When I'm Gone: A Novel (27 page)

CHAPTER 29

Inside his car, Luke tried to figure out what had just happened. He started the car with a hard turn on the ignition. Blasting the air conditioner, Luke set his sweaty face in front of one of the vents. The air pouring out was hotter than the August air outside, somehow superheated by the engine and summer sun. When the burning air finally succumbed to the cooling process, he closed his eyes, letting the crisp mechanically chilled air clear his crowded mind.

The ambulance had just left for the hospital, and Terry had hung up with Jessie’s dad, Neal Townsend. He was going to meet Luke at the hospital. May wanted to go, but Luke knew she was too young to manage all the stress of the ER. Plus, at this point, it wasn’t clear if Jessie would even survive the trip. When the paramedics looked at Jessie’s medical bracelet, one of them asked if she was on dialysis, if she was taking any medications, what site was used for her treatments. All Luke could do was shake his head and say, “I have no idea.”

When Terry finally got Neal on the phone, she passed him over to the medic and then herded hysterical May and confused Clayton into the kitchen so they couldn’t see as the paramedics put a tube down Jessie’s throat and pumped air directly into her lungs.

The thought of losing Jessie was nearly enough to keep the fact that she was Neal’s daughter out of his mind. He pushed the gas pedal harder, not wanting Jessie to be alone in the hospital before her father got there. He’d spent enough hours in Botsford Hospital that he used to say it felt like a second home.

Passing the school where Natalie used to work, Garden Grove Elementary, Luke checked the window to her old classroom. She’d always drive past with the kids and tell them about the projects in the window, talking endearingly about the students who did each one. Luke frowned; with the school year not quite begun, the window was empty now, covered by some brown butcher paper so no one could look inside. Distracted by the pang of sorrow the empty window shot through him, Luke didn’t notice a set of red and blue lights were flashing behind him.

Damn it. A ticket was not what he needed today. He needed to get to the hospital. Luke twisted the wheel to the right, pulled over to the curb, and watched the driver’s side mirror as he fished his wallet out of his back pocket. A uniformed police officer exited his squad car and walked briskly toward his door. Luke slid the stiff license out, tapping it against the steering wheel as he waited.

The window. He pulled at the switch and made sure the window was rolled all the way down before letting go, hoping to shave a couple of seconds off the police stop. The officer stopped a little ways back from his window, hand resting on the hilt of his gun. Luke had only had two tickets before, both for speeding. In both cases he’d openly admitted to being over the speed limit. Those stops took fifteen minutes altogether and even though at the end he was down a hundred dollars, gained points on his license, and had a hike in his insurance bill, cooperation seemed to be the way to go.

“I’m sorry if I was speeding, officer. My friend is in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. I . . . I was trying to get there. I didn’t mean to . . .” He’d been distracted, so going too fast in a school zone was definitely a possibility.

“You have a taillight out back here; looks smashed.” The officer talked over Luke’s explanation. “You been in an accident lately?”

“Not that I was aware of. Maybe someone backed into me at work and didn’t report it.” Luke used the side rearview mirror to try and get a look at the damage but couldn’t see anything. “I’m serious about that friend in the ambulance. I really need to get there. You can give me any ticket you want.”

“We will get you to your friend as soon as possible. License and proof of insurance, please,” the officer said, not a hint of compassion in his voice. Luke passed his license up to the officer, whose name tag read
J. R
ABOLD
. Officer Rabold stared down at him over the top of his sunglasses.

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice the light. I’ll get it fixed immediately.” The officer’s face remained still. “Uh, the insurance card is in the glove compartment. I’ll grab it.” He made sure to keep his hands visible and explain his movements to Officer Rabold. Luke looped his finger under the latch for the glove compartment and pulled. It wasn’t always the most compliant latch, so he yanked extra hard. The latch hitched but didn’t open.

Luke smiled over his shoulder at the officer and then tried again, this time harder. The latch made a loud pop, and the door fell open, papers rushing out behind it in an avalanche. Luke shifted back, stunned. The usually neatly organized glove compartment now stood empty, its contents scattered all over the passenger seat and floor. On the seat was the blue, white, and gray service manual, a pair of headphones, and a small folder with his insurance card peeking out. What he didn’t recognize were four or five prescription bottles.

“What the hell?” Luke swore, forgetting about the officer for a moment. He leaned over to pick up one of the bottles; he looked at the colored pills inside. It reminded him of something . . . it reminded him of . . .

