The Last Thing She Ever Did(27)

For decades the front porch of the Jarrett place had been the site of countless family celebrations. It ran the length of the Craftsman bungalow, facing the river and the endless parade along it. Birthday parties, the Fourth of July, a nearly annual family reunion had taken place on those wide, old, worn planks.

To Liz, all of that seemed a million years ago.

With her husband gone, she looked in the direction of the water. It was after midnight and she half hoped the next day would never come. Her tears with Carole and David had been genuine. She’d loved Charlie. She knew he’d loved her too. He’d come to show her his pinecones that morning. A few days before, she’d told him that they would make pinecone turkeys for Thanksgiving that year, something she’d done with her mother when she was a girl. Pipe cleaners, gobs of glitter, construction paper, and googly eyes transformed the cones into the kind of treasure that mothers can never discard.

Owen had given her some pills, and now she sat there watching, drinking some wine, and feeling as though a dark lid were sliding over her. She looked down at her hands, limply lying in her lap. What had she done? How could she have carried Charlie into the garage to hide him away? Who was she now?

She saw old Dan Miller ensconced in his swivel chair across the water, the light from his TV set silhouetting his bushy, white cockscomb hair. He was always in that chair, facing one way or another. Sometimes he held binoculars to his eyes to get a better look. Seeing him like that always gave her a hollow feeling, only served to remind her how after Seth had died he’d simply retreated from life. He’d become one of those people on the outside, looking in. Face pressed against the glass. She wondered if Dan had seen something that morning, anything that she would not want him to see.

Even in her drugged and drunken stupor, Liz traced the sight line from Dan’s vantage point to the driveway the Jarretts shared with the Franklins. She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think he could have seen what had transpired when she backed out from the garage. He might have witnessed Charlie wander over with his pinecones, the lurching of her car, her panic as she ran around to find the dead boy behind the car.

Liz looked over at the house next door. Carole and David’s place had knife cuts for windows on the street and the sides facing their neighbors. The narrow windows were afire with light. Every one of them. She wondered if they were looking in every room again, trying to find something that might indicate where Charlie had gone.

Or who had taken him.

She knew they’d never see him again. Carole’s heart would be broken forever. The chain reaction that she’d ignited would reverberate for the rest of their lives. Carole would grieve. David too. They’d do so publicly. Arms would wrap around them. Maybe their marriage would become stronger. Maybe it would disintegrate. Liz had done all of that. She’d lit a fuse, and there was no way of stopping it.

She would live with what she’d done. She’d cry with her friend, but her tears would not come from the same place as Carole’s. Owen would stand by her. Wouldn’t he? In books, secrets are always a dangerous bond. Would they stay together because of what he had on her? And what she would have on him when he’d fixed the problem?

Liz put the wineglass to her lips and poured the rest of it down her constricted throat. She hated pinot gris, but it was what Owen gave her when he told her to pull herself together.

As she waited for Owen, she prayed silently that God would forgive her and would understand that it had indeed been an accident. That God would know that evil didn’t live in her heart. That she’d made a mistake. As the wine and the pills took over, Liz felt her eyelids become heavy and her limbs go numb. The wineglass dropped into her lap. What was happening? She wondered if she was overdosing. She hoped that she was. She didn’t deserve to live. She didn’t want to live. Living would be torture.

Liz looked down at the river.

It was a black snake with a stain of silver from a fading moon peeking through the breaking clouds. It called over to her. Begged her. Told her that if she would go into the water, everything would be all right.



Charlie Franklin came to her as she drifted off, sitting on the porch in an old Adirondack chair that her grandfather had made out of lumber from a cedar tree that had died not long after he bought the property.

Charlie had his bucket of pinecones and a big grin on his face as he knelt beside her while she rested. He told her that everything would be all right. That when she got to heaven, they’d make those turkeys together, like she had promised. He spoke to her in complete, measured sentences. Not like a three-year-old at all. He told her that he knew that she hadn’t intended any of what happened to him. That she was not the reason he had died. That what had transpired between them on the driveway that morning had been an accident.

“Lizzie,” he said, “it’ll be okay.”

Liz woke up with a start and picked up her empty wineglass, which had somehow managed to hit the floor beside her chair without breaking. She felt woozy and strange. Not herself.

She knew she would never again be whoever she’d been.

She hoisted herself up from the chair and held the handrail to make her way back inside.

“Owen?” she called out, her voice raspy and her feet unsteady.

No answer.

She went into the kitchen, the bedroom, the office, even the bathroom, stumbling as she worked her way through the house. As repulsed as she was at what she’d done, it took everything she had to avoid going into the garage to see what Owen was doing in there.