“And then what happened?” Liam asks.
“I confirmed what I already knew. She’d gone to the bank and taken out all my money.”
“Because she had your wallet.”
“Yeah, and her driver’s license, which she showed me, which said we had the same name and birthday. My account information, my passwords, they were all in my phone.”
Liam speaks with a bit more urgency. “She went into the bank?”
“I wasn’t signed up for internet banking. I don’t like doing much online.”
“There must’ve been security footage, then.”
“There was. The bank pulled it and gave it to the cops. They didn’t care. One of them even said it could’ve been me, dressed up, taking my own money.”
“Why would you do that?” Liam asks.
“That’s what I said. And you know what the cop said? He said, there’s all kinds of criminals in the world. Smart, dumb, and somewhere in between. Apparently, people do this sort of thing to try to get the insurance money. You know, how the bank has coverage on your accounts for fraud?”
“My cop said something similar,” I say. “Plus, I got told I was a low priority.”
“They said that too.”
“She took everything?” Liam asks, keeping us on track.
“Pretty much. I filed for the insurance, but I was denied. I have the house. And I was lucky enough to get a job at the local school, not teaching, but at least it puts food on the table.”
“It’s not what you fantasized about,” I say.
“Not by a long shot.”
“And that gossip, Leanne—she knew about this?”
“Her husband is one of the policemen in town. I guess he told her, because she started saying things about how I could apply for”—she raises a hand and half covers her mouth—“food stamps. I thought what I told the police would be kept confidential.”
“It should have been,” Liam says.
“Thank you for telling us all this,” I say.
“Is it going to help?”
“Maybe. We know something more now, anyway.”
“What do you know?”
Liam summarizes. “That she’s done this more than once. That she targets Jessica Williamses for some reason. That she’s organized, smart, skilled with people. That her ID is good enough to fool a bank. She’s very good at disguises and also a risk taker, confident she won’t get caught. If you still have the pictures of her, then we can add it to the ones we have and see what other points of commonality we can find.”
“What are you going to do with all that information?”
“We have enough to go back to the cops,” Liam says.
Jessie shakes her head vigorously. “No, it’s not going to make a difference with them. This happening to more than one person? It sounds even crazier than my original story. They’ll end up telling Leanne and all them about it, and then there’ll be more stuff in the papers about me. More reasons to treat me like an outcast. I don’t want that. I just want to be anonymous.”
“Don’t you want your money back?” I ask.
“You think I’m going to get my money back if she goes to jail?”
“Depends on how good she is at hiding it.”
“She’s a professional. Isn’t that what you said?”
Jessie’s up and pacing now; I can almost hear her heart beating from here as I watch a pulse throb in her neck.
“Please don’t take this to the police,” she says. “Please.”
“Hey,” Liam says in a soothing voice. “Don’t worry. We won’t do anything you don’t want.”
Jessie looks at me for confirmation.
“We won’t. Besides, I have a different idea, personally.”
“What’s that?”
“Catch her.”
Chapter 9
In the Land of Todd
“This whole menu is screwed up,” I say to Liam an hour later. We’re ensconced in the A&W in town, sitting on the back porch under an awning that blocks out the suddenly hot sun. He ordered the Papa burger. I rebelled and ordered the Teen. “Why does the Grandpa burger have three patties? And the Mama burger doesn’t have lettuce or tomato? Or bacon? I bet a lot of mothers like bacon.”
“Just order what you want.”
“I did. But this menu is pure patriarchy. What if you’re not a mama or a papa? This is a good way to make people feel bad about themselves.”
“I think we’re going to feel bad enough about ourselves if we eat everything we ordered.”
I pat him on the hand. “Poor Papa.”
“Ha. That would be something.”
“You’d make a great dad. I mean, you basically are a dad already.”
“To a bunch of grown-up children?”
“That’s right. You adopted all of us.”
“I’m not your father.”
Something in his tone reminds me that I don’t want him to be. I change topics. “So, what did you think of her? Jessica Three. You certainly were friendly. I think she’s half in love with you already.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Is it so ridiculous?”
“As you very well know, I was being friendly to get her to open up. And it worked.”
“You were holding her hands.”
“I was calming her down.”
I look away. Two large motorcycles roar into the parking lot. Their drivers are all in black leather and have matching long beards.
“She’s a bit strange, though,” Liam says. “And scared of the cops, for some reason.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be treated like a hysterical woman again. It wasn’t that fun when it happened to me.”
“I think it’s something else. You check her story out?”
“Like I said in the car, I googled her when you sent me the info. She definitely worked at an elementary school in Chicago; I found an article about the school play that she was mentioned in. And then the article in the local paper about her when she moved to the area.”
“Wonder what it is, then?”
The server brings our burgers, and for a few minutes we eat silently, filling up on empty calories. I try to remember how old I was when I came here with my parents. Five? Four? Not long before we were frog-marched up the hill. That’s why they brought me, I think. A last treat.
