by Shannon Kirk
“Yeah, nope. My counselor is in California. I’m not leaving Mag’s side,” I say. Mag’s handing me a Vitaminwater from the camper fridge. The orange flavor, the flavor she saw me select at a café by our California apartment and, without asking, went out and stocked the apartment fridge with. And here, she magically stocked the camper fridge too. She takes a seat next to me and stares at whoever this official is who’s trying to move me out of the camper and into an ambulance.
“You heard her,” Mag says to the official. She cracks the tab on a Coke she got for herself.
Carbonation sizzles to soundtrack the pregnant pause.
The official looks us up and down and shrugs. “All right, all right.” She turns and leaves.
Mag stands and shuts the door behind the official, sealing off all the other cops and Chief Dyson, who want to talk to us. Mag already told them where she thinks Jerry Sabin is netted up or wounded. Told them about the catacombs and the trail to the gorge. She whispered something else to him too; I heard the name Laura. But I can’t deal with that truth right now.
We’re alone. Just me and Mag.
“What’s up with that brown house in the woods? Do you think there’s more kidnapped people?” she asks me.
“No. But I do think Gretchen’s got something going on in there. I don’t know what. Something with the bones.”
“All right.”
Mag opens the door and calls Chief Dyson over.
“The second trail, the one to the brown house I mentioned. Can you let us know what the hell’s going on in there when you find out? And did you find, um—” She pauses and looks back at me. Then back at the chief, she whispers, “Did you find the others yet?”
“We’ve mobilized and outfitted the team. They’re heading out now. And the catacombs are clear of any incendiaries, like you reported, so we won’t need to back out the trucks or your camper.
“About Laura,” Chief Dyson says.
“Not now,” Mag says.
“Understood,” Dyson says, and nods as he leaves.
I hug into Allen and shake. Mag had retrieved him for me.
Mag shuts the door when Dyson steps out; she crouches and looks in my eyes. I shake my head, indicating I really can’t listen to any more facts right now. She says nothing and hugs me instead.
I’m bawling in her presence, and I know I don’t need to be strong for her. She has all the strength, and I am allowed to be weak, and this makes me feel, oddly, stronger for it.
I fall half-asleep with my head on her lap, something like a barely conscious delirium. At some point, she whispers to someone who knocks to “Piss off and stop knocking.” I can’t deep sleep with all the activity going on around the camper: we’re at ground zero.
Mag keeps raking my hair with her fingers, my head on her lap. She doesn’t wiggle or move or try to adjust anything. Her leg must be prickly from lack of circulation. I’m in and out and in and out of consciousness.
A knock on the camper door startles me, and I must have truly fallen asleep, because a dawn light is warming the camper’s windshield, and a blanket has been laid upon me, a pillow exchanged for Mag’s leg. I sit up, and Mag materializes from the back to open the door. Chief Dyson steps in.
“Well, everything’s cleared now. They cleared all the smart Crock-Pots,” he says.
I rub my eyes. “What?” I ask. The chief looks to Mag. Apparently they’ve had updates throughout the night.
“Jerry rigged the house by taking out the crock parts in ten Crock-Pots and stuffing the ends of discarded drapes inside, so the very flammable fabric was touching the heating unit. And he added fire accelerant too. All he had to do was use Wi-Fi on his Apple Watch to crank up the heat. Very strange. Rooms with doused and rigged drapes were all over the house,” Chief Dyson reports.
Once again the chief looks at Mag. She nods. “Look,” he says, “Lucy, we wanted to see if you wanted to see what’s inside that brown house in the woods. The team has cleared all around the place, and you’ll be safe. But we have some questions about what’s out there, and if you see the inside, you might help us understand whatever this is. Maybe Gretchen Sabin said something to you. She refuses to speak to us. Jerry too. Lawyers. What do you think? No pressure.”
“Yes,” I say, because I have to know what the hell she had going on out there.
I put on my sneakers and follow Chief Dyson up the hill. Mag is by my side. She hands me a bottle of water. “Morning, Luce. Someone’s bringing you an egg, bacon, and cheese breakfast sandwich from Dyson’s,” she says. I take the bottle and nod at her. “Your friend Dali, actually. He’ll be here in fifteen. Drove up when news hit the fan. Cool?”
