Meredith

MEREDITH

11 YEARS BEFORE

May

My eyes are closed. I’m belting out the refrain to a song. I don’t know the words. I make them up as I go. They sound perfect to my ears. Bea and I laugh, giddy, euphoric. We drive so fast the car becomes airborne. We fly.

We’ve left downtown. The lights are behind us now, the streets dark.

Bea must see something because there’s an inappreciable gasp a second before impact. I hear it later, only in retrospect.

The impact is pronounced, a dull, heavy thud, and then it’s quiet.

When it happens, I jerk upright in my seat. I’m stunned. My eyes go wide. Bea tries slamming on the brakes. But because of the speed of the car, we don’t immediately stop. We go forward another few feet. The car jounces, running over whatever we’ve hit. Bea brakes harder. This time we stop. My seat belt locks, pinning me in place. She slips the car into Reverse, going backward. Again the car jounces.

I fall silent. I gaze into the darkened world beyond the windshield, seeing nothing, only stars.

Beside me, Bea keeps saying, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

All I can ask is, “What was it?”

Foxes scavenge the neighborhood at night. Coyotes, too. There are many of them. The neighbors are always warning people with outdoor cats and little dogs to watch out.

Bea doesn’t tell me. She just says, “Oh shit, oh shit.”

She slams her hands against the steering wheel.

The mood in the car has changed. It’s deathly quiet.

Bea gets out of the car. Her movements are stiff. They’re robotic. She leaves her door open. She steps around the front end of the car. I sit in the passenger’s seat, watching, still pinned in place by the seat belt.

Bea is all aglow in the light from the headlights. She looks angelic.

I’m buzzed. Things happen in slow motion. My depth perception is off. I feel disconnected, but still cognizant because the buzz is wearing off.

Bea and Kate have a cat. They foster things. Bea would never intentionally hurt anything. She’s beside herself with guilt. She folds herself in half, puts a hand to her mouth and cries. It happens only momentarily. Bea isn’t one to cry.

She snaps back up. She wipes her eyes. She rushes to the car.

As she descends into the driver’s seat, she’s chillingly composed. She’s hatched a plan.

The first thing she does is slam her door closed. The car fades to black. She kills the headlights. The street before us also turns black. Our streetlights are lanterns. They’re more decorative than practical.

“What are you doing?” I ask. If the animal is dead, there’s nothing we can do for it. If it’s still alive, we can call Kate. Kate could help.

Bea turns to me. She grabs ahold of my arm, so tightly it hurts. Her nails dig into me. “You can’t tell anybody about this. Do you hear me, Meredith? You have to promise me that. Do you promise?” she says.

I quickly sober up, because she’s scaring me. People run over animals all the time. It’s why there’s a word for it. Roadkill. I’m not insensitive, but these things happen.

“Get a grip, Bea.” My voice is light when I speak, an insouciant whisper. “People hit animals all the time. It’s fine. Is it still alive?”

I try to free my arm. Bea won’t let me. If anything, she holds more tightly. My forearm begins to throb.

The light in the car is negligible. I can just make out the shape of her, though the details are imprecise.

“Promise me,” Bea demands. Her voice is unshaken. But there’s something off about her eyes; they’re not quite right.

At her behest I do. “I promise, Bea. I won’t say a thing.”

I tell her that whatever ran out into the street did so before she had a chance to react. She can’t beat herself up over it. It’s the thing’s own fault. “When I was sixteen I ran over a whole litter of raccoons. Babies,” I tell her. I’d just gotten my license. I was driving at night. I never saw them, yet the guilt ate at me for months. I felt awful about it.

“It wasn’t a fucking raccoon, Meredith!” Bea screams.

In all the time that I’ve known her, I’ve never known Bea to lose her temper. I’ve never seen this side of Bea. She’s tough, she’s iron-willed. But this is a Bea that I don’t know. This is a Bea that’s reactive.

Silence fills the car. She stares at me, wild-eyed, her hair falling in her eyes.

I can’t hear my own panicked breathing, but I can feel the way my chest rises and falls.

