CHAPTER 21
Kelly Present Day
The officer is my age, but he occasionally calls me ma’am. His wedding band is black silicone, the kind you wear to the gym or the beach, to protect your real ring from sweat and sand. He’s in good shape and he smells a little. I decide I have interrupted his Sunday afternoon run on the beach. Well. Stephanie did.
“What did Stephanie and Vince argue about at the table?”
“Um,” I say, slipping my hands under my thighs. I’ve mentioned that I have a daughter, and I don’t want him to see my unadorned finger and know I’m not married. I need to be regarded as an upstanding and dependable member of the community, and people have their notions about unwed mothers. Not that I’ve had much free time over the years to worry about how it looks that I have a child but not a husband. It was what it was, until the show came along and made single motherhood this very deliberate and punk-rock choice. The show. Will it survive this? Do I want it to survive this? Yes, desperately, I realize, the thought producing an echo of shame.
“Everyone knew that Vince wasn’t faithful to Steph,” I say, my posture attentive and ladylike, the posture of a woman you would be inclined to believe. “And I think Steph always knew but looked the other way until recently, when she just decided she had had enough.”
“Had something happened recently to set her off?”
Yes, Officer, but you can’t prove it given the fact that Jesse’s phone conveniently ended up at the bottom of the pool in the mad dash to get out of Stephanie’s path. We are the only ones who watched it, Jesse said to me, quietly, while the rest of the crew and cast huddled together in mini support groups, comforting each other and waiting for the ambulances and the Coast Guard to arrive. A man attacked a woman and she drove into the ocean trying to escape him! Jesse told the emergency dispatcher, after dialing 911 from my phone. It was one way of looking at it, but it seemed rash to write history with one person’s clearly biased interpretation. I was still bouncing all the possible scenarios around in my head, trying to decide what I thought had happened. Was Stephanie just trying to get away from all of us and she became disoriented in the struggle? Was she intending to kill herself in a blaze of glory and Vince just happened to get in the way? Or, I considered with a shudder, had she come here with the intent to take all of us with her?
I couldn’t look. I stayed back, with Jesse. Lauren and Jen had wandered over to the edge of the property, along with a few members of the crew. Lauren had dropped to her knees with a wail when she saw the wreckage. Jen had actually shushed her. Marc was the one to go and comfort Lauren, moaning in agony himself, which, shell-shocked as I was, seemed strange. He hadn’t been particularly close to Stephanie or Vince, who I had no doubt were dead, shark food along with Stephanie’s phone, with the GoPro app that contained evidence of Brett’s affair with Vince. Do you want people to know that Brett isn’t gay? Jesse asked, privately on her lawn, and I shook my head, speechless, in shock. I knew Stephanie was unraveling, I didn’t realize she had come so perilously undone. So just say it was a tape of the two of them having an affair if it comes up, Jesse said. I looked at her sharply. A tape of Brett and Stephanie having an affair, she clarified, though I had understood. I cut Stephanie off before she could say what was on the tape. It’s not on camera. Don’t you think Brett would rather have people think she had an affair with Stephanie than with Vince? She would have been single when it happened. Technically, she did nothing wrong. No! Don’t text her! Jesse snatched my phone out of my hand. Nothing in writing. They might subpoena your phone. So I called Brett instead. Going on thirty times now and she still hasn’t picked up. She’s pissed at me. This is payback for the way I toyed with her during the Mrs. game.
I do not know if I will be able to tell a bald-faced lie to a police officer, and I’m praying he does not specifically ask if Brett was having an affair with anyone. “Stephanie was definitely reeling from what had happened with her book,” I say vaguely, in answer to his question.
The officer screws up his face. “Her book? She wrote a book?”
“She’s Stephanie Simmons,” I say, but he shows no sense of recognition. “She’s a very successful author.” I sit up straighter, taking umbrage on Stephanie’s behalf. She’s dead. She was maybe trying to kill you. She maybe tried to kill Layla in Morocco!
“She wrote a memoir about her childhood,” I continue. “Recently. It was a bestseller. People loved it. But then it came out just a few weeks ago that she lied about a lot of her life. She lost everything—her publisher, her fans, Vince.”
“Vince left her?”
Again, the ludicrous urge to defend Stephanie’s honor. “She left him. She kicked him out. She was serving him divorce papers, last I heard.”
The officer writes something down. He hasn’t written anything down since he brought me in here, just relied on the recorder. “Did your sister come up in the argument at all?”
My throat constricts. We can pull this off, Jesse had said, as the sirens neared and I started to waver. I know the police chief. I will make sure you and Brett are protected. “My sister did come up,” I say, delicately. “Vince made the comment that Brett was threatened by him. That she was jealous Stephanie had someone in her life, and that she wanted Stephanie to be alone just like her.”
“Wasn’t your sister engaged, though?”
“She’s engaged now. But he was talking about before, when she was—” I stop, abruptly. Wasn’t your sister engaged, though? Why is he speaking about my sister in the past tense?