“Maybe she has something in her past,” I say. “There’s lots of people who aren’t comfortable around the police. It doesn’t matter to me. She met Jessica Two; that’s what’s important. Especially if she can find those photographs.”
“We should go to the cops.”
I sit back and look at him. He’s got some ketchup in the corner of his mouth. I have a sudden urge to reach across and wipe it away, which I quash.
“Since when has that been your modus operandi,” I say instead, “Mr. kidnapper extraordinaire?”
He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “I never kidnapped anyone.”
“Todd would’ve begged to differ.”
“I rescued you.”
“I know you did. I’m just saying, coloring inside the lines isn’t usually your thing. Or going to the authorities.”
He raises his drink to his lips, taking a long slug of his root beer through his straw. Mine’s so sweet it’s making my teeth hurt.
“You’re right,” he says. “But this feels different.”
“The only thing that’s different is that this is my operation, not yours.”
“I’ll accept that.”
“You will?”
“You’re an adult. You can make your own decisions.”
“Or mistakes.”
“That too.”
I take a large bite of my burger. It might be a sexist establishment, but its product is delicious.
“This burger is pretty amazing.”
Liam smiles at me. “You got some . . .” He motions to his face. I reach for a napkin and try to clean myself off.
“Here,” Liam says, taking it
from me. He reaches across the picnic table and wipes gently at my chin. I can feel myself blushing and look down at the table to avoid eye contact.
“That’s better.”
“Thank you.”
I pick up some fries and resolve to eat them more daintily.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Liam says. “This Jessica Two, or whoever she is, is pretty lucky. You having money, this one too . . . you worked out the odds on that?”
“She’s pretty patient, right? Two years between jobs. And maybe she has a string of aliases that she uses in the same way, waiting for the perfect moment. Until she gets a Google Alert telling her that someone she can approach is flush. And from what we know, she’s done well, but it’s not like she’s hit some massive jackpot.”
“How much did she get from you?”
I finished off my burger. Equal parts beef and salt, and probably lots of sulfites. I banish the thought.
“Enough. And don’t give me a lecture. The money was in that account because I was going to invest it like a real grown-up person who doesn’t keep their money in cash and hide it in their mattress.”
“Did I say anything?”
“You didn’t have to. You think Jessie will come through with the photos?”
Liam stands, lifting his tray to take it to the trash. “I don’t think she’s going to do anything.”
“Let’s give her some time to think about it. At least until tomorrow.”
“All right. That gives us the afternoon, anyway.”
“To do what?”
“You’ll see.”
Something about the look in his eyes makes my blood run cold. “It’s not what I think it is, is it?”
He says nothing, so now I know for certain.
We’re going back to Schroon.
Schroon is the town I escaped from. Where my aunt, whose birth name was Caroline, but who went by Tanya then, because all adult Toddians were expected to adopt a T name, had taken me to buy a “pretty dress,” she said. “Something that will look nice in a photograph.”
There were so many confusing things about that sentence. Girls in the Land of Todd didn’t wear dresses, only uniforms—Girl Scouts when younger, and secondhand Park Service outfits when older. I didn’t even know if anyone had ever taken my photograph; Todd was against cameras because they were a way to spy on you and created “evidence” that could be misconstrued. The one exception was the Wall of Honor—a line of photographs of Todd with his “special recruits” on their eighteenth birthdays that hung on the wall in the Gathering Place. That wall fascinated us when we were small and was a place to be avoided when we were older.
The photographs were mostly of Todd with girls, but sometimes boys, often with a cake with many candles. I never thought much about them when I was younger. They were weird, for sure, but everything in the LOT was weird. We knew this even though most of us had never known anything different. But, odd as those photographs were, they never had anything to do with me because if I thought about it at all, I guess I always assumed that I’d never end up there. That if it was a place of honor, it belonged to Kiki.
Kiki—named after how she pronounced her middle name when she was two—was the golden child. Long, perfectly spun sunshiny hair. Clear blue eyes and excellent posture. We were as close as sisters, and yet we wouldn’t be allowed to share a house when we turned eighteen. She was sharing with Sarah, the other girl our age. I’d be the odd woman out, even though we’d asked to be housed together. But it wasn’t to be. Instead, I was the one whose mother wouldn’t look her in the eye when she talked up the virtues of living alone “most of the time.” Shivers.
Even before Todd took an interest in me, I’d thought about escaping from the LOT off and on for years. I’d listened to those rumors about “Liam,” the ghost who came to rescue you if you wished it hard enough. A specter who appeared when you needed him most. If you turned around three times at midnight and clicked your heels together under a new moon, he might come and get you. Sarah knew for sure that this was how Aaron had escaped, only he’d screwed up the spell and his parents had disappeared too.
I didn’t believe in spells, but after that day at the farmers’ market, I knew Liam was real. I told Kiki about him at the first opportunity, but she refused to leave with me. So I was on my own. I spent that winter working out the details of my plan over and over, waiting for an opportunity. When Tanya told me she was taking me to town, I was happy despite the underlying unease related to the reason for the visit. Sitting next to her in the van, I tried to memorize the turns as if I’d be driving them. Right, right, left, then a long stretch . . .
