Their baby was dead, but he was found. They had their closure, that horrible, zip-up-the-body-bag word.
John made the phone calls to their families, pacing, jingling the change in his pocket, yet talking calmly, occasionally clearing his always raspy throat. Not pale like Carrie. Not shaking like Carrie. This was how he operated. When Ben first went missing, John still slept, still ate. He still played squash with his friends once a week. He didn’t let it take over the way other people would, did. Shouldn’t that alone make him a suspect, not Carrie? If they subpoenaed Carrie’s records from Dr. Kenney and found out how callous Carrie thought her husband could be and how controlling the doctor thought he was, what would they think then? Who would they be after then? Still, it was useful, John’s buoyancy. They had a service to throw, a million people to call, a defense strategy to build, and a search warrant to deal with—for their house, their cars, and Saint David’s Church.
Carrie sat and listened as John spoke into his phone, as he insisted his parents not return from their trip to Italy, as he told his brother and sister to wait and come for the memorial service the following week. She breathed a small sigh of relief that on top of everything else, they didn’t also have out-of-town company. It would be too much, and it was already too, too much.
Ben had been found near the middle of the pond, not far from where the dog had been barking. He’d had a concrete block tied around his waist with rope and was faceup in the silty bottom. They knew these things because Forrester had surreptitiously told John. Risked his job to whisper it to him from a pay phone near the mall. Because Forrester was convinced of Carrie’s innocence, even if Nolan was not. Because Forrester felt sorry for them, John said.
“Faceup,” she repeated. An image of her son at the Y the very day he went missing, floating on his back in the pool, kicking his feet. His long, wet eyelashes like the points of stars. She smiled, then stopped, knowing she shouldn’t smile. It wasn’t right to smile, even at the good things, even with John. But her reserves of sadness were dwindling. The tears were going to dry up eventually. She’d been sad for so long, there was just so little left.
“That’s what he said.”
“Facedown would have been more heartbreaking, don’t you think?”
“It’s all heartbreaking,” he said.
The word heartbreaking came out without a catch in his voice, not a snag or dip. How was that possible, with his stretched, vulnerable voice, not to break in the right places too, not just the wrong ones?
John had been the one who had gone down to the morgue and offered to identify the body. They’d told him it was too gruesome, that it wasn’t necessary. They had the dental records, so they sent him away. But he’d been the one brave enough to offer, who could imagine himself looking at Ben’s muddy, swollen face and choking out the words “That’s him.” How could he not feel worse than Carrie, just picturing that? How could he speak at all, stand up, function?
“What did you say to him?” she said suddenly.
“What? To who?”
Carrie saw it in his eyes: John feared she meant Ben. He didn’t want to confess the flat prosaic words he’d choked out in the corridor when he’d seen the drawers, the body bags. That he’d said not only Good-bye and I love you, buddy but I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. No poetry, no monologue, no prayer.
“Forrester. When he told you the details. What did you say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I felt queasy. I—”
“John, listen to me. This is important. I think…I think he’s playing you.”
“Playing me?” He screwed up his face so tight it hurt.
“Feeding you details, telling you he’s on our side, when he’s actually investigating you. All this stuff about me, it’s just to, you know, throw us off. Make you do something or…tell him what he wants to know.”
“Jesus, Carrie,” he said. “Why would you say that? He’s trying to help—”
“No. No. It doesn’t work like that. No one tries to help that way. He wants you to think it, but it’s not true. He asked me questions about you the other day, weird questions, about you following and watching and going out in the middle of the night.”
His face drained of color. “What? I don’t believe it. You have to be wrong.”
“Well, we need to keep our eyes open. Both of us. About both of them. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise me, Frog,” she said.
He smiled the smallest smile he dared. It had been a long time since she’d called him that.“I promise.”
He held her tightly, rubbing his hands up and down her back in a way that she sometimes liked and sometimes didn’t, depending on her mood. She didn’t stop him. She leaned into him, accepting his touch, his closeness.
“Carrie,” he said suddenly, “did you know…the minute you saw the shoe?”
She pulled out of the embrace as if she needed air. “No,” she said softly.
“I just thought, you know, because that guy, Neil, said you fell when you saw it. That you collapsed. And then…well, running into the water. Screaming.”
John looked at his hands. He had fought back tears when Neil told the detectives that. He shouldn’t have let Carrie go walking alone without someone to catch her when she fell.
“No.” She shook her head, put her hands against her mouth. “I knew when I saw him here.”
“What? Who, Neil? Neil was here? What do you mean?”
“Ben. I mean, he was dead then.”
“Jesus, Carrie!”
“I’m right, and you know I am. That’s why he was the same size. That’s why he still fit in the car seat. That’s why he hadn’t aged, couldn’t talk in sentences.”
“He was underfed! He could have been...kept in a box or something, confined. Carrie, good God!”
“No, I’m sure.”
“Please tell me you didn’t utter a single word like that to Susan Clark!”
“No.”
“Well, promise me you won’t!”
John ran his hands through his hair, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He wished he knew exactly what to tell Carrie to say, instead of what not to say. If only there were a script he could hand her.
“They come back to give us what we need,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“The dog, John,” she said softly. She reached for his arm, searched his eyes, this man who knew her better than anyone, who had to know that she had never spoken a false word to him, ever. When he’d asked her if she’d cheated on her biology test, she’d said yes. When he’d asked her if she’d surreptitiously found out the baby’s sex after the ultrasound, she’d said yes. Whenever she could have lied, she told the truth. Everyone knew that about her, all the way back. Ethan, her mother, Chelsea, Tracie. Didn’t he remember that? All the church and Sunday school had carved her into an open book. She might not tell everything unprompted, but if asked? It was all over. Dr. Kenney, foolishly waiting for her to offer, hadn’t figured it out yet. But John—didn’t John know that, even though he didn’t know everything about her, all he had to do was formulate the questions and open his mouth?
“At the pond? That was my dog. From when I was a little girl. He came back and led us to the shoe, to put our minds at rest finally. Don’t you see? That’s why I kept the dog hair. That’s why.”
John swallowed hard and took a step back from his wife.
“Carrie, you are talking like someone…like someone who is…seriously confused.”
“I’m not confused.”
“I’m calling Dr. Kenney as soon as—”
“I don’t need Dr. Kenney, John!”
“Carrie! Listen to me! Your life is at stake. Our life! We’ve lost our son, but what’s ahead could be worse. And you have got to get your head screwed on straight and stop talking like you’re hallucinating, like you’re seeing ghosts!”
“You don’t get it.”
“You’re damn right I don’t get it,” he said, heading toward the stairs. “I don’t get it at all. And neither would your lawyer, the detectives, or a jury.”
“What about a priest, John? What about Reverend Carson or the priest who confirmed you?”
“Carrie, just because, you know, Christ was resurrected, doesn’t mean—”
“Doesn’t it? Did you actually read the Bible while you were sitting in chur—”
“Carrie! Look around you. We are not in heaven! This is not… None of this—”
“What, John?”
“We need to call Dr. Kenney,” he said, “and get this fixed.”
This, she thought, stunned. He called me a this.