by Sasha Dawn
“That guy I dropped for a while back,” I say.
“Yeah. Don’t worry about the coin, man. Consider it payment for services rendered.”
“No, I mean . . . thanks.” I spent what was left of it on my new tat, but I can pay him back. “Do you know him personally? I mean, he places a lot of orders?”
“Pretty regularly.”
“There was a girl there.”
He glances up at me. “Yeah?”
“She has a tattoo like this.”
“Fuck, man.”
“I think she knows Chatham. You ever see a girl with him before?”
“Which girl is more the question.”
“Oh.” I think of the way she flirted with me, the invitation to the rave . . . Maybe it’s naïve to think she might still be there with Aiden’s customer after all this time. Still, I wonder if it’s worth a try.
Suddenly, the need to drive out to Sheridan Road seems crazy-urgent. I can’t go now, obviously. Rosie’s at work, and the twins are asleep. Maybe I can send Aiden. He might have an in with the guy I won’t have. But if she’s there, I need to be the one to talk to her, to look at that tat, see if it’s Chatham’s work. Besides, he’s blitzed and shouldn’t drive. And because he’s blitzed, I can’t very well ask him to stay here with the girls. But I feel like if I don’t go now, she’ll be gone tomorrow . . . if she’s not gone already.
Aiden’s phone chirps again. “God.”
I have to go out there. I have to know what that girl with the tattoo knows. Even if she doesn’t know anything, even if the tattoo is a coincidence, it’ll tell me something about the girl I thought I knew.
“You think it’s all right if Kai comes over for a bit?” Aiden says. “I mean, tell a girl I gotta be here for a brother, but she won’t let up.”
Lightbulb.
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Cool.” He offers a fist for a bump.
I go in. “You think Kai’d mind sitting with the girls? As a special favor to me?”
“Maybe. When?”
“You and I have to head out to Sheridan Road.”
He turns his screen toward me. I stare at the image of my girlfriend as a platinum blonde.
I try to see her as a scared little girl in purple shorts.
Even if she didn’t believe she was the child in the photograph, I can’t rule it out. Particularly with the blonde hair Aiden’s drawn on her fake ID, there are definite similarities.
I can’t take my eyes off Aiden’s screen.
I wonder if that’s what she’ll look like next time I see her.
I wonder if I’ll see her again at all.
M i n d j a m
The old Josh wouldn’t have said anything to his mother about leaving Kai with the twins. But I’m not the old Josh and Rosie isn’t the old Rosie.
I dial her on the way out to Sheridan Road: “I know you’re not going to like this, but I’ve got a line on Chatham.” I go through the whole rigmarole, Kai is certified in CPR, the twins are in good hands, all that bullshit, then get to the meat of it.
“You think her sister is there?” Rosie asks.
“Good chance.” So I bluff that part of it. “I know I said I’d be there for the girls, and I wish to God Chatham hadn’t taken off just now, but please understand. And trust me when I say I’ve left Margaret and Caroline with someone so qualified that—”
“You’re already on your way out there.” There’s a slight edge to her tone now. “You’re calling me on the way.”
My first instinct is to lie to her, then fight it out later. But I bite the bullet and tell the truth: “Yes.”
A beat of silence answers me.
“Rosie?”
“We’ll talk about this later.” She sighs, but not in the way she usually does, like I’m the biggest disappointment in her life. “Just text me when you’re home safe.”
And that’s it. No drama. I wonder if it’s because I took the initiative to be honest with her, or because she’s just exhausted. Either way, I know she wouldn’t have been so complacent, had she known there’s another shrink-wrapped book in Aiden’s bag.
I drive down Washington, then hook a left onto Sheridan.
Aiden’s busy texting the guy, telling him we’re in the neighborhood with a frequent-buyers’ gift, whatever.
I glance down the street where Rachel Bachton used to live, and nearly slow to a stop when I see the news vans. Someone’s taping a story. “There’s news about the case.”
“Huh?” Aiden looks up from his phone to see what I’m talking about.
It probably has to do with the photograph the Bachtons have denied has anything to do with their daughter. But I wonder why the crew is taping in front of the house that hasn’t belonged to the Bachtons in years.
I inch forward, but keep glancing in my rearview mirror, as if I expect to see all the answers to all my dilemmas unfolding on the road behind me. Eventually, I pull up to the enormous house with all the stairs, and we start to climb.
After all the formalities, which include the enormous guy who lives here—he’s got to be about six-four, two-seventy-five—patting me down to ensure his safety, and asking me all the typical questions to convince himself I’m not a cop, I enter. Aiden waits on the front porch with his shrink-wrapped book.
“So,” the guy says. “What can I do for you?” He’s led me to a formal room with an elegant couch, the back of which is shaped like a camel’s hump. It’s hard to believe he would’ve chosen this furniture, and I instantly assume this place belongs to a grandmother or a great-aunt. Nearest to us is a pair of dainty chairs I can’t believe will hold his weight. But he sinks onto one, and offers its twin to me.
I sit. “There was a girl here last time I came.”
“Usually is.”
