by Wendy Walker
“All right. Let’s go solve this little mystery so we can get back to Richard Foley.”
Abby followed him up the steps of the school, to the receptionist and then down a narrow, gray hallway to the office of the school counselor, Lisa Jennings.
This was a far cry from the white marble floors of the Soundview Academy.
They sat in metal chairs around a small coffee table adorned with a neat stack of teen magazines. Lisa Jennings was every bit as beautiful as she had been three years before, though her face had begun to hollow beneath her cheekbones, small crow’s-feet now visible at the corners of her eyes as she marched into her midthirties. On her finger was a diamond engagement ring.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Dr. Winter, under happier circumstances,” she said, smiling broadly.
Abby returned the gesture. “Yes, it is. And congratulations. That’s a beautiful ring.”
Lisa fanned her fingers and admired the diamond. “Thanks. Only a few months to go until the big day!”
“That’s very exciting,” Abby replied.
Leo was not in the mood for small talk. He sat on the edge of the chair, legs straddling the corner of the table, elbows on knees. “How much have you read about Cass Tanner’s return?”
The woman was startled by the abruptness of the question. She settled back into her chair, hand to face as though thinking about her answer carefully. “I’ve read everything I could find, of course.”
She recited the facts that were public—how they left because Emma was pregnant, how they lived on an island off the coast of Maine with people named Bill and Lucy Pratt. How there was a boatman named Richard Foley who helped Cass escape, and how they believed Emma was still on the island with her daughter, now two years old.
“Is there more?” she asked.
Abby jumped in. “We’re trying to find out who might have put Emma in touch with the Pratts. That’s probably not their real name, so we’re having to work backwards, looking for any connection from before the disappearance.”
“Well, I wish I could help you, but I had no idea Emma was even pregnant, let alone trying to find someone to help her run away.”
Leo looked at her curiously. “That’s strange. Cass told us you and Emma had grown close. That Emma had started coming to your office more and more that early fall. She was certain you might have something that would be helpful, even the name of a boy she might have been dating.”
Lisa Jennings shook her head. “That’s not true at all, actually. I tried to speak with Emma on several occasions over the years, given the turmoil in their home with the divorce. She had no interest. I think I told you before that Emma had a very strong external wall, and she seemed very sure of herself. Confident. Some might say arrogant.”
Abby finished the thought. “But behind that wall, you said she was insecure. Why did you think that?”
“Well, if I recall, it was really based on comments made by some of her teachers. And also the way she used her appearance to attract friends. Boys, in particular.”
“Huh,” Abby said, fanning through her notes. “What was it about her appearance? I’m sure I have it in my notes, but I’m working on very little sleep—”
“Sure—you know, she wore heavy makeup sometimes. Eye liner and lipstick. She always wore her hair down, and it was meticulously straightened. She liked to show off her legs, so short skirts and tight pants. We had a dress code, but the girls always found the loopholes.”
When she stopped speaking, Abby and Leo let silence fill the room to see if she would fill it. She did.
“Then there was the time she had that very short hair, and all the girls thought she was being very courageous. The boys were curious as well. It was as if she had decided to make a statement about the pressure on girls to please boys. And of course, it only made the boys want her more. She let everyone believe she was bold like that. She liked that people believed that about her.”
Leo slipped his phone back in his pocket like he was getting ready to leave. “So Emma did not come to see you?”
“No. Never.”
“And you did not know of any boyfriends at the time of her disappearance?”
“No.”
“And you had no idea she was pregnant?”
“No, none at all.”
“Is there anyone you can think of who might have helped her with her plan to run away? Any teachers or friends or parents of friends who may have had views on abortion or adoption or who were involved with troubled teenagers?”
She shook her head. “No. I would have told you back then. We all racked our brains trying to understand what might have happened to those girls. I remember answering all of these same questions—about men and friends and teachers and parents. I’m sorry. I left at the end of that school year.”
Abby was not ready to pack up quite yet. “Can I ask why?”
“I just needed a change. Public schools have different demographics. I can do more good here.”
“And public schools pay more, don’t they?”
Lisa smiled. “Yes. That, too.”
“I thought it might have been because of your fiancé,” Abby said.
“We met after I started work here. He teaches history.”
“Well,” Leo said, standing now. “Thank you for your time.”
Abby followed, reluctantly. She needed an answer to the one question Lisa Jennings could not answer. Why did Cass lead us back to you?
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I will keep thinking about it and let you know if I remember something.”
“Thank you.” Abby gave her a card. Leo did the same. They turned for the door.
“Her family must be elated. Please send them my regards,” Lisa said as a parting gesture.
Abby turned to face the woman, suddenly curious but not sure why. “Her family is complicated, as you know.”
“Yes, sadly. I was aware of the situation with the parents. I’ll never forget the real reason Emma cut her hair so short. We all thought that might be the end of the turmoil, however terrible that was.”
Leo stopped now as well. They both looked at her, then back at each other.
