The Deepest Secret Read online

  “Right.” She frowns. “What if they’re not the only ones he’s targeted?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  She gives him a rueful look. “Good luck.”

  Stan’s office is down the hall, the door standing wide open. He looks up when David knocks on the doorframe. “Don’t tell me you’re done already.”

  “There’s something I need to show you.” David holds open his laptop, scrolls through the screens. He highlights a column of numbers. “And this is only one client. We could be talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  Stan takes the laptop. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”

  “See here? These columns should be the same.”

  “Okay.”

  “So if you do this …” He taps a key.

  Stan frowns. “This is really serious.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe it’s a mistake.”

  “No. He’s done the same thing to a different account each month so that he spreads the monies out. He was trying to avoid triggering an audit.”

  “Damn.” Stan shakes his head. “Well, it’s a good thing you caught this.”

  Back in his office, setting his laptop on his desk, David feels a twinge of guilt. Which is ridiculous. Preston’s the one who should feel guilty. He opens his bottom desk drawer and pulls out the 35 mm single-lens reflex camera he’d picked up for Tyler’s birthday. Eve had done the research and given David very specific directions. He hadn’t even known they still made film cameras, but she’d insisted. If Tyler was serious about photography, and Eve believed he was, then he’d want to learn how to develop and print film. There were differences, apparently, between digital and film, important differences, and Eve wanted to give Tyler the opportunity to understand them. She makes all her decisions regarding Tyler with great care, even the small ones, as though by choosing the right path, she can forestall the inevitable.

  I’m sorry, the specialist had said. They’d waited months to see him. Their regular doctor couldn’t explain the blisters that bloomed across their infant son’s face and belly, or why he suffered strange fevers that could only be relieved by cool baths and Eve rocking him in a darkened room. The man had sat down facing them, his hands loosely clasped in front of him, as if he were saying, We’re all in this together. But David had immediately sensed that whatever the man was about to tell him would draw a dark thick line, and only he and Eve would be standing on one side of it, and this man would be on the other, the safe side, peering over.

  David had leaned forward, desperate to understand what the doctor was saying. The words made no sense. Tyler was perfect. Anyone could see it. He was sweet-natured and sturdy. He held tight to your hand when you walked to the park. He chortled when you played peek-a-boo, and blew spit bubbles, and curled up in your lap to read a story. He was perfect, and no one could say otherwise. But this doctor was shaking his head with a terrible finality, and David finally understood. Horror swept through him and left him shaking. Eve was weeping and, blindly, he turned to her and pulled her into his arms. She pressed her head against his shoulder and he held onto her tightly. They were together. They had each other. They would get through this.

  David looks around at his office, the bleak walls. He thinks of his apartment, echoing and cheaply furnished. If he could, he’d take every single day of his own future and hand them to his son, three dozen years, four dozen. If only it were possible. But the specialist had been clear. There was nothing anyone could do to save Tyler, not even conjuring magic tricks out of thin air.

  EVE

  Late that afternoon the heavy gray sky bursts open to release slanting washes of rain that bash the pavement and shake the trees. Thunder booms and lightning flares, crisp and startling against the dark clouds. The weather forecasters are delirious with delight. It’s been a dry summer and the farmers have been suffering. Watch out for local flooding, the fellow on Channel Six warns at noon. He’s practically bouncing, he’s so happy at having something to report.

  Eve works in the dining room, encircled by lamplight. Three clients have emailed with website event updates. They need them posted immediately. The werewolf author’s eager to see a preliminary design, and Izzie’s asked about revamping her site to reflect her recent foray into adult fiction. Can two sites be linked to one? Izzie wants to know. She’s been a good friend. She’s believed in Eve from the very beginning. Eve checks into the forum, sees with relief that Nori’s online. She messages her. How’s Yoshi doing? Nori writes back: It’s taking a lot out of her, but the doctors think it might work.