“Sir, I’m going to need to ask you to drop that and exit the vehicle immediately.” The officer’s voice cut through Luke’s rambling memories; he took a step back from the car and slipped Luke’s ID in his vest pocket.

“Sure; no problem.” Luke dropped the container and sat up, stunned at the sudden change in the officer’s demeanor. Luke pushed open the door slowly to avoid startling the officer, hand on his gun, badge bouncing slightly as he stepped back toward his squad car. Once Luke had closed the car door behind him, the officer gestured for him to stop his progress.

“Put your hands on the hood of the car, please.” He pointed to the car, his face still, lips set in a hard line.

“What? Why?” Luke asked, running through all the possible infractions he could possibly be guilty of. Surely a broken taillight was not grounds for this. Luke followed orders, flinching as he pressed his palms against the superheated hood. The officer came up behind him and pushed his legs apart, shoes making a scratching sound as they dragged through the dirt. Then he ran his hands up and down Luke’s arms, legs, chest, and torso. Apparently satisfied with his search, the officer reached over Luke’s left shoulder and clapped a cold metal cuff around his wrist.

“What the? I need to go to the hospital. Jessie is sick. I need . . .” Luke tried to look back at the officer. “Wait—am I under arrest?”

“Look forward.” He yanked the other arm around Luke’s back and tightened the other half of the handcuffs around his wrist, so tight they dug into his skin. Guiding him by his elbow, the officer turned the shackled Luke around and leaned him against the car again. “Sir, you want to tell me more about those bottles in your glove box? You have a valid prescription for those pills? If I get a dog out here to look through your car, what am I going to find?”

Luke’s heart was pounding, and his mouth was so dry he didn’t know how to form words. “I swear I’ve never seen those bottles before. I . . . I have no idea what they are doing in there.” Luke spewed out the answer.

“Uh-huh. Then you don’t mind if we take a look through your car, right?” He didn’t sound like he was seeking permission, but Luke gave it anyway. He wasn’t hiding anything and definitely not drugs.

“Yeah, of course.” What would he get for saying no—an even more aggressive body search? A cavity search? Luke cringed at the thought. Whatever was in those bottles, they were a mistake. Something left over from Natalie’s days filled with endless prescriptions, no doubt. They’d search the car, find out it was a big misunderstanding, and have a laugh.

“Sit down.” The officer led Luke to the curb, speaking into the radio on his shoulder. “Cross your legs,” he ordered, and Luke complied, glad he was partially sheltered from onlookers by the tail end of his car.

Three more squad cars later, Luke’s SUV was being towed to the station for a more intensive search, and Luke was under arrest. Through the back window of the squad car, he watched as they passed the green-and-white street sign that usually signaled home. Terry was there; the kids were there; they all expected him to call from the ER, to have an update on Jessie, and to eventually come home. But he wasn’t going to the hospital, and he definitely wasn’t going home—he was going to a police station.

CHAPTER 30

More people should spend a day in jail,
Luke thought, his wrists still stinging from the handcuffs. It was scary and humbling. If he’d ever been tempted to break the law, this would definitely have scared him off. He’d only been there a few hours, as far as he could tell. They’d taken him in, processed him, taken fingerprints and a mug shot, performed a humiliating strip search, and given him a drug test and health screening. After four hours of increasingly invasive procedures, Luke was finally put in a holding cell. He’d be arraigned in the morning for . . . well, he wasn’t sure, but he could guess that it’d at least be drug possession and intent to distribute.

After trying to deny any knowledge of the pills found in his car, Luke finally wised up and shut his mouth. No one believed him. He needed a lawyer, and he wanted to know Jessie’s status and let everyone know he was okay. That meant calling Terry.

It was painful to have to ask Terry for help. He tried to explain the few details he understood and asked her to find a lawyer, no matter the cost. They could use Natalie’s life insurance for a defense, might even have enough for bail. He hadn’t spent a penny of it yet, but getting out of jail had to be his first priority. Terry definitely didn’t believe Luke’s side of the story, but she was literally the only person he could call for help. He hoped she’d find someone—fast.

The only good news was that Jessie had made it to the hospital and had been stabilized. Terry only had two minutes to give him information before they were cut off on the ancient precinct pay phone. What he did get out of that two minutes was that Jessie had been in total renal failure like the paramedics had predicted. She’d been going for dialysis three times a week for the past month and had been going downhill fast. May was supposed to go and visit her at the hospital tomorrow. The last thing the kids needed to deal with was worrying about Luke being in jail, so the plan was to keep his arrest a secret for as long as possible. Hopefully forever. For now the fairly weak excuse was an emergency work trip, but Will wouldn’t buy that story for long.

