I Hope You're Listening

by Tom Ryan

  She recovers herself, I assume because she knows that one of us has to, and comes across the room to me. I have not recovered, and I stand still, wishing myself somewhere else entirely, as she walks to me and wraps me in a hug.

  We stand like this for at least a minute, neither of us saying anything.

  Finally, Mrs. Carmichael pulls back, leaving her hands on my shoulders. I manage to pull myself together, and when she smiles into my face, I return the expression.

  “Delia,” she says. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d be as cool as a cucumber. I guess that’s just not possible.”

  “It’s okay. I feel the same way,” I tell her.

  She gestures toward a low-slung sofa of soft, caramel-colored leather, and I sit. She returns to her chair, and Mr. Carmichael drags an ottoman next to her and perches on it.

  Greetings over, we sit in awkward silence. I know I am supposed to be saying something, explain to them why I’m here, but I can’t collect my thoughts.

  “How’s Greta?” I finally ask.

  They both smile, and I know I’ve asked the right question.

  “She’s wonderful,” says Mr. Carmichael. “She’s in her third year at Sisters of Supreme Sacrifice, has lots of friends. She’s actually there this afternoon, practicing for a debate tournament next month.”

  Mrs. Carmichael gets up from the sofa and takes a framed photograph from a shelf in the corner of the room, crosses over, and passes it to me.

  I have to force myself not to gasp. The girl in the picture looks exactly like an older version of the Sibby I remember, right down to the confident, amused expression. I think about how it must have felt to the Carmichaels as Greta passed Sibby’s age when she was abducted and kept going. A daily reminder of the girl they lost.

  “Wow,” I say, managing to keep my emotions subdued. “She’s all grown up.”

  I hand the photo back to her, and she smiles down at it. “This was actually taken a couple of years ago, when she was thirteen. She’s a far cry from the little girl who used to tag along behind you and Sibyl. I remember the two of you going out of your way to leave her behind.”

  I don’t correct her, tell her that it was Sibby who did her best to leave Greta out of our plans.

  “I suppose I should be thankful for that,” she says. “When I think about what could have happened if she’d gone with you girls that day…” She trails off, and her posture slackens. As she drops back into her chair, Mr. Carmichael smoothly reaches out to take the photo from her, and places it on a side table.

  “We don’t need to think about that, Astrid,” he says. He turns back to me and slaps his hands onto his knees. He clearly wants to wrap things up, and I know it’s time to get to the point.

  “I know it must have been a surprise to hear from me,” I say. “But I’m sure the two of you have heard about Layla Gerrard.”

  They exchange a glance that tells me they’ve been expecting this.

  “Yes,” says Mr. Carmichael. “We had a visit from the police.”

  “For a moment, we thought maybe this would lead to information about Sibyl,” says Astrid. “It seemed as if the two cases might be connected.”

  “You heard about the note?”

  They both nod. “We’d be lying if we said it hadn’t given us some hope,” says Sibby’s dad. “But it appears as if the two cases weren’t connected after all.”

  “It’s dragged up a lot of memories for me too,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted—needed to ask if you ever had any theories about what happened to Sibby.”

  There’s an electric pause as they stare at me. Finally, Grant speaks up.

  “We honestly had no idea,” he says. “Still don’t. It was so random, so out of the blue. There was no ransom note…nothing. Our heads were spinning.”

  “I suspected no one and everyone,” says Astrid. “I suspected Sibyl’s teachers. I suspected the mailman. I suspected neighbors. For months afterward, I walked around staring at people, wondering if they’d done it.”

  “Eventually,” says her husband, “we had to leave Redfields. You know better than anyone, Delia, that it doesn’t matter who we suspected or what we thought. None of it brought Sibby back to us. At a certain point, we had to decide to let go and move on with our lives.”

