A Slow Ruin Read online

  “So you’re saying you would never want a gift so extravagant?”

  “Nah, it’s way too expensive for my taste.” I winked at him. It was an easy lie after all of the other bigger lies.

  “Riiiight, who needs diamonds when you’ve got love like ours?” Cody forced a weak grin, his cheeks flushing an embarrassed pink. We both knew love was fleeting, but like the old ad slogan said, a diamond is forever. “One day I’ll show them all. I’ll be making bank soon, babe.”

  I hated when he called me babe.

  Debra announced that dinner would be served soon, begging Felicity to eat a bite—wine isn’t dinner, she added. “Just a bite to keep up your strength,” Debra pleaded, to which Felicity raised her wineglass for a refill.

  As we headed into the dining room, Oliver walked in step with us, making the differences between the brothers more noticeable. Where Oliver was six-foot-two and hard-bodied, Cody was five-foot-ten and soft. Where Oliver inherited his mother’s thick blonde hair, Cody hid his receding hairline under a baseball cap. Both possessed the same intense blue eyes that burrowed into your soul, but where Oliver’s were broody, Cody’s were guileless.

  Unfortunately I had always been attracted to broody.

  “You okay?” I asked Oliver quietly, not wanting to invite the whole family into this conversation.

  “To be honest, I’m a mess inside but trying to keep it together for the kids. I don’t know how to act when my wife is falling apart, but someone has to be strong and…” He glanced at Cody. “Never mind.” His lips curled into a halfhearted smile, then drooped.

  “I get it. I never know what to say…or not say. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you and Felicity.” Except I could imagine it. I imagined it every hour.

  “I just wish we had answers.”

  I brushed my hand against his. “Me too.”

  The doorbell rang, broadcasting an elegant, eight-note Westminster sequence throughout the house. All our house had was a plain old ding-dong.

  “I’ll get it!” Eliot yelled, racing Sydney to the front door.

  Only one person showed up unannounced at the Execution Estate these days, and never brought good news. Eliot hefted open the heavy door and stood in awkward silence. The whole family wandered to the foyer with Oliver at the fore.

  “Detective Montgomery.” Oliver reached out to shake the plainclothes detective’s hand while Felicity tensed up behind him.

  I couldn’t imagine the thoughts tumble-drying in Felicity’s head, but I had an idea just how dreadful they were.

  “I’m sorry to bring bad news tonight, but I wanted you to hear it from me first,” the detective said. “We’ve found a body.”

  A crash of stemware, then all heads pivoted as Felicity collapsed to the floor.

  Chapter 6

  Felicity

  Three things occurred every time Detective Courtney Montgomery showed up at my doorstep. First my heart went wild, like an animal clawing its way out of my chest. Then an overpowering nausea erupted in my belly. Lastly my vision blurred, and my world became a Monet painting viewed too closely, sucking me down, down into a whirlpool of gauzy colors. By the time I resurfaced, the panic had drained away but always left a ring of fear.

  “You okay, Felicity?” Oliver’s arms steadied me, but the room still wobbled.

  “I…um, I’m fine.” I shrugged his hands off of me and turned to Detective Montgomery. “What were you saying?”

  Oliver led the detective through the door like this was a welcome visit with an old friend. I suppose we kind of were, weren’t we? We’d spent more time with the detective than with our actual friends, who had slowly disappeared over the months. I suppose there’s only so many cancelled play dates and unanswered calls a friendship can suffer before it dissolves. Depression is a lonely beast.

  “Oliver.” The detective nodded to him, then me. “Felicity.” Her eyes skimmed the circle of anxious faces. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  I hated that it had come to a first name basis, because it meant that we still needed the detective’s help, and that Vera was still missing. Yet it was a small comfort as well. Because a final goodbye to the detective would mean one of two things: Vera was found alive and was home safe, or Vera was found dead.

  “No, not at all, Detective,” Oliver said.

  “Mind if we have a quick chat?”

  “Of course. Come in.” Oliver waved the detective further into the foyer.

