I always figured that Penny would come back to us, if not because she wanted to than because she needed to. The credit card debt of her early twenties had turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. She’d made about every bad financial decision a person could make: she owed back rent, had defaulted on payday loans, had written bad checks. How long until Stewart ran out of resources to support her?
I knew there was nothing to be gained from reaching out to her, but there were times I ached for her so much, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wrote her a letter and mailed it to her house. I told her that it was my love for her that wouldn’t let me pretend that nothing was wrong. I told her I hoped she’d be standing next to me on my wedding day, as I’d been on hers. I told her I hoped she’d be by my side when I gave birth to my first child as I was when she gave birth to Ava. I told her I’d always love her. And I’d meant it. What a miserable fate.
Up until the news broke, I’d been holding on to hope that, if nothing else, Ava would eventually come of age and we’d all get another chance. We could help her then and perhaps we could help Penny too. By that point, her fertility—her weapon of choice—would be obsolete. Until then, I would have to reconcile myself to the fact that I would not get to see Ava grow up. As it turned out, no one would.
When the worst thing you can imagine—the thing you’ve been obsessively imagining—happens, it’s worse than the anticipation of it, but not by as much as you’d think. An unspeakable aspect of the worst-case scenario is that it brings with it some relief, because you’re no longer waiting for it.
Because of our estrangement from Penny, we heard what happened from the news like everyone else. The story broke while I was flying home from the two-day trip to Buenos Aires with Blair. By the time we landed, my voice mail was full with messages. When we met Luke at baggage claim, his face was ashen; he’d known for several hours. I know he flew home with me to Idaho to make sure I got there in one piece, but I have no memory of the trip.
The media attention ratcheted up fast, and what began as a local horror story quickly got picked up by the wire services, then by the morning shows and evening news magazines. Soon, my voice mail was filling up so fast I had to change my number. The U.S. Ski Team recommended a crisis PR agent and swiftly distanced themselves from the story with an anodyne statement about being sorry for our loss.
I could tell my sponsors were spooked—the story of a murdered child is too horrific to touch—and it didn’t help that my previous season hadn’t been stellar. I could barely sleep and was having panic attacks.
“Don’t worry,” Tad Duncan said, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “This will all blow over after the trial and you can focus on skiing again.” But the look in his eye as he spoke was one I now recognized: I was bad for his brand too, and his sons’. I was toxic by association.
As the trial drew nearer, as the press became more relentless and my e-mail in-box filled with hate mail, it sunk in just how much there was to lose. No less than everything.
Liz at the End of the World
FALL IS coming on and before the weather turns, Cali and I decide to visit Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, portal to the Antarctic. I need to put several hundred miles between Gianluca and me while I figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I Google all of the many reasons I might not be getting my period: stress, change in diet, the moon. My search leads me down a rabbit hole that begins with legitimate medical advice and quickly devolves into homeopathy, folklore, myth, and sheer batshit mommy blogger nonsense. I know I need to just take a pregnancy test, but I’ve never taken one and I’m terrified, as though the act of taking the test might make it so. Luke and I were always careful with birth control, back when my body was for something. I know I haven’t been as good about taking my pills; I’ve missed a day here and there, but is that really enough? Much of what I read is instructive on how to get pregnant, and makes it sound as complicated as a space shuttle launch. How could this happen to anyone by accident? I wonder.
The plane ride to Patagonia takes us over the vast alien landscape that lies between Buenos Aires and the tip of the continent. There are miles of arid, windswept plains with no sign of humanity. The Andes appear in their sudden glory. I’ve seen them before, but they always take my breath away; there is no mountain range that looks quite so steep and forbidding from above.
The mountains drop off precipitously into the sea as the tiny port city of Ushuaia comes into view. The landing strip is a short runway that ends right in the Drake Passage, which leads out into the southern Atlantic.