“Cool,” I say, smiling at her.
We follow the winding trail; the cops follow us. Once we reach the brown house, Dyson leads me along a marked path that he says a forensics team cleared overnight. White-suited folks mill between pines beyond a clear plastic tarp erected off the rear of the house—like they’re containing a ground-zero zombie patient. Huge drum lights hum and shine and light up the whole space.
When we enter a tunnel in the plastic tarp, it’s hard to describe what I’m seeing ahead; it’s just so strange. The back of the house has a garage door–size door, which is hinged up. Someone cut this out of the back side and created a hinge-up door.
“Big enough to fit the arm of the excavator scoop in,” Chief Dyson says to me. He twists and points to the old logging road. “A witness tells us he drove that excavator in and around down the side of their property to do the digging work inside for them.”
“A witness? Who says he dug this for them?” I ask.
“That man Earl, the captive with Laura, Lucy. He made it to the police and . . . ,” Mag says.
I hold up my hand to stop her from speaking. I hear only the negative aspect of her last sentence—the black part about how Earl “made it to the police” means Laura didn’t. “I don’t. No. I don’t . . .”
Mag holds up her hands, showing me her palms. “Of course. Not now. Chief, let’s just show Lucy the hole and clear out.”
Chief Dyson directs me to designated pads I’m permitted to step on. We enter through the cutout, but only about a foot, where we are stopped by a railing the cops must have installed.
We’re standing above a spiral pit into the earth, within a house.
Yeah. So.
To sum up, someone removed the interior guts of the first and second floors, all the floorboards, even the ceiling above, and dug and dug and dug a deep, spiraling pit into the earth. In other words, this crazy house is a shell, a big wooden tent, obscuring a spiraling pit.
And on the sides of the pit, at different sculpted levels that appear to have been formed after all the digging, are intact skeletons of all sizes—child, adult, teen, baby. Layers of lying skeletons on the different levels down. Gretchen added painted signs on stakes as well, labeling each layer.
“Dante’s Inferno,” I say.
“Excuse me,” a woman in a white suit with a clipboard says.
“Gretchen is obsessed with Dante’s Inferno. She must have been re-creating it here,” I say.
“She seems obsessed with a lot of things,” Chief Dyson murmurs.
The woman in a white suit stops writing and joins me in staring into this macabre scene.
“Too bad she’s sick,” she says. And walking away while resuming her writing, she adds, “She might be an artist.” She shakes her head while going about her work.
She might be an artist. I think that’s what you call an understatement.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
MOTHER
After two weeks of interviews with the cops, giving in to some medical/mental reviews, meeting a prosecution team that needed details if ever there was a trial, and having a dinner or two with Nathan and Thomas—including a fun intermission of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters at their house—Mag and Lucy are in the beast camper, on their way to cross the country.
The Ingrace fam
ily made arrangements to burn Laura’s body and throw her ashes in the Atlantic. Lucy cried enough tears to fill the Atlantic after she was told of Laura’s abusive childhood, why she says she kidnapped Lucy, her horrific eight-week captivity, her tragic death, and her heroism in saving her. Lucy will be dealing with the facts and emotions of Laura Ingrace her whole life, but she feels, she says, when she looks at Mag, that she has great support.
Today, though, is not about anger or fear or grief. Today is a good day. A happy day. And the girls are on the road.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I was in a jug band?” Mag asks.
“I don’t think you’ve told me about any times yet,” Lucy answers with happy sarcasm, because, indeed, Mag has slipped in a few of her endless stories in the bright skies of happy times in their few months back together. And now Lucy has taken to saying she’s never heard her tell any stories yet, as part of a running joke.
“Oh. Well. Let me tell you about the time I clinked a triangle at the end of this song.” Mag presses her iPhone in the holder on the dash of the camper. “Play ‘Knockin’ on Your Screen Door,’” she voice-commands.
