CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JENN

April 25–26 One Month before Drowning

Time began to feel both fast and slow. Every day dragged, but every week that passed surprised me with its swiftness. Each Monday when I went to work, I stared down another week stretching out ahead of me like a long road that disappeared into the horizon. Then, seven eternal days later, Monday arrived again and it started all over.

I felt safe and comfortable being myself at the library, but work was still work, stressful at times. It was also tiring during pregnancy. But going home wasn’t exactly a place I could unwind.

It’s Thursday, I realized as I checked out books at the circulation desk, covering for a college student who had to take the morning off for a final. I handed a stack of five books and the patron’s card back to her, an older woman with silver hair.

“Oh, are you expecting?” she cooed, noting my slightly rounder middle.

For both of us, I was glad that yes, I was pregnant, because I didn’t necessarily look it. I could have just put on a few pounds. I’d been told by plenty of people that all the significant growth happens in the second half. I was sure I’d be a whale in no time. Happily, mind you—I wanted this baby so much—but a whale nonetheless.

“Due in September,” I told the woman.

“How wonderful,” she said, and I could tell she was getting ready to launch into a speech about the blissful life of grandmotherhood—I’d heard several versions from other patrons already—and I wanted to avoid the awkward part where I had to say that my baby wouldn’t have a grandma.

“Have a great day,” I told her, a clear goodbye, and I greeted the next patron, though my mind was stuck on thoughts of the baby, of Rick, of life outside the library. So much had happened in recent weeks.

The ebb and flow of library patrons were like a clock for me; I could tell when the university classes were about to start because students rushed out to get there on time. A rush of teenagers in the afternoon always hit twenty minutes after the nearest high school let out. The students seemed so happy and free, with nothing to tie them down, not even worry about their futures. What would that be like?

I’d never known. Kids in the foster system grow up awfully fast and worry about the future every waking hour. Part of me wanted to warn them about the joys and heartbreaks the future might bring, tell them to cherish the now because it would be fleeting. Of course, if I said anything, they would either look at me as if I had horns, or they’d take me seriously and lose some of their innocent joy.

I kept eying the bank of public computers, waiting for when I had time to do more Google searching about Rick. I rarely found a chance to do research during work hours, and the few times I could have snuck away, I was held back by something else: I was scared to learn more. Things had been relatively fine for a while now. Not great, but okay. The things I found out before—not even a month ago—seemed like another lifetime.

Last night, something flicked a switch inside me. Rick commented on my tattoo again, calling it trampy. I didn’t sleep well, and when I got to work today, I couldn’t get Rick’s nasty tone out of my head. It echoed on repeat like the worst kind of earworm. When my shift was over, I went back to the staff room to get my purse, where I noticed a goldfish magnet I’d stuck onto a file cabinet in the back corner.

It was handmade, carved of wood, and bright orange. I’d bought it at Walmart the same time I bought Edward. I walked over and took the magnet in hand, turning it around and around, running my thumb across the smooth edges. The day after Edward died, I’d taken everything fish-related out of the house and donated it to Goodwill. Everything but this magnet, which I’d taken from the fridge and put on the file cabinet here, where Rick wouldn’t see it. This last little reminder of my fish, I kept. One more tiny way to rebel, I supposed.

As silly as it sounded, my fish was killed by my husband. Standing there in the staff room, a goldfish magnet in one hand, made me think of who else he might have hurt. Killing animals was a sign of being a psychopath, right? But did ice-shocking a goldfish indicate a red flag in the same way mutilating cats did? Edward’s death wasn’t long and tortuous, but the emotion behind it felt similar in a way I couldn’t quite explain.

Then I felt a sudden . . . something . . . inside my body. Something not me. I caught my breath.

The baby. One hand cradled my swelling tummy, and my eyes filled with tears. That was a kick; I was sure of it. “I love you, baby girl,” I whispered, having learned the sex at my last appointment.

When families returned from summer break and school started up again, my little girl would be here. That wasn’t far away. I looked from the magnet in one hand to my other hand resting on my belly. I needed to protect my baby. I needed to find out more about Rick and then . . . do something. I didn’t know what yet. But I had a limited amount of time before she’d be here, and I needed to decide what to do about the family she would have. About her father and his place in her life.

I picked up my purse, but before leaving for my car, I stopped at Kathy’s desk. “I need to take tomorrow off,” I told her.

“Well, good,” she said. “You never take vacation time.”

I gave a half smile and shrugged. “Can’t go on a lot of vacations when your spouse is always preparing the next court case. It’ll just be me resting up a bit.”

“Well, get yourself a pedicure, at least.”