  I look at Mrs. Carmichael. She seems to have aged a dozen years since I came into the room. “I’m quite tired,” she says. “I think I’ll go lie down for a while. It was very nice to see you again. Please give my regards to your parents.”

  Mr. Carmichael puts his arm protectively around her shoulder. “Just give us a moment, Delia,” he says, as he walks her out of the room and down a corridor. I hear a door open and then softly close.

  Quickly, I pull out my phone and lean in to take a couple of shots of the photograph of Greta. If the anonymous emailer did see Sibby five years ago, she would have been about the same age as Greta in this picture.

  I hear the door open again and slip my phone back into my pocket just as Mr. Carmichael returns. It’s clear from the expression on his face that he expects me to leave, so I stand to make my exit.

  “Believe me, Delia,” he says when we reach the foyer. “I know this is hard on you too, and I understand why you feel like asking questions. But you need to take my advice and move on, like we did.”

  I step out of the apartment, and when I turn to look at him, something passes between us—a shared understanding that we’ll never really move on. Then he closes the door.

  26.

  Greta’s school is only a few blocks away, a stately stone building on a tree-lined street. A high iron fence surrounds the campus, a reminder to passersby that these students are being kept apart from the world. A simple, classically lettered sign bolted to the fence near the opened gate reads Sisters of the Supreme Sacrifice Girls Academy, a reminder to passersby who is really in charge here.

  While I’m waiting to spot Greta, I pull out my phone. It’s the perfect way to disappear into a crowd. If you have your phone out, staring intently, occasionally moving your thumb toward the screen so that it looks like you’re engaging with it, people ignore you. I’ve perfected the angle of eyesight required to give the illusion of distraction while watching the scene around me unfold. I’m not a voyeur, because I don’t usually care what other people are doing or talking about, but experience—if that’s what you want to call it—has taught me that I should be as aware as possible of my surroundings.

  As the girls stream out of the wide, arched gate, I lean back against the fence, pretending to watch my phone, and let them pass me like a wave. Only a few of them give me curious looks, since most are engrossed in their own little dramas, but I feel like a sore thumb nonetheless. Even more so than I did in the Carmichaels’ apartment. There, at least, I felt like it was a fair matchup. Here, all these prim girls with their plaid skirts and expensive winter jackets look like an army marching to prove how out of place I am.

  The majority of girls pass, and although they’re moving quickly, trying to get away from the school, I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten a good look at most of them, and Greta is nowhere to be seen.

  Then the door to the school opens, and two girls in the middle of a serious discussion come out. One of them looks up, and it’s her. She and her friend stop at the top of the steps and hover over a binder that one of them is holding out. There is an exchange of papers, notes, or homework assignments shoved into backpacks, and then they continue down the steps and toward the gate.

  “Greta,” I say, stepping forward. The girls start, and Greta takes an instinctive step backward.

  “Yeah?” she asks. “Can I help you?”

  I can tell by the way she talks that she is a serious person. Wary, which doesn’t surprise me at all, but not flighty. Cautious in a way Sibby never was. I wonder how much of this is a result of what happened to her sister and how much is just the way she is, the way she would have been either way.

  “I was wondering if we could talk for a minute,�
�� I say.

  She hesitates, and although she doesn’t step closer, her head moves forward just a little bit, her eyes narrowed, taking me in. “Do I know you?” she asks warily.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, you used to know me. I’m Delia Skinner. Dee.”

  I don’t know what I expected exactly, but I didn’t expect such a calm response. She nods as if someone has just explained a particularly complicated theory to her and everything makes sense to her now.

  “What’s going on?” asks the friend.

  “It’s cool,” says Greta. “Why don’t you go on ahead, Paulette. I’ll text you later.”

  “You sure?” asks Paulette.

  Greta just nods, her eyes still on me.

  “Okay,” says the other girl. “Just text me if you need anything.” Still, she hovers for a moment before deciding that Greta is serious, then continues on down the sidewalk, turning once to glance back before disappearing around the corner.

