All the Little Pieces

10 (#ulink_8948cecd-2a7e-5cdd-bdf0-d6df60371ad3)

‘Hey there, honey,’ Jarrod whispered, his breath warm on her cheek. ‘What time did you get in?’

‘’Bout three,’ Faith answered softly, her face buried in a pillow, most of her head and body burrowed under the comforter, her eyes still closed. The house was freezing; Jarrod liked to keep it like an igloo when they slept.

‘Why aren’t you at your sister’s?’ He sounded distracted.

She could smell the fresh scent of soap and his Bulgari cologne; she heard the crisp rustle his jacket made when he checked his cell phone and put it into his suit pocket. Without opening her eyes, she could tell he was dressed for court and probably running late.

‘Long story,’ she mumbled. ‘I … I wasn’t feeling well; I didn’t want to stay.’

‘What?’ His hand found her forehead. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘My stomach … I’m OK now.’

‘Did you get sick?’

‘I didn’t feel well. It’s all right, I’m OK.’

She could tell he was checking his cell again. ‘You must have some great stories to tell about last night.’

Faith buried herself deeper into the pillow.

He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Sleep in; it’s early. I got a motion in Palm Beach, so I gotta run. I’ll take Maggie to school.’

‘Maggie’s up?’

‘Up and downstairs and ready to go and, boy, is she in rare form. She actually wants to go to school today. Mrs Wackett is in for a treat. Did she sleep at all?’ he asked, his voice fading as he moved toward the bedroom door.

‘In the car.’

‘That must have been some ride home …’ he said, his voice rising on the word ‘some’ as he opened the door and headed out into the hall.

She opened her eyes. ‘Huh?’ The room was dark but for a slice of weak light that leaked onto the carpet where the drapes didn’t meet.

‘Love you!’ he yelled from downstairs. She heard him hurry Maggie into the car, then his garage door opened and shut and he was gone.

When she woke up again the bedroom was still dark. For a few blissful seconds while she lay there tuning in to the day, she forgot about the night before – the party, the fight, the storm, the girl, the strange men. But with just a few blinks, the static was gone and it all came rushing back. And along with the assorted upsetting memories came guilt, accompanied by a heavy, awful, queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, like she had drunk a shot of glue. She looked over at the clock and sat up with a start. It was already eight thirty. She hadn’t slept that late in ages.

Her head throbbed and her body ached. Physically, she felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Emotionally she felt just as drained, like the mornings after she and Jarrod had had an argument and she’d spent most of the night crying. After she’d put Maggie to bed last night she’d finally had that cigarette, along with a generous shot of Stoli, out on the back patio. That was probably a bad idea in hindsight, but she could not sleep when she first got home. She could not calm down. She couldn’t turn her brain off. She had reached for the phone a few times, only to put it back down before even punching a number. More than three hours had passed since she’d seen what she’d seen. Then it was four. With every slip of the minute hand, the sense of urgency seemed to wane. Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?Well, I guess it’s not really an emergency any more, Operator, now is it? I’m back home and those people are long gone back into the woods. Where, you ask? I don’t have a clue. Make a left at the cane stalk and then drive around in circles for a long time. The same fear-stoked rationalizations popped back into her head, fighting off the guilt, aided and abetted by the boozy effects of the vodka, which finally worked its magic. She’d gone upstairs somewhere around five, staring at the shadows of the palm fronds that violently danced on her ceiling, courtesy of the patio light that she had forgotten to turn off outside.

She got out of bed now, moved over to the drapes and hesitated, looking at the nondescript light slice on the carpet, her hand on the cord. What’s behind curtain number two, Bob? Show us what she’s won!

Faith hoped it would be sunny and beautiful outside – a normal, enviable Florida day. Bright blue skies, puffy white clouds. She hoped it would look nothing like the day before. A do-over – a symbolic fresh start. But when she opened the drapes her heart sank: it was gloomy and rainy. In fact, it looked exactly as it had when she’d pulled out of her driveway yesterday. The glue shot churned in her stomach. She scanned the backyard below. Everything looked the same as it had twenty-four hours earlier – same lounge cushion in the pool, same pink impatiens in the garden, same swingset in the corner, same toppled-over umbrella.

Everything looked the same. Everything was completely different.

She turned on the TV, raising the volume so she could hear it in the bathroom as she showered. The local morning news was over, so she clicked on Headline News. The DOW was up. So were oil prices. A child murder from 1957 was finally solved. Another corporate swindler was indicted. The polar ice sheets were melting faster than scientists had predicted.

No missing persons in Florida. No dead girls found in sugar cane fields.

