A Field Guide to Deception (41 page)

Five stitches. They had to shave a patch of Liv's hair to clean and stitch her scalp just to the left of her part. Wrapped her forearm too, the skin sliced and bleeding from the broken windshield. Sophia in emergency surgery, they said. Trauma, they said. Trauma not word enough
for that girl's body.

The police officer found Liv in the waiting room, and led her to a cubby of an office down one of the wings. A huge, scrubbed guy in a button-down shirt and suit jacket, no tie; he had two cups of coffee, and held one out to her.

“How's your head?”

She shook it. This guy looked like he might cry too. They sat side by side; he'd turned in his chair to observe her. The coffee tasted like silt.

“We found deer tracks,” he said. “Along the roadside where you swerved. You hit one of them with the truck—we found it on the other side of the road—then the truck hit the tree, and then it rolled.”

Her eyes burned, her jaw from clenching it.

“It could have happened without a blizzard,” he said. “We notified her parents—found her cell in her bag, and called them. They're driving up from Ritzville.” His voice was subdued, as though to lull her to sleep, and she wanted to be lulled to sleep. “You were driving?”

Liv stared at Claire's boots, the torn knee of her jeans. “Yeah.”

“She was in the passenger's seat?”

“Yeah.”

“Was she wearing her seatbelt?”

“I don't remember.”

“Where had you been, before the accident?”

“Sophia's house. She and her boyfriend just split up.” Liv choked, coughed. “Her housemate is in Napa. I've tried to call her, but I just get voicemail.”

A knock at the office door, and the officer stood, stepped outside. She looked at the bandage on her arm, a dark patch at its heart. Her coffee spilled, the liquid expanding across the floor. She tried not to think of blood. He came back into the room, shut the door, knelt beside her.

“She's fucking dead,” Liv said. “She's fucking dead, isn't she?”

The cop said yes. A shudder escaped before she could seal it off. “And the baby? Her little boy?” Liv saw legs in the snow, her body half buried, and blue. Nothing could survive that. Nothing.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck.” She crushed the Styrofoam cup with Claire's boot. “I'd gone over there because she was frightened to be alone. I was taking her back to my house, and then—”

She could not swallow the wail; it tore from her. Sophia would never have a little boy named Riley.

Simon played on the floor beside his mother's bed. He had made breakfast, and drunk milk, and gone back to the kitchen later for raisins, and a banana. Still she slept. And so he'd brought his trains into her room, set up a track along the floor to the chest of drawers.

When he heard the kitchen door open, he ran down the hallway, and launched himself into Bailey's arms.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said. “Where's your mama?”

He climbed her, clutching her neck and shoulders, and buried his face into her throat.

“I've got you,” she said, squeezing him. “I've got you.”

“Mama's sick,” he told her.

Bailey jostled him in time with her heartbeat. “It's OK,” she said. “We're going to be OK.”

Forty

Those are my boots

Coffee going cold in the mugs they held, Liv's mother and father sat at the kitchen table at Claire's house. On her way to class, Drake had dropped off bagels and apples, but no one could eat. Liv stood at the counter, beside Bailey, and tried to remember the police officer's name. Watts, she thought. Could a cop be named Watts?

He was even bigger here, impossibly large in this kitchen. He kept his voice soft, she noticed, to minimize his size. Today he wore a tie, a blue suit. Officer Watts, she tried it in her mouth.

They'd buried the mother and child three days earlier, another item in the paper. The night of the blizzard, twenty-four people had died in accidents, most of them in the freeway pileup. She got a sentence in the lead article the morning after, the young pregnant woman killed in a collision on Government Way.

The police had taken photographs of the scene, measurements, asked Liv for a voluntary blood sample that night at the hospital to rule out any question of impairment. They had investigated thoroughly because of the death involved in the crash. The death involved in the crash. He had explained all this to her, this detective. Today, in the kitchen, he assured them that the case was closed, the accident officially accidental, and no charges would be pressed.

Claire came into the kitchen, holding Simon's hand. They sat at the table, and Simon crawled across into Susan's lap.

Bailey had shaken Claire awake that first morning, told her that something terrible had happened, and that she needed to get up.

Nauseous, aching, Claire had tried to sit. “I feel awful,” she said.

“Simon said you were sick.”

“Where is Simon?” Claire asked.

“He's here. Claire, you need to get up. Something's happened.”

“I had a dream,” she said. “I couldn't find him. He was lost. I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find him.” Simon had been lost in the woods. It was so real. But here he was on the floor playing. “My head. Something's wrong with my head.”

“Is it the flu?” Bailey asked, glancing at her, as she grabbed jeans and a sweater from the bureau. “Do you want some ibuprofen?”

