I sped all the way home, and once I got there, I fought to keep from running into the house. I had to act normal, whether there was something wrong or not. And what real evidence did I have that anything was wrong? A creepy story from a tow truck driver and a muddy fingerprint that was probably my wife’s? I gave my head a small shake as I unlocked the front door. Time to get my shit together and act like everything was fine unless and until I was sure it wasn’t.
Walking into the house, I heard my parents and Cody talking in the living room. Their voices sounded relaxed and cheerful, and I felt myself calm down a little as I stepped around the corner and said hello. My parents were sitting on the sofa and Cody was in one of the recliners nearby, while Evan was sitting on the floor playing with a group of robot action figures, his face drawn down into a concentrated frown. When he looked up and saw me, his face lit up and he ran over to give me a big hug.
“Hey, buddy. We sure have missed you.” I pulled back and gave him a grin. “Did you have a good time with Granny and Grandpa?”
He nodded and looked like he was about to say something when Mom spoke up. “We loved having him. Took him to see Todd’s horses down the road and he loved that. Another week and we would have bought him a pony.”
I laughed and gave Evan a playful frown. “You know, when I was growing up, I wanted a horse, but they always told me no. Looks like you’ve got ‘em where you want them.”
He smiled slightly, but it didn’t last but a moment. My frown turned more genuine.
“You okay? Feeling okay?”
Cody spoke up. “He’s probably hungry. I’ll go fix us some lunch.” Dad stood up and offered to help her, and a moment later they were gone in the direction of the kitchen. I glanced at Mom and then at Evan. “Go play with your bots for a minute up in your room, okay? I want to talk to your grandma. I’ll get you when lunch is ready.”
He looked at me uncertainly for a moment and then he grabbed up his toys and left. I saw Mom’s confused expression, but I waited until I felt like Evan was out of earshot before I went over and spoke to her in a quiet voice.
“Sorry, I just wanted to talk to you about Cody for a second.”
She frowned and gave a slow nod. “Okay. Is everything all right? The doctors haven’t found something bad, have they?”
I shook my head. “No, no, nothing like that. They still don’t have any real answers, but nothing bad has come up.” I sighed. “I just…how does she seem to you and Dad? Does she seem like herself?”
Her frown deepened as she seemed to ponder the question. “Well, I mean she told us about the amnesia—which you should have told us that already, by the way, but I think I understand why you didn’t. She said she remembers us, but its spotty. And I mean, sure she seems a bit different. Quieter and more reserved, probably. But isn’t that to be expected given everything?”
I nodded. “Sure, sure. Yeah, you’re right. Of course you are.” Pausing, I tried to stop myself from asking the next question, but I couldn’t help it. “But I mean…it seems like her, doesn’t it?”
She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Listen, I know this is hard on you too, but you need to be supportive of her, okay? Maybe she’s not exactly like she was, but think of all she’s been through…and is still going through. I can’t imagine how scary losing your memory like that must be.” Mom jabbed a finger at me. “But you need to suck it up and be strong for her. Patient. In time she’ll come back to herself more, but you have to let it happen on her terms.”
“I mean, yeah, of course. That’s not really what I…”
“Lunch is almost ready.” I looked up to see Cody leaning in the doorway. Had she heard what we were saying? If she did, her face didn’t show it, and she seemed preoccupied looking around. “Where’s Evan?”
Swallowing, I gave her a smile. “Up in his room playing. I’ll go get him.” She was still watching me as I stood up and headed into the hall, but by the time I made it to the stairs she was back talking to Mom about lunch. Normal stuff. Everything seemed normal, except for me.
When I went into Evan’s room, I saw he was curled up on the bed, staring out into the hall. His eyes widened as I came in, and before I could get out that it was time for lunch, he was off the bed and back to me, hugging me again.
“Hey, sweetie. It’s good to see you too. They’ve got lunch just about ready downstairs. Let’s go on down.”
He looked up at me, his face crumpling a little. “I don’t wanna.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“It’s not right.”
