After Anna

by Lisa Scottoline

  ‘You’re right.’ Maggie took a final sip of coffee. ‘Maybe tonight will get us back on track. It’s her first day of school, and I’m making Indian food. Noah’s going to apologize to her, too.’

  ‘Good. You need to settle into each other, that’s all.’ Kathy rose. ‘Show me her room. I’m dying to see.’

  ‘I have to go get paint chips today so she can choose a wall color. I’m thinking blue, but you can let me know what you think.’ Maggie rose, taking the lead, and they went upstairs to Anna’s room. Anna had unpacked and moved in all of her things, and Maggie felt pleased at how the room looked, with the pretty bed, bureau, and bookshelf full of textbooks, novels, and volumes of poetry.

  ‘What a transformation!’ Kathy walked to the bed, touching its frilly canopy with her fingertips. ‘I love the canopy.’

  ‘She picked it out.’

  ‘And how cute is this?’ Kathy went over to the bookshelves. ‘So many books!’

  ‘I know. She’s a big reader.’ Maggie scanned the hardbacks of the entire Harry Potter series, took one off the shelf, and flipped through the pages. A line of Hermione’s dialogue was underlined, where Anna had written a margin note that read, awesome! ‘Aw, she likes Hermione.’

  ‘Don’t we all? Hermione is Nancy Drew with a British accent.’

  ‘She really likes poetry. That’s her thing.’ Maggie replaced the Harry Potter book and slid out a volume of Sylvia Plath.

  ‘Sylvia Plath? Now there’s a fun gal.’

  ‘She was a good poet.’

  ‘But she dies in the end. I know, I saw the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow, my girl crush.’

  ‘I didn’t know that about you.’ Maggie looked over with a smile.

  ‘Now you do. I subscribe to Goop. How else will I know where to eat in Barcelona?’

  ‘You’re not going to Barcelona.’

  ‘What if I do and I’m hungry?’

  Maggie replaced the Sylvia Plath book. ‘Anna wants to join the Poetry Club at school, like I was telling you. The Misfit Toys.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it. Teenagers choose their friends. You can’t help it.’

  ‘What if they choose the wrong ones?’

  ‘Then you’ll deal.’ Kathy slid one of the textbooks off the shelf. ‘You say she gets good grades?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maggie had been so proud to see Anna’s transcript from Congreve, emailed by James. ‘Even in math.’

  ‘Oh look at this.’ Kathy thumbed through an algebra textbook and plucked a piece of paper from the pages, chuckling. ‘They pass notes in class, like we did.’

  ‘Really?’ Maggie leaned over to see the note. ‘I recognize Anna’s handwriting from the Harry Potter book. It’s the second line.’

  ‘The one with smaller print.’ Kathy nodded, and they read together:

  Please God make it stop

  It won’t be on the midterm anyway

  She’s the worst teacher in the history of teachers

  Boogie alert – check her left nostril

  OMG too funny

  She’s literally wearing mucus

  What a hag! She could be a Wiccan

  LOL guaranteed

  Maggie smiled. ‘I remember when we used to make fun of teachers.’

  ‘Now I’m the teacher, and kids are making fun of me. Meanwhile, do I have a boogie in my left nostril?’

  Maggie laughed, returning her attention to the note. ‘I wonder if this is between Anna and her friend Jamie, who left school.’

  ‘Left school? That’s too bad for Anna.’ Kathy replaced the note, flipped through the other pages, and pulled out another note. ‘Oh look, here’s a second.’

  Maggie looked over. ‘This time, the first line is Anna.’

  She spits when she talks

  That’s part of her charm

  I bet she chews with her mouth open

  I know she does

  How

  High tea on parents weekend, remember? She ate a raspberry scone. You can’t unsee that.

  I wasn’t there

  Oh right sry

  So there are advantages to having no parents

  Take mine

  Maggie felt a wave of guilt. ‘The poor kid. How much does it suck to be on Parents’ Weekend with no parents? I should’ve been there for her.’

  ‘You can’t own everything. Sometimes people are working against you, and Florian did that, and he won.’ Kathy put the book back, and another note fell to the rug.

  Maggie bent down to pick it up.

