The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

  What does Samuel know?

  Winnie placed the washed and dried cereal bowl back into the cabinet harder than she intended. The mugs rattled as she slammed the door closed. It was then she stopped dead in her tracks, spotting the empty Froot Loops container propping open the lid of the recycling bin. Where had he got the Froot Loops from? Winnie had been so distracted by her thoughts that she hadn’t asked herself this until now. There was no way Nigel would buy them for him after the last fight they had about it, and Winnie certainly hadn’t. Unless Samuel bought them for himself. Was that possible? Winnie rode him so much about what he ate, maybe he was purchasing food on his own dime. Sometimes he was home alone after school before one of them got to him, though it had never been for longer than thirty minutes. Would that be enough time for him to walk to the Safeway and back? She put the box on top of the bin, took a photo of it, and sent it to Nigel. His message came back right away.

  Where did he get those?

  Winnie was relieved by his response.

  I don’t know??? She texted back. Nigel sent back an emoji scratching its head. Winnie set her phone down. She stared toward the stairs, wondering if she should say anything at all; it was just cereal. Maybe he got it from one of his friends—that seemed more likely—Subomi or Angelo. But Winnie knew both of their mothers, and they were of the Kashi, antigluten variety. It’s just cereal, she told herself firmly before heading upstairs. But why did it have to be that cereal?

  Their walk around the lake after lunch was unsurprisingly awful. Winnie tried to lure Samuel into conversation but was met with the cold indifference that he seemed to specialize in lately.

  In her heyday she’d been the most popular person in any room, and that confidence, still ingrained in her personality, took a blow every time her son rejected her. When Samuel walked ahead to distance himself from her, she gave up, pulling her phone from her pocket. Manda had tried to call and then had resorted to texting. She kept half an eye on Samuel as she read the texts, her mood plummeting. Nigel had been right in his prediction: Manda was refusing to let Dakota back, her newfound spine made of steel.

  As she was getting ready to text back, her phone rang, Manda’s name popping up on the screen.

  “Hey, I was just texting you back,” Winnie said. She watched Samuel bend down to pet a fat bulldog up ahead.

  “He’s making threats.” Dakota’s normally timid wife sounded angry. “He’s saying that someone is putting these thoughts in my head because he’s never known me to be an unforgiving person. Can you believe the actual level of gaslighting he’s using?”

  She could tell that her sister-in-law was pacing; she’d seen her do it often when she was on the phone, her feet getting tangled in the skirts of the long dresses she wore. Manda claimed that the dresses were a souvenir from her Pentecostal upbringing.

  “Wait, wait,” said Winnie. “Threatening you how?”

  “How do you think, Winnie? God, I know how you guys worship your brother, but he’s not been right for a while. No one wants to acknowledge that.”

  Winnie took a deep breath as Manda called out to her boys. “Lincoln, ask your brother, all right? Go...right now. Go!”

  “I’ll acknowledge it.” Winnie was tired of making excuses for Dakota; she had her own problems to worry about now. “What do you think he needs?”

  Manda was quiet for a long time, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded much calmer.

  “He hears people. I think he’s schizophrenic or something, Winnie.”

  Samuel had moved passed the bulldog and was drinking from a water fountain, the toe of his orange Vans pressing down on the pedal. Winnie flinched. He did that to annoy her. He darted away out of sight, probably to avoid the look she was about to give him.

  “What do you mean, he hears people...?”

  “I don’t know. Ask him yourself. I can’t believe he didn’t say anything to you. He said he saw a ghost in your house. I’m not letting him near the kids, I’m not. Paired with the drinking and drugs, he’s a ticking time bomb.”

  Samuel was making his way up the path toward the street now; she didn’t want him crossing without her.

  “Manda, he was drunk half the time he was at our place. He wandered around in his boxers crying. I don’t know what he thinks he saw, but you’re right not to let him around the kids. I’ll call him, see where his head’s at. I promise.”

  “I don’t need you to call him, Winnie,” Manda said dryly. “I’m done. He may have mental health problems, but he’s also an entitled, drunk narcissist and it was all of you who made him this way.”

  “That’s not fair. You know he lost his father when he was—”

  “That’s exactly the problem. Goddamn, Winnie, I thought you were different. He thinks he can do whatever he wants to me and the kids, and then just cry about his issues and I’ll forgive him, just like your family always does. And you refused to see the much bigger problems he has because it wasn’t convenient for you.”

  “Manda, you called me...”

  “Yeah, to warn you that Dakota has it out for your husband. Goodbye, Winnie.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but Manda had already hung up.

  Samuel was no longer in her line of sight. She pocketed the phone, pressing back her tears, and sped up. What was that saying? It didn’t rain until it poured.

  Samuel was already in his room when she walked through the front door. She slid into a chair in the kitchen and sat with her face in her hands, trying to make sense of what was going on. First the envelope with the clippings, which, aside from the actual night of the incident, was the single worst day of Winnie’s life. Then there was the library card ordeal—she still didn’t know what to think of that. And now the Froot Loops. Samuel was acting like a complete stranger.

