No Hiding in Boise Read online

  “You two close now?”

  “Not as close as we were. I moved here. She’s back in Bend. We’ve never lived far apart before.”

  “How long have you been in Boise?”

  “About a year.”

  “It’s a good place to live,” he said.

  “I like it so far.”

  A couple guys came into the bar, putting my conversation with Cale on hold. By the time I served them, Cale was done with his pint and said he was going to head home. He left a twenty on the bar—again, way too much.

  I DECIDE TO drive by Ray’s, compelled by curiosity or masochism, or both.

  There is still police tape, but it’s hanging limply from the building, no longer pulled taut around the perimeter. There is a makeshift memorial—so many bouquets of flowers, cards, a cardboard sign that says Rest in Peace in black marker.

  I just drive by. I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I’m gripping the steering wheel so tightly my hands are white. A couple streets past Ray’s, I pull up to the curb, put the car in park. I’m hyperventilating again. I need to catch my breath.

  I think about what I told Cale, about my mom. I look at my phone, sitting in my cup holder. It’s time.

  The phone rings three times before she answers.

  “Tessie girl,” she says. This is what she calls me when she’s being especially affectionate.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “It’s been too long again.”

  “I know.”

  I don’t even bother trying to sound normal, and I know she’ll notice.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, right on cue.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say.

  The tears are already coming.

  I know when I say it out loud, it will be real.

  I know when I say it out loud, the jig, as they say, will be up. There will be no more pretending to be okay. I am on the verge of a breakdown. I am on the verge of relief.

  “What is it? Tess? You’re scaring me.”

  “I know. Mom, just sit down, okay? And I’ll tell you.”

  JOYCE

  WHEN I OPEN THE front door, Lindsey Benton is standing on the welcome mat, a screaming, red-faced baby in one arm, a diaper bag slung over the opposite shoulder.

  “Here, give me something,” I say to her, in lieu of any usual greeting.

  She turns to the side and leans so the diaper bag slides off her shoulder. I grab it, hold it against my chest as if it’s a briefcase containing a million dollars.

  “Thank you,” she says, moving the baby to her shoulder, patting her back.

  “I think she needs to burp,” she says. “I just fed her in the car.”

  There is a wet spot on her shirt—milk leakage. I remember those days, but they feel like another lifetime.

  “Come sit,” I say, motioning for her to follow me to the living room, to the couch. She falls onto it, the baby jostling in the process. The crying comes to a sudden stop.

  “She burped,” Lindsey says.

  She sets the baby on the couch cushion next to her, lying on her back. The baby is so small. I forgot babies could be this small. You don’t often see the newest of the newborns in public, after all.

  I set the diaper bag at Lindsey’s feet and join her in staring at the baby. Her skin is so light and pale that I can see the network of veins and arteries all over her body. She is wearing a pink onesie, swimming in it; it is way too big. Her eyes appear dark blue, like the deepest part of the ocean, but I guess all babies have those eyes in the beginning. Jed did. I expected them to fade into a hazel, like mine, but they stayed that color blue.

  “She’s beautiful,” I say.

  That’s what you’re supposed to say. In reality, the baby looks a bit alien. She is completely bald, not a strand of hair. Lindsey has affixed a pink headband to her head, something to clarify gender, something to assist strangers who feel the need to marvel at the infant: Oh, what a cute little girl. She has splotches of acne on her forehead and cheeks. I remember this too, the baby acne. It has something to do with the mother’s pregnancy hormones still circulating in the baby’s bloodstream.

  “I think so too, but I’m horribly biased,” Lindsey says.

  I sit in the chair next to the couch.

  “Your first?” I ask.

  She nods. “Possibly only. I can’t imagine having another one.”

  “Well, you say that now.”

  Lindsey takes an orange conical object out of the diaper bag. When she twists it, it starts making a shushing sound.

  “It helps her sleep,” Lindsey says. “They call it the Shusher. White noise is important—that’s what they say. Mimics the sounds of the womb or something.”

  I shake my head. “They have all kinds of things these days.”

  There were no Shushers when Jed was a baby. There was no Amazon to deliver diapers. There was no Google.

  “It’s a total industry,” she says. “All these gadgets they say you need. And you’re so sleep-deprived and such a nervous wreck that you’re like, ‘Yes, I need that!’ It’s crazy. My husband says he needs to take away my credit card.”

  I bristle at the mention of her husband. I know it’s not fair to bristle. It was ridiculous of me to fantasize about Lindsey and Jed ending up together. They were just kids when they dated—and it was never even clear that they dated, officially.

  “How long have you been married?” I ask.

  “Three years. We met at Boise State,” she says.

  That was the big thing that happened between them—she stayed in Boise, and Jed couldn’t get out of Boise fast enough. He was set on California, Santa Cruz, even though he’d never been there before. Lindsey came over to help him pack up his car—the Mustang. He insisted on driving to Santa Cruz, a tenor eleven-hour trip. When they were done packing, cramming as much as they could into the trunk and back seat, Lindsey stood with me on the driveway and we waved as he drove off. It was like a scene out of a movie. I told him to call me every four hours until he got there, and he did—three phone calls in total. I assume he and Lindsey kept in touch at first, but then she must have met the man who would become her husband and that was that. No man is okay with a woman keeping in touch with a guy she used to have feelings for.

