by Kate White
I’ve always suspected that what he appreciates about the relationship is the lack of turmoil and angst, compared to the final years with Kaitlin. Marion has no children from her previous marriage and claimed to Roger she never wanted any. Plus, every inch of her seems to relish playing lady of the manor and keeping their life together humming pleasantly along. It just doesn’t include me and Hugh much of the time.
I step away from my position on the sidewalk and push open the door.
“Hey, Ally, there you are,” Roger says, leaping to his feet. He embraces me in a bear hug, and Marion rises, too, brushing my cheek with her lipstick-thick lips. She’s wearing a crisp long-sleeved white blouse, open at the neck to reveal a gold and diamond pendant necklace. Her dark blond hair’s cut short but with a stylish flip in the back.
“It’s nice to see you,” I say, doing my best not to seem vexed. “Please sit.”
“I’m not staying, dear,” Marion tells me. “I know you need time alone with Roger. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to at least say hello.”
That’s funny because it seems that lately she’s been more than happy to pass up any opportunity for that.
“Thank you for understanding.”
She clasps my hands, squeezing my fingers so hard the knuckles pinch against each other. “We’ve missed you,” she says. “And Hugh, too.”
“Likewise.”
Now she narrows her eyes, staring right into mine with a concerned but knowing look. I can smell her fragrance, a mix, it seems, of roses and jasmine. “You’re always in our thoughts, dear. And we just want the best for you.”
I’m not sure what her game is today. I’m almost certain Roger’s stayed mum about our phone conversation, so this might be a simple power play, her way of pretending she’s in the loop. Or maybe she’s rummaging for info. Marion has a truffle hog’s need to sniff and unearth.
“I appreciate that, Marion. And thanks for stopping by. I’ll talk to Roger about the four of us getting together later in the fall.”
“Unfortunately, as you know, it’s not going to be for Thanksgiving this year. With your dad away and not doing the big meal, my younger brother Adam insisted we come to his place. Do you and Hugh have a back-up? I could always ask . . .”
“We’re going to see Hugh’s parents in Boston.”
“Perfect.” She graces me with another lip brush before she departs; Roger is treated to a squeeze of the arm.
“I hope you didn’t mind,” Roger says once we’re both seated. “She thought it would be rude not to stop by.”
“You didn’t tell her what was going on, did you?”
“No, no, of course not. Though she’s aware something’s up because I’ve been preoccupied ever since you called. I’m so worried about you, Button.”
“I’m actually feeling a little better today—and seeing you is already helping.”
It’s true. Being in Roger’s steady, dependable presence anchors me, as it has since I was young—whether he was teaching me how to make scrambled eggs, explaining the stories behind the constellations, or sticking his head beneath my bed to prove there weren’t any monsters lurking there.
At the same time, I’m a little surprised. The last time I saw Roger, two months ago when our father left for San Diego, his light brown hair along the side of his head was tipped with pewter, but he’s almost entirely gray now. There was a time when, despite our age gap, we looked unmistakably like siblings—we both have full lips and hazel-colored eyes set slightly far apart. But it’s hard to imagine anyone thinking that today.
“So give me an update,” he says after the waitress has taken my order for a sparkling water. “Have you pieced together any more details?”
“Unfortunately, not. Those two days are a total dead zone.”
“And they don’t know what caused it?”
“Not so far. Though as I mentioned on the phone, there’s a small possibility it was related to the whole Jaycee Long business.”
“I know that was a terrible experience for you. But why would it play havoc with you now, after so many years?”
“Maybe I never fully processed things. And it’s actually been on my mind quite a lot lately. Because—gosh, Rog, I haven’t wanted to burden you with this, but Hugh and I have been having issues lately over whether or not to start a family. He definitely wants kids, and I originally thought I did, too, but I’m now balking.”
“Ally, I’m so sorry.” He reaches across the table and briefly clasps my hand. “Trust me, it’s never a burden to have you share whatever is going on with you.”
“Thanks—and I’m sure Hugh and I will work it out,” I say. Though as the words spill from my mouth, I wonder how confident I really am that they’re true.
“Anyway, I was hoping that speaking to you would help me fill in a few blanks about Jaycee Long.”
“Blanks?” His face darkens with even more concern. “Are you saying there are parts you don’t remember about that period either?”
“No, it’s not that. Blanks is the wrong word. It’s more that certain things still seem shrouded in mystery. Mom and Dad whispering. The police whispering. People in town staring at me once the word was out.”
“Do you remember much about that day? Finding her?”
I smile grimly. “Pretty much. I’d hung around too long after school that afternoon instead of going straight home like I was supposed to, so I took a shortcut through the woods. Another no-no. While I was walking, I stumbled over this pile of leaves—and she was there. Practically underfoot.”
My voice cracks. I take another deep breath and slowly exhale. “At first I didn’t even realize what I was looking at.”
“That must have been so awful, Ally.”
“Tell me what you remember, will you?”
“I remember how shaken you seemed. And how sad I felt for you. . . . Dad must have called and I decided to come home.”
