One More Day (11 page)

They slept with the windows open most of the year. There was something comforting to them both about the piney air, the wind moving the soft, low branches, the small splashes made by birds or frogs on the man-made pond. And yes, occasionally, a sound that wasn't restful broke through—a rustling that woke only Carrie.

This time, it was one a.m. She sat straight up, clutching her chest. She looked over at John, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open, sleeping soundly as he always did.
Did he not just hear that? That…cry?
She got out of bed and went to the window overlooking the pond, cranked it open wider. A few lights here and there across the way, on timers. No flashlights, no footfalls she could discern. No animal rustling in the brush. The breeze picked up again, and she smelled something that reminded her of manure. Grassy, sharp, but just an undercurrent of sweet.

She ran downstairs, put on her coat and clogs, and took a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. In the garage, she pulled a folding beach chair off the pegboard. As she hit the electronic button to close the garage door, she did not immediately recognize this as a mistake. John could sleep through anything—that was what she believed.

But he didn't. He heard the familiar clanging outside, woke up, and rubbed his eyes. He patted the empty side of the bed, then stood and looked out the window. He watched the bobbing polka-dot trail of her flashlight as she made her way to the path. One of his instincts was to call out to her, to demand an answer, but another, deeper one, was to be quiet. To slip into the dark, become one with it. He pulled on a sweater and slippers and moved gently through the house and onto the lawn, stepping lightly on the balls of his feet, staying well behind her as she walked down near the water's edge, testing the swampy grass for firmness, deciding where to set up her chair. She sat down.

John stood behind her on the path, trying to calm his breathing. She didn't look like she was waiting for anyone. She didn't turn around toward the other houses, crane her neck. He stood in one spot for fifteen minutes, twenty, his heart pounding, hands curled into fists, preparing for Neil McGibbon to arrive. Prepared to finally be right. But Carrie didn't look at her watch or her phone. Finally, he saw her dig into her pocket and pull out a tissue, dab at her eyes. And that was when he made his move.

He came to her unquietly this time, not hiding, calling her name when he got close enough for her to hear.

“What are you doing out here, babe?” he asked. “It's not safe.”

“John,” she said through her tears, “I couldn't leave him out here alone.”

He felt his face drain of color; his hands and limbs, every inch of him, went suddenly numb.

“Carrie, what are you saying? What do you—”

“What if he's in there, John?” she said, sobbing. “What if he's in there?”

“Honey, we don't know—”

“We can't just leave him here alone at night.”

He blinked back at his wife, then crouched down to sit beside her, taking her hand, watching the water and the outline of the squat trees. Every so often, a leaf would detach, and they followed the shadow as it fell into the water. How long before that familiar shape soaked up the brackish surface and broke down? Until it was nothing but veins and spine? He shivered and pushed the thought aside.

He leaned into Carrie and dozed until the first glimmers of sun arrived, illuminating the silver dew on the long grass. John woke his wife gently, rubbing her arms and hands to warm her, and told her it was time to get ready to go to the precinct. She didn't protest. She followed him, and she didn't say good-bye, because it was morning, and it was safe, and because she was still so unsure of everything she sensed—what she saw, what she heard, what she smelled when the breeze switched direction.

Susan Clark had stick-straight red hair, pale freckles, and wore no makeup that Carrie could discern, only lip gloss. She shook hands with Carrie and John in the corridor and told Carrie to just stick to the plan and not answer any questions that weren't the ones they had discussed.

“We'll meet you back in here in maybe half an hour,” she said to John.

“I can't go with her?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“What if they, you know, turn bad cop or something? They know me. I don't think they'll behave badly if I'm—”

“Mr. Morgan,” she said, “you cannot accompany your wife.”

“But if something happens, you'll text me, right? I can wait right outside.”

“It will be fine, I assure you.”

He nodded, then pulled Carrie in close and kissed her on the forehead.

Nolan led Susan and Carrie to a room with a long, nicked table, and all of the former warmth Carrie occasionally saw in his face or Forrester's was gone. Now that there was a lawyer in the room, there would be no more buddy-buddy inside scoop for her or John. No more feeling like those two were looking out for them. No more patrol cars on their street, no more kindly glances. The detectives were not on their side anymore; there was only room for the lawyer.

“Okay, now, Mrs. Morgan, I'm sure you'd like to clear your name.”

“Clear my name?”

“Yes. Remove any doubts or suspicions. And the best way to do that would be to submit to a polygraph.”