Cali and I rent a funky little condo near the water that’s covered in the tacky nautical decor of every seaside town everywhere. The town itself is an unlovely, utilitarian port with some touristy shops and mediocre restaurants haphazardly added for visitors. But the town is beside the point; it’s the location that matters. The steep Andean cliffs surrounding it and plunging into the ocean, the lush lakes and forests just outside the city, the bay with its perpetual, eerie fog, and beyond it, only Antarctica. The weather moves in and out swiftly, changing from sun to rain to clouds in the space of an hour, so that watching the sky here feels like looking at time-lapse photography. My body feels haywire: I’m in a giddy space between knowing and not knowing.
On our first full day, we take a Jeep tour through tangled forests and sparkling lakes, which send an unexpected flash of longing for home through me. There’s a couple on our tour—half Argentine, half American, one speaking Spanish, the other speaking English with our guide, and Cali and I pivoting between the two. The couple has been together two years; he’d just been to visit her family in one of the northern provinces. “Good thing I speak some Spanish now,” he tells us in English. “He doesn’t speak any Spanish,” she tells us later in Spanish. I ask how they talk to each other. She flicks the cigarette she’s smoking. “We don’t!” she says cheerfully, and the three of us laugh and laugh. Lunch is served in a tiny tent that we come across, seemingly by magic, in the forest where there’s a burly cook who serves us bloody, delicious steak and quotes Borges.
On our second day, we take a cruise through the accessible parts of the bay and spot sea lions and penguins on the harsh, barren shores of the island.
Though there isn’t much to the town itself, the views from the bay are spectacular, and we spend a long afternoon wandering around. There is a large sign in the classic Argentine fileteado that reads USHUAIA: FIN DEL MUNDO. The end of the earth.
“Liz, go hop in there and I’ll take a picture!” Cali says.
I’m standing next to the sign smiling broadly when I hear her.
“Katie?”
The sound of my name, which I haven’t heard in months now, is immediately disorienting. I turn in the direction of the woman who says it. Cali is watching, bemused, thinking that this stranger has mistaken me for someone else.
“Katie Cleary!” Now she’s only a few feet from me and I process her face.
“Kjersti!”
I wrap my arms around her: my rival, my friend. Fresh off her gold medal win.
“What are you doing here?” she says. “Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the earth, and now I find you at the end of the earth!” I’m not sure if Kjersti is as adorably corny in Norwegian as she is in English, but if not, the Norwegians are missing out.
“Oh, um . . . I’m living in Buenos Aires right now. I’m just here visiting with my friend, Cali.” I look over to see Cali standing apart from us, looking confused and reticent. I wave her over with a look that I hope says that I’ll explain later.
“Kjersti Larsen, Calliope Ford. Cali, meet Kjersti, my old friend and newly minted gold medal downhill racer.”
“Oh shit,” Cali says as the two shake hands. “That’s incredible, congrats!”
“Thank you, and nice to meet you. I love Buenos Aires. San Telmo,” she says, clutching her heart, “my favorite.”
“That’s where we live,” Cali says. I
would have preferred to avoid specifics, but what difference does it make if Kjersti knows what neighborhood I live in? The cat’s out of the bag. I would feel ridiculous asking her to keep it a secret.
“Seriously though, Kjersti, congrats on Vancouver,” I add.
“You know the medal, it doesn’t count, Katie, because you weren’t there. You know I don’t just say this.”
Kjersti doesn’t just say anything. I know she means it. I would feel the same. Wins against her were always more meaningful, and the losses too; for years, we’d pushed each other to be better, and I miss her more than I’d let myself realize until now.
“I’m so proud of you, Kjersti. I’m really happy for you. If it wasn’t going to be me, I’m glad it was you. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
“Not that bitch Sarah Sweeny, huh? I take care of her for you.”
At this, I laugh out loud, and indeed, I’m glad it wasn’t Sarah Sweeny. She didn’t medal, small mercies.
“Shit,” Kjersti says. “I wish I could stay and go have a drink with you girls. But I got to get my gear ready to head to Antarctica tomorrow.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“BMW is sending me and Hans,” she said, name-checking one of her teammates. “We’re shooting a video.”