The waitress interrupts before I can say anything, setting my water on the table.
“But weren’t you already there for some reason?” I ask. “I remember sitting with you in the family room that Friday night when the police talked to Dad and Mom in the kitchen.”
He pulls back in his chair. “God, you’re right. I was going to travel that summer before grad school, and I came home for a few weeks in the spring.”
“I take it Dad filled you in on everything then?”
“He did, though some of it’s fuzzy now. I remember the girl was only two and that she’d died from a blow to her head. I also know Dad and your mom were pretty distraught.”
“I was worried they were mad at me. For taking the shortcut, for hanging at school.”
“I don’t think they had any room left over to be mad. For starters, they were incredibly concerned about the impact the experience would have on you, and I remember your mom working so hard to find you a good therapist. You know, I wonder if it would be of any use for you to talk to the psychologist you saw back then. See if she has any insight.”
“Louise Hadley was her name. But she was at least in her late forties. She might not even be alive.”
“Let me ask around and see what I can find out.”
“I’d appreciate that. What did you mean by ‘for starters,’ though?”
“What?”
“You said that for starters they were worried how finding the body would affect me. What else?”
“Oh, they weren’t happy about all the time you had to spend with the cops. They were afraid that being questioned was as tough for you as finding the body.”
“It was tough. The first time was bad enough—when they came to the house and I had to go to the woods with them and point out where she was. But then a day or two later I had to talk to them all over again.”
“Ah, right. They didn’t take you to the police station, did they?”
“No, the second interview—and I think there was a third, too—was in a room at some kind of municipal center.” It’s still all th
ere in my mind’s eye. The yellow walls. The small chair I sat in. The huge pit in my stomach. “I guess it was where they took kids so it would be easier for them to talk. But it was unnerving. I didn’t understand why they kept asking me the same questions over and over again.”
“They had an agenda.”
I feel a prick of anxiety. “What do you mean?”
“Are you sure you want to get into this?”
“Of course.”
Roger sighs. “One guy—I don’t even remember his name—told Dad and Lilly they thought you were being evasive.”
“Evasive? What?”
“I’m sure he was a total jerk.”
“If I seemed evasive, it was because I was shell-shocked,” I say, disturbed by his revelation. I can feel my pulse quickening. “And I was worried that they’d be upset about the shortcut part, too. That maybe I’d gone someplace I wasn’t allowed to.”
Roger turns his attention to a small bowl of homemade potato chips he must have ordered with his wine. “You want one?” he asks. “They’re totally decadent but worth it.”
“No thanks,” I say. His sudden shift in focus confuses me. “Is there something you’re not saying?”
He sighs, clearly conflicted. “Yes, there’s a bit more, though I hate to lay it on you like this. They told Dad they thought you were holding something back.”
My heart’s jackhammering at this point, propelled by a weird mix of indignation and alarm.
“But what could I have been holding back?” I ask. “It’s not like I saw someone put her—” A thought explodes in my head like a firecracker. “Wait, are you saying they thought I had something to do with her death?”
“God no, I can’t imagine that. Okay, maybe for five seconds they did. But you were nine. And there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it.”
Roger reaches across the table and clasps my hand again. “Ally, listen to me. You can’t let this get under your skin. Cops are trained to be suspicious of everyone. And it became obvious pretty quickly that the mother and that sketchy boyfriend of hers—Frank Wargo—must have done it.”
“Why weren’t they ever arrested?” I ask. I had looked up the story in the local paper several years later and seen both their pictures. Wargo and the gaunt, straggly-haired mother, Audrey Long.
“From what Dad told me, they had these convoluted alibis that turned out to be hard to puncture. As I recall, the girl had been missing for a couple of days, but the mother hadn’t reported it until the same day you found her. She said that she thought the girl was with the boyfriend, who sometimes took care of her when the mother worked, but it turned out Wargo wasn’t even in town. Or something like that.”
“Do you think they’re both still in the area?”
“I heard once that she is, but I don’t think anyone’s seen hide nor hair of him. He might still have family there, though. He was a few years behind me in school and I vaguely remember him.”
“Were there any other suspects?”
“Not that I was aware of. Let me see what I can find out on that, too. The Millerstown chief of police occasionally joins a weekly guys’ breakfast I go to at the diner. I’ll give him a ring and ask for a bit of background. See if there were any developments.”
“It would be good to know.”
I reach for my coffee cup and notice my hand is trembling slightly.
“Ally, look, please don’t think about this another second,” Roger says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s okay. I think it helped to talk about it. And I’m glad you told me about the cops being suspicious. Maybe on some level I always sensed that, and it added to my stress.”
“Okay, but give me your word you won’t dwell on it. None of that matters now.”
“I swear.”
Roger insists on walking me back to my building, promises to call me soon, and asks me to pick a weekend to come out to his place with Hugh. We hug tightly before parting. I try to draw comfort from the embrace, but I’m too fraught now to feel anything. Something seems to gnaw at me. What happened to that city girl from an hour ago, the one who was sure she had the world by the tail?