The store she took me to was out of date and out of the way. There was one older woman at the cash register and dust flashing in the sunbeam that cut through the front windows. I took the white dresses Tanya handed me and willed her with a look not to follow me into the dressing room. I hung the dresses on the hook, then slipped out the emergency exit before I had time to talk myself out of it. I rushed down the street to the coffee shop Liam had told me about, one who’d know what to do if a scared girl came in unexpectedly asking to use the phone. I dialed Liam’s number, and he thankfully picked up immediately. We made a quick plan for a week ahead, the day I’d be moving down the mountain. Then I ran back to the store, grabbed the dresses from the changing room, and told my aunt that either of them was fine, she could choose.
I’d been away for five minutes.
What did she make of the beads of sweat on my brow? She was too guilty to notice, I thought. Or she’d mastered the art of looking away, because that was how you survived in the LOT.
Looking right at things was discouraged.
The LOT has shrunk in the intervening years. As we walk around the dilapidated compound, I’m shocked at how quickly we canvass what once seemed vast: the Gathering Place, Todd’s house, my parents’ cottage, where I was supposed to live. There’s still half a dock on the small lake we used to jump into on winter mornings to cleanse ourselves of our desires. “When you plunge into the cool,” Todd used to say, wrapped in a fur coat that looked like it belonged to a Muscovite, “you have no choice but to forget everything else. There’s nothing but yourself and your survival. Hold on to that feeling and you’ll be invincible.”
I move instinctually, Liam following me, letting me set the pace. I’ve been back here since I ran away, but I had things on my mind other than a trip down memory lane. Like Todd said, I’d been dipped into the cool, and I was trying to hold on to the feeling.
The hike up to the Upper Camp is steep—I remember that right. I’m out of breath when we get to the small collection of cabins I spent my childhood in. The “school,” where we learned our odd lessons and ate our meals. The washstand, where we brushed our teeth outside in all weathers. The girls’ bunks and the boys’ bunks.
The guardhouse.
I open the door to the girls’ bunks. The roof is half–caved in.
“Careful,” Liam says.
“It’ll be all right.”
I walk into the dark wooden structure. It smells of rot and decay. A mouse scurries across the floor. I suppress a yelp.
My bunk was at the back, above Kiki’s. My initials are carved into the beam, but Kiki was too afraid to do that. She didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t either, but I didn’t think I would. That was how we were different. She let fear in, anticipated it, even. I tried to keep it at bay by ignoring the obvious realities.
I look down at her bunk. I don’t have to close my eyes to remember her lying there in a rough muslin nightgown like something Laura Ingalls Wilder might have worn. Her hair was always pleated into a tight braid that looked as if it hurt her head, but she took it out for sleeping. She’d make me brush it a hundred times, though I never understood why. It was perfect whether she did anything to it or not.
I told her I was leaving that last night I spent here, my bags all packed with my meager belongings to move down the hill. She was moving down
also, but not moving on. I’d asked her again and again to come with me, but she’d always refused, her fear holding her in place.
“What will you do?” she asked. “Where will you go?”
“Anything and anywhere. It has to be better than here.”
“They won’t accept you.”
“So Todd says.”
Kiki sucked in her breath. Questioning Todd was an offense that brought on the highest punishment—banishment to the Back Forest. Kiki was terrified of the place even before we were forced to spend a week there for punishment. It was claustrophobic and terrible, and the thought of being there for any length of time was more than enough to keep her in line.
“Jess!”
I slipped down off my bunk and broke another rule. I climbed into Kiki’s bunk and hugged her close. “I’m not going to tell you anything else because I don’t want you to get into trouble, but if you want to leave, anytime, find a way to call this number.” I whispered it into her ear and then traced it on her palm over and over again until she nodded that she had it memorized. “It’s for Liam. He can save you.”
Kiki pushed me away and turned onto her side. I didn’t take it personally. She was afraid for me and for herself. Despite the nightgown, she wasn’t a pioneer. She wanted stability, rules, predictability. But those things were already slipping away. Todd wasn’t Todd anymore. Maybe he’d never been, and our parents had simply participated in some mass hallucination about sunshine and rainbows and good pot. When the smoke cleared, all that was left were weird rules and unhappy children and adults who looked like they wanted to talk in whispers while checking over their shoulders that they weren’t being spied on, but somehow never did.
Right before it started to get light outside, I dressed in a pair of Park Ranger pants and a heavy flannel shirt I’d lifted from the boys’ laundry and tucked my hair into a baseball cap. Then I scurried down the hill with my duffel bag on my back, on past the small sleeping houses, out to the road where Liam was waiting.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask Liam when I step out of the cabin into the half light of the woods.
“Unfinished business.”
“We all have that.”
“Some more than most. I could sense it when we drove past here earlier . . .”
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