“Deal,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I’d make good on the promise.

At home, I didn’t tell Rick that I’d be taking a day off. As far as he was concerned, I would have a typical workday.

The next morning, I drove to the Harvest Valley city library, as always. Once there, I checked the app Rick insisted I use, supposedly so we could make sure to find each other in case of an accident or other emergency. Today, I needed it to record me as being at work. I didn’t go inside the building, but that didn’t matter. For the app, the parking lot was close enough.

Once I was sure it registered my location as the library, I turned off my phone’s location services. If Rick checked up on me with the app, which he did a few times a month, my last known location would be the library, as expected. He’d have no reason to suspect anything else.

With my ties to GPS severed, I drove to the library in neighboring Red Grove. Along the way, I planned what I’d look up. I also reminded myself why I was doing this, because looking into your husband’s past seemed creepy and stalkerish. I had to know who Rick was and who he had been. I needed to understand the wounds and scars he still bore. He was the kind of man who didn’t express his feelings, who thought that sharing emotions and being vulnerable meant you were weak and a sissy. If he wouldn’t tell me what was behind the Rick Banks I knew, the only way to find out was to find out for myself.

I’d never been to the Red Grove Library. It was much smaller than Harvest Valley’s. I didn’t think I knew any of the librarians. Even so, I tried to stay inconspicuous while finding a computer to work at. One in the far corner was shielded from view and available. I took it. My heartbeat picked up speed as I pulled a notebook and pen out of my work bag to begin the research I’d intended to do ever since Rick killed Edward.

I’m really doing this. Am I nuts?

I went through the reasons this was important. Rick had lied to me repeatedly about his past—either when he first spoke of it or later, I didn’t know. He’d killed the only living thing I’d ever called my own. Most of all, I was still pregnant. We weren’t quite at the point that I was legally unable to have an abortion, and until I was, I wouldn’t relax on that count. With a simple internet search, Rick could learn the truth and pile the pressure back on. I couldn’t wait until we were past the stage where it was legal in any state, so no amount of Rick harping on how I was trying to trap him would help.

A tiny voice told me that I was reading things into the past, that I’d misread what I’d found, and that I should just go home. One thing was for sure: if I stayed, and I learned more—if there was more to learn—I couldn’t ever unknow it. I was standing at a metaphorical doorway, and though I knew I needed to step across the threshold, taking that first step was proving to be nerve-racking.

The baby kicked again. It reminded me that I had to prepare in every way for her arrival, and that included figuring all of this stuff out. How could I figure out how to be a mother, how to guide a child, when I didn’t know my husband at all, or how we got here? That knowledge would come from figuring out my husband and whether our marriage was doomed.

And that meant digging to learn who he was.

I put on my librarian science hat and dove into the research as objectively as I could. Determining where to start proved to be harder than expected. No search of Rick’s name, in any combination, brought up any useful leads. The only hits were things like his LinkedIn profile and his bio on the law firm’s website, with the picture of him that matched all of the other lawyers, all with the same bluish background, taken on the same day, at the same studio.

In a notebook, I wrote out everything I thought I knew about Rick and researched each piece of information. First up was Wagner High School in Del Marita, California to look for any record of him as student there in case I’d missed something before.

Then I searched public records of all kinds, unable to find any indication that Rick had ever lived in California; I already knew he hadn’t been born there. I found no driver’s license, no property records, no speeding or parking tickets, and nothing on social media. I sat back against the wood chair and stared at the screen, unsure what to do next.

Hire a private investigator?

That would be ideal, but how would I pay for one without Rick finding out? I considered setting up a bank account he wouldn’t know about, using Becca’s street address so no statements or promotional mailers got sent home that would tip Rick off. I’d have to do that if I wanted to have any kind of money to spend on a private investigator. I could take on one of those MLM side hustles that were mostly excuses to throw parties and get free products. Plenty of wives in the area did this. If I pitched it as a way to make friends rather than money, Rick might not balk at it. After all, I could tell him, so many nights when he worked late were lonely. Hosting little parties might be the perfect thing to cheer up his wife, which would make his life happier.

Instead of getting free or discounted stuff, I’d—hopefully—earn money here and there that I could deposit into a new account that Rick wouldn’t know about. He controlled the finances and knew to the penny what I earned. I could make up a reason for wanting extra money: I was saving up for a surprise for him, maybe a big trip together.

But eventually, I’d have to come up with the grand gesture of the surprise I’d supposedly been saving up for. I’d also have to tell Becca something about it all, but I could come up with an excuse that she wouldn’t press me on.

