The Break(90)

FIFTY


Rowan. Friday night. November 11th.


I unwrap myself from my mother’s arms and turn to my husband. “Gabe,” I say. I put my hands on his face. I think of June, about how much she loved Lila, of how scared she must have been to know all of this about Gray when I didn’t remember him, and the way she kept taking care of us anyway. “I remember Gray,” I say to Gabe, and his entire being lifts in a way I’ve never seen before, and it reminds me that marriages are full of new things. “You remember him,” he says, his voice cracking.

Harrison backs away from us, leaving us in our own shared tragedy.

I hold Lila closer, bouncing her gently but staring only at Gabe. “I do,” I say. “And I’m so sorry I forgot him. I’ll never forget ever again.”

Gabe shakes his head. He can barely speak, but he manages to say, “I love you.”

I say it back, and he pulls our daughter and me inside his arms. I close my eyes. I want to stay here forever—I don’t want to open my eyes; I don’t want to see June inside that bag, taken away from us.

The detective finally leaves us alone. Maybe we’re such a sad group, he realizes we’re not even capable of bolting. Harrison comes back over to us and launches into full agent mode, robotically telling us we need a lawyer, but on closer inspection I can see his face has fallen, the side of his mouth hanging low, his eyes red. He cut himself shaving today, maybe, because there’s a spot of blood on his neck.

The police lights scatter across the night sky. The sound of cars racing down the West Side Highway mix with the sounds of cops and emergency personnel talking over their radios.

Emergency workers flood the scene; I keep expecting them to put the three of us in handcuffs, but no one does. We just stand there, useless, Elena watching my mom and me with a drawn expression on her face, Harrison getting downright furious when Gabe doesn’t seem to be listening to his advice.

Neighbors have come out of their homes, from other buildings and from our own. Henri is standing there with our neighbor Mart, both with their arms crossed over their chests like they’ve seen this all before, like babysitters have long been buried inside this very building.

“What have we done to June?” I ask against Gabe’s chest.

“I don’t understand what happened to her,” Gabe says, pulling away from me. “I don’t get how she was down there for three days and no one found her. It had to have happened that night she was here, at our place, trying to talk to me about . . .”

His voice trails off.

I tip my chin up to look at him. “About what?” I ask, already scared to go near the answer.

“She always wanted to tell you about Gray. She was convinced what Sylvie was doing was wrong and unfair to you. And it’s not like I was one hundred percent sure on the right thing to do . . .” He shakes his head. “That night, she was drunk when she showed up at our apartment. She came when my mom was here and we were both pretty hard on her, we told her it wasn’t her place to tell you and that if she wasn’t on board she should get out and not come back.”

I imagine it unfolding: June fighting on my behalf, Gabe scared and questioning himself, Sylvie, me. “I did this to all of you,” I say, but it barely holds weight in the air. Even I know it’s more complicated than that. Gabe wraps his arms around me again. I close my eyes, and when I finally open them I look for Harrison, thinking I should comfort him, too. But he’s nowhere. I scan the crowd, but I see only my neighbors. Maybe it was all too much for him, losing the girl he loved, seeing her lying there like that. There are firemen on the scene now, too, and I’m distracted by their large presence and the way they talk to the police officers like this isn’t an emergency, like a dead person in a basement is just something they see all the time.

I scan the crowd again. Harrison is gone.

Paramedics and other emergency personnel block my view of June. They seem so busy, flitting around her. Now the uniformed men with the black body bag move closer and I can hardly bear it. Lila whimpers, and I want to use it as an excuse to go somewhere else, anywhere but here, but I don’t. I make myself watch. June was here, in my home, and then she died. She was babysitting my baby, dating my friend, taking care of me. I make my eyes follow the men, but instead of stopping next to June’s body and putting her inside the body bag, they move toward our apartment building.

“Where are they going?” I ask Gabe. He’s watching as Elena carefully leads my mother away, all of us worried this is too much for her in her fragmented state. Tears are still streaming down Gabe’s face, but his arm is slung around my waist and there’s a looseness to him I haven’t felt in weeks. He turns back to see the men with the black bag on the steps of our apartment building.

“To the basement,” Gabe says. “That’s where he is.”

I open my mouth to ask what he’s talking about, but then Mulvahey is suddenly next to us. “Are you ready?” he asks. “I’d like you to identify his body.”

I turn to look at Mulvahey’s face, but it’s too hard to make out his expression in the dark with the police lights flashing, making everything feel chaotic. “Sorry, what did you say?” I ask.



“He’s not carrying a picture ID,” Mulvahey says, impatient now. “And I’d rather get this process started now rather than have everything held up at the morgue. I’ve got his name from his credit cards, but I’d like your eyes on him to make an ID, since you seem to be the only one who’s ever met him.”