The prediction, p.1
The Prediction, page 1
part #1 of The Jolvix Episodes Series
THE PREDICTION
THE JOLVIX EPISODES
FAITH GARDNER
Copyright © 2022 by Faith Gardner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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To my best friend, confidante, trusted advisor, and lady who is always there for me—Alexa.
CONTENTS
The Afterward
Six months earlier
1. The Party
2. The Machine
3. The Directions
4. The Appointment
5. The Review
6. The Club
7. The Date
8. The Fever
9. The Prediction
10. The Shift
11. The Discovery
12. The Friend
13. The Truth
14. The Getaway
15. The Reunion
16. The Details
17. The Birthday
18. The Confrontation
19. The Blitz
20. The End
21. The Beginning
One More Thing…
A note from the author
Also by Faith Gardner
About the Author
Acknowledgments
THE AFTERWARD
Tonight the wide streets, yellow street lamps, the reaching arms of oak trees flash by my window at sixty miles per hour. Buildings, their shades pulled over windows like sleepy eyelids. Dim shops with no signs of life. A long stretch of park with the path I pushed a stroller up and down that I will never push a stroller up and down again. In mere minutes, the green boulevard signs become unrecognizable. I am re-entering the unknown.
A bone-deep ache mounts within and I sob, blood-smeared hands clutching the wheel. I want to turn back, go home, but home is in front of me now. Michelle fusses in the backseat so I turn up Raffi on the stereo and it rings almost comically poetic, a song about a whale and its baby, swimming wild and free. The glow of fast-food restaurant signs, the shimmering snake of highway in my rearview. Nothing ever appears so beautiful as the moment you know it’s lost.
I glance at the reflection of my swollen face, fat lip, blood in streaks like paint.
“We’re going to be okay,” I tell both the baby in the backseat and the silver machine sitting passenger.
“You did nothing wrong,” she says soothingly. “You did what had to be done. You are a hero, Rowena. A hero.”
She’s right. I know she is. She’s always right.
I put my foot on the accelerator until I feel the floor.
SIX MONTHS EARLIER
CHAPTER 1
THE PARTY
I’m in the backyard of my sprawling ranch house under a blue, cloudless sky in the middle of January. A dotted rainbow of balloons hangs between maple trees along with a Happy Half-Birthday Michelle Maybelle!! banner my mother-in-law Jennee painted herself, because of course she did. Just like she arranged the catered taco bar, the mobile mini petting zoo in the side yard, and invited the entire neighborhood. She also ordered a cake that has my baby’s face printed on it in edible icing and the cake-cutting will likely be the stuff of nightmares. She means well. She drives me bananas. I splash more prosecco into my plastic flute.
“Rowena, I was scouring the premises for you,” Jennee sings as she trudges across the lawn in Birkenstocks, three of her friends trailing behind her with identical eager smiles. Scouring the premises. This is how Jennee talks—like she fancies herself Katherine Hepburn in a black-and-white movie.
I’m an introvert, and that’s a euphemism. This whole crowded scene raises my blood pressure. Secretly, I can’t wait for everyone to leave, to shed this sundress and return to my sweatpants, to escape into a blanket and a book. The party started fifteen minutes ago and I’m already socially exhausted.
“What’s up?” I ask Jennee with a bright smile.
Jennee resembles a Barbie left out in the sun too long: enviable bone structure but weathered skin, frizzy platinum hair, unblinking blue eyes. She’s wearing a bedazzled Proud Liberal shirt. “I want you to meet my book club friends: Pauline, Tiff, and Fran.”
“Hi!” the three women behind her say.
“Nice to meet you all,” I say.
“Rowena used to be an editor,” Jennee tells them. “You know that book on the bestseller list about the woman who got lost in the woods?”
They ooh in unison.
“I don’t, but tell us about it!”
“I’d love to add it to my reading list!”
“Well,” I say. “It’s a literary novel called Garden of the Unknown by Wesley Sinclair—kind of a heady book. Psychological fiction, a contemporary exploration of human fragmentation.”
I’ve lost them. The women’s faces are frozen. Why did I describe it that way, in that voice I once used for pitches? How pretentious, they’re probably thinking.
“With a twist ending,” I add.
“I love twist endings,” says one of the book club ladies, who has a ukulele strapped to her back.
“I’ll be honest,” Jennee tells her friends. “I perused it and didn’t get the hubbub, but it was a bestseller.” Jennee enjoys bragging about two things when it comes to me: I gestated and birthed Michelle Maybelle, who is unarguably the pinnacle of baby perfection. And I once acquired a book that became a bestseller for a blink in time. A book that I never actually even got to edit, by the way, because I left the city to move out here.
I have a sneaking suspicion I peaked at twenty-nine.
“You should join our book club,” the ukulele woman says.
“We have a lot of laughs,” the tie-dyed one says.
