“Okay,” Cam said, relenting. “For you, Alexa Thornhill. Only for you.”
In point of fact the teacups spun faster than Alexa remembered, and, contrary to what she thought, the riders did not control the spin. The ride seemed to go on for a semester and a half. Alexa loved the feeling—she even found herself emitting an out-of-character whoop—but when she caught sight of Cam’s expression she thought she might have gone too far. Queasy was an understatement.
Finally the teacups stopped. Cam was still holding on to the center wheel. His head was bowed.
“Sorry,” she said. “Too spinny?” They were the last ones left in a teacup, and the ride operator was looking at them sternly.
“A little too spinny.” He looked up; his face had taken on a greenish tint. “A little too spinny after eating. I’m just going to—” He pointed toward a trash can, unable to finish his sentence, and hightailed it out of the cup. Alexa got herself out, located Cam’s back near the trash can and turned away, to give him privacy. But then a good amount of time passed. Not just seconds, definitely minutes. She wondered if he was okay. She turned back to the trash can and didn’t see him. She checked out the game booths. She looked in the line for the lemonade stand. Then she spotted him, over by the line for the junior sports cars. Cam was more than okay. He was smiling and laughing. He was in an animated conversation with . . . Shelby McIntyre.
Alexa walked closer. Shelby was back from Africa, apparently; she was overseeing a day camp field trip. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing a T-shirt that said counselor on it in block letters.
“Hey,” she said. “I couldn’t find you, Cam. Hi, Shelby.”
“You two know each other, right?” Cam looked uneasy, but it was possible his stomach was still roiling from the teacup rides.
“Absolutely,” said Shelby. Her mouth opened and closed and she looked from Alexa to Cam and back again.
“Great to see you,” said Alexa to Shelby amicably.
Shelby did not take the opportunity to say that it was also nice to see Alexa. Shelby turned to Cam and said, “I have to get back to the kids now. But I’ll definitely call you about that thing, okay?” She touched his arm when she said that.
“What thing?” asked Alexa. Nobody answered her.
Once Shelby was gone, Alexa could feel that Cam’s attention had wandered off, perhaps following Shelby to the Jungle Bounce. She couldn’t have that.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said. “Nobody else knows this, but I want to tell you. Just you, Cam. Only you.” She spoke quickly, before she had time to lose her nerve. “You know Katie? Well. You won’t believe what I found out about her.”
Cam’s attention was right where she wanted it. “Something bad?”
Alexa hesitated. “I’m not sure. I mean, yes. I mean, it’s not good.”
He looked worried. “About her? That little girl? Isn’t she like ten?”
“Eleven,” said Alexa. “Same as Morgan. And it was actually about her and her mother, what I found out. About both of them together. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a pretty big deal. I just—I just feel like I have to tell someone, Cam. Like I can’t keep it a secret any longer. I’m scared.” With each word she could feel the power of Shelby McIntyre receding.
“Scared?” he said. “What are you scared of?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes, and then she looked up at him out of the corner. She was nailing this.
Maybe Cam Hartwell was not so perfect after all. Maybe, like everyone else on the planet, he was human, and he was curious. He met her eyes. His eyebrows lifted. And then she was pointing at a bench and they were sitting down next to each other and she was telling him everything.
39.
The Squad
Sometime during July Alexa Thornhill posted on her Instagram a photo of Katie and Morgan at Canobie Lake.
(We all followed Alexa’s Instagram account. She knew a lot about fashion! And makeup! When she Rented the Runway for her prom dress she posted the three dresses she was deciding among. Most of us voted for the KaufmanFranco red high low gown, which she did, in the end, choose. Though two of us stood firm for the Giambattista Valli sweetheart dress.)
Anyway, when we saw that photo we were all like, Whaaaat? Canobie Lake is typically a group activity. Three of the moms take all of the girls. It’s always been that way, since they were too small to go on the Yankee Cannonball, since before they built Untamed. Maybe not everybody can go every year, maybe somebody is at summer camp or on a family vacation or what have you, and the moms rotate in and out, depending on who is available, but at least everybody is included! Everybody is invited! Everybody is given the chance to opt in!