Shaking my head, I decided to search the other schools that Rick claimed as alma maters. His biography on the law firm’s site said that he received his bachelor’s degree in political science from UCLA and his law degree from Stanford. Again, California ties.

A quick search turned up phone numbers for both institutions. I looked around the Red Grove Library and found a small hallway where I placed calls to both universities, pretending to be a recruiter looking into references on Rick’s resume. I soon had my answers: neither school had any record of him as a student. I’d expected as much, but finding out for certain made my steps heavy as I walked back to the carrel I’d been using.

I felt queasy, and even if it was due to my research, it also had to be related to hunger and pregnancy. I opted to grab a bite to eat, paying with cash so there would be no digital record, then go to another nearby city and use their library. I ate a shake and fries in the car—I could keep those down on an upset stomach and drive while eating them—and headed toward Maple Fork, our city library. Being close to home would be smart if I found a research rabbit hole that sucked the rest of the day away.

With my notebook open, I read over everything I’d written. I’d had an idea a couple of hours ago, one I’d put a star by, and now it seemed brilliant: doing a reverse-image search on the one picture I had of Rick as a boy.

I no longer had it on my phone’s camera roll, but I’d posted it on Instagram last year for his birthday. I scrolled through my feed to find it. There he was, a young boy wearing a bright-yellow tee, with crooked teeth too big for his mouth and an untamed cowlick. I took a screenshot, emailed the picture to myself, then used a public computer to log on to my inbox and download it.

I set up the image search, but my finger hovered over the mouse button for several seconds; I suddenly didn’t have the nerve to click it.

The tattoo seemed to be suddenly burning on the back of my shoulder. I scratched it, took a deep breath, let it out, and then, eyes closed, clicked the button. At first, I thought the results were fruitless, but as I scrolled, I found a newspaper article with a grainy black-and-white picture that looked like the one of Rick as a boy. It wasn’t the same picture, but it was strikingly similar, down to the same cowlick and teeth crooked in the same way—canines up high, the front two teeth overlapping.

The article was a scanned newspaper image, so I magnified it enough to read the text. I learned of a tragic boating accident in the middle of the night that claimed the lives of a father and mother. They reportedly had an argument on deck after heavy drinking and had likely fallen overboard, unbeknownst to the two other people on the boat: their ten-year-old son Ryan, and the captain of the yacht. The boy in the picture was identified as Ryan.

Could Ryan be Rick?

The family’s name was Brockbank. Ours was Banks. Had he created a new identity, keeping his initials and shortening his last name? Was I reading too much into the similarities?

Based on the article’s date, the boy was ten, the same age as Rick was in my picture. The newspaper photo looked just like him.

Was this Ryan Brockbank my husband as a child? Is that how his parents died? Weirdly, the idea wasn’t disturbing; on our second date, he’d said that he, too, was an orphan. Maybe something he’d told me about himself was true. Changing his name could have been a way to start fresh, leave a tragic past behind.

Biting my lip, I felt an uneasy energy building in my chest, a strange mix of both relief and disappointment at not finding more.

Something deep inside me said that Rick’s birth name was Ryan Brockbank.

Did that mean I was really Jennifer Brockbank? That had a nice ring to it. It also sounded like someone else. He married me as Rick Banks. Was our marriage valid? I was being silly. If he changed his name legally, of course it was.

Shaking, I printed off the article, then went on to the next item on my list. I had to keep focused. Who knew when I’d have the time—and courage—to do more research? This might be my last shot for a while. I kept digging, reading everything I could about the boating accident that had killed his parents. Interestingly enough, it happened in southern California. Maybe he had grown up there.

Unfortunately, the story hadn’t stayed in the papers for long, and a few months afterward, the only mention I found was a tiny update when the toxicology report came back, confirming blood-alcohol levels right in line with the medical examiner’s theory of a terrible “drunken row,” as he put it, a tragic accident in the middle of the night.

I found nothing about what happened to the boy, Ryan—not that he’d been put into relatives’ custody or the state’s or anything else. The trail went cold.

The alarm I’d set on my phone went off, yanking me back to the present. Time to head home and get dinner ready—and turn on my phone’s location services again.

As I packed up my stuff, I felt a small measure of peace. Rick had been raised in California. He was an orphan. Changing his name would explain why his schools had no record of him. I’d have to check them for Ryan Brockbank, but I suddenly wasn’t afraid of what the search would turn up.

Rick had been through a lot. He might have blocked out parts of his past from his memory as a coping device.

If anyone had empathy for trauma, I did. And if anyone could help her husband heal from that kind of trauma, it would be me. I’d spend the rest of my life trying.