Pulling him back a little more, I studied his face, trying to understand what he meant. “What’s not right, Evan?”
His lip trembled slightly. “Mommy. She doesn’t smell right.”
I convinced my parents to stay a few more days to visit and help out, and while Cody didn’t seem happy about it, she didn’t overly complain either. I didn’t say anything else to Mom or Dad about my concerns, but I did stress to them that I didn’t want Evan left alone with her, as I didn’t want her “tiring herself out”. They agreed, and for the next couple of days, everything was…well, if not normal, at least fairly calm and quiet. Cody got along with my parents as well or better than she ever had, and while Evan was still very standoffish with her, she never commented on it or tried to force the issue.
For my part, I kept trying to let my strange worries go, but I just couldn’t. I tried to tell myself it was just the mystery of the accident and the stress of everything that had followed, and that if I could get more answers, I’d be satisfied and able to move on. Cody went to her first follow-up exam, and everything went fine. They did more bloodwork and another MRI, but it would be a few more days before we heard anything new from the medical side of things. That left the accident itself.
I started wondering if there had been any type of police investigation of the accident or even the missing Robbie. I didn’t want to let Cody know I was still asking questions, so I called around myself. The best I could find was a state trooper’s accident report which didn’t go into any detail I didn’t already know. I tried to ask about the Robbie guy, but I didn’t even have a last name, and I could already tell they weren’t willing to give out random information to whoever, if he’d ever been reported missing in the first place. So, out of other options, I slipped out to my car and called Jesse again.
“Hey, Jesse. Steve Miltry.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey Steve.”
“You got a minute to talk?”
His voice sounded slightly wary when he answered. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
“Did that Robbie guy ever show up again? I’d just like to talk to him if he did.”
“No, he never did. In fact, the old man went yesterday and swore out a warrant for him taking the truck. Maybe the cops can find him.”
I let out a sigh. “Yeah, maybe. I just…I wanted to find out more what happened out there, you know? And I don’t think the cops really investigated anything. I thought about carrying this fingerprint…you know, the one I found on the license? I thought about giving it to the cops so they could see if it was my wife’s or if someone else was out there too, but now I don’t know.”
There was a moment of quiet on the line, and then Jesse finally spoke. “I may can get someone to check that for you at least.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, I mean working the wrecker, you get to know cops, right? I have a few I’m buddies with. I can probably get one of them to check it if you want.”
“Really? That’d be awesome. Really great.”
“Sure, man. I…let me ask around and I’ll let you know what they tell me.”
“I really appreciate this. Just…text me when you find out and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
I noticed he didn’t question why, but I tried to let it go as I hung up and snuck back into the house. An hour later he texted, and when I called back, he told me the woman he was giving it to needed the license and ideally a sample print from Cody. His voice sounded tense at this last.
“If you can’t do that, it’s cool. She said she can look up her prints from the driver’s license database. Just a clean, confirmed sample on a glass or something is better to double-check everything. But only if you think its…you’re comfortable with that.”
“Um, yeah. I can try. I’ll bring you the stuff tomorrow.”
It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it’d be. I made it a point of clearing away the dishes that night, having watched Cody handle her drink glass for over half an hour. Quietly sticking it in a plastic bag and sitting it up on a high shelf, I snuck it out the next day on a trip to run “errands”. The main errand, of course, being dropping off the glass and license to Jesse.
When I got back to the house, I noticed my parents’ car was gone.
Going inside, I found Cody and Evan sitting together working on a jigsaw puzzle at the kitchen table. He didn’t even look up when I entered, but she gave me a smile. “Did you get your stuff done?”
I blinked. “Um, yeah. Mostly.”
She frowned slightly. “What were you out doing again?”
Turning away from her gaze, I pretended I needed to wash my hands at the sink. “Oh, just drop some checks in the mail and go by the office to pick up some stuff. Nothing too big.” I tried to keep my voice even. “So where are Mom and Dad?”
She let out a soft chuckle behind me. “Oh, they went home. I told them I was ready for it to be just the three of us again, and they agreed. It was so sweet of them to come and stay like they did. I told them that too.”
