Pieces of Her Read online

  Why was she letting everyone believe that she had deliberately committed murder?

  “I don’t get it,” Andy repeated. “I just don’t understand.”

  Gordon stroked his mustache again. It was becoming a nervous habit. He didn’t answer her at first. He was used to carefully considering his words. Everything felt especially dangerous right now. Neither one of them wanted to say something that could not be taken back.

  Your mother is a murderer. Yes, she had a choice. She chose to kill that boy.

  Eventually, Gordon said, “I have no idea how your mother was able to do what she did. Her thought process. The choices she made. Why she behaved the way she did toward the police.” He shrugged, his hands out in the air. “One could hazard that her refusal to talk about it, her anger, is post-traumatic stress, or perhaps it triggered something from her childhood that we don’t know about. She’s never been one to discuss the past.”

  He stopped again to gather his thoughts.

  “What your mother said in the car—she’s right. I don’t know her. I can’t comprehend her motivations. I mean, yes, I do get that she had the instinct to protect you. I’m very glad that she did. So grateful. But how she did it . . .” He let his gaze travel back to the television. More talking heads. Someone was pointing to a diagram of the Mall of Belle Isle, explaining the route Jonah Helsinger had taken to the diner. “Andrea, I just don’t know.” Gordon said it again: “I just don’t know.”

  Andy had finished her drink. Under her father’s watchful eye, she poured another one.

  He said, “That’s a lot of alcohol on an empty stomach.”

  Andy shoved the rest of the sandwich into her mouth. She chewed on one side so she could ask, “Did you know that guy at the hospital?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The one in the Alabama hat who helped Mom into the car.”

  He shook his head. “Why?”

  “It seemed like Mom knew him. Or maybe was scared of him. Or—” Andy stopped to swallow. “He knew you were my dad, which most people don’t assume.”

  Gordon touched the ends of his mustache. He was clearly trying to recall the exchange. “Your mother knows a lot of people in town. She has a lot of friends. Which, hopefully, will help her.”

  “You mean legally?”

  He did not answer the question. “I put in a call to a criminal defense lawyer I’ve used before. He’s aggressive, but that’s what your mother needs right now.”

  Andy sipped the bourbon. Gordon was right: the edge was coming off. She felt her eyes wanting to close.

  He said, “When I first met your mom, I thought she was a puzzle. A fascinating, beautiful, complex puzzle. But then I realized that no matter how close I got to her, no matter what combination I tried, she would never really open up to me.” He finally drank some bourbon. Instead of gulping it like Andy, he let it roll down his throat.

  He told her, “I’ve said too much. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s been a troubling day, and I haven’t done much to help the situation.” He indicated a box filled with art supplies. “I assume you want this to go tonight?”

  “I’ll get it tomorrow.”

  Gordon gave her a careful look. As a kid, she would freak out whenever her art supplies were not close at hand.

  Andy said, “I’m too tired to do anything but sleep.” She did not tell him that she had not held a charcoal pencil or a sketchpad in her hands since her first year in New York. “Daddy, should I talk to her? Not to ask her if I can stay, but to ask her why.”

  “I don’t feel equipped to offer you advice.”

  Which probably meant she shouldn’t.

  “Sweetheart.” Gordon sensed her melancholy. He leaned over and put his hands on her shoulders. “Everything will work itself out. We’ll discuss your future at the end of the month, all right? That gives us eleven days to formulate a plan.”

  Andy chewed her lip. Gordon would formulate a plan. Andy would pretend like she had a lot of time to think about it until the tenth day, then she would panic.

  He said. “For tonight, we’ll take your toothbrush, your comb, whatever you absolutely need, then we’ll pack everything else tomorrow. And get your car. I assume it’s still at the mall?”

  Andy nodded. She had forgotten all about her car. Laura’s Honda was there, too. They were probably both clamped or towed by now.

  Gordon stood up. He closed her art supply box and put it on the floor out of the way. “I think your mother just needs some time alone. She used to take her drives, remember?”

  Andy remembered.

