Bette reached for more chips, but a glance into the rear-view mirror stopped her.
Looking into the side-view mirror, Layla spotted the white car, now a bit closer. Part of Bette’s road anxiety?
“What’s wrong?” Layla asked.
Without signaling or slowing down, Bette veered onto the next exit.
“We’re low on gas,” she said, near the end of the ramp. “And I could use something more substantive than potato chips. How about you?”
As she filled the truck’s tank at the rest stop, Bette kept an eye on the cars driving into and past the gas station. As she and Layla ate grilled cheeses, Bette glanced now and then toward the diner’s window and the parking lot beyond. As they merged back onto the highway, Bette checked the rear-view mirror as much as the side one.
Layla never saw the white car reappear.
Chapter 6
Mark Twain High School
Spring 2001, South of Pittsburgh
Late library hours, on Wednesdays, were supposed to give students extra time for research, or a quiet place to do homework. But tonight, the only other kids present were two other sophomores: Kurt Heinz and Jason Riesler. They sat gaping in front of PCs, surfing the Internet for porn. Or so Layla guessed. She also guessed that, like her, they didn’t have an Internet connection or a computer to themselves at home. On any other Wednesday, she would have been on the Internet, too, after grabbing the most distant PC.
Instead, she made her way to the librarian’s desk, where Ms. Carle—Layla’s favorite—was on duty. Ms. Carle looked like almost everyone’s idea of a librarian, with her tortoise-shell glasses, her neat blouse and skirt, and her black hair knotted on top of her head.
She sat up and smiled, like she’d been expecting Layla. “Your book should be in by Friday.”
“Awesome.”
A couple of weeks earlier, Ms. Carle had noticed Layla looking over the meager offerings of the library’s “Fine Arts” shelf. By that point, Layla had worked her way through every exercise in her mother’s worn copy of Light, Shade and Shadow. The book taught her to make shapes pop from the page, but it offered no help with her biggest problem, which she explained to Ms. Carle: every hand she drew looked like a monster’s claw or a catcher’s mitt.
That day, with Layla looking over her shoulder, Ms. Carle typed search terms into her computer terminal, eventually finding the Book of a Hundred Hands, a “classic guide to drawing the hand.” When Layla agreed the book might help, Ms. Carle ordered it on the spot.
The thing Layla needed help with now put a knot in her stomach. She’d intended to approach Ms. Carle about it yesterday, then changed her mind. “Do you know where I can find microfilm? For the Register-News?” The local paper.
“Sure.”
“And maybe the Ledger-Appeal, too.” Another regional paper.
“Of course. Follow me.”
Ms. Carle led her to a room at the back of the library, which Layla always assumed was private—an office for the librarians or a storage area. As they entered the room, Ms. Carle flipped on the lights, illuminating a wall of little boxes, on shelves labeled by date. Along the opposite wall stood three cubicles, each containing a clunky-looking machine with a screen.
Ms. Carle approached the wall of boxes, then turned to Layla. “The microfilm is organized by month and year. What dates would you like?”
The words Layla needed to get out constricted her throat, like poison.
“October nineteen eighty-six. And November, too, just to be on the safe side.” There was no safe side.
It was likely Ms. Carle sensed the date’s significance. Most everyone in the school would have, probably—those who’d been in town long enough. But there was no change in the kind, level look on her face. She ran her finger along the shelves and pulled out one box, then another. Then a third and a fourth, covering both months in both papers.
After she got Layla set up in one of the cubicles and showed her the tricks of the microfilm reader, Ms. Carle retreated to the doorway.
“I’ll be right out there if you need anything, all right?” As if sensing that Layla wanted privacy, she closed the door behind her.
Layla turned the knob of the microfilm reader, watched pages of the Register-News sail across the screen, blur to gray. Growing dizzy, she closed her eyes and upped the reader’s speed, knowing that anything before October twelfth would be useless to her.
Maybe the whole roll of microfilm would prove useless. But she figured it was worth testing Mr. Jansky’s advice, the only reason she was here.
Last week, in history class, he’d warned, “The Internet makes no distinctions between good, reliable information and garbage. And it’s chock full of gaps. You want the ins and outs of the Folger strike?”—a Depression-era protest at a local mine, which they were discussing in class. “Well, the Internet’s got jack squat on it. To get the goods, you’ve got to go back to the local papers, which means you’ve got to go to microfilm. Anyone know what that is?”
When no one volunteered a yes, Mr. Jansky gave an explanation that Layla barely heard, because he’d set her mind wandering back to all the Internet searches she’d done for news about her mother’s death, searches that had turned up nothing, not even an obituary. On the websites of the Register-News and the Ledger-Appeal, the stories went back only a few years.
When it came to her mother’s death, all Layla had were fragments—moments she remembered, or thought she did; things she’d been told, or overheard.
Her earliest memory: an animal yowl from the hallway, whose light spilled into the darkness where she’d been sleeping, the light broken by bars all around her (crib rails?). With time and experience, she concluded that the yowl had been her grandmother’s, and it rang again and again across the years, clearer than any other memory.