  I’m so over this place and my family. I’m leaving

  For real?

  Yes

  When

  Tomorrow night after dinner. PG and Connie are getting me a bus ticket. My parents would know if I put it on the amex.

  Don’t go

  I have to. I’ll be happier. PG agrees.

  Don’t. You’re my one and only friend

  I’ll stay in touch

  Promise

  I promise

  ‘Oh no,’ Maggie said, taken aback. ‘This must have been between Anna and Jamie, and it looks like Jamie ran away. I didn’t get that impression from Anna when we talked about it.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t want you to know?’ Kathy arched an eyebrow.

  ‘I wonder if Jamie has been in touch with Anna since she ran away.’

  ‘She might have lied.’ Kathy pursed her lips.

  ‘I hate to think that.’

  Kathy shrugged. ‘It happens. Jamie was her only friend from school, right?’

  ‘Yes, but she said they weren’t that close.’

  ‘They look close from these notes.’ Kathy shot Maggie a knowing look. ‘Maybe Anna lied to you about that too.’

  ‘Right.’ Maggie had to admit it made sense. ‘We don’t know if Jamie got in touch with Anna after she left.’

  ‘But she promised to. That matters with kids.’

  Maggie mulled it over. ‘If Anna knows where Jamie is, we should tell Jamie’s parents.’

  ‘Agree. Also, Connie or PG, whoever they are, might know where Jamie is, since they bought the bus ticket for Jamie.’

  ‘Right. They’re probably on the poetry magazine. That was the circle of friends. PG has to be initials, doesn’t it? Unless it’s a nickname.’

  ‘We can look for the Congreve Poetry Club on Facebook. Maybe they have a page.’ Kathy slid her phone from her pocket.

  ‘They might not. The school keeps the privacy settings high. Anna’s therapist said they discourage social media.’

  ‘What’s the name of the poetry magazine?’ Kathy scrolled through her phone to Facebook.

  ‘The Zephyr.’

  ‘The Zephyr? Gimme a break. Do these people lack a shit detector?’ Kathy typed in the search function, and no organization appeared, only a list of people with their profile pictures. ‘There’s no page for The Zephyr at Congreve, so you were right. Meanwhile, people are actually named Zephyr? Who names their kid Zephyr?’

  ‘Gwyneth Paltrow?’

  Kathy looked up. ‘Hater.’

  ‘Maybe there are other notes?’ Maggie reached for another textbook.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Noah, After

  TRIAL, DAY 5

  ‘That was a mess-up,’ Noah said, when Thomas entered the attorney’s conference room.

  ‘Which mess-up are you talking about? There were so many.’ Thomas sat down. His skin looked shiny in the fluorescent lights overhead.

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘I know but she’s scoring off you.’ Thomas sighed heavily. ‘I stalled to slow her down, break her rhythm. It’s like basketball. She had a hot hand.’

  ‘I had no idea.’ Noah would never get over the gamesmanship in a courtroom. ‘What should I do while you guys are talking with the judge?’

  ‘Just sit there being quiet. It’s when you talk you get in trouble.’

  ‘Ha.’ Noah forced a smile, knowing Thomas was trying to cheer him up.

  ‘Just keep on keepin’ on.’
/>   ‘It’s because Maggie –’ Noah started to say, then stopped himself. Thomas wouldn’t know that Maggie had been in the courtroom.

  ‘What about Maggie?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her yet. Have you?’

  ‘No, but Tim is keeping an eye out. She’s not there.’

  ‘Oh.’ Noah assumed that Maggie’s disguise was working, to a total stranger. ‘What bothers me is that they’re getting such a wrong picture of Anna, like she was perfect and wonderful. She was anything but.’

  ‘Noah, we’ve discussed this –’

  ‘But she was hardly sweet and innocent.’ Noah shook his head, disgusted. ‘That testimony about the night I lost my temper? I get why you objected, but I could’ve explained that. That was the day my patient died. It was awful.’

  ‘Were you negligent?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Noah recoiled.

  ‘What difference would that have made, that your patient died?’

  ‘I was upset that day, I wasn’t myself. Don’t you think that if they knew that shouting was atypical for me, that would make them question that I’m a control freak, intent on controlling Anna?’

