When Secrets Die (7 page)

Once you've had
the fear
, it changes you. Makes you aware. Appreciative. And sometimes, late at night, or when the bank account is overdrawn, it makes you afraid. Emma had learned years ago that fear was useful. Look it in the eye, and don't waste time trying to convince yourself nothing is going to happen. Your subconscious will not let you sleep until you make a plan. That's all it wants, the subconscious. A little notice and a plan to stick in the back pocket of the brain to handle the contingencies. People could save a lot of time and money spent on that last glass of wine, that Vicodin, that joint, the shopping trip that was unaffordable, the late nights on the Internet betting on football, if they'd make a deal with the subconscious. That's all it would take for the people who were just trying to sleep—the ones who were into vice for the enjoyment were still free to dance in the dark.

Emma was eighteen pounds over the weight on the charts given out by insurance companies. She didn't worry about it. There were a lot of things she didn't worry about. Her hips were rounded, her breasts were large, and she was tall. Besides, the weight charts did not have a category for voluptuous women who liked all sensuous things, including eating, and she never gave it a third thought. A second thought, well, yes. She was after all a woman raised in a culture that served guilt with every meal.

One thing losing a child did, though, it swept all the crap right out of your life. It gave you perspective. The people who talk out loud about the good that comes out of tragedy are the ones who never had any—tragedy, that is. Of course, if you actually agreed, and brought up one possible good part, they enveloped you with an undertow of accusation for not grieving properly—a fog of judgmental disapproval that lurked darkly beneath the surface like a stage-four cancer. Next up came the conversation that began with “It's a good thing it didn't happen to me because I would have just not been able to handle it …”

Ending with either “You are so strong,”
or
“brave,” which really meant
You are an insensitive woman who just doesn't have the depth of feeling and sensitivity that someone like me has, and likely God knows that, which is why it hasn't happened to me and won't happen to me … and I wonder what you did to deserve this
.…

Or
I'm sorry it happened to you, but would you mind pretending it didn't so that I don't have to feel bad, I have enough stress in my life already. I'll acknowledge your grief by staring at you when I think you're not looking so I can SEE your grief, and make sure it is there, and suddenly stopping mid-sentence in case the remark I made was insensitive and not allowing you the face-saving option of pretending you didn't notice and that what I said didn't hurt, or worse, actually not noticing and not being hurt
.

Emma's new perspective didn't please people. She was supposed to rave over sunsets—and hell, yes, they were nice, and yes, she'd take a moment and look at one if the opportunity came up at a convenient time and not during
Jeopardy!
—but life wasn't about sunsets. It was about breathing in and breathing out without a great deal of pain. It was about having a place to live—better still, one you actually liked. It was about having a job. It was about being able to feed your kids, and maybe even not sweat when you stood in line waiting for the grocery store total, balancing what was still on that slow-moving black rubber belt with the continuously rising total on the screen that was ever so conveniently turned your way. It was about curling up at the end of the day with a good book or a television show you actually liked, about affording cream to go with the coffee, about not worrying about having your utilities cut off, about not making funeral arrangements and healing healing healing. Fuck healing. Best not to mention that she was currently of a frame of mind that almost made it a pleasure to be cussed out by her teenage daughter because she was still by God alive, very much so if you judged by the level of dust the child could kick up. It meant that Blaine was there, alive and well, and that she was grieving, which was something she was going to have to do not to be in the unbearable pain that sibling loss inflicts. Emma was wise enough to have finally figured out that some teenagers grieve by torturing their mother. Because a mother was supposed to protect you. And it was a hard lesson—finding out your mother couldn't protect you from everything.

Emma had only one child to protect. Not two anymore, and the thought stabbed her in the mid to right quadrant of her stomach, way high, right where the liver was. She'd looked it up in an anatomy chart just because it seemed more logical for a pain like that to hit in the heart. Oh, God, little Ned. Two years and five months old, with a hold on her heart and soul and a smile that defined irresistible.

