by Dana Becker
“Did he say where he got Rose’s things? If he’s just this innocent bystander . . .”
“Exactly. Oh, he simply refused to tell us. Said that he’d never seen Rose and had no idea where she was and had nothing to do with any of it. But that these items of hers had somehow landed in his possession. That’s all he’d say.”
Carmen and April arrived back at the bakery. They both put their aprons on and started working again, without saying a word.
“And the worst part is,” April finally said, “I don’t trust Joseph anymore. I really don’t.”
There it was, clear as day. Those words: I don’t trust Joseph. They hung there in the air for a moment. Carmen was surprised to hear them.
“I’ve been struggling for a while now with this feeling,” April admitted. “And now, talking to you, one of the few people in the world I really do trust, it’s come clear to me.”
“Oh,” said Carmen, “I see. Well, that is a kind of big deal.”
“I didn’t want to meet that creepy guy. And Joseph kind of forced the meeting. And then, once we got there, and it was clear to me that this guy was just fronting for Ricky, I was really angry. And scared, too. But even then, Joseph tried to convince me that this guy was telling the truth.”
“Do you think Joseph is . . . you don’t think he’s, like, working for Ricky?”
April just sighed.
“I know it seems crazy. But I just don’t know. I can’t be sure of anything anymore. Like, it’s possible Joseph just got taken in by this guy. Which is a problem. But it’s also possible that, yeah, he’s actually working for Ricky. Which is way more than a problem. Ricky’s sneaky. And, like I told you, he’s been on some sort of a campaign to manage me. So I dunno. Maybe this is part of that.”
“Wow,” Carmen said.
“I mean, Joseph came into my life right after Rose disappeared, right? Maybe that’s just a coincidence. And maybe it’s also just a coincidence that Joseph, from the beginning, was very interested in helping with the search for Rose. And maybe it’s also a coincidence that Joseph happens to know this guy who knows Ricky, and just happens to have inside information about Rose. But there’s a lot of coincidences here. . . .”
April and Carmen silently kneaded and cut dough for a minute.
“And like,” said April, “when this creepy dude carried my sister’s shoes in his creepy dirty hands and dropped them on the table, I just turned to Joseph and looked at him. Just stared at him. And he looked back at me. But it was really weird and kind of scary. Because it was like I didn’t know who he was, like he was a total stranger to me. I was sitting there shocked and kind of horrified to see my sister’s shoes on this man’s table and Joseph looked at me, totally unsurprised, almost casual. It was this distant, hard look. He seemed like one of them, Carmen. I felt this chill down my back, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, you knew about this, didn’t you? You were a part of this.’”
Chapter Eight
April walked a different way home that night. She’d begun doing this as much as possible: changing her walk, going a different route. Changing her routine. Stopping, on her way home, in the same corner store two days in a row, and then not stopping there for two days, then back to two days stopping there. The goal was to throw off the person who, she suspected, was following her around town—or else to help her to determine whether she was going crazy.
If she kept the same route for a few days, she’d see him: the tall, thin man with a baseball cap pulled low over his head. He’d be following her. If she stopped at the store, she’d lose him. Until she left the store, and there he was again. Until he seemed to notice that she was noticing him, and then he became more cautious—if she took an unexpected turn, or stopped at the grocery store, he’d disappear for the night.
Unless April was imagining all of this. It was distinctly possible. But just when her inner voice of reason told her, You’re just nervous, no one is following you around, this isn’t a movie, she’d see him again, the tall thin man with the baseball cap pulled low.
Constantly in search of new routines to throw this man off, April walked into Bob & Barbara’s, a dive bar on the corner of 13th and Walnut. She went in without hesitation. It was as if her feet were on automatic pilot. This place had once—and not that long ago—been her bar of choice, the place she’d stumbled out of drunk on countless late nights. She hadn’t set foot in there in months. Usually, she avoided that block altogether; that’s how recovery works, she’d been told. Just avoid the trouble spots altogether. But now, her feet carried her right in, stepping over the creaky floor plank and immediately sidestepping the bench near the door, which jutted out a bit too far from its booth. It had been a while, but she still had a powerful muscle memory from hundreds of hours spent in this place.
April sat at the bar, at her usual spot, and looked at the drink menu. It had expanded since she’d gotten sober. But everything else in the bar was unchanged. It was exactly as it had been when she’d last passed through the grimy door with the fogged-up window. So much had happened to April and yet, now that she was sitting here, it was as if no time had passed. It was as if she’d just walked out of the bar one night, for a short smoke break, and returned five minutes later. She inhaled deeply and took in a giant breath, filled with the familiar beer and wine and whiskey aromas. Her switch was flipped.
All of that mental momentum was leading her to place an order. It would be so easy. How was it so easy? The bartender, who was new and didn’t recognize April, would just hand her a drink, like it was no big deal. Like it wasn’t the end of the world. All she needed to do was give the word.
There was no question about it: she needed to get out of there. But she stayed. Her legs were not moving. Her brain was already tasting the sweet-tartness of a beer. She tried to fight it. She even stretched and reached for her coat. As much as she hungered for a drink, she’d also built up new habits, to redirect herself. And so she began to push herself toward her coat.
