The Big Bang (42 page)

Eva looked way more shocked than Maryellen suddenly felt.

“And the only thing I can think of to do is just face it.”

“S
ign here,” the policeman said, pointing to the X on the paperwork he set in front of Maryellen.

With her signature, he unlocked the door beside the front counter and disappeared inside.

She’d left the hospital after the accident with Frank’s wallet, watch, and wedding ring, never having given a thought to the now dead cell phone or the tire-marked briefcase that lay inside the clear plastic evidence bag the policeman reappeared with in his hand.

She’d let go of finding a deed, or anything else that might make sense of the mess Frank had left, resigning herself to making the best of what she could control—day-to-day life and helping to heal her daughter. Then, the letter had come from the police station releasing Frank’s belongings.

She accepted the evidence bag, flew back to her car, and dumped the contents of the briefcase onto the passenger seat.

Two unlabeled files slid out.

The first held the purchase contract between Frank on behalf of the Melody Mountain Community Church and Henderson Homes. Finalized with $2,000 on July 1, courtesy of the Griffin family Visa cash advance, and following three earlier payments of $23,000, $10,000, and $5,000, the deal was originally signed by both parties on March 15, which she couldn’t help but note was two weeks before the April board vote ratifying the new locations.

The deed was to have been processed and mailed following the holiday weekend.

Before Henderson Homes had closed its doors.

Before Frank had died.

At least she had a definitive answer as to whether it was ever coming.

Particularly when she opened the second file.

Maryellen pinched herself until she could force herself to close the file without reading the contents.

When she did, a monogrammed slip of Crane stationery flew out the bottom, and fluttered to the ground.

“W
hoa,” Will said, hanging up the phone.

“Who was that?” Meg asked.

“Maryellen,” Will said, wondering whether he’d really heard what he’d just heard.

“What did she want?”

“She called to tell me she got Frank’s briefcase back from the night of the accident.” Will paused for a second to process what he was about to say. “Apparently, there was paperwork inside proving Frank signed the playground deal ahead of the board vote.”

“Seriously?”

“Not only that, she thinks the fraud involved should activate the board Errors and Omissions policy and cover the repairs on the playground.”

Even as the shock registered on his wife’s face, he still couldn’t believe the rest of what Maryellen had told him. “The playground switch happened in the first place because Frank was working his own side deal with Henderson Homes to buy the mandated playground land—”

“For his church?” Meg asked.

Will nodded. “Maryellen said she’d been trying to protect me from what Frank had done, but couldn’t anymore.”

“Why’s that?”

He waved the piece of paper he held in his hand.

“A phone number?”

“From Frank’s phone,” he said. “Someone from Henderson Homes called him right before he ran out the door.”

“This may be the break we’ve been looking for,” she said.

“But may also have killed Frank,” he said. “Maryellen said he ran out of the house right after the call came in.”

“Wasn’t he was running after Eva?”

“He may have been, but she thinks the caller knew Henderson Homes was shutting its doors and felt bad enough to call Frank and give him a heads-up.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “I’d have run off too if I knew Henderson Homes had gone under.”

“Especially if you’d put down forty grand on your secret land deal, but didn’t get the deed.”

M
aryellen waited until the rec center was closed, and using Frank’s keys she hadn’t yet relinquished, opened the door, turned off the alarm, and headed straight for the kitchen.

It was against everything she believed in to read Hope’s confidential counseling notes, but she had to. Hope’s “letter” was a suicide note, that or the saddest good-bye she could imagine. Exactly the kind of note she herself might have left to spare a husband any pain beyond whatever he’d feel from her departure.

Like the pain of finding out he was to be a dad, but not a father?

Maryellen turned on the light and stood in the middle of the room, willing herself back to the night of the potluck, back into her hash brownie high surrounded by platters of food and the hum of voices in the next room.

The rhythmic thuds from behind her.

The bulk of Frank’s notes didn’t reveal much beyond Hope’s misery over not conceiving, how the frustration led her to question her faith, and the prayers and psalms he’d offered to help her persevere while she awaited the Lord’s ultimate gift.

They certainly didn’t explain why he’d lied about having the note.

She walked to the back wall of the kitchen. As she rapped on the sheetrock she could practically hear the animalistic grunts like they were still happening.

The more troubling of Frank’s comments began to swirl through her head:
Fertility hormones may be clouding Hope’s better judgment. I’ve asked her to consult on the playground, in part to keep an eye on her. I have concerns about the underlying nature of Hope’s working relationship with Tim Trautman. There’s a rumor afoot concerning Hope and Will Pierce-Cohn…

Maryellen ran out the door, through the darkened main lobby, around to the administrative hall, and into the multipurpose room. The light she flipped on reflected off the door handle of the walk-in art supply closet that shared the south wall of the kitchen.

Normally locked, the room must have been open that night for access to decorating supplies.

Or was opened.

She was about to unlock the door herself, but stopped. Even though the red light wasn’t on, the last thing she needed was to show up on the security camera as she let herself into a supply closet after hours when she wasn’t supposed to be there anyway.

That familiar sensation of cold dread and adrenaline began to spread across her chest and through her body.

The camera had to have been on during the potluck.

She rushed down to the security office, made her way inside, and unlocked the cabinets until she found boxes of stored tapes. She located Saturday, May 28,
INTERIOR
.

Her hands shook as she turned on a monitor, put the tape into the machine, and watched a black and white image of the empty lower-level hallway appear on the screen.

The time flashing at the bottom right corner was 11:01
P.M.

