The Deepest Secret

  Of course she was the one to drive Albert to the hospital. He didn’t want the fuss of an ambulance, but his arm hung at such an odd angle. His face was white as he climbed carefully into the passenger seat, Mark helping, Joan standing back with her hand pressed against her mouth. Eve couldn’t look at any of them. The garage door closed behind her and she drove off, going by all the houses golden with late afternoon sun, holding that hateful steering wheel.

  Albert looks so pale.

  She pulls into the hospital lot. In front of her is a green minivan, its back window adorned with a row of those white stick-figure stickers of a family. This one has Mom, Dad, two boys, a girl, a cat, a dog. Below, a bumper sticker reads: Remember who you wanted to be?

  No, she thinks. Not by a long shot.

  DAVID

  The corridor’s dark. Just the corner office has light seeping beneath the door. David lets himself into his own office and sits down at his desk. He opens his laptop and presses a button. He tells himself he’s just checking in. But when Tyler’s face appears on David’s computer screen, David feels a wash of shame.

  “Hey, Dad.” Tyler sits against his bedroom wall, the mosaic artwork and photographs spread out behind him.

  “Hey, buddy. How are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “How’s school going? You use your new camera yet?” Why is it so much easier to talk to his kid this way, separated by hundreds of miles, their vision constrained by a computer screen?

  “Yeah. It’s great.”

  “I thought everything was moving to digital. I thought no one was using film anymore.”

  Tyler frowns and David realizes he’s taken a misstep. “Lots of professional photographers use film.”

  David has no doubt he’s right. Tyler’s spent hours researching online. “So what’s the difference? What does film do that digital can’t?” It feels important to know, as if by understanding it, he can know his son.

  “I can’t explain it.” Tyler’s clearly frustrated. “It’s just … different. Why? Is it a problem?”

  “Not at all. What do you think about building a darkroom in the basement?”

  “That’d be cool.”

  Tell me. Is this what you want? “We could get started on it this weekend.” Would this make you happy? How are you going to manage if your mom and I split? What about if she goes to prison? How are any of us going to manage?

  “You mean do it ourselves?”

  “Sure. It wouldn’t be that difficult. All we’d need to do is block off a corner, make sure we have a water source and a few electrical outlets. We already know how to make something lightproof.” This is meant to be a joke, but Tyler doesn’t smile.

  “Yeah, okay,” Tyler says, but he sounds uncertain. David feels impatient. If his father had suggested building something, David would have leapt at it. He would have been full of questions. He would have wanted to get started right away. But this isn’t David and his father. This is David and his son, and everything’s different.

  “Tyler,” David begins.

  Tyler hears the change in his voice and sits up a little straighter. “Your mother told me what happened. That you lied to cover up Melissa’s sneaking out.”

  “I didn’t lie!”

  “When the police asked you—”

  “They never asked me if Melissa was home the whole time. You never asked, either.”

  Tyler sees everything in black and white. There are no shades of gray for him. “Lying by omission is still a lie. You knew what she’d done was wrong and that you should have told us. Tell me you know that.”

  Tyler’s silent, nibbling his thumbnail.

  “I expect an answer.”

  “Yes.” It comes grudgingly.

  “I understand wanting to protect your sister.” Hadn’t David done the same thing when he caught his younger sister smoking or sliding a chocolate bar into her pocket at the convenience store? He’d told her to give him the cigarettes; he’d made her go up to the counter and pay for the candy. “But you’re fourteen now. You’re old enough to understand consequences.”

  Tyler leans back and the laptop shifts view. His face is farther away, his eyes hidden beneath a shock of curls. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see.” With any luck, this detective will overlook her driving without a license. “Tell me again what happened that night.”

  Tyler frowns. “I already told you.”

  “I need to hear it again. What time did your mom leave?” He says this casually, studies his son for a reaction. Tyler can’t hear anything in his voice, can he?

  But Tyler just shrugs. “Six-fifty-nine.”

