Envy

chapter 37

SANDRA BERKLEY HAD TAKEN HER LAST DRINK. There was no point in it anymore. She went around the house and collected the partial-empties from their assorted hiding places. She recovered a bottle of vodka from under a stack of old towels on the bottom shelf of the linen closet. She found two—rum and whisky—in the pantry behind the basmati rice bag that she’d purchased in bulk and doubted she’d ever use up.

There were six bottles in total, and she took them to the sink and poured out the remnants of each one until nothing remained.

Katelyn was gone. Harper was next door at the restaurant. She sat down and wrote out a letter. It was something that she’d wanted to do for almost ten years.

I want you to know that I’m so sorry … please forgive me …

Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she finished and signed her name. She folded the slip of paper and put it into an envelope.

IT WAS AFTER SIX THIRTY WHEN KIM LEE finished her work in the mill office and began her precise and ritualistic practice of tidying up her desk. That was just how she was. Always the same, every day. Kim kept most things in order. As an accountant, that pretty much was her job. She closed her drawers, turned the locks, and got up to leave. In doing so, she noticed a small envelope in her in-basket. It had been addressed to her, care of the mill.

She used the letter opener that Beth had made in middle school, a red Plexiglas shark with a menacing jaw that cut through paper like a razor.

Kim started reading, and before she was finished, she was on her way out the door. Beth always complained that her mother was a slowpoke. If she’d seen her right then, she’d never dare to make that claim again. Kim’s winter coat was left in the employee break room, but despite the cold wind off the water she didn’t even notice. Four minutes later, she was pounding on her neighbor’s front door.

“Open up!” Kim cried. “Please!”

No answer.

Kim went around the house, looking into the windows. The lights were on, but she couldn’t see anyone home, yet she was sure Sandra had to be there or at the restaurant. Sandra’s car was parked in back.

“Please! We need to talk!” Kim called out as she pounded her fist on the back door.

Footsteps! Good. Sandra hadn’t done anything stupid. At least, not yet.

Finally, the door opened. Sandra Berkley stood in the doorway, her eyes outlined in red and her face blotchy. Her hands trembled as she let Kim Lee inside. She didn’t say a word at first. Instantly, she started sobbing—uncontrollably so.

“Sit down, Sandra,” said Kim, who was crying now too.

“I’m sorry,” Sandra said, “I couldn’t live with it any longer. I’ve never forgotten the screams.”

“I know,” Kim said, her own eyes welling with tears. “We all know.”

“I heard Christina cry out for me as the bus started to sink. I just stood there. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You were in shock.”

Sandra fought for some composure, but it was a losing battle. “I didn’t even try. I just …”

“No one blames you,” Kim said.

“I blame myself. I know what I did and didn’t do. I know how I felt after.”

Kim wrapped her arms around Sandra’s shoulders as she tried to console her. The sobs came in waves. Sandra tried to speak in the breaks between her tears.

“I was glad, Kim,” she said. “I was glad that Katelyn survived. I stood there listening to the screams, knowing that I had my daughter and that she was hurt but she was alive. She was going to live. And for what? She’s gone now too.”

“You’ve suffered so much, then and now,” Kim said.

Sandra stopped long enough to lock her crying eyes on Kim’s. “Forgive me, Kim.”

Kim Lee shook her head. “No, no forgiveness is needed. You did all that you could.”

“Did I? Really, Kim? Really?”

“I’m sure you did. No one knows how they will react in a moment like what happened on that bridge. No one. You did the best you could in a terrifying time.”

“I don’t know,” Sandra said, looking for something that maybe Kim could finally give her.

“I know you did,” Kim said.

The women talked a while longer. They cried; they hugged. Kim didn’t tell Sandra that she had questioned why Katelyn had been spared, when Christina was taken. And even so, in that very moment in the Berkleys’ house, no two women were ever closer, a bond so deep, borne of such tragedy.

The Port Gamble gossip line, thought by many to be sublimely accurate, had failed miserably when it came to the true trouble reverberating in house number 23. The Berkleys’ rows were not about a marriage crumbling because Sandra was drinking. It wasn’t about a restaurant failing, or settlement money that had been squandered. It was a marriage falling apart because Sandra Berkley could not face what had really happened on the Hood Canal Bridge and the shame and misplaced guilt that came with it. Booze had been her medication. Anger had been her weapon against a husband who had wanted to help her work through her guilt.

After she was sure Sandra was going to be all right, Kim Lee left for home, shaken and relieved by the meeting. She composed herself before ducking inside. Beth was watching TV, texting, drinking a sugar-free Red Bull, and reading a book.

“You look completely trashed,” Beth said, glancing at her mother. “What did they make you do now? Re-add everything five minutes before shift change? Your job so sucks.”

Kim had hoped the short walk in the night air would take some of the puffiness from her eyes.

“Nothing ever adds up,” she said, going into the kitchen. “Pizza tonight?”

Beth looked back down at her phone. “All right. I’ll call it in. You always get thick crust because you think it’s a better value because it weighs more. I like thin crust.”

“Fine,” Kim said, heading into the kitchen. She braced herself on the counter a little and steadied herself by taking in a deep breath. She unfolded the letter and read it one more time. After seeing Sandra, it no longer seemed like a suicide note.

I want you to know I’m so sorry that I didn’t save your daughter or the other girls. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to that day and do it all over. I’d do things differently. Please forgive me. I don’t know how much longer I can live with what I did.

Sandra

Kim shredded the note and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. She turned on the water and, as the noisy contraption did its thing, she wondered if it was worse to lose a child or live with the guilt that yours had survived. She was glad that she never had to face that. Sandra’s cross to bear weighed a million pounds.

Later, after a couple of slices of thin-crust pizza and some distracted conversation between mother and daughter, Beth excused herself to her bedroom and texted Hayley and Taylor.

BETH: MOM IS STRNGR THAN NORMAL 2NITE. BOSS PROB YELLED @ HER. WISH I HAD HER PROBS. HER LIFE IS SO EZ.

HAYLEY: TELL ME ABOUT IT. THEY KEEP SAYING THAT THINGS R HARDER IN THE ‘REAL WORLD’ BUT THEY HAVE NO IDEA HOW F’ED UP IT IS @ KINGSTON.

TAYLOR: DEF THE WORST.

As Kim Lee placed her head on the pillow, she was transported back to that day almost ten years ago, standing on the Hood Canal Bridge as the sirens wailed and all the mothers cried. Seeing Sandra hadn’t brought it all back, because it had never really left her. She, like all the other moms, hated that damn bridge. Just hated it.