And that somersault of thoughts that she would not think about. What had really gone wrong? Did the doctors do everything they should have? Why had she accepted such a vague diagnosis? What could she have done?

Emma took deep breaths, enduring the rising panic, breathing her way through. It wasn't as bad as it used to be, the state of her heart. People said it a lot, sweet sadness. She had always wondered what it was about sadness that could possibly be sweet. She knew now. It was thinking about something that makes you unhappy because it made you happy a long time ago. Sweet sadness had always seemed to her a term of indulgence. But it wasn't an indulgence if you were careful not to overdo. It was all about balance, really. Some sadness, some memories, but not too much sadness, and not too many memories. Too much would move you from nostalgia to a mood disorder.

Clayton had told her to start going to church again. He'd told her to go to mass regularly until the business with the Munchausen's accusation was over and done with. And she did, she did go to mass. But somewhere where she was not known, not in her own church, where people would be watching for her. She would go in private, for a religious need. Not in public, to make a statement.

As always, the more she looked for answers, the more questions she found.

What, for example, does one do with the sweep of anger, the sudden spin into rage, the very improper show of grief?

Emma had not forgotten the sheer pleasure of looking at a blank wall. A blank wall, a blank mind. But she found, with surprise, that she no longer needed either. She did not feel bad about feeling good, and by God no one was going to get away with making her think that way. She wasn't going to
act
grieved. She was grieved. She wanted peace of heart, she wanted to get better, she did not think it a sin or a betrayal of her son to heal. She would not conform, she would not pretend; she would not because to do so would be to deny her very real grief, to disrespect her very real strength, and to pretend that the spirituality and, believe it or not, happiness she had achieved by going through this terrible loss was somehow a wrong thing, when she knew it to be so right. She would teach her daughter, by example, the only real way to teach, how to handle the terrible things that life will throw your way, and survive to enjoy the very wonderful ones that make it all worthwhile. She had no patience for people who got mad at God when the horrors took over their lives, who threw grieving temper tantrums because they were petulant, childish, arrogant, and selfish enough to think they were immune.

She had to laugh. Because there she was, doing exactly what she hated, judging the way someone grieved, and disapproving all to hell. Shit, she was just as stupid and intolerant as everybody else. The grief halo needed to go out with the rest of the garbage in the kitchen.

She was asleep on the couch, balancing the half full glass of wine on her chest, when the phone rang. It took her a few moments to wake up. She almost didn't answer. But she could never quite pull that off.

“Yes?”

“Emma? This is Lena Padget.”

The name was familiar.

“You hired me today? I have your car.”

“Oh. Right.” Emma sat up. Awake, now. “You mean
your
car. Or have you called to tell me you've changed your mind?” Her stomach went tight. She would be all alone and in trouble, as usual, if this woman turned her away.

“Not at all. No, I've got your back.”

What an extraordinary thing for the woman to say. And what a wonderful feeling it gave her.

“Look, I'm sorry to call so late, but I wanted to warn you about something.”

Emma glanced down the hallway to Blaine's bedroom, thinking she would like to check on her daughter, just to see she was safe, and she'd do so as soon as she was off the phone.

“Someone has sent a videotape to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office.”

“The commonwealth attorney?”

“It's like the district attorney. They're the ones responsible for filing criminal charges.”

Emma set the wine glass down. “Criminal charges? You mean for the Munchausen's? Am I going to jail?”

“No, not as far as I know. Let's just say that there has been a leak to the local media about some kind of videotape with you in it.”

Emma chewed her bottom lip. “But what kind of tape could they have? Me scrubbing the bathroom toilet? Teaching mambo? I don't do anything very interesting.” But what she thought was, I am not going to jail, not yet, not ever. Should she and Blaine run away? From their house that was all paid for? Move Blaine yet again to yet another school because some doctor stole her son's heart?

“The date of the tape is February twenty-seventh.”