  25

  JUNO

  The obituary was short:

  Josalyn Russel, daughter to Terry Russel and stepdaughter to Mark Gordon, died unexpectedly on February 8, 2008. Her funeral service will be held at the First Baptist Church in Lima, Ohio.

  Icy, Juno thought. That was not the obituary of a well-loved girl. Juno had seen parents over the years who were distraught over the behavior of their children. They brought their children to her like an ingredient for a recipe they didn’t know what to do with. One parent usually looked anxious and put out, the other hopeful. It was like good cop/bad cop in the family department: What is this? How do we make it work in our family? And there were too many times when the therapy wasn’t working that Juno saw parents harden their hearts against their own children—a lost cause, the problem child, the child who just couldn’t be reached. Emotional detachment was a survival skill. The person subconsciously muted their emotions in order to protect themselves. Josalyn, Juno thought, had been a problem child. She could see it in the wording: Died unexpectedly.

  Drugs, she thought. That’s what always got them young. “Died unexpectedly of an overdose” would have been too honest for an obit.

  The Russels’ number was listed. She wrote it on her hand, the pen making sharp, black lines on her skin. Then, sitting at the dinette in the kitchen, staring at the checkerboard floor, Juno dialed and waited. A stately woman’s voice said “Hello,” and Juno detected both class and vinegar in that voice. Here was a woman who had lost a child, who’d been forced to alter her reality to accept that she’d outlived the child she’d grown in her own body.

  “Hello, Mrs. Russel. My name is Juno Holland. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m calling to talk to you about Josalyn.”

  There was a long silence, so long Juno thought that Terry Russel had hung up, and then she heard a release of breath that she supposed was a sigh. Juno pushed on. “I’m a retired clinical psychologist, Mrs. Russel, and I was wondering how—”

  “She’s dead. She was twenty years old when she died. What else would you like to know? I don’t know wh
y you people are calling again.”

  Momentarily stunned, Juno blinked at the wall in front of her. Juno could hear Terry Russel breathing heavily into the phone, like she was restraining herself from crying. For some reason, though, she didn’t hang up. Juno took the opportunity to say, “People? I’m not sure what you mean. I had no idea Josalyn had passed and for that I am very sorry, Mrs. Russel.”

  There was a shocked silence on the other end of the line. Juno’s mind was spinning. You people...had Winnie called Josalyn’s mother, as well? It made sense for Winnie to call if she wanted to confirm Josalyn’s death.

  “Listen,” she said, dropping her voice an octave; it was her sympathetic but in-control voice. Whenever she used that voice, her clients would look up at her like she was going to deliver God’s good word. “I lost my own sons, so I know how you feel. I was very fond of your daughter. I had hopes that Josalyn would...” She let her voice drop off, and Terry Russel picked up where she left off.

  “We all had that hope. Unfortunately, Josalyn was too sick to even seek change.”

  Juno, who still had her eyes closed, frowned. She had sought change, though, hadn’t she? In the form of Illuminations for Mental Health, where she’d been assigned a counselor named Winnie Crouch.

  “What was your name again?”

  “My name is Juno Holland, Mrs. Russel. I met your daughter in Seattle, Washington...before she passed,” Juno lied.

  “Yes?” Terry said, a little impatiently.

  “I worked with her briefly at Illuminations. I’m sure you know of it?” Juno didn’t wait for Terry to respond and she didn’t need her to. “She was a very good writer. That’s how I came to know of you. She would write stories and poems about you for group session.”

  Juno didn’t have the slightest clue as to whether Josalyn even knew the alphabet, or if Terry would call bullshit. She held her breath and was rewarded with Terry’s voice a moment later. “She won a short story competition once...at school...” She sounded wistful. As a therapist, Juno hated to leave that wistfulness untouched, but she wasn’t on the phone to give Terry Russel therapy.

  She pushed on.

  “I’m sorry to bring up such a painful subject, Mrs. Russel, but something has been nagging at me for some time. Did Josalyn ever mention anything to you about being pregnant?”

  There was a long pause on the Russel end, during which time Juno acknowledged a beast of a headache groping along the back of her skull.

  “Yes...” Terry said uncertainly. “But she was on drugs. She said a lot of things. She claimed to be pregnant once when she was fourteen, too. We took her to the doctor and he said her hymen was still intact...”

  Juno made a slight harrumph in the back of her throat. That was a topic she didn’t care to get into today. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference to Mrs. Terry Russel, who had already decided that her dead daughter was a lying drug addict.

  “She mentioned it to her counselor at the time... Winnie Crouch.” Juno imagined the name traveling across the space between them. She found the spot behind her ear and pressed her cool fingertips to it.

  “No, Winnie wasn’t her counselor, I know that name. Winnie was her friend. She said so. Winnie was helping her. She distinctly said that name the second to last time I spoke to her. I said well, who names their kid Winnie anyway, and how equipped is she to help you? And then she laughed at me.”

