The Night Olivia Fell

5

ABI

october

As the hours bled into each other, I alternated between numbness and sorrow, each as intense and debilitating as the other.

‘I need to know what happened,’ I said to Sarah.

She was so still, barely moving since we’d settled in the family waiting room the doctors gave us. I couldn’t hold still, pacing the floor, counting the ceiling tiles, pouring water from one cup to another. I needed to move, to do something. My analytical brain needed to make sense of things, to question the facts and frame the story, to make the columns align, the numbers add up.

‘You should go home. Get some rest,’ she replied.

I glared at her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Olivia and I were linked by birth, by life. I wouldn’t leave her in death.

More time passed. ‘Why does she have bruises on her arms?’ I asked Sarah, slamming an empty cup to the ground. I sucked my lips over my teeth, trying to steady myself. ‘Do you think somebody hurt her?’

Sarah looked startled. ‘I don’t know. The police – they’ll investigate.’

Tears tumbled down my cheeks, sliding into the hollow of my neck. I could barely breathe, whimpers racking my body as I sank into a chair. Sarah came to me, slid her arms around my shoulders. We held each other like that for a long time, our bodies shaking.

‘I wanted to keep her safe!’ I sobbed.

‘This isn’t your fault, Abi,’ she replied, her voice raw with pain.

I pulled away and looked into her reddened eyes.

‘What if it is?’

× × ×

Night washed over Olivia’s room. The hospital lights turned on one by one, and still I didn’t move from my seat next to her bed, the intermittent bleeps and swooshes keeping Olivia connected to this world a bizarre lullaby to my pain. Despair swirled inside me, a relentless fog that made me incapable of anything: eating, drinking, moving.

I stared, lost, at the bruises circling Olivia’s wrists. They were ringed with blue and purple, as if someone had grabbed her, staining her beautiful skin with the color of anger.

I laid my forehead on the edge of her bed, grateful to be alone with her. All day the doctors had encouraged me to go home, get some rest. Sarah had brought me a ham sandwich, left untouched and eventually tipped into the garbage, and then relentless cups of coffee. But it just made me need to pee, and I didn’t want to leave Olivia. So I stopped drinking altogether.

My head pounded from tears and dehydration, but I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I felt like I was living inside a tear in the fabric of time, the real world outside on pause.

Two days had passed since my dash to Olivia’s broken body, time shuffling past with excruciating slowness. More doctors trundled in, more reports, another CT scan, an ultrasound showing a fetal heartbeat. Cautionary whispers that she might miscarry and more whispers that if her heart held up long enough, they could save the baby.

Save the baby? I wanted them to save my baby.

I slept in fits and spurts, my forehead pressed against Olivia’s stomach. Night inched by. Alarm bells rang intermittently, and I imagined the people being told their loved one hadn’t made it. I imagined what would happen when it was Olivia’s turn.

I awoke with a start when somebody shook my shoulder.

‘Mrs Knight?’ Dr Griffith held a cup of water out to me. ‘Why don’t you have a drink?’

‘It’s Miss,’ I corrected him. ‘I’m not married.’ My voice rasped, my throat barren of any moisture. But still I refused the water.

He slid a chair across the room and sat next to me, the cup clasped between both hands. ‘Miss Knight. You need to take care of yourself. You need to eat, drink, get some rest.’

‘Why does everyone keep saying that?’ I burst out. Pain ripped through me, undiminished by the passing hours, and I pressed my fingers hard into my temples.

‘You have a long road ahead of you.’ He glanced at Olivia. ‘All three of you.’

I stared at him for a long moment, tried to lick my cracked lips.

‘Olivia isn’t coming back,’ he said gently. ‘But there’s a chance your grandchild could survive.’ It hurt him to say this, I could tell by the tightening of his eyes, and it made me like him. Or at least respect him.

‘How long?’ I finally said.

‘How long what?’

‘How long does Olivia have to be on life support for the baby –’ I broke off, the words skewering my heart.