“Bea,” I say. It comes out as a breath. “What is it? What did you hit?”

Her silence terrifies me. She lets go of my arm. She relaxes back into her seat, staring ahead.

I get out of the car. I stagger to the front end of it. I have to see what it is.

I prepare myself for the worst. Roadkill is never pretty. Decapitation comes to mind, as does limb loss. Something horrific has happened here. Something that’s shaken Bea to the core.

And then I see, in the faint glow of the nighttime sky.

It’s not an animal.

The horror washes over me. My heart palpitates. My legs are like rubber. My palms sweat. I stand frozen at first, gaping, my sweaty hands pressed to my mouth to hold a scream back.

It’s a person—female, based on the hair length and body shape. She’s lying facedown on the street, a barely perceptible pool of blackness spreading beneath her. Her arms are up like goalposts. It’s the same way Delilah used to sleep as a baby, on her chest with arms up and over her head. This woman’s long hair surrounds her. Her legs are tucked beneath the car.

Bea steps from the car. She comes to stand beside me. “She should have been wearing reflective gear. A fucking headlamp. She should have been on the sidewalk.”

My legs finally give. I drop to my knees, not by choice but out of necessity. The gravel from the street digs into my skin. I reach out for the woman, but Bea says, “Don’t touch her,” as I do. Her words are sharp. They startle me.

“Why?” I ask, dismayed, looking over my shoulder at Bea. “We have to help her, Bea. She needs our help. We can’t just leave her here.”

“Of course we’re not going to leave her here. Help me,” she says, dropping down to the other side of the woman. Bea wears gloves now. They must have been in her car, remnants from the winter. My hands are bare. Bea tells me to bury my hands in my shirtsleeves so we don’t touch her with our hands. I don’t think to ask why. I just do.

We try to turn her over. She doesn’t weigh much. But she’s limp, sagging, all dead weight. At first we can’t pick her up. We have to roll her onto her back. In my head I think that we shouldn’t be doing this. You’re never supposed to move someone who’s injured. We should leave her where she is and call for help. But that thought never leaves my head. It stays where it is. I listen to Bea. I go through the motions mostly because I think I’m in shock. This isn’t happening. I’m not here. I’ve dissociated myself from what’s happening and though, physically, some part of me kneels on the street, turning this woman over onto her back, the rest of me watches, horrified, from a distance.

It’s only when she’s flat on her back that I get a good look at the woman. The alcohol inside me rises up, and I find myself rushing into nearby bushes to be sick. I begin to howl. In an instant, Bea is there, in my face, taking me to task. “Shut up, Meredith,” she snaps, more panicked than anything. “You’ll wake the whole fucking street.”

She presses a hand to my mouth and holds my cries in. I have to fight her off to breathe. Bea is scared, I know that. She’s panicking. I am, too.

The woman on the street is Shelby.

I push past Bea. I rush back to the car. I dig inside my purse for my phone. No sooner have I found it, than Bea is there. She snatches it from my hand.

“Give that back,” I say.

“What do you think you’re doing? Who are you going to call?”

I grapple with her for my phone, but Bea is bigger and stronger than me. She wins.

“I know her, Bea,” I say, and I explain. Bea’s face falls, but to her, it changes nothing. “We need to call 911,” I insist. “We need to call for an ambulance. She needs help.”

“We’re drunk,” Bea chastises, “and she’s dead, Meredith. She’s dead. I checked for a pulse—there’s none. There’s nothing we can do for her. I’ll go to jail if anyone finds out about this.”

“So what do you want to do?” I ask. “You want to just leave?”

It’s unfathomable, leaving Shelby here in the middle of the road for someone else to find.

Bea shakes her head. “Of course not, Meredith,” she says, “We can’t just leave her here,” and I’m relieved at first. At first I think Bea plans to do the right thing. But then she says, “We need to get rid of her,” and my heart stops.

“What do you mean?” I ask, aghast.

“We need to take her somewhere secluded, where she won’t be found for a while, if ever.”

