If I Die Tonight Page 30

Epilogue

  Two weeks later

  Pearl had visited Wade and Connor Reed in the hospital. Wade, who had been naive enough to attempt suicide with low-dose Xanax, had given his mother, police, and paramedics plenty of time to find him. But it had been his brother who had saved the day. Called at the hospital by a frantic Jackie Reed and roused from a deep sleep, Connor had been alert enough listening to Wade’s suicide note to pick out one line: I’m all alone here right now, unless you count the ghost lol. “That’s the shack by the Kill,” he’d told Jackie over the phone. “It’s haunted.” A detective in the making. Finding those clues.

  The afternoon Pearl had visited them, Wade was just about to be released. Connor still needed another week, but the two boys were sharing a room. By then Bobby Udel, who was in a different wing of the hospital recovering from his gunshot wound, had been charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, official misconduct, and attempted murder, and word had gotten out about Ryan Grant’s confession too. Everyone in town and in the world at large wanted to apologize to the Reeds, and as a result, the boys’ hospital room was filled with flowers, stuffed animals, Mylar balloons—a shrine to the living. Neither one of them seemed very comfortable with it. But Jackie Reed, who greeted Pearl along with the boys’ father, Bill, said, “You can’t stop people from caring.”

  Pearl had stopped by the hospital to tell Wade that the Havenkill PD had chipped in to pay for new tires for his car, at which he’d asked his mom, “You think my car will make it to California?”

  Jackie and the boys were leaving Havenkill, despite their newfound celebrity, the GoFundMes in Wade’s name, the song Aimee En had written for Wade—“Sensitive Boy”—to be released on a major label next month.

  “So why are you leaving?” Pearl had asked.

  Wade had looked at her with those black, sad, survivor’s eyes. “Why stay?”

  Pearl envied that in Wade—the simple ability to leave the past behind. She didn’t have it, not yet. Which was why she’d finally buckled under and called her brother and arranged to see her dying father, whose name was Milton. Milton Maze.

  She’d never referred to him by name or even thought of him by name, and so, sitting in Paul’s car, on their way up to Albany, she’d wondered aloud what she should call him. “Milton? Mr. Maze?”

  “What about Dad?” Paul said, proving for the millionth time how very different he and Pearl were.

  “No. Not Dad.”

  “Pops?”

  “Stop it.”

  Milton Maze lived in a white two-story row house, wedged in between two very similar-looking row houses, one yellow, the other blue, a few blocks from Albany Med. There were some cars parked out front—the place had no garage—and so Pearl wondered which of the cars belonged to her brother, just to have something to wonder about that didn’t terrify her as they walked to the door.

  “The roof didn’t cave in,” Paul said. He was talking about the roof at the Havenkill police station, which, despite some very stormy weather, had remained intact long enough for the big move into the double-wide. He’d pointed that fact out a few times, whenever Pearl had expressed doubts over seeing her father. The roof didn’t cave in. See? You aren’t as doomed as you think.

  “Paul.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m still working out of a trailer. I can’t turn around without bumping into another cop and whenever we bust someone who isn’t, uh, hygienic, the whole place reeks for days.”

  “Meaning . . .”

  “Meaning nothing. Meaning there is no meaning behind the station’s noncollapsing roof. Much as you may want there to be.”

  Paul smiled at the sidewalk. “I like you,” he said.

  JAMES WAS WAITING for them—a tall twenty-three-year-old with Pearl’s curly dark hair and gray eyes. “Wow,” he said, when he met her. Nothing more. They hugged, very awkwardly. Paul shook his hand. And then James took Pearl upstairs to Milton’s room and left her there, as much of a stranger as he’d always been, nothing really changed at all.

  Inside Milton Maze’s bedroom, Pearl’s breath caught. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting to find on the other side of the door. Her memories of her father were so vague, but they all involved a tall figure standing over her, turning away. She imagined an angry shadow in the bed, so when she walked into the room and saw a frail, white-haired man with watery eyes, she was surprised enough to move closer. The sun shone through the shaded window, the air too close—medicinal and slightly stale.