“Damn! Can’t let the freeskiers have all of the fun. Nice.”
“When will I see you, Bomber? When are you coming back?”
Standing with Kjersti is like going back in time for a moment, and I can almost believe that none of it ever happened. She’s talking to me as though it could be so, like she hasn’t noticed that I’m clearly out of shape, like I haven’t pulled a complete disappearing act. I wonder if I could even still have reps, a team, a future, even if I could get over my fear and get my head back together enough to face the mountain at all. Even if I’m not pregnant. Or if I decide not to be.
“I’m not sure,” I say, “but I’ll be in touch, okay? I promise.”
“You better promise! I come find you!”
“You’ll be too busy kicking Sarah’s ass all over the Alps.”
This gets a full-throated laugh.
“I promise though,” I say, pulling her in for a hug. My voice catches in my throat, and I need her to leave before I start bawling.
“Okay, I better go,” she says, pulling back to hold my shoulders and give me a long look. “Nice to meet you, Cali. Bye, Bomber. We’ll see you soon, yes?”
All I can do is nod.
For a moment, Cali and I stand there silently, watching Kjersti walk away, her sleek panther-like form striding down the sidewalk and catching glances from men and women alike. Professional athletes are like beautiful aliens, similar to humans but perhaps one stage further along in their evolution. I realize too late that I never fully appreciated the beauty of the body I had; I was too obsessed with its mechanics.
“So, uh, Katie? Bomber?” Cali says finally.
I give her a sheepish look, but at least she’s smiling, taking it in with cheerful grace. Dread is pooling in my stomach. I know she thinks she can handle it, whatever it is. I’ll forgive her if she can’t. I’m new in her life, I tell myself, and she’s new in mine, it will only be a surface wound if I lose her.
“Ye-ah,” I say.
“I mean, I know I wasn’t exactly forthcoming about my past, but an alias is kind of next level.”
There’s really no choice now, I think. We can’t be friends any longer with this hanging between us. I can’t pile another lie on the ones I’ve already told her—the fake name, the altered backstory. After all, before Penny was a killer she was a liar. I can’t keep this up.
“I want to tell you, but it’s hard to know where to start,” I say as we make our way to a bench that looks out onto the Drake Passage. The bay is both eerie and beautiful: the clouds above it are constantly churning, and the water, the light, the sky are never still. Beyond it, there’s only the forbidding Antarctic.
“Well, how about we start with why you told me your name was Liz?”
“Liz, well Elizabeth, is my middle name. My actual name is Katie Cleary.” I realize that this piece of information might save me from having to explain the rest. “Does that ring any bells?” My voice gets soft.
She thinks about it. “I mean, yeah, vaguely. But, to be honest, I don’t really follow ski racing.”
I smile sadly. That’s not why she recognizes my name.
“How about Penny Cleary-Granger?” I say.
Cali’s eyes grow wide with recognition. I can’t be sorry that I didn’t tell her until now; at least now she’s less likely to jump to every horrible conclusion in the book, now that she knows me. Maybe.
“She’s my older sister.”
I hear the sharp intake of Cali’s breath and my heart races. I envision her backing away from me or screaming for help. The weight of not having told anyone, of finally telling her, is crushing me.
“So, honey. That long story you were going to tell me at some point?” she says, looping her arm through mine as we sit on the bench. “If you’re ready, I think I’d like to hear it.”