  On weekends, Andy and Gordon would be doing a project, or Gordon would be doing the project and Andy would be nearby reading a book, and suddenly Laura would burst in, keys in her hand, and announce, “I’m going to be gone for the day.”

  Oftentimes she would bring back chocolate for Andy or a nice bottle of wine for Gordon. Once, she’d brought a snowglobe from the Tubman Museum in Macon, which was two and a half hours away. Whenever they asked Laura where she had gone and why, she would say, “Oh, you know, just needed to be somewhere besides here.”

  Andy looked around the cramped, cluttered room. Suddenly, it felt less like a cave and more like a hovel.

  Before Gordon could say it, she told him, “We should go.”

  “We should. But I’m leaving this on your mother’s porch.” Gordon pocketed the bourbon. He hesitated, then added, “You know you can always talk to me, sweetie. I just wish you didn’t have to get tipsy to do it.”

  “Tipsy.” Andy laughed at the silly-sounding word because the alternative was to cry, and she was sick of crying. “Dad, I think—I think I want some time alone, too.”

  “O-kay,” he drew out the word.

  “Not, like, forever. I just think maybe it would be good if I walked to your house.” She would need another shower, but something about being enveloped by the sweltering, humid night was appealing. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course it’s okay. I’ll tell Mr. Purrkins to warm your bed for you.” Gordon kissed the top of her head, then grabbed the plastic garbage bag she had filled with underwear. “Don’t dawdle too long. The app on my phone says it’s going to start raining in half an hour.”

  “No dawdling,” she promised.

  He opened the door but did not leave. “Next year will be better, Andrea. Time puts everything into perspective. We’ll get through what happened today. Mom will be herself again. You’ll be standing on your own two feet. Your life will be back on track.”

  She held up her crossed fingers.

  “It’ll be better,” Gordon repeated. “I promise.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  Andy heard his heavy footsteps on the metal stairs.

  She didn’t believe him.

  4

  Andy rolled over in bed. She brushed something away from her face. In her sleeping brain, she told herself it was Mr. Purrkins, but her half-awake brain told her that the item was way too malleable to be Gordon’s chubby calico. And that she couldn’t be at her father’s house because she had no recollection of walking there.

  She sat up too fast and fell back from dizziness.

  An involuntary groan came out of Andy’s mouth. She pressed her fingers into her eyes. She could not tell if she was tipsy from the bourbon or had crossed into legit hungover, but the headache she’d had since the shooting was like a bear’s teeth gnawing at her skull.

  The shooting.

  It had a name now, an after that calved her life away from the before.

  Andy let her hand fall away. She blinked her eyes, willing them to adjust to the darkness. Lowlight from a soundless television. The wah-wah noise of a ceiling fan. She was still in her apartment, splayed out on the pile of clean clothes that she stored on the sofa bed. The last thing she remembered was searching for a clean pair of socks.

  Rain pelted the roof. Lightning zigzagged outside the tiny dormer windows.

  Crap.

  She had dawdled after p
romising her father that she would not dawdle, and now her choices were to either beg him to pick her up or walk through what sounded like a monsoon.

  With great care, she slowly sat back up. The television pulled Andy’s attention. CNN was showing a photo of Laura from two years ago. Bald head covered in a pink scarf. Tired smile on her face. The Breast Cancer Awareness Walk in Charleston. Andy had been cropped out of the image, but her hand was visible on Laura’s shoulder. Someone—maybe a friend, maybe a stranger—had taken that private, candid moment and exploited it for a photo credit.

  Laura’s details appeared on one side of the screen, a résumé of sorts:

  —55-Year-Old Divorcee.

  —One Adult Child.

  —Speech Pathologist.

  —No Formal Combat Training.

  The image changed. The diner video started to play, the ubiquitous scroll warning that some viewers might find it graphic.

  They’re going to take you down harder than him, Laura. This is all going to be about what you did, not what he did.

  Andy couldn’t bear to watch it again; didn’t really need to because she could blink and see it all happening live in her head. She stumbled out of bed. She found her phone in the bathroom. 1:18 a.m. She’d been asleep for over six hours. Gordon hadn’t texted, which was some kind of miracle. He was probably as wiped out as Andy. Or maybe he thought that Laura and Andy had made amends.