“And a lot of wine,” the lady in the Hawaiian shirt says.
Giggles all around. Book clubs have never made sense to me. Books are where I go to escape people.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“She’s got to check her busy schedule,” Jennee jokes to her friends.
I tell them how thrilled I am to meet them and excuse myself to go look for the baby. Where’s the girl of the hour? Or half year? I wave at some of Jacob’s co-workers hovering around high-top tables holding plates heaped with tacos. There’s Jacob, standing under the shade of the cherry tree with Michelle at his feet in an explosive little volcano of a dress printed with lemons, fists full of grass. Jacob, carelessly, effortlessly handsome in his rumpled outfit, thick glasses, and mussed haircut, has a beer in hand. He’s chatting with a woman in sunglasses and an indie band T-shirt. A surge of jealousy strikes like lightning.
Who’s she?
Early or mid-twenties, fashionably disheveled, like she doesn’t need to bother even trying to prim herself for the outside world yet glows with that beaming, golden California vibe. Youth renders everyone effortlessly beautiful. She didn’t squeeze herself into Spanx this morning just to fit into a sundress. She probably slept in this morning. She wasn’t woken up three times in the middle of the night. Whatever she’s telling Jacob is making him laugh that goofy laugh, the one that starts in his belly, the one he really means. And there’s Michelle on the ground, a wood chip now in her hand and reaching toward her mouth.
Panic.
In one second’s time, my anxiety writes an entire tragedy. I can imagine her choking, me falling to my knees and trying to scoop it out of her mouth, me having to put her over my knee and hit her back, nothing coming up. Ambulance lights. A tiny coffin. Those horrible statistics I looked up last week about choking incidents—these thoughts crowd my brain in an instant, make my heart pound.
“No, no, no, Michelle.” I scoop her up into my arms and pluck the wood chip from her fist and toss it back where it belongs. Michelle cries out and I pet her curls over the bald spot on the back of her head. Give her puffy cheek a smooch. Hold her extra close a moment and breathe in her milky smell as I tell myself, it’s okay. We’re okay.
Jacob smiles at me. He has no idea. I’m sure it never crossed his mind that his baby could have choked to death right there at his feet while he laughed with what’s-her-face. “Carrie, this is my wife, Rowena. Ro, Carrie’s another engineer at Jolvix.”
“Cool party.” Carrie cheerses the air with her bottle.
“Nice to meet you,” I say. “Love your shirt.”
Not sure why I said that, I don’t even like the band. I guess I want Carrie to think we’re not so different. Even though we are.
Why am I like this?
“Oh, thanks.” Carrie looks down as if she forgot what she was wearing. “Saw them at Coachella once, like, years ago.”
Coachella is a word that, in my native language, means “nightmare.”
“How fun,” I say. “Jake, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Course,” he says.
I lead him past the caterers and the bluegrass band now playing a version of “Twinkle Twinkle” fit for a hayride. We circle the corner to the shady, empty side yard where the shed and the bins live next to a row of skinny trees still hung with Jennee’s birdhouse collection. I turn to Jacob, a look of concern in his hazel eyes behind his thick square frames. I am desperately trying to not hyperventilate, to not think about what would have happened if Michelle had choked.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
I try, very hard, to keep my voice steady.
“She had a wood chip,” I say, “in her hand.”
Jacob looks genuinely confused. “Who?”
“Michelle. Your daughter. The one I’m holding in my arms, remember her?”
Jacob’s expression stays puzzled. “And?”
“She’s six months old. You weren’t even watching her. She could have popped that wood chip in her mouth, choked, and died if I hadn’t seen her at that moment.”
“She wouldn’t have choked and died. Come on.”
“Last year, a hundred and forty children choked and died. Thousands more children choke and wind up needing emergency care, and they experience brain damage—”
“How do you just pull stats like that out of your head?” he asks.
“I read this thing called the internet, ever heard of it?”
I didn’t mean to sound so rude, but come on. Choking’s no joke.
Jacob puts a hand on my shoulder. “Babe. You’re doing it again.”
“This is not me being overanxious. I admit it is sometimes, but this is not one of those times. This is me just keeping our daughter safe.”
Jacob gently reaches over and lifts Michelle out of my arms. “Have you eaten yet? How about you go get some food? You know how you get when you’re hungry—”
“This isn’t me being hungry,” I say, a little flame rising at the dismissal.
“Have you eaten?”
“No, but—”
“Go eat, Ro,” he says, with an edge, before turning around to head back to the party. I watch his plaid back retreating and defeat swallows me alive.
I slip in the back door, through the dining room, past the table covered in presents. In the kitchen, I hold my hand out and yes, it’s shaking. I’m upset, I am overreacting again, and I need a moment alone. And I don’t get what’s so wonderful about Mexican food anyway. What’s up with Californians’ obsession with tacos?
