Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (12 page)

The heavy door swung open and Mark said, “Bear? What is it?”

Wanderley held his ID out to Mark and asked if we could come in.

Mark stepped back reluctantly and we went in. He switched on one of the lamps that sat on a dark wood chest.

His son said, “Chocolate milk.”

“You go get in bed, Tanner, and Daddy will bring it to you as soon as I can.” The boy protested but Mark was firm, and with a whimper, the boy climbed the stairs. A door shut.

Mark led us into a study. There was a mahogany table that served as a desk and a wall of beautifully bound books. This room, too, was a shrine to the twins. A picture of Lizabeth cradling her bare, bulging belly, a picture of the sleeping newborns curled together on a black velvet throw, the ubiquitous Texas shot of the children in a field of bluebonnets. There were none of Phoebe.

The Persian drifted in, circled the room and leaped to the back of a chair. He watched with interest, his tail swishing.

Mark gestured to chairs and a love seat and we sat down. He knew it was bad.

Wanderley said, “It's about Phoebe. Do you want to get your wife?”

Mark shook his head, not smiling. “No, I'll deal with it. Me and Phoebe. Do you want me to go get her or do you want to talk to me first?”

Wanderley opened his mouth, shut it again.

Mark said, “Is it that bad? Has she done something that bad?”

I took a breath to speak but Wanderley stopped me.

“Mr. Pickersley-Smythe, an hour and a half ago, Jo Wells discovered your daughter's body in her bedroom. In Jo's bedroom. It looks like a drug overdose.” Wanderley dropped his eyes. Cracked a knuckle. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

Mark's brow puckered. “Phoebe's in her room. I could hear her music when I went to bed.” He looked at me, took in my face, and sprang to his feet. He took the stairs three at a time and we heard a door thrown back. And then he screamed.

Eight

M
ark was still screaming when we reached the room. He had torn the bedclothes off the bed, Phoebe's backpack lay next to a wall where he'd thrown it, textbooks splayed. He was on his hands and knees, pounding the floor with his fists and his head, screaming in hoarse roars. His sons ran into the room and to his side, adding their screams of terror to his. Finally, Lizabeth hurried into the bedroom, peach silk billowing, matching slippers on her feet.

She handed a struggling twin each to me and Wanderley and dropped to her knees next to Mark. Lizabeth pulled Mark to his knees and wrapped her arms around him, crooning, “My love, my love, I'm here. I'm here, Mark. You've got me.” Liz lifted her face from his neck and waved us off. Wanderley handed me the twin he was holding and sat down on the stripped mattress.

I stood there, two hysterical three-year-olds in my arms and then carefully navigated the stairs down to the kitchen. I used my toe to swing the door shut behind me, shutting out some of the frightening noises their father was making. I leaned a twin over to the wall and said, “Can you get the light for me, Tanner?”

The child stopped crying and stared at me, bleary-eyed. “Toby.”

“You're Toby?” A solemn nod. I held him out from my body and checked his pj's. The Incredible Hulk. Spider-Man was Tanner, The Incredible Hulk was Toby.

Tanner stopped crying, too, and leaned across from his brother to flip the light switch, which earned a flailing fist from Toby and more tears from both. I sat them down on the kitchen island and clapped my hands once, sharply. They startled and stopped crying. Two pairs of round blue eyes looked at me. If they'd been my babies, they'd have to wear dog tags or ID bracelets or something—I couldn't tell one from another, not without the pajamas, and they don't wear pajamas in the bathtub.

“Chocolate milk?” I asked. Vigorous nods. “Where's the sippy cups?” Blank eyes. I opened cabinet doors onto collections of china and stemware that would have had Martha Stewart doing the happy dance. Nothing I would hand to a three-year-old. Checked the built-in drawers in the island and found one full of sippy cups and lidded bowls and dishes for toddlers. I held two of the cups up for the boys to see.

“Sippy cups,” I said.

“Nuby,” they responded in unison.

Whatever. I got out the milk and bottle of sugarless chocolate syrup, filled the cups, screwed the lids back on, put a finger over the spouts and shook. Toby and Tanner reached out and I handed them their cups. They drummed their superhero heels against the cupboard doors while they drank. I opened a drawer that looked like it might hold kitchen towels. It did, so I took one, wet it and wrung it out, and wiped down the boys' faces. They didn't fuss.

When they had finished a second round of chocolate milk, I took them to the downstairs powder room to pee. Afterward, The Incredible Hulk burped and Spider-Man giggled and produced one of his own. Together, they yawned, their mouths opening as wide as a cat's.

