What Have You Done Page 5

  His mother had survived. She had been arrested and taken to a mental institution, where she ended up killing herself on the second anniversary of their father’s death by drinking rat poison a hired exterminator had accidentally left behind in her bathroom a few days earlier. All she had wanted was to be with the man she loved so dearly. She finally got her wish with a most painful and agonizing death.

  The small waves slapping the pier sounded like cannons exploding as Liam inched his way closer to the boat. He walked carefully, always staying in the center of the platform, feeling it sway even though he knew that was impossible. His breath grew short and quick as it always did. His hands began to sweat, even in the rain.

  He’d never been out on the boat but often found enough courage to climb aboard and have a few beers with his brother at the slip. The usual joke would entail Sean lowering the motor into the water and starting it, threatening to take it out onto the Delaware River to help Liam overcome his debilitating fear their mother had forever instilled in him. The idling motor would send Liam into a panic that was all too real. Sean seemed to enjoy watching him squirm as he revved the throttle and made as if he were about to untie the moorings. But Liam knew his brother would never really take off in the boat. When all was said and done, he and Sean shared a bond that was stronger than anything he’d ever known. Sean was there to look out for him and protect him. No way that boat would ever leave the slip. He knew that, yet logic would never overtake the panic.

  Liam placed a careful foot on the edge of the dock and then stepped onto the back of the Bayliner. He clung to the boat’s railing so tightly he could feel it in his shoulders. The black water nipped at the heels of his shoes, trying to grab him from the swimming platform and pull him under. He threw one leg over the side, then slid his body over the railing and brought the other leg around. The rain pelted his face as he balanced himself.

  “Sean!”

  The door to the interior cabin opened, and Sean appeared, carrying a life jacket. He tossed it to his brother. “Hey. I didn’t hear you come on board.”

  Liam shuffled toward the doorway and fell into it, grabbing the life jacket and throwing it over his neck. “Can’t we ever just meet at a bar? Why do you put me through this?”

  “Getting on the boat is one step toward your recovery.”

  “I’m never going to recover.”

  “Not with that attitude you won’t.”

  The interior cabin was simple. A couch that converted to a bed, a small table that could fold away, a stand-up shower, and the smallest galley kitchen on earth. Sean used it mostly for blue fishing and sometimes slept on board when he took it down toward Virginia or up to Cape Cod. Liam made his way into the cabin and took off his raincoat. He put his arms through the life jacket and fastened the clips. The rain pounded the roof, drowning out the radio, which was broadcasting classic rock.

  “Seeing Kerri like that today,” Sean said. “It scared me. Someone knows something. They know we knew Kerri. And they know about Mom.”

  Liam walked farther into the cabin. “The only people who knew about all that is me, you, Kerri, and Don. Unless you told someone else.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Me either.”

  “What about Kerri? She could’ve told her friends.”

  “Maybe. I never met any of them, so I can’t be sure.”

  Sean sipped his beer.

  “The paper flowers Mom made for us that day wasn’t public domain,” Liam said as he sat down on the couch. “It was kept out of the news at the time. How would someone know about that?”

  “They wouldn’t. But whoever killed Kerri knows it all. You, me, the flowers, the affair.”

  A heavy silence hung in the cabin.

  “Any memories come back from last night?” Sean asked.

  “Nothing. I’m going to have my blood run for a tox screen. See if I was drugged somehow.”

  “You think that’s a good idea? I mean, aren’t people going to want to know why you’re testing your blood?”

  “I’ll run it through Gerri Cain’s office at Jefferson. My team won’t know.”

  Sean put his beer down. “I don’t see that sweatshirt you came here to get last night. I assume you picked it up. Did you see it at home this morning?”

  “I didn’t even remember I was coming here to get a sweatshirt until you told me. Hell, I don’t even know which sweatshirt I was talking about.”

  “What’s going on here, Liam?”

  Liam shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  10

  With the storm now receding into a light drizzle, Liam sat in his car, staring up at his house as thoughts and emotions compounded, one upon the next. There were several lights on in the windows, but everything else was dark.

  It was a simple house in the South Jersey suburbs—a quaint white colonial with black shutters that sat on a quarter-acre lot—and from his vantage point in the driveway, he could see part of the stone wishing well he’d put in last summer. Plants hung in baskets on the front porch, the breeze rocking them ever so gently. Inside the silence of his car, he looked upon all of this as if he were staring at a picture. It felt distant, not part of this reality. Not after what he’d seen today.

  He and Vanessa had been happy once and were in the midst of trying to find that happiness again. But so much had happened in between. They’d met in college through a mutual friend. She was in nursing school, and he was studying forensic science. The attraction had been there from the start, but their true bond came from their mutual loss of their fathers when they were young. Vanessa had lost her father to a fatal heart attack when she was ten, and she’d been the first person Liam had known, other than Sean, who’d had any idea what it was like to lose a parent when you were still a kid. Vanessa could relate to the struggles Liam had had growing up without parents in the traditional sense of the term. She still had her mother, but that sense of having lost her dad was always there. Soon, understanding and empathy had grown into love, and he knew he’d found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He’d found his soul mate.

