23. Falling FatalitiesThirty-Two Years Ago

Falling Fatalities

Jack leaves for the restaurant, and the house goes silent.

I sit on the bed and stare straight ahead at the photographs lining the fireplace mantel. Framed candid shots and Polaroids and photo-booth strips, glimpses into our last couple of years together: photographs of the two of us in our backyard and at friends' weddings, on a bike-riding trip upstate with my mother. I even have a framed photograph of us at thirteen years old. I found a copy of our eighth grade yearbook and there it was, a class picture in woodshop. We were on opposite ends of the first row. Jack was smiling at the camera, but I was looking down the bench toward him. Jack likes to joke that I was definitely looking past him at Hudson Ricci, the kid to his left, who everyone had a crush on. But I know it was Jack. Even then, I knew.

I can go to see him, I think. I can fix this. I just need to stand up. My phone buzzes, stopping me, an unknown number on the caller ID. For a brief moment, I get to tell myself it's Jack calling from the restaurant's landline. Jack saying he's not going. Jack saying we can figure this out. Stay there. Stay where you are. I'm on my way.

But it's a woman on the other end of the line. Her voice terse and serious.

"This is Dr. Susan Clifton. I received your email. I work with Lanie Robertson."

Dr. Susan Clifton. The second of the two forensic pathologists.

I sit up taller, focus in. "Dr. Clifton," I say. "Thank you for the call. I really appreciate you getting in touch."

"Of course," she says. "Though I'm not sure how much help I'm able to be. I took a look at the files you sent. And, to be perfectly frank with you, most aspects of your father's fall lend themselves to multiple interpretations."

"Okay…"

"I think the investigators were correct to rule out self-harm," she says. "The fall pattern is consistent with someone caught off guard, as was the angle of contact. Forgive the bluntness. But, I do have to say, their other conclusions feel premature to me. With falling fatalities, it's quite difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty whether a fall from a great height is due to an accident or foul play because the fall pattern is similar."

"So why did they conclude there was no foul play?"

"That would be my question as well. Unless they were privy to information I was not. There don't seem to be toxicology reports here or proper blood splatter analysis. Your father was cremated, correct?"

"Correct."

"Unfortunately, that really limits what we are able to determine now. There is usually a story that emerges. But without his body, I can't be of much help."

A story emerges. That language stops me. And something else does.

"Dr. Clifton," I say. "What do you mean by ‘most aspects'?"

"Excuse me?"

"You said most aspects lend themselves to multiple interpretations." I say. "Some aspects are more definite?"

"Certainly there are a few things I would characterize as—"

"Suspicious?"

"Requiring further investigation."

"Like what?"

"There was a large contusion on his left cheek, which he could have sustained in an altercation before the fall. If we had access to the body, I'd be better equipped to study that and to see if they missed any foreign DNA under his fingernails… I also think the velocity with which he seems to have fallen suggests it was the result of a push. On an accidental fall, I would expect him to land closer to the cliff's edge…" She pauses. "But, to be honest with you, the most compelling pattern piece to me, at the moment, is the fact that everyone is pretending they know anything with certainty in a very uncertain situation."

"So without a body, is there anything left for me to do?"

She pauses, the air between us thick. "As a clinician, I don't know. But as a daughter? You may want to go back to the scene of the fall again. Sometimes things emerge that you can't see on the first or even the second visit."

"And you think that's worth doing?"

"I can't promise you it will be fruitful, but yes."

I take a moment to steady myself. "And if it were your father, and if you were making an educated guess, you think he was pushed?"

"I'll say this. I can't tell you he wasn't."

I call Sam's cell, but it's Morgan who picks up. She starts talking over me.

"Thank goodness it's you," she says. "I need you."

"Okay, but I have to speak to Sam first. It's a bit of an emergency."

"You have an emergency? I have an emergency! We need to meet you at the brownstone ASAP. Sam wants to move up the wedding."

I think I heard her wrong. I'm still focused on Dr. Clifton. On the scope of my father's fall. The angling.

"So you and me just need to triage," Morgan says. "Focus on the roof deck and how to get that ready. I need a detailed lighting plan, obviously. Also, maybe we like… erect a cool outdoor staircase or ladder that people have to climb up to the top?"

I try to process what she's saying. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, a way to avoid guests walking through the unfinished house. I don't need the judgment."

"Is Sam there, Morgan? Can you get him, please?"

She calls out to Sam. "Nora's on for you!"

I hear his response coming at me from another room in their apartment, from an echoing distance. "Not a good time," he says.

"Not a good time?" I ask, as though he can hear me. "Tell him to pick up the phone."

"He's walking out the door already," she says. "Let me send you some inspo pics. Ten a.m. tomorrow at the brownstone, okay?"

Then she hangs up.

I sit at my drafting table, turning over everything Dr. Clifton said to me. Her suspicions, her uncertainty.

Her words to me: a story emerges. I learned the same early on in my training on how to think about building out a space. A column isn't just a column. A pillar isn't just a pillar. It doesn't just have to interact with the rest of the building but also with the story of what the building needs to do. Who, at the end of the day, am I hoping the building will save? Who do I need it to hold?

I study my father's will again, going back over the deed and property notes for Windbreak. What am I missing? Who was my father trying to save? Who was he trying to hold?

I zero in on Jonathan's name on the bottom of several of the documents. Jonathan Reed, Noone's general counsel, who clearly has access to everything. Jonathan, who is the only person with a legal obligation to keep that information privileged and private.

I shoot him an email anyway. I ask him to give me a call when he gets to the office, that I have some questions about Windbreak, about next steps for me to take possession. These aren't the questions I have, but they are questions that he won't try to avoid answering. Questions that, it seems, are in his fiduciary responsibility to try and answer.

Then I get on the subway and head to Austin's recital.

When I get off at Bleeker Street, my phone buzzes. It's Jonathan.

I walk toward Austin's school as I listen to him say hello, listen to the false lilt in his voice.

"It's quite straightforward," he says. "You're free to take possession of Windbreak when you are ready. Or if you'd prefer to explore selling, I can help you with a local real estate agent and prepare the sale from here."

I have no intention of selling, but I also don't want to get into that discussion. Because he'll want to know what I'm going to do with a cottage across the country and I don't have a good answer yet. I just know that I'm not ready to give up the piece of my father I seem to have held on to.

"Jonathan, was there ever anyone else?" I ask.

"How do you mean?"

I mean, who else did Windbreak matter to the way it mattered to my father? Who may have been there that night with him? Who may have been there because my father mattered to them in a way that was so deep and painful that it ended on the edge of that clifftop?

"I'm asking if it was always my father's intention for me to get Windbreak or did that plan change too?"

He is quiet, his silence steely. And I wonder if I'm imagining it in the silence or if it's actually there. The anxiety.

"Nora, I'm not really at liberty to go over the whole history."

"Should I take that as a yes, then?"

I've arrived at Austin's school. The auditorium doors are open, family and friends heading inside. I see Elliot racing toward the entrance from the other direction, still in his hospital scrubs, holding a present for Austin

"If it's helpful to know," he says, "your father always wanted to take care of you."

"That's not answering my question, is it?"

"It's the best answer I have," he says. "Your father wanted to do the right thing, for you, for your brothers. For everyone he loved. He was nothing if not loyal."

A teacher comes out and starts to swing the auditorium doors shut. I click off the call and race inside.

It isn't until the curtain goes up, Jonathan outside my grasp, that I find the question I want to ask. The question he didn't answer. The question no one will answer.

Loyal to whom?