by Wendy Walker
You should get back to the house. The rain’s coming. And it’s too cold out here.
I looked up at him, met his eyes, and then reached out my hand. He hesitated, but took it and helped me to my feet. I had been crying, so it was not hard to start again, to make the tears fall and the breath heave in and out. He started to let go, but I reached out and grabbed both his forearms. I grabbed them tight like they were ropes from a lifeboat trying to drift away and leave me to drown. I pulled on those arms and pulled myself closer to him and then I rested just the very top of my forehead on his chest. I did not move any closer than that. I did not try to hold him or make him hold me. I waited for him to push me away, but he didn’t. He just let me hold his arms, the top of my head on his chest, until I had finished crying.
When I was done, I looked up at him again for a second only, wiped my face and then marched back to the house.
I had learned a lot from Mrs. Martin, and from Emma. I had gotten smarter from them. Everybody needs something. And what Rick needed was to do what he had failed to do years before on that fishing boat. He needed to save the woman. So I became a woman he could save. I let him save me with small moments like the one on that trail. And then he saved me some more by listening to me talk and keeping me company on my walks. And then he saved me the most by loving me and letting me love him.
Now, at the same time I had planted the seeds to undermine his loyalty to the Pratts. That is the part I told to Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss. Nothing I had to offer would have been enough to overcome that loyalty, so I had to break its back first. I did not take any chances. And I was patient. So incredibly patient.
There were many days when I thought I didn’t have one more drop of patience. My desire to leave, to be free and seek revenge, was growing too big. Every day, seeing Lucy with the baby, pretending it didn’t make me want to kill her, stealing moments with the baby because I loved her as much as I loved Emma. Maybe even more. I loved her smell. I loved her laugh. I loved her pudgy arms and bright blue eyes. It was the first love that I knew was pure because she was too little to do anything to force me to love her, or trick me into loving her. I loved her so much that it was torture to see her so close and not be able to hold her. From that wretched day on the dock, it took 247 days to break Richard Foley. And then it took those 286 days more to conquer that loyalty so he would help me leave. I held this painful desire all that time.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but my wanting Richard Foley to manipulate and control him so I could escape the island blurred into just wanting Richard Foley. I had to truly want him to make him believe me. And so with every interaction, every look, every moment getting ready to see him—brushing my hair, choosing my clothes, pinching my cheeks so they would be flushed with pink—I thought of nothing else but his hands on my body, his mouth on my mouth, his skin touching my skin. I thought about him at night. I thought about him when the air turned warm or the sunlight reached my face. The desire to leave became all mixed up with the desire to have this man.
I can see him now, his tortured face as he held my cheeks in his strong hands. He did not want to do it, but he was too beaten down to fight me anymore. I had done that; I had beaten him down with my words and my power. I looked at him with desire, and it was pure and true, even though I made myself pretend to pull away. He held my face even stronger and drew it to his. It was a kiss I will never forget, and not only because it was my first kiss, but also because we were both starving, drowning, dying, and this kiss was all that could save us.
We lay down in the tall grass just before the rocks on the west side of the island. He stopped looking at me and I felt as though the connection that had been in that place, in our eyes and our thoughts and our words, shifted to our bodies and that was where it would stay for all those days we were lovers. I would be waiting for him somewhere—the grass, the dock, the shed that held the generator. And he would kiss me and remove my clothes and place me where he wanted me. Sometimes face-to-face. Sometimes he was behind me. But I was always beneath him, feeling his power over me the way I had used my power over him. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard to think about now. But he was gentle with his power, no matter how much rage he wanted to unleash in those moments. And he could have. He could have raged on my body—with the rage that had driven him from his home when he was young and the rage of hatred for himself for not helping that woman on that fishing boat. Holding back the rage somehow healed him, bit by bit like little drops of water seeping from a large pool.
On day four of my return, my thoughts turned to being with Richard Foley. My body missed his body. And my mind was twisted in knots. That is where desire begins, and it does not just vanish the minute we command it to. I felt things I didn’t want to feel. Longing. Hunger. Disgust. I thought I had left those feelings on the island, and so I wondered that morning if these feelings had been with me here as well, in this house, waiting here for my return.
I took a shower, a long shower, to wash them all away.
* * *
The war in our house after the incident with the photographs had hot periods and cold periods. The cold periods were not moments of peace, but rather moments of regrouping, rearming and strategizing. Cold war. I don’t know exactly when Hunter found out that his father had taken the pictures of Emma with her dress pulled down, but it was during the three weeks after they were taken and the time Hunter posted them on that Web site. I think it all happened quickly, and was driven by his fury at Emma and his father. As much as Mr. Martin worshipped and adored his son, Hunter idolized and admired his father. He loved to tell embellished stories about Mr. Martin’s business conquests and wealth, and even insinuated that his father had side dealings with organized crime. His father had wounded him deeply by coveting Emma and giving in to his desires. And Emma had been vicious by using his father as a weapon against him.