Mag turns up the volume as John Prine’s classic begins. Banging her thigh with a free hand, the other tapping on the steering wheel, all in keeping with the country-music rhythm, she sings one of the lines about a sailboat and a fur coat.
She hums along to a few more lines. Lucy is sitting quietly, not asking questions, just watching her mother and seemingly waiting for whatever story her mother will tell. Her face is patient, waiting, like she needs her mother’s story. Mag feels both awash with deep gratitude to have this responsibility, but also a tinge of fear. She doesn’t want to let her baby girl down. Ever. Not ever again. She’ll tell her a trillion stories for eternity and then start from the beginning, if stories are what her baby girl needs.
In turning down the volume, Mag looks away from the road and to Lucy.
“So, November 2014. Everton, Pennsylvania. I’m at the local Laundromat. Weirdest name, Suds O’ Tons O’ Funs. Crazy, right? So I parked my camper, did a load, bought myself some Fritos from the vending machine, and in walks the Depravity Jan Jug Band. The DJ-J’s, ha. Anyway, they were on their way home to Savannah, Georgia. Seems they were one triangle player short of their full band. So . . .”
Mag pauses to turn up the volume. She sings the final line and pantomimes along to the final drum send-off. She turns down the volume again. “So I said I’d be happy to fill in for eight weeks if they signaled to me when to clink that triangle. And that, my darling, was the time I joined a jug band.”
Lucy keeps watching her mother, who smiles back with a look of love.
A ding on Mag’s iPhone, which is mounted for easy view of the Google Maps navigation, indicates an incoming text. The font is huge, so they both read out the name of the sender: Dr. Nathan Vinet.
“Hmm,” Mag says with a smile.
Lucy leans forward and reads aloud from the iPhone from its mounted holder:
Mag, how about Thomas and I meet you wherever you both are for a long weekend after Christmas? Thomas and I will get our own hotel, of course. I’m going right out over the edge here and being as direct as I can be. Hope you’ll say yes. I like, no, I love, our talks.
Lucy giggles. “Oh my God, Dr. Hot Pants has flaming hot pants for you.”
“You think he’s hot?” Mag says in a nonchalant ease.
“Hell yeah. I mean, for people into dads.”
Mag laughs. “Not sure I should be into a dad here. Do we really want some guy and his son intruding on our new life? Should it be just us for a little while longer?” Mag regrets saying it as soon as she says it, for Lucy shivers. Mag yells at herself in her mind that of course her baby doesn’t want to be shut in anymore, kept away from the world. “I mean. Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
Lucy doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes Mag’s iPhone from the holder and starts typing a text back to Nathan.
“Oh no,” Mag says. A devious smile takes the place of her worry. “What did you do?”
“Okay, here’s what I wrote.” Lucy reads aloud:
Nathan, if you can travel internationally, then let’s plan on you and Thomas coming for New Year’s. There’s good surfing on the coast and Monopoly. In our board, the guy has a monocle. We can text and FaceTime until then.
Lucy looks to her mother and doesn’t blink. “Is that okay?” she asks, cringing her face into her neck, widening her mouth and scrunching her eyes, shielding herself from reproach.
“Is that okay?” Mag says with a cool calm and a slow, easy smile. “It’s bloody brilliant.” Mag holds up her hand for a high five, and Lucy high-fives back.
Lucy beams and sits straighter.
A happy-face emoji dings back from Nathan, followed by a separate text:
Deal. Anywhere. Anytime.
And then, after a couple of seconds, another text:
I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to miss you. Talk soon.
Sorry to be so direct, but you’re basically perfect.
A ten in every single way possible.
Mag smiles and offers noiseless laughter, subconsciously stroking her long neck.
“Oh. My. God. Get a room already,” Lucy says, laughing.
Mag tapers her smile and hums a Hmm. After a pause, she says, “Maybe we don’t write back to that one quite yet, yeah? I’ll send Dr. Hot Pants something a little later.”
Lucy bites her bottom lip and sets the burning phone back in the holder. “Yeah, Mag, you need to take this one from here. That’s all you. Thomas needs to teach his dad how to text like a normal person and not write a whole dissertation of slobbering lust. Whatever. It’s awesome. I hope he keeps texting and baring his soul. This is entertaining.”
