What You See

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Channel 2.” Land held up two fingers. “She told me she was a reporter for Channel 2, but when I called there, they were, like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Really?” Jake said. She’d told him she was at the station, too. Why would she say that unless it was true? But he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Bobby.

  “Jake?” Jane made his name into two syllables, inquiring. “You hearing me?”

  “You want to give me your phone number, I can have her call you,” Jake said.

  “So that is her? Is she at Channel 2? Or not?”

  Persistent kid.

  “Jake? Are you hearing me? I guess everything is okay with Lewis and Gracie,” Jane was saying. “They went out to the mall to buy clothes for Gracie’s trip to Chicago, had a flat tire, then a broken jack. Phone battery died. But it’s all good. They’re at the repair place, and the guy there had a phone charger.”

  “So our previous plans are still in effect?” Jake tried to sound like they were talking business.

  “Is someone there with you?” Jane said. “You’re so funny. I can always tell. I guess that’s a good thing. Anyway, yeah, so far so fine. Melissa is freaking, but what else is new? So. We pushed the dinner reservations to eight-thirty, Brookline Taverna. Jerry’s on duty, he’s holding a table. Daniel’s still stuck in Geneva. Lewis and Gracie will get there when they can. Apparently Gracie’s jazzed about getting to stay up late. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Hey. Tell her to call me,” Bobby said, pointing at the phone. “I know she’s gotta still be a reporter. She was covering the story, right? Tell her I know the whole picture. I’ll tell her everything.”

  “Great,” Jake said. That one-word answer would work for Jane and Bobby, too. Clicking off the phone, he waved to Sergeant Thomason, the veteran desk clerk who’d just arrived at her longtime post behind the shoulder-high intake booth. Monday nights were always a parade of human drama: fallout from weekend domestic squabbles, battles over reneged sports bets, complaints about unfairly towed cars. “Fill out the form,” Shelley Thomason would instruct one unfortunate after another, her cigarette voice both sympathetic and dismissive. “I know, life isn’t fair.”

  “You’ll tell Jane everything, huh?” Jake shook his head. Life isn’t fair, he thought. “Your call, Mr. Land. But here’s the deal. You’re gonna have to tell me everything, too. And you’re gonna have to tell me first.”

  21

  “Mom? I’m home.”

  Catherine Siskel opened her eyes, slowly, processing the voice, remembering. Tenley. Home. Good. She closed her eyes again, tight, trying to unstick her contacts—she must have fallen asleep here on the couch still wearing them. What a pain. Opened her eyes, tried to focus. What time is it? Dark in the living room now, even with the shades up and curtains tucked back, so hard to tell. She must have slept awhile. Didn’t really matter, though, and in truth, might be a somewhat reassuring sign. She hadn’t been sleeping well at night for—well, since Lanna, if she had to honestly calculate. Greg, she thought. He hadn’t slept well, either. With her, at least.

  “Hey, honey.” Her voice came out a little croaky. She cleared her throat, tried again. “In here.”

  Tenley appeared in the archway to the living room, her canvas messenger bag strapped diagonally across the buttoned cardigan. Catherine knew Tenley had probably unrolled her skirt on the way home, trying to fool her mom. Lanna had never been a problem when it came to clothes. She was always impeccable, more fashion conscious even than Catherine, who prided herself on dressing for success. What could Tenley be dressing for?

  All Lanna’s clothes were still in her bedroom closet, still arranged by color and season, just the way Lanna had left them. Tenley’s clothes were arranged by last use, hangers optional. All of that ran through her brain after one look at her one remaining daughter. Will I ever see just Tenley? And not the empty space where Lanna used to be?

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Catherine saw Tenley’s eyes light on the empty wineglass. “Hey, honey.” Catherine ignored the girl’s silent rebuke. “Did you have fun? Where were you?”

  “Why do you always have to know that?” Tenley frowned, adjusted the strap on her bag. “I’m in college. I have a job, thanks to you, right? If you want me to be self-sufficient, in the world, like Dr. Maddux says, why are you always bugging me about, like, where I am?”