‘We’d aim to get her to thirty-two weeks’ gestation.’

I did the math quickly. Eighteen more weeks on life support.

‘Is it possible?’

Dr Griffith hesitated. ‘As far as I’m aware, it’s never happened before. But I think it’s possible.’

I tried to breathe, but a solid lump had formed in my chest, squeezing all the oxygen out. I clenched my eyes shut, then opened them.

‘Why haven’t the police come? Where are they?’

Dr Griffith looked surprised. He took his glasses off and polished them on his lab coat.

‘The hospital doesn’t report . . . accidents.’

‘Accidents? This wasn’t an accident!’ My voice pitched high, anger and pain surging through my body. ‘You’ve seen the bruises on her wrists!’

‘My apologies.’ Dr Griffith shook his head vigorously. ‘I just mean that the hospital isn’t legally required to report anything other than gunshot or stab wounds, and this is likely why you haven’t heard anything from them.’

I pressed my palm to my forehead, a tingle of panic buzzing in my fingertips. But this time I won, pushing the anxiety away. I would report it myself.

‘Olivia’s a good girl. What happened?’ I asked.

I heard myself using the present tense, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want her to slide into the past yet. She was still here.

His eyes were kind but calculating, the eyes of a lawyer rather than a doctor.

‘I don’t know. But I promise you this’ – he held the cup of water out to me – ‘you’ll need your strength to find out.’

I took the water and gulped down every drop.

× × ×

It started raining as soon as I left the hospital. It was almost night, black clouds edging over the horizon.

I turned onto my street, slowly rolling toward my Victorian-style three-bedroom. Mine was the smallest house on the street, perched at the end of a row of grander ones.

My neighbors were middle-class professionals, lawyers, doctors. Their wives stayed home and raised chubby-cheeked toddlers. They had playdates and did hot yoga and went for coffee dates. I, a single working mother, pregnant at eighteen, stuck out like a sore thumb.

I never would’ve been able to afford the house on my own. But everything I did was for Olivia, to give her a better chance in life: middle-class neighbors, a good school, low crime rate, and right by the beach. I wanted her to have all the things I’d never had. So I couldn’t regret any of it. Not now, not ever.

I imagined Olivia on our last morning together. I’d watched her swaying to silent music in the living room, her eyes closed, the earbuds of her iPhone pressed deep into her ears. A scarf I’d never seen before was draped around her neck. It was silk, scarlet, like a flame around her throat. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt, loose-fitting sweats. Dark circles were smudged like half-moons beneath her eyes, her face pale as a tissue.

‘Are you feeling okay?’ I’d pressed the back of my hand to her forehead, concern washing over me. It was smooth and cool. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and drew her close for a hug.

‘I’m fine. Just studying.’ She pulled away sharply, her brow crinkling.

I caught the undercurrent of her words: Would you ever just stop asking? My mom used to tell me that I never let things go. Sarah said that too.

I almost started questioning Olivia. Everything was something to be worried about. She was sick, she had cancer, she was being bullied. My stomach gave a panicky spasm. I did that sometimes: worried and questioned and analyzed until I found a rational reason. I needed the whole picture to understand the details. The problem was that it never changed anything. Like when my mom died.

Get a grip, Abi, I said to myself. She’s just being a teenager.

I busied myself with my laptop bag, the cold slice of her rejection smarting.

‘I know it’s Saturday, but I have to go into work for a bit.’ I hated leaving her alone, but as a single mom sometimes I had no choice. ‘You know the rules. No riding in your friends’ cars. Don’t walk on the main road.’

I waited for her to point out that I never worked on the weekend. I wanted to tell someone about a new case I was working on at my CPA firm, Brown Thomas and Associates.

It was the first time I’d felt excited about work in years. Accounting wasn’t what I was supposed to do with my life. Once upon a time, I’d been a journalist. I’d had fire, ambition, ideas. I loved the buzz of investigating, seeing my byline under a headline.