“Oh, babe, you’re the best. This is fun. I’m having fun. You having fun?”
“I’m having fun.” Lucy smiles and says, “Cool. Um. Oh, but wait.”
“Yeah, babe?”
“Um. So. I wanted to ask.” Lucy rolls her hands in her lap, her face dropped to watch them. “So do you think we could make a stop in Indiana? There’s a real-live Jenny there who I never got to say goodbye to when we left for New Hampshire. And, um, I’d like to be long-distance friends with her. I felt bad for never saying goodbye. I don’t know her phone number, and I guess I’d like for once to say goodbye in person and for real.”
“First off, of course. Yes. Absolutely. Let’s map the coordinates when we stop for lunch. Also, and we’ve talked about this, but you know the feds found one of the places where Laura stored money, right? In Chicago. And she’s left you a note. FBI is holding it in their office there, so are you still okay with that stop too? Right after Indiana and before your aunt Squawk’s big party in Riverside? But wait, also, a real-live Jenny? What’s that mean?”
Lucy lifts her eyes in a careful glance at Mag. “Yes, I’m still okay with getting Laura’s note in Chicago. It’s fine. Fine. I mean, it’s going to suck hard to have to read it, but you’ll be with me, and whatever, I can deal. I’ve got to deal with it sometime. And a Jenny. Well, it’s like, well.
“There’s a certain kind of girl, could be a boy, too, like my friend Dali, but often I find it with girls—because they become my friend even though it’s always with some distance between us, because I always have to run, had to run. Anyway, she’s just so self-aware and assured, naturally at peace, even though she’s had trouble. And she’s beautiful, but she throws nothing in your face. She’s quiet but explosive when you know her. She doesn’t pry or judge you for anything, and she’ll listen if you decide to talk. If you’re not afraid of her independence, you’ll learn to see how crazy beautiful the world seems to her. Anyway, I call girls like that Jenny. And this girl in Indiana is really named Jenny.” Lucy pauses. Mag is nodding her head like she fully understands 100 percent what Lucy is saying, because she does. To her, her big sis Carly’s a Jenny. She gets it. Lucy seems encouraged, because she keeps talking. “And um
, well, Mag, I hope this isn’t weird, and I truly mean it as a huge compliment, but I think you’re a Jenny too. Maybe even the truest Jenny.”
Mag closes her eyes; her eyelids tremble. Instant tears flood her face.
Lucy starts crying too, which turns into a full-out sob. “Ugh, I guess I popped the blip-bubble,” she says.
“What?” Mag says, sobbing.
“Never mind. Never mind.”
Mag pulls over to the side of the road and pulls Lucy into an embrace. And after a while, mother and daughter let go and laugh together while wiping their tears.
On their drive, Mag proceeds to tell Lucy stories for several more hours as the two drive west to Carmel, California, back home to their first state. The stop in Indiana to visit Jenny, a real Jenny, is surprising and fabulous. Lucy and Jenny exchange Snap accounts.
In Chicago, Lucy asks to be left alone on a bench at the base of the downtown FBI office. The day is cool, and calmness slows the world around her. Cold, frozen clouds blur into a smudged, gray midwestern sky. Sparse pedestrians scatter far off around her; no people seem to talk in the world. Mag waits and watches from the stone steps of a restaurant across the way.
Dearest Lucy,
Now you know I am not your birth mother. But I’ve never thought of myself as anything but your mom. I was often terrible to you. Harsh and unrelenting, and the biggest evil in that is that I knew it and couldn’t stop it. But I tried, I did. Maybe I could blame my disposition on my own mother, sure, part of that is true. Maybe my disposition is in part due to some other abuse I had as a child, at the hand of a man. But that’s my burden. I’m an adult and that is my problem, and I should have been better for you as your mom. I’m skipping the obvious here, that I am not your mother and I stole you. I say that cold and bare, because it is the truth, and you, as strong as you are, I know you will accept the truth.