  With crisp footsteps, the detective approached me, the honey-gold glow of the setting sun framing her. Oliver tensed. Debra clutched Joe’s hand and whispered for the kids to run along. Cody shuffled awkwardly. All of us waiting, worrying, wondering.

  My whole body had rejected seeing her on my porch, now in my home, parting the sea of people standing in the hallway. The perpetual state of alarm had become my default setting. Every phone call a jolt through me; every doorbell a wave of panic. Tonight, especially. For it was the anniversary I didn’t want to remember. Six months from the day Vera disappeared.

  “How you hanging in there, Felicity?” the detective asked.

  “Just trying to get through each day,” I said.

  “That’s all you can do.” She patted my arm.

  Packed into a gray button-down blouse, Detective Montgomery wore black jeans and flat shoes too manly for her pretty, fresh face. Her golden retriever-blonde hair was tucked into a neat bun. While she had been working with us since day one, I had been less than enthusiastic back then to meet this young rookie. It was a detail I bemoaned often enough, only wanting the best and brightest investigating Vera’s disappearance. A seasoned professional. I wasn’t going to speak delicately when my daughter’s life was at stake. So far I had been right in my harsh judgment, because Vera had yet to be found.

  Detective Montgomery swept the room with a glance. “I wish I had some good news for you, God knows you deserve it, but unfortunately I’m here to speak with you about a possible development. Before you see it on the evening news.” Her voice was low and husky, a perfect fit for the man shoes.

  My heartbeat instantly stopped or spiked—I couldn’t tell which. All I knew was that my body felt cold. “What news?”

  “The kids,” Oliver interjected. “Can we speak in the kitchen? I don’t want the kids to hear something they shouldn’t.”

  “Of course,” Detective Montgomery said.

  The walk toward the kitchen was a countdown to some unimaginable fate. As we collected around the island where I prepped brownies earlier that day, the detective’s eyes settled first on Oliver, then swerved toward me.

  “I’m just going to lay it all out. We found a teen girl’s body in the Allegheny River, and her description matches Vera’s.”

  My hand involuntarily flew to cover my mouth. A scream sat deep in my throat, coming out as a gasp.

  “This doesn’t mean it’s Vera.” Detective Montgomery rested her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

  A couple days into the initial investigation, the first time they found a body that matched Vera’s description, I broke down in the detective’s arms, breaking all personal space boundaries with it. Since then, I’d come to realize Detective Courtney Montgomery was a toucher. A hugger. An arm-squeezer.

  The detective continued, “Remember, we’ve been through this before in April and it wasn’t Vera. Plus, this time the remains are pretty decomposed, so we don’t know anything for certain yet. We don’t have an ID, but I wanted you to be prepared in case you saw the news tonight. There’s a good chance it’s not Vera, but in case it is, I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

  “What makes you say that the description matches Vera’s…if it’s…decomposed?” Oliver’s question stumbled awkwardly from his mouth.

  “Based on the height and gender, and hair color. But that’s about all we have right now. So like I said, it might not be her.”

  I felt my heart crack in half. I parted my
lips to speak, but the words dropped. I tried to scoop them up, but instead my voice poured out a sob. It physically hurt to imagine my daughter’s body rotting at the bottom of a dirty brown river.

  The butcher block tilted; the room trembled. I tried to seize the walls, the floor, but they slip, slip, slipped from my grip. I fell downward, barely caught by Oliver’s strong arms. They had held me more in the past six months than in twenty years of marriage. It was a shame that our closeness deepened at the cost of our daughter.

  I had been so certain Vera was still alive; I could feel her lifeblood pulsing through me. She couldn’t possibly be gone. Forever. Dead. Hope that she was hiding out somewhere was the only thing keeping me sane, breathing, waking up each morning. Without that hope…what else did I have?

  “Mommy,” a tiny voice reached me through my weeping, “are you crying because of sissy?” I turned toward Eliot’s voice. His hand touched mine. I felt his yearning for me, warm in his palm. His face was at my hip, distorted through my tears.

