September 30, 2018
Galveston, Texas
After another quick hotel stop in Dallas, Marnie called Ellie Jean and brought her up to speed about Gen. She told her where she was headed and why. Ellie Jean was distraught but said she had a friend with her for support. She reassured her mom that she’d be okay.
Marnie walked the dogs before hitting the road. From the car, she called Louise and gave her an estimated arrival time. Driving down I-35, Marnie knew she was back in Texas. The highway baked in the autumn heat, daring a person to fry an egg on it.
Five hours later, she arrived at Louise’s house—hoping the guest suite was up and working. Her own place would be ready tomorrow.
As Marnie pulled into Louise’s driveway, Louise came down the long staircase to meet her. Her athletic friend looked good with her loose blonde hair pulled back and out of the way. She was a few inches shorter than Marnie.
After an embrace, Louise took a good look at Marnie and was glad to see her friend had some animation in her expression. “It’s been a hard year,” Louise said.
“You’ve always been a master of understatement,” Marnie replied sadly. “Until recently, Gen competed with you. Funny how much you can miss someone you probably only communicated with once a month or so.”
Louise squeezed her shoulder. “Come on inside.”
After admiring the newly painted living room, Marnie continued. “I miss Adam like a dull ache, but I’m not convinced he’s gone. I guess that’s one reason it made sense for me to go live somewhere else for a while. I need to stop looking at the door, waiting for him to come through it.”
During the conversation, Harlee and Jack had been trying to run circles around Chico, Louise’s Chilean rescue dog, Chilean by birth, Heinz 57 by breeding. Chico felt more comfortable with Harlee, who at only twenty-five pounds was more his size, but Jack, at sixty pounds, was not to be excluded.
“Okay, let’s take this dog circus out into the yard,” said Louise. “You know you could have stayed with us instead of renting your own place.”
Marnie raised her eyebrows and looked at the dogs making loops around Louise’s yard. It looked like a racetrack. “Seriously, how long before Didier shot my dogs and dumped them in the bay?”
Louise laughed. “Okay, point taken.”
“Did you get a chance to go by the place yet? Is it an honest representation online?”
Louise gave Marnie the “mom” look. “I had an extra shift this week and barely got clean sheets on your bed.”
“That’s okay. I’m just ribbing you. I had Nancy check it out right after I rented it. I love abusing your mom more than you. It reminds me of all the help she gave me when Ellie Jean was a baby. I send her yellow roses on her birthday to let her know that I remember.”
“I know,” Louise sighed. “She sends me a picture of her two dozen roses just in case I forget it’s her birthday. Come on, let’s get you settled.”
Louise walked around to the other side of Marnie’s car. It looked like something out of The Grapes of Wrath if they had been driving BMWs. There wasn’t a square inch of space left in it. “Where did the dogs sit?”
“Jack had the front seat and Harlee sat in my lap or Jack’s. I think Harlee was the one most offended with the arrangement. Don’t worry. It’s very organized. The only things I need are on the floor of the back seat and the dog bed on top. Not like they need the bed for sleeping, but it’s a good security blanket for them.”
Louise shook her head.
“Oh, come on, Louise. Forty percent of people sleep with their dogs and at least another twenty percent lie about it. You and Didier are the outliers. I remember when I first met Adam and his surprise that Tonya, my original dog, slept on my bed. Because his family had never had indoor dogs, he was hesitant about the arrangement. Then, he became such a pushover.
“These dogs are something else. Jack’s been trainable but getting him to sleep on the spare places on the bed hasn’t been easy. Even now, with more spare space,” Marnie said wistfully as she grabbed her belongings from the car and trudged behind Louise.
Louise and Didier had wondered how Adam and Marnie had had sex. Marnie knew that they were curious, but she never let Louise know that, of course, the dogs got shut out.
After getting settled in the guest room, Marnie joined Louise on the back porch. It was one of the best times of the year to sit outside in Galveston.
“We have about twenty minutes before Didier gets home with the kids,” Louise said, handing Marnie one of her favorite beers.
Marnie asked, “Any word on the autopsy?”
“Definitely looks like foul play. I’ve been getting bits and pieces from Iliana Sudhan. Remember my detective friend? Strictly off the record.” Louise gave Marnie a meaningful look. “There’s more. Did you know that Gen was transgender? It’s getting to be common knowledge here.”
Marnie paused a minute. “Yes, I’ve known for quite a while, but it was never my secret to share. Gen felt strongly about her privacy in this area. I only found out when Ellie Jean was born. In medical school, there were things Gen said that only made sense if she wasn’t born with female anatomy. I got to wondering about her being transgender. It seemed to explain a lot of things—her estrangement from her family, her lack of a past, and her resistance to dating.”
Taking a sip of her beer, Louise nodded.
Marnie reminisced. “A week after Ellie’s birth I started hemorrhaging and couldn’t reach Adam—the 90s remember—no cell phones, and pagers didn’t always work inside the research lab. Gen stopped by to check on me and found me in a pool of blood. I would have bled to death if she hadn’t come by.”
