The Weight of Silence Page 9

  She looks up and sees my outstretched hand.

  “What?”

  “Your phone, Mia. I need to take your phone.”

  “My phone? You can’t be serious!” Her eyes puddle. “You can’t take my phone. I need it. It’s my lifeline to Luke. It has all my pictures. You can’t take it.”

  “This paper says we can,” Carter says.

  Mia grips her phone like it’s the rocky ledge of El Capitan and she’s about to plunge to her death.

  “I need my phone,” she says.

  “Our techs will copy the phone and return it to you. All right? I’ll tell them to do it first thing in the morning and I’ll make sure you get it back right away,” Carter says.

  She looks at him, then at me. Her eyes are wet, and she’s angry. Defeated. I’d seen delayed grief more than a time or two. I know that a person’s response to grief varies. Some cry. Some stay mute. Some punctuate their words with tears and screams.

  “Luke and I each have a laptop,” she says, pulling herself together and giving up her phone. “I have a MacBook and we also have a Dell that’s on life support. They’re in the baby’s room. That was our office before Ally.”

  Carter stays with Mia, and I retreat down the hall, going past some bland artwork that reminds me of a motel in the middle of nowhere.

  Ally’s room is a complete surprise as far as little girls’ rooms go. Not in a good way. With the exception of a crib that’s been converted to a toddler bed, it is mostly an office by design. A long white Formica desk runs under the window. On its cluttered surface are two laptops, a docking station, and a monitor. On the wall above Ally’s bed is a poster of local hero and Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. It’s a strange choice for a nursery. Not so strange for a twentysomething’s office. It hits all three marks: retro, ironic, and very Aberdeen.

  I call for Carter, and he’s there in a flash.

  “Taking in these two laptops,” I say.

  He nods. “Okay. Anything else catch your eye?”

  I indicate the poster with an askew glance.

  “Weird,” he says.

  I’m grateful that he doesn’t quip that it smells like Teen Spirit.

  The door to the master bedroom is open, and I go inside. Carter follows. It’s neat, like the other rooms in the house. Organized. The spread is a deep royal purple, and the shams are black, making the space look as though Elvira and not that winsome—and toothy—Texas couple from HGTV had decorated it. I can tell which is Mia’s side of the bed because the time she’s set her alarm for is for her shift at the hospital. Luke’s side of the bed has no clock. On his bedside table, however, is a Neil Gaiman novel. And while my reality both professionally and personally is so very brutal, I never gravitate toward fantasy as a means to escape. I amend that thought right away. Gambling was all about fantasy. Winning was always the unicorn.

  As I turn to leave, I notice the headboard and the outside posts supporting it from the floor. The posts are worn on both sides as if something—or someone—might have been tied up in bed. Into some rough stuff, those two.

  Maybe not Elvira after all, I think.

  More like the Marquis de Sade.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thursday, August 17

  I know that some other addiction often replaces a vanquished one. It’s like there’s a foundation of vices that exist separately but create a whole. Like bricks in a building. I don’t want to be an alcoholic, but I do like a good glass of wine. This evening I sit alone in the living room while Emma sleeps upstairs. The sauvignon blanc was on sale. It’s a good bottle: ninety-four points, New Zealand’s Marlborough region. It’s better than I normally buy. I drink only a glass each night. Sometimes two.

  I feel the presence of my dad in this house more than my mother’s or my sister’s. The indentation that his head has left on the old green recliner is a reminder of the hours he spent in front of the old pecan console TV and record player that ceased functioning twenty years ago and now serves only to hold the flat-screen that Stacy and Cy bought him on one of their guilt trips to Hoquiam.

  The spot on the headrest of the recliner is slightly discolored by the oil of Dad’s scalp. Above the chair is an oil painting—no, I think, acrylic. It’s a seascape with a pair of surfers fighting the waves at Washaway Beach, not far from here. The palette is gray blue with a slash of red on one of the boards. The artwork is only a notch above Art-Mart quality, yet I love how it reminds me of Dad. He used to take me to Washaway when Stacy was too little to go. I’d sit on the driftwood and watch him for hours as he and his friends played Washington’s version of the Beach Boys. It was cold. Gray. Yet he seemed so happy.