“Ask a question, please,” Susan said with a sigh. “We are not interested in a polygraph.”

Her phone pinged, and she looked down at the text.

“Mrs. Morgan, would you like to comment on why your Google search history included looking for adoption agencies?"

The blood drained from Carrie's face.

“Excuse me, Detective,” Susan said, looking up from her phone. “Before we go any further, is there any new information you'd like to share?”

He blinked twice.

“Such as?”

“Such as the result of dredging the pond.”

“Still in progress.”

“My boots on the ground say the divers are gone and there's crime tape up.”

“Boots on the ground? Please, the area is sealed.”

“There's a news crew at the scene now reporting otherwise.”

Carrie's arms began to tingle. She felt herself shrinking in the chair, melting, as if she were about to no longer exist. The sticky-sweet coffee smell of the room began to sour, like old milk.
Here it comes
, she thought.
This is the feeling of being right all along.

“I'm not going to comment on the media, couns—”

“Did you or did you not find a child's body in the pond, sir?”

“Until we're ready to release that infor—”

“Surely you're not saying that you refuse to release that information to the mother of the victim?”

“As I said, until we're ready—”

“Are you prepared to charge Mrs. Morgan with a crime right now, at this moment?”

“No.”

“Then my client has nothing to say.”

Carrie looked up suddenly. “I do have something to say.”

“Carrie, no, we—”

She looked at Nolan and Forrester. “Shame on you,” she whispered. “Shame on you both for leaving him there in the dark.”

Susan turned to Carrie and lifted her by the elbow. Carrie felt what she'd expected to feel at the cemetery and didn't—a weightlessness as she rose, light, as if floating, as if in a dream.

Their baby was dead, but he was
found
. They had their closure, that horrible, zip-up-the-body-bag word.

John made the phone calls to their families, pacing, jingling the change in his pocket, yet talking calmly, occasionally clearing his always raspy throat. Not pale like Carrie. Not shaking like Carrie. This was how he operated. When Ben first went missing, John still slept, still ate. He still played squash with his friends once a week. He didn't let it take over the way other people would, did. Shouldn't that alone make
him
a suspect, not Carrie? If they subpoenaed Carrie's records from Dr. Kenney and found out how callous Carrie thought her husband could be and how controlling the doctor thought he was, what would they think then? Who would they be after then? Still, it was useful, John's buoyancy. They had a service to throw, a million people to call, a defense strategy to build, and a search warrant to deal with—for their house, their cars, and Saint David's Church.

Carrie sat and listened as John spoke into his phone, as he insisted his parents not return from their trip to Italy, as he told his brother and sister to wait and come for the memorial service the following week. She breathed a small sigh of relief that on top of everything else, they didn't also have out-of-town company. It would be too much, and it was already too, too much.

Ben had been found near the middle of the pond, not far from where the dog had been barking. He'd had a concrete block tied around his waist with rope and was faceup in the silty bottom. They knew these things because Forrester had surreptitiously told John. Risked his job to whisper it to him from a pay phone near the mall. Because Forrester was convinced of Carrie's innocence, even if Nolan was not. Because Forrester felt sorry for them, John said.

“Faceup,” she repeated. An image of her son at the Y the very day he went missing, floating on his back in the pool, kicking his feet. His long, wet eyelashes like the points of stars. She smiled, then stopped, knowing she shouldn't smile. It wasn't right to smile, even at the good things, even with John. But her reserves of sadness were dwindling. The tears were going to dry up eventually. She'd been sad for so long, there was just so little left.

“That's what he said.”

“Facedown would have been more heartbreaking, don't you think?”

“It's all heartbreaking,” he said.

The word
heartbreaking
came out without a catch in his voice, not a snag or dip. How was that possible, with his stretched, vulnerable voice, not to break in the right places too, not just the wrong ones?

John had been the one who had gone down to the morgue and offered to identify the body. They'd told him it was too gruesome, that it wasn't necessary. They had the dental records, so they sent him away. But he'd been the one brave enough to offer, who could imagine himself looking at Ben's muddy, swollen face and choking out the words “That's him.” How could he not feel worse than Carrie, just picturing that? How could he speak at all, stand up, function?

“What did you say to him?” she said suddenly.

“What? To who?”