“This one’s blonde, with a shamrock tattoo on her ankle. You took her to a rave.”
“Rave? I don’t do that shit. Alana goes where she wants to go.”
My heart sinks a little in my chest. Alana. “That’s her name?”
“It’s the name she gave me. What about her?”
“Is she still here?”
He shakes his head. “Took off.”
“Can you tell me . . .” I flip through my phone for the screenshots of Savannah’s Instagram and present him with a close-up of the tattoo. “Is this the same tattoo?”
Dude takes my phone. “Could be. To be honest, her ankles weren’t what I was interested in.” He hands back the phone.
“Did she, by any chance, ever wear a dark blue wig?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“You didn’t know her too well?”
He looks down at me, with his lips pressed into a thin, white line.
I twist in my seat.
“What,” he says. “You want to know if she’s a natural blonde? Do your own dirty work.”
“What I mean is . . . was she new in town?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she stay here with you?”
“What’s it to you?” His skin’s a little redder than it used to be. “You know, when I told Aid I’d talk to you, I didn’t think I’d be under a fucking firing squad.”
“My girlfriend’s gone. And I think she knew yours. I’m just trying to find—”
“Let’s get something straight. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Okay.”
“So whatever she’s mixed up in, I don’t know about it.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t care about it, either.” The guy stands up, signaling our conversation is over. “What do I care that she took off yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
He’s almost back to the front door.
“Wait.” I offer my phone again. “Is this Alana? Is this the girl I saw here that day?”
Just when I think he’s going to squash me into oblivion, if only with his hard-ass stare, his shoulders relax a little. He takes the phone.
“Farmgirl.” He
reads the username and, this time, takes it upon himself to flip through the pictures on my phone. “Yeah, that’s Alana.”
“My girlfriend calls her Savannah,” I say. “Says she left Moon River a few months ago.”
“Moon River?”
“Georgia.”
“Alana was from Georgia. I saw her license once.” He sort of smiles a little. “And on certain words . . . she had a cute twang after she’d had a couple drinks.”
I know the twang to which he refers.
“She’s underage. She lied and told me she was eighteen, can you believe that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I thought this was about. I mean, I met her in a club. I’m twenty-two years old. I wouldn’t normally . . . you know. But what do you do if the girl lies, right? I put an end to it as soon as I found out, but—”
“Yeah.”
“Sixteen. Christ.”
“Chatham—my girlfriend—she came here, to Sugar Creek, looking for her. Says she’s her sister. And now they’re both gone. Both left last night. Would you happen to know Alana’s last name?”
“I was too focused on her birthday to notice.”
“Yeah.”
“Well.” He hands back my phone. “If Alana’s your girlfriend’s sister, I hope you do find them. And if you don’t mind, tell her she can keep the watch if it’ll ward off any legal fallout from the time we spent together.”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck. Wish I knew more.” He opens the door. “Then, and now.”
“We brought a little something for your trouble.” I don’t want to make eye contact—he might then notice that I’m close to falling to pieces—but I force myself to look him square in the face because he’s been walloped, too, in his own way. “I’ll let her know about the watch, if I find her. Thanks again.”
I go back to the car, while Aiden and this guy chat it up on the front porch.
If that girl—Alana—is Chatham’s sister, it means Chatham lied to me. About her sister’s name, about knowing her at the rave. About everything.
God, I wish Aiden would hurry the fuck up. I just want to go home.
If you’ve ever had something precious in your sights, and come this close to grasping it before it’s out of reach, you understand: I could scream right now. It’s like surviving a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, only to die by whale bite at Sea World.
I roll down the window. “C-caw!”
Aiden takes the hint and finally joins me in the car and makes some statement like we’ll find her, man, and other bullshit he means to be encouraging. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate it—I do—it’s that I’d rather face facts than believe in a fairy tale.
We swing past the spectacle at Rachel Bachton’s old house, but we can’t tell what’s going on. There are only two crews, which is strange. In the early days of the investigation, even up until about five years ago, the road would be so crowded you couldn’t turn onto it. I wonder if other crews are set up at the lighthouse, on the boardwalk, or other places Rachel Bachton was known to be way back when.
I’ll turn on the news at home.
Once we get home, Aiden and Kai head out, I text my mother, and I’m sort of relieved to be alone. Aiden left his netbook—what’s he going to do with it when he’s high anyway?—so I know I’ll see him tomorrow when he comes to get it.
For a few seconds after I sit down, I’m locked in a staring contest with blonde Chatham on Aiden’s screen. Then I look at the Scrabble tiles that spell out her name, as if waiting for them to move. I consider keeping them, framing them. Her fingers touched them, laid them out in this display.
I snap out of it and turn on the television, and find a channel covering the Rachel Bachton story.
I’m trying to listen to everything being said, but my mind is tripping back and forth, trying to put pieces into the puzzle, trying to decide why Chatham would lie to me about knowing the girl at the rave.
Alana-slash-Savannah.
Why would Chatham lie about her name?
Wait.
If her name is really Alana . . . her license could be a fake, after all.
I open my laptop and type Alana Goudy into a search engine.
