I Know You Remember

by Jennifer Donaldson

  My phone clangs periodically with text alerts. It’s in my backpack, a few feet away. I don’t bother to check. I’m sure it’ll be Marcus, Jeremy. Maybe Soo-Jin or Margo. Maybe Ingrid, hoping I’ll at least message her from a room over. They don’t need me. They’re just trying to get me to step into the river with them, to be carried on the current of grief and gossip. I can’t. I just can’t.

  The playground. Our sanctuary. Ancient ruins in the middle of the woods, excavated, explored. It was a place not to hide but to be seen, in the most vital way. To be seen by each other, to be seen by ourselves, without the noise and chaos and ugliness of the world polluting our personalities. Who are you really, when you walk away from the world, when you don’t have other people’s mistakes governing your every move?

  It had only been a matter of time before it would be invaded by the outside world. Before the noise and chaos and ugliness of the world found us. It felt like such a secret place—but after all, it was barely a quarter mile from civilization.

  Blood in the dirt. Blood on the equipment—a spatter on the metal slide we sometimes used as a mirror, bright against the dented metal. I can’t shake the image.

  I don’t know what time it is when I hear a knock at the door. “Ruthie?”

  My eyes snap open. I must have dozed off. Clouds have coalesced outside; it’s still light but there’s a looming dark.

  It’s Ingrid’s voice. “Ruthie, please say something.”

  She waits for a second. Then she pushes the door open.

  She stands over me, her forehead crinkled. I stare blankly back at her. “It’s dinnertime,” she says.

  I close my eyes again. “I can’t.”

  “Rick said we can stay down here. In your room, if you want. Or at the couch,” she says. “Come on, Ruthie, you need to eat. It’s just a little soup and toast, nothing heavy.”

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Five,” she says.

  “Can we watch the news?” I ask.

  She hesitates. “Sure, if you want.”

  “Okay. I’ll meet you there in a sec.” When she’s gone I take my time, getting slowly to my feet. My body’s stiff, a low ache in my back. In the bathroom I wash my face, run my fingers through my hair. I stare into the mirror. The girl who stares back at me is a mystery.

  Down the hall I hear the drums and trumpets of the local news. I make my way to the rec room. Ingrid has our food set up on two little TV trays; she’s laid it out with cloth napkins and a small blossom in a bud vase. She smiles at me nervously as I take a seat.

  “Tonight’s top story.” The anchorwoman has been the same woman my whole life; the only thing that’s changed is her hair, the style flitting alongside current trends. Now it’s a long, sleek bob, dyed a shade too pale for her complexion. “Anchorage Police have released the identity of the body found in Russian Jack Springs Park, discovered yesterday afternoon during a search for missing teenager Zahra Gaines.” Here the screen flashes to Zahra’s picture. “Gaines was last seen at a party in Rogers Park, when she left after a fight with her boyfriend, and her disappearance is currently being investigated as a crime.”

  I can feel Ingrid’s eyes on me, wide and nervous. I stare straight ahead and wait.

  The screen cuts to a press conference. Detective Teffeteller stands at a podium, her name on a chyron along the bottom of the screen.

  “We’re still waiting on forensics for a lot of information, but at this time I can confirm that the body is that of Bailey Sellers, who went missing in the summer of . . .”

  “It’s not her?” Ingrid’s voice cuts across the detective’s, shrill and ringing. “Wait, it’s not . . . but . . .”

  “It’s not her,” I answer, closing my eyes tightly. Something inside me shifts. I breathe slowly, almost afraid to move. “It’s not her.”

  “Yes, we are currently investigating this as a homicide,” Teffeteller says, in answer to a question from the reporters. “As to whether it’s connected to the disappearance of Zahra Gaines, it’s too early to say for sure. But the girls did live in the same trailer park, and I understand they were friends.”

  “Does that mean this might be the work of a predator?” someone asks from the crowd.

  Teffeteller sets her jaw. She speaks slowly, carefully.