  “And you’re still living in Boise, I gather?” I ask.

  “Yep. We just bought a place in the North End.”

  The North End, the trendy part of town. Lindsey Benton has done well for herself.

  “Are you working?” I ask. I’m prying, really. I want to know if her husband is rich, if he supports them. I want to know how easy her life is, though I know in my heart that no life is truly easy.

  “Well, not now,” she says, nodding toward the baby, who has fallen asleep, just as the packaging for the Shusher promised, I’m sure. “I’m a third-grade teacher at Washington Elementary. It worked out well, actually. I’m on maternity leave, and by the time that’s up, it will be summer break. But I’ll go back in fall.”

  “That’s great, Lindsey, really,” I say, giving her a smile that I hope disguises the envy I can’t help but harbor.

  She leans back against the couch, as if relaxing for the first time since she arrived. She takes a deep breath.

  “It’s hard, this baby thing,” she says, in a soft voice, like she’s afraid the baby will hear and be scarred for life.

  “It is,” I say.

  “Why doesn’t anyone tell you?” she asks. It’s not a hypothetical question. There’s an earnestness to her tone, a desperation.

  “The people in the thick of it don’t tell you because they don’t want to scare you. They know ignorance is bliss. The people no longer in the thick of it don’t remember that well. The brain has only so much room. You learn to discard the bad stuff and remember only the good times. That’s what I did at least.”

  That’s what I’m still doing, I should say.

  “Was Jed an easy baby?” she asks.

  “I don’t believe in easy babies. The
re are hard ones and harder ones.”

  She looked at me, expecting more.

  “Jed was a harder one,” I say. “He was colicky.”

  I’m still not sure what “colicky” means. Is it related to stomach issues? Gas? Or does it just mean your child is cranky for no discernible reason?

  Lindsey groans, says, “My mom thinks Charlotte might be colicky.”

  Charlotte. So that’s the baby’s name. I feel stupid for not asking.

  “I hated her for telling me that. Like I need a Google diagnosis on top of everything else.”

  Lindsey Benton’s mother’s name was a flower—Violet or Rose or Lily, I can’t remember which. I never liked her, mostly because she never liked Jed. She was the type of mother who started angling in middle school for her daughter to marry a doctor. I’m too afraid to ask Lindsey if that’s what her husband is, a doctor.

  “Everything is a phase,” I say. “Whether she’s colicky or not, she won’t be that way forever.”

  Lindsey looks down at her shirt, notices the expanding circle of wetness around her breast, the leaking milk.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she says.

  She stands quickly. I worry it’ll wake the baby, but the baby stays sleeping.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” she asks.

  “Sure, of course.”

  She takes the diaper bag with her. A few minutes later, she comes back, wearing a new shirt.

  “They say to always have a change of clothes for the baby,” she says, “but I’ve realized I need one for myself too.”

  “You’re better prepared than I ever was as a new mom.”

  “I feel like a mess all the time.”

  “Every mother feels that way.”

  She sits, leans back into the cushion again. The way she exhales—so hard that her bangs flutter—tells me we are about to put an end to the charade of being two old friends, catching up. The real reason for her being here is about to be revealed.

  “So,” she says, looking at me.

  “So.”

  “I’m sorry I just showed up like that yesterday. And just dumping that stuff on you. I’m not totally myself. The hormones and everything …” she says.

  She’s stalling.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Really.”

  She exhales again.

  “So,” she says again. “Jed and I, we hadn’t really been in touch for a long time, since high school basically, but we would exchange texts on birthdays, that kind of thing. He congratulated me when I had Charlotte. He must have seen the photo I posted on Facebook or something.”

  “Jed didn’t use Facebook,” I interrupt.

  I feel the need to say this because Jed was so adamant about his dislike of social media. I want people to understand who he was, to get their facts straight.

  Lindsey just shrugs. “Well, I’m not on Instagram or anything else. I posted the birth announcement on Facebook. I don’t know how else he would have found out.”

  I slump a little in my chair, imagining Jed secretly perusing Facebook, spying on the present of his past girlfriend. It makes me ache.

  “Anyway,” Lindsey says. “He congratulated me, and we exchanged a few texts—we hadn’t changed numbers after all these years. He told me he was back in Boise, he was working at Home Depot. He said you were doing well. That was it.”

  I nod, knowing there is more, knowing that was not it.

  “Then, that night. The night of the shooting. He texted me. I can show you.”

  She digs around in the diaper bag, retrieves her phone, which has a smear of diaper cream on the cover. She wipes it on her shirt, unlocks the phone, finds what she’s looking for, and hands the phone to me.

  I stare at the text message chain, the name Jed at the top of the screen.

  Jed:

  Linds, I just wanted to say I’ve always valued you in my life. You are such a good person. I should have stayed in Boise with you all those years ago. I’m so glad you are happy. I wish you nothing but the very best. Love, Jed

  The message has a timestamp below it:

  Thu, April 11, 10:08 pm

  Lindsey:

  Are you ok?