Slightly later memories: aches of absence—of that humming sweet sound and warmth through her skull, of that scent of soap and soil, edged with a brightness she couldn’t quite place.
In time, the aches brought questions, and resentment. So did the mothers she saw all around her, on the playground, at school, in books, on television.
Where is she? In Heaven, her grandparents said.
How do I get there? Be a good girl, every day.
When will I get there? Only God knows. Have faith, and be patient. You’ll see her again.
Years brought doubt in God and Heaven, suspicion that You’ll see her again was a lie to hush questions, keep her content. Did her grandparents even believe in Heaven? They never prayed or went to church, never made her either. They swore. They smoked and drank during bridge and poker games.
How did she die? No answers, at first. Then, A bad person hurt her.
Who? We’re trying to find out.
She never asked what hurt meant. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to guess. Didn’t want the pictures in her mind.
Sometimes, at night, she’d hear her grandparents’ voices in the kitchen, low and serious. Sensing that her mother was the subject, she’d strain to listen, gathering nothing but fragments: outside the diner that day … . Didn’t she say something about … need to try the police again.
Later on, she’d ask, Did you learn something new? Not really.
Are the police still working on finding who did it? Not really, but we haven’t given up.
In time, Layla got the feeling there was a fuller story going around, one her grandparents were holding back from her. She sensed this in the looks she got at school, especially from girls in groups—at lunch tables or in the hall. As if on cue, they’d all glance her way, then huddle together, whispering.
Last spring, in the locker room after track practice, she and Jen Patrick—and a new girl, Amanda Hurley—were complaining about the legendary difficulty of Ms. Fiorelli’s algebra class.
“Oh my God,” Amanda said, “that last test was like�
��” She yanked a fist up behind her neck, slumped her head, lolled her tongue.
Jen didn’t laugh. She turned a fuck-off stare on Amanda.
“What?” Amanda glanced between Jen and Layla.
Layla shrugged, as if to say, I have no idea. But she did. She had too many ideas.
It wasn’t fair, Layla knew, to put Jen in the middle of this. She left to grab the razor she’d forgotten in the shower, hoping that would give Jen enough time to satisfy Amanda’s curiosity, or change the subject.
Returning, Layla heard them whispering. Stop, she thought. Go back. But she couldn’t keep herself from moving forward. When she reached the bank of lockers, she kept behind them, listening.
“Where’d she do it?”
“Ross Woods.”
A pause.
“Holy shit. How do you know all this?”
“My mom told me.”
“How does she know?”
“Her brother—my uncle—knows someone in the police department. One of the guys who went to where they found her body.”
“God.”
“Can you imagine how horrible she must have felt? To hang herself?”
A longer pause.
“Poor Layla.”
“I know. It would fucking suck to think of your mom doing that. To think she’d—”
Layla bolted, tossing her razor into the trash can by the exit, leaving her duffel bag in her locker.
That evening, she lit into her grandparents, let them know what she’d overheard. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Because it’s a load of crap,” her grandpa said.
“Really? It came from a cop.”
Her grandpa laughed theatrically, his usual wind-up to declaring bullshit. “Well, I suppose it’s gospel then. Who would ever doubt a single word of those fine men and women in blue?”
“Roy, that’s enough,” her grandma said. “Let’s show a little respect.”
He slammed a fist on the kitchen table, rattling their dinner plates.
“For what, Alice? What the hell have they done for us lately? What have they done for our daughter? That suicide ruling is an insult to her. All it’s done is stopped ’em from looking.”
Layla filled in the words he’d left out: for her killer.
“Let me play devil’s advocate,” Layla said, using one of Mr. Jansky’s favorite sayings. “Why are these stories going around about a—” She could barely get the words out. “—about a hanging, if there isn’t some truth in them?” What she didn’t say: some truth you don’t want to tell me.
“Because someone made it look that way,” her grandpa said. “It was staged.”
In Layla’s mind, a picture was taking form in the darkness. She pushed it back under.
“Why would someone go to that trouble?”
“’Cause of just what I said. To get off the hook with the cops.”
Although this made some sense to Layla, she couldn’t help but feel that it was an elaborate denial of an uncomfortable truth. To resist the temptation of denial herself, she asked, “You don’t think Mom was capable of, of what people say she did?”
Her grandparents looked at each other, as if deciding who would answer. Then her grandma spoke up.
“Your mom had her ups and downs, honey. Just like everyone else. But she certainly wasn’t suicidal, was she, Roy?”
“Absolutely not.”
“And after you arrived, Layla, she got a new spark.”
“She sure did,” her grandpa said. “She had everything to live for, most especially you.”
Layla’s throat tightened, but she fought the urge to cry. She didn’t want to break down now, when she still had so many questions.
“Then who would have done it?” She thought of her father, then remembered hearing he’d been locked up at the time.
“One of those hoods she waited on at the restaurant,” her grandpa said. “One who had eyes for her. That’s our best guess anyway, based on what she told your grandma.”