  I wonder if he remembers that.

  I sip my wine, letting the citrusy and grassy notes coat my tongue before swallowing. Under the coffee table is a shelf brimming with old magazines that portray my father’s interests: diving, motorcycles, and the one that brings a smile to my face, carpentry.

  He was so terrible at that.

  As I sift through the magazines, another item catches my eye for the first time. It’s a cream-colored photo album that I immediately recognize. My mother started it before she left us. Its leather cover is scuffed. Embossed on it in a fancy script that makes it look as though the people whose images are inside are as regal as the Windsors or the Kennedys: Our Family.

  The first few pages are blank except for the gummy residue indicating where photographs had once been affixed. I run my fingers over the cellophane covering. In my mind’s eye I can picture what was there: photographs of my parents’ wedding. My mom was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. In those images, now gone, she appeared like a movie star or an angel. Or maybe it was a combination of both.

  I turn the page, and there is a photo of my parents standing in front of the Tokeland Hotel on Willapa Bay, south of Grays Harbor County, where I know they spent their wedding night. My dad stands tall and handsome; his arm is around my mother’s perfect waist. I cannot tell anything about how she was feeling at that moment.

  Someone—my father, I think—has excised her face from the photo.

  As I look through the pages, I see the recurring theme. Mom, who left us all alone in pursuit of her dreams, has been eliminated from “Our Family.” I can’t blame Dad. She hurt him to the core. Mom was a cyanide-laced apple. Outside—gleaming, flawless. Inside—something so vile and so selfish that she was unable to possess a shred of empathy. I’ve known that my whole adult life, but it isn’t until this moment that I know there is another word for mother: sociopath. We were never anything more than something she could manipulate. Everything was a game to her.

  I turn the page, and I see the proof that has eluded scientists for a hundred years. Stacy. She looks at the camera with the face of an angel. She stands next to that pony she insisted Dad buy her. Her face is lit up. Her smile is a bright crescent moon in a night sky. I remember how she tired of that pony. I remember how Dad told her that a pet is a commitment that lasts a lifetime. Candy was a Shetland, light brown with a dark, toffee-colored mane. She was gentle and unafraid of children or dogs. We kept her in the backyard.

  I drink some more wine and look at the bottle. More than a glassful of wine, less than two. I fill my glass to the rim.

  I remember when I came home from school one afternoon. I was worried about Stacy because she’d been ill that morning and had stayed home. When I got inside, I dropped my backpack by the door. Mom and Stacy were on the couch watching The Sound of Music on TV. It was the old console then, flickering through a fading picture tube.

  “Don’t go in the backyard,” Mom said.

  Stacy looked up, a frown on her face.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s Candy, honey. Candy’s gone.”

  My mother always used the word gone as a euphemism for dead. It was casual. Dismissive. When our grandmother went “gone,” I thought she’d driven to the store.

  I started to cry. I wanted to know what happened to Candy.<
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  Before turning back to the movie, she said, “Poisoned. Someone poisoned the poor thing.”

  Stacy looked at me.

  “She died real fast, Nicole,” she said. “She didn’t suffer.”

  I never forgot that exchange. It came back to me time and again. I never had the guts to ask Stacy, but in my bones I felt like Stacy—or maybe our mother—had done something to that pony. How was it that Stacy knew that Candy didn’t suffer? Or how long it had taken for her to die?

  I flip through the pages of the album. I know that I’m the oldest. I know that in most families the number of photographs of the oldest versus the youngest is nearly two to one. In my family things didn’t work out that way at all. In fact, it is the reverse. When I flip though the remaining pages, I also notice that my mother selected group photos in which she and Stacy appeared the most animated, the most center stage. It took me until I was about twenty to realize that my eyes didn’t automatically shut when the camera was pointed at me, as I had once thought. My mom, it seems, liked selecting images that made me feel bad about myself.

