The Guilty One (31 page)

“Look who's talking,” Pet said through her tears.

They decided that Pet would go across the street to the diner to wait, doubling back and approaching from the other side of the street so she was out of Liz's view. Maris went to consult with Norris, who had already called the cops while Liz hunkered down on the top step, rocking with her knees pulled to her chest. When Maris saw the cop car coming down the street, its lights flashing, she waited until Liz was distracted by the officers before heading over to the diner.

If the woman behind the counter recognized Maris, she didn't let on. Pet was sitting in one of the cheap plastic chairs with her earbuds in, her eyes closed, and the unopened copy of
East of Eden
in her lap.

“Bacon egg sandwich,” Maris said. “Make it two.”

She sat down across from Pet and gently tugged at the cord coming from her ear. Pet sat up and gave a weak smile, pulling off the earbuds.

“I know how this is going to sound,” Maris said. “And you can ignore me if you want. But it's going to be fine. I mean, I really believe that.”

“Then you're not as smart as you look,” Pet said. Then: “Fuck, I'm sorry.”

The sandwiches came. Maris unwrapped hers and contemplated it. “I wonder how many calories are in this thing?”

Pet just shrugged. Maris folded the waxed paper back over it. “Well, you're a grown-up,” she said. “So I'm not going to tell you that you ought to eat something. Or ask you when you last ate.”

Pet glanced up at her and flashed a smirk. “Actually, you just did. You just asked. By saying you weren't going to.”

“Um, yeah, obviously. It's a mom thing.”

Their eyes met while Maris realized what she had said. The first time she'd laid claim to that territory in such a long time. But she didn't look away. Not this time.

“I had a Clif Bar before class,” Pet said in a small voice. “And a Rockstar.”

“Oh, Pet. Listen. You want to stay with me?” And there went her getaway; there went her easy out. The fantasy she nurtured of running away again, leaving the mess she'd made behind her.

“Thanks, but she's in for seventy-two hours no matter what, unless they don't take her. But when she's like this, it's a pretty easy call. They'll get her calmed down in the hospital and then John will come for her and he'll be extra careful with her for a while, and as long as she takes her meds . . . Anyway, the next two nights are like a vacation, because I don't have to worry about her while she's in the hospital.”

“Oh.” Maris had a thought . . . an audacious thought that seemed like a potentially bad one the more she considered it. So she decided to just blurt it out. “You don't work tomorrow night, right?”

“Not on Fridays . . .”

“How would you like to go to a thing with me?”

“A thing?”

Maris grinned, not even sure why. It wasn't like either one of them had much to be happy about. “A gala. A fancy fucking gala.”

“Did you really just say fuck, Mary?”

“Do you have anything decent to wear?”

AN HOUR OUTSIDE
of Fresno, Ron pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and vomited on the hard-packed ground. A large, ragged black bird landed not far away and hopped around, squawking angrily. The stench was instant and awful. Ron backed away from it, pulling his phone from his pocket. He squinted at the browser window, barely able to make out the number without his reading glasses, and dialed.

Six rings before anyone picked up.

“Hey, can you tell me if I can get on the visiting schedule today?”

“Walk-in only, sir.”

“I can walk in?”

“If there's an opening.”

“How do I find out if there's an opening?”

“Just show up.”

“Well, can you tell me how likely—you know what, forget it,” Ron said.

It was sort of on the way home and it wasn't like the world would stop turning if he didn't ever show up at work today. Besides, waiting in the lobby of a correctional facility didn't sound any less appealing than any of his other options.

Back in the car he floored it, digging in the console for gum. Maybe he'd get pulled over, maybe he wouldn't. At least if he did, it would take the matter of what was next out of his hands, even if just for a moment.

NO ONE ELSE
was trying for the walk-in appointment, as it turned out. But when Karl was brought out, he looked even unhappier to see Ron than he had the last time.

“What's that smell?” Karl said, after they'd taken their seats.

