Miracle Creek(35)
* * *
IT WAS MUGGY in the courtroom. She’d expected relief from the heat—over a hundred, someone said—but the air was just as dense inside. Maybe from everyone who’d walked in the hot sun, soaking up the humidity like a sponge, now stepping in and releasing the dank heat. The air conditioners were on, but they sounded feeble, sputtering once in a while as if exhausted. The air dribbling out, not cooling the room so much as ushering sweat particles around it.
Abe announced his next witness: Steve Pierson, an arson specialist and lead investigator. As he walked up, his bald head slimy and pink with sweat, Teresa could almost see steam rise from it. Teresa was barely five feet tall, so most people seemed big to her, but Detective Pierson was a giant, even taller than Abe. The witness stand squeaked as he stepped up, and the wooden chair looked like a toy next to his bulk. When he sat, the streaming sun hit his hairless head-bulb like a spotlight, casting a halo around his face. It reminded Teresa of the first time she saw him, the night of the explosion: him standing against the backdrop of the fire, with twitching flames reflecting off the gloss of his scalp.
It had been a nightmare scene. Sirens in varying pitches from fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars blaring above the steady crackle of the fire eating through the barn. The emergency vehicles’ flashing lights against the darkening sky creating a psychedelic nightclub vibe, with foam-water lines from hoses crisscrossing in midair like streamers. And stretchers. Stretchers with their bright white sheets, everywhere.
Both Teresa and Rosa were fine, miraculously, just smoke inhalation for which they were given—an irony—pure oxygen. As she breathed in, she saw Matt fighting off EMTs holding him down. “Let me go! She doesn’t know yet. I need to tell her.”
Teresa stopped breathing. Elizabeth. She didn’t know her son was dead.
That’s when Steve Pierson had come into view, with his freakishly wide shoulders and hairless head like a caricature of a movie villain. “Sir, we’ll find the deceased boy’s mother,” he said in a high, nasal squeak, all the more alien because it contrasted with the booming bass she expected from such a big body. It seemed wrong, as if his real voice had been dubbed by a recording from a prepubescent boy. “We’ll deliver the news.”
Deliver the news. Ma’am, I have news, Teresa imagined this man say ing, as if Henry’s death were an interesting CNN foreign-correspondence report. Your son is deceased.
No. She would not let some stranger who looked like a Scandinavian sumo wrestler and spoke like Alvin the Chipmunk tell Elizabeth, would not let him infect that moment she’d relive again and again. Teresa herself had lived that, an oh-so-busy-and-important doctor telling her, “I’m calling to inform you that your daughter is in a coma,” then cutting off her shocked “What? Is this a joke?” with “I’d suggest getting here as soon as possible. She likely won’t survive much longer.” Teresa wanted a friend to tell Elizabeth gently, to cry with and hug her the way she wished her ex-husband had instead of delegating to a stranger.
Teresa left Rosa with the EMTs and went to find Elizabeth. It was 8:45, so the dive was supposed to have ended a while ago. Where was she? Not in her car. Maybe she’d gone for a walk? Matt had said once that there was a nice trail by the creek.
It took her five minutes to find her, lying on a blanket by the creek. “Elizabeth?” Teresa said, but she didn’t answer. Walking closer, she saw white buds in her ears. Tinny echoes of blaring music leaked out of them, mixing with the gurgling creek and chirping crickets.
The darkening sky cast a purplish shadow on Elizabeth’s face. Her eyes were closed, a slight smile on her face. Serene. A pack of cigarettes and matches lay on the blanket, next to a cigarette butt, crumpled paper, and a thermos bottle.
“Elizabeth,” Teresa said again. Nothing. Teresa bent down and snatched the earbuds away. Elizabeth startled, her body jerking awake. The thermos fell over and a pale straw liquid gurgled out. Wine?
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I fell asleep. What time is it?” Elizabeth said.
“Elizabeth,” Teresa said, and cupped her hands. Flashing lights from the ambulance brightened the sky in spurts, like distant fireworks. “Something awful has happened. There was a fire, an explosion. It happened so quickly.” She gripped Elizabeth’s hands. “I’m afraid that Henry was … involved, and he … he’s…”
Elizabeth didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask He’s what?, didn’t gasp, didn’t scream. She just blinked at Teresa in even beats, as if counting down the seconds until Teresa could utter the last word in her sentence. Five, four, three, two, one. Hurt, Teresa yearned to say. Near death, even. Anything with just a shard of hope.
“Henry died,” Teresa finally said. “I’m so sorry, I can’t tell you—”
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut and held up her hand as if to say, Stop. She swayed slightly, back and forth, like a shirt on a hanger in the summer breeze, and as Teresa leaned in to steady her, she opened her mouth in a silent howl. She snapped her head back, and Teresa realized: Elizabeth was laughing. Out loud, in a high-pitched, maniacal cackle, as she repeated like a mantra, “He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!”
* * *
TERESA LISTENED to Detective Pierson’s testimony about the rest of that night. How Elizabeth had scanned the scene with an eerie calmness. How he’d led her to Henry’s stretcher and, before he could stop her, she’d pulled back the white sheet covering his face. How she hadn’t screamed or cried or clung to the body like other grieving parents, and he told himself it must be numbness from shock, but boy, it sure was creepy.