  “Pearl.” His voice sounded like snow crunching, and Pearl felt outside of herself, as though she were watching the moment as a movie.

  He held out his hand. She reluctantly took it. It was soft and dry, his fingernails clean. Well cared for, for a dying man. He smelled of medicine and soap, and he smiled at her. It made her feel strange.

  She heard herself speak. “I shot a man a couple of weeks ago.”

  His smile dropped away.

  “Second person I’ve ever shot. It was in the line of duty and he had a gun drawn on me. When I shot him, I figured he’d shoot me too . . . that he might kill me, considering where his gun was aimed. I closed my eyes. I waited for it. But when I opened them, he was down. A couple other officers tackled him.”

  Pearl’s father watched her with bloodshot eyes, silvery from cataracts. She wasn’t quite sure whether he could see her at all. “My gun was aimed at his foot, his at my head. But I was the one who fired. Can you believe that?”

  “How did you feel,” he said, “knowing you were going to stay alive?”

  “Surprised,” Pearl said quietly. “Disappointed, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s just the way I am.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s the way I made you.”

  Pearl let go of his hand.

  There was a pitcher of water and a stack of cups on the nightstand. He motioned to it. She poured him a cupful and he took a few long, greedy gulps. “She’d been cheating on me,” he said finally, as though coming up for air. “I’d just found out. I was mad, but couldn’t . . . I couldn’t say it. I knew if I said it, she’d leave me. Take you kids with her. You were on the floor, playing with my shoes. You always liked to play with my shoes.”

  He motioned to the water again. Pearl poured him another cupful and waited for him to drink it, a ritual that was already getting to her. She didn’t know why she was waiting. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be here.

  “She was putting her makeup on. The safe was under the desk and it was open. It was right next to my shoes.” He took another swallow. “I saw you pick up the gun. I was standing in the doorway.”

  “I don’t need to hear any more.”

  “You picked it up and you pointed it. Just like you’d seen me do at the shooting range.”

  “Please stop.”

  “You pointed it at her. I could have kept you from doing it but I didn’t. I stayed in the doorway. I turned my back until I heard the shot.”

  An image flashed in Pearl’s mind. Something she’d seen in nightmares. The heavy thing dropping out of her hand. Her ears ringing. A woman in a black dress, falling onto a pale pink carpet, pooling blood. And Pearl, all alone, looking for her dad . . .

  “I waited. I didn’t come in the room right away. I watched her fall, and I watched you, this little girl . . .” Milton Maze’s face was red. Tears trickled down his cheeks. “I was glad it had happened.”

  Pearl stared at him. She knew what she was supposed to say: I forgive you. But she couldn’t do it. Her mouth wouldn’t form the words.

  “I couldn’t look at you after. It’s why I left you at your aunt Ruth’s. I couldn’t look at you, Pearl, without remembering what kind of monster I am.”

  Pearl took a step back from the bed; the smell was getting to her: soap and medicine and sweat and death; the words were getting to her too. What did he want from her? What did he expect? “Thank you for telling me.” She couldn’t say any more than that. She
put Milton Maze behind her, swallowing tears, knowing she’d never see him again.

  Walking back to his car, Paul turned to her. “So what did you call him?” he said. “Milton? Milty? Mr. Maze?”

  Pearl grabbed Paul’s hand more tightly than usual. She kissed him on the cheek. The roof didn’t cave in. Maybe it never will. “What the hell is your last name?” she said.

  Six weeks later

  Jackie was at the wheel when they crossed the California border, Wade’s car hitched to the bumper, Death Valley spreading out in front of them like some strange, lifeless planet. Connor was asleep in the backseat and Wade was next to her, eyes closed, headphones jammed into his ears. She tapped him on the shoulder, and his eyes opened, taking it all in. “Welcome to Mars,” Jackie said.

