suitcase, the Vera Bradley duffel, the two large Crate & Barrel bags. Ha. Good luck with that.

People who broke into cars in Oakland were likely just looking for things to sell for drug money, for their next high. For a
chunky
, for a
dirty,
Jeff would have said. He was embarrassingly proud of the lingo he'd picked up from his crime shows:
burners, hoppers, carrying weight
. He'd say these things ironically, self-deprecatingly—God, he was good at that fake self-deprecation. You don't live with someone for more than two decades without knowing what lay beneath the fragile glib exterior. And still, all that time, he never seemed to accept that she heard things too, she knew things. And the things she knew were actually true.

Once the depth of his disinterest in her life became clear, Maris didn't bother to tell Jeff that the kids didn't really talk like that, not even the ones in East Oakland. Before Calla's death, Maris volunteered once a week for a literacy program at Morgandale Elementary School, working with a fourth-grader in one of Oakland's worst neighborhoods. But maybe Jeff was right to be skeptical. Here in front of her was evidence that do-gooders like her made no difference at all—her possessions sold off for, what, a single afternoon's relief? Her clothes, toiletries, books, her journal, what kind of money could they possibly bring? A size-twelve wardrobe—expensive, yes, but out of date. Not one thing purchased in the last year. And what would a junkie do with a jar of Estée Lauder face cream?

At least Maris's laptop was in her purse. She'd go across the street and get some coffee and file a report. She knew damn well that cops didn't actually come for things like this anymore, not in Oakland. You just went online and filled out a form and the system assigned you a number, and then at least you had something to show the insurance guy.

The package in her hand was uncomfortably heavy. Maris hitched it up under her arm and crossed the street, not bothering to walk back to the crosswalk on the corner.

The diner was staffed by an Asian couple. The woman stood at the register, sorting through a pile of receipts. The man was scraping the grill. There was one other customer in the shop, a mumbling, shuffling black man with a coat whose sleeves came well past his wrists. A coat, in this heat. Maris stepped wide around him but still she could smell him.

“I'd like a large coffee,” Maris said. And then, because she might have to sit there for a while, she scanned the menu for something else to order to justify taking up table space. “And a bacon and egg sandwich.”

“White or wheat?” the woman asked.

“Wheat.”

The man got to work without looking up, setting down his spatula with a clang and reaching for the package of bread on a shelf above the grill. What a life this must be, working with your husband from early in the morning until closing time at night. This heat, these smells, the grease hanging in the air, and every day, only each other.

“I'll bring.” The woman handed Maris her change and gestured at the table.

There was only one, a Formica round top on uneven legs. The chairs were the white plastic outdoor type you could buy for fifteen dollars at Home Depot. The table had been wiped, but there was still a greasy smear. Maris rubbed at it with a napkin before she set her laptop down.

She should call Alana. Let her know she was delayed again. God. Dread unspooled in Maris's gut. Alana had made it plain that she'd cleared her evenings this week, that she'd try to take off early in the afternoons. That the guest room was “move-in ready.” At the thought of what lay ahead, the ease with which Maris had been navigating the day guttered like a candle in the breeze and she shut her eyes and forced herself to take a series of deep breaths. Just the thought of that place—Alana's condo building with its designated landmark plaque, its turret room and coy little arched windows . . . the way Alana's heels clicked briskly on the refurbished floors. That was Alana: always so brisk.

The woman set Maris's sandwich down. It arrived on a paper plate stained with butter, wrapped in waxed paper and cut in half.

“You work?” the woman pointed to Maris's laptop.

“No,” Maris said, embarrassed. “I mean, yes. I have to . . .”

She didn't finish the sentence and the woman made a small tsk'ing sound and went back behind the counter with her husband. The shambling man was gone, leaving behind a sense of industry as they all three went about their tasks. Maybe that was what the woman meant, that Maris
should
work, as if at this hour of the day it was the only reasonable thing to do. Actually, Maris would agree with that. It was a little after eleven. Once, when she had a job, this had been her most productive time of the day. Even this last year, as her leave dragged on and on and everyone tacitly seemed to conclude that she was never going back, morning was when Maris worked the hardest, even if it was just ripping weeds from the cracks between pavers or scrubbing the dust from the baseboards.

She unwrapped the sandwich. Suddenly, she was ravenous. This was the sort of food no one ate anymore: plain square slices of pale soft bread, an egg shiny with butter, the bacon limp and folded back on itself. It was delicious. Maris ate the first half, starting with the triangle corners, and then after wiping her fingers on the paper napkin, she ate the rest.

She got up to refill her cup from the pot on the counter.

“Refill fifty cent.”

“Oh.” Maris dug her wallet from her purse, embarrassed, and then realized she hadn't tipped when she paid. She laid down a dollar, then two more. The woman stared at the bills with what might have been contempt.

Maris took her cup and sat back down. She should open the laptop. She should get the report over with. She would search “Oakland police report theft.” Or burglary? What was the difference? Maris sighed, staring out the window across the street. Her car, a three-year-old Acura with less than forty thousand miles on it, was wedged between a purplish Ford Taurus and an old blue Corolla.

The shop where she'd had Alana's fittings replated was around the corner, a long cramped space with a glass counter right out of the 1950s and a proprietor to match, an old bent man with white close-cropped hair and a narrow tie. “Only place in the Bay Area still does the triple plating,” he'd said, like an accusation, when she brought the fittings in. Silver services and brass doorknobs, babies' cups and old-fashioned hand mirrors lined the shelves, looking as though they'd been awaiting pickup for years. “Been here since 1972,” the man said gloomily when he ran her credit card.