“It's . . . never mind.”

“Mom's attorney is apparently coming to see me,” he said angrily. As if Ron had anything to do with it. As if Ron had any control over anything.

“He's not Mom's attorney. He's your attorney.”

“Not if I say no.”

“Karl,” Ron said heavily. “Why didn't you just say no already, then?”

“Why are you here?” Karl retorted.

Ron sat with his second thoughts, his self-recrimination. Two tables away, a woman in an impossibly short skirt struggled to keep a squirming baby on her lap.

“I asked you to do one thing for me,” Karl finally said, deflated. “Just keep Mom under control.”

“Oh, sorry,” Ron said sarcastically. “I wasn't aware I owed you.”

“Dad!”

His voice was so anguished that Ron looked up in alarm. Karl's eyes were bright with emotion. “You act like I've been shit all my life. But I wasn't. I wasn't. You've never—not even before, I could never do anything right for you. You've always hated me. Why are you even here?”

“Wait, I never—”

“Every day in that courtroom? You never even looked at me. You looked at every damn thing in that room, but you couldn't stand to look at me.”

“I
love
you,” Ron whispered, the air stagnant in his lungs. What had happened here?

“
Now?
Now you say it?” Karl stood up but immediately sat down, before the guard could even react. “You never told me that,” he said miserably.

But Ron had. When Karl was a baby, he'd said it all the time when it was just the two of them, when there was no one else around. He whispered it at night and murmured it into Karl's soft scalp when he was in the Snugli. When had he stopped saying it out loud? When had he locked the words away?

When Karl was old enough to understand? When he was old enough to say the words himself?

“I know I was . . . tough on you,” he tried. “Karl. I know that. I just wanted . . . I wanted you to be strong. I wanted you to be able to be proud of yourself. To know you could take care of yourself. It was, it was—” It was the only thing he'd been able to hold on to when he was growing up, he wanted to say, but didn't know how to explain it. That every time he survived one of Magnus's bouts of anger, every jab or slap, he'd consoled himself with the knowledge that he'd endured. That he'd been strong. Staying silent and getting back up every time he was knocked down, that had come to symbolize survival for Ron.

Keith had been the soft one. He was the one who still hurt, who had been in and out of therapy and addiction treatment for years. Keith was divorced and lived in a shitty apartment that smelled like burning chemicals and always ended up getting laid off for no good reason. Ron hadn't wanted that for Karl. Keith was proof that if you let your guard down, life chewed you up and spit you out.

So instead he'd taught Karl to turn everything inward. Where it had festered and simmered until the day it spilled over in one disastrous torrent.

“Oh, God,” he said. “I did this to you. I'm why you're here.”

“That's . . . Dad.
Dad
.”

Karl's anger turned to alarm so fast that for a moment Ron could almost imagine he was like before, a teenager mortified by his parents' very existence. He coughed several times, trying to mask his crying, trying to pull himself together. But when would he get a chance to tell Karl again? Would he be able to express his remorse any better in five years, or seven? Would he ever be able to make it right?

“Karl,” he said, clearing his throat. “I'm sorry. I haven't stopped trying to talk to your mom. I'll see what I can do, if you really don't see the value in trying to appeal. And meanwhile, maybe you and I could, I could come more often and we could, I could write, too—”

“Dad. I—I did it.”

Ron stopped midsentence. “What? What did you say?”

“You heard me, Dad. I
did
it.” Karl's eyes sought his. “Look, tell Mom if she keeps up with the appeal, I'm going to say it. Like to the reporters. To everyone.”

“You . . . Karl, are you just saying this to try to—”

“I
did
it, Dad. I killed Calla. I didn't mean to, you have to believe that. I never meant it, even after it was . . . after, even when I was driving her, I still couldn't believe it, I kept thinking, I mean, right up to when I got to the lake. And after. The next day? I mean, I couldn't believe it was me. Sometimes . . .”