  “Wow.” He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and started taking pictures.

  It was about as much conversation as they’d had during this trip, Jackie and Wade, with Connor only slightly chattier. But she found comfort now in these silences, the nodding of their heads as they listened to their music, the sound of their breathing. It was all she needed—the two of them, alive.

  Yesterday morning, she’d gotten an e-mail from Helen. A long letter detailing her divorce that ended, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

  Such a strange expression—as though the heart were a messy closet you dug around in, forgiveness stashed in some long-forgotten shoe box. Jackie felt sorry for Helen. She might forgive her, maybe write her back someday. But for now, she had a rental in the valley to settle into, two boys to acclimate to new schools, a real estate job to start, a half-finished manuscript to complete. So many new things to begin that the idea of looking back on anything seemed unappealing and remote.

  “Mom,” said Wade. “Let me take your picture.”

  Jackie turned to her oldest son. He held up his phone, the desert sun shining on his floppy, two-toned hair. She’d forgotten how oddly bright California was.

  “Don’t look so serious,” he said.

  Jackie flashed him a smile, not so much posing but watching him: a young man, heading into his future. Connor snored in the backseat, growing older by the second, and Jackie wanted to hold this moment in her hands, to keep it with her always.

  Acknowledgments

  Tremendous thanks to Sergeant Peter Dunn of the Rhinebeck Police Department, Lee Lofland, and cybersecurity and digital forensic expert Josh Moulin for answering all my police-related questions. Thanks also to Sergeant Dunn for his hospitality in allowing me to tour the Rhinebeck station.

  As ever, I am so grateful to my wonderful and insightful agent, Deborah Schneider, and the ever-organized Cathy Gleason, as well as the amazing team at William Morrow, including Liate Stehlik, Priyanka Krishnan, and my truly brilliant editor, Lyssa Keusch. Thanks so much also to the great Selina Walker and Sonny Marr at Penguin Random House UK.

  Thanks and hugs to so many good friends, including Sharon Breslau for letting me know how a Realtor thinks; James Conrad and Jackie Kellachan of my all-time favorite bookstore, the Golden Notebook; and, for their support and advice, Chas Cerulli and James (again), Jamie and Doug Barthel, Paul Leone, Wendy Corsi Staub . . . and of course my beloved FLs who always make it nice.

  Finally, but not least, thank you to my in-laws, Sheldon and Marilyn Gaylin, and my mother, Beverly LeBov Sloane, for much-needed emotional support. And of course, Mike and Marissa Gaylin, without whom the roof would cave in.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Alison Gaylin

  About the Book

  * * *

  “We’re The Guinea Pigs”

  Fake News

  Read on

  * * *

  Five Big Books Set in Small Towns

  About the Author

  Meet Alison Gaylin

  ALISON GAYLIN is the author of the Edgar-nominated thriller Hide Your Eyes and its sequel You Kill Me, the stand-alone Edgar-nominated What Remains of Me, and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was (winner of the Shamus Award), Into the Dark, and the Edgar-nominated Stay With Me. A graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she lives with her husband and daughter in Woodstock, New York.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  About the Book

  “We’re the Guinea Pigs”

  There was a time, back in the days when MySpace was first becoming a thing, that I took little notice of social media. To my mind, it was a fad, possibly worthwhile as a marketing tool for my books, but still destined to go the way of the CB radio. Did I worry about its potential effect on my then six-year-old daughter? Not even for a second. The Disney shows she watched—with their emphasis on over-the-top materialism and outsmarting grown-ups—seemed like a far more pressing concern.

  It’s more than a decade later, and obviously things have changed. Like If I Die Tonight’s Jackie Reed, I think a lot about my teenager’s online activity. And while I have many conflicting feelings about it, the overwhelming one is a type of helplessness. Yes, I’ve friended her on Facebook. I follow her on Instagram. Yet I’m aware that she probably has other accounts I don’t know about (every kid does) and probably spends more time on them than she lets on (again, every kid does), which means that every day I lose her to an alternate world with its own set of dramas and dangers—a world that I’m far less familiar with, and within which I feel ill-equipped to keep her safe.