  I’m glad my mother’s dead. She has been for many years. It’s terrible, I know, but I hope she suffered. And yet, at the same time, I know that any forgiveness I might have offered her would have been met with the cold eyes of a rattlesnake. She didn’t understand the concept of forgiveness the same way human beings do. Those who are not narcissistic and sociopathic.

  The wine is gone. I put down the leather album and grab the neck of the bottle. It’s cool to the touch. As it warms, I think of swinging it like a baseball bat. But I don’t. Instead, I carry it into the kitchen and drop it in the recycling bin by the back door. I look out the window and wonder if Candy’s bones are still out in that grave our father dug. Or if they’ve turned to dust.

  I wish my memories would turn to dust. Maybe my father’s Alzheimer’s is a gift after all.

  I hear Emma stirring, and I go upstairs and sit on her bed. She’s pushed her covers away, as she does nearly every night. I inch up the top sheet to make her feel secure, but not overheated. I thank God for her every day. I thank God for the chance to fix all of the things that have made my family a sordid and sorry mess.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Friday, August 18

  It’s morning, and Emma stands in the kitchen looking like Stacy did at that age. I hope to God that Stacy’s good looks are all that she’s inherited. Emma’s hair is less strawberry than it had been when she was small. Her eyes, however, are just as blue as her mother’s. They flicker in that same way that Stacy’s do when the light hits them just so. I find myself staring into them, wondering what else, if anything, might also be like her mother.

  Before we leave for Carrie Anne’s, we look at the school assignment still hanging on the refrigerator. It was the source of a great deal of effort and angst at the beginning of the summer. Her effort. My angst.

  I look at the assignment, and I wonder if I’ve done right by Emma. She knows that her dad is dead. I couldn’t lie to her about how he’d been killed in what was ruled an accidental propane-tank explosion.

  I didn’t tell her that her mother chose her lover, Julian, over caring for her daughter.

  “She’s going away on a long trip,” I said three years ago when the world turned upside down. “Until she returns, I’m going to take care of you. We’re going to move into Grandpa’s house near the ocean.”

  Emma cried every night for her mother and father. I tried not to take it personally. Though I was much older, I remembered how it felt when our mother left us. I rationalized it. I thought that she was only leaving for a short time and that once she made a movie or got on TV, she’d send for Stacy, Dad, and me.

  Stupid, stupid me.

  In time, Emma started calling me Auntie Mommy and began to believe that her mother’s long trip had in fact been to heaven. Somewhere along the way, the story morphed from a long trip to a car accident, something with more finality.

  She looks up from her family tree and gives me the smile that brings me more joy than anything in my life.

  “You know something?” she says, her eyes taking me in.

  “What’s that, honey?”

  “Mommy’s not in heaven.”

  My heart skips a beat. I wonder if she’s overheard me bad-mouth Stacy one too many times. I’ve tried so hard to keep my anger toward my sister in check. It isn’t an easy endeavor.

  We gather our things and start for the door.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I saw her,” she says.

  Emma had frequent dreams about her mother the first year of her absence. Not many since. Though I know better, I ask her anyway.

  “In a dream?”

  “No,” she says. “For reals.”

  I lie to myself. I tell myself that a child’s imagination is powerful. I give Emma a big hug and lay a soft kiss on her cheek. As we head out into the hot blankness of the world outside for the car, I pretend to fidget with my keys and lock the dead bolt. I’m buying time. I try to hide the worry on my face by looking deep into my purse.

  How to answer her?

  “I know how much you miss your mom,” I finally say as I start the car. “And your daddy too. I know they are watching over you, Emma.”

  It’s a lie, but it’s also a kind of wish too.

  As it turned out, taking a swing at a police officer was only the middle of a very bad day for Luke Tomlinson. On the morning of the fourth day of the case, charges were amended from second-degree murder to homicide. I wasn’t in booking to hear how the news went down, but Nora Harper, the department’s victim advocate, has excellent hearing.