  Maybe. There’s only a ten percent chance a second round of chemo will work. The cancer cells usually adapt during the first round. But Nori and Eve tell themselves that ten percent is so much better than zero. They have learned to live within those narrow gaps of possibility.

  Eve turns off Skype and her screensaver image blooms across the screen: Tyler and Melissa, arms wrapped tight around each other, cheeks pressed close. Melissa had been eleven and Tyler nine, both of them in that pre-adolescent stage where Eve could still kiss them good night and hold their hands when they walked to the park. She has hundreds of pictures of her children—no, thousands—but this is her favorite: Melissa with those bangs that refused to lie flat and a blueberry stain on her blouse, and Tyler with a gap-toothed grin and crooked collar. Melissa hates this picture. She complains that she looks fat and stupid, which is, of course, untrue. She looks joyful, and so does Tyler, their bond so pure and strong. Every time Eve looks at this ordinary photograph taken on an ordinary day, she feels peaceful. She feels whole.

  Eve shuts her laptop and rises to unhook the UV meter from where it hangs beside the door. The dining room is walled in glass. This house has more windows than any of the other houses on their cul-de-sac. In a fit of whimsy one day, David had walked around and counted. She’s attached special films to the glass that are guaranteed to keep out ninety-nine percent of UV radiation, but there’s always that remaining one percent. All it would take is one particle of UV to kill her son.

  She holds up the meter. The arrow wobbles but holds steady at zero. Maybe she can let Tyler out a little early tonight. It’s a tricky call, and one she needs to consider. Heavy cloud coverage is the good thing about bad weather. The bad thing is that it could change in an instant. Here in central Ohio, clouds sweep across the sky with gusto. In five minutes, it could be a clear sunny day and the only sign that it had just been storming would be the puddles shimmering on the ground. That burn on his arm—is it any paler?

  David answers the phone on the third ring.

  “I called you earlier,” she says. A pause that tells her David is collecting his thoughts, distancing himself. She tries to picture him, standing in his office—or is he sitting? He’s Skyped, held up the laptop so she can see his surroundings for herself, but it’s a hollow substitute. It’s impossible to render three dimensions satisfyingly into two. She doesn’t know the space her husband occupies, how it feels, smells, encloses him or expands around him. Sometimes she missed him so much she felt dizzy with desire. “Tyler got burned.”

  “What? How? Is he okay?”

  David sounds confused. So he hadn’t known. He hadn’t been keeping it a secret from her, which means he hadn’t even thought to check their son. “When you went to the park last Saturday,” she says, “you let him take off his sweatshirt, didn’t you? I was only gone thirty minutes, David.”

  “How bad is it?”

  No apology, no promise to do better in the future. Nothing. “Dr. Brien said to keep an eye on it.”

  “It happened in a second, Eve. We were talking, laughing. We turned onto our street. I didn’t even hear the car approach.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Dimly, she hears the back door open and her daughter stomp into the kitchen. Eve moves into the living room and lets herself outside to stand on the porch. The air is wet. Everything around her is black and gray, and lashing. Water rus
hes down the curb and pours into the storm drain. “You should have been here last night.”

  “I know. I wanted to be there, but I couldn’t. Tyler understood.”

  That’s just like Tyler not to reveal hurt feelings or disappointment. Tyler’s always been stoic. He’s never been one to feel sorry for himself. “What he understood was that your job is more important to you than he is.”

  “Don’t be dramatic. He knows I have responsibilities.”

  “To your family.”

  “Yes! To provide for them.”

  Eve leans against the railing, listening to the rain, welcoming the cold dampness. Her cheeks are burning with fury. “One day, David. What difference does taking off one day make?”

  “Stan’s already asked me if I want to take on a less challenging workload. I told him no. But I can’t keep taking off weekends like this.”

  “You don’t take off weekends. You work from home.” He sits on the couch, laptop opened before him, for hours each day and long into the evening.

  “It’s not the same. I’m never going to make partner at this rate.”

  They need that extra income. They need that job security. “Of course you will,” she says uncertainly.