  “At this time, I can’t speculate,” she says. “But we are asking young women to take the same safety precautions we always encourage: travel in pairs, or even better, in groups. If you are out at night, stay in public, well-lit areas. If you feel unsafe, don’t hesitate to call for help.”

  The crowd erupts in questions.

  “Detective Teffeteller, can you tell us . . .”

  “Is there a serial killer in Anchorage?”

  “Do you think . . .”

  Ingrid’s already on her phone, texting someone. Back in my room I can hear my phone chiming again, too. In just a moment I’ll have to move, and there will be a million questions to ask, a million things to think. But for now, I just sit and breathe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “SO . . . STILL NO UPDATES?” Dad asks.

  It’s Sunday morning, and we’re at the Cup and Saucer before church. Brandy, Dad, and Ingrid sit around the little table with me, sipping their coffee, picking at blueberry muffins and croissants.

  “Nothing,” I say. “No news on Zahra, no news on . . . on Bailey.”

  The café is still papered with Zahra’s image. Now Bailey’s has joined it. Seeing their faces side by side, the contrast is jarring: it’s not like Zahra’s is a picture of opulence, but Bailey’s is so clearly a portrait of want. Her cheeks are pinched, her oversized T-shirt stained. There’s a tough little smirk playing around her mouth. Her hair’s combed back into a tight, savage ponytail.

  She looks younger than I remember.

  Ingrid shakes her head, looking around the room. “I can’t believe no one even knew she was missing. It’s so . . . it’s so messed up.”

  I’ve gotten most of the details from Zahra’s dad. Apparently Bailey’s mom was the kind of person who’d vanish for weeks on end and you’d only later find out she had a new boyfriend she was shacked up with, or that she’d been in jail, or that she’d been facedown in some strange drug den the whole time. According to him, Bailey hadn’t even known where her mom was for much of that summer. The other families in the trailer court tried to look out for her—they invited her over for dinner, brought her groceries, checked in on her—but they weren’t the kind of community that called the Office of Children’s Services. And Bailey was almost fourteen, and was pretty independent, so they just let her run wild and made sure she ate every now and then. When she vanished, most of them assumed she’d either gone to live with her mom elsewhere or that she’d landed with a foster family.

  The media’s been all over Walker Court, asking around about her. One station made a big show of looking into how many registered sex offenders live in the trailer park, though they neglected to mention that the numbers were about average (I checked). Every story I watch or read manages to find the most neglected trailers, the filthiest cars, the most methed-out-looking people, the reporters coming off like smirking anthropologists exploring an alien culture. It’s gross. Especially when I know how many people are truly devastated by the news—the Gaineses in particular.

  “It’s so sad,” Ingrid says, staring at the flyers posted next to us. “She never had a chance, did she?”

  Up at the counter, Soo-Jin’s ringing someone up. As soon as she’s made change, she steps over to us, standing at the corner of our table. We hadn’t had much of a chance to talk when we ordered—there’d been a line.

  “How are you guys holding up?” she asks gently.

  “Been better,” I say, fidgeting with my spoon. My appetite hasn’t really come back since they found the body. “How’re you?”

  “Ditto that,”
she says. She sits down at the corner of the table. “Did you know Bailey?”

  I nod. “Not very well, but I met her. Zahra hung out with her sometimes.”

  I remember thinking that three, somehow, didn’t work right. Two was perfect. Two could find a comfortable equilibrium—almost symbiotic, even. But three? Three people would triangulate. Three people was drama of a kind I didn’t like. Bailey always seemed a little jealous when Zahra hung out with me. And maybe I was a little jealous, too. I remember the handful of times Bailey would crack a joke that I didn’t get, that’d make Zahra laugh. Or the seamless way they pocketed lipsticks at Fred Meyers, with one intuitively serving as lookout while the other did the deed. If I complained, or said it wasn’t a good idea, suddenly their heads would duck together and they’d both be giggling. I hated that.