“You're in Napa, aren't you?” Claire said. Why was she wearing Liv's pajamas?

“We came back early from Napa.” Bailey laid the clothes out on the foot of the bed. “Claire, you have to get dressed. I'm sorry to drag you out of bed when you feel rotten. I don't know much yet, but Julia—” Her phone rang and she looked at the display. “I have to take this; it's Julia.” She left the room, with Simon tailing along behind.

Her head ringing, a pain in her belly whenever she breathed, Claire pushed up from the bed. She discovered the bruises when she undressed, examined them in the mirror, pressed her ribs as she breathed in and out. After dressing, she found them in the kitchen, Simon in Bailey's arms, his head tucked, eyes closed.

“There's been an accident,” Bailey said.

And then she explained that Liv had hit a deer in the blizzard, and rolled the truck. She said that Sophia had been killed. Claire touched her ear, asked if Liv had been hurt.

The detective stepped toward Liv, and she started. He'd said something, she realized. “I'm sorry, detective. I didn't catch that.”

“Would you walk me to my car?” he asked.

Liv smiled, the idea of protecting this mammoth man, the first amusing thought she'd had in days. “Sure.”

He held the door for her, and she led down the steps, and along the
path through the snow to his unmarked car. Once she reached the car, she turned to face him, waiting.

“It's good your family's here with you,” he said.

She stared up at him, his earlobes the size of half dollars.

“A time like this.” He shaded his eyes to see her better. “We closed the case, but that doesn't mean things will resolve for you. I know how hard you worked to help your friend—your tracks were all over the place. I know you worked desperately. I know you did. And to find her, in the woods in the dark after an accident, to try to help her, to call for assistance, Liv, you did everything you could. Remember that.”

“Stop,” she said. His kindness hurt her. “Please.”

And so he stood quietly with her beside the police car, the sun refracting off the snow.

In the kitchen, Bailey brewed tea. A house full of people, and nobody had anything to say. The day after the accident, while they waited for Drake to bring Liv home, Bailey had played trains on the floor with Simon, while Claire sat on the sofa, her head splintered.

Simon woke her, crying Liv's name. When Claire stepped into the kitchen, she saw Liv on her knees, holding the little boy. Her head shaved just back from the forehead, stitches showing in the patch of scalp. Her eye and cheek were bruised.

Drake said she'd brought some groceries, some things to make sandwiches, in case anyone was hungry, and asked if Bailey and Simon would help her bring the bags in. They put the child in his snowsuit, and headed outdoors.

“Those are my boots,” Claire said.

Liv sat down at the table, rested her head in her hands.

“Liv, what happened last night?”

“Sophia died.”

“Bailey told me you were driving.”

Liv went to the sink, poured a glass of water. Outside, Simon hit one of the women with a snowball. They heard his ecstatic,
Gotcha!

“You were driving?” Claire asked. Just standing in the doorway hurt. And breathing.

“What do you remember?” Liv asked, her back to the room, to Claire.

Claire could see the deer in the road. They hadn't had time to scream. She'd woken in Liv's pajamas with black, livid bruises. “What happened to your head?”

“I hit it on the truck.”

“You weren't in the truck,” Claire said. She'd cut her palms crawling through the windshield. She stared at her hands. “Liv?” Sophia bent forward trying to kiss her belly. “Liv,” she said again. The baby hated hiccups. “Look at me.”

A snowball splattered against the window above the sink. Liv stared at it. “The truck pinned her,” she said. “Threw her and pinned her.” Liv drank the water, poured another glass.

“You weren't driving,” Claire said. She knew this. “I was driving. A deer ran into the road, and we hit it.” Two deer in the snow, and they'd hit one.

“She's dead,” Liv said. “They're dead.”

“I don't understand you.” Claire crossed to the sink, leaned against the counter because it hurt less than being upright. “Why have you done this? It was an accident. I hit a deer.”

“And left an injured pregnant woman in the snow.” At last, Liv turned to face her. The white of her eye was bruised too. “And you never said a thing. Not a fucking word about Sophia. I found her. Buried in the snow where you'd left her.”

Claire stepped back. “Things were—” she looked around the kitchen, “confusing.”

“Oh, confusing,” Liv sneered. “Well, that explains everything.”

In the dark, Claire had stumbled in the woods, had tripped and crawled and dragged herself up. She'd been looking for Simon. No, not Simon, Sophia. She'd been looking for Sophia. The snow—drifts of it, and the blizzard—and she hadn't seen anyone. She didn't know how long it had taken her to find the road, or how long she'd been in the truck before she'd kicked her way out. She'd only known that she had to get home. That if she got home, she'd be safe. She looked at
Liv's stitches. “Why didn't you take me to the hospital?”