I walked to the front door and onto the sidewalk. Pebbles bit my feet. Our driveway was half-empty. My Prius was there, but not Hanna’s Acura.
“Why would he take your car?” I asked. “He’s barely ever driven it. And he knows he’s not allowed to drive without an adult present. We made that perfectly clear.”
She held out her phone and hit “Redial.” She got his voice mail.
“Chris, please call us back. Where are you? We’re worried.”
“Maybe he fell asleep at Ashley’s?”
“I think they broke up again,” Hanna said.
“Did he say something?”
“Haven’t you noticed how moody he’s been?”
“Hasn’t he been moody since he turned fourteen?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Can you please take this seriously?”
“I am taking this seriously. What do you want to do?”
“Maybe we should call Ashley.”
“Good idea.”
We both started at the sound of a dog barking. Julie was standing on her front porch with Sandy. She held her leash tightly.
We must’ve looked strange: me without shoes, Hanna in her pajamas. Arguing on the sidewalk at six in the morning.
Julie gave us a wave. A nervous gesture that seemed to set something off in Hanna.
“You stay out of this,” she said, almost growling. Sandy barked in reply.
“Stay out of what?” Julie said.
I put my hand on Hanna’s shoulder. “Let’s go back inside. We can call from there.”
Hanna shrugged me off. Julie took hold of Sandy’s collar as Hanna strode toward her.
“Why are you always around?”
“What? I . . . I came out my front door to walk my dog.”
“Always playing the victim. Leaning on my husband. Where’s your own husband, Julie? Why isn’t he enough?”
“Hanna, please,” I said. “Stop this.”
“Why, John? You want me to keep my voice down? You don’t want the neighbors to see? She’s going to capture all this on video. What do you do with all that footage, anyway? Do you watch us? Does it give you pleasure?”
“I’ve told you again and again, it’s for security purposes. I don’t even have access to the feed.”
“And yet you denied our discovery request to verify that information.”
“I don’t need to let strangers into my home.”
“Strangers. Ha. Yes, you and I are strangers.”
Julie’s eyes meet mine in a plea.
“Hanna,” I said again, “you’re going to wake Becky. And the twins.”
“They’re away,” Julie said. “Daniel took the twins away.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” Hanna said.
“You can do what you want.”
“What I want is for you to disappear.”
I took Hanna’s elbow. “Okay, that’s enough. This isn’t going to help us find Chris.”
Hanna seemed to come back to herself. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“Chris . . . ,” Julie said.
“Do you know something about my son?”
“I saw him leave in the middle of the night.”
“I knew you were spying.”
“I wasn’t spying—”
“What did you see, Julie?” I said, tightening my grip on Hanna.
“I was going to the bathroom. I heard a car door slam and looked out the window. I saw him driving your car down the street.”
“Was he alone?”
“I think so.”
“Did he stop anywhere?”
“I think he stopped in front of Ashley’s house.”
“I knew it,” Hanna murmured.
“Leave it, Hanna, okay?”
I tugged her arm and almost pulled her toward the house.
“Thanks, Julie,” I said over my shoulder.
“See you later,” she said. “I hope you find him soon.”
“See you later?” Hanna said as we got inside. “Is she kidding me? Like we’re all going to the same party instead of the courthouse?”
“It’s just an expression.” I grabbed my running shoes and knelt to tie them up. “I’m sure she wasn’t thinking.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going to talk to Cindy and Paul. Are you coming?”
She threw her raincoat on over her pajamas and shoved on her rain boots. We didn’t talk during the short walk down the street. Oddly, Brad Thurgood was sitting on his old front stoop, his head in his hands. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing there, but I had bigger worries on my mind.
Hanna stopped me as I reached for the bell.
“Maybe we should call Ashley first. Do you know her number?”
“Why? You heard what Julie said.”
“Exactly. And if they’ve only gone off on a drive . . . I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“What are you talking about? They’re both in big trouble.”
Hanna didn’t say anything.
“What is it? What do you know?”
“Nothing for sure, but . . . I overheard him on the phone the other day. I didn’t understand what he was saying then, but now it makes more sense.”
“What did he say?”
“I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but something about how they could do it at her house. Or our house. And then I missed part of it, and then I heard the word ‘Acura.’”
“Are you telling me that Chris and Ashley are off somewhere having sex in the back of our car?”
“I think it’s possible, yes.”
“Fuck.”
“Shh. You’re the one who told me to assume they were having sex.”
“Not in our car,” I said. “In the middle of the night.”
“I could be wrong.”
“So what do we do?”
“Maybe we should wait an hour and see if he turns up in time for school?”
“Okay, maybe we are overreacting. It’s not like he’s run away or anything, right? He wouldn’t have run away.”
“Chris is a good kid.”
“He is. He’s a good kid. So, we go home?”
She seemed unsure. “What if Cindy notices Ashley’s missing? She’ll freak out.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We have to let her know that she’s probably okay. That she’s with Chris.”