“Do you have any idea who he was?”
“Just theories,” her grandma said.
That’s all she could get her grandparents to say.
After that evening, Layla was no longer angry with her grandparents. Still, she couldn’t help but think there was more to the story—things they were holding back out of a desire to protect her, or things they didn’t know.
All of that led to the library.
Layla opened her eyes, seeing that the microfilm had advanced to October twelfth. When she got to the thirteenth, she eased up on the knob, slowing the film to a crawl. The thirteenth was the day they found her mom.
If she’d been murdered, any news of that would start around now in the microfilm. If she’d killed herself, there’d probably be nothing in the paper. That, at least, is what Layla had learned from the Internet.
She watched headlines, pictures, and advertisements roll by—all bland in comparison to what she was looking for. There were stories of high-school football games, people running for town council, controversies over what new building would go where. There were photographs of a pumpkin contest, a charity dance, people in suits cutting ribbons or shaking hands. Between October thirteenth and the end of the month, the most alarming stories concerned complaints of slashed tires on Main Street, and a convenience-store robbery on the outskirts of town.
It wasn’t until early in the November roll that her mother appeared. She smiled out from her senior portrait, surely never imagining it would appear on the Register-News’s In Memory page, alongside pictures of other random dead people, none of them younger than 60.
Sara Louise Shawn, 20, October 12th. Beloved daughter and mother, gifted artist, 1984 graduate of Mark Twain High School. Survived by ….
No cause of death. Not even a “died.”
The Register-News offered nothing more than this. By the time Layla loaded the Ledger-Appeal into the reader, she was tired, close to giving up on the microfilm mission. She cruised quickly to October thirteenth and didn’t slow down much after this date, her mind wandering ahead toward dinner and the drawing she hoped to finish afterward.
A flash of headline caught her eye. She stopped the film and rolled back to it.
“Historian Discusses ‘The Curse of Ross Woods’”
The article began:
For years, spooky tales of Ross Woods have been traded around campfires: stories of evil faces appearing in the knots of the trees, of otherworldly cries rising in the distance after nightfall. At a lecture last night, just in time for Halloween, local historian Eve Formsby discussed why the woods became the source of such stories, and why those tales have had lasting appeal.
Layla skimmed the next paragraphs, stopping at this passage:
Stories about Ross Woods being cursed are taken with a grain of salt by Formsby and other scholars. But few would dispute that the woods have had an unusually dark history. Over the past thirty years, they’ve been the site of two murders and three suspected suicides, according to police.
“We can’t assign such tragedies to any curse,” Formsby said. “In all likelihood, they are nothing more than unfortunate coincidences. Still, they feed into the dark myth that’s emerged over the years.”
Layla knew the stories of the tree-knot faces and the otherworldly cries. She’d heard them on Girl Scout hikes in those very woods, back when they were nothing more than a collection of trees parted by a path, then broken by a clearing. Back when such tales were just a thrill.
Back then, she didn’t see the faces, didn’t hear the cries, as much as she almost wanted to. They’re no more real than fairytales, she thought at the time.
Now she knew the truth in those stories, knew that their darkness was real, that it had been in those woods all along. It had been there the whole time she and the other g
irls laughed, skipped, and joked their way along the path, and it would be there as long as those woods remained.
Which tree? Layla wondered now. Had she ever passed by it, unthinking?
An old oak flashed in her mind, one of the many in Ross Woods. Then came her mother looking skyward, her throat untouched, the instant before it happened. What happened?
She pushed aside this image, thinking, Let the picture be hers.
In her mind, the maple from the front yard took shape in soft pencil—light, shade, and shadow. The maple as her mother had drawn it, with a tire swing like an invitation extended to Layla, across time.
Climb in, I’ll push you.
“Layla?”
The tree still stood in the yard, still held the swing.
“Layla?”
Ms. Carle was crouching at her side, her brow stitched with concern. Layla wiped her eyes, tried to pull herself together. “I think I’m done with this stuff.”
It was as if Ms. Carle hadn’t heard her. She kept still and studied Layla’s face, as though trying to read her thoughts. After a moment she said, “Do you want to talk about anything?”
The maple, the swing, the oak, the throat. They flashed again through Layla’s mind. She didn’t want to talk about them, about anything.
“No. No, I— ”
When she broke down, Ms. Carle’s arms circled her. Layla buried her head in Ms. Carle’s shoulder, picking up that bright scent from years ago, the scent she’d never been able to place.
Lemons. Her mother had smelled of lemons.
Chapter 7
I-70 West
“Where do you stand on cilantro?”
“Hate it,” Layla said. “Tastes like a soapy basement to me.”
“Hah! Same here. Only possible way I can tolerate it is if there’s like one part per million of it in something really spicy. Like a super-hot salsa.”
“Same with me.”
Layla noticed a sign for a winery, something she’d never expected for Illinois. Had this been a solo mission, one focused more on pleasure than business, she might have taken a tasting detour. Especially now that it was well past five.
I Mean You No Harm Page 5