Posting those pictures was done without much thought or planning. Hunter paid the price by having his face punched by Witt and being blamed for everything by Mrs. Martin. I think if he had not been driven by his emotions, his own fierce rage, he would have come up with a better plan.
He learned from this mistake.
The cold war in our house went on for months, with Mr. Martin avoiding Emma so he didn’t have to think about her breasts, Hunter staying at school as much as he could to punish his father, and Emma gloating at her victory in the last battle, even though it had cost her the boy she’d met over the summer. There are always more boys, she said. The cold war ended with a devastating attack over spring break when we all went as a family to St. Barts. It was a quick and decisive strike. Yet it was so subtle that I nearly missed it myself—and I had devoted myself to observing the war as a matter of survival.
I can see that now, being older and having been through everything that happened on the island.
The teachers at the Soundview Academy told us that human beings have a natural desire to learn. What I think is more accurate is that human beings have a natural desire to learn the things they have to learn to survive. On the island, that meant learning about people—what motivates them, what their expressions mean, what causes them to act and react. And what they desire in their darkest, most secret places. These were things that could not be found in the textbooks Lucy bought, but I still managed to learn them. And I did it without even knowing I was doing it.
When I finally came home, it felt as though someone had injected my brain with this knowledge. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It felt like I had put on ice skates for the first time and somehow just knew how to land a triple jump. I used this knowledge to help them find the island, and to find my sister. But I also used it on every memory that rushed into my brain. Things that had not made sense to me were now clear. Things that were done, by my mother, Mr. Martin, Hunter, Emma and even myself were now understood for what they were.
Not forgiven. But understood.
That spring break when the cold war turned hot, we rented
a house up in the hills. It overlooked the ocean and I think it was the best house we’d had there in the three years we’d been going. St. Barts is a very fancy place. And very expensive. It is a French territory, so there is a lot of gourmet food and dance clubs that are open all night long. Models and movie stars go there, which was why Mrs. Martin had insisted on making it our spring break tradition after she married Mr. Martin. My father had refused to take her. He said it was too showy, and anyway, he loved to ski and made her go to Utah, where she would sulk and stay inside rather than make a fool of herself trying to learn. My father was an expert skier and he offered to get her private lessons. But she preferred to protest the trip.
Hunter always had a few friends from school who were in St. Barts during spring break, and he would meet them in town or at the beach. Emma had always gone with him. But this year she was not invited. I could tell this made her sad because she was stuck at the pool with me and our mother and then just me when the adults went out at night. She was so sad that she tried to make peace with Hunter by asking him to put suntan lotion on her back. I know this sounds like nothing. But she was doing more than asking for help with her sunscreen. She was asking for things to go back to the way they were. She was saying she was sorry about letting Mr. Martin take the pictures and that she forgave him for calling her a whore and not telling her about Joe’s girlfriend before she had sex with him. And she was even willing to forgive him for posting those pictures on the Internet. These were very large concessions.
But as I have said, Hunter had learned his lesson about making his war plans without proper planning, and he had been plotting his next move for months. So he told her no. He could not help her with her suntan lotion.
I’m in a rush, Em. Cass can help you.
Emma stormed to her room and didn’t come out all day.
The next afternoon Hunter did not meet his friends. He stayed home and sat by the pool with me and Emma and Mrs. Martin. Mr. Martin did not like the sun, so he would go to town every day, as he did on this day, to drink wine and walk around. This also served the purpose of not seeing Emma in her tiny bikinis. He avoided us the whole trip, which Mrs. Martin was happy about because it meant she could sit and read the kind of magazines that made Mr. Martin think less of her. I think if she had not been so happy, she would have seen what was happening and then she would not have been happy at all.
Hunter sat facing the ocean. His sunglasses were on, so we could not tell if he was watching us or the ocean or nothing. A long time went by. Emma listened to music and texted her friends, laughing here and there, running her hands through her short hair. I was reading a book for school—The Giver, which is about a made-up place where people don’t have feelings anymore. It was very awkward, being there with two enemies, pretending to be a family on vacation when really they were thinking of ways to destroy each other.
It was right before lunch when Hunter made his one deadly move, a move that would escalate the war and lead to everything bad that happened to Emma. And to me.
It’s so hot today! Mrs. Martin said. She put down her magazine, took a sip of her rum drink, and reached for her suntan lotion.
Hunter, who had not moved since breakfast except to jump in the pool one time, got up from his chair and sat down on the edge of Mrs. Martin’s chair. I can do your back.
Mrs. Martin smiled curiously. Maybe even cautiously. I could see her calculating how to answer, and because of my knowledge, I now understand why. If she said no, then she was admitting there was something wrong with her stepson touching her bare skin, rubbing it with lotion. But if she said yes, then her stepson would touch her bare skin, and rub it with lotion. She was undecided in that split second before she answered, until she noticed the hurt look on Emma’s face.