Once I’m in the apartment I find Hugh where I left him, hard at work at the dining table. He seems relieved to see me back safely, but he’s also preoccupied, and after I promise to fill him in later, he buries his nose in his papers again.
I kick off my shoes and head to the den. I consider watching a movie to distract myself, but after I’ve settled onto the love seat, I don’t bother turning on the TV or even a lamp. I simply sit in the waning light, thinking.
For the first time in a long time, I allow myself to travel fully back to the April afternoon when I found Jaycee. The woods were so hushed, I remember, and the ground slightly spongy from a recent storm. There were piles of dead and decaying leaves left on the ground from the previous fall, and I trampled through them happily, not caring about my shoes.
Jaycee was hidden under one of those piles. I felt rather than saw her at first, nearly tripping over something. Curious, I glanced downward. My gaze fell on a sliver of white that didn’t seem to belong. I kicked a section of leaves out of the way, and the wind did the rest, suddenly revealing her pale white face, eyes open. I lurched back in shock.
It’s only a doll, I told myself. I quickly kicked the leaves back into place, thinking I shouldn’t have disturbed them. And then I ran, so fast that even now, sitting in the fading light, I can still recall how much my lungs burned.
Leaning back against the cushions, I lift up my legs and tuck my feet underneath me. The room is as quiet as the woods were that day. I close my eyes, and after a moment a thought worms its way into my brain, something I’d buried deep in my memory and forgotten until just now.
I told a lie back then about finding the body. I lied to my parents, and to the police. I even lied to the therapist who wanted so much to help me.
12
SESSION WITH DR. ERLING
By the time my Monday appointment with Erling rolls around, I’m desperate to see her and unload. I’m also eager to continue the “detective work,” hoping this time it produces results.
“So,” she says as soon as I’m seated. “Tell me how you’re doing, Ally.” She laces her fingers together in her lap. There’s no wedding band on her left hand so I’ve always assumed she’s not married.
I give her a brief recap of my morning—that I managed to do a smidgen of work on my next column and even ventured outside for a while, having coffee and reading the newspaper at the neighborhood Le Pain Quotidien. But then I quickly take her back to my meeting with Roger.
“I know you said I should give my brain a rest,” I say, “but I had a drink with my brother yesterday and ended up asking him to clear up some of the mystery about that case years ago. It was a bit upsetting—I mean, you obviously knew that it would be—but it was also good to understand more about what happened.”
“How was it upsetting, Ally?”
“Roger said the police told my parents they thought I was being evasive. I suppose in hindsight I should have realized that something was off, because after the police talked to me at the house, they did a couple more interviews at this other location. Roger said they might have actually considered me a suspect.”
There’s a few seconds’ pause before she speaks.
“That you’d been involved in the little girl’s death?” she says.
“Yes. . . . The idea of it makes me sick—that they thought I could have hurt her. There was a story in the news once about two kids luring a toddler away from his mother in a shopping mall and then killing him, and I suppose it was natural for the cops to wonder.”
“Can you think of any reason you might have seemed evasive to them?”
I take a deep breath, steeling myself to say this out loud for the first time.
“Because I was. Oh god, I can’t believe what I’m about to tell you. I misled everyone back then.”
“What w
as it you weren’t truthful about?”
“The timing of everything. The day I came across the body. When I told my parents about finding Jaycee, I said it happened that afternoon, on a Friday. But I really discovered her two days before, on Wednesday. . . . And I only remembered that I’d lied when I came home from seeing Roger yesterday. Something was eating at me on the walk back, and finally, I found myself staring at this piece of truth that I’d stuffed away all these years.”
It’s a relief to finally spit it out, but it hasn’t stopped the awful churning in my stomach.
“Why do you think you waited to tell anyone what you’d found?” Erling asks.
I take a minute to consider before answering. It’s been a question I’ve been asking myself over and over since last night.
“I was worried my mom would be upset with me for taking the shortcut. I sometimes walked in those woods with her, but I was never supposed to go in there alone. Plus, I kept trying to convince myself I hadn’t found anything bad, that maybe I had only seen an abandoned doll. But I couldn’t get the image of her out of my mind, and I finally snuck back on Friday and looked from a distance. The mound was still there so I went home and told my mom.”
“About Jaycee, but not about the time lapse.”
“Right. I let her believe I’d just taken the shortcut and found the body. I must have decided not to make things worse for myself by saying I’d been sitting on the truth for two days. . . . And I allowed myself to forget the real story.”
“How does it feel to bring it to the surface after all this time?”
I throw up my hands and at the same time feel my eyes prick with tears.
“I’m glad I remembered. I am. It seems important. But at the same time, I feel—ashamed. That lie was unfair not only to my parents but to the police, too.”
“It makes sense that as a child you didn’t want to disappoint your parents and told a lie to protect yourself. Lots of children do that, and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
Her tone is filled with assurance, and I nod in appreciation.