Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (24 page)

Don’t worry about that email from Ushuaia. I’ve been in much worse shape than that! Don’t believe me? I was actually arrested for disturbing the peace one night at the Westin! The charges were dropped. But still, you have nothing on me when it comes to being run amok by emotions. And I didn’t even have the very legitimate excuse of pregnancy hormones. Congratulations! You, Elgie, and the baby are in my prayers.

That is very unsettling news about Bernadette. I don’t believe for a second that she froze to death in Antarctica. Please do send the captain’s report as soon as you receive it. I am quite anxious.

Keep that last letter I wrote you, and frame it, for it is an artifact from a fleeting moment when I could call true happiness my own.

You know how I said Elgie was heading back east to see Bee? Which
I found kind of strange? It turns out Elgie withdrew Bee from Choate. He just returned to Seattle with her in tow!

Remember what a sweet, quiet girl Bee always was? Well, the child is unrecognizable, I tell you, absolutely consumed with hatred. Elgie moved back into the Gate Avenue house to be with her. But Bee refuses to sleep under the same roof as him. The only place she wants to sleep is Bernadette’s Airstream. Saint Bernadette!

Elgie is so guilt-ridden, he’ll do anything Bee wants. She won’t go back to Galer Street? Fine! She refuses to step foot in my home for our weekly dinners? Fine!

You’d never guess the source of all this turmoil. It’s the most incredible “book” Bee wrote. She won’t let anybody see it, but from what little Elgie will tell me, it’s based on emails between you and me, Audrey, plus the FBI report, even handwritten notes between you and the blackberry specialist. I have no idea how Bee got her mitts on all of this. Not to point fingers, but the only person who could possibly have had access is Kyle. (The old Kyle.) Perhaps you can confront him during your next therapy session. I, for one, would like some answers. I’m even paranoid this fax will fall into enemy hands.

Elgie wants Bee to go to Lakeside in the fall. All I can say is she had better get over herself because there is
no way
we’re moving that Airstream over to the new house. Can you imagine? We’d be the hillbillies of Madison Park. “We”! As if Elgie would ever want to live together as a family!

I’m sure you think I’m being horribly selfish, but my life has been turned upside down, too! I gave up my job, I’m pregnant at age forty by a man whose life is in turmoil, plus I have terrible morning sickness. The only thing I can hold down is French toast. I’ve already gained eleven pounds, and I’m not even in my second trimester. When Bee finds out that Bernadette perished, not to mention about the baby, who knows what she’ll do?

Here’s a letter from the cruise company along with the captain’s report, plus the forensic analysis. And those gorgeous pictures I promised of the poppies from Ushuaia. I’m late for a VAV meeting, and boy do I need it.

Let me begin by expressing my sincerest condolences to you and Bee for the sudden disappearance of Bernadette. I can only imagine what a shock it must be to lose such an extraordinary woman.

Since Harmsen & Heath was founded by my great-grandfather in 1903, the safety of our passengers has always been our top priority. Indeed, for over a century we have enjoyed an unblemished record.

As promised, I have enclosed a report compiled by Captain Jürgen Altdorf. It is largely based on the electronic signature created by your wife’s magnetically coded ID card. It paints a reliable and detailed portrait of her shipboard life: daily disembarkations, purchases in the gift shop, bills from the ship’s lounge. Additionally, Captain Altdorf conducted extensive interviews per Harmsen & Heath protocol.

Your wife’s last recorded activity occurred on January 5. She went on the morning excursion, and returned safely to the ship, then made some significant charges at the bar. At that point, the H&H
Allegra
headed through the Gerlache Strait. It should be noted that the ocean was unusually turbulent during the next twenty-four hours. We were forced to cancel two planned disembarkations. Out of an abundance of
caution, several announcements were made over the PA system, warning passengers not to go out on deck during such severe weather.

I believe the weather conditions and charges made at the Shackleton Lounge will give you a better understanding of your wife’s condition on the day she was last seen. While nobody can ever know what really happened, there are inevitable conclusions to be drawn.

While unpleasant to contemplate, the facts may provide a small measure of comfort to you and your daughter during this difficult grieving period.

Using an Electro-Static Detection Apparatus (ESDA), we analyzed the second-page writing present on several sheets of stationery with the HARMSEN & HEATH
ALLEGRA
letterhead. Due to the
three distinct depths
of indented writing, it is highly probable that a
three-page letter
was written. It is signed, “Love, Mom.” This strongly indicates to us that it is a letter written from a mother to a child. The most frequently repeated words are “Audrey Griffin,” which appear to have been written at least six times. While we are unable to piece together the whole letter, we are somewhat confident that the letter contains the following phrases:

“
Audrey Griffin is the devil.”