That’s so nice of you, sweetheart.
Hunter smiled. He took the lotion, squeezed some onto his hand, rubbed it with the other hand and then put both hands on our mother.
That was all that happened on that trip. But it was more than enough. Hunter went back to school and we would not see him again until the summer, when the next battle would be waged, this time by Emma.
* * *
There was a knock at the door on day four of my return. I heard it from my bedroom. Then I heard Mr. Martin get up to answer it.
Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss were at the door, but they did not ask to come in. Instead, they offered to speak with Mr. Martin outside on the porch and alone. I could see them through the arched doorway between the living room and foyer, the gestures, the surprised shoulder shrug, the exit and the door closing. I did not know for sure that they had found out what I needed them to find out, but I became instantly hopeful. Mrs. Martin had been increasingly unnerved with every day the island was not found and every day that I was telling my stories and being believed. The hushed conversations with Mr. Martin were more frequent; the worry lines were starting to march across her face.
But it was not enough. None of this had been enough.
Until the fourth day.
The very next day, they would find where Richard Foley lived, and that would lead them to the island. But on day four, they had found the other thing that I had needed them to find. It had been worth the torturous waiting, the whole day with Mrs. Martin’s switch on love and treating me like a mental patient. It was worth her gloating and her arrogance. It was worth everything, even what it did to Dr. Winter.
SIXTEEN
Dr. Winter
On the evening of day four of Cass Tanner’s return, Abby and Leo were back at the Martin house.
They sat on the porch in wrought iron chairs. Jonathan Martin crossed his legs, leaned back and smiled like he was at a cocktail party with friends from the club.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
Leo smiled back. This was his show and he was an exceptional performer. But he was working with very few props. “Lisa Jennings,” he said.
Jonathan looked confused. “I’m sorry? Who?”
“The school counselor. From the Soundview Academy.”
“Oh, right. I remember now.”
Leo smiled wider. “She remembers you. Quite well, in fact.”
Jonathan dug in deeper. “Why don’t you just say what you want to say?”
“You had an affair with her. It was still going on when the girls disappeared,” Leo said calmly. “You met at an open house for the school. She’s quite attractive.”
“That’s absurd,” Jonathan insisted.
Abby studied his face as Leo laid out the evidence. After their meeting with Jennings, they had gone back to the file and the two years of records that had been collected from Jonathan Martin’s cell phone during the original investigation. The analyst who had gone over the records when the girls first disappeared had written a report, listing the phone numbers called and texted and the names of their owners. Dozens of calls and texts had been made to Lisa Jennings. Too much time had passed to obtain the content of the text messages between the two of them. There were no hotels or meals or travel. No doorman at her small walk-up who would have seen them coming and going. Essentially, they had nothing. Except her confession.
“I told you I was trying to help. That I was trying to get information from her,” Jonathan explained.
Leo had accepted his explanation back then—that he was calling with concerns for the girls. Lisa Jennings had also been extensively interviewed, with no red flags appearing. The focus at the time had been on strangers, outsiders—people who could have kidnapped or harmed the girls, not the relationships between the people who had been trying to help them.
Looking back at it now, through the lens of suspicion, it was strange that Jonathan had contacted anyone at the girls’ school. And now they knew why.
“We went back to see Lisa Jennings after we pulled the phone records, and that’s not the explanation she gave us. She told us all about the flirtation at that school function, the slow seduction over text messages, and then the afternoons in her apar
tment. It had gone on for several months before the girls disappeared. Your stepdaughters.”
Lisa Jennings had not held out for long. They explained to her about the lie she had told—hearing the story about Emma’s hair from Owen Tanner. Owen had not known. From there, they had the phone calls and text messages. She was a millennial, accustomed to the indelible footprints of social media, so it was not difficult to convince her that the text messages had been stored by her carrier.
She’d had tears in her eyes when she told them about her realization that he never loved her, about how easy it was for Jonathan to cut it off with a phone call. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. Of course it had to end, at least for while, during the search for the girls. The family, the school—they were under a spotlight. It was the fact that he felt nothing at all. No sadness, no longing, no empty spaces left behind. She had felt all those things. He had made her feel them—“I can see now that it was all a lie. All the tenderness in his eyes and the words on his breath—they were all lies. And he was very, very good at lying.”
“Well,” Jonathan said now on the porch. “She’s obviously very disturbed.”
Abby studied him while he and Leo did their dance. He was smug. He knew they could never prove that he’d slept with the young woman. But they weren’t putting him on trial. His feigned ignorance when they spoke her name confirmed the affair, and that was what they had come for. Confirmation.
Lisa Jennings had also told them about his obsession with his son. How he spoke of him like he was “God’s gift” even though she’d seen him and he looked like “a scrawny, self-entitled prick.” She said that even though she had believed he loved her, she always knew that Jonathan would give her up in a heartbeat to keep the family name clean.