  “Do you think . . .” Soo-Jin bites the corner of her lip. “I mean . . . do you think the same person . . .”

  I know what she’s trying to ask. The same question half the town is asking.

  Is there a predator, picking off girls from Walker Court?

  Ingrid answers before I can. “The police only found one body. Unless they find more . . . there’s no way to tell.”

  Brandy makes a strangled noise in the back of the throat. I glance at her, realize she’s looking pale and stricken. Both her and my dad, actually. Soo-Jin looks a little embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your morning, guys, I just . . . it’s been hard, waiting for news.”

  “Of course,” Dad says softly. “It’s okay. Don’t apologize.”

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” she says, glancing at the counter. “I’ll text you guys later, okay?”

  We mumble our farewells. She slips back behind the counter and whispers something to the other barista.

  I’m startled when Dad reaches across the table and takes my hand in his.

  We haven’t really talked much since our fight. He’s been giving me space this week, letting me hide in my room when I want to, letting me set the tone. I’ve been out of school since we got the news, without a peep from him, and the few times I’ve gone out there’s been no talk about the fact that I’m supposed to be grounded. But now he gives me an anxious, aching look.

  “I’m so happy I’ve got another chance,” he says. “I don’t know what I’d do if . . . if I . . .”

  And that’s when I realize. For Dad, for Brandy—what happened to Bailey isn’t just what happened to Bailey. It’s what happened to her mom. It’s the worst-case scenario for an addict parent, being so out of it that you lose your kid forever. And I don’t know why this is what does it—I don’t know why it has to be the actual worst-case scenario for me to open up even a little—but the tiniest spark flares up somewhere in my chest. It’s not quite forgiveness, but it’s something that feels similar.

  I squeeze his hand back.

  “Me too, Dad,” I say. “I’m glad, too.”

  * * *

  —

  VICTORY EVANGELICAL IS PACKED when we arrive—even more so than usual. I’m guessing some people are here because they heard about Zahra’s connection to Dale Worthen and are hoping for a show.

  It’s weird—I feel like, in a way, we should be relieved. As ghoulish as that sounds, it’s Zahra that we love—Zahra that we care about. And we still don’t know where she is. But it feels like everyone has decided that Bailey’s death means that Zahra must be dead, too. I guess I can see why. The connection between them—their friendship, their proximity—is one of the only pieces of information we have. So of course everyone is jumping on that.

  But I’m still clutching at hope. I’m not ready to give up. Not yet.

  “Spare the rod,” booms a voice from the pulpit, “and spoil the child.”

  Pastor Worthen stands at the podium. I blink a few times to clear my vision; everyone around me is sitting up more sharply, craning their necks to see him. He’s flushed already, mopping his head with a handkerchief.

  “One of the most well-known verses in the Bible, of course. Everyone knows that one. But how many times do we treat it as a metaphor?” His hands grip the edge of the podium. “How many times do we treat it as a little poetic advice? ‘Oh, the Lord didn’t mean it literally!’” His voice goes cloyingly high as he speaks for some hypothetical Christian. “‘The Lord doesn’t truly want us to spank our children!’”

  He looks around the cavernous space with a fierce gaze. In the front row I spy Grace Worthen. I can’t see her expression from where I’m sitting, but there’s something fragile in her frame.

  “The Lord is clear that we are to train our children up, not just to keep them safe, not just to form them into responsible Christian adults—but for the sake of their salvation!” he shouts. “‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.’ The stakes could not be higher, brothers and sisters. We are not just keeping them from the darkness of this world, but from the darkness of the next.”

  The room is perfectly silent. Next to me Ingrid’s clutching the fabric of her skirt in both fists, her eyes wide. Down the pew I can see Brandy’s and Dad’s fingers knotted together.

  “It’s not easy,” he says, lowering his voice a little. “Of course it’s not easy. Why would we expect it to be easy? It’s a war between good and evil. Every time you strike your child, every time you force them into submission, you are battling the devil. It is one of the hardest battles we face. Much harder than contending with our own sins. But it is because we love our children that we must triumph. Even if they fight us. Even if they’re not willing.”

