It’s One of Us, page 3
“I’m afraid there’s no mistake. Mr. Bender, you are the father of the suspect we’re seeking. That you’re not aware of the child makes things more complicated, but it doesn’t change reality.”
Moore glances sideways at Osley, who finishes his coffee with a slurp and sets the cup on the table hard enough to rattle. “We know this is awkward, Mr. Bender. We’d like to take another sample from you, so we can run the tests once more, just for certainty.”
Olivia is crumbling now. “This is impossible. Tell them, Park. Tell them they’ve made a mistake.” She’s crying; there’s a thickness in her voice, a long, slow sniffle. “You can’t have a child with someone else. You can’t.”
The coffee is burning in his stomach, acid crawling up into his throat. Her tears are making it worse. Shut this down. Now.
“Detectives, you need to give us a moment.”
“Sir—”
“A moment. Please. My wife is in a delicate condition. She needs to lie down.”
“I don’t. Tell them. Tell me,” Olivia wails. He hasn’t seen her this emotional since the first miscarriage. She’s been so strong through it all. Stoic. Numb, maybe. Damn it, why can’t she fall apart after they leave?
He stands, fighting the urge to grab her arm and yank her out of the room. Gently, oh so gently, he cups her elbow, says, “Come with me,” and, relieved when she complies, leads her from the kitchen toward the staircase in the hallway.
He hears the police murmuring, ignores them. Tears are pouring down Olivia’s cheeks, her gorgeous dark eyes swimming. He stops at the base of the stairs, knuckles one hefty tear away. “Go lie down. I’ll figure this out. I promise.”
“I don’t need to lie down.” A choking cry. “I’m not pregnant anymore. I lost it. This morning.”
The twin blows are too much to take. He has a biological child out in the world, one he had no idea existed. His wife has lost their baby. Sorrow spills over him, and he pulls her to his chest. Her hair smells like freshly cut hay on a summer day, clean and grassy, and now that he’s paying attention, he scents the blood. He’s always been especially attuned to her cycle. How had he missed this?
“God, Olivia. Why didn’t you come get me when it happened?” he says.
“There are some things you don’t need to experience firsthand, Park. Trust me.”
The quiet desolation, the haze in her eyes. She’s already back there, remembering, reliving it.
“Then why didn’t you tell me, honey?” he asks, softer now.
“I was about to when they rang the bell,” she whispers, body drooping in defeat. “Park. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I failed you again.”
He grasps both shoulders—he can feel the sharp edges of her collarbones under her sweater; if she’d only gain a little weight, maybe she wouldn’t keep miscarrying—and makes her face him. “Oh, hon. No more talk like that. Remember what Dr. Henry says. This is not a situation of blame. It’s a biological anomaly.”
“Apparently, you’re the biological anomaly, Park. What will the neighbors say? How will you explain this to our families? Do you even have any idea who the mother might be?”
No, I don’t. I don’t have a clue.
“I’m sure this is some sort of lab screwup,” he says. “They’ve made a mistake.”
“They don’t make mistakes with DNA. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t sure.”
“Just... Olivia, go upstairs, okay? Let me talk to the police, let me straighten this out. You do need to lie down, you look very pale. Take an iron pill, and maybe a little something to relax you. Since you won’t hurt the baby—”
Her face crumples, and he trails off. The tears have ended—Olivia is too strong for her own good—but she needs to temper things. No woman should have to go through what she has. He feels a spike of guilt for his uncharitable thought about her weight being to blame for the babies. Of course this isn’t her fault. It’s a terrible circumstance, that’s all.
“No numbing,” she says finally. “I have to work today. The Jones build. And you owe me an explanation of what the hell is going on. When you finish telling them whatever it is you need to say without me in earshot, I expect you to share with me, Park Bender. Is that understood?”
This last is said fiercely, and he nods. Without another argument, Olivia moves soundlessly to the stairs and floats up, small feet soft on the runner. He watches her go, heart twisted, mind whirling.
This absolutely cannot be happening.