When the phone cut out, a uniformed officer escorted Luke to a holding cell at the back of the station. At least it was empty, a row of benches bolted to the wall and a urinal in the corner. There were bars, though, cold, metal, and painted off-white. He wasn’t sure why they painted them since it seemed like there were at least twenty coats in spots where the paint continued to peel. He was sore and exhausted.

The small, rectangular windows on the other side of the room gave him the only hint to the time. It was black outside, yellow lights from the parking lot filling the room with eerie shadows. It was hard to keep track of time without a watch or a phone, but it must be near midnight by now. He should sleep, but the cell was undoubtedly not made for relaxing, the painted-green benches his only option for stretching out besides the floor. He briefly contemplated taking off his shoes to help him unwind, but then the idea of what might be on the floor made his toes curl.

Luke threw himself on the bench that lined the back wall. The shadows from the bars of the cell made patterns on the ceiling, and soon his mind was turning them into images like when he’d watch the clouds with Will and May. However, these weren’t happy bunnies or silly Santas; these images were much darker. In the corner, the shadows clustered together over a watermark in the ceiling, making it look like the face of an old woman was looking back at him. Over by the door to the cell was a splash of black shadow that reminded him of a pool of blood.

He tossed his arm over his eyes, pressing down hard, trying to keep the panic from taking over. What was he going to do? There had to be some way of proving he hadn’t done this. He could lose his job, his house, and his kids—everything he had left.

As far as he could tell, being arrested was good for one thing—bringing into focus the most important parts of your life. On a day when he thought discovering Dr. Neal and Jessie’s connection was the worst moment he could imagine, sitting in a cell, rubbing his chafed wrists and dreaming up horrors on the wall, made him feel like a fool for ever being obsessed with Neal and those letters.

If Neal had helped cover up the adoption and the death of Luke and Natalie’s child, if they had a deep connection because of it, or even if they had planted Neal’s daughter into his home as a spy, Luke didn’t care. Natalie was dead and he was alive. One more reason he should be living for his kids, not for some dead woman, even if that woman was the one person he’d ever felt loved him unconditionally. The kids were worth more than his pain.

On the last night of Natalie’s life, Luke pushed the fancy white couch in the living room up right next to her hospital bed. He had spent large portions of the past several nights sleeping in a chair, but it made Natalie feel so guilty. When he let his body settle into the stiff cushions of the pristine fabric, Natalie put out her hand.

“Will you hold my hand tonight?” she asked. Luke took her frail hand in his, counting the bones on the back of her hand through her skin. “Ah, that’s nice.” She sighed and one tear slipped out of the corner of her lashless eyes. It followed one of her new wrinkles, the ones that came once she lost the protective layers of fat under her skin. He loved kissing those wrinkles and pretending they’d grown old together.

“You’re too far away; get up here.” She tugged at his arm, and Luke cautiously crawled up into her bed. Weakly, she tried to shift over to the other side of the bed but stopped, out of breath after her first attempt.

“I’ve got you,” Luke whispered in her ear, letting his lips brush her cheek as he moved her over the last few inches.

“Thank you,” she whispered, always grateful for anything Luke did. You don’t have to thank me, he wanted to shout, but he wasn’t mad at Natalie. He was mad she was in pain and that soon she’d be gone.

“I love you, Nat,” Luke said, nuzzling his nose into her neck and wrapping an arm over her torso.

“I know, I know.” She patted his back, like she was comforting one of their kids. He cried a lot back then, even though he tried not to. It was his intention to make those last moments with Natalie happy ones, to leave the kids with thoughts of a cheerful farewell. But that night, he didn’t want to pretend to be happy. Sometimes Luke wondered if some ancient instinct told him his wife was that close to death.

“This reminds me of what it was like when we were kids. All we’re missing is pop and Twizzlers.” She took a labored breath, and Luke picked up his arm.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No.” She grabbed his arm and pressed it back down on her stomach. “I like feeling you. I miss your touch, I miss kissing you, I miss . . . everything.” She kissed his forehead again. “I want to go back and do it all over again. Can we start over? Is that a thing?”

Luke tried to turn a sob into a laugh, but it came out sounding like he was choking. “You want a do-over? If this was a video game, I could erase the memory, and we could start at the beginning.” He curled his body around hers, trying to touch her in as many places at the same time as possible. “But we’d lose everything, all the levels we’d beat and coins we’d won. I’d do it; would you?”