“Audrey Griffin is an angel.”

“Romeo, Romeo.”

“I am a Christian.”

“Audrey knows.”

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

I need you to immediately go home and check the answering machine, my mail, and email. I’m urgently looking for anything from Bernadette Fox.

Yes, Bernadette Fox.

For months, you’ve wanted to know what transpired during those days before Christmas that caused me to capitulate. I have been trying to find the courage to tell you one of these weekends in family therapy. But God has decided he wants me to tell you now.

Those days leading up to Christmas were a nightmare. I was furious at Bernadette Fox. I was furious at Kyle for being such a stinker. I was furious at Soo-Lin for siding with Elgin Branch. I was furious at you for drinking and refusing to move to Soo-Lin’s with us. No matter how many gingerbread houses I made, it only increased my fury.

Then one evening I visited Soo-Lin at work. A woman came in and asked for Elgin Branch. I noticed an ID badge from Madrona Hill, the mental institution. I was intrigued, to put it mildly. My interest was further piqued when Soo-Lin lied to me about this woman’s identity.

Soo-Lin returned home late that night, and while she slept, I rifled through her bag. In it, I found a classified FBI dossier.

The contents were astonishing. Bernadette had unwittingly given her financial information to an identity-theft operation, and the FBI was conducting a sting. Even more shocking were Post-it notes stuck to the back of the file. They were handwritten, between Elgin and Soo-Lin, suggesting that he was meeting with Madrona Hill because Bernadette was a harm to herself and others. His evidence? That she had run over my foot and destroyed our home.

My sworn enemy was being sent away to a mental institution?! It should have been cause for celebration. Instead, I sat on the hall bench, my whole body quivering. Everything fell away but the truth: Bernadette never ran over my foot. I faked the whole thing. And the mudslide? Bernadette removed the blackberries exactly as I had asked her to do.

A full hour must have passed. I didn’t move. I just breathed and
stared at the floor. I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be awakened to the truth. The truth? My lies and exaggerations would be responsible for a mother being locked up.

I dropped to my knees. “Tell me, God,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”

A calm came over me. A calm that has protected me for the past month. I walked to the twenty-four-hour Safeway, made a copy of every document in that file, plus the Post-it notes, and tucked the originals back into Soo-Lin’s bag before anyone was up.

While everything in those documents was true, it was a
partial
truth. I was determined to fill in the story with my own documentation. The next morning, I ransacked our house for every email and note I could find about the mudslide and my “injury,” then spent the whole day assembling them chronologically with Bernadette’s emails from the FBI file. I knew that my more complete story would absolve Bernadette.

But from what? What had transpired in that meeting between Elgin and the psychiatrist? Was there a plan?

I returned to Soo-Lin’s at four in the afternoon. Lincoln and Alexandra were at swim team. Kyle, of course, was zombified, playing video games in the basement. I stepped in front of the TV. “Kyle,” I said, “if I needed to read Soo-Lin’s email, how would I go about it?” Kyle grunted and went upstairs to the linen closet. A dusty tower computer, giant keyboard, and boxy monitor were on the floor. Kyle set them up on the bed in the guest room and hooked the modem into the phone jack.

An ancient version of Windows loaded, with a turquoise screen, a strange blast from the past! Kyle turned to me. “I’m assuming you don’t want her knowing?” “That would be optimal.” Kyle went to a Microsoft website and downloaded a program that allows you to remotely take over another person’s computer. He had Soo-Lin’s password and ID
sent to her email program on this computer. With that information, he entered a bunch of numbers separated by periods, and, within minutes, what Soo-Lin sees on her laptop at Microsoft appeared on the screen in front of us. “She’s away from her computer, it looks like,” Kyle told me, cracking his knuckles. He punched in a few more things. “She’s got a signature saying she’ll be out of the office for the night. You probably have time.”

I didn’t know whether to hug him or slap him. Instead, I gave him money and told him to wait outside for Lincoln and Alexandra and take them out for pizza. Kyle was halfway down the stairs when I had an even bigger idea. “Kyle,” I called, “you know how Soo-Lin’s an admin? Do you think we have enough information to take over, say, her boss’s computer?” “You mean Bee’s dad?” “Yeah, Bee’s dad.” “It depends,” he said, “if she has access to his in-box. Let me check.”

Warren, I’m not joking when I say that within five minutes I was looking at Elgin Branch’s computer. Kyle checked his calendar. “He’s having dinner with his brother right now, so he’ll probably be off-line for at least an hour.”