  “Is that what time she left, or what time you got out of your room?”

  “Okay. Then I guess she left around seven. What does it matter?”

  “It doesn’t.” It does. It matters. “I’m just trying to get a sense of what happened. You watched her leave, didn’t you?” Tyler always stood by the window and watched Eve drive away, as though fearful she might never return. “Which way did she turn?”

  Tyler lets out his breath, looks up at the ceiling, and narrows his eyes. “Left,” he says finally.

  David’s heart drops. “You sure?” Left was where Amy had been struck. Right was the way to the airport.

  “I’m sure. She went left.”

  A knock, and he looks up to see Renée.

  “Ready?” she says.

  “He said he wouldn’t be here,” Renée says, unlocking the front door. They step into a tiny vestibule. She works the lock on the interior door. This one has a stained glass inset of red tulips. The window on the second-floor landing has purple asters and the one in the upstairs bedroom has white jonquils. She’d given him the tour the first time he came by for dinner. Makes me feel like I’m living in a florist’s shop, she’d said, making a face, and Jeffery had shrugged. I kind of like them, he’d said.

  The place smells faintly of woodsmoke. The floors are blond wood, the furniture pale ash and white leather. Jeffery had picked out the living room furniture, had waved around with his wineglass. Just put in Bose speakers, he’d said. Wall-to-wall sound. He’d seemed uncomfortable, laughing a little too hard at his own jokes. He’s a little jealous of you, Renée had told David the next day. I know, I know. She’d rolled her eyes. But that’s how he is.

  “Need any help?” he asks Renée.

  “I’ll just get my clothes. A few other things. I’ll be right back.”

  There’s an ink drawing of a woman’s naked back, her head turned to show just her demure profile, fringed wall hangings in maroon and black, a trio of tribal masks.

  The first mask Eve had fashioned for Tyler had had a thick sheet of UV plastic hanging down from the brim of a sun hat. He had hated it, kept reaching up to tug it off. He wouldn’t keep his socks on, either, or his gloves. Taking him to the doctor’s had been a nightmare. David would take off from work and drive while Eve sat in the backseat with Tyler, who screamed and cried and kicked his legs. By the time they arrived, they were all exhausted. And then they’d have to do it all over again the following month.

  On the mantel is a large silver-framed portrait of the two of them, professionally shot, Renée standing inside Jeffery’s embrace, both of them smiling at the camera. Our engagement photo, she’d told him. His mom insisted.

  He and Eve had rented a place downtown after they were married, a one-room apartment with a kitchenette, all they could afford. They’d sit at the counter to eat. He’d tell her what he’d learned that day in business school, and she’d regale him with stories from the hotel where she worked. I placed the wake-up call to Malcolm Forbes, she’d say, or, Housekeeping found a briefcase filled with passports. She was always interested in other people’s stories, and talking with her always brought things alive for him. He misses that girl. He wonders if Eve misses the boy he once was.

  He heard the sharp tapping of high heels, and Renée’s back, rolling a su
itcase behind her and carrying a shoulder bag. “Let me get that,” he says, putting his phone into his pocket and taking both suitcases from her.

  Renée looks around at the walls, the white furniture. When she looks at him, her eyes are shining with tears. “I guess this is it.”

  Tyler possesses an uncanny ability to recall conversations word for word. He’s like that with stories he’s read, images he’s seen. He can remember walks they’ve taken, step by step, and where every house is and what every neighbor was doing when they passed by. His mind is always working, finding ways to challenge itself. So if Tyler had said that Eve had turned left, then that was what she had done.

  FREAK

  Something’s happening on Facebook. Zach’s posted a winky face on Savannah’s wall. Does that mean they’re dating? Tyler stares at Zach’s avatar—the picture Tyler took of Zach leaping on the trampoline. Zach hasn’t changed it, but he’s unfriended him. As soon as Tyler figured that out, he did the same.