This year, apparently, it was a couples’ activity, the couple being Morgan and Katie.
After that, Maya and Riley went to Canobie together. Then Callie and Izzy. Taylor and Audrey ran into Anna and Abby, and it was said that they didn’t even make eye contact in the line for the log flume.
It was almost funny, but not that funny, how Katie Griffin changed everything. Forever, the girls had all been one big happy group, and suddenly there were these . . . well, for lack of a better word, these factions forming. Everybody starting to break off in twos. We’d been working hard since these girls were in Pull-Ups to keep this group together, and it was not nothing to do that. The organization required. The group texts that had to be tended several times a day. The plans that had to be considered and reconsidered before being offered to the whole group. We had done all of this upfront work for a reason. We were going to go to middle school as one, a united front, a whole lunch table.
And then one new person came in, and look what happened. Things started splintering like pieces of a felled tree. Breaking off like icicles from the edge of a roof.
Maybe we are mixing our metaphors here. But surely you get the picture.
40.
Sherri
“Do you want to cover this bit of gray here?”
Sherri put an alarmed hand to her temple, where the stylist, Brittany, was pointing. Sherri had come to the salon that Rebecca had recommended, Shanti, for a simple cut, although she wished she were getting full foils, like she would have in the old days. She missed her glimmering, shimmering hair. It wasn’t in the budget, even if she could have allowed herself.
“Yes!” she said. “Absolutely.” Sherri had been blond for so long; she’d only gone back to her natural color in that tiny bathroom in the awful motel room. She hated her natural color—a beigy brown that made her think of sand after it had been doused by a wave. She hadn’t noticed the gray in her temples. How long had it been there? She supposed the blond highlights had covered the gray all that time.
“It’s just a tiny bit,” said Brittany merrily. “No worries.”
Well, that was easy for Brittany to say. She was probably twenty-four years old. It worried Sherri plenty.
“Lean back,” said Brittany later, when she’d retrieved Sherri from the cozy chair where she’d been dozing while the color set. Brittany’s skin was smooth and plump and her eyes were gigantic. She wore several bracelets on each arm that clinked musically as she went about her business, and after she washed the color out of Sherri’s hair and put the conditioner into it she gave Sherri a scalp massage that was so good it was practically orgasmic. It had been a really long time since another person had touched Sherri with any sort of tenderness.
Suddenly Sherri thought about Katie at the amusement park. What if she got separated from Morgan and Alexa? What if somebody from their past had followed them there and was going to snatch her from one of the lines? An amusement park would be a very easy place to snatch a child. Sherri never should have allowed Katie to go.
She strained very briefly against Brittany’s hand as though she planned to lift her head out of the sink, wrap it into a towel, and drive to Canobie Lake herself. Brittany kept her gentle grip, and Sherri
forced herself to settle. The girls were with Alexa, not by themselves. Everybody had a phone. Katie knew to shout for help—no, to scream for help—if she ever found herself in trouble; and the girls knew to stay together the whole time, even in the bathroom. Especially in the bathroom.
Soon enough, because of the warm water, the ambient white noise of the salon and the comforting sensation of Brittany’s fingers, she allowed her mind to drift.
Three days after she found the necklace, Bobby told her he’d be out of town for two nights. Business, he said. She didn’t ask where: she never asked.
The morning he left she called the FBI. She’d expected that when she spoke her voice would be shaky, but it was sure and strong. She said, “I have information on the kidnapping and murder of Madison Miller.”
They asked her to come to the local office. They greeted her politely, like she was a dinner guest. They got her coffee. They brought her to a room and sat her down with three FBI agents, two male and one female. Sherri kept her gaze on the female agent. She felt more comfortable talking to her. The female agent had hair in a blunt bob and a no-nonsense way about her but at the same time she had really kind eyes. She was part badass, part therapist. She wore a wedding ring, and Sherri could picture her at home in her kitchen, mixing oatmeal for breakfast, checking a child’s math homework. This image made Sherri want to do a good job for her; she wanted to do a good job turning in her criminal husband.