It was quiet now, only a soft murmuring coming from behind the shut door to Phoebe's room, so I chanced returning upstairs. We climbed the stairs, a small hand grasped in each of mine, and the boys pulled me to their room. A little-boy paradise. Or a rich momma's idea of a little-boy paradise. The boys ran to their beds, helpfully labeled
TOBY
and
TANNER
with big, red, wooden letters attached to the wall above the headboards. It was necessary that I admire the stuffed partners they slept with—a penguin for Toby and a Clifford the Big Red Dog for Tanner—and then Tanner handed me a book and said, “Read.”

From below, I heard the front door open, and the sound of feet on the stairs.

The book was a scuffed and worn copy of Margaret Wise Brown's
Goodnight Moon
. It had been a favorite of my girls' long ago. Before I could start, Tanner patted the book and said, “Phoebe read.”

“What?” I said.

Toby nodded agreement.

“Did Phoebe read this book to you?”

Two heads nodded. Toby said, “All night.”

“Every night,” corrected Tanner.

I opened the front cover:

For our Phoebe Peapie,

From Daddy and Mommy

On her second Christmas

“‘In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of
—
'” I stopped and cleared my throat.

A drowsy Tanner said, “Read.”

By the light of a teddy bear lamp, in a room where there were stacks of books and puzzles and toys, a chalkboard, two small rocking chairs, a table with crayons and manila paper, I read Phoebe's
Goodnight Moon
to Phoebe's baby brothers, a book she read to them every night.

“‘Goodnight stars—goodnight air—goodnight noises everywhere . . .'”

I closed the book. They were asleep, superheroes in toddler beds, so healthy and beautiful they looked as if they'd been genetically engineered.

I turned off the lamp and shut the boys' bedroom door behind me, then walked to Phoebe's room. Wanderley had been joined by two officers in uniform.

“No. No,” Mark was saying as I came in. “Why do you want to? What do you think you'll find?” His face was swollen and puffy and his shoulders sagged. He sat on the side of Phoebe's bed, the covers and sheets heaped in one corner. Mark held one of her pillows over his stomach, clutching it like he was keeping his insides on the inside. I understood. Phoebe wasn't my child and I still felt ripped open.

His wife sat behind him, a bent knee on either side, pressed up against his back with her arms tight around his shoulders. She was trying to pour her comfort, her strength, into the man. I had my issues with Lizabeth—I'd seen her maybe at her worst. But right now, I admired her compassion.

“Mark,” she said, “we have nothing to hide. You were a wonderful father to Phoebe—”

Mark cried, “Oh, God!”—such despair in the cry—and buried his face in the pillow. I didn't stop to think, I just knelt by Mark's feet and put a hand on his knee.

“Let's go see her, Mark, let's go see your girl.” It's what I would have wanted. Mark nodded, face still in the pillow.

Liz looked up. Her tone had changed completely. “That's not a good idea, Bear.”

“That okay, Wanderley?”

“We can do that.” Wanderley had been leaning against Phoebe's dresser, arms crossed, but he straightened.

Liz's hands flew out and she caught hold of Mark's silk robe.

“Oh, no, Mark, let's don't do that. You don't want to do that.” She turned him to face her—he looked away but she laid a palm against his cheek and drew him back. Her hands moved from his face to his shoulders, smoothing the silk, caressing the muscles beneath. It was an intimate, possessive touch. “You've had enough for tonight. There's nothing you can do for Phoebe now. The boys and I—we're your family. Stay here. Stay with us.” You would have thought the man was leaving for good. She tightened her hold on Mark's shoulders.

What?
I thought. His child, his baby, is in the morgue, lying somewhere cold and hard and scary and she is all alone. Why
wouldn't
he go to her? My admiration for Liz dimmed. For her to make it sound like Mark had to choose between his daughter or his wife and sons—well, to me that showed a profound inability to imagine what her husband was going through.

Mark pulled his wife's hands off him and stood up. Liz continued to remonstrate but he ignored her. He put the pillow at the head of the bed and made an effort to spread the nubby tapestry coverlet over the bare mattress, but he gave it up. He asked us to give him a minute, and disappeared into the master bedroom, Liz following and becoming increasingly strident.