She was silent for a moment, and Luke wondered if maybe she’d fallen asleep. Every night she took a sleeping pill to help her sleep through the pain, and it was probably kicking in.

“No,” she answered suddenly. “I wouldn’t start over, not if it meant giving up our memories.” Her breath hitched in her chest, and he watched her collarbone go up and down with each cry. “That’s all you’ll have left of me, memories.”

Luke couldn’t talk. If it hurt to think about losing her while she still lay in his arms, he didn’t know how he could even breathe once she was buried under six feet of dirt. “We won’t forget,” he finally forced out. “I could never forget . . .”

“I hope you’re wrong”—her tone turned suddenly hard—“about death. I want you to tell me I’ll see you again, that our years together weren’t a waste.” She pushed Luke’s head back with her chin, and he looked up at her eyes. Still deep and blue, they were the only thing unchanged by chemo and cancer and impending death. He didn’t believe, he hadn’t for a long, long time, but when he saw those sparkling eyes, the ones he’d first noticed as a boy and saw every day when May asked for pancakes or Clayton giggled at a television show, he couldn’t tell her that. He loved her enough to lie.

“I’ll see you again. I promise . . .” He pulled her limp hand up to his lips and kissed her fingertips. “I promise.”

“Mmmm, thank you, Luke.” She closed her eyes, her body falling asleep part by part. “I’ll see you soon . . .” She breathed out before succumbing to her medication and exhaustion. He waited until he was certain she was asleep and then rolled off the hospital bed, pulled her favorite fleece blanket up to her shoulders, and then settled back into the couch, where he got his first full night’s sleep in weeks. When he woke up in the morning to the sun shining in from behind the front window curtains, Natalie was dead. He’d slept through her last breaths.

“
Hey!
You have a visitor; get up!” A loud voice shattered Luke’s memory. He wiped at his eyes, not wanting anyone in this place to think he’d been crying. Squinting through the poorly lit room, Luke tried to make out who could possibly be visiting him in a holding cell in the middle of the night. An officer, dressed in his street uniform, stood at the door to the cell. Luke rubbed his eyes, and the man came into focus. It was Brian Gurrella.

“Luke, you okay?” Brian held a tray of food, a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel, an apple, and something that looked like a juice box lying on its side. “I have your dinner. Made it myself.”

Luke wasn’t hungry even though he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Still, he crossed the cell and took the steel tray from Brian’s hands.

“Thanks.” He placed the tray on a bench without inspecting it further, only caring about how to get out of that cell and back home to his family. He returned to the door and Brian, who was watching him carefully.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Brian asked, his thumbs looped through the belt loops on his pants. There was none of the usual humor in his face. No, he looked like a cop ready to interrogate a “perp.”

“I have no idea. Really. I guess I had a busted taillight and got pulled over, but after that . . . I don’t know what happened.” Luke approached the door, wrapping his hands around the bars. “What did they tell you?”

Brian stepped back, like Luke was too close or potentially dangerous. “I’m not really supposed to discuss charges with you. I heard you have a lawyer coming. This isn’t official. I just wanted to talk to you, man-to-man.”

“No, no, it’s okay. I have nothing to hide.” Luke pressed his face between the bars. “Please, what did they say?”

“Fine,” he said, brushing out a wrinkle on the front of his uniform. “They said you had drugs in your car, pills. That you had them in bottles, ready for distribution.”

“I’ve never seen those before, damn it,” Luke growled, squeezing the metal bars until he was sure he could break them.

“I have to tell you, Luke, that’s what they all say.” Brian shook his head like he didn’t know what to think. “No one sits in that cell, looks back at me, and says, ‘Yeah, I did it. I sold drugs.’ So you can see why it’s hard to believe you.”

“Hard to believe me? You’ve got to be kidding. We’ve been friends for ten years. I barely even drink, much less use illegal drugs. Please tell me you can do something.” Being accused by a stranger was one thing, but to be accused by Brian, wife-beating, drug-abusing Brian, was nauseating.

“Wait, let me get this right.” Brian took a large step toward the bars, making them face-to-face, minus the metal barrier. “You want someone who knows you, who you’ve been friends with for a long time, to put in a good word for you? Is that what you’d like to happen here?”

A dark hole formed inside Luke, sucking out any hope he’d been holding on to. Brian knew he’d called Bormet. He released the bars and took a step back. Is this what Annie was talking about when she said that if Luke helped her, Brian would come after him too? Those pills weren’t Natalie’s after all. Brian put them there.