[Georgia 01] Genesis (aka Undone) Page 9

  She carried the boxes to the front of the store, the smell making her feel hungry and nauseated at the same time, like she could eat every one of them until it made her sick enough to spend the next hour in the toilet. It was too early to smell anything with frosting, that was for sure. She turned around and checked on Felix, who was dragging his feet behind her. He was exhausted, and it was her fault. She contemplated getting him the bag of Gummi Bears he'd wanted, but her cell phone started ringing as soon as she put the cupcakes on the checkout belt and all was forgotten when she recognized the number.

  "Yeah?" she asked, watching the boxes slowly make their way down the belt toward the slope-shouldered cashier. The woman was so large that her hands barely met in the middle, like a T. Rex or a baby seal.

  "Paulie." Morgan, her boss, sounded frantic. "Can you believe this meeting?"

  He was acting like he was on her side, but she knew he'd stab her in the back the minute she let her guard down. She'd enjoy watching him pack up his office after she produced the email at the meeting. "I know," she commiserated. "It's horrible."

  "Are you at the grocery store?"

  He must have heard the beeps from the scanner. The T. Rex was ringing up each box individually, even though they were all the same. If Pauline hadn't been on the phone, she would have jumped over the counter and scanned them herself. She moved to the end of the checkout and grabbed a couple of plastic bags to expedite the operation. Cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder, she asked, "What do you think's gonna happen?"

  "Well, it's clearly not your fault," he said, but she would've bet her right one that the bastard had told his boss that very thing.

  "It's not yours, either," she countered, though Morgan had recommended the upholsterer in the first place, probably because the guy looked thirteen and waxed his gym-toned legs to shiny perfection. She knew the little tart was working the gay connection with Morgan, but he was dead wrong if he thought Pauline was going to be the odd girl out. It had taken her sixteen years to work her way up from secretary to assistant to designer. She'd spent endless nights at the Atlanta School of Art and Design getting her degree, dragging into work every morning so she could pay the rent, finally getting to a position where she could breathe a little, could afford to bring a kid into the world the right way—and then some. Felix had all the right clothes, all the good toys, and he went to one of the most expensive schools in the city. Pauline hadn't stopped with her boy, either. She'd gotten her teeth fixed and laser-corrected her eyes. Every week she got a massage, every other week she got a facial, and there wasn't a damn root in her hair that showed anything but sassy brown thanks to the girl she saw in Peachtree Hills every month and a half. There was no way in hell she was giving up any of that. Not by a long shot.

  It would serve Morgan well to remember where Pauline had started. She'd worked the secretarial pool back before wire transfers and online banking, when they kept all the checks in a wall safe until they could be deposited at the end of the day. After the last office remodel, Pauline had taken a smaller office just so the safe would end up in her space. Just in case, she'd even had a locksmith come in after hours to reset the combination, and she was the only one who knew it. It drove Morgan crazy that he didn't know the combination, and it was a damn good thing he didn't, because the copy of the email covering her ass was locked behind that steel door. For days, she had conjured countless scenarios of herself opening the safe with a flourish, shoving the email in Morgan's face, shaming him in front of their boss and the client.

  "What a mess," Morgan sighed, going for the dramatic. "I just can't believe—"

  Pauline took her purse from Felix and dug around for her wallet. He stared longingly at the candy bars as she slid her debit card through the reader and went through the motions. "Uh-huh," she said as Morgan yapped in her ear about what a bastard the client was, how he wouldn't stand by while Pauline's good name was dragged through the mud. If anyone had been around to appreciate it, she would've feigned gagging herself.

  "Come on, baby," she said, gently pushing Felix toward the door. She cradled the phone to her ear as she took the bags by the handles, then wondered why she had bothered to bag the boxes in the first place. Plastic boxes, plastic bags; the women at Felix's school would be horrified on behalf of the environment. Pauline stacked the cupcakes back together, pressing against the top box with her chin. She dropped the empty bags in the trash, and used her free hand to dig into her purse for her car keys as she walked through the sliding doors.

