Black Out

uncomfortable around me. We keep up appearances for Victory’s sake. Drew has avoided me altogether.

“What happened to him?”

She hands me the paper, and I read the feature about the fallen cop, the hooker, the heroin, the gambling addiction, the mysterious money in his account. Ray Harrison looks beaten, dazed in the mug shot pictured. I notice that the white hair over his ear is gone. Strange. Maybe it’s a trick of the light.

I glance over at Ella, and she is watching me. She wrinkles her brow when our eyes meet.

“Crazy, huh?” she says, and there’s an odd brightness to her gaze, as if she takes some pleasure in the sensational nature of the story.

“Yeah,” I say, folding the paper, closing my eyes, and leaning my head back. I feel the sun on my face. I feel a sudden anxiety, a sense that something is not right about what I’ve read. But I can’t afford to dwell on Ray Harrison right now or worry about his problems. “Crazy.”

43

I am never alone, I start to realize after I’ve been home another week or so. Either Gray or Ella or Brigit is always with me. I am not even left alone with Victory except when I take her to school in the mornings. It’s not that anyone’s hovering, but someone is always in the house or out with us as we run errands. With what they think of me, I suppose I can’t blame them. I’ll go along with it for a while, but eventually it’s going to start to wear on me. Right now I’m on my best behavior, doing what I must to be home with my family and not locked up in a rubber room somewhere.

“Mommy,” Victory says in the car on the way to school this morning.

“Yeah, Victory?”

“Are you better?” She is looking at me through the rearview mirror. She’s frowning slightly.

“Yes, I am,” I answer. “A lot better.”

I see her smile, then put my eyes back to the road.

Then, “I don’t want to go away with Grandma and Grandpa anymore.” It’s an odd thing to say, and I look back into the mirror to see that her frown has returned.

“Why, baby?”

“I just don’t want to. I want to stay with you and Daddy. You shouldn’t go away, and they shouldn’t take me anywhere.” I can see she has given this some thought. My heart aches a little.

I give her a smile and decide not to press right now. “I’m not going anywhere. And you don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, but her smile doesn’t return.

The rest of the ride I am watching her face, wondering if I should urge her to talk more. But by the time I get her to school, she’s back to her old self, bubbly and chirping about show-and-tell today. She has brought Claude and Isabel. I am sure they’ll be a smashing success.

After I drop Victory off, I don’t go straight home. I just can’t face the rest of the day tiptoeing around Brigit, who, by the way, is an even worse cook and housekeeper than I am. I’m starting to suspect that she’s an operative from my husband’s company, hired to keep an eye on me.

I find myself at the Internet cafe by the beach. I order myself a latte and grab a spot in a booth toward the back, start browsing the Web on one of the laptops. I have thought about trying to find some proof of the things that happened to me. But, it turns out, I don’t really need anyone to believe me. I know what happened. I know I’m not crazy. I know that I faced Marlowe Geary and removed him from the world. I am healed by this knowledge. That should be enough. Whatever Alan Parker and Grief Intervention Services did to cover everything up is not my problem. I have tried to reach my father to talk to him about that night, without luck. I’m starting to worry about him.

My fingers hover over the keyboard. I think about searching for a way to contact Alan Parker, to look for stories of other people who have been involved with Grief Intervention Services, or to try to reach my father again without Gray around. There’s a pay phone over by the bathrooms. But in the end I don’t do any of these things. I have the sense that I’m being watched. Everyone is so pleased with my “progress.” I don’t want to set off any alarms. I need to be home for my daughter.

“They don’t want you to be alone, do they?” I turn to see a young woman sitting at the table behind me. She has a baby who is blissfully asleep in a stroller. The woman’s ash-blond hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, her face pale to the point of looking almost gray. The dark smudges of fatigue rim her eyes. I don’t recognize her.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“I’ve been trying to get you alone for days,” she says.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

“No, you don’t know me, Ms. Powers. My name is Sarah Harrison. I’m Ray Harrison’s wife.”

I look at her face and try to decide what she wants. Is this going to be another attempt at blackmail? A desperate woman looking for money? But no, there’s something about her face. Her eyes are wide and earnest. There’s a strength and a presence to her. She’s not the criminal type. She’s scared, looking over at the door and then down at her baby. The baby looks a lot like Ray Harrison; the only way I know she’s a girl is because she’s wrapped in pink. I remember when Victory was that small and fragile. I can’t help myself-I reach in and touch the downy crown of her head. She releases a sigh but doesn’t wake.

“I need to talk to you,” Sarah says.

I turn away from her. If anyone is watching, I want them to think I was just admiring her baby. I look at my computer screen. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Harrison?”

“You heard what happened to my husband?”

I nod. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. And I am sorry, for all of them, especially for his little girl.

“What happened to him happened because he was trying to help you.”

“I don’t understand,” I say. I’m aware that I sound distant and cold. But I can’t afford to be anything else at the moment. She seems undaunted as she begins to tell me about the recent events of her husband’s life, the version I read about in the paper plus everything he learned in his investigation.

“They think he had a nervous breakdown relating to his gambling addiction. No one believes him about Grief Intervention Services, about the Taser attack. They think he’s crazy.”

“There must be marks on his body from the Taser, if it’s true.”

“There were marks,” she says. “But no one believed that’s where they came from. They questioned your friend, Ella Singer, just to say they had.” She pauses and issues a harsh laugh. “She and her husband were outraged. She helped in every way possible with his investigation, and this is what she gets from him, she said. Apparently, her husband plays golf with the mayor.” Her words are heavy with bitterness.

I remember the glint in Ella’s eyes when she handed me the paper. She’d made no mention of these allegations Sarah is describing, of course. There was nothing of it in the paper. If I confronted her, I’m sure she’d say she was trying to spare me any upset, that I had my own problems. And maybe that’s the truth. It’s difficult to think of Ella wielding a Taser gun, and yet somehow it isn’t impossible to imagine.

“Let’s just pretend that I believe what you’re saying,” I tell Sarah Harrison. “What can I do about it?”

“You don’t understand,” she says. “I’m not asking for your help. I’m trying to help you. They want you to think you’re crazy. You’re not. My husband wronged you, he knows that now. He wants to make it right, and so do I.”

“Okay,” I say. “Maybe that’s true. But what do you think you can do for me, Sarah?”

The baby releases a little sigh. I can see the little pink bundle out of the corner of my eye.

“Maybe nothing. I just thought you needed to know that you’re living in a pit of vipers. Your husband, your best friend, and your in-laws are all lying to you. They’re basically holding you prisoner, in the nicest possible cage.”

I don’t say anything, just take a sip of my coffee and hope she can’t see that my hand is shaking.

“This is an interesting thing my husband found out, the thing that brought him to your house in the first place. He learned that Grief Intervention Services is a client of Powers and Powers, Inc.”

When I still don’t say anything, she goes on.