  Oliver knelt down to speak to his son. “Hey, buddy. Mommy’s just having a hard day. But you don’t need to worry about any of this stuff, okay?”

  Eliot wrapped his pudgy arms around his daddy’s neck, then recited the same words Oliver spoke to him too many times to count: “It will be okay.”

  “You know, you’re exactly right,” Oliver agreed, squeezing Eliot until he popped out a laugh. “Why don’t we let Pappy Joe and Nana give you a treat and let Mommy rest a bit.”

  While Oliver led Eliot back into the living room to taste test cookies—one of the rare things Eliot would eat—that Debra had brought for dessert, I found a breath. Found my voice. Found a million questions I needed answered. I speared Detective Montgomery with the first one that came out. “Be honest with me. Do you think it’s Vera?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I wish I could answer that, but until the coroner comes back with a DNA workup and the autopsy report, we have nothing concrete.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Since the body was found outside of our jurisdiction, it’s in the hands of the city police department. But we’re offering our resources to help speed things up, and they’re keeping me in the loop with their investigation. At this point, let’s not assume the worst. We have nothing that shows it’s Vera. Nothing.”

  “What about the clothes? Were there any on the…” I couldn’t say body. The word refused to drop from my tongue.

  “No, nothing identifiable. But—” Her tone resonated with something bad.

  “But what?”

  Her eyes grazed Oliver as he returned to the kitchen. “We think the body has been in the water for a while. Around six months or so, based on the level of decomposition.”

  “So it could be Vera.” There it was. I said it. The worst-case scenario, out in the open.

  “Let’s not go there just yet. There’s still a lot of information that’s missing. I’ll be back with an update as soon as I have one, but it could be a while before I hear anything. I’ll keep in touch. Stay strong for your family, okay?”

  “Okay.” I hesitated a moment, then blurted out something I instantly regretted. “Are you sure you’re doing everything you can? I mean, you are awfully young. Maybe there should be someone a little more…seasoned on the case.”

  “Felicity…Mrs. Portman…I understand your concern,” she said in an even, practiced tone. “It might ease your mind to know that I have a degree in criminal justice, and after completing training at the police academy, I spent four years on the beat as a patrol officer. I had a perfect score on my promotional exam to become a detective. I’ve cracked numerous high-profile cases. I’ve paid my dues. Now if you would like me to turn this case over to a certain disheveled, cigar-chomping detective in a rumpled raincoat, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry, Felicity, I get it all the time.” She smiled and gave my arm a squeeze, then turned to leave. “Oh, just one more thing…” She spun around, brow furrowed, scratching her head.

  “Yes?”

  She winked. “Just a little Columbo humor for you.”

  After shooting me a reproachful look, Oliver escorted Detective Montgomery to the door. I couldn’t face my family waiting in the living room as the full impact of her report belatedly sucker-punched me in the gut. I crashed to the floor, back propped up by the cabinet. When Oliver found me slumped over, sobbing, he knelt beside me.

  “Hey, you okay, honey?”

  I shook my head. I would never be okay. Not until Vera was home safe. “I can’t, Ollie. I just can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t go through this again. Last time it was unbearable…the wait…to find out if it was her. And what if it is? I can’t accept that she’s gone.”

  “You heard what Detective Montgomery said. It’s probably not her.”

  “But what if it is?”

  “If it is…then we take it one day at a time.”

  I whipped my head back and forth. “No, it can’t be her. I know she’s still out there alive. I feel her, Ollie. A mother knows these things.”

  “I believe you. And I believe Vera will come home.” He held me against him, pressed my face against his chest until I could hardly breathe. For a moment I wished he would suffocate me, put me out of this revolving door of misery. Then the moment passed. Vera needed me to hang on. For her.

  “Do you want to lie down?” Oliver asked.

  I blinked slowly, my eyelids begging to close. “No. I just need a minute.” I couldn’t rest. Not until Vera was found. Not until I knew for sure. I pushed myself up, with Oliver lifting me, and followed him into the living room. The muted conversation paused as I entered, all heads turning toward me.