  If only.

  She tapped on the text icon and selected DAD. Her eyes watered. The light from the screen was like a straight razor. Andy’s brain was still oscillating in her skull. She dashed off an apology in case her father woke up, found her bed empty and freaked: fell asleep almost there don’t worry I’ve got an umbrella.

  The part about the umbrella was a lie. Also the part about being almost there. And that he shouldn’t worry, because she could very well get struck by lightning.

  Actually, considering how her day had gone, the odds that Andy would be electrocuted seemed enormously high.

  She looked out the dormer window. Her mother’s house was dark but for the light in her office window. It seemed very unlikely that Laura was working. During her various illnesses, she had slept in the recliner in the living room. Maybe Laura had accidentally left the light on and couldn’t bring herself to limp across the foyer to turn it off.

  Andy turned away from the window. The television pulled her back in. Laura backhanding the knife into Jonah Helsinger’s neck.

  Thwack.

  Andy had to get out of here.

  There was a floor lamp by the chair but the bulb had blown weeks ago. The overhead lights would be like a beacon in the night. Andy used the flashlight app on her phone to search for an old pair of sneakers that could get ruined in the rain and a poncho she’d bought at a convenience store because it seemed like an adult thing to have in case of an emergency.

  Which is why she had left it in the glove box of her car, because why would she go out in the rain unless she got caught without an umbrella in her car?

  Lightning illuminated every corner of the room.

  Crap.

  Andy pulled a trashbag from the box. Of course she didn’t have any scissors. She used her teeth to rip out a hole approximately the circumference of her head. She held up the phone to gauge her progress.

  The screen flickered, then died.

  The last thing Andy saw were the words LO BAT.

  She found the charger stuck in an outlet. The cable was in her car. Her car was two and a half miles away parked in front of the Zegna menswear store.

  Unless it had already been towed.

  “Fuck!” She said the word with heartfelt conviction. She pushed her head through the trashbag hole and stepped outside. Rain slid down her back. Within seconds, her clothes were soaked so that the homemade poncho turned into cling wrap.

  Andy kept walking.

  The rain had somehow amplified the day’s heat. She felt hot needles stabbing into her face as she turned onto the road. Streetlights did not exist in this part of the city. People bought houses on Belle Isle because they wanted an authentic, old-fashioned, southern coastal town experience. At least as old-fashioned as you could get when the cheapest mansion off the beach ran north of two million dollars.

  Nearly three decades ago, Laura had paid $118,000 for her beachside bungalow. The closest grocery store had been the Piggly Wiggly outside of Savannah. The gas station sold live bait and pickled pigs’ feet in large jars by the cash register. Now, Laura’s house was one of only six original bungalows left in Belle Isle. The land itself was worth literally twenty times the house.

  A bolt of lightning licked down from the sky. Andy’s arms flew up as if she could stop it. The rain had intensified. Visibility was around five feet. She stopped in the middle of the road. Another flash of lightning stuttered the raindrops. She couldn’t decide whether or not to turn around and wait for a lull in the storm or keep heading toward her father’s.

  Standing in the street like an idiot seemed like the worst of her options.

  Andy jumped over the curb onto the sidewalk. Her sneakers made a satisfying splash. She made another splash. She picked up her feet and lengthened her strides. Soon, Andy had pushed herself into a light jog. Then she went faster. And faster.

  Running was the only thing that Andy ever felt she did well. It was hard to continually throw one foot after the other. Sweating. Heart pounding. Blood racing through your ears. A lot of people couldn’t do it. A lot of people didn’t want to, especially in the summer when there were heat advisories warning people not to go outside because they could literally die.

  Andy could hear the rhythmic slap of her sneakers over the shushing rain. She detoured away from the road that led to Gordon’s, not ready to stop. The boardwalk was thirty yards ahead. The beach just beyond. Her eyes started to sting from the salt air. She couldn’t hear the waves, but she somehow absorbed their velocity, the relentless persistence to keep pushing forward no matter how hard gravity pulled at your back.