She tried her best. But just as she slipped on her coat and began to turn toward the door, April heard the voice of a young woman behind her.
“Hey there,” she said. “Sorry for the wait. Busy night here. What can I get you?”
And just like that, April’s knees buckled, and she collapsed back toward the barstool. All the muscle memory came rushing back. There was literally nothing in the world April wanted more than a beer. Just that first taste of it. Maybe I’ll order something and just take one sip and then leave, she thought. One sip! She knew that was a lie. But knowing it was a lie didn’t deter her. On the contrary, self-awareness somehow made the lie okay. And that’s what scared her the most.
She sat on the barstool and spun around toward the bartender.
“What’s on tap?” April asked.
April, unimpressed with the drafts, ordered her old drink. Muscle memory.
“I’ll have a lager,” she said.
In Philly, “a lager” always means a bottle of Yuengling beer.
The bottle of Yuengling came. April stared at it. It looked back at her, with its mouth open, awaiting hers. She passed her nose near it and inhaled its tart chill. And then April sat up, threw a ten-dollar bill down on the bar, told the bartender to help herself to the beer—that she hadn’t touched it—and then she turned around and briskly walked out before the bartender could reply.
Outside, as she walked home, April sensed someone moving near her, in the dark. Was it him? She didn’t look. She just steeled herself and started jogging toward home. When she got there, she quickly threw a glance over her shoulder. There was nobody there.
* * *
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Carmen said to April, then hesitated.
Carmen and April were cleaning up after a busy day at the bakery. April had been scurrying around, picking up trash, wiping down the tables and, in one practiced motion, flipping the shop’s OPEN sign around to CLOSED. Carmen watched all of this with satisfaction and also some ama
zement at how natural it all seemed to April now, how much April had become a pro; she had come a long way since that first crazed day. Carmen was starting to have serious thoughts about her future with April. Maybe April could be a partner in this business . . . maybe, one day, she could take it over?
But that was a long time down the line. And, anyway, there were a lot of steps that they needed to take together before they got there, including some personal steps. One of those steps would happen tonight. Carmen now realized that the time had come for her to tell April the truth. The full truth. If April was really going to be a permanent part of Carmen’s life, a part of her inner circle, she needed to know who Carmen really was. Or who she’d once been. Where she came from. It was time to tell her The Big Secret. Especially now, with all this Joseph stuff coming to a head.
“April?” Carmen said, hesitantly at first; then gaining more confidence, she repeated it. “April . . . stop for a second and come over here. This is important.”
April put down the mop and walked over to Carmen.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There’s something about me, my past, that I haven’t told you. That you need to know.”
Carmen paused. This was turning out to be harder than she’d imagined.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll just say it: I grew up in Joseph’s community.”
April’s mouth dropped.
“Well,” Carmen added, “not exactly in his, but in one a lot like it. I grew up . . . Amish.”
April just stared at Carmen.
“You know your jaw just literally dropped, right?” said Carmen.
“I just . . . wow,” April finally said. “Not sure what to say. I had no idea. Why was it a secret?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. I just . . . I don’t talk about it to almost anybody. I don’t even like to think about it myself, to be honest. There’s kind of a story there, you know?”
And now, with the truth revealed, Carmen told her that story.
* * *
Carmen was born Abigail, the oldest daughter of eight siblings of the Lantz family, an Old Order Amish family, who lives near Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania.
Carmen/Abigail was the pride of the Lantz family and their community. The perfect daughter. And, of course, she was also a prized potential bride. Abigail’s charmed life got somehow even more charmed when she married the community’s most-loved young bachelor, Jacob Thomas Weaver. Within a year of their marriage, Abigail had a beautiful healthy child, a girl, who arrived like a blessing to the entire community.
But a year later, everything went terribly wrong. A freak accident during a summer storm changed Abigail’s life: in one afternoon she lost her beloved Jacob and her only daughter, Baby Rebekah, who was just learning to walk. Heartbroken and bereft, Abigail began a tailspin from which she barely recovered. Fairly or not, she blamed her community for the deaths of Jacob and Rebekah. And her family’s heartfelt but, to her, inadequate response to her grief finally drove a wedge between her and them, and between her and the community. And between her and her faith. She felt the need to escape and start a new life.
So she did. Abigail moved to the city, to Philly, changed her name to Carmen—a name she’d seen on a bus billboard for the Philadelphia Opera—and she never looked back. Or, at least, she tried to never look back.
“I hope you can forgive me,” Carmen said. “I hope you can see why I didn’t tell you.”
“Of course,” said April, as she walked over to Carmen and put her arms around her. “That must have been so hard.”
April tried to empathize with Carmen—but it was still a lot for her. There was so much she didn’t know in her life right now: about Rose, about Joseph, and, now, also about Carmen. Throughout all the confusion, Carmen had been one of the few steady things in April’s life over the past year, and now, it turned out that she didn’t really know her, either. And not only that, but Carmen’s secret crossed right over into the Amish world that had suddenly come to dominate April’s thoughts.