“You’re right.”
I reached for the bell again, pressing it long enough to wake those within.
We waited. A light turned and the front door sprung open. Paul was in his robe. Cindy tumbled down the hall behind him.
“Do you know where Ashley is?”
Sent: August 1st, at 9:30 a.m.
From: Cindy Sutton
To: PSNA mailing list
Re: Speed Bumps!
Pine Street Friends!
I just got off the phone with our city councilor. The speed bumps have been approved! They’ll be installed next week! I’m certain you’re all as excited as I am that our street will soon be considerably safer.
Feel free to e-mail me for further details. Updates will be posted to iNeighbor.
Cindy Sutton
PSNA Chair and Founder, 2009–present
Another Day, Another Conflict
Julie
Two months ago
Memory isn’t a provable thing. We see what we want, hear what pleases us, and remember what grieves us. That is the human condition.
But I swear I remember every detail of the day Kathryn died, like a movie camera was recording it.
It happened at law games. I’m not sure when the law-games tradition started, but when I was in school it involved matching coveralls, almost like prison uniforms, school buses, and drinking games. All the law schools would get together at one school or another every winter, and mayhem would ensue. Drinking, recreational drugs, hookups; Fuck it was the motto. Maybe you shouldn’t play that game of quarters? Fuck it. Maybe you should
n’t go up to that guy’s room? Fuck it. Maybe you shouldn’t take that pill that guy gave you without really knowing what’s in it?
Fuck it.
I said and did all those things. And so, even though I remember every detail of that weekend, it’s off-kilter. Filtered through a fog of drugs and sex and Ace of Base.
Here’s what I know for certain.
The Saturday-night party was at what can only be described as a frat house, even though there wasn’t a frat at that particular university. It was a large Victorian building, complete with turrets and multicolored shingles. I arrived with Kathryn around ten. We were already pie-eyed from the drinks we’d had that afternoon in the dorm room we were staying in. I think we were trying to one-up the boys, but that might be my adult take on what we were doing. The boys weren’t there that afternoon; they’d gone off to play flag football in the snow. It was just the two of us and our host, a girl whose name I never learned, and whose face I feel like I’ll remember forever. She had a lollipop head on an anorexic body, with large brown eyes framed by too much mascara, and pale, almost-invisible lips.
The minute we got inside, the house felt claustrophobic. It was already so full I was thinking about fire codes despite how drunk I was. I asked Kathryn what she thought. “Maybe we should leave,” I said. “Fuck it,” was her reply.
We pressed in.
Even though it was February, and so cold the ground crunched as if it was made of gravel, and my hair felt frozen even though I hadn’t gone outside with it wet, the house was so hot people were stripping down. The fashion trend for the night was unzipped coveralls with the arms tied around the waist to keep them from falling off completely. Many men were shirtless. Many women wore only bras. One or two, dared into it or because, you know, fuck it, weren’t wearing bras at all.
The music was so loud you had to yell to be heard. I started losing my voice a half hour after we got there. Drink after drink was pressed into my hand in a candy-colored stream of Solo cups. Kathryn was usually the life of the party, but she seemed a bit subdued that night, happy to hang out by my side and gently nod the constant stream of men away. I’d suggest every half hour or so that we leave, but she shook her head. She seemed to be waiting for someone to show up. She’d broken up with one of the bland Dockers-wearers she dated during the perpetual off-periods with Kevin a few weeks before, and he hadn’t come to law games.
When Booth and Kevin showed up, I realized how stupid I’d been. Of course she was waiting for Kevin. I could never quite follow or understand the ups and downs of their relationship. (Which I admit, I used in The Murder Game, only I transferred it to Meredith—the character supposedly based on me—and another character, Jonathan.) Kevin was a puzzle. Some days he hung on Kathryn like he didn’t want to let her out of his sight. Others, he’d barely look at her. I wouldn’t have put up with it, and I couldn’t understand why Kathryn, who could get whatever she wanted, did. But it wasn’t the sort of thing you brought up.
So, like, why do you let that guy treat you like a doormat? I don’t think so.
It was Kevin who suggested we smoke some stuff he’d bought on campus. I’d love to be able to say I resisted, had some trace of a thought, even, that maybe it wasn’t a good idea. But that didn’t happen. Fuck it, you know. Instead, we all tramped out into the night and inhaled the warm smoke and the cold night air. Maybe the stuff was bad or was laced with something. Maybe Kathryn had too much of everything that day. She turned gray and felt woozy, and I led her back inside and to the bathroom. She hovered over the toilet, waiting to throw up, but it didn’t come. So I found a bed for her in one of the rooms upstairs. I made sure she had a glass of water. I told her I’d come back for her when I left.
And then I went downstairs.
Two hours later, a shout pierced the party noise. There was a stampede upstairs. When I saw where everyone was headed—the room where I’d left Kathryn—I got down on my knees and crawled through the legs and feet like they were an obstacle course.