  ‘You want to prove that you only yelled this one time and that Anna is manipulative?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s blaming the victim, and it never works. It’s the legal equivalent to speaking ill of the dead. In addition, it only gives you more of a motive to kill her. If she was ruining your family, you wanted to take revenge for that, or put a stop to it. When she filed for that PFA against you, the cat was out of the bag on your happy home life.’

  ‘We had a happy home until her.’

  ‘I can’t prove that unless you let me call Maggie.’

  ‘No.’ Noah felt frustrated, trying to make him understand. ‘They don’t know how selfish Anna really was. Like there was this one time, Maggie was going to make this nice Indian dinner, and I was going to apologize. We were sitting at the table waiting, and Anna doesn’t come home. Maggie’s calling everywhere, even hospitals. Anna didn’t call or answer Maggie’s texts.’

  ‘And?’ Thomas blinked, unimpressed.

  ‘And then she waltzes in late, saying she got a ride home, and that was that. No apology for not answering the texts.’

  ‘Noah, this is minor.’

  ‘But it’s indicative of who she really was. It was rude and selfish.’

  ‘You sound like a control freak right now.’

  ‘It’s not about control, it’s about what a family is. And she bullied Caleb, too. She told him to get out of her car when he touched the radio.’

  ‘My nephew does that. Drives me nuts.’

  ‘She was using us.’

  ‘For what?’ Thomas asked, skeptical. ‘What did she need from you? She had all the money in the world. She didn’t need anything from you guys.’

  ‘I could never figure that out.’ Noah racked his brain. ‘I have no answer.’

  ‘And that’s why it wouldn’t make sense to bring it up to a jury.’

  ‘They’re not understanding what it was like, living with her. She wanted her own rules.’

  ‘In other words, a typical teenager.’

  ‘It sounds that way, but it’s not. The only one she listened to was Maggie. We fought constantly over her. Caleb regressed because of the stress. She ruined our lives. She ruined our family.’

  ‘And you wanted to get her back for that, so you strangled her with your bare hands.’

  Stunned, Noah didn’t say anything.

  ‘You have my point. That cannot be our theory of the case because it gives you ample motive, even more than the failed seduction. And it plays into the picture they’re painting of you as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’

  Noah flashed on a bigger fight with Anna, when Anna had lied to him and Maggie about her friend Jamie, but Noah couldn’t prove it was a lie anyway. He wondered if she was a pathological liar or a sociopath, but it didn’t matter now. She couldn’t do him any more damage, and telling the truth would only convict him.

  ‘And a week after this was the barbecue, correct?’

  ‘Yes, the infamous barbecue.’ Noah realized that Maggie would probably be back in the courtroom because she would want to hear what he said about that night. ‘That was Maggie’s idea, too. She wanted to introduce Anna to our friends. Most of them didn’t even know she had a daughter. She’d been ashamed to tell anyone.’

  ‘Because she lost custody?’

  ‘Yes, it weighed on her.’ Noah thought back, pained. ‘Maggie has a soft heart, a wonderful heart. It killed her that she lost Anna. All Maggie wanted was to have Anna back, then the barbecue blew everything up.’

  ‘Linda’s going to get to that next.’

  ‘I figured.’ Noah dreaded it. ‘But then she’s finished with me, right?’

  ‘Not quite. She’s not done until you lose consciousness.’

  Noah assumed it was a joke. ‘Any advice?’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t get angry.’

  ‘Okay,’ Noah said, but he was angry already.

  Chapter Forty

  Maggie, Before

  Maggie and Kathy sat on the floor of Anna’s room, eyeing the notes between Anna and Jamie, which were laid out in front of them. There were nine, mostly from the algebra textbook, about teachers, calories, schoolwork, and hair products. The only note that concerned Jamie’s running away was the one they had found already.

  ‘Oh boy.’ Maggie couldn’t deny the evidence, staring her in the face. ‘So it looks like Anna probably knows where Jamie ran away to.’

  ‘Right.’ Kathy met Maggie’s eye, gravely. ‘They might even be in touch, too.’

  ‘I guess Anna lied to me.’ Maggie sighed, and Kathy smiled sympathetically.