  "This is absolutely the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my career," Morgan groaned. Despite the crick in her neck, Pauline had forgotten she was still on the phone.

  She pressed the button on the remote to open the trunk of the SUV. It slid up with a sigh, and she thought about how much she loved the sound of that tailgate lifting, what a luxury it was to make enough money so that you didn't even have to open your own trunk. She wasn't going to lose it all because of some pretty-boy butt waxer who couldn't be bothered to measure a fucking elevator.

  "It's true," she said into the phone, though she hadn't really paid attention to what Morgan was stating as the God's honest. She put the boxes in the back, then pressed the button on the bottom of the trunk to make it close. She was in her car before she realized that Felix wasn't with her.

  "Fuck," she whispered, closing the phone. She was out of the car in a flash, scanning the parking lot, which had filled up considerably since she'd been inside the store.

  "Felix?" She circled the car, thinking he must be hiding on the other side. He wasn't there.

  "Felix?" she called, running back toward the store. She nearly slammed into the sliding doors because they didn't open quickly enough. She asked the cashier, "Did you see my son?" The woman looked confused, and Pauline tersely repeated, "My son. He was just with me. He's got dark hair, he's about this tall, he's six years old?" She gave up, mumbling, "For fucksakes." She ran back to the bakery, then up and down the aisles.

  "Felix?" she called, her heart beating so loud she couldn't hear herself speak. She went up and down every aisle, jogging, then running, like a madwoman through the store. She ended up at the bakery, about to lose her shit. What had she dressed him in today? His red sneakers. He always wanted to wear his red sneakers because they had Elmo on the bottom of the soles. Was he in the white shirt or the blue one? What about his pants? Had she pressed his cargo pants this morning or put him in jeans? Why couldn't she remember this?

  "I saw a child outside," someone said, and Pauline bolted for the doors again.

  She saw Felix walking around the back of the SUV toward the passenger side. He was wearing his white shirt, his cargo pants and his red Elmo sneakers. His hair was still wet in the back where she had smoothed down the cowlick this morning.

  Pauline slowed her pace to a fast walk, patting her hand to her chest as if she could calm her heart. She wasn't going to yell at him, because he wouldn't understand and it would only make him scared. She was going to grab him up and kiss every single inch of his body until he started to squirm and then she was going to tell him that if he ever left her side again she was going to throttle his precious little neck.

  She wiped away tears as she rounded the rear of the car. Felix was in the Lexus, the door open, his legs dangling down. He wasn't alone.

  "Oh, thank you," she gushed to the stranger. She reached out to Felix, saying, "He got lost in the store and—"

  Pauline felt an explosion in her head. She collapsed to the pavement like a rag doll. The last thing she saw when she looked up was Elmo laughing down at her from the bottom of Felix's shoe.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SARA WOKE WITH A START. SHE HAD A MOMENT OF disorientation before she realized that she was in the ICU, sitting in a chair beside Anna's bed. There were no windows in the room. The plastic curtain that acted as a door blocked out all the light from the hallway. Sara leaned forward, looking at her watch in the glow of monitors, and saw that it was eight in t
he morning. She had worked a double shift yesterday so that she could take off today and catch up on her life: the refrigerator was empty, bills needed to be paid and the dirty laundry was piled so high on the floor of her closet that she could no longer close the door.

  And yet, here she was.

  Sara sat up in her chair, wincing as her spine adjusted to a position that did not resemble a C. She pressed her fingers to Anna's wrist, though the rhythmic beat of her heart, along with every in and out of breath, was announced by the machines. Sara had no idea if Anna could feel her touch or even knew that Sara was there, but it made her feel better to have the contact.