The detectives are still in the kitchen. He half hoped they’d see his family was suffering and quietly let themselves out, but no, here they are, the Black cowboy sitting at the table calmly sipping away and the cold white chick with the swan’s neck standing at the window, looking out at the backyard. The feeders are nearly empty, and the squirrels are up to their usual hijinks, hanging upside down, tails straight out as the feeders spin wildly. Olivia always laughs when they do this, says it’s their way of going on a roller-coaster ride. Moore seems to agree, is more animated, at least. He doesn’t know how Osley can stand being with her all day; she’s so intense, so disapproving.
Osley has helped himself to another cup of coffee. He sets down the cup with a small click and smiles, gesturing for Park to take the chair opposite, as if this is his kitchen, his home, and Park the honored guest.
Park hesitates a moment, drops into the chair. Moore stays by the window.
“Sorry things are so confusing, sir. Your wife okay?”
“She will be. Listen, she’s in a fragile state right now. We’ve lost several pregnancies, and it’s been very difficult. We’re both in therapy, trying to make sense of it all. You can imagine this news coming as more than a shock. That I have...a kid.” He shakes his head like a wasp is flying near. “How old is he?”
“We don’t know for sure. Old enough to ejaculate. Now that your wife’s out of earshot, who’s the mother?”
Park shakes his head again. “I told you. I honestly have no idea. I don’t have a lot of exes. Olivia and I dated in high school. I had a girlfriend in college, then Olivia and I got back together.”
Osley’s eyes glitter. “Speaking of the girlfriend in college—”
“She’s dead. Which I assume you already know, or else you wouldn’t be here.”
3
THE WIFE
“The suspect in our case is your biological son.”
That word, that word. Olivia wants a son. She wants sweet-smelling baby skin to cuddle. She wants so much, more than she’s ever going to get. More than she deserves.
Who has birthed her husband’s child? Is he telling the truth that he doesn’t know? He’s been faithless before; has it happened again, and again, and again? When did this anonymous woman spread her legs for him to sow his seed?
She opens the cabinet, assesses the array of bottles. It is tempting, too tempting, to seek the oblivion of a pill. How easy it would be to just check out of this situation.
Park has a child.
If this was happening to anyone else, the irony would be delicious. They’d lie together on the couch, legs intertwined, watching some random documentary about the story, a mysterious child who murders women, drinking wine and giggling at the absurdity of it all.
Can you imagine? Poor guy. He had no idea.
Poor guy? Poor kid!
But this is their chaos. There is no way they’re going to keep it a secret. If Park doesn’t cooperate, the police will just leak it to the media, and he’ll be forced to confront the story in the press. They are going to be scrutinized, pitied, torn asunder. She can already hear the screams from the street as she slams the door—Mr. Bender, how does it make you feel to know you’re father to a murderer? Mr. Bender, why didn’t you tell your wife you had a child with another woman? Mrs. Bender, how are you still living under this roof knowing your husband lied to you all these years—
“Jesus.”
Olivia shuts the cabinet, scrubs her face, twists her chocolate hair into a bun, changes from her yoga pants and T-shirt into leggings, boots, and a blazer. Her therapist is going to be pissed at her for normalizing things again. She’ll want both Olivia and Park to sit down and discuss their “feelings” about the miscarriage immediately, add entries to the dog-eared journals they’re both supposed to be keeping, sharing those words between them, but damned if she’s going to put herself through another round of who’s fault is it? That’s all their conversations are anymore anyway. Olivia—I’m so sorry, the money, it’s me, we can’t keep doing this; Park—it’s fine, it’s not your fault, we have plenty, we’ll try again. Reassuring, cajoling, tender, conciliatory, while inside she can feel him blaming her.
At some point, he will want a baby enough to try with someone else, and he’ll divorce her, leave her the house maybe, as a consolation prize, with its sterile bathrooms and haunted toilets, while he sets up shop across town with a leggy blonde who produces two-point-three perfect towheaded little beasts within the first five years.