“No,” I say, my head jerking wildly back and forth. “No, Bea. Why would we do that? You’re out of your mind.”

“Listen to me,” Bea says, her voice controlled. She grips my head in her hands, forces me to look at her. “Just listen to me. I know you’re upset. I get that, Meredith. I’m upset, too. But think about it for a minute. Just stop and think. This woman is dead. There’s nothing we can do for her. If she was alive, Meredith, I’d call an ambulance. I’d take her to the emergency room myself. But she’s dead. She’s fucking dead. Nothing we do now can change that. But if we turn ourselves in, we’re fucked. I’m fucked. We can’t save her but we can save ourselves.”

“We leave her here, then,” I say, decisive. “We leave her here and we make an anonymous call to the police.”

If the alternative is hiding her body, it’s better to leave her here.

“We can’t do that,” Bea says.

“Why? What difference does it make?”

Bea’s response is thoughtful, swift. She’s two steps ahead of me. “Because if we leave her here, the police are searching for the driver of a hit-and-run by morning, at the latest, if not tonight. If we get rid of her, they’re looking for a missing person. It’s different. Don’t you see that, Meredith? For all we know there are tire impressions on her body, paint on her clothes. Evidence that connects her to me. We have no other choice,” she says. “I know this is hard. But we have to get rid of her.”

I shake my head frantically. The tears come. They’re inaudible, falling from my eyes. “I can’t. I can’t be a part of this,” I rant. I turn away. I set my hand on the door handle. I think about leaving. Where would I go? What would I do?

Bea grabs me before I can leave. I try shrugging her off but can’t. I turn back to her. “Stop it, Bea,” I say. “Let me go. I won’t be a part of this. I can’t have this on my conscience. We should call the police. You should turn yourself in.”

“Snap out of it,” she says as she slaps me hard. I fall silent, shocked. My cheek stings. My hand goes to it as I choke on a sob. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?” she asks. She has the presence of mind to keep her voice quiet. “You’re no innocent bystander,” she says. “You’re already a part of it. What do you think Josh would say if he knew we plowed down some woman in the street? You think that husband of yours would ever think the same of you?”

Shame and fear wash over me. What would Josh do if he knew? Running into Shelby was an accident. But would he judge me for getting in the car with Bea when she was so obviously drunk?

“I don’t know,” I say frantically, shaking my head. “I don’t know what he’d do.”

“Get out of the car, Meredith. Now. I can’t carry her alone.”

She’s firm. We’re no longer on a level playing field. Now Bea is in control.

We get out of the car. We go back to the body. With Shelby on her back, she’s easier to carry. Bea slips her arms under Shelby’s underarms, and lifts her upper half. She has to slide her out from under the car first, before I can take her feet. All the while I sob, my body in spasms. Bea tells me to be quiet, to walk faster. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes.

I go through the motions. I do as I’m told. This isn’t happening, I tell myself. This isn’t real. I keep waiting for myself to wake up. This is all just a dream, a horrible nightmare.

I never wake up.

We haul Shelby to the back end of the car. She’s as limp as a ragdoll. There’s a mark on her head from where she landed on the concrete. It’s swollen. It bleeds. Blood comes from her mouth. Whatever caused her death is far worse than skin-deep. Head trauma. Organ failure. Internal hemorrhaging.

Bea shuffles her into one hand so she can pop the trunk. It’s awkward and ungainly. Shelby’s head sags backward, practically snaps. As Bea opens the trunk, a negligible light comes out. But on the dark street, it might as well be the sun. Bea panics. “Hurry,” she says, nearly throwing her half of Shelby into the trunk, beside jumper cables, a box of cat litter.

There’s a dull thud when Shelby’s head hits the inside of the trunk. It sickens me. I won’t do the same. I carefully, tenderly, lay Shelby’s lower half inside and rearrange her so that she’s comfortable.

Bea doesn’t like this. “Hurry up, Meredith. Just put her in.”

Her eyes appraise the street. There are houses. Most are dark. Most everyone has gone to sleep. Of the few homes still lit, the windows are empty. No one’s watching.