  No one tells him not to, so at 7:51 he unlocks his bedroom door and swings it open. The hall stairs spill away into darkness. Silence ticks around him. His mom’s at the hospital with Albert. Melissa’s at Brittany’s.

  Beige carpet rolls down the stairs. He knows each riser, the third one from the top with the loose thread, the second one from the bottom with the tiny red smear of wax from the time he’d pretended to be a medieval knight. He’d tried to scissor it away and his mom had caught him. It’s all right, she’d told him. It’s just carpet.

  Downstairs, he turns on the lamps—the tall brass lamp by his mom’s favorite reading chair, the glass globe on the end table, the two smaller candlestick lamps on the server. He flips the switch in the kitchen, and everything jumps out in brightness. The dining room chandelier, the outside lights around the patio. At last he stands alone in the kitchen, with all the gleaming countertops. The whole place feels empty, like a balloon that’s let out its air, leaving just a thin rubber skin.

  Tyler shouldn’t open the door. His mom would tell him no. She would want him to wait until she was home. He undoes the latch and twists the doorknob.

  His mom had called him from the hospital. He’d heard the garage door rumble up then, and a while later, rumble back down. He hadn’t even heard her drive away, and so when his phone rang, he was surprised to see her name on caller ID. I had to take Albert to the hospital, she’d told him. I don’t know how long I’ll be.

  He could go to the park if he wanted to. He could check on that python in Dr. Cipriano’s basement, to make sure it was still in its cage. He could go over to Holly’s house, but Mark’s car is in the driveway.

  He sits down on the front step.

  His dad had been full of questions. Tyler had sweated through every one of them, though none of them was important. They were all about his mom. His dad hadn’t asked a single one about Melissa, though Tyler knew they were coming. And then his dad had to hang up, and Tyler had been saved from having to answer. But the one about which direction his mom had driven had been an important one. His dad’s face had changed at Tyler’s response. Tyler doesn’t get why it mattered, but he tries to think now of that night, picture the way the rain had fallen and the thunder had boomed. He squints up the street, trying to picture his mom braking there before driving away, and then there she is, the dark shape of her car turning the corner and heading down the street toward him. He stands up. He’s glad she’s home. He never likes it when she’s gone, especially at night.

  The garage door rumbles up, but his mom’s car stops in the driveway instead of pulling in. The engine is silenced. She climbs out and hurries toward him. “Tyler! Oh my God. Get inside this instant!”

  “What happened?” Melissa asks when she gets home. She’s staring in the refrigerator, holding onto the handle. She looks empty, like she’s got nothing holding her up. She reaches in and pulls out a cherry yogurt.

  “Albert broke his elbow,” his mom says. He and his mom are playing Uno and he’s kicking ass, but now his mom stops and looks at Melissa. She’s been doing that a lot—watching Melissa as though she might vanish. “He might need to have surgery.”

  Melissa turns and looks at her. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’ll be fine, honey.” His mom sets down an eight. “They’re keeping him at the hospital overnight for observation. He was a little dehydrated.”

  “Who would hurt Albert?” Melissa takes a spoon from the drawer.

  “He stumbled. No one meant to hurt him.”

  Tyler wishes he’d seen it, everyone standing around yelling at one another. Even Holly had been there, his mom had told him. Everyone had.

  “Crazy.” Melissa wanders away. His mom doesn’t call after her to bring back the spoon when she’s done.

  Don’t worry, his mom had told him, but she’s been watching, getting up every so often to stand by the kitchen window and look between the gap in the curtains. Nine o’clock comes and goes. He discards a three. “Maybe she changed her mind.”

  “Maybe,” his mom agrees.

  “Uno.” He sets down his cards and she shakes her head.

  “How do you do that?” she says, scooping the cards together to shuffle them. “I never even see it coming.”

  She used to let him win, pretending not to notice what he was collecting, keeping the bad cards in her hand until she had no choice but to play them. But then Melissa ratted her out, and she had to stop. Now she has to work hard to win, and they can play for hours, slapping cards down and laughing. Tyler’s dad shakes his head at them, and Melissa, who used to play with them, glares and tells them to keep it down.