“I don’t know if things are ever really over in a situation like that,” Abby said cautiously. A new door had just been opened and she had no idea where it would lead.
“Or with a person like that. I thought it was child abuse. When I heard how Mrs. Martin cut her daughter’s hair in the middle of the night, well, I tried again to speak with the girls. Maybe that’s what Cass was remembering. I tried to help. But they would not talk about it—or anything, for that matter. You know, sometimes I wonder if I should have reported that to social services. I wonder if I could have stopped that runaway train. But you have to understand, I was following protocol. It was not a reportable event according to the school, and I worked for them.”
Abby flipped through her notes again, stopping on a random page. “Right, I remember that. Judy Martin cut her hair to punish the girls for wanting to live with their father. That must have been very difficult. It’s a shame they didn’t confide in you.”
Lisa Jennings held her palms to the sky. “Teenagers…”
“I remember being one,” Abby said. She smiled and touched the woman’s arm warmly. “Do you remember who told you about that—I mean, if the girls didn’t say anything?”
“Oh,” Lisa said. She was taken aback, then struggled to regroup. “You know, I think it was their father, Owen. Strange I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
Abby smiled. “Yes, it was.”
“And I’m sure you did everything you could,” Leo said. “You know what they say about hindsight.”
They said their good-byes. Abby rushed down the hall and out the door. Leo was right behind her. Neither of them spoke until they were outside, barreling down the stone steps to the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” Leo said.
“I know.” Abby was out of breath. Her heart was poundin
g. They stopped on either side of the car, looking at each other over the roof.
“What did Cass tell you about that story?”
“That only four people knew that it was Judy who cut off Emma’s hair.”
“Cass, Emma, Judy—”
“And Jonathan. Jonathan Martin.”
“Which means Owen Tanner could not have told her. No way Judy told her. And she would have remembered if one of the girls had told her.”
“She said she never met with the girls,” Abby continued.
“Which means Jonathan Martin told her. But why?”
Abby could see her thoughts playing out across Leo’s face. “The same reason she just lied about it.”
FIFTEEN
Cass
After my visit with Witt, I returned to Mrs. Martin’s house and began my mission to prove myself sane. It was day four of my return.
Mrs. Martin was beside herself with happiness. I had finally submitted to that psychological examination she wanted Dr. Winter to give me. It didn’t matter that it came back “normal.” What mattered was that my emotional state, my sanity, was now being discussed and examined along with the search for Emma.
When I first heard the words “psychological examination,” I imagined having to lie on a table with electrodes connected to my brain. I imagined it would be physically painful somehow, like shock therapy. But it had nothing to do with my brain. It was just a lot of paperwork, 567 questions on a form called the MMPI 2, whose answers were meant to indicate one thing or another. I could see the conclusions they would draw from the different answers. “I have bad thoughts more than once a week,” for example. Why would anyone answer yes to that? “Evil spirits possess me”? “I have acid in my stomach most of the time”? “If someone does something bad to me, I should pay him back”?
The questions jump around because they are trying to catch people who think they can trick the test. There were a few questions about sleep and other physical symptoms of stress or anxiety but then a question about self-esteem, for example. Some of them were very tricky, asking about authority figures and whether you sometimes feel alone in the world. No one understands you. I could see that if I answered them in a way to appear perfect, the test would flag me as being a liar. No one is perfect. And we all feel alone sometimes.
It was not hard to answer the questions and be found sane. It was not hard to also alert Dr. Winter to the extreme emotional stress I was under, both from my experience on the island and my obsession with finding my sister. “I have trouble sleeping.” “I can’t stop thinking the same thought over and over.” “I have trouble concentrating.” These were all answered with a yes.
Mrs. Martin was not only happy because the professionals were looking into my sanity; she was also happy because she was able to trust me again. I could see it on her face and from the amount of time and attention she gave me that afternoon. We went shopping for clothes. We got manicures. We went out to lunch. She talked more about town gossip and I pretended to care about all of it. She talked to me about being a woman, about my future and the things we needed to do for me, like getting a tutor and taking a vacation together, maybe to a spa in Florida. And at random moments, she would stop what she was doing and stare at my face. Her hand would cup my cheeks and she would shake her head and say how gorgeous I had become and how lucky she was to have me back.
And in everything she did and said to me, there ran an undercurrent of sympathy. I was crazy. Poor, crazy Cassandra.
Mrs. Martin has a switch. It goes on and off depending on how she feels about you. If you adore her and are on her side, and if you make her feel good or look good to others, she trusts you and so she loves you. If you are a threat to her in any way, or competing with her for anything she wants or needs, she despises you and will dedicate herself to destroying you. In between, there is a neutral position in which she is indifferent. You have been fully neutralized, meaning you can never harm her. And you have nothing to offer her that she wants or needs. You cannot make her appear good or bad. You cannot make her feel good or bad.