  “You know why, Tenley.” Catherine’s head felt like a dark fog was circling, muffling her thoughts. She knew her reaction was too harsh, heard her own unfairness, and yet couldn’t figure out how to soften it.

  “You think the same thing that happened to Lanna will happen to me.” Tenley’s voice, a sarcastic singsong, mocked the reality. She ran her tongue across her front teeth, her nervous habit. “Don’t you?”

  Catherine remembered Tenley’s baby teeth. When the very first one came out, tooth fairy Greg had tucked a dollar under the little girl’s pillow. Catherine remembered the braces, too, and the “braces-off” celebration. Lanna had showed Tenley how to use lipstick, her reward for making it through orthodontia. And now Lanna was gone.

  “Honey, of course I don’t. That was, you know, an accident.” Of course, that was not a good answer. Accidents could happen to anyone. That’s why they were accidents. Catherine struggled to remember what a good mother would say. She used to know, but it all seemed far away. Work, that was easy. Running a city, easy. But having a daughter—two daughters, once—there was no Kennedy School for that.

  “I love you, Tenner, but as long as you live here, which I hope is a long time, I simply feel more comfortable knowing where you are. When you have a daughter, you’ll understand.”

  “Yeah. About that,” Tenley said.

  “About what?” Catherine’s mind floundered, trying to keep up with this conversation. When you have a daughter, that was the last thing Catherine had said. “Are you—?”

  “OMG, Mom.” Tenley rolled her eyes heavenward. “That’s disgusting.”

  Catherine watched her blow out a breath, as if deciding whether it was worth it to continue the conversation with such an idiotic adult.

  “Forgive me, dear, if I’ve ruined your life by being so dense.” Catherine had meant to gently tease, but her words came out derisive. Why were they fighting? How could she stop it? “Why don’t you just tell me what you mean?”

  “I mean,” Tenley said, “I’m thinking of moving out.”

  * * *

  “Don’t. Even. Move.”

  Bobby Land heard the words, felt them, soft and whispery in his ear. Someone—one person?—had clamped two strong hands around his, yanked them behind his back. And now he couldn’t move.

  He’d been walking from the police station to the Ruggles T stop, ready to take the subway home, enjoying the last of the evening light, noticing how the shadows fell across the Vernon Street pavement, seeing a couple of seagulls, off course, he guessed, silhouetted against the twilight. Calculating f-stops in his head, thinking about how he could get a good shot of them. With the new camera he was about to buy.

  He touched his jeans pocket, reassuring himself that the big fat check from that woman lawyer was still there. He could deposit it first thing in the A.M., then hustle downtown to Bromfield Camera and pick out a prime piece of camera real estate. They’d have to respect him then, right?

  He stopped, staring at the random pieces of grass stabbing up through cracks in the sidewalk. He was still in mourning, deeply in mourning, for those pictures Hewlitt had destroyed.

  But hey.

  He started walking again, shaking it off. Funny how a little dough could help erase all the bad. There’d be other good shots, right?

  “Right,” he said out loud.

  And it was kind of a cool story, actually, the fight, and the destroyed memory card. Exciting and dramatic. He’d talk to Jane Ryland, she’d call, for sure, after the cop gave her his number. Maybe he’d even get on TV. He could just see it, him on TV and that blue
line with his name under it: Bobby Land, eyewitness. He’d witnessed something, that was for sure.

  He pictured it again, the noontime image forming in his brain. Tourists. The statue.

  Yeah, he might have to testify. He planned it as he walked. That detective said he’d be showing him photos of some suspects when he came in tomorrow. So, fine, he might actually recognize someone. And if he didn’t, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He still hadn’t quite decided how much he remembered.

  But then, that voice in his ear.

  And now he was almost shitting his pants. Who the holy crap had come up behind him?

  He could feel the person’s chest against him, actually feel them breathing. There was only one, and not that huge, but they must be doing some kind of martial arts hold or something, Bobby couldn’t fight back. How could some asshole rob him, like, not two blocks from the police station? Why would they think he had anything to rob?

  He was gonna be so screwed. He couldn’t even comprehend how—

  “Listen to me,” the voice was saying, all whispery and hissing. Bobby could smell cigarettes, and leather? And something else. What? But no time to think about smells. There was only time to, like, pray to whatever, that he come out of this alive.