  They’d married shortly after graduating college. She’d gotten a job at an area hospital, and he’d been accepted into the academy. Their friends saw them as the ultimate couple, but like anything observed superficially from the outside, there were hidden cracks beneath the surface of their blissful existence, and these cracks became deeper and wider as the years went by. Their first test came when Vanessa discovered she was unable to have children. They had talked about adoption, but neither of them really set out to make that happen. The loss that was always there became deeper and more personal as they came to realize they would never have the family both of them had envisioned. The final test had come when Vanessa’s mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

  Vanessa’s emotional downturn had come quickly and without warning. Liam had seen shades of what he’d been through with his own mother, and it frightened him. He began to turn away as she locked him out of a suffering she wanted all to herself. When her mother finally passed, Vanessa filled her suddenly empty hours with an abundance of overtime shifts at the hospital and an unwillingness to get back to the life she’d known beforehand. Liam tried to reconnect with her, but she shut him out. It wasn’t long before the marriage had disintegrated to the point where they’d only see one another while passing in the hallway as one returned from a shift to watch the other leave. Their conversations became mumbled greetings.

  When Vanessa had eventually turned to alcohol to help make it through her days, Liam had seen the finality of it all and had contemplated divorce. His decision to stay with her had been based on the reality that despite their problems, he knew leaving would ultimately destroy her, and he couldn’t be responsible for that. He’d seen what abandonment had done to his own mother. He couldn’t do that to Vanessa. Instead, he had pursued an extramarital relationship with Kerri. It had lasted for a few years until one night, out of the blue, Vane
ssa had broken down and asked him to love her again. They’d sought help from a counselor and found ways to rebuild what they had once had. She’d quit drinking, and together they’d begun a new life and found the hint of a passion that had been dormant. She wanted to take care of him, and he would let her. He’d try to make it work. He owed her that much.

  His relationship with Kerri had lasted for almost two years. Sean had introduced them, and much like when Liam had first laid eyes on Vanessa, there was an instant attraction, despite Kerri being a little younger than he was. They’d had fun together, laughed, and made love as if they were in love. Then one day she’d ended it, imploring him to make things right with Vanessa. She wanted him to go back to his wife to try to make things work again. She didn’t want to be the reason Liam’s marriage couldn’t last. She said he needed a clean slate, and he had reluctantly agreed. But he missed her. He missed everything about her. And now she was truly gone. Dead. It was almost too much to bear.

  Sean knocked on the window and snapped him back to reality. Liam grabbed his briefcase and stepped out of his car onto the driveway.

  “You okay?” Sean asked.

  “Yeah. Daydreaming. Let’s go.”

  The two of them walked along the stone path toward the front of the house. Liam opened the door and was met by a symphony playing on the stereo. The soothing music tried to caress him, to lull him into its arms and protect him from the harsh realities of the outside world, but it fell flat against a headache that was coming on with ferocity. He placed his briefcase down next to a small bench by the stairs and sat to take off his wet shoes.

  “That you?” Vanessa called from the living room.

  “Yeah. Sean too.”

  “Dinner’s in the fridge.”

  “I already ate.”

  Vanessa walked into the foyer. She was dressed in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. She smiled as she walked over, kissed Sean on the cheek, and gave him a tight hug. “I wish you hadn’t eaten. There’s enough for all of us.”

  “Long day today,” Sean replied. “Had to grab something while we could.”

  “Liam bring you by as a peace offering?”

  “No. We were in the area going over a new case, and I just wanted to pop in and say hello. See how you’re doing.”

  “That’s nice of you. I’m doing fine. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “You boys figure out what happened last night? Did you fill in all the blanks?”

  “Just too many drinks,” Liam said.

  Sean nodded. “Yeah. We started with shots, moved to beer, then ended with shots. I drove him home.”

  “And your clothes?”

  “I left them in Sean’s car. Apparently I started stripping on the way home.”

  “Actually,” Sean interjected, “he puked a little, and it stunk, so we threw them in the trunk. I’ll bring them by after I wash them. They’re at the house now.”

  Vanessa moved in closer toward her husband. “Are you all right?” she asked. She touched his forehead with the back of her hand the way a mother would do to a child. “You don’t look good.”

  “I’m fine. Caught this new case today, and it has me wiped.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Tell me about it. It’ll feel good getting it off your chest.”

  Liam looked at his wife, but all he saw was Kerri. For a brief moment, he resented her for being alive, then brushed that thought away as he climbed off the bench and walked toward the stairs. “I don’t think so. I feel like crap. I’m just going to head up, take a shower, and go to bed.”

  “Yeah, I gotta get going too,” Sean said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Sean pecked Vanessa on the cheek. “Good to see you, as always. And go easy on my brother. He can’t handle his liquor.”

  Vanessa chuckled. “So you were brought here as a peace offering.”

  “Maybe.”

