This Close to Okay(74)

The EMTs had to pull him away from them. He was on his hands and knees, sobbing as the rest of the neighbors peeked through their curtains and stepped out into the moonlight.

Eleanor Christina, his Bertha Mason, his wild one in the garage, not the attic. Eleanor Christina, his Sylvia Plath, who forgot the courtesy of sealing off the children’s door. Eleanor Christina, his Medea per accidens.

*



Rye talked. Tallie listened, finished her cigarette, kept crying and sniffing. “How do I know any of this is true?” she asked.

“Look it up,” Rye said. And Tallie sat on the bench, pulled out her phone with trembling fingers. “R-y-l-a-n-d. K-i-p-l-i-n-g.”

Tallie typed and scrolled as Rye lit his own smoke. He sat on the far end of the bench, staring at his boots.

“You were arrested for this? You went to prison for this? Because they thought you killed your wife and daughter?” Tallie asked after a moment of quiet reading. She looked up at him, her deep brown eyes wide and wet under the dusk.

*



At the police station, his story never changed because it was the truth. Rye had told them he’d left Brenna, asleep for the night, in her bedroom—her lavender lamp shade casting light onto the plush orange rug beneath, the gentle chime of her music box still paling the air. He’d walked past her room on the way to their bedroom to get his socks. He’d looked in on her on the way to the front door, where his boots sat waiting. Christine had followed him stomping, and he’d asked her to be quiet again, reminded her Brenna was sleeping. He told Christine he was leaving. He was tired and angry and needed fresh air. He’d gone, just like that, not turning around to look back at the Honeybee House.

And although he didn’t say it aloud at the police station, it was something he knew he’d never forgive himself for. Leaving. He should’ve stayed. He shouldn’t have left Christine alone. He shouldn’t have left Brenna in that house with Christine so upset.

“She didn’t kill Brenna on purpose. Christine was terrible at science. It annoyed her. She had no idea the carbon monoxide could kill Brenna, asleep in the house.” Rye had cried when he’d repeated it to the officers in that little room—one of them Christine’s cousin.

Bloom, forever swollen with Blooms.

Rye had defended Christine, explaining she was sick but hid it exceptionally well. She hadn’t meant to kill Brenna, and he knew that. He never believed she’d intentionally kill Brenna.

*



He’d gone to his parents’ house, planned funerals, and picked out what to bury his wife and daughter in. Christine: the pale peach dress she’d worn the day they’d gotten married. Brenna: a white Easter dress that had been too big for her in the spring. Rye put on the new suit his mother had gone out and bought for him since he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d sat there in the front row of the church, staring straight ahead at Christine’s full-size casket; Brenna’s small one, mercifully blurred in his periphery.

The autopsy reports had shown that Christine and Brenna had both died of asphyxia from carbon monoxide poisoning. There were also alprazolam, clonazepam, and fluoxetine in Christine’s system along with alcohol, but the potentially deadly mix of benzodiazepines was, in the end, unnecessary.

Rye knew exactly what had happened when he’d left the house. Annoyed by how much he’d been pushing her to take her meds, Christine had taken them and taken them and taken them, ferrying the pills down her throat on a warm river of red wine before going to the garage.

Manic.

Overkill.

When the autopsy report was released, Rye was arrested, shocked and numb. Still desperately grieving and barely hanging on. The police accused him of drugging Christine, staging her suicide, killing their daughter.

His and Christine’s shared laptop had been seized, revealing a damaging Google search for the mix of drugs and wine and carbon monoxide poisoning more than a month before. And more searches for carbon monoxide car garage and carbon monoxide death suicide, peaceful suicide, as well as a short video clip from The Virgin Suicides in which one of the characters kills herself in the same manner as Christine.

The town of Bloom was rattled, split right down the middle as to whether he was guilty.

*



Rye told Tallie about Miller’s, the lake restaurant. How his family had owned it, but not anymore. He told her about falling in love with Christine there and how he’d cooked in the prison cafeteria, because yes, he’d been sentenced to life without parole for the deaths of his wife and daughter. But then his parents had received a phone call from Yolanda Monroe, an attorney from Release, an organization committed to proving the innocence of the wrongfully accused. Yolanda was the daughter of a longtime Miller’s patron and had contacted them after hearing Rye’s story from her father. She’d been involved in one other suicide-mistaken-for-murder case and told Rye’s parents she couldn’t get him off her mind. Her obsession turned into Rye’s light.

*



Bloom had been named after Christine’s family, and they’d worked hard to put Rye away for life. They’d refused to listen to him before, when he’d told them Christine needed help. Things had been bad before Brenna, and they’d gotten altogether worse after. But Christine was reticent with almost everyone in her life besides Rye and Savannah. Christine was an actress, onstage and off, and when she was around her family, she played the role of happy new mother, laughing off any concerns that she was spiraling or overwhelmed. Rye stopped covering the extra shifts to stay home with Christine, to watch over her, to keep an extra pair of eyes on Brenna. And Rye’s parents had been helpful, stepping in to babysit and loaning them money whenever they could, even when Rye refused. He’d return home to a pack of cigarettes behind the screen door (his dad’s calling card) along with a check or cash.