Chapter Twenty-Two Tessa
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tessa
“Barb. Barb,” I mutter, wheeling Jasper’s stroller back and forth across the wood planks as I watch the boardwalk where Barb disappeared to meet April.
I let her walk away without telling her I can no longer be a part of this investigation.
I’m letting her return thinking we’re still in this together.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I assume it’s Barb, asking me to come meet April. As soon as I read Gabe’s name, I know something’s wrong.
Gabe starts talking all at once, his sentences braiding into each other, their strands impossible to follow. “Oh, Tessa. Shit. I can’t believe—I’m freaking out—I don’t understand how—”
My first thought is Jasper, and the baby. My first thought is always the children, even though they’re always with me.
“Slow down,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”
“When I got to work, Aram’s car was already in his spot.
It was a little strange. Sometimes he’s here early, though.
He’s got tinted windows.” This seems irrelevant, but I let Gabe meander toward whatever he needs to tell me.
“Only he wasn’t inside the clinic. He never showed up.
Then Lara’s calling, asking if we’ve seen him. He didn’t come home last night, and—”
The wheels on Jasper’s stroller clunk to a stop. He delights at the impact, kicks his legs, eager for more. The crowd around us blurs. I know what’s happened before Gabe tells me that Aram’s dead.
I steady myself against the handles of Jasper’s stroller, trying to catch my breath.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell Gabe.
Barb wanders back in a daze, her shoulders slumped. She begins to tell me how terrified April was, that Regina was in some kind of trouble. I can’t focus.
“I need to go. Something happened with one of Gabe’s employees.” I grab the handles and start to push Jasper, his stroller rattling along the pier. Barb keeps pace, asking what happened. “One of his colleagues, he’s dead. I need—”
Jasper reaches for Barb, hindered by the stroller’s safety belt. “Bar. Bar.”
It distracts us momentarily, forces us to stop and take notice. I didn’t realize he knew her name, how much she’s become a part of his life.
“Actually, can you watch him?” I don’t have time to consider the implications of what I’ve just asked her.
My son has already seen too much death. Plus, there’s no one else who can babysit.
Claire was the one to find Marisol, and even if I had hired her, I would let Claire keep our nanny.
It’s a meager penance for the mistake I made.
But it does mean that I’ve just traversed a line with Barb I won’t be able to retreat from so easily. “I won’t be more than an hour.”
Barb’s face grows serious, as though I’ve asked her to be responsible for national secrets. “Go.”
I point down the paved path that lines the beach. “There’s a playground at the end of the pier. Or you can take him to the skate park. It’s a bit of a walk. Or Café—”
“Tessa, I’ve got this. Go.” I bow my head in thanks and bend down to kiss Jasper’s curls.
As I walk away, I wait for Jasper to cry for me, but I hear only the waves crashing against the beach, the bustle of tourists deciding where to eat, what to ride.
When I peer back at them, Jasper is laughing, reaching for Barb’s nose as she leans toward him, then away.
I hurry off before Barb can see me, before she can think I’m nervous, when really I’m overwhelmed with a gratitude that scares me.
It’s not just Jasper who’s become attached to her.
Ten minutes later, I’m rushing down the sidewalk toward Gabe’s clinic.
The police have blocked off the parking lot outside Longevity Fertility and are conferencing around Aram’s red Mercedes.
Despite the flurry of people, there’s a tranquility to the scene, similar to the one along the canal a week ago.
I survey the area, searching for Gabe, freezing when I see a familiar face.
Dan Huntsman angles to see around the crowd.
What’s he doing here? And is that Erin beside him?
Farther over, the man with the bike who snakes up and down the canals stands beside my always-shorts neighbor and his Yorkies.
My heart pounds, the baby kicking as she feels my fear, making it her own.
I need to calm down, for her if not for me, but I see too many familiar faces.
Too many people here who were also along our canal.
I scan the crowd for Officer Gonzales. Surely he will see how troubling this is.
The patch on one of the police officer’s arms catches my eye.
It says Santa Monica Police Department. Not Los Angeles.
This is a separate city. A different jurisdiction.
When I notice the always-shorts guy again, he tugs the leash of a golden retriever three times the size of my neighbor’s Yorkies.
And that isn’t Erin. It’s another brunette with poutier lips.
Although the man with the bike has the same bright-orange children’s seat mounted to the front, I don’t remember the father along the canals sporting a beard like the one cloaking this man’s face.
These are different neighbors, witnesses to a separate tragedy so close to their lives.
When Dan turns my way, he’s paler, doughier, less angry.
The only people who were at both death scenes are me and my husband.
“T.” Gabe encloses me in his familiar arms. I go slack as he holds me and explains how he found Aram unresponsive behind the steering wheel with pill bottles all around. He called 9-1-1, but they were hours too late.
Gabe buries his head in my hair. “Oh, T.” His breath is hot and ragged against my neck.
I don’t sense any fear in him, just profound loss.
He isn’t thinking about Regina, how recently we’ve been this close to another tragedy.
He isn’t even considering how his patients might interpret a death where they’re hoping to create life.
His thoughts are only on his friend and colleague, inexplicably gone.
I pull my husband closer, trying to exude a calm I don’t feel.
At some point our tiny world is pierced by a wail.
Across the parking lot, Lara, Aram’s wife, is being held back by an officer as she tries to get to the open car door, where her husband is still inside.
She’s wearing a floral pajama set, flip-flops, her hair oily, her face splotchy.
Gabe lets go of me and rushes over to her.
I start to follow him when a spasm hammers my tailbone, forcing me to slow down.
Gabe hugs Lara while one of the nurses rushes into the clinic, returning moments later with a glass of water.