  Vanessa walked Sean to the door and watched him scurry back down the stone path and into his pickup. When he was gone, she turned back to her husband. “Look,” she said. There was a hint of desperation in her voice. “I’m sorry I was a bitch this morning. I don’t know why I freaked about you going out last night. It’s really no big deal. I don’t wanna fight. Deal?”

  “Deal. I don’t want to fight either.”

  “Good. How about some tea?”

  “No. I really just want that shower and to go to bed.”

  “You want a beer instead? I was hoping we could spend some time together. Talk and hang out. We could watch one of our shows.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Vanessa nodded, her lips tightening a bit. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

  “That is definitely what I want.”

  “It’s just that the counselor said we should spend as much time together as possible when we’re both home.”

  “I’ll do a movie or one of our shows some other night. I need to lie down right now. Seriously. I’m beat.”

  “What about tomorrow? Joyce and I are having lunch in Center City at Talula’s. Will you meet me there and have something to eat with us?”

  “I promise I’ll try.”

  “I’d like that.” Vanessa came forward one last time. She brushed the hair out of his eyes and ran her soft hand down his cheek to his neck and shoulder. “You know, I could come lie with you. I might be able to fix that headache.”

  Liam didn’t answer. He turned away and climbed the stairs to his bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he went. All he could see was Kerri’s face, blue and swollen. His heart ached more now that he was alone.

  Where were you last night? Why can’t you remember?

  Downstairs, Vanessa called to him one final time. “I love you!”

  Again, he didn’t answer. Instead, he wiped away tears that began streaming down his cheeks as he made his way into the bathroom, started the shower, and used the noise of the water running to mask the uncontrollable sobs that had finally bubbled to the surface. Kerri was dead. His heart was broken.

  11

  “Boys? Boys, come take a look at this! Come into the kitchen!”

  Sean waited a few beats as he heard the front door close and his mother’s footsteps cross the living room into the kitchen. He dropped the bright-yellow Tonka truck he was playing with and ran down the stairs as fast as he could. The sound of Liam’s tiny footsteps came up behind him, but they were slower and more deliberate as his little brother climbed down to the main floor, too slow to keep up with Sean.

  His mother was standing at the far end of the table they ate at every night. She was wearing a long peach dress with a white blouse. Her dark hair was back in a ponytail, and the sun streaming in behind her from the window above the sink gave her an aura that made her look almost magical. She smiled when he ran into the kitchen, then dug into a large brown paper bag that was sitting in front of her, pulling out several items from inside it and placing them side by side on the green plastic tablecloth.

  Liam came in and stopped next to his older brother, panting as if he’d just sprinted in an Olympic race. He instinctively grabbed on to the end of Sean’s sweater and pulled himself closer.

  “What’s all that?” Liam asked.

  “This,” his mother began as she took the last item from the bag, “is our new project. I’m going to show you how to make my paper flowers, and together we’re going to make them and sell them around the neighborhood. People will buy them, and that’ll give us a little spare change until the union calls and puts your father on a new job.”

  Sean walked to the table and could feel Liam tagging along next to him. “We’re going to make paper flowers?”

  His mother held up a small stack of multicolored paper. “Yup. All kinds. Roses, tulips, daisies. All different colors too. Watch.”

  The boys climbed up in their chairs and looked on as their mother took a pair of scissors and cut several t
eardrop shapes out of the colored paper. She then took the shapes and folded them into triangles, attaching the triangles around a long wire.

  “Doesn’t look like a flower to me,” Liam said.

  “Be patient,” his mother replied.

  Sean poked his brother in the head. “Shut up and watch.”

  His mother secured the paper to the wire with tape and continued to add more paper petals to the bud, taping at the base each time. She kept going—cutting teardrop shapes of paper, folding, taping—until she had a decent bloom of what would become a paper rose. Finally, she twisted fake wire leaves onto the original long wire to create a stem and trimmed the end with their father’s wire cutters. She placed the rose on the table and looked up at her boys.

  “That’s a flower!” Liam exclaimed.

  “It’s pretty, Mom,” Sean said. “I like it.”

  His mother smiled and grabbed more paper to start again. “We can sell them at church and at bingo and maybe even the flea market. It’ll be fun.”

  “It’ll be embarrassing,” Sean replied. “All my friends go to those places. They’ll rank me out for selling flowers.”

  “It’s for the family,” his mother said. “We all chip in around here when it comes to family. Don’t you ever forget that. Blood comes first. And I can guarantee if your friends were in the same situation, their parents would have them chipping in too. No matter what. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Good. Now come in closer, boys, and grab some of your own paper. We’ll make one together. I’ll show you.”

  The boys slid their chairs closer, and each grabbed a wire and paper.

  “Okay, first you take the wire . . .”

  The lights of the Ben Franklin Bridge acted like stars in a dark sky that was otherwise absent of them. Sean sat on the back of his boat, listening to the traffic overhead, letting the current of the river rock him. After Liam’s house, he had driven back to the marina to sit and think. He didn’t want to go home just yet. The rain had stopped, and the air was now cool.