Lisa Unger - Black Out

“Marlowe Geary is still alive. Someone’s looking for him, they have Victory, and I need to lead them to Marlowe or they’re going to hurt her.” As the words tumble out of my mouth, I hear how crazy they sound. I suddenly feel very bad for Victory. This is her rescue team: a beat-up old pathological liar and a nutcase mother.

In a mad rush, the rest of it pours out of me, everything that’s happened since the dark figure on the beach. “Somewhere inside me, I know where he is,” I tell him finally. “I just don’t have access to that information yet.”

“Opie,” he responds gently, “no offense, but are you sure you haven’t lost your mind?”

I think about this for a second. “No, Dad,” I admit. “I’m not sure at all.”

Looking at me from beneath raised eyebrows, he says, “What do you need me to do?”

Less than a week after my disappearance, my memorial service was held at a small chapel by the beach. Neighbors, friends, colleagues crowded into the space. It was a hot day, and the air-conditioning was not up to the task. People were sweating, fanning themselves, shedding tears as Gray gave a heartfelt eulogy about how he’d loved me, how I’d changed his life and made him a better person. He said I’d left all the best parts of myself behind in Victory, our daughter.

Detective Harrison stayed in the back and watched the crowd. Conspicuous by their absence were Vivian, Drew, and Victory. It’s a show, he thought. No one would have a memorial service for a woman who was still classified as missing unless he was invested in making it appear to someone that she was dead. Gray seemed sunken and hollowed out; to everyone else he seemed like a man suffering with terrible grief. To Harrison he seemed like a man struggling under the burden of terrible lies.

A woman sat in the front of the chapel and wept with abandon. He recognized her even from behind. It was Ella, beautifully coiffed in her grief, of course-hair swept in a perfect chignon, impeccably dressed in a simple black sheath, her nails done.

After the service Harrison stood off to the side in the trees watching people leave. He watched for someone alone, someone who seemed out of place. He guessed that most of the men were colleagues of Gray’s-they all had that paramilitary look to them, built and secretive, ever aware of their surroundings. He recognized some of the older people as neighbors he’d seen the night of the intruder on the beach. He didn’t see anyone who aroused his interest.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ella said, approaching him. “You weren’t her friend.”

Her breath smelled lightly of alcohol. He regarded her, sized her up. She was handling things badly, seemed unsteady on her feet. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

“Do you have someone to drive you home?” he asked gently.

“None of these people were her friends,” she said too loudly. People turned to stare as they moved toward their cars. “I’ve never seen any of them in my life.”

He put a hand on her arm. “Let me take you home, Mrs. Singer.”

“I have my own car, thank you,” she said primly.

“You can get it later,” he said, more firmly.

She surprised him by not arguing. “I mean, who are these people?” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, leaning her weight against him as he led her to his Explorer.

“Where is her daughter? Where are Drew and Vivian? I asked Gray. He told me that it was none of my business.” She paused and shook her head. “Something’s just not right.”

He opened the door for her, and she climbed inside with a little help. He got in on the other side, turned on the engine, and pulled in to the line of cars exiting the parking lot of the chapel. The blue sky was going gray; heavy dark clouds were moving in from the sea.

“Someone killed her, didn’t they?” she said, looking out the window.

“Why would you say something like that?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “The man on the beach that night. Since then, she wasn’t the same. She seemed-I don’t know-not herself. Maybe she was afraid of someone? I don’t know.”

“Did she ever talk to you about her past?” he asked, pulling in to our neighborhood. The line at the gate was long, with people heading back to our house for the reception. Ella pointed the way to her house and shook her head slowly.

“You know what? No. I knew that Annie was raised in Central Florida and that both her parents were dead. She didn’t have any family at all except for Gray and Victory. She never talked about her past. I had the sense she didn’t want anyone asking, either. So I never did.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that Annie wasn’t even my real name, that most things I’d told her about myself were lies.

“How’d she get along with her in-laws?” he asked instead.

“She loved Vivian. But Drew…bad blood there, if you ask me.”

“Oh?”

“He hated her, or so she thought. He didn’t think she was good enough for Gray. She didn’t talk much about that, either. So I didn’t press.”

“What did you talk about?”

She let a beat pass. “Shoes,” she said, then let go a peal of hysterical laughter that ended in a sob. He thought she was going to lose it. But she pulled herself together relatively quickly. After a moment she wiped her tears away, careful not to smear her mascara. “I was a terrible friend, wasn’t I? I didn’t know anything about Annie.”

He pulled in to her driveway. “You accepted her for who she was in the present, Mrs. Singer. We only know about people what they want to show us. You respected her privacy and shared good times with her. I think that makes you an excellent friend. I really do.”

Detective Harrison was a wise man; I would have told her the same thing.

She took a tissue from her clutch and wiped her nose. “Thanks,” she said, nodding. “She did that for me, too.”

They sat like that for a minute in her drive. The wind was blowing the high palm fronds around, and they whispered, gossiping about all they knew and wouldn’t tell. The sky had gone from blue to gray to black and was ready to erupt.

“That night on the beach?” Ella said, leaning forward and looking up at the sky. Harrison noticed her beauty again, the delicate line of her jaw, the regal length of her neck.

“What about it?”

“At the party she thought she saw someone that she recognized. A young girl, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Who was it?”

She gave him a quick shrug. “No idea. I knew everyone there that night, even all the servers who have worked for me before. She seemed really unsettled by it and left pretty soon after that.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying there was no one at my house who looked like that, no one under forty, and certainly no one wearing jeans and a T-shirt.”

He remembered the night at the rest stop. He remembered how my gaze kept moving behind him as though I’d been watching someone or something. He’d seen fear on my face that night, so clearly that it had caused him to reach for his gun. “You think Annie imagined her?”

She looked surprised for a second, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to her. Then, “I don’t know. She had an expression on her face that stayed with me. I think I’d seen it before in flashes, but not like that. She looked haunted. I think she was, in some ways.” She smiled nervously, ran a self-conscious hand along her jaw. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t help you any, does it?”

“You were right to tell me,” he said. “You never know what helps.” After a pause he added, “Did she ever mention her doctor to you?”