“Do you think you could check again?” I ask him. “On Brett? I’ve been trying to get through to her, but I’m wondering if maybe I just have bad service in here. I really want her to hear about this from us, not the news. Do you know if it’s made the news?” I swipe left to check my Apple-curated Top Stories for the umpteenth time but it’s exclusively headlines about Hurricane Harvey. I make a mental note to talk to Brett about doing a ride to raise money for Houston when we get home.
The officer clears his throat with a fist at his lips. “As soon as we are finished here I will check.” His thumb twiddles his silicone wedding band. “Tell me how Stephanie and Vince ended up in Jennifer Greenberg’s vehicle.”
I nod, cooperatively. Of course. Of course he has to ask this question. “Stephanie was sort of disgusted by the conversation and the way he was speaking about my sister. He called her fat too, which, you just don’t do that—ever—but particularly in front of a table full of women. She just wanted to get away from him. I don’t think she was thinking clearly. She got up from the table and he followed her. He put his hands on her.”
“So it got physical?”
I nod, emphatically, relieved I don’t have to lie about this.
“Did anyone try to stop it?”
“Of course we tried to stop him!” Him, not it. Why are men so obtuse when it comes to the violence they inflict against women? “We yelled at him to let her go, and we all started to get up, and so he did. Let go, that is. And when he did that, she ran for the car, and he ran after her and he, like, threw himself into the passenger seat.” I demonstrate with flying Superman arms. “Like that. Stomach down, stretched out across both seats. And Stephanie started driving. His door was still open, and I think she thought she could maybe, like, throw him out of the car. But he had his hands on the wheel.” I demonstrate again. “And they were driving right at us. It looked like they were fighting for control of the wheel.”
“She could have braked,” the officer says.
She could have braked. She could have not worn such a short skirt. She could have not gone up to his room. She could have not laughed at him and made him feel small. There is a blitheness to the statement, a maleness to it that sets me straight. My voice is different when I speak again. It is resolved. “She was terrified. You don’t think or act rationally when you’re in fear for your life. I think she thought he was trying to kill her.” Did she think that? Does it matter? “I think she was trying to turn the wheel away from us, to spare us.” There is such a gap between how much I want this to be true and how untrue it is that my voice catches. A memory of Layla surfaces then. Three or four. We were waiting to be seen by a Genius at the Apple store. I had booked an appointment but they were running behind, and we were going to be late for a checkup at the doctor’s and then a playdate after that. I was grumbling and huffing, griping with the other customers whose reservations hadn’t been honored either, my stress palpable. I had given my purse to Layla to occupy her—one of her favorite pastimes was sorting through its contents—and from her perch on the floor, my wallet and keys and loose change and lip gloss and sunglasses and dry-cleaning tickets scattered around her, she said something so quietly I had to ask her to repeat it.
“Layla, speak up,” I’d snapped.
“I’m happy,” she said, only a little bit louder. The girl next to me, older than me but still young, gasped and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
“It’s the little things in life,” he laughed.
Would the little things in life ever bring Layla joy again had Stephanie not turned the wheel?
The door opens and another officer asks for a word. My guy stands, his chair rolling back. “Can I get you anything? More water?”
“Please,” I manage, remembering how small Layla’s voice was that day. I’m happy. “And you’re going to ask if anyone’s heard from my sister?”
“Hang tight,” he says, closing the door.
While I wait, I check to see if Brett has responded to my anthology of abusive texts. Nothing in writing, Jesse had said, but when phone call after phone call went unanswered I resorted to a verbal thrashing. Even if they do subpoena my phone, there is nothing implicative in a sisterly spat. You are a stubborn fucking brat, I have texted. I know you are mad at me but SOMETHING MAJOR HAPPENED and you need to swallow your pride and call me the fuck back. To continue to punish me with silence, because I merely hinted at the real reason she shouldn’t marry Arch? Grow the fuck up. I text her that now. Grow the fuck up. Until you do, I don’t want Layla anywhere near you. My anger is only displaced fear. I’m restless to speak to Brett, to tell her what really happened, to ask her if it is a dangerous and stupid idea to lie about it. To ask her if she is even willing to lie about it. What if I say that it was Brett and Stephanie on that tape, but she tells the truth? Can they arrest me for that? I think they can. Could I lose custody of Layla if I am arrested?
I drop my head into my hands with a low groan. How do I explain what happened to a twelve-year-old? Layla is on her way up here now (Out here, comes Brett’s voice). Our local police department in New Jersey is giving her a ride, and the officers have confiscated her phone to be sure she hears what happened from me, and not from Facebook.
The door opens. The officer is back with Jesse, of all people, and a bottle of water. The plastic is foggy from the refrigerator, still sporting a price tag, which tells me the bottle did not come from a bulk pack. An officer bought this bottle, for himself (Because only men can be police officers, comes Brett’s voice again), and he put it in the fridge to drink later, and now it’s being given to me. I need it more than he does. To have a train of thought like this, I must suspect what is going on.
“How are you?” Jesse crouches down on her heels and twists the cap off for me.
“Oh, let me . . .” The officer starts out of the room again, presumably searching for a chair for Jesse.