  I catch her eye from my desk, and she stops her loping gait. She looks perturbed about something.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Nora folds her arms and takes a breath as she stands outside my office. She’s closing up, centipede-like.

  “I’m telling you—and you know I don’t like to talk about pending cases whatsoever—this rant of his was completely over-the-top. I was outside the jail and I could hear him wailing and yelling and repeating over and over how ‘you have it all wrong! You don’t know me! I’m not that guy!’”

  Nora stops to allow me to soak it in.

  “But I think he is that guy,” I say as she stands outside of my office.

  “He probably is,” Nora says. “Due process is needed, of course. But seriously, Nicole, he was all over the place, pitching the biggest fit that I’ve ever heard in my life. He was like a three-year-old at the checkout line wanting a Snickers bar. Such a fuss over his county-issue clothes. Like that was something to be mad about.”

  “I get the picture,” I say.

  “Get this,” Nora goes on, a bit uncharacteristically. “Never once did he mention his daughter. Or his wife, for that matter. It was all about him, him, him.”

  “He’s his own favorite person, is he?” I say, without a touch of sarcasm.

  None needed.

  “Yeah,” Nora says, letting her arms dangle. “I don’t get it. I really don’t. Mia seems like a lovely young woman. What in the hell did she see in him? She’s working her butt off, trying to get her nursing degree and make some real money, and she’s somehow ended up with this selfish, self-absorbed moron.”

  Nora lingers a little in my office doorway. She’s a towering figure at nearly six feet tall, but her ability to reel people in makes every conversation seem like she’s at eye level. I suspect she wants to come in, but the truth is we really can’t talk about the case any more than we already have. We are smile-and-wavers, people like Nora and me. The ties that bind us are solely the result of the cases that keep us awake at night. While it feels like there is a friendship, it’s really not like that at all. It’s more like, I imagine, the relationships that maybe stamp or butterfly collectors share. They can talk all day and night about an Abraham Lincoln stamp or an Amazonian swallowtail, but after that, they have nothing else to say to each other.

>   I want to ask her if Mia had said anything useful, but Nora won’t go there because she’s professional and she knows that divulging any information to the police will eat away and almost certainly destroy her relationship with victims.

  Nora Harper needs victims more than she needs friends or allies.

  I understand. Not long ago, I needed the sound and promise of the casino’s slot machines more than I needed my old life. I can see more clearly now the things that have blinded me. Disaster has a way of either saving or killing you.

  “Leaving your child in a hot car to die,” I say to her, “is the cruelest way to kill that I can think of.”

  Nora nods. “Of course he says—and I mean very loudly—that he didn’t do any such thing.”

  “Right,” I say. “Just a mistake he made.”

  She sighs. “The biggest mistake he’ll ever make, I suspect, for the rest of his life.”

  “I guess that’s what we’re here to figure out,” I say. “Just where he will spend the rest of his life.”

  “That’s up to you and the prosecutor’s office,” Nora says, finally turning to leave. “I can’t help you there, but I think you know where my prayers are going.”

  I give her a slight nod.

  “Same place as mine,” I say, but Nora’s already gone.

  The news alert on my PC flashes. It’s a story about Luke Tomlinson’s charges being amended to homicide. His booking photo has already made it to the media. He looks at the camera dull eyed. His mouth seems to be in a smirk, but part of me wonders if it’s just because I know what he did.

  Just like he does.

  The story recounts what happened in that parking lot and indicates that Luke researched hot-car deaths just prior to Ally’s murder. Some anonymous friends of the Tomlinsons talk about how shocked they are that it happened, and they say the police have it all wrong. “The lead investigator has a lot of baggage of her own. She’s botched up some cases in the past.”

  One slings an arrow in my direction, but I don’t wince. I’m stronger than that. Of course, I can’t argue against that. In fact, when Carter got me into the department for the interview, he told me that the key to my future would be to view everything as the next step in some kind of personal rehab.