I put a piece of leftover pizza in the toaster oven and wait at the sink, gazing out the window. From here, the party sparkles with life and silent conversation. A professional photographer is now floating around the yard, squatting to take pictures. What’s wrong with me, that I can’t enjoy this? That all I can think about is what would have happened if Michelle had put the wood chip in her mouth and choked silently in the grass while Jacob stood laughing and flirting with some girl half his age? What if Michelle had died at her own half-birthday party? Why can’t I even trust my own husband to keep our daughter safe?
With a sigh, I turn and head to our master bedroom with the shut curtains and the rumpled, unmade bed, clothes scattered in piles on the floor around the hamper. I open my bedside table, read the label on Lorazepam advising me not to mix it with alcohol, and put it back. I put a hand on my heart and focus on my breath instead. Michelle is safe. The choking didn’t actually happen. She’s safe. She’s not in danger.
A voice floats from the dining room, along with the sound of the sliding door gliding open and shut. Jennee’s voice, low and conspiratorial.
“… yes, though it wouldn’t have killed them to offer a little assistance. You know I planned this whole thing myself? I know Jacob’s up to his ears with work, but Rowena …”
Now silence. Whispering. She’s whispering about me. My stomach turns, trying to imagine what she’s saying. That I’m lazy. Ungrateful. Nuts. A bad mother. A terrible wife.
“New York her whole life,” Jennee finishes, her voice rising again. “So there’s a bit of culture shock going on, too.”
“Poor thing.”
Oh, so much worse—they’re pitying me. I get up and ease the door shut, a hiss along the carpet, then a click. Not knowing what to do, where to go, trapped in my own room, I step into the walk-in closet littered with high-heeled shoes and hung with business casual outfits I never have a reason to wear anymore. I turn off the light, close the door, and plunk down on a pile of shoes.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper into my hands. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”
Eyes squeezed shut, with a pang, I miss home. I’m transported back there in a whirlwind of images flashing and stirring emotion: the view from my thirtieth floor midtown office windows, how the skyscrapers glowed with lit windows when the sun went down, how proud I was when I was given my own office with a door. My apartment in Bushwick filled with funky furniture I hand-painted and curtains I sewed myself out of thrift store fabric, where my best friend Dane lived a floor above and stomped her feet in secret code. Readings on weeknights in crowded bookstores, my neighborhood bar with my ex Shana behind the counter, the knowledge that I could wander anywhere and never get lost because the city just made sense, and I never wondered what people thought about me because people said whatever the hell they were thinking. They didn’t smile at you and then talk about what a basket case you were when they thought you weren’t listening.
It’s embarrassing to tell people that Jacob and I met on a dating app, so the story I usually spin is that we met at the High Line. Which is true—that was where we decided to meet in person for the first time. But at that point, we had already exchanged I love yous, life histories, and jacked off with each other on video calls. We met during one of the many pandemic lockdowns and while the whole world seemed frozen in time, the city streets outside my window eerily empty, it was a relief to have one part of life rushing full speed ahead on my smartphone and in my heart. I loved his gentleness, how often he checked in on me, his passion for video games that reminded me of my passion for books, how much he respected and adored his mother—a good sign in a guy. Jacob was loyal. His last girlfriend had died of leukemia a few years before us and even though their relationship had been on the rocks for a year, he stuck with her to the end. He mailed me truffles and a vintage copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel that must have cost a fortune. I was used to more dramatic relationships, physical passion that often fizzled quickly. Jacob was so sweet, so safe, at a time when everything was topsy turvy and uncertain.
A few months later, we had our first date. He moved in by the end of the summer. By October, I took him to Yonkers to meet my mom, all masked up and shivering on the porch while my mom grilled Jacob about his plans and I interjected occasionally with the word “Mom.” Thanksgiving I spent vomiting in my apartment and staring at two pink lines on a drugstore test. Jacob and I married a week later at city hall, Jennee sobbing on a video call the whole time, even her virtual attendance obnoxious, while my mom stood six feet away from us, masked up and gloved, wiping tears from her eyes, saying, “I hope this makes you happy. I really do hope you make each other happy.”
Up to that point, life never moved fast enough. And then suddenly it picked up speed like a bullet train. It was romantic. It was like a movie. I never wondered if I had made a mistake, until we came out here to California and the reality set in.
I’m still balled up on the floor of the closet but am pulled from the past by an earsplitting beeping sound accompanied by a calm robot voice.
“Danger. Fire. Vacate the premises. Danger. Fire. Vacate the premises. Danger—”
Adrenaline washes the self-pity away and grips me by the throat. I fly out of the closet, out of the room, the robot voice continuing through the house’s speakers. Shit, I do smell fire—a toxic, smoky, burnt-plastic smell. I rush into the dining room, empty now, and the smoke thickens. Oh, look at it—the toaster oven! My pizza! In flames! Out the picture window, the party continues, the bluegrass band playing instruments and people dancing.
