by Kit Frick
Aster’s arraignment was yesterday. She’s grounded too, but at least she’s home, not in juvie. Martina hasn’t been able to reach her friend, knows she’s been charged with concealing her sister’s body, but not much more than that. She saw the officer collect the earring from the stable floor. She knows Aster was interviewed that night, and that she returned in the morning with her parents. That sometime after they left Windermere, Aster changed her mind about coming clean.
“Hey.” Martina’s head snaps up. Caden is pulling out a chair, unwrapping a scarf from around his neck, and sliding into the seat across from her. “Sorry I’m late. Took longer than I’d thought.”
“No problem.” Martina gives Caden a small smile. He’s only home for the night. She knows she’s lucky he agreed to meet her after finishing up at the station, giving a final witness statement to Holloway and Massey.
“I wanted—”
“I didn’t—”
They both speak at once, then Caden laughs. “You first, Jenkins.”
Martina clears her throat and takes a small sip of coffee. “I wanted to apologize. I was really frustrated last winter, with the way the investigation was going. I’m not sorry I kept bugging you for an interview, but the things I said in my ‘boyfriend theory’ episode, they weren’t entirely responsible. I was thinking about you as a suspect, not a person.”
“Thanks,” Caden says. “I appreciate that.”
Martina breathes and leans back in her chair. “How was, um … how was everything at the station?”
“You’re not recording this, are you?” Caden leans forward, a small smile playing across his lips.
“Scout’s honor,” Martina says. “The podcast is on hold for now. I need to do some sort of final episode, but I’m … Honestly, I’m not ready to go there yet. All this time, I’ve been trying to figure things out, get justice for Zoe’s family. But then …”
“But then the bad guy turned out to be Aster?”
“Yeah, something like that.” She drains her coffee. “Can I ask you something?”
Caden nods.
“The flash drive. Why did you leave it where someone could find it?”
“How did you—?” Caden starts to ask.
“Oh right. Um, Anna found it this summer, and the card for Zoe. Right before the fire.”
“Huh.” Caden scrubs his hand across his eyes, then drops it to rest on the table. “Okay. Well, I found Zoe’s flash drive in the stable a few days after she went missing. I thought she was angry with me, that she’d left town to punish me. Escape for a while. I really thought she’d show up by the start of the semester.” He pauses, looks down at his hands. “Anyway, on my first trip home in the spring, I put it in the stall and wrote out the card. Just in case. I didn’t think anyone except Zoe would go looking there. But it was probably as much a reminder for me as it was an apology for her. Because I knew if she didn’t come home …”
For a moment, they’re both silent.
“And Tiana?” Martina finally asks.
“Yeah, that never really got off the ground. After Zoe disappeared, it just got complicated. And sad. We both felt pretty guilty.”
“I really am sorry,” Martina says after a minute.
Caden shrugs. “Apology accepted. I think we both have some regrets. I just wish I’d gotten the chance to apologize to Zoe.”
Martina stares down into her empty mug. A layer of milky foam lines the sides. “One more thing,” she says, looking up. “When I do put a final episode together, I want to include memories about Zoe, from the people closest to her. Is that something you’d be interested in doing?”
Caden smiles. “Sure. That’s the kind of interview about Zoe I’d be happy to do.”
“Thanks.” Martina smiles back, then glances at her phone. “I should get going. I’m kind of grounded for trespassing at your house last week.”
Caden laughs. “I think I’m going to stay and get a coffee. Take care, Jenkins.”
Martina pushes back from the table and slings her book bag over her shoulder. Then she sticks out her hand, because it feels like the right thing to do, and Caden takes it. “See you around.”
35 October
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, NY
THE LIES STARTED the moment I was born. Now that I’m home, I spend my days cleaving truth from untruth, sorting memories into the times and places they belong. I’ve been talking to Mom, a lot, about my early childhood. After hearing her stories, seeing the photos she kept hidden, I’m getting better at it. This face belongs here, in this year. This event happened there. In the daylight, I’m beginning to understand. Everything that got jumbled is becoming unjumbled. I can hold one piece of memory up to the light, look at it, examine it without the other memories getting in the way, churning things into the messy concoction that scrambled my brain this summer.