But the antisocial hours of a journalist didn’t work for a single mom with a baby who battled severe ear infections. I was a mother first. I would never abandon my daughter the way my mom had abandoned me – loving me, then turning away; being there, then . . .

So I’d switched to accounting. It allowed me regular hours and more time with my daughter. I’d come to accept the trade-off years ago.

‘Do you want me to stay?’ My smile slipped a notch. ‘You know you come first.’

‘No, honestly, it’s fine, Mom.’ She’d already dismissed me. ‘I have to study for this calculus test anyway.’

I looked at her, feeling strangely lost. I wondered suddenly when the last time was that we’d talked properly. I opened my mouth to find out what was going on. We were closer than other mothers and daughters; we told each other everything. But Olivia stood abruptly and stretched, yawning big.

‘I’m gonna take a shower, Mom. See you at the barbecue later.’

She’d plucked up the red scarf from where it lay on the table, turned, and walked away, the slip of silk dragging like a discarded teddy bear across the floor.

Within seconds, she’d disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.

× × ×

The memory sliced through me. It seemed so obvious now. Of course she was pregnant. I hated myself for not seeing it, for walking away when I should’ve stayed. Guilt suffocated me, pressing down on me like a crippling fog.

I slowed outside my driveway as lights flashed around me. Cars and vans overflowed along the street outside my house. A microphone was shoved in my face as soon as I opened my car door, and people started shouting my name.

‘Abi! Rob Krane, KOMO-TV. Can you tell us more about Olivia’s condition? Will her doctors try to keep her on life support? Will they be able to save the baby?’

‘I-I-,’ I stammered, edging toward my front porch. How did they know? My elderly neighbor, Mrs Nelson, stared at me from across the road, her mouth hanging open, the evening newspaper in her hand.

‘No comment,’ I said, my voice wobbly and unsteady.

I raced up the steps and let myself inside, black dots dancing across my vision from the flashbulbs. Exhaustion swept over me and I leaned against the door, the voices now muted to a dull mumble.

Finally I staggered to my feet. I needed a distraction from the creeping anxiety threatening to overwhelm me. I went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of vodka from the freezer. I poured a finger into a glass and swallowed it fast. It burned, but I poured another and took it upstairs to Olivia’s room.

I snapped on the light. It was still messy, like an explosion in a clothes factory. It smelled of lemony shampoo and dirty socks. Her blankets trailed off the bed.

I set the glass of vodka on Olivia’s dresser and draped the blankets neatly over the bed, then sat on the edge. Something on her bedside table caught the afternoon light. Olivia’s cell phone. It was attached to a charging cord, but when I picked it up, the plug dropped out. The battery was dead.

The sound of a knock at the front door startled me. I slipped Olivia’s phone into my hoodie pocket as I went downstairs. I looked through the peephole, expecting it to be a reporter, but instead it was a tall, broad-shouldered teenager wearing a wrinkled blue shirt halfway untucked from his jeans. His fair hair was disheveled, his hazel eyes so raw and swollen I almost didn’t recognize him.

The football build of Olivia’s boyfriend looked like it had been put through the washing machine and shrunk. I took in his red eyes – the dark circles, the tear tracks trailing his putty-colored cheeks – and felt a swell of compassion. This inexorable tide of grief was his as well. It was something we shared.

I opened the door and flashbulbs instantly started popping, reporters shouting questions. I ignored them, pulling Tyler inside. Word traveled fast in a town as small as Portage Point, and it looked like every major Seattle media outlet was on this story.

‘Is it true what they’re saying about Olivia?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ I pressed my fists into my eyes. ‘There was an accident.’

Tyler swayed on his feet. I grabbed his elbow and directed him to a chair at the kitchen table, pressed a glass of water into his hands. He gulped it down.

‘An accident?’ he echoed.

‘I don’t know. The police . . . I have to report it . . .’

‘What happened?’ he asked thickly.

