Eyes Wide Open

Chapter Fifty-Five





That morning I drove Gabby to the market to pick up a few groceries. She had asked me to dinner again that night and was making a Greek stew called stifado.

As we left, I noticed a white police car stationed along the tracks down from their apartment. I thanked Sherwood silently and felt better about leaving Charlie in the house alone.

While Gabby shopped, I got a cup of coffee and followed her around with the cart while she went to the meat department and bought inexpensive cuts on sale, and then went through produce, checking the onions for ripeness and examining the peppers for color and price.

I wanted to be alone with her, and after we went through checkout, with a small tussle over allowing me to pay, we rolled the cart over to the coffee bar and I bought a latte for her.

“Thank you for the coffee, Jay,” she said, “and for the groceries. This is a real treat for me.” She sipped her frothy latte with a smile. She wore a red knit shirt over a skirt, her blond hair in a ponytail. “Usually we bring our own cups here because they charge us fifty cents less.”

“I’m sorry for the way you have to live, Gabby . . .”

“This is our fate to bear, Jay, not yours. We are who we are. The way your brother is. You’re nice, but there’s nothing you can do.”

I shifted my stool around and looked at her. “I need you to help me, Gabby. I need you to tell Charlie to unlock the past. I need you to help me help you both.”

She smiled at me, a little fatalistically. “After Evan there is no life for us.”

“I know, but if someone conspired to kill your son, Gabby, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want that person brought to justice? Especially if it put the two of you in danger?”

“Danger? I’ve thought about that.” Gabby put down her cup. “Believe me, I have nothing but hate in my heart for that person if it is the case. But maybe the feeling I have most is, in the end, what does it matter? My son is dead, Jay, and if in some way Charlie was involved, with things from his past . . .” She looked at me. “I don’t want to lose my son and lose my husband too. That is the true danger. Can you understand that? I’ve never seen him quite like this, Jay. He’s losing his mind.”

“Gabby, whatever’s in his past is no longer buried. It’s here. It’s taken Evan, and it will take him too if you don’t help me. Get him to talk about his time on the ranch. Please. I need him to tell me what he did there. I already have some idea . . .”

She nodded, a little tentatively. Then she pushed a hair in place on top of her head and finished her coffee with a smile. “I will do my best, Jay. For you. Now, come on, we have to go to the bakery. Do you like sourdough bread?”

She waved good-bye to her friend behind the counter, and I wheeled the grocery cart outside through the sliding doors.

I had parked the Lincoln in an open area around the side. All the spaces around us had filled in. I got to the car and popped the trunk. Gabby went to load up the bags.

“Let me help you . . . ,” I said, reaching for two of the heavier ones.

“No.” She laughed, her eyes blue and light. “I am old, but I am able to do this, Jay.”

“Okay, okay . . .” I hoisted a bulky bag containing milk and juice cartons into the trunk and went around and opened the driver’s-side door. I smelled the acrid scent of oil coming from somewhere. I looked but didn’t see anything. “I’ll take back the cart.”

I wheeled it toward the lineup of carts in the front, and a pretty Latino woman happily took it from me.

Heading back, I watched Gabby close up the trunk. Though she was probably sixty, she still looked trim and attractive. Her smile, however brief, always lit her face, and I thought to myself that this was a woman who would have really enjoyed her life if things had been different. I felt sorry for the look of anguish that had replaced her quick smile, and all the pain. She had tried hard to be a good mother to Evan, whatever the outcome. How loyal she had been to Charlie all these years.

She caught sight of me staring at her and briefly smiled.

The same moment I realized something was horribly wrong.

Walking toward her, I caught that smell again, and my gaze fixed on a slick black river of flame traveling toward us on the pavement, one car away.

No . . .

I ran to try to put it out, but it sped quickly under the blue Ford truck parked in the space adjacent to us, a dangerous stream of fire picking up speed.

That’s when I realized that the smell under my car wasn’t engine oil at all, but gasoline!

My eyes were now drawn to the widening black circle pooled underneath the Lincoln.

No!

I stopped, knowing I was too late, and turned back to my Lincoln in panic.

“Gabby, no . . . !”

She had climbed back in the car and shut the door. Still a picture of that same happy smile glancing my way.

My own gaze unraveling into horror.

I ran toward her, shouting out her name, a passerby turning, just as the stream of flame met the pool of gasoline underneath my car—suddenly engulfing it in a bright whoosh of scalding yellow heat.

“Gabby!”

I stared, helpless, as a burst of heat shot at me as if the car was an enormous gas grill overloaded with propane. Scalded, I turned away for a second, blinded. When I looked back Gabby had her arm covering her face, a twisted expression of horror on it, frantically tugging at the door, the vehicle erupting around her in flames.

“Gabby!”

I darted over, ripping off my jacket as I went for the already scalding door handle, swatting the flames away from my face.

All around me, people screamed.

The door was jammed. Gabby’s mask of helplessness and fear inside whipped the quickening drumbeat of my own exploding heart.

“I’ll get you out!” I screamed, tugging with my jacket over the fiery handle.

Goddamnit, open, please!

I pulled and pulled, but I couldn’t get my fingers around the handle. Smoke began to rise, starting to fill up the inside of the car. Gabby’s fear intensified and I realized that at any moment the whole thing might explode.

I flung down my jacket and squeezed, and finally the door mercifully released. I threw it open, grabbing on to Gabby’s arm, ripped her out of the seat, as onlookers rushed from the market, pointing and screaming all around.

I picked her up in my arms and carried her over my shoulder, twenty feet away, just as I heard this chilling, enveloping whoosh from behind me and my rented Lincoln erupted into an orange ball of flames.

“Jay! Jay!” Gabby was screaming.

Then it blew.

The blast knocked me down, and we hit the pavement, hurled up against another parked car. Gabby clung to me, shaking, coughing smoke out of her lungs, unable to look back, guttural sobs coming out of her, from both relief and fear.

“Oh, Jay, oh, Jay, oh, Jay . . .”

I turned around. My car was engulfed in smoke and flame. A stomach-turning, fuel-like stench was all around. Shocked shoppers ran out of the stores, eyes stretched wide.

“It’s okay, Gabby, it’s okay.” I stroked her, my own heart slamming against the walls of my chest, as I squeezed her close. “It’s okay . . .”

But no matter how many times I said it, I looked back at the smoking carcass of my car and knew it wasn’t okay.

The truth came over me. As inescapable as the wall of flames I now watched in disbelief.

This was my car.

I was supposed to be inside. If I hadn’t wheeled the cart back . . .

The blazing fireball, a bonfire of burning oil and smoke, melting metal and leather . . .

It was meant for me.