“Holy fuck.”
Within the past couple of hours, it’s official: the foster girls entrusted to Wayne and Loretta’s care have been declared missing and endangered. I’m staring at a picture of two girls. Two girls I’ve seen before. But they’re not who I thought they were. Savannah is the girl at the rave, no doubt about it. But Alana—Alana Goudy is Chatham Claiborne, with blonde hair.
D r i n k M e
So why did Chatham/Alana concoct a whole new identity? Why give herself a whole new name? And why did Savannah assume Alana’s name?
Chatham asked for an ID.
I helped her get it.
What if Chatham didn’t have ID when she arrived in Sugar Creek because Savannah had taken Alana’s license with her when she left? Because Chatham had refused to run away with Savannah, Savannah could have swiped the driver’s license to avoid leaving a trail. If Savannah was approached, she could pretend to be Alana—whom no one would be looking for because she opted to stay on the farm. Being Alana would have raised fewer flags than being Savannah on the run.
I think back to the day Chatham told me about what Savannah had said about the stables at the Goudys’ farm. She’d been convinced Savannah was in danger because she’d found Savannah’s money, and her license, under the floorboards of the stables. She realized then, she should have gone with Savannah.
Either way, what do these sisters have to do with Rachel Bachton? Have they come all this way, to this has-been town, to convince the police their foster parents are involved in Rachel Bachton’s disappearance?
I look up at the television, where a reporter is discussing the case in front of Rachel’s old house:
“. . . despite sightings at train stations along the East Coast, despite thousands of tips, and despite the recent surfacing of a photograph, and the testimony of a man currently in custody on charges of domestic violence who may or may not be involved . . .”
Damien!
“. . . police are no closer to solving the case than they were a decade ago. The missing girl’s family holds out hope that even though this lead did not pan out, others will. Police continue to cite a possible connection between Rachel Bachton and the case of Baby A, whose remains were found earlier this year in rural Chatham County, Georgia.”
She goes on, but I’m distracted by the reporter’s backdrop: Rachel’s old house; more specifically, a leaded glass window in the door, just beyond the gate the reporter is standing in front of, the gate against which sympathizers tied ribbons and left flowers and teddy bears.
I hear the echo of my sisters’ voices on the beach on the last day of summer: criss-cross windows!
I practically bounce off the sofa cushions. The house!
Of course!
It’s the house Chatham sculpted on the beach! The turret, the wrap-around porch. The criss-cross windows!
By the time I get the picture up on my phone to compare, the camera cuts to Rachel’s parents, who are thanking the public for their continued concern, awareness, and support. “We’ve been through this before. Some young woman insisting she’s our daughter, some Good Samaritan thinking he’s seen our Rachel. But even every negative result, every lead that doesn’t pan out, puts us one step closer to knowing the truth.”
There’s a photo-montage of their precious daughter on the screen now. In some pictures, she’s posing with her little brother.
I snap a picture of one in particular—Rachel on Northgate Beach. The lighthouse is in the background. She’s wearing a two-piece swimsuit with wide ruffles; it coordinates with her brother’s stars-and-stripes trunks.
But it’s not really about the beach. And it doesn’t matter that it must be the last summer she spent with her family before someone grabbed her.
It’s what
I see that a lot of people might not notice.
I enlarge the picture and study what I think I saw:
Rachel has a birthmark on her left hip—an oval patch of dark against her ivory skin.
I flash back to the day Chatham unbuttoned those amazing cut-offs and revealed the X on her hip, and I hear the words she said to me in the back of my mind: It makes sense, based on what Savannah remembers. She says it wasn’t an accident. She says Loretta held me down and Wayne branded me. Like, some sort of punishment. She saw it, she says.
Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.
My fingertips are tingling, and it’s getting hard to breathe.
“Here is an age-progressed image of what Rachel Bachton may look like today.”
I snap a picture of that, too, because I’m on overload. I can’t process.
“If anyone has any information . . .”
I take a deep breath and compare the age-progression of little Rachel to the teenage blonde Rachel. She’s not identical to the Chatham Aiden’s doctored on his screen, but there are definite similarities.
Is the scar on Chatham’s hip a coincidence? Or did the Goudys purposefully burn her to get rid of an obvious connection between her and a missing girl from northern Illinois?
It’s possible. Chatham had a vague recollection of being at the farmers’ market, and she assumed it was because she might’ve witnessed Rachel’s abduction.
Could it be she was wrong?
Could it be she was the one who was abducted?
“Someone saw something,” Rachel’s mother is saying on camera. “It’s been long enough. Tell us what you know. Put us—put yourself—at ease, and tell us. And, Rachel, if you’re out there, and we believe you are, all you have to do is tell someone. Tell someone about the charm on your necklace. Even if you don’t have it anymore, it’s all right. Tell someone.”
F e e d Y o u r H e a d
“What’s all this?”
I look up from the coffee table in the basement.
Rosie’s standing at the stairs.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What are you doing, Josh?”
I’ve taped news stories to the walls—stories about children fatally left in cars on hot days, stories about Rachel Bachton sightings.