‘Nobody knows. She might’ve fallen off the bridge. But . . .’ I hesitated, unsure if I should share my suspicions. ‘Did she leave the barbecue with anyone?’

‘No. She was by herself.’

‘Madison didn’t drive her?’

‘I’m pretty sure she walked.’

Olivia knew she wasn’t allowed to walk home alone in the dark. It was a firm rule of mine – one she’d never broken before.

‘What time was that?’

‘Like, ten thirty? Maybe more like ten forty-five?’

‘Tyler, there’s something I need to tell you.’

He stared at me. Waited.

‘Olivia’s pregnant.’

His arms dropped to the sides of the chair, heavy and limp. He looked like I’d punched him in the stomach.

‘Did you know?’ I needed information. Anything he could tell me mattered intensely.

He swallowed, then balled his hands into fists and stood. He turned away from me and hunched his shoulders.

‘Tyler?’ I walked to him, touched his back with my fingertips. ‘I promise I won’t be mad. Did you know she was pregnant?’

The muscles under his shirt jumped, and he pulled away from my touch. When he finally looked at me, his eyes were wide, the whites dominating his face.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Knight. There’s no way that baby’s mine.’

6

ABI

october

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

Fear crept over me, sliding along every muscle and bone as a new realization settled over me: maybe I didn’t know my daughter at all.

‘How?’ I asked Tyler. ‘How could – how do you – ?’

‘I know it’s not mine,’ he cut me off, his voice rough. ‘Because Olivia and I never . . .’ He looked away.

I pressed my fingers hard into my eyeballs, stars exploding on the undersides of my lids. The vodka I’d gulped earlier burned bitterly in my empty stomach. ‘You never had sex.’

‘Right.’

Olivia was cheating on her boyfriend. It explained so much. She’d been so different lately. Distant. I had a sudden memory of her at the Stokeses’ annual neighborhood barbecue. I’d arrived late, work a handy excuse.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like people, just that I didn’t really have anything interesting to talk about. Once I’d ticked off Olivia’s achievements, the conversation went stale. Besides, I was really more of an observer than a participator. I was better at standing on the sidelines.

Jen Stokes had opened the door, a glass of champagne in each hand and a wide smile on her lips. Her dark corkscrew curls bounced around a heart-shaped face.

‘Hi, Jen.’ I smiled hard, the muscles in my jaw twinging painfully.

Jen and I had known each other since the girls were five. Even after all this time, we were friendly but not friends. Truth be told, Jen intimidated the hell out of me. Standing next to her made any bravado I had disappear, as if it had been sucked into the black hole of her self-confidence. She reminded me of what it was like being in junior high and high school.

Back then I was an outcast. The Girl Whose Mom Committed Suicide. Nobody knew what to say to me, nor I to them. I never wore the right clothes or had the right hair or makeup. I spent lunch alone in a corner of the cafeteria, was never picked for teams in PE, was the last to get a partner for school projects. My teenage years were even worse, lonely until I developed breasts and learned to use my looks to get guys to like me.

As I got older, I learned I was perfectly fine on my own. In fact, I preferred it that way. I didn’t need any better friend than my daughter.

‘Abi, so glad you could make it!’ Jen leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, then handed me a glass of champagne.

I took a tiny sip. It was sweet and crisp, obviously expensive.

‘How are you?’ I asked. My voice was too quiet, lost in the chatter of people inside, so I said it again. ‘How’ve you been?’

‘Oh, you know, kids, work, life.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed drily, but I knew she loved it. Jen was an ER doctor; she thrived under pressure.

I followed Jen through her tastefully decorated living room, my feet sinking into thick, oatmeal-colored carpet. We exited the back door to a sprawling deck that overlooked a shade-dappled yard. A shimmering rectangular swimming pool glinted in the waning light. The rich scent of barbecued ribs and burgers wafted up toward me.

‘Have you seen Olivia?’ Jen asked. Something in her voice made me look up sharply. I felt my face freeze, determined not to show that her words sent a gush of worry flooding through my veins.