  Maybe it was for the best that Anna was not awake. Her body was fighting against a raging infection that had sent her white blood cell count into the dangerous area. Her arm was in an open splint, her right breast removed. Her leg was in traction, metal pins holding together what the car had ripped apart. A plaster cast kept her hips in a fixed position so that the bones would stay aligned as they healed. The pain would be unimaginable, though considering what torture the poor woman had been through, it might not even matter anymore.

  What Sara could not get past was the fact that, even in her current state, Anna was an attractive woman—probably one of the qualities that had first caught her abductor's eye. She wasn't movie-star beautiful, but there was something striking about her features that must have garnered a fair share of attention. Probably Sara had watched too many sensational cases on the news, but it didn't make sense that someone as noticeable as Anna would go missing without another person in the world noticing. Whether it was Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, the world seemed to pay more attention when a beautiful woman disappeared.

  Sara didn't know why she was thinking about such things. Figuring out what happened was Faith Mitchell's job. Sara wasn't involved in the case, and there really had been no reason for her to stay at the hospital last night. Anna was in good hands. The nurses and doctors were down the hallway. Two cops stood guard by the door. Sara should have gone home and climbed into bed, listening to the soft rain, waiting for sleep to come. The problem was that sleep seldom came peacefully, or—worse still—sometimes it came too deeply, and Sara would find herself caught up in a dream, living back in the before time when Jeffrey was alive and her life was everything she had wanted it to be.

  Three and a half years had passed since her husband was killed, and Sara could not recall a minute since that some thought of him, some piece of him, did not linger in her mind. In the days after he was gone, Sara had been terrified she would forget something important about Jeffrey. She had made endless lists of everything she had loved about him—the way he smelled when he got out of the shower. The way he liked to sit behind her and brush her hair. The way he tasted when she kissed him. He always carried a handkerchief in his back pocket. He used oatmeal-scented lotion to keep his hands soft. He was a good dancer. He was a good cop. He took care of his mother. He loved Sara.

  He had loved Sara.

  The lists became exhaustive, and turned at times into endless itemizations: songs she could no longer listen to, movies she could no longer see, places she could no longer go. There was page after page of books they had read and holidays they had taken and long weekends spent in bed and fifteen years of a life she knew she would never get back.

  Sara had no idea what happened to the lists. Maybe her mother had put them in a box and taken them to her father's storage unit, or maybe Sara had never really made them at all. Maybe in those days after Jeffrey's death, when she had been so distraught that she had welcomed sedation, Sara had simply dreamed up the lists, dreamed up sitting in her dark kitchen for hours on end, recording for posterity all of the wonderful things about her beloved husband.

  Xanax, Valium, Ambien, Zoloft. She had nearly poisoned herself trying to make it through each day. Sometimes she would lie in bed, half conscious, and conjure Jeffrey's hands, his mouth, on her body. She would dream of the last time they were together, the way he had stared into her eyes, so sure of himself as he slowly brought her to the edge. Sara would wake to find herself writhing, fighting against the urge to rouse in hopes of a few more moments in that other time.

  She wasted hours dwelling on memories of sex with him, recalling every sensation, every inch of his body, in lurid detail. For weeks, she could think only about the first time they made love—not the first time they'd had sex, which was a frenzied, wanton act of passion that had caused Sara to sneak out of her own house in shame the next morning—but the first time they had really held each other, had caressed and touched and cherished each other's bodies the way that lovers do.

  He was gentle. He was tender. He always listened to her. He opened the door for her. He trusted her judgment. He built his life around her. He was always there when she needed him.

  He used to be there.

  After a few months, she remembered stupid things: a fight they had had over which way the toilet paper roll should go on the holder. A disagreement about the time they were supposed to meet at a restaurant. Their second anniversary, when he'd thought driving to Auburn to see a football game was a romantic weekend. A beach trip where she had gotten jealous over the attention a woman at the bar was giving him.

