The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (19 page)

Daniel sipped at his coffee. It had taken half an hour to fill her in, starting with the beach and running all the way through to last night. Sophie had listened with quiet, focused attention. There had been something cleansing in confessing, and he’d left nothing out. “No joke.”

“You have amnesia.”
“Or something like it. You know those weird news stories you hear about? A guy on a train wakes up and can’t remember who he was, a girl goes jogging and vanishes for weeks, she doesn’t recall anything? A fugue state. I think it’s something like that.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hell if I know. I’m just telling you how it feels. I remember how to drive, I can talk, write. It’s just the personal stuff that’s gone.”
“Completely?”
He shook his head. “It’s coming back. Sometimes in small bits, sometimes more. Sometimes I won’t even notice until later. When I went home, that brought a lot back. And my dreams. I don’t think it’s really amnesia. More some sort of . . . blackout. Temporary shock.”
“Shock wouldn’t last this long.”
“Well, maybe not just shock. I think it was a combination of things. Laney’s . . . Laney, then driving all the way across the country. I think I did it in one run, amped on caffeine and speed. Booze too. And then when I got there, I.” He hesitated, realizing what he was about to say, how it sounded. “I tried to kill myself.”
“Kill yourself.”
“Maybe I just wanted the pain to stop. But maybe once it came down to it, some part of me didn’t want to die. I came damn close, though. I think the memory loss was my subconscious mind’s way of protecting me. Keep me from trying again.”
Sophie picked up her mug, held it in both hands, elbows on the table. “And you don’t remember me.”
Daniel hesitated. He’d come here expecting a professional meeting at best, and wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d had to flee again. Instead he’d found someone who loved him. “I’m sorry. It’s not personal. I don’t even remember Laney well. I mean,” he said, trying a laugh that came out sick, “when I first woke up, I thought she
was
Emily Sweet.”
Sophie’s gaze was cool, a card player’s stare. “From a legal standpoint, you know what this looks like? A premeditated defense. The timing is too convenient.”
“Says you. From where I’m sitting, it couldn’t be less convenient.”
“What do you mean?”
Daniel stared at her. “I had to lose my wife all over again.”
Sophie paused. “I’m sorry.” She looked away, fingers tapping on the table.
“So what do you think?”
“What’s the best part about sex with twenty-seven-year-olds?” “Huh?”
“It’s a joke. What’s the best part about sex with twenty-sevenyear-olds?”
“I don’t . . . care, Sophie. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
She stared at him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. “Your memory really is gone, isn’t it? You’re not kidding.”
“No. I’m not.”
“And you don’t remember me at all.”
“No.”
“There’s twenty of them.”
“What?”
“The best thing about sex with twenty,” a beat, “seven-yearolds. There’s twenty of them.”
To his surprise, he felt his lips curl in a smile. “That’s awful.”
“That’s what I said every time you told that joke. Which was about once a month.”
Sunlight bounced through a crystal in her window to paint the walls in dancing spectrums of color. After a long moment, Daniel said, “We were friends, weren’t we?”
“Down here on Planet Earth, we still are.”
“Yeah, I mean, of course. I just.”
“Don’t remember.”
He nodded. “It’s so strange. Without context, everything is equal. I don’t even remember who I am. Take Laney. I
know
I loved her. I can feel it, physically feel it. When I realized that she was gone, it just. I mean, I wanted to die all over again. And that will only get worse as I remember more. Everything that comes back will change love from a feeling to an action, a verb, something that happened. The moments when we loved each other. We were together for years, right?”
“Six or seven.”
“Seven
years
. Of emotions and decisions and moments. But with her dead and my memory gone, what do they mean? What is love without history? Like Alzheimer’s. A husband and wife live their whole lives together, make love, buy a house, raise kids. Then one of them gets sick and can’t remember the other. Are they still married? Are they still in love? Did the time they had mean anything on its own, or is everything just . . . temporary?”
“Life is a raindrop.”
“What?”
Sophie smiled. “Something my grandmother used to say. ‘Life is a raindrop.’ It never made sense to me when I was young, but the older I get, the more it means.”
“Life is a raindrop. Whoa.” The line was so simple, and yet so beautiful it tugged at his chest. It felt like there was a truth at the center of it, that, like a Zen koan, you could meditate on it forever and still find fresh meaning. “Life is a raindrop.”
