by Chris Mooney
“They said you died,” Sarah said.
Mike nodded, trying to keep the anger and judgment from reaching his face.
“I remember sitting in their kitchen and both of them telling me that you died and that bad men were looking for me,” she said. “That’s why they changed my name to Susan Myer. It was the only way to protect me from these bad men. And they said if I told anyone my real name, then the bad men might come looking for me, hurt me and them both.”
Listen. This is about Sarah. Your job is to listen.
“Mr. and Mrs. Myer were always so nice to me,” she said. “They never yelled at me. They took me to Disney World. I went to church with them. Why would they lie to me?”
They’re religious fanatics, Sarah. They all share the same sick belief that God spoke through them—not priests, no, they’re as morally corrupt as the rest of us. That’s why they punished Father Jonah. He had the audacity to forgive women who played God.
Mike’s thoughts momentarily turned to Jonah, his body cold in the ground now. Jonah had suffered right up until the very end.
He didn’t see the need to tell any of this to Sarah.
“Sometimes you can believe in something so much, with such intensity, that it blinds you,” he said. “When that happens, when you believe with all your heart and mind that what you’re thinking or doing is right, it’s all you can see. In their minds and in their hearts, Mr. and Mrs. Myer believed that what they were saying and doing was right.”
“But they lied,” Sarah said.
“I know. And I wish I could change it, but I can’t. As you get older, you’ll find out that people will lie to you—sometimes people close to you. It’s sad, and it hurts, but it happens. That’s why it’s important to think about the good things. Like this.”
Mike reached into his back pocket and handed Sarah a small stack of loose pictures.
“Sorry they’re a little wrinkled,” he said. “I forgot I was sitting on them.”
Sarah slowed her steps as she studied the picture of Jess.
“Your mother will be here sometime later today.”
Sarah studied the picture for a moment, Mike waiting ready to answer questions if that was what she wanted. Sarah flipped to the next picture.
“Oh my gosh,” she said and stopped walking. “Is that a baby bear?”
“That would be your dog, Fang. He’s a bull-mastiff.”
“He’s huge.”
“And he drools, big time. Flip to the next picture and you’ll see him as a puppy.”
Sarah did. She wasn’t staring at Fang though; her eyes were locked on the girl with the glasses and crooked teeth sitting next to the sleeping puppy. Mike had chosen it hoping it would trigger a memory.
He moved in closer, debating about whether or not to put his hand on her shoulder when she flipped to the next picture, a grainy newspaper color photograph taken of Lou Sullivan as he left prison. Bill had given him the news clipping this morning; Mike had folded it up and stuffed it in his back pocket, meaning to read it later.
“Who’s this?”
“He’s … he helped me find you.”
“His name is Lou Sullivan,” Sarah said. “That’s your last name.”
It’s your last name too.
“He related to you?”
Mike nodded. “He’s my father,” he said. “Your grandfather.”
Sarah held out the pictures.
“They’re yours,” he said. “You can keep them.”
“Can you hold them for me? I don’t want to lose them.”
Her face was closed up. He had pushed her too far.
“Sure, no problem.” Mike smiled, but it was forced and holding it was an effort. He took the pictures and tucked them in his back pocket.
“I’m hungry, so I think I’m going to go back and get something to eat.”
“Okay,” he said. “You mind if I hang out here for a moment?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“Okay then. Later.” Sarah turned and jogged away from him, back up the slope toward the house where Dr. Davis and the other psychologist were waiting.
Later.
It was okay, he reminded himself. They had time now. At least they had that.
CHAPTER 53
At eleven o’clock that night, Mike stepped out onto the porch for a smoke. The sky was black, bursting with stars, the air still hanging onto its winter chill. He lit a cigarette, sat in the rocking chair and put his feet up on the railing, feeling the weight of the day in his bones.
Dr. Davis and the other shrink had spent a good part of the afternoon with Sarah, who suddenly didn’t want to talk anymore, just wanted to hang around her room with the door shut.
“She’s overwhelmed,” Dr. Davis had explained to him. “It’s a lot to digest. Just give it time.”
He had given it five years. Sarah didn’t need all this talking. What she needed was to be home, not here in this sprawling farmhouse full of strange rooms and strange faces. She needed to be back in her house, in her room and sitting on her bed, and he would sit next to her and the two of them would go through the pictures from the day she was born until the day she was taken from him—go through all the pictures and all the home movies over and over and over again until Sarah finally turned to him and said—
“Smoking’s bad for you.”
Mike turned around. Sarah was standing on the porch.
“You’re right.” He mashed the cigarette out on the floor, then flicked the butt into the darkness and removed his feet from the railing.
Sarah stepped up next to him. She wore gray sweats and a denim jacket over a T-shirt. Mike wondered who had bought the jacket, if it was a birthday gift or something she had picked out herself, a reminder of her home for the past five years now comforting her as she waited in this strange house, about to go to another strange house with another strange bedroom.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s been a long day.”
Sarah nodded. There was a problem; it was written all over her face.
She’s here to tell me that she wants to go home to her other family.
Only that wasn’t going to happen. Sarah wasn’t going back to Canada, but the warm, good feelings she held for the Myer family were very real and weren’t going away.
“This scar,” Sarah said, then pointed to the skin near her right temple and leaned in so he could see. The scar was faint, about an inch long and jagged. “I can’t remember where it came from. Do you know?”
He thought about the dried blood he’d seen in her hood.
“No,” Mike said. “I don’t.”
Sarah nodded. She seemed on the verge of tears. He resisted the urge to reach out and hold her. Don’t force it, Dr.Davis had said. Let her come to you. And most importantly, listen. Listen without judgment, without anger.
Mike said, “I’m sorry you have to go through all of this.”
Sarah stared out at the trees, the leaves rustling in the wind.
“Today when we were walking we saw the skating rink,” she said. “At least it looked like a skating rink.”
“I think it was.”
“I was in bed thinking about it—about the skating rink, I mean. At your house, was there a pond out back?”
Mike nodded. “Salmon Brook.”
“It’s out in the woods, right?”
“There’s a trail in the back of the house. You saw figure skating on TV, and you wanted me to teach you how to skate.”
“You put these, like, crates or something on the ice.”
“Plastic milk crates. I’d stack two of them together and you’d hold onto the top as you skated. You didn’t like them after a while. You wanted to skate on your own. You’d fall, and I’d rush over to pick you up and you would get so mad. You wanted to learn to get up on your own. Skating, swimming—especially sledding.”
The last words came out before Mike realized what he had said, and he wis
hed he could take them back.
It was okay. The words washed right over Sarah. She kept staring out at the trees with a faraway, dreamy look, as if the memory he was describing was being played for her.
“But then I got better.”
“Oh yeah,” Mike said. “You really took to it.”
“And we played a skating game. You held me up in front of you while we skated.”
A chill washed through his body. He wanted to speak, wanted to urge her on but was too terrified to say or do anything that might break her connection to this hazy fragment of a memory.
“You held me up and I’d call out names,” Sarah said. “And they were silly names, right? Hungry Caterpillar or something like that.”
Mike swallowed. “Something like that.”
Sarah nodded slowly, lost again in a time they had built together and once shared.
“Yeah,” she said with a shy smile. “I remember.”