Sliver Of Truth

“Well, what?” I said. “They weren’t able to make a case against my father. The prosecution’s case against Esme Gray was so weak they couldn’t hold her for more than twenty-four hours. They can’t really get Zack for things that started long before he was ever born.” I took a deep breath. “They’re looking for someone to prosecute and they’re willing to resurrect the dead to do it.”

I hated to even think about Esme, the nurse who had worked at my father’s practice and assisted him in his clinic since long before I was born. She’s also the mother of my ex-boyfriend Zack Gray. At one time, Esme and I were closer than I was to my own mother, but she was intimately involved in the shadow side of Project Rescue, as was Zack. I can no longer be close with either of them for more reasons than I can recount here.

Jake didn’t respond, just stared at the photos, one after another. There was something so strange on his face. He wore a half-smile but his eyes were dark. I saw him give a small shake of his head. An ambulance raced by, siren blaring, filling the apartment briefly with light and sound.

“What?” I asked him. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” he said, putting the photos on the table. “I’m not thinking anything.”

He was lying. He put his head in his hands, rested his elbows on his knees, and released a deep sigh. I sat up and crossed my legs beneath me, watching him.

“What is it?”

He looked at me. “Is this him, Ridley? Is this Max?” There was something desperate in his voice. And something else. Was it fear?

“No,” I said. “Of course not. Max is dead. I saw his dead body in the casket. I scattered his ashes. He’s dead.”

“His face was unrecognizable, shredded by glass when he went through the windshield. The face you saw was reconstructed from a photograph.”

“It was him.” What Jake said was true. But I remembered Max’s hands, his rings, the small scar on his neck. There wasn’t an open-casket viewing for him, but we were able to see the body once it had been prepared for cremation. My father had arranged for postmortem reconstruction of his ruined face so that we could all say good-bye to something we recognized. I guess in retrospect it was pretty macabre (not to mention a huge waste of money), but at the time it felt right.

“Because if this is Max…” He let his voice trail off and kept his eyes on me.

“It’s not,” I said firmly.

“Ridley,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “There’s a lot you don’t know about this man.”

Sometimes Jake frightened me. That was the other thing that had started to eat away at our relationship. Not that I was physically afraid of him, but the intensity of his obsessions seemed like a natural disaster, something that could shift the ground beneath our feet, open a chasm in the earth. I always wondered when it would swallow him whole-and me along with it.

“You know what?” I said, rising. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

“Ridley.”

“Jake, I want you to go.” I walked over to the door and opened it.

“Listen to me-” he started but I stopped him with a raised hand.

“No, Jake, you listen to me. I can’t do this. You need to leave.” I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Not at all.

He looked at me for a second. Then he nodded, stood up, and walked over to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living area. He took his leather jacket off one of the stools. I felt bad; I could see that I’d hurt him. But the fatigue I’d felt earlier had burrowed into my soul. I only wanted to close my eyes and disappear into blissful black.

“We do need to talk,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek at the doorway.

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

He left then and I closed the door behind him. I walked across the loft and went into the bedroom we used to share. I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed, sinking into the down comforter, and sobbed for I don’t know how long from sheer exhaustion and the crushing sadness that had settled into my heart and threatened never to leave.

I GUESS I fell asleep because it was hours later that the phone woke me. I looked at the clock to see that it was 3:33 A.M. I reached over to the bedside table and picked up the receiver, thinking it was Ace. He called at all hours-typical of his recovering addict’s personality, totally self-centered. I, the recovering enabler, never hesitated to pick up.

“Hello,” I said.

There was a heavy static on the line, the sound of distant voices, a tinny strain of music. I glanced at the caller ID, which told me the number was unavailable.

“Hello?” I repeated.

I heard the sound of breathing on the line, then it went dead. I put down the receiver and waited for it to ring again but it didn’t. After a while I got up and brushed my teeth, stripped off my clothes, and got under the covers. I drifted back into an uneasy sleep.

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