  “And listen to me good.”

  And now he felt something at his side, sharp—like a … like a knife. At his side. Like the one that stabbed the guy in Curley Park. His knees buckled and the night went white and then black and his eyes were, like, on fire. What if he never saw anything again, not ever, and his mother would wonder where he was, and the cops would call and he would never—he slammed his eyes closed, kept them closed.

  “I could kill you right now,” the voice went on. “I could stab your freaking eyes out, too, and then what would happen to your little career as a photographer?”

  This person knew him?

  “Have you talked to anyone about what you saw? Have you?”

  “No.” Bobby managed to get the word out, it was true, thank crap. He hadn’t told the reporter anything. The lawyer woman hadn’t asked. He didn’t say anything to the cops either. That detective Brogan seemed, like, in a hurry to get out, and they’d set up the interview time for tomorrow morning. Would there even be a tomorrow? He opened his eyes, wide, looking for a way out. “No, nothing, no one, I promise, I haven’t talked to—”

  “Lucky for you, little man,” the voice said.

  Bobby opened his eyes, desperately trying to wrench himself away. They were right in the gloom, right where the streetlights didn’t reach. No one in sight. If he yelled, called for help, he could get stabbed in one second. He twisted again, frantic, then felt the threat of the blade through his thin T-shirt.

  Good-bye. The thought floated into his consciousness, then settled in to stay. Good-bye.

  22

  Jane looked at her watch, calculating. The maître d’ at the Brookline Taverna had asked her when the other two guests would arrive. And no one knew the answer.

  It was now nine P.M. They’d been here thirty minutes. It felt like three hundred. The not-missing stepfather and not-missing daughter had not appeared. Robyn clutched her cell phone, checking it periodically. The phone stayed silent.

  How long could it take to fix a tire? What was taking them so long? Where were they?

  Laughter from other tables of happy diners only underscored the gloom cloud looming over theirs. Jane was starving. She craved a glass of wine. And a fork to stab herself in the throat. First meetings were often awkward, but this one was Emmy-winning awful.

  Melissa had told Jane that Daniel’s plane was still delayed, that she hadn’t told her fiancé anything about Gracie, and that she was freaking out. Not the most auspicious mental state for her sister to meet Jane’s boyfriend. Now Melissa’s “conversation” with Jake sounded more like a prosecutorial grilling. Jake was clearly distracted, his answers almost brusque. Lucky Daniel, Jane thought. More fun to be stranded in an airport than be sitting at this table.

  There must be some kind of Heisenberg effect for families, Jane thought, some force that mutates a perfect beau into a perfect stranger. Real Jake, intelligent and thoughtful and warm, was nothing like this icily argumentative table Jake. She wondered if she had changed in Jake’s eyes, too.

  They had to talk. Without family. She and Jake were sitting so close they could touch each other—but they couldn’t say an important word. Not about each other. And not about the dead man in Curley Park.

  Robyn, red-eyed and fidgeting, was regaling Jake with a nostalgic anecdote about Gracie. Robyn’s cardigan, now unbuttoned, revealed an ice-blue silk blouse underneath. Also unbuttoned. Farther than Jane might have recommended.

  “I mean, Jake, she’s the cutest!” Robyn had the fingers of one hand curled around Jake’s forearm, leaning in. Her other hand still clutched that phone.

  Jake cleared his throat. Took an impossible sip from his empty water glass. Melissa looked as if she’d like to stab someone, anyone, even herself.

  Stab. That was the second time she’d mentally used that word. Jane allowed herself to think, briefly, about Channel 2 and the Curley Park incident. What had been on the six o’clock news? She yearned to call Marsh Tyson, somehow make amends. She’d left four hours ago explaining her defection as a family emergency. At least what she’d thought then was an emergency. Tyson had seemed to be understanding, and they’d parted with the agreement that she’d talk to him tomorrow. Their new relationship had started auspiciously. Now it felt like a loose end.

  “And then, I remember one time…” Robyn’s reedy voice, relentless and persistent, carried to Jane’s end of the table. Melissa escaped toward the ladies’ room. Jane escaped into her own thoughts, making sure her face was pointed, politely, in Robyn’s direction.