His skin had gone ghostly pale; his eyes hollow. His hands, clasped on the table in front of him, gripped so tightly the knuckles were white. “Sometimes I still can't believe it,” he whispered.

“Karl.” Ron felt light-headed. Now, more than any time in his life, he wished he could touch his son. The table between them could have been a continent. “Karl, am I the only person you've told this to?”

Karl stared at him bleakly and then shook his head, very slowly.

“Who do you think helped me wash the car?”

HALFWAY HOME, RON
stopped at a gas station and bought a toothbrush and a travel-sized toothpaste. After brushing his teeth in the station's restroom, he splashed water on his face and slicked his hair back. He used a damp paper towel to blot out a spot of vomit that had gotten on his shirt.

Then he was back in the car, where he would have driven even faster than he'd been driving all day except that he hit traffic starting in Tracy and didn't get home until nearly eight o'clock.

Deb met him at the door, frantic. “Where have you been? Oh my God, where have you
been
? I've called you half a dozen times!”

He hadn't wanted to talk to her until he got home. Had been counting on being able to look her in the eye when he told her that he knew.

But he hadn't expected her to throw her arms around him, sobbing.

“What the
fuck
is wrong with you?” he muttered, prying her arms off him, shoving her away.

She staggered back, confusion and hurt in her eyes. “Larry Loughlin called. They needed some file you were supposed to send out. They said you weren't picking up. And then I called Anita and she said you never came in this morning. I called the cops, they've put an alert out to the bridge patrol, Ron. I thought . . .”

She thought I'd really done it this time, Ron thought with amazement. But how was that possible? Deb knew him better than he knew himself.

“Oh—I have to call them. To tell them you're home. I told them the minute I heard . . .” She was practically running for the kitchen. Ron stood in the foyer listening while she talked to one person and then another, repeating over and over again that her husband was fine, that he was home. And apologizing, and thanking. Finally she came back, stopping in the hall, and they stared at each other over a gulf of travertine tile and processed air.

“We need to talk,” Ron said.

SHE DIDN'T DENY
any of it.

“You took an Ambien that night,” she said haltingly. “I saw the bottle on the counter.”

She'd waited up for Karl, alarmed when he wasn't home by 1 a.m., frantic by 1:30. She was getting ready to try to wake Ron when she heard the back door open. She'd only waited that long because she knew how the Ambien knocked him out.

She'd gone downstairs to find her son standing there like a zombie, his shoes muddy, dirt tracked onto the hardwood floors.

“He told me right away,” she said. “He kept saying she was dead. Over and over.
Calla's dead
. At first I thought there had been an accident, that he was in shock. We walked out to the car together and I thought for sure it would be all smashed up. I wasn't thinking straight because why would they let him drive home, if—and that was sort of sinking in. He said it one more time, Calla's dead, and I made him come sit next to me on the chaise by the pool and I took both his hands and I said, ‘You're telling me Calla's dead?' And he said yes and I said, ‘How did it happen?' And he looked at me and he said, ‘Mama, I think I did it.' Not Mom.
Mama
. Just like when he was five. He told me he thought he'd accidentally choked her and I said where
i
s she and he said in the lake and then we were both crying, Ron, we were both crying so hard and holding each other. And it took the longest time for me to understand that he had
put
her there, that no one else knew. That . . . there was still a chance to keep it from ruining his life.”

“Oh, Deb,” Ron said. They were sitting on the couch in the family room, their knees touching, and the rage that had fueled him all the way home was gone, just like that it was all gone. He tried to put himself into Deb's shoes, tried to imagine what it was like to carry that weight, to know something unknowable, to endure it, alone.

“We washed the car in the dark. It wasn't dirty, there weren't any marks on it that I could see, but I just wanted to be sure. When we were done the sprinklers were coming on and I knew no one would be able to tell we'd washed it. I pulled it into the garage and then I checked the inside, but there wasn't . . . there wasn't anything, Ron. It wasn't like you'd think. It wasn't like you'd expect.”