Ned's birthday
, Emma thought.

“It starts out with you and Clayton Roubideaux at some restaurant parking lot.”

“Oh. Oh, right, we had dinner together. It was our son's birthday. We thought it would be nice to sort of make it a special day, so we had dinner. In spite of us arguing in his office this afternoon, we're still friends. And we both miss our son. Is that against the law? Did I spill food or talk with my mouth full? Who made this tape anyway, were the police following me? Was I staked out?”

“As I understand it, it was mailed in to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office anonymously.”

“Weird.” But her stomach felt like it was curling up, and the small of her back had gone cold. Who would do such a thing? Tape her eating dinner in a restaurant? And on that night. The night that marked the birth of her son who had died so sadly and so young. She hadn't seen him, whoever he was, this creep with the video camera.

“Most of the tape was filmed in the restaurant parking lot. When you and Clayton Roubideaux were … in his car.”

The air went right out of her.

“I just wanted to warn you in advance. In case there was something in the newspapers. Or on the news.”

“Right.” Her throat was so tight. She felt like she was choking. “Thank you.”

“I'll look into this. I'd like to know who made the tape, for one thing. I'm going to—”

Emma made very little sense of the words, but felt grateful that for once she did not have to think or take action because she wasn't sure she would ever even find the strength to get off the couch. She was remembering, as best she could, what might be on that tape.

“Look, I need to go now,” she said, and hung up.

Emma put her head down on her knees so that Blaine would not hear her crying and wake up.

Oh, God.

She had smoked a cigar and drunk too much wine and stuffed herself with an expensive dinner and a rich dessert—this to celebrate the birthday of her dead child? This had not been a celebration of life, it had been the bravado of a disgusting woman. The Commonwealth Attorney's Office had it all on tape, herself sitting at the skinny rectangular table, the edges of the ironed white tablecloth just brushing her thighs across the slit in the silky black dress where the slippery material pressed against her nipples and outlined them for everyone to see. The slender spaghetti straps slid sideways over her shoulders and she was too buoyed up by the wine to care about pulling them up. She had been seductive, she had worn dark lipstick, overlaid with moist and heavy gloss, and left an imprint on the side of the glass. She had been a glutton. She had eaten a steak, she had drank a bottle of wine, she had smoked, and kissed her ex-supposed-but-not-really husband in the parking lot. She had felt the night wind on the back of her neck when she lifted the hair off her shoulders.

And the evening hadn't stopped there. Oh, no. She'd just been getting started.

She had gotten out of her car and walked over to Clayton's, had leaned her hip up against the door handle and drummed her fingers on the top of the side-view mirror. She had parted her legs and given him the look, and he'd opened the car door immediately and put a hand on her knee.

“Just my knee?” she'd told him, but had taken hold of his wrist when his fingers slid upward. She let him touch the black lace top of the stocking, then traced the garter and satin strap with his forefinger, and told him, in a whisper, to put the seat back.

And he had.

He'd have signed away his retirement, he'd have cut off his right arm, he was caught in the glare of her desire and intent. It was unlike him not to take the lead, it was unlike him to take orders, and it was unlike him to enjoy doing both.

The car seat glided way way back and he frowned but seemed definitely intrigued when she'd strapped him into the seat belt. It wasn't that she had a plan or a fantasy she was acting out, it was just that she was wide open to obeying the urge wherever it took her. And it took her places that night.

It is a wondrous thing, the endless stream of orgasms a woman can have when she is hot and slippery with desire.

She had stood within the embrace of the open car door, and pulled her dress up to her waist. Held up a hand when he reached for her, and said
wait
.

She liked the way he watched her every move. She liked the way his eyes followed her hands as she peeled the little snippet of panty down over her legs and let them hang about her ankles. She was sweaty inside her dress, and the night had cooled and felt amazing against her legs. She still wore the garter belt and the stockings, but she was bare everywhere else and the feeling excited her.