The Elizas: A Novel(3)

There’s a knock at the door, and I shoot up. A guy in a faded blue shirt enters. He’s sandy-haired, with black plastic glasses that were probably hip about five years ago. He’s got a weak, wimpy half smile and long, thin fingers with carefully manicured nails. I arrange the sheets around me so that my ass isn’t exposed and pull my hospital gown tight. I wish the gown were any color but white. The fabric matches my skin tone perfectly.

“Miss Fontaine.” He extends his hand. “I’m Lance Collier, with the Palm Springs PD. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

“You’re a detective?” My voice leaps. The world blossoms.

He sinks into a plastic chair next to my bed. “I have a few questions for you. I hear you’re going to be with us for a while longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was told your family would like you to take a few days to recover in psychiatric.”

My heart sinks. “No. No. I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

Lance turns his head to the right. His neck cracks noisily, and I wince. I have never liked the sound of cracking joints. “What I see”—he flips a page—“is that two passersby rescued you from the bottom of the Tranquility resort pool last night. True?”

I shrug. “I guess.”

“And you can’t swim, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So what were you doing in the pool?”

“Someone pushed me.”

This doesn’t even elicit an eyebrow raise, which surprises me, considering the last time I made this claim I got a needle jammed into my bicep. “Did you see the person who pushed you?” he asks in an even tone.

“No, but I felt hands on my back.”

“But no face. So you can’t be positive you were pushed.”

I lick my lips. “Are you saying I’m lying?”

He crosses his legs. The clock on the wall ticks loudly. “Miss Fontaine, it’s come to my attention that you’ve had some issues with suicide attempts in the past.”

I inwardly groan. “Yes, but that was . . . before.”

“Before what?”

“Before her brain tumor.”

My mother rushes into the room, never mind that this is a private meeting. Bill follows. Gabby pulls up the rear.

“Um, hello?” I say awkwardly, defensively.

My mother turns to the detective. “She tried to drown herself four other times last year. Three were in hotel swimming pools. The fourth time was in the Pacific Ocean—Santa Monica. She kept saying she had to. Someone was after her. Someone was trying to hurt her. Finally, about eleven months ago, a doctor gave her a brain scan, and it turns out she had a tumor pressing against—”

“—my amygdala,” I interrupt, desperate to regain control of this. “It’s this part of your brain that tells your body how it’s supposed to respond to emotionally charged situations.”

“I’m aware of how an amygdala functions,” Lance says.

“That’s why you see all those suicide attempts on my record,” I say. “But the doctor got the tumor out. I had treatment, and I’m better now. Last night was different. I wasn’t trying to die. Honest.”

“It’s just so similar, chicken,” Bill says quietly. “The drinking, the fear that someone was after you . . . everything about the situation is the same.”

“Well, it’s not the same.” I look around the room and see tilted mouths, downcast eyes. “It’s not.” It comes out like a whine.

There’s a small, condescending smile on Lance’s face. “How about you walk me through what you remember?”

I try to grab on to that memory of the strong hands on my back at the edge of the pool, but the shot that nurse gave me—a mixture of drugs I’m unfamiliar with—is making even reality seem dreamlike and unfathomable. “I walked out to the pool. I stood there. Then I felt this whoosh. I was pushed from behind, and I fell in. I was in a public place. Weren’t there witnesses?”

Lance studies his notes. “According to the report, there were no witnesses besides the people who rescued you. By the time they saw you, you were already in the water, and they said no one else was around. They pulled you out, laid you on the deck. One of them gave you mouth-to-mouth.”

I feel itchy. It’s harrowing to hear the details of your almost-death. I notice, out of the corner of my eye, that my mother has her lips pressed tightly together.

“Are they sure no one else saw?” I ask. It seems impossible. There were hundreds of guests at that resort when I checked in. The lobby was clogged with guys in Maui Jim sunglasses and women carrying raffia Tory Burch handbags.

“There was a thunderstorm—the pool area had been cleared. The staff wonders how you even got onto the deck—it was roped off.”

I’d climbed over the rope? My patent leather booties had five-inch heels. What the hell prompted me to do that?

“Who pulled me out of the water?” I ask. “Who was it?”

He looks again at the notebook. “Someone named Desmond Wells. Know him?”

I crane my neck at the notebook, too. Lance has written the name Desmond Wells in all caps along with a Los Angeles area code phone number. The name doesn’t ring a bell. “Does he work at the hotel?”