The Last Thing She Ever Did(91)

Liz stepped through the overgrown garden and pressed her palm against the rusted metal of the trailer. Why had Dr. Miller kept that trailer after so many years? She’d have gotten rid of it right away. It had to remind him of the worst day of his life. The unkempt space was in sharp contrast to the rest of his yard, which up until lately had been garden-tour perfection. Here, she thought, was a space that he seldom visited.

She went to the riverfront side of the house. All of the basement blinds were drawn tight. She pressed her ear close to the back door. She could hear a faint noise coming from inside, but with a plane passing overhead, she wasn’t sure if she was hearing a television or a neighbor’s radio playing. It was very muffled.

Liz looked across the water. The Franklins’ place: big and imposing. Her house: small and weak. She remembered all of the good times she and her family had had there. The fire pit sending sparkles of light into the dark sky. The taste of a hot dog roasted to a crunchy blackness. She thought of the time she and Owen had made love on the hammock, only to freeze into silence as some inner-tubers floated by. Standing there was like flipping through a scrapbook and feeling the blast of memory with every page.

Part of her knew that Charlie was the last page.

She turned away and started uneasily for home. There was nothing there for her, but something here seemed wrong.

Mrs. Chow, who had lived next door to the Millers for years, was unloading groceries.

“Tina,” Liz asked, “have you seen Dr. Miller lately?”

The short, round woman with a penchant for gauzy shifts and six-inch heels gave Liz a quick nod of recognition.

“No,” she said, moving a heavy bag to her hip. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. A week? Maybe more? I’m not sure.”

“I’m worried about him.”

“I didn’t realize you were close,” the woman said. “He never mentions you.”

Liz didn’t take the bait. Mrs. Chow could be a negative force, and Liz didn’t need that right now. She’d had plenty of that already.

“Well, he’s such a fixture in his yard that I got kind of worried when I noticed that his lawn hadn’t been mowed. You know that he practically lives for cutting that grass.”

Tina Chow shifted her gaze between the two houses and looked down at the lawn. “You aren’t kidding there. I admit, the same thing crossed my mind. First thing I thought was that he’d had a stroke or something, but then I saw the Safeway delivery truck the other day. So I know he’s eating. Not my place to get into someone’s business. Not yours, either.”

Again, no bait taken.

“Right,” Liz said. “I didn’t know that he was getting deliveries.”

Mrs. Chow let out a sigh. Her bag was heavy, and the younger woman hadn’t offered to carry in the groceries. She ruminated on how thoughtless the younger generation had become.

“Me neither,” she finally said, shutting the car door with a swing of her gauzy hip. “Just started a short time ago. I was going to ask him about it but I’ve been busy and he hasn’t been out messing around the yard. Sure hope he isn’t ill or anything. Those greedy relatives of his will turn the old place into a rental, and I’ll be stuck with frat parties for the rest of my life.”

Liz thanked her and started walking to the street.

“Hey, any news on the Franklin boy?” Mrs. Chow asked.

Liz turned around. “No,” she said. “Still missing.”

The woman with the groceries made a concerned face. “Poor kid. Poor parents. Seems like the world’s a decidedly uglier place these days.”

Liz couldn’t argue with those sentiments. Nor could she deny her role in the way things were. She thought about her RAV4. She would not keep that car. She would not let it be a monument to an accident the way Dr. Miller had made the boat trailer.

His car was in the garage. Had Dr. Miller become a shut-in? It was the kind of ending that Liz had imagined for herself once she was released from prison.

She’d shut herself in, never able to face another human being.

What happened at Diamond Lake had been an accident. What happened to Charlie had been one too. At least in the beginning. And yet the two events were very different. Only one of them was truly shameful.

Although she’d covered four miles already, she started running once more. Back to the park, along the river. She ran as fast as she could. She could feel her heart work so hard that she was all but certain she would have a heart attack.

That would be the easy way out.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

MISSING: TWENTY-NINE DAYS

The next afternoon, Liz looked in on Carole, who was lying motionless in the Jarretts’ guest bedroom. Carole’s silvery-blond hair was a snarled mess. A glass of water and those same pills that she’d pilfered to ease her own pain sat on the nightstand. The framed photo of her little boy that she’d clutched in front of the media watched over her.

“Carole?” Liz said, inching closer. “Are you feeling better?”

Charlie’s mother stirred but didn’t turn her head to look up. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Just sad. Just tired.”

Liz perched next to her, her heart beating like a hummingbird’s. She put her hand on Carole’s and patted it gently. Carole stayed quiet.