  “It’s been two years,” he says, and now she understands he’s moving the conversation in another direction, a place she literally doesn’t want to go. “We can’t move to DC.” This is what he wants, what he’s been hinting at for months. But she’s made a safe haven for Tyler here, in this house, in this neighborhood. She won’t uproot him. “It’s too dangerous.” David knows this. He knows this just as well as she does, but he no longer seems to care.

  “We can make it work. We can drive in tandem, at night. I’ll find a house ahead of time and make sure it’s safe.”

  “Like you did last Saturday?” she snaps before she can stop herself. A strained pause that writhes with recrimination, with blame. She doesn’t want this. She loves him. She needs him. They all do. “It’s just that … Tyler’s doctors are here.”

  “We can find new doctors, Eve. There’s no shortage of them here.”

  New doctors won’t be as familiar with Tyler; they might miss a crucial early warning sign—the slightest pigmentation change, the smallest freckle. David doesn’t understand how hard she’s worked to forge these relationships. He’s not the one who takes Tyler to his appointments, talks to the doctors and the nurses in an effort to unite them in the unrelenting effort to save her son. He’s uncomfortable around doctors and in medical settings. “We can’t pull him out of school. Not just as high school’s starting.”

  “He sits in his room and watches a computer screen. He can do that anywhere.”

  “No,” she says between her teeth. “He can’t.” It had taken her months to set everything up, meet with the teachers, pave the way for them to adapt to her son’s unique needs. He won’t want to be singled out, she’s told them. Kids can always meet here for projects, as long as it’s after dark. Tyler doesn’t build rapport with his teachers. He doesn’t have impromptu opportunities to ask questions in the hall, to work with his classmates on projects. They’d tried, the kids in his group taking the computer and sitting with it, but it had been a failure from the start. Something always went wrong. The kids didn’t listen when Tyler volunteered something. Someone knocked the computer askew and he couldn’t see everyone. Someone in another part of the room said something that he didn’t catch. Group projects had had to be conducted with kids who were willing to go out of their way to come to their house. Often it was Eve herself who was the group.

  “You’re underestimating him.”

  But she’s not. “What about his friends? It’s so hard for him.” It’s not enough for Tyler to have friends he only knows online. Zach’s important. He helps normalize Tyler’s life. She loves hearing them debate at the dinner table and roughhouse on the trampoline. She loves hearing Tyler laugh.

  “He’ll be all right. What’s important is that we’re a family.”

  What was important was keeping Tyler safe. “Other families live apart.” Military families, for instance.

  “We’re not like other families.”

  No, we’re not.

  The front door opens behind Eve. Melissa’s standing there. “What are you doing?” she demands.

  “Talking to Dad. Go inside. I’ll be in in a minute.”

  “I’m taking a shower.” Melissa slams the door.

  Eve looks down the street to Charlotte’s house, the lights there shining through the murk. Brave Charlotte, always smiling, picking through the debris of her broken marriage. “I wish I could do it, take a deep breath and risk it, but I just can’t.”

  She misses the carefree person she used to be, that joyful girl. Being Tyler’s mother has turned her into someone who’s endlessly vigilant. She tortures herself with horrifying scenarios just so she can come up with a plan. What if there was a fire and they had to evacuate the house? What if she had an accident taking Tyler to one of his doctor’s appointments? What if a tornado touched down and tore off the roof? The sun’s a powerful enemy. It’s much stronger than she is.

  “I know,” David says, and she hears the misery in his voice. Who else knows their suffering but the two of them?

  He had stood in the doorway of her dorm room, grinning down at her as she sat cross-legged on the floor, and the rest of the world had fallen away. She remembers everything: how he’d clasped the doorknob, easy, his untucked blue shirt and sockless sneakers, the light behind him so that, for a moment, until he moved, she couldn’t see his face. His voice, the way he’d looked at her—she’d known in that instant. He’d never actually proposed marriage. He’d never had to.