Carrie saw it in his eyes: John feared she meant Ben. He didn't want to confess the flat prosaic words he'd choked out in the corridor when he'd seen the drawers, the body bags. That he'd said not only
Good-bye
and
I love you, buddy
but
I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
No poetry, no monologue, no prayer.

“Forrester. When he told you the details. What did you say?”

“I don't know. I don't remember. I felt queasy. I—”

“John, listen to me. This is important. I think…I think he's playing you.”

“Playing me?” He screwed up his face so tight it hurt.

“Feeding you details, telling you he's on our side, when he's actually investigating you. All this stuff about me, it's just to, you know, throw us off. Make you do something or…tell him what he wants to know.”

“Jesus, Carrie,” he said. “Why would you say that? He's trying to help—”

“No. No. It doesn't work like that. No one tries to help that way. He wants you to think it, but it's not true. He asked me questions about you the other day, weird questions, about you following and watching and going out in the middle of the night.”

His face drained of color. “What? I don't believe it. You have to be wrong.”

“Well, we need to keep our eyes open. Both of us. About both of them. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise me, Frog,” she said.

He smiled the smallest smile he dared. It had been a long time since she'd called him that.“I promise.”

He held her tightly, rubbing his hands up and down her back in a way that she sometimes liked and sometimes didn't, depending on her mood. She didn't stop him. She leaned into him, accepting his touch, his closeness.

“Carrie,” he said suddenly, “did you know…the minute you saw the shoe?”

She pulled out of the embrace as if she needed air. “No,” she said softly.

“I just thought, you know, because that guy, Neil, said you fell when you saw it. That you collapsed. And then…well, running into the water. Screaming.”

John looked at his hands. He had fought back tears when Neil told the detectives that. He shouldn't have let Carrie go walking alone without someone to catch her when she fell.

“No.” She shook her head, put her hands against her mouth. “I knew when I saw him here.”

“What? Who, Neil? Neil was here? What do you mean?”

“Ben. I mean, he was dead then.”

“Jesus, Carrie!”

“I'm right, and you know I am. That's why he was the same size. That's why he still fit in the car seat. That's why he hadn't aged, couldn't talk in sentences.”

“He was underfed! He could have been...kept in a box or something, confined. Carrie, good God!”

“No, I'm sure.”

“Please tell me you didn't utter a single word like that to Susan Clark!”

“No.”

“Well, promise me you won't!”

John ran his hands through his hair, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He wished he knew exactly what to tell Carrie to say, instead of what not to say. If only there were a script he could hand her.

“They come back to give us what we need,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“The dog, John,” she said softly. She reached for his arm, searched his eyes, this man who knew her better than anyone, who had to know that she had never spoken a false word to him, ever. When he'd asked her if she'd cheated on her biology test, she'd said yes. When he'd asked her if she'd surreptitiously found out the baby's sex after the ultrasound, she'd said yes. Whenever she could have lied, she told the truth. Everyone knew that about her, all the way back. Ethan, her mother, Chelsea, Tracie. Didn't he remember that? All the church and Sunday school had carved her into an open book. She might not tell everything unprompted, but if asked? It was all over. Dr. Kenney, foolishly waiting for her to offer, hadn't figured it out yet. But John—didn't John know that, even though he didn't know everything about her, all he had to do was formulate the questions and open his mouth?

“At the pond? That was my dog. From when I was a little girl. He came back and led us to the shoe, to put our minds at rest finally. Don't you see? That's why I kept the dog hair. That's why.”

John swallowed hard and took a step back from his wife.

“Carrie, you are talking like someone…like someone who is…seriously confused.”

“I'm not confused.”

“I'm calling Dr. Kenney as soon as—”

“I don't need Dr. Kenney, John!”

“Carrie! Listen to me! Your life is at stake. Our life! We've lost our son, but what's ahead could be worse. And you have got to get your head screwed on straight and stop talking like you're hallucinating, like you're seeing ghosts!”

“You don't get it.”

“You're damn right I don't get it,” he said, heading toward the stairs. “I don't get it at all. And neither would your lawyer, the detectives, or a jury.”

“What about a priest, John? What about Reverend Carson or the priest who confirmed you?”

“Carrie, just because, you know, Christ was resurrected, doesn't mean—”

“Doesn't it? Did you actually read the Bible while you were sitting in chur—”

“Carrie! Look around you. We are not in heaven! This is not… None of this—”

“What, John?”

“We need to call Dr. Kenney,” he said, “and get this fixed.”

This
, she thought, stunned.
He called me a
this
.