But I can’t shake the dreams. At night, I dream I’m in Pathways, curled up on my cot. I dream I’m inside Windermere, surrounded by birds. I dream I’m in the stable, and it’s burning, and I’m burning with it.
It’s almost Halloween. In Bay Ridge, some of our neighbors have gone all out with their porch and lawn decorations, as they always do. There are full-scale scenes of witches and zombies, murder and mayhem. I don’t look too closely. When Mom sends me out to the store, the laundromat, to Duane Reade, I keep my eyes on the sidewalk, where the crisp browns of autumn leaves have begun to scatter. I wrap my scarf twice around my neck and button my denim jacket, relishing the chill in the air.
It’s autumn. I’m outside.
SUNY New Paltz let me defer my start until the spring semester, given the circumstances. My new leaf will have to wait a few months. But it’s okay. I’m home in Brooklyn. I’m free.
Today, I don’t have any specific errands on my agenda. I’m just walking, listening to the crunch of leaves beneath my feet, letting the familiarity of the houses and apartments I pass wash over me, letting the memories come.
* * *
This first one isn’t a memory so much as a story Mom should have told me a long time ago. She said it was her secret to keep, but I think she’s beginning to understand it was mine too.
Now that we can finally talk about it, Mom says she knew the second she had me. I wasn’t the daughter of her husband, John. I was the product of Mom’s on-again, off-again summertime affair with a mostly laid-back landscape architect with an occasional temper, who she’d met on one of many summer vacations to Herron Mills. Because we had been to Herron Mills—John wasn’t cheap, he just wasn’t a very good husband. He’d spend most of their vacations ignoring her, absorbed in his work, and eventually, she found George Spanos.
There was no Stone Harbor. It was always Herron Mills.
It explains a lot about my mom’s reaction when I told her about the nanny job, why she didn’t want me to go. She was so afraid I’d run into George, or Zoe, who she didn’t even know was missing. That they’d see, after all this time, that I was theirs. Because Mom never told anyone the truth about my paternity—not John, even when they divorced; not George; and certainly not me. To hear her tell it, we were fine on our own. We didn’t need John, and we didn’t need George either, who by the time my parents split, had reunited with his wife, Joan. I get that. But she still should have told me. If she had, surely none of this would have happened the way it did. …
After I confessed, when I swore to Mom that I knew Zoe, that we’d spent time in Herron Mills together last winter, she believed me. Of course we’d found each other again. I can understand now why Mom thought my story was real; it’s the same reason it all made sense to me. It’s true that I drank too much and blacked out often. It’s true that the police used to bring me home. There was just enough truth to my story; it made it all seem real.
After hearing Mom’s stories, here’s what I know was actually real:
* * *
I’m three, and Zoe is five. Zoe is my summer friend, two years older and infinitely wiser. Her dad and my mom take
us to get ice cream at Jenkins’ Creamery on Main Street while my dad works. Dad is always working, laptop open on the desk in the little house we’re renting, papers spread out, phone pressed to his ear. Dad is a businessman, which means he’s always busy. I’m happy Mom has a friend, happy I have Zoe.
I order chocolate with sprinkles in a waffle cone that Mr. Jenkins promises won’t leak, because there’s hard chocolate hidden at the bottom. Zoe orders the same thing she always orders: the featured flavor in the bright blue box on the chalkboard menu, Chocolate Caramel Popcorn.
“In a cup,” she insists, even though it’s better in a cone. Zoe doesn’t like to get ice cream on her face, prefers to eat it neatly with a plastic spoon.
Her dad laughs as we leave the ice-cream shop and turn onto Main Street. My face is already covered in chocolate, while Zoe dabs at her clean cheeks with a napkin. “My little princess,” he calls her.