  Loose ends. One, she should inform Marsh Tyson that Gracie was okay. He’d want to know, if only because a missing nine-year-old and her stepfather were a potentially headlining news story. Now, thank goodness, it wouldn’t come to that.

  Two, what had happened in Curley Park?

  And three, if Jane did start working at Channel 2, should she be having dinner with Jake in public?

  She looked at him, now tête-à-tête with the just-returned Melissa, immersed in a verging-on-argument about a Supreme Court decision on life sentences for juvenile offenders. Lovely, Jane thought. This is a bad Lifetime movie.

  She felt a touch on her thigh. Jake’s hand, hidden under the edge of the white tablecloth, gave her leg a surreptitious squeeze. She put a secret hand over his, silently reassuring, connecting. Okay, then, she almost smiled, they’d make it through this together. A wretched family dinner was almost a rite of passage.

  Everything would be fine. As soon as Gracie and Lewis arrived.

  The waiter appeared with a dripping pitcher of ice water, hovering behind Melissa. Jake’s cell phone vibrated on the table, moving, in infinitesimal jumps, across the tablecloth.

  Robyn stopped talking. Her phone was ringing, too.

  * * *

  “You come back here, right now!”

  Tenley heard her mother yelling behind her as she raced up the stairs to the second floor. She’d ignore her, she didn’t have to do what her mother said, she was eighteen and—

  “Right now!” Her mother’s voice came closer, and Tenley could hear her bare feet slapping on the hardwood steps. Tenley could run faster than her mom, especially since she was fueled on coffee and not sauvignon blanc.

  Tenley yanked open the door of her room, stared at the unmade bed. Her suitcase was in the closet.

  “What on earth are you talking about, Tenley Rebecca Siskel? Moving out? You are not moving out, not as long as—”

  Tenley whirled to see her mom, hands planted on hips, in the hall behind her. Mom’s blouse had come untucked from her skirt, a white silk tail hanging over the gray linen. Her hair had come out of its ponytail. One strand now straggled, limp, over one cheek. She looked all off balance, one-sided, and Ten
ley figured that was a pretty great metaphor for their entire lives.

  “As long as what?” Tenley shot back. “You can’t make me do anything.”

  “Oh, yes I can, missy.”

  Her mother’s face was getting red. Seriously, Tenley wished this whole thing had never happened, but her mother had started it, and now it seemed like it was impossible to undo. And maybe it was time for the shit to hit the fan. They’d all tiptoed around the whole thing for so long, maybe they all needed to face reality. Whatever reality was now.

  Tenley stepped into the hall, slammed her bedroom door closed with one yank of her arm, and in another swift motion, opened the door to Lanna’s room. Sacred, sacred Lanna’s room. There the pristine white bedspread lay unwrinkled over a float of pillows, lacy and lacier, and a smiling teddy bear perched, reclining, on top of them, endlessly grinning at the emptiness.

  “She’s gone,” Tenley said. Her voice sounded different than it ever had. She picked up Teddy, held it at her mother, accusing. “This is a stuffed bear, an old stuffed nothing bear that used to be hers, and you keep it. Why?”

  Tenley hurled the bear across the room. It bounced off the silver-and-white wallpaper and landed on a tufted stool, then toppled to the pale blue carpet. She couldn’t believe she was doing it, it was kind of a tantrum, but the pretending should be over. Over! She wanted a life, her old life, her real life. When she mattered.

  Her mom leaped across the room, grabbed Teddy, clutched the stupid stuffed thing to her chest. Shouldn’t she have clutched her daughter? Comforted her? Wouldn’t that have been the right thing to do?

  “See, you care about the bear more than you care about me. It’s still all about Lanna, right? Your dear Lanna. Why did you even have me?”

  Tenley found the knob of the closet door, pulled it open. A puff of lavender and cedar scented the room.

  “What are you doing? Don’t—” Mom, still clutching the smiling bear, held out the other hand as if to stop her.

  Hell, nothing was going to stop her. Tenley felt her chest get tight. The way it did when the police came to tell them about Lanna. The way it did at the funeral.