“I remember,” Louise said.
Marnie continued, “Gen looked at the situation, immediately called 9-1-1, and, as I was fading in and out of consciousness and babbling about Ellie Jean, she said, ‘Thank you for sparing me this!’ It was one of the few things that stuck in my brain. Weeks later, those words still came to me.”
Marnie took a sip of her beer. “At first, we never talked about it. I was on maternity leave for three months and she visited often. Outside of Adam and Nancy, she held Ellie Jean the most. I often think the scents babies and caretakers share in the first few months of life seal their relationships forever.”
“It’s possible,” Louise said.
As Marnie continued her story, she was transported back to that time. It had been so scary. The doctors had recommended a hysterectomy, but Marnie had resisted. She had been determined that Ellie Jean not be an only child like herself—a situation she’d hated.
After another sip, Marnie continued, “Back to Gen. One day when she was over, she asked if I remembered the details of my near-death experience and what she had said. I told her yes. Then, she told me about growing up with her gender dysphoria in a small town in Iowa. She got to go to college on a basketball scholarship. It was during college that she learned about and came to grips with being transgender. At the time, her parents couldn’t come to terms with her pursuing re-assignment.”
“Man, that must have been so hard for Gen,” Louise said.
“Yes. I think it scared her from telling anyone else. Over the years, I tried to convince her that times had changed and that she didn’t need to take any guff about her status. I was unsuccessful. She felt strongly that no one know. I do think in the last few years she was becoming more confident. Garrett had done a lot to reassure her. Do you think her death was related to her transsexuality?”
Louise’s eyes were fixed on a point on the horizon as she answered, “I don’t know. The only thing that has come up is that it seems she fought with her attacker. It’s hard to tell if her bumps and bruises were from a drowning—getting rolled about in the ocean can be pretty brutal. But she wasn’t in the water for very long. She was found about ten hours after her last credit card charge at the grocery store. They think she had some skin under her fingernails.”
“Wow,” Marnie said.
Louise continued. “It correlates with Garrett’s story. He told me that he was planning to cook a special dinner after closing the restaurant for the night. They were going to celebrate her decision that her transgender status didn’t need to be a secret anymore. She had run to the grocery store for some last-minute ingredients and wasn’t home when Garrett got there. He had a creepy feeling—a Born-on-the-Island intuition—that something was wrong. He filed a missing person complaint immediately, but the police didn’t begin looking into it before her body was found the next morning.”
“Damn, damn, damn,” Marnie mumbled. “It seems unfathomable that this happened. None of it makes sense. Louise, someone dragged her out there. Hard to believe it was a hate crime since so few knew about her sexuality. Do you think it was related to her work?”
Louise looked hard at her friend. “I think we need to find out what the full autopsy shows before we worry about why she was murdered.”
“You and I both know she didn’t go into the water willingly.”
Louise reached forwarded and patted Marnie’s hand. “I know…”
“The memorial is in two days,” Marnie said. “After that, I’ll talk to Garrett and get a look at her computer. What are your plans tomorrow?”
Louise thought for a moment. “I have a day shift tomorrow and then I’m off for the memorial. Why don’t you get settled? Dinner here tomorrow?”
“Sounds good,” Marnie said. “What’s your work schedule for the week?”
“I’m back on days starting Thursday. You could come by the hospital and let me know what you find out at Gen’s. Our old friend, Mrs. Riley is in the hospital making a slow recovery from hip surgery, complicated by pneumonia. You could see her, and then after my shift, we can grab a drink. Didier has a work meeting that night, so my mom will be here to watch the kids.”
“I’m so glad you told me about Mrs. Riley. I would love to stop in and see her. After getting through this week, we will need a happy hour,” Marnie said. Life moves too fast. Death moves even faster.
“The kids were so excited to see Aunt Marnie and her crazy dogs that I didn’t think we’d ever get them settled down for the night,” Louise said to Didier.
He was reading in bed as she slipped into her Houston Astros nightshirt, a Mother’s Day gift from the children. She stood at the window for one more look at the bay, now offering a rippled reflection of the full moon.
He looked up. “How do you think Marnie’s doing? I wasn’t expecting her to be so animated, if that’s the right word. She gave me an earful when we were doing the dishes.”
Louise went to her side of the bed and climbed in. “I know what you mean. She seems driven to get to the bottom of Gen’s death. And she’s in a hurry to do it. It’s almost manic.”
“I guess it’s her way of coping with another loss, but seems kind of extreme,” Didier said.
“Then, today I find out that Marnie has known for years that Gen was transgender. I’m not sure how I feel about being left out of that secret between them.”
She filled him in on Marnie’s revelation and continued. “Did Gen think I’d have been judgmental? Not that it matters now.”
“It definitely doesn’t matter now. And no, she would not have. You were always a good friend to Gen. It sounds as if she was about to let all of us know, if only…” Didier said, shaking his head.
“It’s been a long day. Let’s turn off the lights,” Louise said softly and snuggled next to him.