Penny’s Sister Takes the Stand
THERE ARE many more parents tried for the murders of their children than anyone would like to think about, and the sad reality is that most of these cases are no more than a blip on the local news. But the particular elements of our story combined for a perfect media maelstrom. First, there was Penny herself: a middle-class, conventionally attractive white woman. I’d now spent enough time around social workers and at family court to discover that this made her wildly unusual as a suspect of any kind of child neglect or abuse, let alone murder. These weren’t the usual depressing systemic circumstances—poverty, addiction, prison time, child neglect as a result of parents whose lives were in tragic disarray. My sister—with her nice clothes, her professional background, her shiny hair—slipped right under the radar. A pretty, white female murderer is a beast that hides in plain sight because no one believes she exists. I suppose it would have been different if she’d killed her cheating husband or something—after all, Chicago was a hit—but pretty ladies only kill for sexy reasons in the public’s imagination. Second, there was the sheer horror of the crime itself and the immense backlog of social media for speculators to parse. Third, there was me. No one other than skiing fans and Luke Duncan groupies knew who I was before the trial, but even the most minor level of celebrity mixed with a murder case turns the wattage up to a million. Suddenly, I was recognized everywhere. I got messages of support, hate mail, rape and death threats, marriage proposals, the gambit.
The narrative Penny’s defense team tried to advance was that my parents had favored me in such a way that it amounted to neglect and deprivation of my sister. Trial watchers obsessed over our relationship; rating women against one another is America’s favorite pastime, after all. Who was the sweet one? Who was the bitch? Who was the smart one? But most importantly, who was the hot one? Was it Penny, with her curves, or me, with my lean physique? Penny was a bit fat actually, the pathetic men who comment on such things online opined, but wasn’t I a bit masculine with my muscles? Plenty of guys registered the opinion that they’d do both of us, a smaller number—trolls with unreasonably high standards—said neither of us would make the cut. I briefly considered having DON’T READ THE COMMENTS! tattooed on my hands.
For the thousands who watched the trial coverage, the worst moments of my life became a parlor game of speculation, a soap opera that people could tune in to and be scandalized and riveted by before going back to their normal lives. The country was in the deep end of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and I imagined they looked at my family and thought, We may be underwater on our mortgage but at least we’re not these people.
A parade of people Penny had deceived into thinking she was a dutiful mother who’d been deeply and despicably wronged by a negligent hospital and her evil family—the minor acquaintances, the rude aunties—reemerged for t
heir moment in the spotlight. But there were also many people who testified bravely against her on Ava’s behalf, participating in the awful, gruesome trial to do the right thing. The court-appointed special advocate who’d worked on Ava’s previous case gave a thoughtful, convincing testimony about her experiences with Penny and Ava. Then there were the doctors from the SCAN team, nurses from Children’s, the therapist who’d evaluated her for the original case. With no video evidence of Penny’s misdeeds, the prosecution relied on the testimony of experts and on the massive, byzantine paper trail that detailed not only Ava’s strange medical history and Penny’s own, but other instances of fraud, including the fact—which my parents and I had only learned via the local paper’s investigative reporting—that Penny wasn’t actually qualified to work as a physician’s assistant. This detail paled in comparison to her other crimes but was nonetheless dizzying. The lie had roots that went back the better part of a decade, and I could recall dozens of conversations with Penny about how hard she was working to get her master’s. I’d been so proud of her for the achievement; I’d never questioned her. It was cold comfort to know that she’d been credible enough to convince actual medical professionals that she was qualified. One more piece of my sister turned to ash.
My testimony came late in the trial, weeks before the verdict. In addition to the doctor who’d been in the room with Penny when Ava coded and who had discovered a container of table salt in the bathroom off of her hospital room, and my mother, I was considered a star witness. People find sports celebrities credible, I was told, especially Olympians who’d stood on the medal stand, even if it wasn’t a gold around their neck. Patriotism becomes a factor, and with a jury made up of red-blooded, red state Idahoans, this was key.
The prosecutors asked me questions about our family growing up, what Penny had been like, and how our relationship had been. They asked what I’d made of Penny’s many health issues, and specifically of her previous “pregnancy,” which we now knew for certain—given the medical records subpoenaed by the prosecution—had never existed. I answered as truthfully as possible and when asked if I had anything else to add, I spoke from the heart, my voice shaking. I was emotional, and saying this all in public, with the cameras and the jury and the onlookers, was more unnerving than I’d expected. I’d naively thought that my many interviews with sports journalists throughout the years would have prepared me.
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