It was easy to see the position of her switch with my father. After the custody fight, after she’d won, it was in neutral. My father would always love and desire her. He could not take anything from her. And she had beaten him publicly and won her daughters. She did not think at all about my father, except for that brief incident when I tried to leave her house and live with him. She took care of that with a pair of scissors—cutting off Emma’s hair to punish me, and I was punished because when Emma had to go to school like that, I felt her humiliation way down in my stomach, worse than if my own hair had been cut off. I always wanted my father to find a beautiful woman and marry her just to see my mother flip her switch to loving him again. She would have loved him to death, or at least until she won back his desire and could trust him again. But he was too close to see any of this.
It was very different with Mr. Martin. My mother never rested in her efforts to keep his desire, because it was always in jeopardy. Emma was a constant reminder of this, and as she got older, it got worse and worse. Mrs. Martin didn’t really love anyone, not the way I think of love. So I use that word more to describe how she acted toward people. Her switch for Mr. Martin was always on love.
With Emma, she could go back and forth in a matter of minutes. Emma made her feel proud because she was so desirable. The love switch was on. But then she would catch her husband looking just a little too long at Emma, and especially Hunter and Emma when they were together, and the switch flipped to hate. Emma was a proficient operator of Mrs. Martin’s switch. She had studied the circuit board for years and it came to her like her first language. It was effortless. Maybe even subconscious.
Before I disappeared, I spent most of the time in Mrs. Martin’s neutral position. I had no power to help her or hurt her and she was too busy dealing with the threat of Emma, the lightning rod, to even notice me. When I returned, things were all mixed up. First, when she thought I was crazy but no one else could see it and they were all believing me and feeling sorry for me, she hated me. I could feel it, even through her plastic smiles and bony hugs. But now—now that she was the dutiful mother whose long-lost daughter was mentally disturbed and in need of help, now that the things I said were not a threat to her, she could love me again, and this was a great relief to her.
“I know you were in your room that night,” she kept saying that day. “You weren’t hiding in Emma’s car. You didn’t go with her to the beach, did you? You’ll remember when you get well.” She said this with a smile while our nails were drying.
I knew when this was over, the switch would move again. And that it would move for the last time.
Later that day, Richard Foley’s boat was identified. The owner of the boat ran a commercial dock in New Harbor, leasing slips and watercraft—long-term rentals for local residents and lobstermen, and seasonal rentals for the tourists and vacationers. The boat had been found six days before that off the coast near Rockland over thirty nautical miles north of the dock where it was from. But it was not until day four of my return that the dock owner put the pieces together and contacted the FBI. He said his wife saw the story and the picture of Richard Foley on a news show that morning. They had been renting a boat to Foley for five years, but under a different name. He paid cash, even for the six-thousand-dollar security deposit.
I could barely contain my excitement, and my fear. I knew they would find the island now and I could taste the vengeance that was growing closer. But this news had done nothing to upset my mother, and I was beginning to think that nothing would. She had grown stronger without us here, without Emma constantly chipping away at her façade of perfection. And even though I had been proved sane, she had convinced herself that people doubted me because I had taken the test in the first place. And so there was just as much fear as excitement.
There was also something else when I heard the news about Richard Foley being identified and his boat being found. It was so e
asy to answer that one question. Were you and the boatman intimate? But there had been nothing easy about it, and I could not chase the memories from my brain when I heard the news, and when I heard his full name.
I was Richard Foley’s lover for 286 days. I will say very little about this because it is still mixed up in my head. When I think about it, I feel sick in my stomach with shame and disgust and also from the knowledge that there is evil in the world and that evil can dress up as love so convincingly that it blinds you to the truth. Those are all very sickening things and I don’t like to feel them.
I knew three things about Richard Foley. First, he was not easily conquered by that kind of power Mrs. Martin had taught me about. However strong his desire was, his will not to give in to it was even stronger. The second thing had to do with his experience in Alaska witnessing the assault of that woman. He had a conscience, and he had morality. He had been so disturbed by what he saw that he became a drug addict just to shut it out of his brain. And he had then cleaned up and made amends by returning to Alaska and telling the story to the newspaper with the names of the men who had done it. The third thing I knew about Richard Foley was that the first two things fit together like a hand and glove.
It was not complicated. I started taking long walks at the times I knew the boat was coming with supplies or to take Bill to the mainland. I waited until Rick was alone on the trail, and I would be there as well, not every day, but many days. Our paths crossing had to appear coincidental. And on those days, I walked slowly, with my arms folded around my body, and my face swollen with despair. Sometimes I would be sitting on the dock, staring out at the ocean that held me prisoner, silent pleas flowing down my cheeks. I would not look at him or even acknowledge him for several weeks. I did not speak until he did.
It began in March one and a half years after we’d first arrived there in his boat. I was on the path to the dock, the ground packed with snow. The trees bare. I had stopped walking and crouched against a tree, knees to chest, rocking back and forth with violent shivers. Rick saw me and stopped for a second, like I had startled him and then shocked him. He got a hold of himself and walked past me, but then he stopped, turned and, for the first time in all that time, spoke to me.