I turned back around, leaning against the sink. “Yeah, I mean it was. But are you sure you’re ready to not have the extra help and company? It might help you remember more too.”
She gave a shrug. “I remember the important stuff already.” Reaching over, she swiped a lock of hair off Evan’s forehead as he studied and turned a puzzle piece. To my surprise, he didn’t recoil or even look up. “And I’ve got my family to help me remember.”
I nodded. “Sure. But why did they leave so fast? They couldn’t wait until I got back to go?”
“Your Dad said it was going to be dark if they didn’t go ahead and leave. And it did take you awhile.” Her eyes widened slightly. “Hey, you haven’t seen my glass from last night, have you?”
Swallowing, I shook my head. “Um, no. It…well, it’s probably in the sink or the dishwasher.”
Cody glanced at the sink and back to me. “No, I washed some stuff this morning and it wasn’t there. And the four glasses we used last night were all the same. Now there’s only three of them.” She just stared at me, letting the words hang between us like a shading snake on an overhead bough.
“I…I don’t know. Maybe one of them washed it by hand and put it away.” I forced a laugh. “Or they broke it and were embarrassed. “But I mean, it doesn’t matter does it?”
She smiled at me. “It doesn’t matter to me if it doesn’t to you.”
The days crawled by, but every day seemed slightly more normal. I went back to working full-time, and a few days later, so did Cody. Time passed, and the longer things went without anyone else having some issue with Cody, the more embarrassed I felt that I’d spent so much time and energy doubting my wife.
Even Evan, who had seemed so skittish around her at first, had swiftly shifted to clinging to her most of the time. He’d always been his mother’s baby in a lot of ways, but it was even more obvious now. He would talk to me and play with me some if I made him, but for the most part he just wanted to be close to her, and it was rare that he was ever out of Cody’s sight. Still, I wrote it off as them rebonding after time apart and trauma. Nothing nefarious or strange about it in the least.
When my phone rang one morning, I felt my stomach twist as I recognized the number. Glancing around my empty office as though I was committing a crime, I answered the call. “Hey, Jesse.”
“Um, hey. I…well, I got some information for you. Some stuff you’ll want to hear.”
I felt my palm sweating against the back of my phone. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“Well, um, I need the detective that checked those prints to explain it. Can you meet us for lunch today?”
The air seemed thin in my lungs. “I…I’ve got a lot going on today. Can’t you just tell me?”
“Steve, I don’t want to tell you wrong, and I feel like you may need to know what she has to say. Can you meet us?”
“Sure. Yeah, sure I will.”
Detective Marisa Somers had a kind, intelligent face weighed down by a kind of heaviness or fatigue I’d seen before in some cops and soldiers. People who had seen too much for too long and were marked by it. When she shook my hand and smiled, it did brighten her face, but only slightly, and her eyes still looked serious and concerned.
“Do you want to order anything or…”
I shook my head. “I just want to know what you found.” I jerked my thumb toward Jesse. “He says you needed to tell me yourself, and I really appreciate all the trouble you two are going to, but please just tell me what’s going on.” I let out a shuddering sigh as I leaned back in my chair on the outdoor patio. “Please.”
Marisa nodded. “I understand. So…okay.” She held up one hand and started ticking off fingers. “I took photos and liftings from the license and the glass. Now bear in mind, none of these prints are perfect. Ideally, you’d like to have twelve or more points of similarity for a trial or something, but something more informal like this, I’d be happy with ten.”
Frowning, I leaned forward. “So was it her print on the license?”
She returned the frown. “I’m getting to that. I just need to explain what I did so you know I’m not full of shit.”
I blinked. “Um, okay.”
She nodded. “Okay. So I took the liftings and photos, and then I focused on the license at first, as that was the big question mark from what Jesse told me. I compared it against the prints on file when your wife got her license. It didn’t appear to match. Then I ran it through IAFIS, which is a national database. No match there. There are other ways to check, but none that I have access to without raising a red flag and putting my own ass at risk.” Marisa furrowed her brow. “So then I checked the dirt print against the glass.”