* * *
We’re at the glassed-in pool in Zoe’s backyard, stationed on the lounge chairs with the soft plum cushions. It’s late afternoon, maybe four or five, the hottest part of the day. I’m wearing a bright blue bathing suit with little white stars splashed across the fabric. Zoe is wearing her yellow two-piece, her favorite. Her dad has the air-conditioning cranked up, the cool air cutting the thick mugginess in here. He’s sitting on a porch swing behind us with Mom, sipping cocktails and laughing.
Zoe and I have our own cocktails: pink lemonade and fizzy water and ice. Lemon Spritz, her dad calls them. A little yellow parasol rests on the rim of Zoe’s cup, but mine has a lid, so I keep my parasol on the lounge chair beside me.
Belle, Zoe’s bichon frise puppy, is flopped across Zoe’s feet on her lounger. I wish Belle would come visit me, but she’s drawn to Zoe like a magnet, always wants to be close to her. Zoe has a way with animals like that. Even the squirrels don’t run away when she goes out in the yard to sprinkle seed along the garden wall.
“Where’s your mom?” I ask, and Zoe takes a long drink.
“She works in the city,” she says finally. “Daddy says her job is very important, so she has to live there with my little sister for a while. I’m going to visit them at the end of the summer, but Daddy will stay here. They’re ‘taking a break’ right now.” She surrounds the words with air quotes.
“My dad has an important job too,” I say. “He’s very busy. That’s why he can never hang out with us.”
Zoe nods solemnly, and I wonder if my parents will “take a break.” But they both live in the city. Where would Dad go?
All at once, the sky darkens, and a long streamer of lightning strobes across the sky above the glass ceiling. While the light is still bright in our eyes, thunder cracks, loud and very close, and Zoe screams. I stare at the sky above us, fascinated, as rain starts pelting the glass.
“It’s okay,” I tell Zoe, but she’s already curled in a ball, her lemonade pooling on the floor beneath our chairs. Mr. Spanos snatches her up and takes her inside, promising that the storm won’t hurt her, that they’ll wait in the hall closet together until it passes.
Mom sits next to me on Zoe’s abandoned lounger and slips her hand into mine.
“You okay, pumpkin?” she asks, and I nod.
“Why is Zoe afraid of storms? They can’t get us in here.”
Mom shrugs. “Lots of kids are afraid of thunder and lightning. I’m glad you’re not. Hopefully it’ll pass for Zoe soon.”
* * *
I’m on the balcony at Windermere. It’s late afternoon, late summer, the last summer my parents will vacation in Herron Mills. The day is bright and cloudless and thankfully not too hot. The Talbots are throwing one of their classic parties, an end-of-the-summer bash. Mom is sipping a glass of rosé and chatting with the wives of George’s friends. My dad is downstairs, in the back, walking out where it’s quiet, by the stable and riding pen, so he can take a business call without the nuisance of the party getting in the way. If Mom and George are being too obvious, flirting and chatting, my dad’s not around to notice.
I’m playing with Zoe and Caden near the balcony’s southeast corner. Caden is our audience, although not a very good one. He’s five, like Zoe, and quickly distracted. They know each other from school, but today will be the first—and last—time Caden and I will ever meet. For fourteen years, that is. Zoe and I are standing with the balcony rail to our backs, reciting part of a poem she’s taught me while Caden fidgets with his bow tie.
No time hath she to sport and play:
A charmed web she weaves alway.
A curse is on her, if she stay
Her weaving, either night or day,
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be;
Therefore she weaveth steadily,
Therefore no other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
I trip over the strange words, but Zoe knows them by heart. She learned them from TV, from something called Anne of Green Gables, which Mom says we can rent at home, if she can find it on Netflix or at the budget rental place near our apartment. She says I’m too young for it, but I don’t care. If Zoe loves it, I’ll love it too.
As soon as we finish the passage I’ve learned, Caden darts off, inside the house, leaving Zoe and me to entertain ourselves again.