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, no reason.’ Her eyes skated sideways, and she set her glass on a table. ‘I’m gonna grab you a plate of food. Then we can catch up. Here –’ She turned to a leggy blonde woman wearing a short sunset-colored caftan and high canvas wedges and pulled her over to me.

‘Marie, this is Abi. Abi, Marie Corbin.’

Before I had a chance to reply, Jen had headed down the stairs and disappeared into the crowd. I frowned, feeling inexplicably abandoned. I tidied a few loose strands of hair behind my ears.

Marie was gorgeous, and I felt my shoulders round as nerves pinched my stomach. She smiled at me, her sapphire eyes crinkling, her blonde hair a sleek mane perfectly framing an angular face. ‘Oh, Abi, yes. I remember you. You’re –’

‘Olivia’s mom.’ I forced a smile.

‘I was going to say an accountant at Brown Thomas and Associates. You did the books for my new interior design company, and I was so pleased at how quickly you got them done.’

‘Oh,’ I said, startled. Usually people only knew me as Olivia’s mom, the mother of the rising star of the swim team. I tried to think of the last time I was anything else, and couldn’t. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Across the yard, Jen’s husband, Mark, raised a hand in greeting. Mark was a square-jawed business type, handsome in an aging frat-boy sort of way. I waved back.

‘I’ll just go say hi.’ I pointed at Mark, glad for an excuse to leave. ‘Nice to meet you.’

I went downstairs, grabbed a Coke from an ice bucket, and huddled next to a tall shrub in the corner of the backyard. If Sarah were here, she’d push me to go talk to people. She said I used work and Olivia as bricks in a wall I’d built around myself.

Sarah was always right and she did everything in the proper order. She’d finished college with a degree in psychology, then got a job, then a husband, a kid, and so on. Now she was a counselor for victims of traumatic cases. Most of her clients were referred from the Seattle Police Department. I was a wrecking ball in comparison: a single mom with a job I’d settled for and no real friends.

Just then something cold splashed against my arm.

‘Hi, Abi!’

‘Derek. Hi.’ Mark and Jen’s son used to call me Miss Knight. I remembered when he was a chubby-cheeked second-grader with perpetually grass-stained knees, and now here he was, calling me by my first name. I suddenly felt rather old.

He grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry about that.’

I brushed the liquid from my arm. ‘When did you get old enough to drink?’ I teased.

‘I’m nineteen now,’ Derek said, proud in that way teenagers get when they think they’re all grown-up.

I smiled fondly at him. ‘Have you seen Olivia?’

His smile faded. ‘No. Why? Is she in some sort of trouble?’

‘No!’ I laughed at the thought. Olivia never got in trouble. ‘Nothing like that. We were planning to meet here.’

‘Oh. . .’ He ran a hand over his jaw and I noticed how much he looked like his mother. He had the same intense beauty: shaggy, dark curls; a narrow, heart-shaped face. His dark-blue eyes were piercing and intelligent. He was a good-looking kid. Probably already breaking hearts.

Somebody – a young woman – came up next to him then, touched his shoulder. He glanced at her, then at me, then stepped back. The entire exchange probably only lasted seconds, but it took me all that time to realize that the young woman next to him was Olivia.

My brain felt like it was spinning in mud. Her long, silky blonde locks were gone, cropped into a pink-streaked pixie cut. Gone also were her usual T-shirt and jeans, replaced with black leggings and a low-cut peasant top that plunged into her cleavage.

I remember looking at Olivia in the fading evening light and feeling like I didn’t know her anymore. I knew then that something had been shaken loose, something I had no power to put back together. . .

‘Whose baby is it?’ I asked Tyler now, my insides tight as a fist.

He didn’t answer. He looked very far away.

‘Tyler. Whose baby is it?’

He didn’t look at me. Didn’t answer. Instead he said: ‘I wish I could’ve saved her.’

‘Saved her from what?’

His eyes crashed into mine.

‘From everything.’