Downstairs she put on a pot of coffee and scanned the Sun-Sentinel – even the sports section, in case the girl from last night was some high school track star who hadn’t shown up for practice. There was no mention of any missing girls, in Florida or anywhere else. She felt a tiny bit better, although she knew something that had happened in the middle of the night would not make the morning paper. It might make the TV news, though, and there was nothing there, either. She’d have to keep checking the paper and the Internet and watching the news over the next couple of days. If there was still nothing by Wednesday or Thursday, then there was obviously nothing to worry about. She could officially breathe a sigh of relief and chalk up whatever had happened last night to some weird, unfortunate experience that she hoped never to go through again.

She popped three Advil for the headache that wouldn’t go away and downed them with a long gulp of coffee. She still couldn’t shake the unsettling, off-kilter feeling. It was a feeling that something was … wrong. Amiss. Out of place. Not right. She looked around the kitchen. The milk was on the counter, cereal bowls left in the sink, the toaster was out. But it wasn’t the mess leftover from breakfast or the lounge cushion still floating in the pool that was bothering her. Like in her bedroom, everything looked exactly as she had left it before she’d headed to Charity’s yesterday. The hand-painted canisters she’d gotten on vacation in New Orleans were displayed neatly next to her collection of olive oils and a decorative tin of amaretto cookies. Maggie’s artwork covered the fridge: circles made with glued-on buttons, crayoned stick figures, Jackson Pollock-esque finger paintings. Jarrod’s shoes and jacket were sitting on a seat, waiting for someone to take them upstairs and put them away. Maggie’s toys were spread out all over the family room. Like the backyard, everything looked the same, but it was all completely different. It made her think of Maggie’s favorite story, The Cat in the Hat. It felt like, while she was away yesterday at Charity’s, strangers had come in, partied on her furniture and done crazy stuff with her house, then gone and cleaned up and put everything back in its proper place moments before she’d stepped through the door. Everything looked the same … but it wasn’t.

Faith put the milk away and the dishes in the dishwasher. The ‘change’ she was sensing was obviously imperceptible to others, instigated by her own Irish Catholic guilt. Hopefully, time would temper the guilt and the unsettling feeling would settle down and go away. After all, the unsuspecting mother in the Dr Seuss tale had no idea what calamities befell her house while she was away and she would never have to know since everything had been put back in its proper place. It was the children who faced the moral dilemma of whether or not to tell her. She looked around her kitchen. Would it really matter what had happened last night as long as everything was put back to the way it was supposed to be?

Then she thought of the Explorer. She braced her hands on the island’s sink and stared at the door that led out to her garage. Not everything looked the same as it had when she’d left yesterday …

After she’d finished cleaning the kitchen, she headed back upstairs to the laundry room. Her clothes from last night were buried in the hamper where she’d stuffed them, including her blue jeans. Her shirt smelled of wine and beer and smoke and partying and she sprayed it with Febreeze and a glob of Shout for good measure. Then she squirted a mound of the spot cleaner on the dark stain on her jeans and shoved everything in the washing machine, watching as it filled. A fresh start. A do-over.

Then she headed back downstairs.

The house had two garages: a double on one side where her car was, off the kitchen, and a single on the other side of the house, which was where Jarrod parked his Infinity. She hesitated for a moment with her hand on the door to the garage that housed her Explorer and held her breath. Part of her was hoping that last night was somehow a dream. A crazy nightmare that only felt real. Or maybe one that she was remembering as worse than what it actually was. She took a deep breath, turned the knob and flicked on the light. Her heart sank.

The grille was dented and so was the bumper. There were two dents in the hood along with two deep scratches. It was all very, very real.

She ran her hands over the hood, her fingertips following the scratches. On a shelf by the AC handler was a box of rags. She took one, wiped underneath the fender, held her breath again and looked at it.

Nothing. There was nothing there. No blood.

She exhaled. She stuck her head under the car and wiped again – hard. She looked again. Nothing. She scrubbed. The rag was dirty, but it wasn’t red. The rationalizations were back.

Maybe it wasn’t blood that you thought you saw. Maybe it was grease.

She got up and went over to the driver’s side window and looked in. She could see the scraggly streaks inside from where her own fingers had wiped away the fog when she first saw the girl. She traced the glass outside, where the girl had been standing, where she had placed her dirty palms. But like the dark substance under the fender, the handprints that she feared might still be there were gone.

Faith took a deep breath, twisting the rag around and around in her fingers.

Then she took the rag and wiped the glass clean, anyway.

11 (#ulink_b6ab1961-7f6b-5d45-a9dd-36a34c04a2aa)

‘I can pull that out. No biggie. You don’t even need a paint job,’ said the mechanic with the name patch that read ‘Sal’.

‘Really?’ Faith exhaled a deep breath.

‘Yeah. It won’t be perfect, like if you got a new fender or nothing. Same with these dents on the hood. I’ll pop those out.’

‘That would be great. And the …?’ She pointed at the scratches next to the dents.

‘I can wet sand those,’ he answered with a smile. ‘I’ll try compound first. That might work.’

‘Well, that’s better than what I was thinking.’

‘Problem is your grille. You need a new one.’

‘Oh.’ Her face fell.