  This—this is the message he has chosen to deliver the Sunday after a girl’s body was discovered buried in the woods. This is the message he’s chosen while his granddaughter is missing, possibly dead. It seems beyond contemptuous. It seems cruel.

  “I hear parents all the time, making excuses for their children’s transgressions.” He pitches his voice high again. It’s not lost on me that it’s clearly a woman’s voice he’s emulating. “‘Oh, but Pastor Worthen, it’s such a minor thing. Pastor Worthen, it can’t possibly matter. Pastor Worthen, he’s only a little boy, he’s just a baby, he doesn’t know what he’s doing . . .’” He slams a fist against the podium. “It is because they are so young, so vulnerable, that we have to force them to see the light.”

  My mouth feels dry. I stare up at him—the man who drove Charity away, the man who followed Zahra around in the months after she rejected his religion, harassing her, maybe even assaulting her. I can picture it too clearly. I can see the pleasure he’d take in forcing someone to submit to his will.

  “If we do not act,” he says, “your children are lost. Again, this is not a metaphor. They will wander without light, unable to find their way. The Bible is not vague on this point. Beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell. It’s worth it, even if you have to beat him again, and again, and again.”

  He stares out across the crowd, and I know it’s my imagination—it has to be—but for a moment I’m sure he locks eyes with me.

  “It is worth it, even if you have to beat him bloody.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE FUNERAL SERVICES ARE held on Monday, at a local nondenominational funeral home. They’re calling it a “Celebration of Life,” but it’s pretty clear that there’s not much to celebrate. There’s a slideshow that plays throughout the service, but there are only about twenty photos, and they’re all badly framed and out of focus. In one, a preschool-aged Bailey has an obvious split lip and black eye. In another, a syringe and a spoon are visible on the coffee table while Bailey opens a birthday present on the floor beyond. Whoever edited this thing apparently didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

  Her junior high English teacher speaks first. She reads “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and claims Bailey wanted to grow up to be a veterinarian. Then a woman in a dark gray suit le
ads the room in prayer. There’s music, all generically sad. I remember watching Bailey and Zahra dance to Fetty Wap in Zahra’s bedroom; I don’t know if Bailey ever even heard “Wind Beneath My Wings” in her short life, but here we are.

  Ingrid sits next to me in her black wrap dress, hands folded in her lap. Dad and Brandy both offered to skip work to come, but I told them we’d be all right alone. Besides, the place is packed, standing room only.

  I’m fighting to stay present. I didn’t want to come, but I knew I had to. Charity, Ron, and Malik are here, a few rows ahead of me. I recognize a few other families from the trailer park—including Seb and a younger girl that has to be his sister, they look so alike.

  Near the end of the service a woman in the front row starts to sob convulsively. I can only see the back of her head—thin dishwater hair hanging limp down her bony back—but I know instinctively it must be Bailey’s mom. And that’s what does it—what sets off an irrational blast of anger. Because it’s fucking pathetic. She didn’t even know Bailey was missing. Or she didn’t care. Or it was actually a relief, an unlooked-for blessing, because with Bailey gone she could do whatever she wanted without guilt. Who even knows. And now she has the nerve to grieve. Hell, can you even call it grief? It’s just self-pity. Poor me, my daughter was murdered. But will she even miss her?

  None of these people knew her. None of them cared when she was alive. And before I can stop myself I’m on my feet, and I’m making my way for the door, my breath coming fast and sharp, and I’m tumbling out into the lobby beyond.

  I brace myself against the wall. The world feels very far away now, the lights gray. I can still hear the sound of the music inside. Inside I’m pushing the levers again and again and again, trying to make this body move, but it won’t. It can’t.

  I see his shadow moving into mine, merging with it, before I hear him. His hand falls gently on my shoulder. He smells of winter air, pine needles. His voice is low and rich.