  She took a left onto the boardwalk, fighting an inelegant battle between the wind and the trashbag before she managed to tear off the plastic and slam it into the nearest recycling bin. Her shoes thudded on the wooden planks. Hot rain drilled open her pores. She wasn’t wearing socks. A blister rubbed on her heel. Her shorts were bunched up. Her shirt was glued down. Her hair was like resin. She sucked in a great big gulp of wet air and coughed it back out.

  The spray of blood coming from Betsy Barnard’s mouth.

  Shelly already dead on the floor.

  Laura with the knife in her hand.

  Thwack.

  Her mother’s face.

  Her face.

  Andy shook her head. Water flew like a dog sloughing off the sea. Her fingernails were cutting into her palms. She loosened her hands out of the tight fists they’d clawed into. She swiped hair away from her eyes. She imagined her thoughts receding like the low tide. She pulled air into her lungs. She ran harder, legs pumping, tendon and muscle working in tandem to keep her upright during what was nothing more than a series of controlled falls.

  Something clicked inside of her head. Andy had never achieved a runner’s high, not even back when she kept to something like a schedule. She just got to a place where her body didn’t hurt so much that she wanted to stop, but her brain was occupied enough by that pain to keep her thoughts floating along the surface rather than diving down into the darkness.

  Left foot. Right foot.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Left. Right. Left.

  Breathe.

  Tension slowly drained from her shoulders. Her jaw unclenched. The bear-teeth headache turned from a gnawing to a more manageable nibble. Andy’s thoughts started to wander. She listened to the rain, watched the drops fall in front of her face. What would it feel like to open her box of art supplies? To take out her pencil and sketchbook? To draw something like a puddle splattering up from her ruined sneakers? Andy visualized lines and light and shado
ws, the impact of her sneaker inside a puddle, the jerk of her shoestring caught mid-step.

  Laura had almost died during her cancer treatments. It wasn’t just the toxic mixture of drugs, but the other problems that treatment brought with it. The infections. The C. difficile. Pneumonia. Double pneumonia. Staph infections. A collapsed lung.

  And now they could add to the list: Jonah Helsinger. Detective Palazzolo. Needing Gordon to butt out of her life. Needing space from her only daughter.

  They were going to survive Laura’s coldness the same way they had survived the cancer.

  Gordon was right about time putting things in perspective. Andy knew all about waiting—for the surgeon to come out, for the films to be read for the biopsy to be cultured for the chemo and the antibiotics and the pain meds and the anti-nausea shot and the clean sheets and the fresh pillows and finally, blissfully, for the cautious smile on the doctor’s face when she had told Laura and Andy that the scan was clear.

  All that Andy had to do now was wait for her mother to come back around. Laura would fight her way out of the dark place she was in until eventually, finally, in a month or six months or by Andy’s next birthday, she would be looking back at what had happened yesterday as if through a telescope rather than through a magnifying glass.

  The boardwalk ran out sooner than Andy had expected. She jumped back onto the one-way road that skirted the beachfront mansions. The asphalt felt solid beneath her feet. The roar of the sea began to fade behind the giant houses. The shore along this stretch bent around the tip of the Isle. Her mother’s bungalow was another half mile away. Andy hadn’t meant to go back home. She started to turn around but then remembered—

  Her bicycle.

  Andy saw the bike hanging from the ceiling every time she went into the garage. The trip back to Gordon’s would be faster on two wheels. Considering the lightning, having a set of rubber tires between herself and the asphalt seemed like a good idea.

  She slowed down to a jog, then a brisk walk. The intensity of the rain dialed back. Fat water drops slapped against the top of her head, made divots in her skin. Andy slowed her walk when she saw the faint glow of light from Laura’s office. The house was at least fifty yards away, but this time of year, all the McMansions in the vicinity were unoccupied. Belle Isle was mostly a snowbird town, a respite for Northerners during the harsh winter months. The other homeowners were chased away by the August heat.