I Liked My Life(87)

The detail infuriates me. “I know what shoes she was wearing. Don’t talk to me like I don’t know what shoes she wore that goddamn day!” Kara takes the opportunity to move to my right and stand to leave, but she’s staggering enough for me to get ahead before the door and block her exit. “If it was an accident why didn’t you tell someone? Why didn’t you get help?” My eyes beg her to fix it now, to change the ending.

She shrugs. “Your mom was dead. It’s not like it really mattered how she got there.”

I drop to the floor, disgusted, shocked. But I shouldn’t be. Every time Kara did something horrible my mom would ask why I was surprised. Kara has always been in it for Kara. She must’ve warned me a million times.

“Why tell me now?” I call to her back as she walks to the car.

Kara shudders, again looking around like there’s an audience. “Because I’m haunted. I swear it.” She tries to take another swig from her flask but remembers it’s empty and drops it on the driveway instead. “I can’t sleep because the second I do she crawls into my dreams and lets out that scream. And I can’t focus because she talks over whatever else is happening. Tell Evie. Tell Evie. Tell Evie. She’s obsessed. It’s like having a song loop in my fucking brain. I wish I’d just jumped that night. So fuck it. She wins.” Kara twirls around shouting, “Are you happy now? My parents are sex fiends and Mrs. Starling didn’t kill herself. So now can you leave me the fuck alone?”

It’s over. There’s nothing more to say. Kara steps over the flask and gets in her car, mumbling that it’s my turn to ruin her life, and peels out of the driveway.

Kara’s ghost was Gram. It had to be. I only saw her once a year until I was eight and she died, but Gram is the only person who ever called me Evie. It drove my mom crazy—“If I wanted to name you Evie, I would’ve named you Evie,” she always said.

I remain collapsed on the tile, unable to shut the front door. My mom loved me. And we were happy. Her words come back to me again. Practice love, compassion, and forgiveness. Only now, I’m certain the voice is real. It’s Her. If Gram can get in Kara’s head then Mom can get in mine. She wouldn’t have harassed Kara, my mother didn’t have it in her to torture someone like that, but she’d definitely sing me lyrical lessons and pass down wisdom and comfort.

I close my eyes and picture her on that ledge, feeling victorious as Kara moved to safety, her mind already plotting what to do next. The image is so clear it’s as if I’m there, as if the memory is now mine. She turns and reaches for the top of the barrier, but misses. She looks at her hand like it failed her. Realizing she’s off balance, then her foot slips. She reaches both arms toward the ledge but gravity has already won.

My breathing slows. She died terrified. She had no time to think of me or Dad or her garden or the book she’d never read the end of. I cry, but this time I cry for her. Not me. Her. For all she lost. Her death was a sacrifice. A sacrifice for Kara.

I lift myself up. Of course she hadn’t left Kara alone that night. My mom wasn’t a shirker. If she was in a position to help, she’d see it as her duty. She’d see it through to the end.

My mom was a hero.

Brady

I’m not even through the door when Eve says it wasn’t suicide. Her face is serene—the contradiction between what was said and her expression baffle me.

“Kara came here.”

“Kara Anderson?”

“Yeah. She’s the one who went out on the ledge. Mom talked her back inside.”

“What?”

“She fell, Dad. It was an accident.”

I slide my back down the wall and onto the floor. It doesn’t make sense. “Why was she there?” I ask. “Why didn’t she say anything?”

Eve shakes her head. “It was messed up. Kara found out her parents are total nymphos and got wasted and just, like, snapped. Mom calmed her down, but then fell.”

I take off my tie. The veins in my forehead drum against my skull. I can see Eve is relieved—at least Maddy’s death doesn’t betray our memory of who she was—and I am too, only relief sits second to my anger. A far second. I get up and grab the portable phone. “I’m calling the police.”

“To say what?”

My voice gets louder as I speak. “To say my wife was a goddamn saint. That she wasn’t depressed. That Kara fucking Anderson decided it was okay to screw with us all. I’m going to demand the state press charges.”

Eve squeezes her eyes shut. “What’s the point, Dad? I get what you’re saying, but we can’t change what happened.”

I back away as if Eve might infect me with her ability to forgive. “So it’s okay with you that Kara let everyone think your mother was unhappy? She let everyone believe Mom took her own life. That’s okay with you?”

Eve throws her hands in the air. “No, it’s not okay. But it is what it is. At least we know, Dad. At least she told us. It could be worse. Think about what Mom would—”

“No.” I cut her off. I see what she’s saying but can’t match it. There’s a certificate that lists my wife’s cause of death as suicide. It’s disrespectful to Madeline, disrespectful to our life together.

*

Eve endures thirty minutes of questioning at the police station.