Now he has his deepest desire. It doesn’t matter how. It only matters that he is a father, and she is not a mother. Maybe she can just get her tubes tied so she doesn’t have to go through the agony of hope anymore. She won’t tell him. She’ll just never get pregnant again, and they can go back to their lives before they became those people, the people she felt sorry for, the people she pitied. The statistics. The anomalies. The curiosities. Infertility is fascinating to those who seek to break its back. The doctors and the therapists who get rich at the expense of those desperate to procreate. Oh, they care. But they’re still rolling in it.
Stop. Stop. You’re not getting anywhere with this line of thinking.
She swipes on a little lip stain, then heads for the front door. Let Park deal with the police. She needs to get out of here.
The detectives’ Crown Vic sits at the curb like a great black buzzard hovering over a freshly dead deer. Her Jeep is in the driveway—since Park put a gym on her side of the garage, her car was nominated to sit outside in the weather. “It’s more rugged than mine,” he’d said at the time, dismissing the fact that hers was much more interesting to people who might want to break in. “Who wants to steal tile samples?” he scoffed, laughing at the very idea, so she’s been parking in the drive for the better part of two months. She is grateful for it now; she can slip away without raising the door and drawing everyone’s attention.
She leaves the car in Neutral and lets it roll backward out of the drive, then whips the Jeep around, heading toward Belmont. The Jones build will give her plenty of distraction today.
She feels only a little guilty about leaving him with the cops.
Work. Focus. Escape.
Between teardowns and new builds and the renovation boom, she has five houses currently underway and a wait list of ten more. Nashville is slammed with new construction right now. She can’t drive a block without seeing a construction site. The big boom downtown, multiple skyscrapers going up at once, gave the town the nickname Crane City, but now, with the influx of tech jobs and the vagaries of the COVID pandemic, the push is out of the city into HDH—high-density housing, also known as “tall and skinnies”—on the fringes of downtown, and the suburbs beyond. Add in new builds, renovations, additions—every craftsperson in Nashville is spoken for.
She is grateful she has her own crew who’ve been working with her for years, grateful she has the jobs lined up to keep them busy, because finding new and reliable tradesmen in this environment is like casting a line into the final hour of an end-of-season salmon spawn. Everyone is looking for people, and anyone worth their salt is committed for months.
Though there are plenty of craftsmen who will do whatever Olivia Bender wants, just to have a chance at the publicity. OHB Designs is regularly featured in all the magazines around town and many national publications. There’s even been talk of a television show, but she’s resisted. She hates the idea of losing her privacy, of having to conform to others’ ideals of what her life and work should look like. Anyway, trying to have a baby is a full-time job, as she’s told Park numerous times. I’d rather be a mom than have a show. How many times has she said it? Twice? Three times? At some point, she’s going to start believing it. Though now...police on the doorstep, the phone ringing, the neighbors staring. Murder, and scandal. A child, not of her blood. What of their privacy? Their lives are being upended, and it is only going to get worse.
Maybe now is the time to open negotiations. Maybe she should capitalize on this.
Olivia Hutton, you are a horrible person. Human, but horrible.
Stay the course. Do your work, your way. That’s what will get you through. It always has.
Olivia has a reputation for creating elegant, livable spaces that are at once homey, personal, as minimal or maximalist as her clients want, but always done with taste and restraint. She understands space and color, knows how to take down a wall and make the room come together, knows when an exposed beam or shiplap wall or quad-level crown molding or orange velvet barstool will do the trick. With her architectural design background, she is not just sought after, she is the crowning glory for anyone who gets her on their job.
She’s worked her ass off to get to this point, and she’s loved every minute. She has nurtured her talent to create livable spaces out of thin air, lives and breathes color and texture and mixed metals and raw wood and stone. Her perfect day involves hammers and nail guns and paintbrushes and rug placements and jovial shouts in colloquial Spanish and Romanians singing lullabies as they caulk bathtubs. Why would she ruin a good thing by having a kid?
This is why you keep losing the babies, Olivia. You don’t really want them.