She reaches for my hands, and then we’re twirling on the balcony, arms crossed in an X, spinning and giggling, Zoe’s laugh a glittering sunbeam in the summer air. I’m in a white party dress with a yellow sash, because Zoe says yellow is the prettiest color, next to gold. Zoe is wearing a ballerina dress, shimmery gold top attached to a cream tulle skirt. We wear matching pink barrettes in our raven hair. We twirl and twirl, and the sun dances like snowflakes on our skin through the lattice of the tall maples and oaks.
Two strong hands take hold of my waist, and suddenly Zoe’s sitting on her bottom on the balcony while I’m being lifted up, up, up in the air. The hands dangle me over the balcony rail, and I whimper as the ground below swells and buckles.
“Tell me who her father is, Gloria.”
“What the hell are you thinking?” Mom’s voice is a hot whisper, the panic hovering right beneath her desire to deflect the party’s attention away from us.
The ground swells again, a roiling, churning wave.
“We’re just having fun.” A whisper in my ear, whiskey thick on Zoe’s dad’s breath. “Don’t be afraid, Anna.”
“George, put her down. Right now.” In my mother’s eyes, tears gather, then spill over. Below me, the grass surges and retreats. My whimpering gets louder.
“Just tell me the truth, Gloria. I’m her father, aren’t I?”
His palms are slick with summery, boozy sweat. They begin to slip against the shimmery fabric of my dress. I squeeze my eyes shut and silently pray he’ll put me down. That this will all be over soon. Then his hands slip again, and for a second, I’m falling. Everything goes out of focus as I pitch down, body twisting in a flash of yellow and white.
Then his hands tighten around my baby fat arms, and I’m dangling. I press my eyes shut and he pulls me up, back onto the balcony, back to safety and my mom’s wet sobs.
* * *
After that last summer, we don’t return to Windermere. We don’t return to Herron Mills. Mom resolves to make things work with Dad, but two years later, he leaves for a better opportunity. Something better than us. LA, Mom tells me now. We move to a small apartment in Bay Ridge. Mom starts working one job, then two. I forget Zoe, mostly. Mostly, I forget Herron Mills. Until fourteen years later, when I’m offered a plum gig at the Bellamy estate, and bits and pieces of my early childhood start to catch at the corners of my eyes like wisps of shadows at the end of a long summer day.
* * *
Now, I’m taking one day at a time. Allowing Mom’s stories and pictures to pull my memories more clearly into focus. I turn the corner onto Eighty-Second, pass by the fruit market, the house with the purple awning. Kaylee found an apartment in Queens with
Ian, which is okay for now, and she’s busy with community college, which is great.
No one has heard from Starr. We’ve retreated back into our guilty silence. Maybe she faked her death; maybe she’s living a new life somewhere amazing. I looked it up. People do it more than you’d think. I need to believe it’s possible, although deep down, I know the truth.
Martina and I text every day. She’s going to come out to Bay Ridge to spend the weekend with us, as soon as her parents agree to let her come. Hopefully by January, when I move up to New Paltz, there will be a new podcast everyone’s listening to. A new case to push the name Anna Cicconi far, far into the background.
Most nights, when I’m lying in bed and trying not to fall asleep, delaying the dreams I know will come, my mind wanders to Zoe and Aster. My sisters. The short gasps of time I got to spend with them both. Now that I understand who she was to me, I want Zoe back more than ever. She was my summer friend, and so much more we didn’t realize. Our parents’ secrets like a river running between us, pushing us to opposite banks, pushing us apart.
Aster was only a baby when our parents had an affair. If I ever met her when we were kids, I don’t remember it. Sometimes I think of her, and my vision goes white with fury. How she let me sit in Pathways for two months. How she must have hoped my confession would stick, that she’d get to keep the real story locked inside her heart. But then I remind myself that, in the end, she did the right thing.
She’s lucky. She’ll be held at home until trial. I’m glad she’s not in juvie, like I was, but I know things still can’t be easy. I’d like to visit her, but I’m not ready yet. Someday, I will be.
After all, she’s the only sister I have left.