  ‘That’s how you know you’re a parent of a teenager. You got lied to.’

  ‘I got the impression from Anna that Jamie had left recently, definitely in this semester.’

  ‘But we don’t know the exact date.’

  ‘No.’ Maggie scanned the notes.

  ‘The note about Jamie’s leaving was the most recent, because it was farthest back in the book. I flipped through the book back to front.’

  ‘Okay.’ Maggie turned to the laptop. They had Googled Jamie Covington and Congreve, hoping to find an article about her running away in the local newspaper, but there had been nothing. Maggie assumed that it hadn’t been newsworthy enough or that Congreve or Jamie’s family had kept it out of the press.

  ‘I can’t believe we can’t figure out who PG is, or Connie.’ Kathy picked up a copy of The Zephyr, which had been among Anna’s notebooks on her shelf, and turned to the front page. It had a masthead and a black-and-white photo of the staff, captioned Nora Brady, Simona D’Artiel, Sofia Belovic, Jamie Covington, Larissa Cabot, Rachel Dinatello, and Leah Rosenstein.

  ‘Jamie’s so cute, it’s a shame she was so troubled. She had everything going for her.’ Kathy pointed a manicured fingernail at Jamie, who stood out with her Goth looks.

  ‘And the picture’s black-and-white, so we can’t tell what hair color she has. They’re trying too hard. Tryhards.’ Maggie finally understood the term.

  ‘But none of these girls is PG or has the initials PG, and there’s no Connie.’

  ‘So PG is either a nickname of a staffer, or they aren’t staffers. I think PG is a nickname. It sounds like one.’

  ‘Or they could be girls in their dorm or somebody in some other class or activity.’

  ‘But I get the impression that the circle of friends is small and tight. There’s nobody else even mentioned in the notes except for PG and Connie.’

  ‘Is it possible that PG is a guy?’

  ‘It’s a girls’ school, so that seems unlikely.’ Maggie double-checked the note that mentioned PG to see if it used the pronoun he or she, but it didn’t use either. ‘Anna was lonely, and I’m getting the impression that anybody she’d be close friends with, like Jamie, wasn’t seeing anybody either.’

 
; Kathy hesitated. ‘Do you think they’re gay? Anna or Jamie?’

  ‘No, I don’t get that impression from Anna. I don’t know about Jamie. Okay, I’m going to assume that PG is a girl. And none of the other notes mention a boyfriend or a guy.’

  ‘So let’s stay with our original assumption, that they’re lonely girls and they’re friends.’

  Maggie realized something. ‘I wonder if Jamie’s running away was another reason Anna reached out for me.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Anna’s been going through more of a rough patch than I thought.’

  ‘Funny that the therapist didn’t mention Jamie to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure if the therapist realized how close Anna and Jamie were either. We talked about the fact that Anna didn’t have any friends.’

  ‘Do you think that Anna kept it from the therapist or the therapist didn’t mention it to you?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense that Anna would keep it from the therapist, so I bet the therapist didn’t mention it to me. It is confidential.’ Maggie mulled it over. ‘I feel so terrible for Jamie’s parents. They have to be told about this.’

  ‘I know.’ Kathy nodded. ‘We could try to find them in whitepages.com.’

  ‘But that goes by state, doesn’t it?’ Maggie looked over. ‘We don’t know where they live.’

  ‘True. Maybe Facebook.’ Kathy searched in her phone, typing quickly. ‘Damn. Covington is such a common name. We could start looking, but I should probably get going.’

  ‘It doesn’t change what I’m going to do anyway.’ Maggie rallied, determined. ‘I have to talk to Anna about this. She has to tell us where Jamie is. I can’t sit on it. I would never do that to another family. I want to talk to Noah first, then we can sit Anna down together, after dinner.’

  Kathy pursed her lips. ‘You have to. Jamie’s a young girl. Anything could happen. Anna will understand.’

  ‘Not right away. She’s going to be pissed.’

  ‘Oh well. Comes with the territory.’

  ‘Suddenly my trip to Benjamin Moore doesn’t seem all that pressing.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Kathy stood up and helped Maggie to her feet. ‘There’s nothing like a fan deck to lift a girl’s spirits.’