That night, Liz and Owen barely spoke. They sat in the living room for a long time. The sound of some last-of-the-season vacation renters roasting marshmallows a few doors down from the Millers’ leaked through an open window facing the river. Not a single word was uttered about what had happened at the office. Or what Owen had been doing when he was at his off-site meeting. It was hard to trust him when every time he spoke it was a suggestion on how to lie.
Despite his lies, Liz counted on Owen. She hoped against hope that everything would be all right—as he’d promised.
That night when they went to bed, Owen moved close to her as she lay on her side, facing the wall. He pushed his pelvis against her, a signal that usually indicated that he wanted sex. She wondered how he could even contemplate such a thing at a time like that. She could think of nothing but the couple next door and the little boy she’d accidentally killed.
Owen had told her that everything needed to be normal. Yet there was no normal anymore. She didn’t feel like making love to him. She wondered why he’d even want to touch her. She was poison.
Instead of tugging on her shoulder to roll her over, Owen leaned in and whispered in her ear.
“You need to toughen up,” he said. “If you crumble on me, I’ll kill you.”
Liz didn’t say a word. Didn’t breathe.
“I swear that I will, Liz,” he went on. “I’ll make sure your name is dragged through the mud before I do it, too. Your mistake is not going to cost me.”
He stayed close for a moment, feeling her body shiver under the sheets.
“You seriously need to get a grip,” he whispered before rolling over. “Tomorrow we need normal. Not drama.”
“Okay,” she said.
Liz didn’t view her husband’s words as a threat. She saw them as a promise. She’d earned each and every word. A silent tear fell onto her pillow, and she studied a blank wall as though there were answers there. She looked at her phone and watched the time roll by. She didn’t want to dream of Charlie. She was afraid that she’d see his face again. His eyes shut. The pinecones he’d so proudly collected scattered on the driveway. The tarp from her father’s old workbench, a plastic envelope in which to hide him. She wanted none of that in her mind. She willed herself not to think about it for a second. For two seconds. That was her record.
For the longest time, her efforts to find refuge from her thoughts proved futile.
Finally, after two in the morning, Liz fell into a restless sleep.
This time Charlie didn’t come to her. Instead, she dreamed she was in the station wagon with her brother, Jimmy, in the neighbor’s station wagon, heading out that morning to Diamond Lake. Country music filled her ears. The Egg McMuffin felt warm in her small hands. And then the roar of the flash flood as water poured over her, Jimmy, and Dan and Seth Miller. In her dream she could make out Dan Miller’s bloody face before he went after the car carrying his son away. His eyes met hers for what seemed like a very long time. The memory was freeze-framed. It was hard to know how long the doctor hesitated before he went after it. He was going to die saving his son, although it didn’t turn out that way. Seth died. Dan survived. She wondered what he would have given to trade places with his son. She’d give anything if Charlie could be home, warm in his bed with the Star Wars duvet, and if she were the one wrapped in a tarp and discarded off the highway in the howling cold of the high-desert night.
The accident when she was nine years old was no longer the worst moment of her life.
Something else had replaced it. It, too, had been an accident. That truth was something she needed to hold tight inside.
That night Liz had a second dream. She was sitting with Carole at the breakfast table. David was gone. Owen too. It was only the two of them. Carole wore white. Her face was lined, her eyes vacant and sad. Liz looked down at her own hands. Age spots. Liz felt a bump protruding above her left breast, just below her shoulder. What? Her fingers found an implanted port used to receive chemotherapy medications. Cancer? She was dying and before her was this sad angel, Carole. She moved her lips to tell Carole what she knew she should say, but nothing came out.
“It’s all right,” Carole said. “When you go, don’t worry.”
She tried once more, but again no words came out.
“I forgive you,” Carole said.
Liz pushed herself up from the table. She was weak and undeserving. She could not accept the kindness that Carole was offering her. She was unworthy. She clawed at the port, somehow ripping it from under her skin. Blood splattered over the table and onto Carole’s white hair and white dress.
“It’s all right,” Carole said. “I would have forgiven you no matter what.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
MISSING: NINE DAYS
It was easy. The little boy and his mother had decided on the black-and-white terrier mix. It was love at first sight. The dog was a rescue picked up behind the Bend Walmart, fittingly dubbed Wally. He was one of those dogs that practically smiled when he looked up at someone, treat or no treat.
Usually those moments brought Liz Jarrett such joy. This time, however, tears came.
She’d been volunteering at the Humane Society of Central Oregon, just off Twenty-Seventh, for the past year. When she’d told the staff there she was studying for the bar, she laughed and said she was going to represent animal rights. “And if those dogs and cats in the kennel don’t get ten hugs a day,” she teased them, “I’m coming after you.”
The little boy was wearing blue jeans and a green and navy Seahawks T-shirt. His blond hair curled a little over his ears. Liz wondered how that mom with the dark hair could have a blond boy. And yet those two fit together the way Charlie and Carole had. Her eyes dampened a little, and the mom, a pretty woman with short black hair and a slender face, put her arm on her shoulder.
“What is it?”
Liz snapped out of her misery. “I’m sorry,” she said, drying her eyes. “There’s something truly beautiful about a boy and his first dog. A precious bond is being made right now.”
She watched as the dog nuzzled the boy and heard the belly laugh that came right along with it.
The mother smiled. “It is a beautiful thing.”
“Yes,” Liz said, easing herself from the joyful scene. “I think I’ll need to be excused right now. I’m really sorry. Wally is a great dog. I know he’s going to a good home. Sorry. I’m sorry. Tamara can help you with the paperwork.”
“Okay. Take care,” the mother said, surprised at the sudden departure of Wally’s adoption coordinator.
Liz hurried to the storage room and locked the door. She was grateful that there was no mirror in the space. She couldn’t stand the sight of her own face. Seeing that little boy laughing with that dog had been a knife in her heart. She sat on a pallet of dog food. She was numb. She was no longer a person.
If she could stay there forever, she would. Never come out. Curl up and die. Turn to dust. Any of that would be a relief from the agony she’d caused the Franklins.