The very moment the first of Theresa and Tim’s twins had been born.

She pressed rewind and watched rotating images scroll backward in reverse double time from the various cameras set throughout the rec center. At 10:15, she paused to zoom in on a short, dark-haired man entering the rec center.

Will Pierce-Cohn.

If anything did happen between him and Hope, it wasn’t at the rec center.

And, he couldn’t be the father.

At the 9:35
P.M.
mark, she slowed the speed to watch more carefully the people exiting the bathrooms, walking backward toward the pool area. Another short, dark-haired man stopped to talk to someone before entering the men’s room.

She zoomed in.

Frank.

He headed back toward the pool area and the tape switched views to the closed door to the multipurpose room.

She’d almost caught her breath from seeing her husband, knowing he’d been alone, when the empty fitness wing hall appeared on the screen.

Hadn’t Theresa said her water had broken at 8:15 and they were at the hospital by 9:30?

Hope had definitely mentioned eating chips from the vending machine with someone.

Maryellen rewound the tape, stopping at 8:15.

She watched at normal speed as the camera changed views every five minutes, switching from the main entrance to the crowded pool area to outside the bathrooms.

At the 8:30 mark, the fitness center hallway appeared on the screen.

Hope stood beside a short, dark-haired man in front of a vending machine.

Maryellen zoomed in.

Tim.

He appeared to be talking on his cell phone.

Hope put money into the slot.

Maryellen’s heart began to thump watching Hope make a selection and Tim head away from her toward the stairs.

The camera cut to the administrative hallway and a view into the multipurpose room.

Through the open door.

The pounding in her heart gave way to a sick ache. She forced herself to watch the next few scenes as they flashed before her, five minutes at a time.

Main entrance.

Pool area.

Outside the upstairs restrooms.

At 9:04, she took a horrified breath in preparation for what she feared she would see when the view switched into the open multipurpose room.

The empty fitness hallway filled the screen.

She looked at the time on the monitor. It read 9:10
P.M.

She rewound and pushed play again.

The tape skipped from the 9:00 view of the restrooms to the 9:10 view of the lower level.

9:05 to 9:10 was gone from the tape.

As she fast-forwarded to the 9:30 view of the multipurpose room, the closed-door view of the room, she remembered how early Frank was up and gone the morning after the party.

“Had to make sure the rec center was back in order,” he’d said.

***

“Mom?” Things had gone from weird and horrible to weird and different, starting the second her mom had dropped that F-bomb. Waking to find Mom staring directly at her, a piece of paper in hand, was somehow, weirder still. “What is it?”

“I was very annoyed with your dad that night,” her mom finally said.

Eva turned off the already-on-mute TV. “What night?”

“The night of the potluck.”

“Oh.” The lump that had permanently settled in Eva’s throat began to throb.

“I thought it was the combination of him not appreciating how hard I was working and…” She paused. “And those hash brownies.”

“I’m so sorry, Mommy. I—”

“I’m glad to hear that and I know.” Her mom shook her head. “But, I woke you up because I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“I was the thirteenth person.”

“What?”

“Your witch rules. Weren’t there supposed to be thirteen people to do your spell?”

Eva’s temples began to throb. “I don’t ever want to think or talk about that, ever ag—”

“But I was there.” She looked up. “Not downstairs with you, but in the house.”

Eva wanted to, but couldn’t avert her eyes from her mother’s intense gaze. “Doesn’t mean a thing. You weren’t in the coven.”

“I was angry with him that night. So angry, I wished as hard as I could he wouldn’t come home.”

There were only twelve of them in the circle. As they chanted the spell, Eva knew it wouldn’t really work, which made her know for sure nothing serious would happen. But if her mom was standing in the room above them thinking she wished Daddy wouldn’t come home… ? “Can’t be true Mom. Can’t be.”

“Which is exactly the conclusion I finally came to,” she said. “Because neither of us really wanted him to be gone. What we wanted was for him to be present with us, for us, and not just for how we reflected on him. I didn’t want him to be so damn competitive.”

Familiar hot tears began to roll down Eva’s cheeks.

“Your dad ran into that ice cream truck not because we willed him to, but because he was so busy trying to run away from the disastrous results of his insatiable need to control and run everything and everyone, he wasn’t looking where he was going.”

“But I was one of the things he was trying to control.”

“You can’t control people, only guide them,” she said. “Remember that, because you’re a lot like him.”

The words stung.

“Thing is, there’s hope for you.” She seemed to grimace with the word. “And me.” She waved the paper in her hand. “See this?”

Eva managed a nod.

“I sent in my resume for a head librarian opening at the Central Library mostly to see what would happen. I didn’t think I had any chance, but this is an e-mail with the response.”

“What does it say?”

“I didn’t allow myself to read it,” she said. “I knew there was no way I could take the job even if by some chance this is a request for an interview.”

“Why not?”

“That’s the other conclusion I came to,” her mom said. “Do you think it’s a request for an interview or a thanks for applying, but?”

“You’d be a great head librarian.”

“Thanks.” Tears filled her mother’s eyes. “I’m going to read it right now.”

“Go for it.”

“If they want to interview me and it’s not too late, what should I do?”

“Go on the interview.”

“And what if I get offered the job?”

“Take it.”

“My commute will be almost an hour either direction every day.”

“We could move,” Eva said.

“I wouldn’t want to uproot you so soon after Dad’s…”

“If you got a job, or if you just wanted to move, I’d support you and go because it’s what you really wanted,” Eva said. “That’s all I ever really wanted from Dad.”