  “You want to get a coffee or something?” I ask her.

  “Yeah,” she says, “okay. There’s a place a couple of blocks away.”

  As we walk, she unslings her bag from her shoulder and digs around in an interior pocket, coming out with a thin metal case. She opens it and, to my surprise, pulls out a cigarette. She stops to light it, eyeing me sideways.

  “You want one?” she asks after a deep breath and release of smoke.

  I shake my head. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a smoker.”

  She shrugs. “You haven’t seen me since I was five,” she says. “Most people don’t picture five-year-olds growing up to be smokers. Anyway, I only do it because I know it would upset them if they found out. My parents.”

  “But they don’t know?” I ask. “Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, it does. I’m not rebellious. I don’t get into trouble. My grades are excellent. I have good friends. I’m not interested in being messed up. It’s just…”

  I wait, giving her space to explain on her own.

  “It’s just, they want so badly for me to turn out okay, that they don’t even realize that they’ve gotten their wish. They’re waiting for something awful to happen, like what happened to—” She breaks off abruptly, gives me a nervous sideways glance as she sucks on her cigarette.

  “What happened to Sibby,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Of course.” We’ve reached the coffee shop, and we step around to the side, away from the door, so she can finish her cigarette.

  “I’m their only remaining hope,” she says. “Their second chance to hang on to a daughter, make sure she grows up happy and healthy and…and safe. I’m not going to be the asshole who ruins that for them, not after what happened. These”—she holds the end of her cigarette up, then drops it onto the sidewalk and crushes it into a snowbank with her boot—“are my one self-destructive habit.”

  “Gross habit,” I say.

  She nods, lets out a little laugh. “The truth is, I hate smoking.”

  Inside, we sit across from each other at tiny, almost useless, wooden tables. Our hands are cupped around our drinks, a chai latte for Greta, an Americano, black, for me.

  “I saw your parents today,” I say. “I visited them at home, at your condo.”

  She rolls her eyes. “God, isn’t it tacky?”

  “It’s all right,” I say.

  “Try growing up there. Keep your feet off the coffee table! Don’t drink juice around the good furniture! Do you remember our old house?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I remember it really, really well.”

  “Well, I don’t. I was too young. I only remember it from pictures. It looked comfortable.”

  “It was,” I tell her. “It was like most houses in the neighborhood: old furniture, toys all over the floor, ugly lamps. It was a bit of a surprise to see the new place.”

  “Well, people might not change,” she says, “but the things around them sure do.”

  “Do you remember Sibby?” I ask.

  “Vaguely,” she says. “I remember her voice and how she was bossy to me when we were playing with dolls. Not mean bossy, just in-charge bossy. Mostly though, she’s like that house we used to live in: she exists in a bunch of pictures that remind me that things used to be more relaxed. Better. I remember that things were one way for as long as I remembered, and then, suddenly, they were very different.”

  I feel a twinge of guilt, realizing that I have much clearer memories of Sibby than her own sister does.

  “You’re here because of that girl, aren’t you?” she asks. “The one who went missing.”

  “It’s dragged up a lot of shit,” I say. “And it’s made me realize just how much I don’t know about what happened back then.”

  “You know,” she says, staring down into her drink, absent-mindedly stirring with the little silver spoon, “things were never the same after. I mean, obviously, right? But they were really not the same. I mean, a complete change. The thing that bothers me the most about it is that I was too young to even realize. I only have little snippets of memory. But at Christmastime, my mother always makes us sit and watch these old home videos. It’s so awful, everyone sitting, blank-faced around my mother as she cries. My dad used to sit and hold her hand and they’d both cry, but even he hates it now. He wants her to move on, but there’s no good way to tell her that.”

  I nod. I hate home videos, and in my house there’s no tragedy woven into them; they’re just embarrassing.

  “The worst part is that it seems like we’re watching completely different people,” she says. “The people in those videos are my parents, but they aren’t.”