“He’s going to tell you they can’t say for sure who is responsible, but it’s obviously Vince.” Jesse is speaking at a fast, whispered clip. I don’t understand what she is saying, and I don’t really care. I’m only hoping for an answer to one question.
“Have you gotten ahold of Brett?”
“Babe,” Jesse says, resting her hand on my forearm, “we have really bad news about Brett.” Tears prick her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“What about Brett?” I’m saying as the officer returns with a chair for Jesse.
“She’s asking about Brett,” Jesse says, in a sort of tattling way. She’s asking, not me.
The officer sighs, putting his weight on the back of the new chair, leaning on it like it’s a walker in a nursing home. “We wanted you to know before your daughter arrived that we’ve located your sister.”
“Well . . . where is she?” I look from him to Jesse. “Is she here? Have you seen her?”
Jesse is looking at me with big this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you eyes, stroking the back of my head. This is the most we’ve ever touched.
“Ma’am,” the officer says, and I feel this word far sooner than what he says next, because I am still in shock, “there is no easy way to tell you this, but your sister is deceased.”
My immediate thought is that it was a car accident. That Brett implored her driver to go faster, to get her out of here, and he blew a red light, flipped taking a turn too fast on one of the back country roads. I don’t think to connect what happened to Stephanie and Vince with what happened to Brett.
I am surprised that I am able to ask, “What happened?” quite normally. Jesse has taken my hand now. She’s still crouched next to me on the floor.
“I need you to understand,” the officer says, “that we don’t have that answer ourselves, just yet. But as her next of kin, I want to provide you with all the information we have at this point in the investigation. But know that is subject to change as we gain a better understanding of what happened today.”
I don’t really hear him, but I nod. My head feels heavy on my neck. How did I never notice how heavy my head was before?
“Your sister was in the car that Stephanie was driving. When they went over the edge, her body was expelled onto the roof.”
Lauren’s wail. Marc’s moan. They saw my sister. I wish I could be sick. I wish I could purge this feeling, flush it down the toilet, but already I know, this is not a feeling. This is a growth. Inoperable, benign but painfully pressing on a vital organ. It will be with me, hurting me and not killing me, all my life.
Still, I am trying to understand how my sister got into the car. Did she sneak into the car while we were filming at the picnic table? How did we not see her? I must look very confused, because the officer asks me if I understand.
I shake my head: No, I don’t. “How did she get into the car without any of us noticing?”
Jesse and the officer exchange a worried look. They haven’t told me the worst of it yet, I realize.
“I’m sorry,” the officer says, “I should have phrased that more clearly. Your sister wasn’t in the car. She was in the trunk.”
“The trunk?” I’m at a loss. “When did she get in the trunk?”
“Sometime between when she came home from Talkhouse with Stephanie and when you woke up in the morning.”
“Why didn’t we hear her? Wouldn’t she have been kicking and screaming?” As I ask the question, I work it out for myself. “Oh,” I say, my voice low, the sharp threat of vomit high in my throat. “Oh. She was . . . she was not alive? In the trunk?”
The officer shakes his head, wincing on my behalf. “We believe she was deceased before she was placed in the trunk, yes, but that is one of the things we have yet to conclusively determine.”
“You’re saying she was murdered. Is that what you’re saying?” My mouth is sticky and dry. I must look like I’m having difficulty swallowing, because Jesse brings the water bottle to my lips.
“Drink,” she commands, lifting the bottle. Water leaks from the corners of my mouth, splashing my bare thighs. I rubbed my legs with bronzing lotion this morning, and the real color of my skin is exposed in jagged rivulets. I rode in a car listening to the new Taylor Swift song while my sister’s dead body was in the trunk. Like patting my head and rubbing my stomach, it is a cognitive challenge to have this thought and swallow water at the same time.
“How did this happen?” In the library with the candlestick my mind answers with a giggle that tells me I am not well.
“We’ll know more when the autopsy report is in, but your sister sustained a sizable wound to the back of her head. It’s possible she slipped and fell, but if it were an accident, there wouldn’t have been a need to conceal the body. And also. Because your sister was not, um. Well. It would have taken some strength to move her. A woman couldn’t have done that on her own.”
Because your sister was not thin, is what he was almost about to say.
“Vince did it,” Jesse says, and the officer shoots her a reproachful look. “I don’t know why she can’t know that is what everyone is thinking. He found out about Brett’s affair with Stephanie and he fucking lost it.”
I am standing. Why am I standing? I have my hand on the wall. I am doubled over, as if I am in labor, again. Maybe I am, a little bit. This is a realization so awful it must be born.
Someone killed my sister and that someone may or may not have been Vince, but we are going to say that Vince did it. We are going to say that he did it just like we are going to say that Brett and Stephanie had an affair when they didn’t. We are going to rig reality.
Jesse and the officer are telling me to sit down. I try but I immediately get back up. To sit on the truth. That’s something people say, and I understand it now. There is a strain of the truth that is a cement-backed chair, a pea in your mattress, and a pebble in your shoe. Bearable, but just barely.
So I pace until Layla arrives. By that time Jesse has worked out what we should tell her.