Through the walls there was the roar of a car engine, something coming fast. Daniel stiffened. The car grew louder, then quieter as it passed. He glanced over to Sophie, ready to explain himself, and saw that she had tensed as much as he.
Why? What’s she scared of?
It took a moment to click. “The sheriff told me that someone broke into your house.”
She nodded, shoulders knotted under her light top.
“Someone asking about me.”
“That’s right.” Sophie stood, took her coffee to the sink.
“I— Did he hurt you?” The heat in his belly was back.
“I’m fine.” She dumped her mug, began to scrub it.
“Can you tell me about him?”
“Why? Not like you’ll remember anyway.”
Ouch.
Daniel eased out of the breakfast nook. She didn’t turn around, just kept washing dishes. “Soph.”
There was a tiny hitch in her movement. Then, over her shoulder, “Funny. That’s what you always called me. Do you remember, or is it just there?”
“Soph, I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
I’m sorry some sick fuck came into your house. I’m sorry he did it looking for me. I’m sorry that as strong as you obviously are, it shook, maybe even broke, something in you.
He sighed. “Everything, I guess.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” She shut off the faucet and turned around. “He didn’t hurt me. Scared me, is all.” She picked up a towel and began to dry her hands, her voice slow. “He was so calm. Smiling, always smiling. That was the worst part. I think he could have done anything to me, and then gone on about his day. Not felt a thing about it.”
He opened his mouth, closed it. Didn’t know what to reply. Finally he said, “I hope you told him everything.”
“I didn’t know very much.”
“This guy. He must have been the one who . . .”
Say it. You have to face it.
“He must have killed Laney.”
“Do you think so?” Her tone flat.
“Someone comes and threatens you with a gun right after she’s been driven off the road?”
“But he wasn’t asking about her. He was asking about you.”
“Yeah, but. You don’t think I had anything to do with it?” She didn’t answer, and he sighed. “Look, I understand. I wondered myself. In fact, I was even starting to believe it. But I know now. I know it’s not true.”
“Then what did you mean—” She tossed the dish towel on the counter, shook her head.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Sophie.”
She sighed. “You called me. Very drunk. You kept saying you were sorry. When I asked what for, you wouldn’t tell me. You just kept saying you were sorry, and . . .”
“What?”
“That it was your fault.”
“My fault?” He braced a hand on the counter. “I can’t . . . I didn’t.”
“What were you talking about, Daniel? What were you sorry for?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes. Tried to remember. Let the words float in front of him, and when that didn’t work, tried to force it. Nothing came. “I don’t know. But I know I didn’t kill her. Damn it, Soph, I spent all last night looking at video of the two of us. There are pictures from two weeks ago that would break your heart, we look so happy. Why would I kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not going down this road again. Whatever I said that night, I
know
I didn’t kill Laney. We were happy, goddamnit. Everything was perfect. You know that. You
remember
that. Right?”
“Perfect?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well, okay, but the point is, we were in love, and there’s no way—”
“Christ, Daniel, it was a marriage, not a fairy tale. It wasn’t perfect. And don’t get it in your head that it was just because she’s gone. Relationships don’t work like that.”
He took a breath, made himself pause. “We fought?”
“Of course you fought.”
“Over what?”
“The things people fight over. Money, sex, children, who did the dishes last.”
“But like you said, people do that.” He saw her expression. “What? We were bad?”
“Laney was an
actress
, hon. They’re all crazy. And you,” a snort, “you’ve got a temper. When the two of you went at each other, you went for blood. You’d scream yourselves hoarse. The last time, she spent the weekend in a hotel, and you spent it at the bottom of a bottle.”
He had a sick feeling, a primal, caught-jerking-off shame. The same way he’d felt in Robert Cameron’s trailer the morning prior, listening to the actor describe the way he’d seen Daniel:
A mediocre writer in a town thick with them. Not particularly talented, not particularly smart, not particularly brave. The top of the middle of the bell curve.
It killed him. Why couldn’t the past be perfect? If he couldn’t have it anyway, couldn’t he at least have that certainty? “Did it happen a lot?”
“What’s a lot? My marriage didn’t work out, so who am I to judge?” Sophie sighed. “You fought, and your fights blew the roof off. But you always made up. And when you did, you shook the walls down. That’s just the way the two of you were. It was a tempestuous relationship. When you were happy you were giddy. When you fought, you fought hard. My point is just that you’re not doing yourself any favors believing it was perfect.”