  Juno didn’t just get chills, her body started to tremble. So, Winnie had secured Josalyn’s trust enough for the girl to consider her a friend; so much so that she affirmed it to her mother. Her mouth was so dry she had to pry her tongue from her teeth before she could speak again.

  “Did she tell you she was pregnant when she called that time?”

  “No. I asked why she was calling us if she had this Winnie to help her. She didn’t like that at all. She said terrible things I won’t repeat and hung up on me. The next time I heard from her she was so high she couldn’t string two words together.”

  “Do you remember the year she claimed to be pregnant? Not when she was fourteen, but the second time.”

  “I don’t understand why you need to know this.”

  Juno was losing her; she’d have to act fast.

  “Because I think she really was pregnant.”

  Terry Russel was breathing heavily on the other end of the line, probably deciding whether or not Juno was crazy or credible.

  “April 2007,” she said finally. “She called asking for money. She was living in Oregon and said she was eight weeks pregnant and wanted to get back to Seattle.”

  “And then did you ever hear from her again? Or hear about a baby being born?”

  Terry was quiet, and when she spoke again, there was a different tone, one that didn’t sound quite as sure of itself.

  “Yes. She called after she supposedly had it. I couldn’t hear a baby in the background, though. So I asked her where the baby was.”

  “What did she say?” Juno asked, growing impatient.

  “She said that Winnie had stolen him.”

  Juno felt herself get hot all over. For a moment her eyes closed and her head lolled back.

  I need a minute, she thought, feeling woozy. But she didn’t have one; Terry was waiting for her to say something on the other end of the line. She could see the reflection of her own face in Winnie’s framed photographs across from her. A deep groove cut down the center of her forehead. It had been there since she was twenty-five. Kregger called it her Mariana Trench. Try to come at this from Terry’s angle, she told herself.

  She remembered the obituary: “Died unexpectedly.” It wasn’t a lie, just a cover-up. Terry was disappointed in the product she’d put out into the world and hardened her heart against her own flesh and blood. So did Juno really want to alert her to the possibility of a grandson? Well—yes, because if Sam was Josalyn’s, telling Terry was the right thing to do. Sam was the one Juno cared about, and Sam deserved to know his real family.

  “What?” Juno said.

  “She was a very disturbed young woman. She thought a lot of things,” Terry replied.

  “I raised two children myself,” Juno said. “You get what you get, and you try to help them as much as you can. They take the help or they don’t.”

  Juno had finally poked the sore spot; Terry Russel began to cry. She could hear the muffled quality of it at first, and then she really let loose, gasping and sobbing into the receiver like it was her best friend’s shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” Terry said after a minute, sniffing. Her voice lacked some of its refinement now that she had a stuffy nose. “You never stop grieving, but I suppose you know that, don’t you?”

  She knew all too well that no matter how fresh the day was, the rot of the grief permeated through it. No day was safe, no hour, no minute; grief came and went as it pleased.

  “No, but you find new things to be hopeful about as you move forward. Terry...” she said, switching to the woman’s first name without permission, “may I have your email address? I have something I want to share with you.”

  26

  JUNO

  After hanging up with Terry, Juno bustled straight to the computer. Her mouth was puckered into a little bud as she sat down and swiveled toward the keyboard. As she touched the mouse gingerly, her mind was still going over the conversation she’d had with Josalyn Russel’s estranged mother.

  Terry had been vague about the details of Josalyn’s death, but Juno was a stranger. She’d been surprised that Terry had told her as much as she had. So why had it felt like snide gossip? This time, Juno typed in “missing teen Lima/Seattle dead” and found three pages of results. The first that she opened was enough: a short clip from the Seattle Times.

  An unidentified female had been found in a landfill next to an incinerator in Tacoma, Washington, on February 10, 2008. She was between sixteen and twent
y-five years old, 5'6" and 114 pounds, with faded dyed hair. She wore black bikini panties and a single ring, worn on her right hand. She had good muscle tone and, at one point in her life, had taken good care of her teeth. The victim had likely died on February 8.

  Josalyn Rose Russel had been reported missing from her home in Lima, Ohio, in 2005, when she’d run away from her family home after an argument; that’s what Juno gleaned online. According to an acquaintance, Josalyn had hitched a ride to California, after which she was not seen or heard from again.

  Juno sat back, her mind tussling with this new information. So Josalyn had fled Ohio and, a year later, in 2006, ended up in Washington, a teen runaway under the care of Winnie Crouch. In 2007 she’d had a baby, and in 2008 she had been found dead. Winnie, she was sure, had had maternal feelings toward the girl. But why had Josalyn run away in the first place? Juno thought of the cold aloofness she’d heard in Terry Russel’s voice. The denial mothers, that’s what she’d called them in her therapist years; women who dragged their sullen, druggie kids into the office for her to fix. They didn’t want anything to do with the actual therapy; there was a strong aversion to the truth.