  I’m not alone. According to a Pew research poll conducted in 2015, 92 percent of teens reported going online daily, including 24 percent who claimed to be communicating on the internet “almost constantly.” And their moms and dads are worried about it. The 2017 C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health found internet safety topping such issues as teen pregnancy, child abuse, and suicide as a primary concern among parents.

  It’s no wonder it’s such a prevalent fear: as well as we think we know our teenagers, the fact is, they all long to escape us. It’s not our fault. It’s simple biology, that desire for independence. And the internet is, as it turns out, an incredibly effective getaway car.

  Especially considering that we aren’t all that adept at hopping in and taking the wheel. As a good friend of mine put it (in a Facebook message of all things): “When it comes to social media, we’re the guinea pigs.” Raising a teen is tough enough when you’re dealing with issues that have been around for generations . . . dating or driving, for instance, or even drinking and drugs. But as my friend pointed out, we know about all those things because we’ve lived through them. Never having known what it’s like to have posted the wrong picture in the wrong place, to have fallen prey to cyberbullying or catfishing or revenge porn or any number of newly named horrors that didn’t even exist when we were teens, we are uniquely unqualified to help our kids navigate their way around them now.

  And we tend to be dangerously slow on the uptake.

  Preparing to write this piece, I posted on Facebook, asking parents of teens for stories having to do with “social media impacting your child’s life in some unforeseen way.”

  Almost immediately, I received close to two dozen private messages, the stories ranging from shocking to surprisingly sweet to borderline tragic. There was the dad who discovered the private message thread in which his son desperately attempted to counsel a suicidal friend. There was another man, shocked to learn that his stepdaughter had put out feelers over Snapchat to purchase illegal prescription drugs, and had begun corresponding with a stranger about it. There was a woman who learned that her son, treated cruelly by girls at school, had secretly joined an online “men’s rights” group. Yet another mother found out that her daughter was being bullied over Instagram without ever telling her about it, while a stepdad was delighted to learn that his wife’s young teen daughter had learned sign language, on her own, via YouTube.

  In every incident—
from cyberbullying to sign language—the parent happened on their child’s online life long after it had begun. And that seems part and parcel of this brave, new, confusing world that our kids have settled into. We are always, always the last to know.

  What can any of us do to keep our children safe in the internet age? For me, the answer is to be as vigilant as I can in real life. I pay attention to her moods, ask questions about her life and try to know as many of her friends as I can. My husband and I have warned her of the dangers of the internet, and we’ve let her know that if she ever runs into trouble, we’re here.

  It’s not perfect. But then again, when it comes to parenting, is there ever a perfect answer? Haven’t all of us been disappointed in them, in ourselves, at least once?

  We do what we can. Everything we can. And we trust them.

  Fake News

  It was a small headline in a local newspaper from a nearby town. And for those new to the area and those who didn’t have children, it was not terribly memorable:

  Local Teen Victim of a Hit-and-Run Accident.

  In the weeks that followed, though, the story took hold and spun wildly, as small-town news stories so often do. The boy hit by the car died, and another local teen emerged as a suspect and was later arrested. Because of their ages, both of their names were kept out of the paper. But that didn’t stop everyone—particularly the young people—from embellishing the story. As days and weeks went by, the hit-and-run was said to have been gang-related, drug-related, a purse-snatching gone wrong, the inevitable culmination of a years-long vendetta between the two boys who, as it turned out, were from rival schools.

  Outside of them being from rival schools, none of it was true, of course. But in a way, it didn’t matter. Those spinning the various stories were younger kids, friends of my daughter who had never met either boy but who suffered from that nagging, yearning boredom so specific to kids growing up in small towns.