Over and over, eyes closed or open, Liz kept seeing Charlie’s face. The tiny slits made by his eyelids. The blue of his lips. The bucket of spilled pinecones. The tarp. All of it. She had robbed Charlie of his life and she’d taken the coward’s way out. If anyone had ever told her that she could have done that, she’d have punched them.
A half hour later, Liz emerged from the storage room. She handed her key card and photo ID to Tamara, the woman in her fifties who managed the facility.
“What’s this?” Tamara asked.
“I think I need to take a break.”
“I know you’re close to Carole, Liz, and I can’t imagine all that they and you are going through, but animals are good therapy. For people. People hurting.”
Liz knew her manager was right. She’d seen it a thousand times. A widower coming in to get a dog after his wife succumbed to cancer. Empty nesters filling the void left by the last kid off to college. A young woman heartbroken over her breakup with a longtime lover.
“The animal part is fine,” she said. “Just kind of breaks me up when the little ones come in here. Makes me think of my friend and her son. I don’t think I can do this right now.”
“What about working in the back office? We could sure use some help back there. Paperwork doesn’t love you back, but it’s a necessary evil around this place.”
Liz removed the white smock that she wore over her street clothes. She handed that over to Tamara too. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m not good for much of anything right now.”
“They’ll find Charlie,” Tamara said. “I just know that they will.”
Liz didn’t know what to say. It seemed that every word that came out of her mouth when she spoke about Charlie was a lie. She even questioned her own tears. She wondered if they were solely for her. If they had nothing to do with the death of a child she’d loved so much. She was barely hanging on. Lying to oneself is an exhausting task.
There was only one thing harder, she now knew: keeping a dangerous secret.
Liz stopped at Safeway on the way home. She moved quickly, as if she were a contestant on one of those shopping-spree shows. Her first stop was her most important. She filled her cart with bottles of wine. She didn’t shop labels. She didn’t look for the highest number of points. She grabbed whatever was at eye level. Then she plowed through the produce aisle and picked up some bagged salad. Grabbed some milk. Some chicken.
Her hands trembled as she swiped her debit card at the check stand. The cashier, a man with a penchant for small talk, asked her the question that genuinely kind people frequently do. “Are you all right?” When she didn’t respond right away, he paused in his scanning and studied her eyes.
Liz didn’t think there would be a time when she’d ever be all right again. No matter what her husband said.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered.
The cashier kept his eyes on her for another second. Then the conveyor belt started moving once more. “Okay, then,” he said.
When Liz got in her car and started to drive away, it took everything she had not to reach across the seat to twist off the top of the bottle of a hideous Riesling that had somehow found its way into her cart. It was a poor choice. She’d made plenty of those lately.
Before Charlie and the accident, she knew the biggest mistake she’d ever made was in the hospital after the flash flood, though she wasn’t exactly sure if she had been tricked or if she’d remembered correctly.
The officers and doctors were a blend of sympathy and accusation as they tried to determine what had gone wrong on the drive to Diamond Lake. Though no one could deny that the flood was an act of nature, there somehow was a need to lay blame. Blame made people feel better. Move on. Act superior. And maybe make them feel just a little safer.
An Oregon State Police officer, a woman with bright red hair and penetrating eyes, sat next to Liz’s bedside while her parents hung back just beyond the privacy curtain.
Later, Liz would find a transcript of the notes made the day after the accident. It was in her mother’s things, with the two newspaper clippings about the accident.
Officer: You like Dr. Miller, don’t you?
Witness: Yes. He’s nice.
Officer: Did you notice anything unusual about him that morning?
Witness: No.
Officer: Did he have anything to drink?
Witness: Coffee. We stopped at McDonald’s.
Officer: Did he put anything in his coffee?
Witness: No.
Officer: Did you smell anything on his breath?
Witness: No. He smelled real nice.
Officer: What kind of smell?
Witness: A good smell.
Officer: Can you describe?
Witness: Like my mom’s mulled wine. Sweet like that.
Officer: You smelled wine?
Witness: I guess so. Dr. Miller always smells like that.
Reading those words, Liz could see the officer’s green eyes roll over her, taking in everything she said, sizing her up and egging her on. The officer said she was after the truth, but when Liz said that about Dr. Miller and the woman’s eyes lit up, Liz knew that she’d just been looking for her to say something ugly about Seth’s father.
In the background, Liz caught a glimpse of her parents shaking their heads in disgust. The officer went to them while a nurse checked on Liz’s vitals.
“We’re pretty sure he was drinking,” she said, her voice low, but not low enough. “Blood tests were taken too late to get a reading on any alcohol. We waited too long. We won’t be able to prosecute, but I’d watch that one. He might seem like a good guy, but anyone that would take a nip in the morning wouldn’t be anyone I’d want my kids around.”
Dr. Miller had been drinking that morning. The police and her parents said so. They said so in a kind of whisper. A whisper is a very effective way of making sure everyone hears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MISSING: TEN DAYS
Carole was a nighttime migrant. She slept on the couch. In a chair in front of an infomercial on pressure cookers that played early in the morning. Finally, she found comfort in her son’s bed. It was as much to get away from David as it was to be close to the boy who had disappeared from the river’s edge. Questions from the police and innuendo she saw online suggested that David had been cheating on her. That hadn’t really been news. He’d done it before they moved to Bend. A leopard, her mother told her more than once, could never change his spots.