I furiously read correspondence between Elgin and Soo-Lin, his brother, and that psychiatrist. I discovered the plan for an intervention the next morning. I wanted copies of the documents to add to my new, comprehensive narrative, but there was no printer. After everyone was asleep (except Soo-Lin, who’d called to say she wouldn’t be coming home that night), Kyle opened two Hotmail accounts and taught me how to take something called a “screen shot” and email the image from one Hotmail account to the other… or something. All I know is, it worked. I printed them out from a computer at the Safeway.

The intervention was happening at Dr. Neergaard’s office. I didn’t want to interfere with an FBI investigation. But there was no way Bernadette was going to get hauled off to a mental hospital because of my
lies. At nine a.m., I headed to the dentist’s office. On my way, on a hunch, I drove by Straight Gate.

There was a police car in the driveway as well as Soo-Lin’s Subaru. I parked on a side street. Just then, a familiar car zoomed by. It was Bernadette, behind dark glasses. I had to get this file to her. But how would I get past the police?

Of course! The hole in the fence!

I ran down the side street, climbed through the fence, and clambered up the naked hill. (An incredible side note: the blackberries had begun to grow back. All that work for nothing!)

I clawed my way across the watery mud until I reached Bernadette’s photinia. I grabbed the branches and hoisted myself up onto the lawn. There was one police officer at the far side of the house, with his back to me. I crept up the lawn to the house. I had no plan. It was just me, the manila envelope in the waist of my pants, and God.

Commando-style, I slithered up the grand stairway along the back of the house and onto the rear portico. Everyone was gathered in the living room. I couldn’t hear them, but it was clear from their body language that the intervention was in full swing. Then a figure crossed to the far side of the living room. It was Bernadette. I ran down the steps. A light turned on in a small side window, about twelve feet up. (The side yard slopes down steeply, so from the back of the house the first floor is the equivalent of several stories high.) Crouched down, I ran to it.

Then I tripped over something. I’ll be damned, but it was a ladder, lying across the side yard, as if God had placed it there Himself. From that point on, I felt invincible. I knew He was protecting me. I picked up the ladder and stood it against the house. Without hesitation, I climbed up and tapped on the window.

“Bernadette,” I whispered. “Bernadette.”

The window opened. Bernadette’s gobsmacked face was in it. “Audrey?”

“Come.”

“But—” She couldn’t pick her poison, coming with me or being locked up in a loony bin.

“Now!” I climbed down, and Bernadette followed, but not before she shut the window.

“Let’s go to my house,” I said. Again she hesitated.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I’m a Christian.”

A radio squelched. “Kevin, see anything?”

Bernadette and I made our break across the lawn, dragging the ladder with us.

We skidded down the muddy hill and into our backyard. The floor guys were quite surprised to see us mud creatures stagger through the door. I sent the men home.

I handed Bernadette my completed dossier, which also included a newly published article Kyle had found on the Internet about Bernadette’s architecture career. “You should have told me you won a MacArthur grant,” I said. “I might have been less of a gnat if I knew you were such a genius.”

I left Bernadette at the table. I took a shower, brought her tea. She read, expressionless, with furrowed brow. She spoke only once, to say, “I would have done it.”

“Done what?” I asked.

“Given Manjula power of attorney.” She turned the last page and took a deep breath.

“There’s still boxes of Galer Street gear in the living room if you’d like to change,” I said.

“That’s how desperate I am.” She peeled off her muddy sweater. Underneath, she was wearing a fishing vest. She patted it. Through the mesh pockets, I could see her wallet, cell phone, keys, passport. “I can do anything,” she said with a smile.

“That you can.”

“Please see that Bee gets this.” She slipped the documents back in the envelope. “I know it’s a lot. But she can handle it. I’d rather ruin her with the truth than ruin her with lies.”

“She won’t be ruined,” I said.

“I have to ask you a question. Is he fucking her? The admin, your pally, what’s her name?”

“Soo-Lin?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Soo-Lin. Are she and Elgie—”

“Hard to say.”

That was the last I saw of Bernadette.

I returned to Soo-Lin’s and reserved a space for Kyle at Eagle’s Nest.

I found out Bee was at boarding school. I confirmed it with Gwen Goodyear and sent the envelope of documents to Bee at Choate, with no return address.

I just now learned that Bernadette ended up going to Antarctica, and that she disappeared somewhere on the continent. An investigation was conducted and, reading between the lines, they want everyone to believe Bernadette got drunk and fell overboard. I don’t buy it for a second. But I am worried that she might have tried to get word to Bee through me. Warren, I know this is a lot to digest. But please go home and double-check to see if there’s anything from Bernadette.