Lara holds it in her hand, uncertain what she’s supposed to do with it.
“This makes no sense,” Lara keeps saying to Gabe. “Did you tell them this makes no sense? Aram didn’t do drugs. You know him. He would never.”
With Lara, I hear the same bewilderment I’ve witnessed in Barb. Not willful ignorance or wishful thinking, but certainty. This wasn’t an accident. Regina’s death wasn’t either.
There are no benches in the parking lot, so Gabe escorts Lara into the office lobby, where it’s eerily empty. Gabe’s office is never empty.
As soon as Gabe and Lara have vanished inside, my brain starts racing.
Overdoses and drunken accidents happen all the time, but two in a row?
In two people who seemed clean? Outside our home and my husband’s clinic?
Even if I was wrong about Dan, my instincts are right.
Something’s going on, something I don’t understand.
One thing I know for certain. The only person connected to these two deaths is Gabe.
A few minutes later, Gabe files out and finds me.
“How’s Lara?” I ask.
“She’s with an officer, answering some questions.” He scans the crowd. I can’t tell who he’s looking for, if he’s looking for anyone at all.
“It is suspicious,” I tentatively begin.
Gabe’s gaze returns to me. “What?”
“You said it yourself, he’s been on edge lately.”
Gabe clenches his jaw. “So you think, what, Aram’s been acting weird lately? He must be on drugs?” He shakes his head, disappointed.
“I just mean, first Regina outside our house, and now at your office? To a man you’ve never known to have a drug problem?” Her name rolls off my tongue too smoothly. I recognize my slip-up immediately.
“Regina?” Except his tone is more confused than surprised. He doesn’t remember her name. She’s omnipresent in my thoughts, my days, but my husband doesn’t even know the name of the woman who died outside our house.
“The woman who drowned. You don’t think it’s strange? First our home, now here?”
Suddenly, Gabe’s furious. He’s never furious. Particularly not at me. “My colleague was just found dead outside our place of work. His wife is inside—” He points to his clinic, where two police officers are stationed by the door. “This isn’t about you. Don’t make it about you.”
This hits me so hard it’s practically physical.
My stomach jolts as my daughter kicks. Gabe notices, places his hand on my stomach.
I’ll always be between him and my children.
Even after they are part of the outside world, they remain inside my DNA, reordered.
He’ll never know our children like I do.
Nothing is about me. It’s always about them.
“I just thought maybe we should mention it to the police,” I say sullenly.
“Sorry.” He pulls me toward him. I let him hold me, but I don’t hug him back. “That was a shitty thing to say. You’re right. I’ll mention the other accident to the police, okay?”
I nod, not entirely trusting that he’ll say anything to the cops. Gabe searches the crowd, suddenly worried. The Dan look-alike is still there. The man with the bike and the child’s seat. A woman in spandex—not Erin, not the woman I saw moments ago either.
“Where’s Jasp?”
“What?” This question shouldn’t startle me as much as it does. Gabe is a good father. Like me, he never stops thinking about our son. “With Marisol,” I blurt before I catch myself.
“Claire was okay with that?”
“I asked Marisol directly.” I ignore the tiny grumble that warns me I’ve just lied to my husband. Not omitted, not withheld. Lied. Bold faced. Intentional. “I assume Claire’s with Summer today.”
The grumbling intensifies, our iron-strong bond bending with the pressure, threatening to snap.
“You two will work it out,” Gabe says so confidently I almost believe him. “Let me walk you to your car.”
Gabe opens the driver’s side door for me and helps me in.
“Don’t forget to tell the police about Regina,” I say as he shuts the door, his expression hidden behind its frame.
I drive robotically toward the pier, trying to make sense of this confluence of events.
Regina drunkenly drowned. Aram overdosed.
If someone did kill them, their deaths were designed to look like accidents, something the police would discount, something you’d be crazy to think was plotted.
Barb isn’t crazy. Lara isn’t crazy. I’m not either.
I pull over and call Officer Gonzales, whose card I’ve kept in my wallet, though I was hoping I wouldn’t need to use it.
After I say my name, there’s a long pause. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Irons?”
“Someone who works for my husband, his embryologist, Aram Yassin, was just found dead outside their office. Supposed overdose.”
“Oh.” I hear him typing. “Where was this?” I give him the address. The typing stops. “Mrs. Irons, that’s in Santa Monica. You need to call the Santa Monica Police Department.”
“They’re already there.”
“Then I’m not sure what you want from me.”
“First Regina, now Aram. That’s two deaths in one week. At our home, now at my husband’s office.”
“Were Miss Geller and Mr. Yassin acquainted?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Help me understand. You think their deaths are connected?”
“Regina died outside our home, and Aram died in the parking lot outside my husband’s clinic.”
“Look.” Why do men say look when they’re trying to appease women?
I don’t know what I was thinking. If my husband can’t see the connection, there’s no way Officer Gonzales will.
“I’m making a note of this. And I’ll call one of my buddies in the SMPD.
If there’s anything suspicious with Aram Yassin’s death, we’ll find it. ”
“Okay. Thanks.” As I hang up, I hate myself a little for thanking him.
I can’t force Officer Gonzales to believe me.
I can’t force my husband to either. I don’t get why Gabe doesn’t make the obvious assumption that their deaths are related to us, that this might have something to do with him.
But he doesn’t know that Regina was obsessed with me.
He’s still not convinced our son knew her.
It’s easier, more comforting to assume their deaths were random tragedies.
They weren’t random, not their causes nor their locations, in our canal and Gabe’s parking lot.
I can’t make sense of this, which only serves to terrify me more.