When I finally got into the room, Kevin was standing over her, half hugging her to him. She flopped like a rag doll. I flung myself through the last human barriers and told Kevin to let her go. I yelled at someone to call 9-1-1, and then I began administering CPR.
I worked on her until the paramedics came, pumping her chest and blowing air into her lungs. I knew it was useless. I knew she was gone, but I did it anyway, and I remember every breath I gave her until the paramedics pulled me away.
An investigation followed. A young girl dies at a party, there’s going to be an investigation. The autopsy results were inconclusive. She’d been smothered, or smothered herself, in one of the pillows on the bed. All the alcohol and drugs had depressed her breathing, and it might only have taken a matter of seconds for it to be too late. Since they couldn’t tell if it was a homicide, no one was charged. Rumors swirled. Information passed behind cupped hands, over e-mail, in dark corners at parties. The police did their best, trying to sort out who was where and when, but there were more than two hundred people in and out of the house that night, at least twenty of whom knew Kathryn. Today, there might’ve been multiple cell-phone camera videos, but back then there were only our impaired memories. After a month or so, they closed the case and moved on.
They never found out that Kevin liked plotting perfect murders, or that he roped me and Kathryn and Booth into his game, or that Booth had seen them have a humdinger of a fight the night before in the room he was sharing with Kevin. And no one asked to see my diary, where I’d documented so much of it.
I could fill a page with the things they never found out.
Some of them made their way into my book, and some of them did not.
Write what you know, they say.
And where was Heather that whole time? That night at law games in the bitter cold?
I don’t know.
She’s said she was there. She’s said she saw things, but Heather says she saw a lot of things. Most of them have been proven false, but there are some things that are not verifiable.
With so many people with things to hide, separating out the fact from the fiction was impossible.
Even if you managed to piece some of it together, the result would be fractured.
The night before the accident, Susan and I had a blowout.
At first I wasn’t sure what set it off. One minute we were on a night walk, and the next we were yelling at each other in the street. Or she was yelling and I was listening, baffled. At one point I thought about putting up my hands in surrender, of saying, Okay, stop. Whatever it is you want. Whatever you think I’ve done. Just stop.
But I didn’t. Instead I sat on the ground, a physical protest against what I felt was an unfairness. I come in peace, shoot me if you will.
Susan stopped yelling.
“What are you doing?”
I looked across the street at a crooked house. Its foundation had slipped on the downhill side. It looked like it had been printed out of register.
“I don’t know what to do, Susan. What did I say?”
“Nothing. Sorry. It’s not you, really.”
I looked up at her. She’d been sweating so much her hair looked like she’d taken a shower. The back of my T-shirt was soaked through.
“Then what?”
“Brad wants to get back together.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he . . . he’s been e-mailing me and calling me a lot. Apologizing.”
“I thought he did that before?”
“That was his AA apology. That didn’t count.”
“What’s different now?”
She pulled her hair free from her elastic, smoothed it back, and retied it. “I’m not sure. Something in his voice, and what he’s saying. He’s recognizing stuff from way back. Years ago. Stuff I didn’t even think he remembered.”
“Are you thinking of taking him back?”
She sat down next to me. We were both sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, two blocks
away from Pine Street. I didn’t know how to react to her change of mood. Was I supposed to forget the way she’d been talking to me a minute ago? Let it drift away on the blown-dry wind that was making me sweat, even as I sat there?
“Do you think that would make you happy?” I asked.
“I’m so far from happy, I don’t even know what it looks like anymore.”
“Is that true, or just something to say?”
“Not sure. It felt true when I said it.”
“And what does your life look like if you let Brad back in? Happy?”
“If he’s sober.”
“That’s a big if. It hasn’t even been six months. They told you a year, right?”
“Six months can be a long time.”
“Look who you’re talking to.”
“Right. Maybe I’m just tired?”
“Of doing it alone?”
“Of being alone. You’ve never really had that, have you?”
How could I answer that? Tell her that I was always alone? Say that she didn’t know anything about me, really, other than what she could see? That our moments of confidences didn’t mean she knew me?
“I’ve been alone. Before Daniel—”
“Not like this. Not every moment of every day, always needing to be available for the kids or making a plan that involves them . . . you have Daniel to rely on.”
“I do. I’m not complaining.”
“Ha.”
“Okay, so I was complaining.” I had been. I’d been talking about the lawsuit, and iNeighbor, and Cindy, and the shit in general I’d had to put up with since we moved to Pine Street. “I have to go to court tomorrow. I’m being sued because I tried to defend someone’s house and protect my family. Is that not something to complain about?”
“Rich people’s problems.”
“We live on the same street.”
“But we don’t live in the same world. I’m about to lose my house. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Because you never asked. You never ask me about anything.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“If that’s the way I feel, then it is.”
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