Midway through a laugh—at a joke Mason’s told a hundred times—I see the dead girl on the news. The mood of the day changes on a dime. My laughter dies quickly, like fast-motion footage of a flower withering as the first frost arrives.
It’s an aerial shot. The news helicopter hovers over the Oklahoma River. On the bank, a forensics guy zips the top of a black body bag over the young woman’s face. I catch it, though. It’s unintentional on the part of the news. They didn’t mean to film her face. They aren’t supposed to expose victims. But the shot lasts long enough that I see she’s got blonde hair.
Two people in white polos and black pants lift the black body bag onto a cot that’s backed into an unmarked white van. The kind you pass every day on the highway.
I wonder how many of them have a girl just like this one in the back.
I wonder if it’s the same van she rode in.
My stomach is heavy, like a stone just dropped out of my esophagus down into my gut. Suddenly, I’m not hungry, but I clamp my fist around the fork in my hand, allowing the metal to dig into my flesh. I squeeze harder. It’s a grounding sensation.
A reminder that I’m here now.
“Winona?” Mason says my name from across the table, but my eyes remain glued to the screen. He turns, wanting to see why I’m transfixed.
Closed captioning runs across the bottom of the screen.
...
MUCH MORE THAN THAT RIGHT NOW, BOBBY. THE OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE ARE OUT AT THE RIVER INVESTIGATING A CALL RECEIVED THIS MORNING. A KAYAKER RAN INTO THE BODY ON AN EARLY MORNING BOATING TRIP. WE’RE GETTING REPORTS THAT THE BODY BELONGS TO A YOUNG WOMAN. AS YOU KNOW, TWENTY-SEVEN YEAR-OLD AMANDA JONES HAS BEEN MISSING FOR MORE THAN THREE WEEKS. WE HAVE NO CONCRETE INFORMATION FOR US TO THINK THIS YOUNG WOMAN IS AMANDA JONES, BUT WE KNOW HER FAMILY MUST BE WATCHING WITH A HEAVY HEART THIS MORNING.
Amanda Jones.
I remember her name.
A young woman that went missing only a matter of weeks ago. Young, blonde, and partying at Club Royale. A dance bar in the city.
It’s not the same bar. Calm down.
She’d been out with friends, then disappeared. No one ever saw her again. And the body that was just loaded into that van might be hers.
Even though it’s not the same bar, it’s all too familiar.
The shot pans over the river and gives a wider view of the scene. I imagine what it would be like to be kayaking and stumble onto a dead body floating in the river. I wonder if that person will ever get that image out of their head. Skin stretched beyond reason while gas builds up inside the putrefying corpse. A face so swollen it’s unrecognizable. Black splotches gathering on the skin, nature’s rot taking its claim.
Mason turns slowly back to me. There’s a look on his face that tells me he’s mourning the day. I’d been in a good mood, something that’s not always guaranteed. Something that he delights in when it happens. The frown and the way his brow furrows make me think he’s about to say, But we were just having such a good time.
He knows as well as I do that I can’t help the shift. Still, I feel guilty. Sometimes I feel like Mason carries me through life. Like I’m his burden. Maybe he did something terrible before I met him and this is his punishment. Although, I can’t imagine Mason doing anything wrong. I can’t even imagine him so much as gossiping about another person.
He’s so good.
He’s the sun while I’m a black hole, sucking all of his light into my void of nothingness and never reflecting it back.
The thought is a hard one to swallow.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. An entire conversation between us has played out in my mind. Me freaking out. Him comforting me. Me apologizing. I don’t want to go through that routine right now. I feel zapped. Watching the news has drained the life out of me. Like a bloodletting.
“Winona,” he says softly.
I want to cry. I feel tears prick the edges of my eyes as a lump rises in my throat.
Fuck, I hate being vulnerable. I hate it.
I would rather be dead than vulnerable.
Not the best attitude to have if you want to make a marriage work, but Mason does his best for both of us. He takes care of me and I love him for it. There’s a part of me, though, that resents the kid gloves with which he tends to me. A part of me wishes he didn’t have to. I’d love to be better. And you’d think after five years of therapy, I would be.
A tear escapes my eye, and I swipe it quickly.
“It’s okay,” Mason says. He reaches across the table for my hands. I let him have them. “This doesn’t mean anything.” Mason shakes his head as he speaks.