  “I miss you,” she says simply.

  “I’ll be home soon.”

  “Don’t forget Tyler’s camera.”

  “I’ve got it right here.”

  And on this uneasy truce, they hang up.

  The shower’s going in the hall bathroom, the water splashing against the tiles. Eve remembers when she had to fight to get Melissa into the bathtub; now she has to fight with her not to use up all the hot water. She takes the chicken out of the refrigerator, the sprigs of fresh rosemary, the round yellow onion. The rain intensifies, the wind hurling it against the windowpanes and making them tremble. She assembles everything in a glass baking dish, then presses a sheet of aluminum foil on top. She’ll ask Melissa to pop the casserole into the oven while she’s gone, and it’ll be ready by the time she and David return.

  She goes upstairs and knocks on Tyler’s door. “I’m leaving.” She waits, knowing he has to go through his tapping ritual first. A minute later the door swings open and her son stands there, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his black curls, his sunglasses shielding his eyes from view. His sleeves fall to his wrists, hiding the sunburn, but it’s there. So close. They’d come so close.

  “You can come out if you want,” she says. “But keep an eye on things, okay? If the rain looks like it’s letting up, run another UV check.” What sort of treat is it for him to be allowed a little extra freedom if he spends the whole time safeguarding it?

  He follows her down the stairs and stops in the kitchen. “Wow,” he says, looking through the rain sheeting the windows. “It’s really coming down.”

  She glances around for her car keys. She usually hangs them on the hook, but there they are, tossed on the counter beneath a dishtowel. “Traffic might be slow,” she says, pulling her raincoat from the closet. “And I have to get gas, so don’t worry if it takes a little extra time.”

  Tyler stands in the kitchen doorway, watching her. She feels all the threads connecting them. She could go a hundred miles, a thousand, and those threads would never snap.

  “Love you,” she calls, as she slides behind the steering wheel. She waits for him to step back and close the door after him before she presses the garage door opener to raise the door. The wind and rain rush in.

  Does she dare leave him? He’s safe,
isn’t he? But she’d thought he was safe last Saturday night. Thirty minutes. That’s all she’d been gone, just long enough to pick up milk and bread. And then the car had appeared and David hadn’t even thought to mention it. Tyler had kept it from her despite knowing that it might have needed emergency care. She grips the steering wheel. Her life is a carefully constructed house of cards, every piece precisely balanced. All it would take is one gentle nudge for everything to come tumbling down.

  GONE

  A red patch, two inches square. Small enough that Tyler had been able to hide it from his mom all week. Small enough that he’d pulled on a short-sleeved shirt that morning, unthinking. How stupid that something so freaking small could loom so large. Still, when his mom had texted him to say that Dr. B had cleared him, Tyler had felt sick with relief.

  He scrolls through his camera for something to put on Facebook. The one of Zach jumping on the tramp is a good one, with his eyes squeezed tight and his mouth stretched in a crazy grin. Not this one of Mitch, smacking at a balloon that bounces away from him and looking bored. Tyler deletes it.

  He’d forgotten he’d taken this one of Robbie and Charlotte. Charlotte’s talking, her hand in motion, her rings sparkling in the flash. Robbie’s watching her with a squinty look. He’d really fooled Tyler. He’d seemed so friendly, even though he was old, like maybe thirty-five, showing him how to grip a baseball bat and giving him cool things from his restaurant—colored plastic stirrers and cork coasters. He could game for hours, swearing and pounding his knee when he’s losing, leaning back and throwing up his arms when he wins. He has a tattoo of a sad-faced angel on his shoulder and another one of barbed wire twisted around his calf. He’d once showed Tyler how to mix gin and tonics. Fill the glass with ice, pour in a third of gin, two thirds of tonic, cut and squeeze a slice of lime and drop it in. Stir with a forefinger and suck. Robbie had winked at this step. Then he’d laughed when Tyler took a nervous sip before running to the sink to gulp water and wash the nastiness down his throat.