  “I know you all think I’m delusional,” I said to the room. “Clinging to a false hope that Vera will come home soon. But I can’t give up faith in that. I need to believe it, even if it’s just a lie to myself.”

  No one knew what to say. But I read them well, because I knew them well. Debra, an empathetic gloss on her eyes. Joe, a concerned dent between his brows. But the look Cody aimed at Oliver, a sharp glass-cutting stare, told me they knew something I didn’t. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one lying.

  Chapter 7

  Marin

  A girl’s body was found yesterday. While the family comforted Felicity like an emotional wagon circle blocking out villainous theories of kidnapping or murder, all I could do was try to hide my guilt. Apparently my acting skills only went so far, because even after she got sloshed, Felicity saw right through my sympathy. And she made sure to voice it, too.

  “I know you’re hiding something.” Drunk Felicity had pulled me aside, whispering these words in my ear last night. “And when I find out what it is, family or not, I will destroy you if you’re the reason my child is missing.”

  In that moment I had wanted to reply that I knew about her secrets too, but her tightening grip on my arm silenced me. My flesh still wore the half-moon bruises her fingernails had inflicted on my skin.

  Cody and I had returned home well after midnight, the open windows gawking, the front yard yawning sleepily. Trapped in a bedroom dripping with secrets, I shut my eyes to the shadows crawling up the walls. The waxing crescent moon was as bright as a spotlight, and I couldn’t sleep, not when Cody’s niece could be dead because of me. I flipped through a Rolodex of thoughts, anything to distract me. Lines from various beloved scripts. My boss’s ridiculous to-do list. The stack of overdue bills on the dining room table.

  My thoughts were once mine. Now they belonged to Cody’s family.

  A tornado of regret ripped through me. So many shouldn’t-haves I lost count. Only busy hands and a caffeinated brain could save me now. I got out of bed, the mattress squealing almost as loud as Cody’s snoring, and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen to brew coffee. When you’re plagued with OCD, the most re
laxing thing in the world is dismantling your entire spare-bedroom-turned-storage-room, followed by putting it all back together in tidy color coordination. Thank you, The Home Edit, for the inspiration. Books in rainbow order—not genre, as Cody would have preferred—were neatly lined on the bookshelf against one wall. On the opposite wall I had installed gray wooden cubbies with cream linen baskets, where I borrowed Marie Kondo’s Tidy Up wisdom to fold and store clothes in colorized harmony. Cody had no dispute left in him about that.

  All that was left were a couple shoeboxes full of God knows what. You’d think shoes, but they were mostly filled with scraps of memorabilia. The script from my high school role as Shelby (the first Black lead our director cast, I proudly add) in Steel Magnolias. Prom photos. Actress headshots. More headshots. A callback letter for a television series out in Los Angeles that I didn’t end up getting. A starred review for one of my performances printed in The Wilkinsburg Sun. All the good parts of my life tucked into a couple of dusty shoeboxes.

  Picking up the largest shoebox in the stack, a heaviness shifted inside the cardboard, tipping the weight too far to one side. Out fell a pile of old pictures, musty with time and captivity. I picked them up, leafing through them as I dropped each one back into the box. I paused halfway through, catching the sepia hue of a photo taken before my time.

  My father and mother, younger than I was now, foreheads touching, faces beaming, arms entwined. The contrast between Dad’s umber skin and Mom’s latte white had melted into my pecan flesh. Her eyes, his lips, her smile, his oddly long middle toe. Pieces of them created pieces of me. I saw a blend of my parents in the mirror every day, and missed them every day. I flipped it over and read Mom’s handwriting:

  Devin and Josie forever (1989)

  Setting the photo aside, I continued my trek into the past as I found another picture, newer, this one 1990s bright. There I was, mini-me, baby me, small enough to fit in the nook of my father’s arms, my mother beside a picnic basket, the three of us in the backyard of the house I grew up in. I recognized the yellow shed with green trim in the background. My mom leaned back on her elbows, her thin, strict lips turned up in a smile aimed at the sunshine while my father’s gaze met the camera.