I felt my mouth going dry. “It matched, didn’t it?”
She met my eyes, her expression strange. “Yeah. It did.”
“So…fuck…so the dirt license print matches her prints now but not the ones from a few years ago? Is that possible? Can they change like that over time?”
Shaking her head, she took in a big breath. “Not generally no, and not without some kind of accident or surgery or something.”
I felt the terror building in my throat as I hissed out my next words. “So she’s not my wife?”
Jesse leaned forward. “Just hold tight, man. Let her finish.”
I looked back at Marisa. “I’m sorry. I just…I don’t understand.”
She nodded. “It’s okay. I didn’t either at first. But something bugged me, so I went back and looked at the three prints again. The ones from when she got her license, the dirt print on the physical license itself, and the ones you got on the glass. That’s when I realized what I’d missed.”
“Every fingerprint is unique, not just because of the different lines and whorls and ridges, but how they fit into the larger pattern of the print. How far one identifing point is from the next, and what angle and position this point is relative to the others, that kind of thing. That’s why I didn’t notice it at first. The print from the DMV and those from the dirt print and the glass are all identical. It’s just the dirt print and glass prints are reversed.”
I shifted my gaze between her and Jesse. “What does that mean? Like are they just upside down or something? Like maybe she was just holding the license or glass weird?”
Marisa shook her head. “No, it doesn’t work like that.” She grabbed a drink napkin as she pulled out a pen. Tearing the napkin in half, she drew a cross on each before writing the numbers one through four in the quarters made by the intersecting lines. “Okay, imagine these are the four quadrants of a fingerprint. One, two, three and four, right? And one has some unique points. So does two. So does three, and so does four. This is like the record of your wife’s prints from the DMV. This is our baseline, okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
She moved over to the other half of the napkin and redrew the numbers, swapping one and two on the top and three and four on the bottom quarters of the cross. “This is what I saw on the dirt print and the glass. The opposite of the first one.” She rotated it upside down and slid it next to the first. “Flipping it upside down doesn’t make it match, because it’s not an inversion of the old print.”
My hand had drifted to my mouth as I stared at the napkins. She was right. One said 1, 2, 3, 4 left to right and top to bottom. Inverted, the other said 3, 4, 1, 2 read the same way. I looked back up at the woman. “What is it then?”
“It’s a reflection.”
My mind raced as I made my way home. Jesse and Marisa hadn’t wanted me to leave until I calmed down, but I couldn’t wait. Evan was home with that…with her and whatever was going on, I was going to make sure he was out of the house and safe. And then I was going to get answers, once and for all.
I skidded to a halt in the driveway and started taking the steps two at a time as I raced up the porch and fumbled to unlock the door. Through the door’s glass I saw the lights inside flicker, flare, and then go out. Pushing open the door, I paused, listening for any sound. At first there was none, and closing the door behind me, I tried flipping the hall lights off and on, but nothing happened. Was the power out suddenly?
Just then I heard a sound upstairs. A harsh, wet sound like gagging or retching. Running to the stairs, I started up, calling Evan’s name.
“We’re in here.”
It was Cody…it sounded like Cody’s voice, and it was coming from Evan’s room. Topping the stairs and rounding the corner, I saw her sitting next to him on the floor. His body was still heaving as another spasm of gagging hit him, his back shuddering and…did he look larger than before? It didn’t matter now, I needed to get him to a hospital and away from…
He vomited this time, a grey burst of thick liquid pouring out across the floor, and in the midst of that, some darker, heavier object. The woman that looked like Cody was rubbing his back, crooning something softly to him that at first I took as comfort, but then I realized was praise.
“That’s a good boy. I know it was hard. But you did it. You finally did it.”
Horrified, I took a step into the room. “What did you do to him? What is that?”
She didn’t respond directly, but instead reached forward into the wet filth on the floor, fishing the solid object out with a slimy shake. Turning to me, her smile was wide and her eyes dancing as she held it up between us.
It was a key.
---
Credits
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