When Mark came back out less than five minutes later, he wore jeans and a dress shirt both so wrinkled I knew he had to have pulled them from the dirty clothes hamper and now that's what Liz was on about, the way the man was dressed. She followed after him, a pair of slacks and a clean shirt hanging off her arm. Couldn't he at least put on clean clothes? She had them right here, it would only take him a second . . . I caught her eye and put a finger to my lips. Liz froze. She stopped midsentence and pressed her lips tightly together. I watched the effort it took her to pull herself in, but slowly, she nodded.

“Let me come too, then. Can I come, Mark? I can get Mrs. Holsapple to come stay with the twins. I should be with you. You need me. Let me come with you.”

Mark shook his head, but he did turn back and press his lips to her cheek. She reached up and took his face in her hands and moved his lips to hers. She held him there a moment and then released him.

“Before you go, Mark, come with me.” She led him to the door of Toby and Tanner's room and pushed it open. That sweet baby-boy smell, and the night-light and the dear, dear sound of sleeping children breathing, steady and true and so alive. Mark stood in the door and took it in and then squatted between the two absurdly ornate toddler beds and laid a hand on each golden head. Liz stood behind him, her fingers resting on his shoulder. His hand drifted and he took Tanner's small, plump hand in his own, before he stood and headed to the stairs, to go out the door and get into the car to see his daughter one last time.

•   •   •

I'd never been to a morgue. And I didn't have a clue, when I made the suggestion, that going to see Phoebe meant driving all the way out to Galveston, more than a hour's drive away. Sugar Land doesn't have a morgue of its own, so it sends all questionable deaths to Galveston to be autopsied. And one hour is like ten when you are driving through the night with a grieving father come to see his dead child.

A morgue is not a people-friendly kind of place. I had a sweatshirt on and I was cold. Mark had come out in his dress shirt, so of course I had to give him my sweatshirt. It seemed like the only tangible way I could minister to the man, though after I did,
I
was freezing.

I'm not afraid of being dead. I am step-out-into-the-dark confident that when I leave this world, I'm going to a better one. I will know the way I'm known.

I
am
afraid of
dying
. I'm afraid of the pain and the loss of control and the myriad humiliations that go with old age and sickness. I'm afraid that I won't die well. Mainly I try not to think about it.

You can't do that in a morgue. Death is everywhere. I'm telling you, when they wheeled Phoebe out and uncovered her face, I knew I had made a mistake suggesting this trip. She just looked so much more dead than she had in Jo's room. Premises vacated. Lights out.

Gone.

•   •   •

It was the wee hours when I let myself into our home. Baby Bear padded out of my room to meet me and we each had a bowl of cereal. After Baby Bear had chased down his last Cheerio, he took a potty break in the backyard and clicked his way to my room, me on his heels.

Annie Laurie had heard me come in and was awake in our bed, curled around a sleeping Jo. Baby Bear settled down on Jo's bathrobe on the floor. Annie gestured me over, and when I bent down, she kissed my ear and breathed, “She couldn't be upstairs by herself, not even with Baby Bear. Could you sleep in Merrie's room?”

Yes, I could. I went to Merrie's room, looking at the portraits of my girls as I climbed the stairs. I want those pictures to keep going on forever. No stopping at eighteen. I want the pictures to go up and up and someday include nice young men who won't possibly be good enough, and then some kiddos to make up for the nice young men's deficiencies. I want my girls to live forever, or at least long, long after I'm gone and composting the garden.

Jo's door was shut tight. I leaned my head against the door, listening, and then jerked back. Exactly what was I listening for?

After dropping Mark back at home, Wanderley had taken a call. Once he'd hung up, Wanderley told me the team had found nothing suspicious in Jo's room. Like I needed him to tell me that. Like I didn't know my own daughter.

Okay, there may be some things about Jo I was willing to admit I might not know. But drugs? I'd know if my girl was involved with drugs. Shoot, Jo didn't even smoke. I know that for sure because when Merrie had tried smoking, it didn't matter how much mouthwash she used, you could smell it in her hair. Jo's hair falls to her waist. So I'd know if she was doing drugs.

So I told myself, anyway.

Merrie's room had the cool, foreign feel of a room that isn't being used regularly. There was a copy of Joe Hill's
Heart-Shaped Box
on the bedside table. I thought a mindless moment with a romance might soothe me to sleep.

Heart-Shaped Box
is
not
a romance.

From:
Walker Wells

To:
Merrie Wells

Sorry about the phone call last night. I didn't mean to scare you. Call me when you get a chance. We had a bad time here last night.

I read your
Heart-Shaped Box
. I'll bet Stephen King is proud of his son. Pretty grim.