A shudder runs through her. That isn’t true. Of course she wants them. She wants them so badly she can pretend to herself she doesn’t. Lying to yourself is the greatest lie of all, isn’t it?
She flips on the radio to drown out her thoughts, but they are breathlessly covering Beverly Cooke. It figures that brash woman was going to be a part of Olivia’s life forever. It’s always the ones you don’t want around who stay with you ad nauseam. Beverly wanted to be Olivia’s friend. She’d tried everything—texting invites to bunko nights, sending referrals, asking for advice. Olivia was just turned off by her from the very beginning. Yes, she was being judgmental, yes, she was being spiky and unfriendly. Who cares? It was not Olivia’s responsibility to make a stranger trying to force her way into her life feel better. Therapy has given her permission to take what she needs from life, from the people around her, and leave the rest. She is not going to apologize for simply not liking the woman.
But Beverly is dead, and Olivia feels bad about this, she truly does. As aggravating as the woman was, Olivia didn’t want her to die. Not really. Not like that. Raped, murdered, and submerged in the lake? It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
If Park’s child has done this, what does that mean? What does that say about Park?
The arrow-to-the-heart thought leaves her breathless again. Will she ever not feel the betrayal at the words? Park has a child. A son. At least one son. Who knows, maybe there’s more.
Now there was a nightmarish thought.
And if her handsome, loving, giving husband could create a child who grew up to be a killer? She needs to rethink everything. She knows there’s a difference between nature and nurture, between passing on homicidal genes and creating monsters out of neglect and abuse, but plenty of kids are abused and don’t kill things. Don’t kill people. Maybe they’re all just seething like she is. Maybe they’re all just so sad. But they don’t go through with it. They don’t act on their whims.
Can she have children with a man who’s taken part in creating a monster?
Her cell rings, the caller ID popping up on the screen in the car. She expects it to be Park, but it’s Lindsey. Park’s little sister is his polar opposite and has been Olivia’s best friend since they were kids. She debates letting it go to voice mail in case Park has reached out to her, but no, there’s been no time. Park would call his wife first, not his sister.
“Hey, Linds.”
“Hey, yourself. You will never believe what I just heard.”
Olivia tenses. It’s already out there, it’s too late to contain it. Their lives, upended, ruined. “What did you hear?”
“Perry is coming home.”
4
THE PAST
Nashville, Tennessee
April 1999
“He’s here, he’s here. Oh my God, wait until you see him, he’s gorgeous.”
Olivia’s mother drops the curtain and flits around her bedroom like a demented butterfly. Her father is downstairs, waiting with the camera for Olivia to make her grand entrance.
“And so are you, my darling girl. You two will be the talk of prom.”
Olivia smiles, swallows back her nerves, and gives her nose one last sweep with the powder brush. A few grains fall onto the strapless bustline of the pale chrysanthemum organza, and she carefully brushes them away. Prom. Rite of passage. She will be going through many rites of passage tonight. First corsage. First black-tie event. First time.
It’s been planned for weeks. They have a hotel room—ostensibly, the whole crowd is going to be there, but they’ve managed a suite with an adjoining bedroom, so they’ll be able to sneak off for privacy once people start passing out. She’s not nervous to lose her virginity, not to him. They’re going to be together forever, she knows this in her heart. They have a tie that will see them through everything, a link that’s been in place since the day they met. The day the Benders moved to town, and she saw the boys across the street for the first time, she’d felt it, that zing, an invisible thread that crossed the street and tied her to him. He’d seen her lingering on the porch, threw up a hand in a jaunty wave, already so comfortable with his new surroundings. Then he punched his brother in the arm—she knew it was his brother, they looked alike, not exactly, but they were similar in the ways that counted—and the other boy made brief eye contact with her, then looked shyly away. The girl, younger, pretty, had come tearing around from the side yard screaming about a rope swing, and the three of them had disappeared through the hedge without a word. But the moment was ossified for her, clear as amber in her mind’s eye.