Now April understood why Carmen had been carefully trying to steer April away from Joseph since the beginning. It wasn’t because Carmen was ignorant of Amish ways but because she had her own baggage. Hearing the story of Carmen’s own difficult path in life came at just the right moment for April. It helped her feel more confident about her own decision.
“But I’m still going to miss Joseph,” April said when they talked about it.
“I know, honey,” Carmen said, taking April’s hand and squeezing it tightly. “But it’s for the best. You’re turning a corner now in your life and sometimes that’s hard to do.”
April, feeling like she was carrying a sack of bricks on her back, walked home slowly that night. She was trying to process everything. It was all so confusing. On the one hand, she felt as if her soul had been taken from her because of her sister’s disappearance—and the slow process of acceptance that Rose might really be gone forever. And yet, April was healthier than she’d been in years—maybe ever in her life. She’d passed a major test: she’d been facing prison time, a completely different life path, but she’d stayed on course and navigated herself through danger.
Now she was sober—really sober. She had a job. She was about to take classes that would put her on track for a real career. Things might not have worked out with Joseph, it was true, and it was possible that Joseph was not quite who he said he was—but still, on a basic level, April had managed a healthy, non-abusive relationship. Her first. Even though the relationship had ended, it had been a kind of success.
April’s new life helped her see that it was over, that it had to be over, with Joseph. It made her intensely sad, because she’d fallen in love with him. But it was the right decision and, for once in her life, she could take true comfort in knowing that a setback like this breakup would actually help her move forward and leave her stronger than before. Carmen was right. She was turning a corner in her life.
April was so busy with these thoughts, she’d hardly noticed that she was almost home, and was actually turning the corner onto her street. And that’s when she saw him. Again. The tall thin man with the baseball cap pulled low. At first she heard his footsteps behind her. Then she glanced over her shoulder and saw him, walking twenty feet behind her. She suddenly had an idea. She stopped short and pulled out her phone. And when she did that, she heard him suddenly stop, too, and she knew, without any doubt, that this man was following her. Why else would he stop the moment she stopped? In that sudden hesitation of his footsteps, she knew she was being followed, and that knowledge terrified her and literally took her breath away. For a second, she felt as though the man were right behind her, grabbing her by the neck, preventing her from breathing. But there were no hands on her neck.
The man, probably sensing that he’d been found out, quickly resumed his movement. From behind her, April could hear his footsteps again. She turned around just in time to see him skip across to the other side of the avenue and disappear onto a side street. By the time April reached the front of her apartment building she’d managed to convince herself, once again, that it was in her head. That it was her anxiety and her generally heightened emotional state at the moment that had caused her to think this stranger’s footsteps had stopped when she’d stopped. It was perfectly normal for a guy to cross the street like that. It was her own oversensitivity that made her hear it, and feel it, as something else.
So she convinced herself. But her shaking hand, working extra hard to fit her key into her lock, told her that she hadn’t quite succeeded in convincing herself.
* * *
There were some practical things to take care of, regarding Rose—her apartment, for one. April had taken up a collection with Rose’s friends to pay Rose’s rent for the first couple of months of her absence. And when that became too much of a strain, she helped sublet her sister’s room. She kept it as a sublet for a while—and kept al
l of Rose’s stuff there—just in case she returned. It was really important to April to keep the place ready, so that when Rose came back, she had a proper home. Rose would need that stability more than ever.
But the months were passing by. Soon, it would be a year. Subletting was becoming a burden. And Rose’s apartment mates, though they were too kind to say it directly, did not want to live among Rose’s things anymore. They were getting tired of new subletters coming and going. The time had come to move Rose’s stuff out, and to put the room back on the rental market.
April was also of the belief that this was a way of admitting that Rose wasn’t coming back, though nobody would say it. Friends, who could read defeat on her face, would try to comfort April by saying, “This doesn’t mean we’re giving up. We’re not giving up! When we get Rose back, we’ll find her an even better place to stay.” April, who was genuinely moved by these sentiments, would try to smile. But none of it changed the basic fact that Rose was gone, and that she would never again live in this, or any, apartment.
April had quite intentionally avoided Rose’s apartment during her absence. She’d stopped by to pick up Rose’s cat, Dexter, and bring him back to her place, and she came by to help show the place to subletters. But she never lingered in Rose’s space. Every item, every stuffed animal, stabbed at her heart. All of the dresses hanging in the closet—each one so familiar that they were Rose—floating there like gauzy ghosts of her sister. She avoided them.
Friends offered to help. But April had always said no. This was her job. She had to return to that room, and to immerse herself in her sister’s stuff, to undertake the painful process of packing away—burying—her sister’s life in moving boxes.
Every item brought a world of emotion to her. Happy memories, attached to an old toy or an old concert ticket stub pinned to the wall, were the hardest to deal with. It was almost too painful to bear, that sense of bitterness and loss when she wrapped up the toy, or carefully removed the ticket from the wall, and placed it into a box.