Daniel nodded, the queasiness not any better. He grabbed his mug from the table, poured a cup of coffee he didn’t want. His mind a whirl, too many things to keep track of, too many pieces that didn’t fit. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Do you think I had something to do with this?”
It was her turn to stare. Her fingers knotted one over the other. He realized that he was hanging on her answer. This woman, this friend, knew him in a way he didn’t know himself anymore. If she thought he had done it . . .
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what you meant with that phone call. I don’t know who this guy is, or why he’s after you, or what the necklace he was asking about has to do with anything,” she said.
“I don’t—”
“Hold on. The police believe you did it. And there’s more. Someone was killed in your office.”
“
What?
”
“A security guard. The cops think you did that too.”
“When was this?”
“Night before last.”
“It wasn’t me. That much I can remember.”
“Okay, good. But the other questions, I don’t know the answer to them. Do you?”
“No. But that’s not what I’m asking.”
“You’re asking if I think you killed Laney. Or wanted her dead.”
“Do you?”
“Not in a million years.”
Daniel chest swelled, and his eyes were wet. He put a hand to his mouth, breathed into it. It was as though a giant hand had been pushing him down. At her words, it vanished. He inhaled deep, exhaled slow. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re still screwed.”
Despite himself, he laughed. “Like a Texas cheerleader.”
“Do you trust me?”
“You’re the only person I know,” he said. “If I don’t trust you, I may as well throw myself back in the ocean.”
“Good. Because here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn yourself in.”
“What?”
“Your turn to shut up, kiddo.” She pointed at him, mock stern. “You’re going to get a lawyer. A
criminal
lawyer. I’ll call my friend Jen Forbus. She makes Johnnie Cochran look like Mr. Bean.”
“Soph, I know you’re trying to help, but—”
“Shut up. Jen will call the sheriff, and she’ll broker the deal. You’ll turn yourself in on our terms. No media circus, no questioning without her. Plus we’ll explain your condition, and make sure that access to medical care is part of the deal.”
“I don’t need a doctor, I had an MRI—”
“Shut up. We don’t know what caused your memory loss. Maybe you were drugged. Maybe you have a rare disease. We need to know.”
“What do you—”
“Shut up. A specialist—a team of them, probably—will be crucial to your defense. Right now, the only evidence they have linking you to either murder is circumstantial. Hell, I could get it knocked down. But you resisted arrest in Maine, and again back here. They’ll use that. The medical diagnosis is going to help us there.”
“Soph—”
“I’m not going to lie. It’s going to cost a lot. And you might have to do a little prison time. But don’t worry, it’ll be minimum security, you won’t need to explore alternative lifestyles while you’re there. Probably won’t be more than a couple of months. Meanwhile, once you turn yourself in, I’ll go to work with the press, get them applying pressure to the sheriff’s department, see if Waters wouldn’t maybe like to get off his ass and find the man who killed my friend’s wife.”
Daniel stared at her, smiling from the inside out. What a woman. Whoever Daniel had been before, whatever character flaws he may have had, he had been a man Sophie Zeigler had found worthy of friendship. “Can I talk now?”
“Who said you couldn’t talk? You wanna talk, talk.” 5

While Sophie called her lawyer friend, Daniel wandered. Coffee cup in one hand, at a friend’s house, he felt whole in a way he hadn’t before. Just a guy. With some problems, yeah, but with a plan to fix them.

Her house had a long hallway from the entrance to the kitchen, and the run of it was decorated with neatly framed photographs hung in a perfect horizontal, like a museum. Her life in snapshots. A twenty-something version of her at an outdoor concert, wearing a flowered dress and holding a Bob Marley joint, eyes closed as she danced. Her with a handsome Mafioso type, his hair slicked back and a lazy smile, his arm draped proprietarily over her shoulders. Photos of her with actors and musicians. Halfway down the row there was a black-and-white shot of a long banquet table, a dozen smiling people surrounding it. The guy second from the end was him, in a badly fitting blazer, raising a turkey drumstick in a toast. He looked himself in the eye.

Hello, self. Guess what? You have
no
idea what’s ahead of you.
The thought made him grin. He took another sip of coffee, then turned at the sound of her bare feet on the hardwood floor. “When was this?”