  He knew how to fix the radio in the bathroom. He loved reading to her on long trips. He put up with her cat, who urinated in his shoe the first night he officially moved into her house. He was getting laugh lines around his eyes, and she used to kiss them and think about how wonderful it was to be growing older with this man.

  And now, when she looked in the mirror and saw a new line on her own face, a new wrinkle, all she could think was that she was growing old without him.

  Sara still wasn't sure how long she had grieved—or if, in fact, she had ever stopped at all. Her mother had always been the strong one, never stronger than when her daughters needed her. Tessa, Sara's sister, had sat with her for days, sometimes holding her, rocking Sara back and forth as if she were a child who needed soothing. Her father fixed things around the house. He took out the trash and walked the dogs and went to the post office to get her mail. Once, she found him sobbing in the kitchen, whispering, "My child . . . .My own child . . ." Not for Sara, but for Jeffrey, because he had been the son that her father never had.

  "She's just come undone," her mother had whispered on the phone to her Aunt Bella. It was an old colloquialism, the sort of thing you didn't think people still said. The phrase fit Sara so completely that she had found herself surrendering to it, imaging her arms, her legs, detaching from her body. What did it matter? What did she need arms or legs or hands or feet for if she could not run to him, if she could not hold him and touch him anymore? Sara had never thought of herself as the type of woman who needed a man to complete her life, but somehow, Jeffrey had come to define her, so that without him, she felt untethered.

  Who was she without him, then? Who was this woman who did not want to live without her husband, who just gave up? Maybe that was the real genesis of the grief she felt—not just that she had lost Jeffrey, but that she had lost her self.

  Every day, Sara told herself she would stop taking the pills, stop trying to sleep away every painful minute that passed so slowly she was sure weeks had gone by when it was only hours. When she managed to stop taking the pills, she stopped eating. This wasn't a choice. Food tasted rotten in her mouth. Bile would rise in her throat no matter what her mother brought her. Sara stopped leaving the house, stopped taking care of herself. She wanted to stop existing, but she didn't know how to make it happen without compromising everything that she had once believed in.

  Finally, her mother had come to her and begged, "Make up your mind. Either live or die, but don't force us to watch you waste away like this."

  With a cold eye, Sara had considered her alternatives. Pills. Rope. A gun. A knife. None of them would bring back Jeffrey, and none of them would change what had happened.

  More time passed, the clock ticking forward when she longed for it to go
back. Sara was coming up on the year anniversary when she had realized that if she were gone, then her memories of Jeffrey would be gone, too. They had no children together. They had no lasting monument to their married life. There was just Sara, and the memories that were locked in Sara's mind.

  And so she had had no choice but to pull herself back together, to turn back the process of coming undone. Slowly, a lesser shadow of Sara started to go through the motions. She was getting up in the morning, going for a run, working part-time, trying to live the life she had before, but without Jeffrey. She had valiantly tried to trudge through this semblance of her earlier life, but she simply couldn't do it. She couldn't be in the house where they had loved each other, the town where they had lived together. She couldn't even attend a typical Sunday dinner at her parents' because there would always be that empty chair beside her, that vacancy that would never be filled.

  The job notice at Grady Hospital had been emailed to her by a fellow Emory grad who had no idea what had happened to Sara. He had sent it as a joke, as if to say, "Who would go back to this hellhole?" but Sara had called the hospital administrator the next day. She had interned at Grady in the ER. She knew the great, creaking beast that was the public health system. She knew that working in an emergency room took over your life, your soul. She had rented out her house, sold her pediatric practice, given away most of her furniture, and moved to Atlanta a month later.

  And here she was. Two more years had passed and Sara was still stagnating. She didn't have many friends outside of work, but then she'd never been a social person. Her life had always revolved around her family. Her sister Tessa had always been her best friend, her mother her closest confidant. Jeffrey was the chief of police for Grant County. Sara was the coroner. They had worked together more often than not, and she wondered now if their relationship would have been as close if they had each gone their separate ways every day and only glimpsed one another over the dinner table.