I step back from the trunk. As Bea is closing it, I swear I hear Shelby moan.

My blood curdles. Only Bea felt for a pulse. I never checked.

“What was that?” I ask, panicked. “Open it back up,” I say, but Bea just looks at me.

“It’s time to go, Meredith.” She starts to walk away.

“She made a noise. I heard her,” I insist. “We have to see.”

What if she’s still alive?

What if Bea is mistaken?

Bea says, “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Please, Bea,” I beg. “Please open it so that I can check.”

“Get in the fucking car,” she says, walking around to the driver’s side and getting in. I follow suit, only because Bea tells me that when we get where we’re going I can see if she’s still alive. She starts the car. She doesn’t turn the headlights on.

“If she’s alive, we take her to the hospital,” I say. “Promise me, Bea. Promise me we can take her to the hospital if she’s alive.”

“She isn’t alive.”

“I heard her. She made a noise.”

“You’re hearing things.”

Bea pulls away. I don’t know where we’re going or how long it will take to get there. If Shelby is alive, I pray there’s enough oxygen in the trunk to last awhile.

But what about the exhaust pipe so close to the trunk? Does carbon dioxide get in?

And if she’s bleeding internally, how long until she bleeds out?

It’s only after we’ve gone a block that Bea turns on the headlights.

“If you heard something,” Bea says after a while, “it’s because bodies make noises when they die.”

Bea keeps her eyes on the road. She won’t look at me.

Rain begins to fall in big, fat glops. It splatters against the windshield. If the weathercasters are right, this is the first of many rains to come.

“Can’t we just check?” I ask a few miles from home. The hospital is nearby. If we check and she’s alive, we can take her there.

“Shut up, Meredith. Just please shut the fuck up!” Bea snaps.

I fall silent. I think of Shelby in the trunk. I think of what we’ve done. I think of Jason and her baby at home. I think of Josh, at home in our bed, waiting for me to come.

We drive for miles. We drive through town and then keep going. The road turns wooded. It cuts through the river’s floodplain, on the outer edges of a forest preserve. The houses disappear. The road turns narrow, gravel. The trees close ranks around us, scratching on the hood of the car.

That’s where Bea stops the car, in the middle of the abandoned gravel road. We get out. “We can’t do this. I don’t want to do this, Bea.”

“I’m not going to jail,” she says. She’s hell-bent on that. I’ve never seen this side of Bea. I don’t know who this woman is, but I know this woman is as scared as me, even if it manifests itself as anger and control. Bea is a good person. She’s not a psychopath. But she’s backed into a corner, desperate for a way out. This is that way.

She opens the trunk. I brace myself, not knowing whether we’ll find Shelby dead or alive.

Shelby is dead. She has no pulse. Already the earliest stages of rigor mortis have begun to set in. Her face is fixed in a terrifying grimace. The coloration of her skin has changed.

But she’s shifted positions since we laid her in the trunk. This bothers me.

Was she alive and deliberatively moved inside the trunk, trying desperately to get out?

Or was she dead and kinetic energy moved her?

I can’t stop thinking about it, obsessing over it.

But other than to assuage my guilt, it doesn’t matter. Shelby is dead.

I’ve lost all track of time. I don’t know how long ago the accident was, or how long we were driving.

The rain is steady. As we carry Shelby deeper into the woods, she slips. Her ankles, in my wet hands, are like sardines. They’re hard to hold on to. The ground is soft, wet. We trip over tree roots. We sink into the mud.

Here, we don’t have to worry about being quiet.

We go a couple hundred feet, deep into the trees. I hear the river flowing in the distance. It moves fast. My first thought is that Bea is going to toss Shelby’s body into the river.

But then she stops short of the river. She sets her half of Shelby on the ground. It’s ungentle.