  “I think I kind of know what you mean,” I say. “I felt that way when I visited them.”

  “My mother blamed everyone,” she says. “My father was more realistic. I remember him saying that she was being ridiculous, that she couldn’t just point around, looking for someone to blame.”

  “Was there anyone in particular?” I ask.

  She thinks about this. “It was a long time ago, but I remember she was fixated on that family across the street. Their little boy used to play with you guys.”

  “The O’Donnells?” I ask, shocked. “You know their uncle Terry was arrested in connection to Layla Gerrard, right?”

  “I haven’t paid that much attention,” she admits. “I try to maintain boundaries for the sake of my mental health. But it wasn’t him. It was his girlfriend. The blond.”

  Now I’m really surprised. “Sandy?”

  “Yeah, that was her. Apparently Mom caught her playing with me and Sibby in the backyard one afternoon. Like, she let herself in through the side gate and was just hanging out with us. A bit weird, I guess, but the police looked into it, and she had a tight alibi. Mom was just looking for someone to fixate on. She was out of her head at the time, obviously.”

  She drains her chai and then flips her phone over to check the time.

  “I’ve gotta go,” she says, starting to gather her things. “I’m meeting with my study group in a little while.”

  I pull on my coat, and together we leave and walk out onto the street, where she pulls out her cigarettes and lights up again.

  “It was good to see you, Dee,” she says. “I hope you find whatever it is that you’re looking for.” She doesn’t lean in for a hug or anything, just hikes her bag higher on her shoulder and turns away, walking down the sidewalk, lifting a hand into the air as she goes, without a look back.

  27.

  I’ve gone to plenty of my brothers’ hockey games, but only the away games, where I can climb out of my dad’s car and not know everyone in the parking lot. Where I blend in a bit better, and nobody stops to stare across the arena at me.

  The home rink is just the same as all the others; it’s clad in corrugated aluminum and has a large painted, plywood sign bolted to the front above the doors, announcing that you’ve reached Redfields Arena.

  I meet Brianna at the front doors,
where she’s standing by a folding table with a clipboard and a roll of tickets. She’s wearing her royal blue Redfields Girls Volleyball Team windbreaker, and her hair is pulled up into a perfect high ponytail.

  “I was surprised you changed your mind,” she says. She purses her lips and gives me an obligatory smile. “It helps, so thank you.”

  “No problem,” I say. “What do I do?”

  “It’s easy,” she says. She’s beginning to show me how the tickets work when a woman approaches the table.

  “Just watch me,” Brianna murmurs.

  The woman stops in front of us and peers down at the sign.

  “We’re having a 50/50 draw!” says Brianna brightly, the sarcasm completely absent from her voice. “To fund the annual Winter Carnival Dance!”

  “I thought you might be raising money to find that girl,” says the old lady with a frown.

  Brianna doesn’t skip a beat, and a perfectly pretty little frown of her own pops out to indicate how seriously she’s taking the entire thing too.

  “I know,” she says. “Isn’t it just terrible? The student council and the entire student body, for that matter, are putting forward every effort to find that poor girl. But it’s important for us to keep doing the things we’ve always done.” Her voice takes on a pious tone. “It’s what Layla would want.”

  I doubt Layla gave a shit about the Winter Carnival Dance, but the old lady doesn’t even seem to hear her. “I think the father did it,” she says with a stubborn grimace.

  Brianna politely ignores this, reaching past me instead for the roll of tickets and holding them out. “Can I interest you in a 50/50 ticket? Two dollars each, or three for five.”

  “Why do you think that?” I ask the woman. “That the father did it?”

  Brianna coughs lightly, disapprovingly, and her foot begins to tap next to me.

  “He looks like a real piece of work,” she says. “Probably looking for the insurance money. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  A few other people have stepped up behind the old woman. Brianna cranes her neck performatively to look past the woman at the growing line behind her.