I don’t know how to tell him this, but it does.
Not every dead woman on the news has a connection to her.
My therapist’s voice comes through loud and clear.
I fight back against his gentle baritone. The sage advice may be comforting, but eventually it will be wrong.
Eventually, one of them will have a connection to her.
And what if I’m looking at that one right now?
“You don’t know anything about this girl,” Mason says, still holding my hands.
I know he’s right. Logic fights with emotion inside me. The terror is real; the connection may not be. It’s a panic I’ve addressed over the years with Dr. Ewing.
Ride the wave. Let the anxiety crest.
I inhale deeply.
“There isn’t any reason to think she has anything to do with her, honey,” Mason says. His voice is so kind it cracks me open. My chest aches for him. He deserves to be with someone who doesn’t need him to glue their pieces back together at least once a week.
I’m better than I was, though. Things had turned around. We’ve been trying for a baby lately. Life has been stable.
But just that one news shot is enough to remind me that it’s all a house of cards. I’ve been waiting for this day.
Mason deserves someone stable. Someone good.
That’s another thought I’ve learned to question through therapy.
But right now, I’m not doing so hot at stopping those intrusive thoughts.
Just hold it together long enough to get to the car.
That’s all I’ve got to do.
“Are you ready to go?” Mason asks.
Our food is only half-eaten on the table. He used to do this for me all the time. When I would have a panic attack in a restaurant, he would get our food to go and have me wait in the car. It’s not something we’ve had to do in a long time.
I just nod my head, not wanting to speak because I’m afraid I’ll cry.
“Here,” he releases one of my hands long enough to fish his keys out of his pocket. I take them and head for the entrance, walking quickly like I’m escaping danger even though we’re safe here. It doesn’t feel that way to me, though. When you live with severe anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, your gut gets turned inside out. You can’t trust it any longer, seeing danger where there is none and sensing none where there’s plenty. This is why people with trauma can end up putting themselves in risky situations without realizing they’re doing so. It’s also why I left the last concert I was at, midway through my favorite band’s set. I became convinced a bomb was about to go off in the arena for no reason other than my mind decided that was what was about to happen.
I feel that way now. Like if I don’t get out onto the street, I’m going to be grabbed from behind and dragged screaming to the back of the diner. I jog the last few steps to the door.
Pushing it open, the bell rings. The winter air hits my face, reminding me that it’s almost Christmas. I inhale the cold, letting the shock of it fill my lungs. Letting its prickly little fingers force the blood vessels around my trachea to warm themselves, making my lungs burn. It’s a reminder that I’m here now. Nowhere else. And that there isn’t someone chasing me out of the diner.
I hurry over to Mason’s SUV and get inside, locking the doors once I’m safe in the seat. I breathe a sigh of relief. For a moment I sit in silence.
Grabbing my purse, I rifle through it for my wallet. I open the cracked, yellow leather and pull a photograph from behind my driver’s license. The photograph that’s been in this beat-up old piece of leather for far longer than five years. And I look at us.
We’re young, still in our twenties, and intoxicated by the possibilities that life is throwing our way. She smiles, radiant and gorgeous as always. Megawatt. That’s how I used to describe her smile. Those blue eyes pierce through me even now. Familiar blonde hair falls down past her shoulders. We sit together on a porch swing. It’s dark outside. We were at a party. A lit cigarette clutched between her slender fingers as she rests a hand on the bench seat below us. I lean into her. I remember our skin touching that night. How hot she was—life pulsing against my side. I’ve never known someone that alive. Not before or since.
I’m smiling in the picture, too. A smile that I haven’t seen on myself for years. This was innocence. This was youth.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and look up. Mason walks out with our to-go bag. I shove the picture back behind my driver’s license and toss my wallet back into my purse, resting it at my feet.
Maybe he’s right, I try to tell myself.
But there’s a voice I can hear, coming from somewhere inside of me that’s older than I am. A voice that’s primal, part of my lizard brain.
A knowing that’s bigger than this moment. A culmination of indicators I’ve picked up subconsciously. My gut isn’t lying to me this time.
With calm assurance, it washes over me.
That body is not random.
The person who put it in the river is the same guy.
The man that killed Amanda Jones is the same one that killed my best friend.
It’s the same guy that killed Rosie.
He’s back.