  Ten o’clock comes and goes, and ten-thirty. At eleven, they’re working on their laptops when his mom gets up to look out the living room window. She stiffens, and he knows. He’s always liked Sophie. He doesn’t understand why she would do this to him. He feels trapped, a fly banging against the glass.

  “Tyler,” she begins, and he shakes his head.

  “No.” He won’t wear that fucking mask. She might as well hang a neon sign over his head: FREAK. He closes his laptop and stomps upstairs. He doesn’t open the door when his mom knocks.

  EVE

  She paces from window to window.

  She’d been pregnant with Tyler when she and David and Melissa drove into this pretty little street with its sloping lawns and mature trees. The moment she’d spotted the white house with the gray roof nestled at the bottom of the street, she had felt a spark of interest. The realtor had unlocked the front door, and she’d stepped inside to gleaming wooden floors and sunshine streaming through the windows. She had thought, Here’s where I want to raise my family.

  Around 2:00 am, she thinks about borrowing Albert’s shotgun and taking aim. She almost laughs at the thought. She’s already a felon. In for a penny, in for a pound. It was the glass of wine she’d had, though not the first one, which had only left her longing for more. The third one—that was the one she really felt. She’d have to hide the empty wine bottle before David came home. He’d be sure to ask her about it. He’d look at her with judging eyes. How would he look at her when he got home? Would he look at her at all? She wishes she could call him, but she doesn’t trust herself to keep the pretense going. What if he saw through her?

  At 5:00 am, the lights flare off.

  There has to be something she can do. There has to be. Could they move to the country? They’d have to buy a property and make it safe for Tyler before they risked moving him. Which meant they’d have to pay two mortgages. Was that even possible? Melissa has told her that David’s talked to her about moving to DC. I don’t want to go, Melissa had said, crying, and Eve had reassured her. She had hoped that this was the beginning of a return to the way things used to be between them, but the confession’s had the opposite effect on Melissa. Her daughter has retreated. She’s licking her wounds. She’s just like you, her mother had said, with a sigh of resignation, as if she were saying, See what you put me through?

  She’s w
alking across the basement floor, laundry heaped in her arms, when she stubs her toe against a sharp, hard corner. She curses, drops the jeans and towels in a heap. It’s that dollhouse she’d been making for Amy. Somehow, it’s been dragged away from the wall to stand directly in her path. A hammer and wrench lie nearby—so David had been down here working. She looks at the delicate wooden structure. That tall pointed tower, the curved bay window, all the cheerful gingerbread molding that had taken forever to tack into place. The tiny iridescent pink tiles painstakingly glued to form a kitchen backsplash, the hours spent cutting out and fitting pink-and-white-flocked wallpaper against each wall. Amy had clapped her hands with joy. When will it be done?

  Now the dollhouse glares at her. It squats on her floor, angled precisely to draw blood. The gold wire and pink beads for the chandelier sit inside their glistening plastic pouches; the carpet she hadn’t yet installed lies curled inside one room like a tongue. She reaches down and grasps the house by both sides, pushing her fingers through the windows she’d sliced open with a mat knife. It’s heavy and rises slowly, resisting. She raises it up, stretches to stand on her tiptoes, and opens her hands.

  It crashes down. The bay window crumples and floor tiles pop loose. She snatches up the hammer and swings. The chimney snaps off; the roof caves in. She pounds at the hole she’s created, driving the metal head of the hammer into the floor below. There goes the master bedroom. There sinks the charming nursery. Bam! Bam! Bam! The rooms for the twins lie in splintered pieces.

  She kicks the house onto its side so she can reach inside. Those shiny pink tiles dissolve into dust; the balsa banister shreds. If only she can reach the fireplace. She’ll have to come at it from the other side, after she’s smashed through the living room wall—