With her gloved hands, Bea starts digging into the softened earth. “You just going to stand there and watch?” she asks. I gently lower Shelby’s legs to the ground. I drop to my knees. I start carving away at the dirt, with my hands still covered by my shirtsleeves. Shelby’s body lies beside me, watching. My actions are reactive, unconscious. I go through the motions, because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t leave. Bea is the one with the keys. She’s calling the shots. I cry as I dig. For a minute my whole body heaves. I try to get control of myself but I’m so overcome with emotion. Shock, horror, guilt, fear.

It takes forever to dig a hole big enough for Shelby’s body. It’s sloppy at best. It’s not nearly deep or wide enough. We don’t have a shovel. But at some point Bea finds an ice scraper in her trunk and we take turns with that. We find tree limbs and use those, too, to chisel away the dirt.

Before we bury her, Bea strips her of her clothes. She savagely tears her shirt from her head. She yanks her pants down. She leaves her underwear around her knees.

Naked, Shelby still carries the baby weight. She hasn’t lost the extra pounds that worried her so. Her breasts are huge, sagging. They fall out of the bra that Bea tugs from her arms.

I watch Bea as she takes Shelby’s shoes. I think of the shame and indignity of being found naked. One final disgrace. I look away. I can’t watch.

“Why, Bea?” I ask.

“If she’s naked, it implies something sexual happened here. The police will go searching for a man.”

We drag her into the hole. We use the dirt and the mud that we’ve unearthed to cover her up. We canvass the forest, gathering whatever detritus we can find: leaves and sticks. We lay those on top of the mud. Shelby’s body shows as a protuberance from the earth. But it’s slight. With any luck, no one will find her here.

At some point in our drive home, it stops raining.

Bea stops just short of our houses, pulling to the side of the street.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

Bea kills the engine. She says only, “Follow me.” We get out of the car and start moving down the sidewalk. We’re both filthy, caked with mud. It’s on my clothes, my hands, my shoes. It’s in my hair.

Bea asks if I have bleach. I tell her I do. By now the rain has washed Shelby’s blood from the street. It’s no longer visible. No one will know it was there.

But Bea’s trunk still shows evidence of blood. That needs to be cleaned.

“Where is it?” she asks, walking fast. Her legs are longer than mine. She doesn’t wait up for me. I have to jog to keep up.

“In the garage,” I say. It’s where Josh and I keep all the cleaning supplies, so that Wyatt and the kids can’t get into them by accident.

We come to my house. It’s surreal, standing outside it at this time of night. I don’t recognize my own yard. “Go get it,” she says, about the bleach. “I’ll wait here.” She stands in the yard. The yard is wooded. The neighborhood is hundreds of years old. Some of the trees were here before the homes. They provide coverage. No one can see us, we think.

My house is dark. The porch lights are off. Josh must have forgotten to turn them on for me. He often does. It has to be the middle of the night. If Josh were to wake, he’d be worried. But Josh is a sound sleeper. The odds of him waking up are slim. It’s far more likely one of the kids would wake up and come looking for me.

I wonder about Jason. Is he sound asleep like Josh, or is he awake, worried, wondering why Shelby isn’t home from her run?

I slink into the garage. I leave the lights off. I move by rote. I find the bleach and return to Bea. It’s cold outside. Only now, as the adrenaline slows, do I notice. I start to shiver. It’s slight at first, but then turns considerable. My body jerks.

Bea takes the bleach from my hand. “I’ll take it from here,” she says. “Go take a shower and go to bed. And remember, not a word to anyone, do you hear? Not a word.”

I offer to help Bea clean. She doesn’t want my help.

Before she leaves, she makes me strip naked.

“Why?” I ask.

“Just do it,” she says.

On my own front lawn, I stand and strip down to my underwear and bra. I’m too devastated to be self-conscious. Bea takes my clothes from me. “What are you doing with those?” I ask. They’re covered in mud, in blood.

“I have to get rid of them. They’re evidence,” is what she says, and then, “Go home, Meredith. Go home to your husband and kids. Forget all about what happened tonight.”

She starts to walk away from me. I grab her arm. “And if I can’t?” I ask, knowing I’ll never forget this night.

“You need to,” she says as she shrugs me off and leaves.