Confidential(95)

“I know I’ve done some bad things; I’ve hurt people. I can’t blame them for wanting to hurt me back, but please, just let me explain myself. I need you to know the whole truth because I think I could love you.”

The police are not yet releasing any firm details but at this time, the death is being investigated as suspicious.

“I know I could love our baby, and for the first time in my life, I want to make a real go of it. As in, I want to do the right thing by you and by our child. I want to be a family. We can take things slow, really get it right. There’s a rule about not sleeping together for two years after terminating therapy, and I’ve pretended to follow it before, but I haven’t. With you, I want it all aboveboard. We can take our time, just let our relationship grow organically, along with your belly.” He laughed self-consciously. “That came out wrong. Please, could we just talk?”

The phone clattered to the floor. I was crying and crawling under the bed to get the phone so that I could listen to the message one more time. A thousand more times. It was all I had left of him.

I was moaning and cradling the belly that was too small for anyone to suspect, but it was substantial. I could already feel the weight of my baby in my arms. Michael’s baby.

Oh my God. It had to be a mistake. He couldn’t be dead, not when I was still listening to his voice. As long as I kept listening, he was still alive.

I let it play again, and my tears dried. He was with me. He was right with me, me and this baby. Our baby. He was right with me, the man I love. It couldn’t be too late to tell him. No, he must have known, must have felt it. I was with him in the end. My love was.

Did he die fast or slow? Quick or agonizing? Had there been time to remember me, to let the life we were about to have flash before his eyes and bring him peace?

Noooooooo. He wasn’t dead. It couldn’t be over. We’d barely begun. That’s what he was telling me in his message. We were going to do this, for real. We were going to be a family.

It had to be a mistake. He couldn’t really be gone.

I played the message again, holding the phone tight against my belly so my baby could hear it, too. Our child could come to recognize his (her?) father’s voice. I just needed to keep listening, that was all.

We were going to be a family.





CHAPTER 78





LUCINDA


I didn’t know what time it was, just that the sky had darkened. I’d had nothing to eat or drink. My tear ducts could no longer produce moisture. It was like I’d been wrung out to dry.

Michael Baylor was no more. The me who had existed in the room with Michael Baylor—his client, his lover—was no more. Most of me was bereft and terrified, but some small piece of me thought it had been poetic justice.

Other than my mother, the only one who’d reached out to me was Christine, and her call had nothing to do with Michael. I mean, why would it have? She didn’t know about my therapist’s untimely death. She left a voice mail saying that I’d been fired for failing to meet deadlines and for my poor attendance. “When you didn’t show up today, that was the last straw,” she said.

So like Christine, to try to take away my victory, to pretend that our scene had never happened, to act like I’d never declared my independence from her. How like an editor to rewrite history and tell me, “You can’t quit because you’re fired.”

But it wasn’t like it mattered now. This was life and death, Michael’s and mine. Because Michael was most likely in hell, burning right alongside Adam, but someday, I might be there, too. I didn’t know how Michael had been killed; I just knew I’d participated in that conversation yesterday where we kicked around various scenarios, and now he was dead. I was an accessory.

When someone began knocking persistently on my front door, refusing to be ignored, my first thought was that it was the police, and if I didn’t answer, they might just break it down. I had no idea if they had that authority, but we were talking about murder.

I smelled terrible, and I looked worse, in a pair of threadbare flannel pajamas, my hair half-fled from the confines of its bun. If the police didn’t think I was guilty before, my appearance would certainly suggest guilt or some other pronounced disturbance.

But it wasn’t the Oakland PD. It was my mother.

She embraced me, and I sobbed in her arms. Could I ever see her again without weeping? She must be mortified that she’d raised such a disaster. I was mortified to be me.

“Is anyone else home?” she asked.

“No.” Otherwise, they would have answered the door ten minutes ago.

“Let’s go inside. We need to talk.”

She thought I’d done it. What was I going to tell her?

We sat on the living room couch, an aged navy-blue chaise longue that had probably been here through the last five successive cycles of roommates. I licked my parched lips, and then bit at the flaking skin.

“How are you?” she said. I noticed that her lips were just as dry, that other than the fact that she was dressed in clothes rather than pajamas, she looked as bad as I did.

“It’s been a very strange day,” I finally managed.

“For me, too.” Her eyes darted around nervously, and I had this feeling, like I wasn’t the only one worried about a knock from the police. Could it be . . . ?