  Jed:

  I will be.

  Lindsey:

  Jed, come on, what’s going on?

  “I always knew Jed had some depression, even when we were in high school. He would talk about these dark days he’d have, how he couldn’t see the point in a lot of things,” Lindsey says.

  “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.” I say this with too much emotion, as if I’m in a courtroom, on trial. Lindsey gives me that dreaded look of pity, a look that says, Oh, Ms. Ketcher, you don’t have to prove anything to me.

  “I don’t think he was proud of it. I don’t think it’s something he wanted to discuss with anyone, really. He said I was the only person who knew certain things about him,” she says, lending evidence to the argument that this wasn’t all my fault.

  “I guess I feel like I should have known.”

  She gives me that pitying look again, and I have to avert my eyes from hers.

  “Teenagers hide all kinds of things. And lots of them are angsty.”

  But they don’t all go on to shoot up bars. That’s the part she’s not saying but we’re both thinking.

  I look back at the phone, at the texts.

  “So anyway, yeah, I was worried when I got that first text,” Lindsey says before going quiet so I can read.

  Jed:

  I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry. I know you think I’m weak and pathetic. I’m just tired of so much. Just let me say goodbye. Don’t mess this up for me.

  Lindsey:

  I’m calling you.

  “This was, like, two weeks after I’d given birth. I was already emotional, you know? My husband thinks the whole thing is weird. Like, why did Jed text me, of all people? Maybe it’s because we’d texted right after I had Charlotte and I was on his mind or something. I don’t know. Anyway, I had to call him. I just had a bad feeling.”

  “Did he answer? When you called?”

  “Yeah. He sounded like he was in the car so I asked if he was driving. He said yes. I asked him where he was going, and he said he was going to hike into the foothills. Of course I said, ‘Now? It’s ten o’clock at night,’ and he said, ‘I need to do it at night, when nobody is around.’ And that’s when I understood.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “He was going to kill himself. In the foothills. He’d talked about it when we were teenagers. We had this morbid discussion about how we’d kill ourselves, if worst came to worst. He said he’d hike into the foothills, find a desolate spot, and shoot himself in the head. He was so specific about it. It freaked me out at the time,” she says.

  “So he was going to kill himself that night?”

  “I think so, yeah. I think that was his plan.”

  “But he somehow ended up at a bar and shot people?”

  It doesn’t make any sense.

  The baby stirs. Lindsey puts her palm on Charlotte’s belly, pats it a few times.

  “When I was on the phone with him, I told him to wait, that I’d come meet him somewhere,” she says. “I didn’t know how that would be possible with a baby literally on me, but I figured I had to try.”

  “And?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. All of a sudden, he started cursing. Said some guy cut him off. He was furious. I heard him yelling, like maybe he rolled down his window and was yelling at this guy. Then he said he had to go and hung up.”

  “Did you try to call him back?”

  “Of course. Yeah, I mean, I tried a dozen times, at least. Then I texted.”

  She nods toward the phone. I look at the screen again, scroll through texts she sent to him an hour after the last set, then an hour after that, then again, and again.

  Lindsey:

  Jed? Call me.

  Lindsey:

  You’re freaking me out. Just text me, ok?

  Lind
sey:

  JED! Come on, are you there?

  “That night, or really early in the morning, I was on the couch with Charlotte. I was flipping through channels, and I saw the shooting on the news. I just knew, before they even shared his name, that it was him.”

  I hand her phone back to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know this doesn’t explain much of anything. I just thought you should know.”

  “Thank you,” I say, though I’m not sure if I’m grateful. From what she’s told me, Jed didn’t have a plan to kill people. He was going to the foothills. Unless he was lying. But why would he lie to her if he knew she would find out the truth anyway? It’s like he got distracted from his original plan—by road rage of all things. Is that what I’m left with—road rage? Why didn’t he call me? Or, at the very least, leave me a note. Didn’t he think I deserved a note?

  “Have the police talked to you?” I ask her, wondering if I should call them myself.

  She nods. “I guess they knew that we’d talked that night— phone records or whatever. And they saw our texts. I told them everything. Is that okay?”

  She looks scared, as if she’s guilty of something.

  “The truth is always okay,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe this.

  I wonder how much Detective Kinsky knows at this point, how much he has yet to tell me.

  The baby is adamantly awake now, squirming and emitting little sounds of displeasure that will escalate into crying soon. Lindsey picks her up, unbuttons the first few buttons of her flannel shirt, and unclips her nursing bra.

  “Do you mind?” she asks, the baby already latched on, suckling.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  I’d tried to breastfeed Jed, but he had no patience for it. He would get frustrated—maybe I wasn’t producing enough milk, maybe it wasn’t coming out fast enough for his liking. He would start to tug on my nipples with his gums, biting that was excruciatingly painful even though he had no teeth. When the milk came out pink, tinged with my blood, I decided we’d had enough. I switched to formula. For a while, I resented how much happier he seemed with that. Did he feel my resentment? I have to wonder these things now.

  “We’ll probably leave when she’s done,” Lindsey says, nodding her head toward Charlotte.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m glad you came by.”