She started with Madison Miller’s necklace, and then she worked her way backward. She had so much to tell them. Years’ worth. She had details about meetings, and she had dates and times, and she had a good mental record of all the different items she’d seen at different times in the hiding place. She told them that she’d never been able to figure out the password to the laptop.
The female agent smiled at her. “Our guys can get around that,” she said. “Why don’t you just tell us where the laptop is, Mrs. Giordano, and we’ll take care of everything else.”
Sherri talked and she talked and she talked, until it came time to pick up Katie from school. The agents asked her if she felt safe returning home. She said she did. They said they would get to work right away securing a search warrant.
That night Sherri didn’t sleep. She imagined Bobby might come back home unexpectedly. She imagined Bobby would kill her the way he’d killed Madison Miller.
The next day she kept Katie home from school. She told her she had a mother/daughter day planned. She told her they’d go to breakfast and for a manicure. The whole time they were at breakfast, Sherri was shaking. She spilled her coffee. The manicurist had to hold her hand steady so she could paint her nails.
When they got home Sherri told Katie to go up to Sherri’s room and put on a movie. She called the agent with the kind eyes and she said seven words. She said, “I was wrong. We aren’t safe here.”
If the agent batted an eye, Sherri didn’t hear it over the phone. She said, “Sit tight, Mrs. Giordano. Someone is coming for you and your daughter. It won’t be long.”
The rest of it happened so fast, and also in complete slow motion. The FBI took Katie and Sherri into protective custody. Under the protection of the search warrant, they took apart Bobby’s office, bit by bit by bit. It was easy for them to find the hiding place because Sherri had told them about it, but no doubt they would have found it anyway. By the time Bobby got home, there were FBI agents there to arrest him. The same thing happened at Joey’s house, and at Sonny’s, and at Carmen’s: all four within the span of a few hours. Gone.
Sherri didn’t let herself think about Bobby’s face when the agents approached. She didn’t let herself think about him looking around their house, their big beautiful home, feeling confused—feeling scared. Instead she thought about Madison’s parents walking by her empty bedroom. She thought about Madison’s dog lying near her bed, waiting for Madison to come home. She thought about the last minutes of Madison’s life, the wire tightening around her neck. She thought about the little brothers.
Once Bobby was remanded into custody, awaiting trial, Sherri and Katie were allowed to go back home. Sherri told Katie Bobby was gone because he’d been accused of some very bad things. Katie said, “Did he do the bad things?” Sherri looked at her for a long time, and then finally she said, “I don’t know, Katie-kins. I don’t know. But I think he might have. We’ll know more, after the trial.”
It was a small grace that Katie’s school was in another town, but it wasn’t on another planet. People talked and talked and talked. Sherri didn’t get out of the car at drop-off or pickup, the way she used to. She didn’t chat with anyone. While Katie was at school, she hardly left the house. If she did, she shopped in other towns. She wore a hat. Glasses. Whatever it took. She stopped sleeping. She stopped eating. She pulled herself together in the mornings and the afternoons for Katie, and in between she fell apart. Every. Single. Day.
Weeks went by. A month, two, while they prepared the case. Six months, then nearly nine. At some point someone from the U.S. Attorney’s office came to see her. Sherri poured him a glass of lemonade and he said, “We need you to tell a jury everything you’ve already told the FBI, Mrs. Giordano. We need you to testify at the trial. Do you think you can do that?”
Sherri’s answer was immediate. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
He persisted. She was the only reliable witness. She was the only one who knew everything. She was the one who’d heard them talking in the office; she was the one who had talked about Madison with Bobby, who had gauged his reactions, who knew the time line. If she didn’t testify, there was a chance all the men could go free.
In Sherri’s dreams that night, Katie was wearing the ripped jeans, the pink Vans, the charm necklace. Katie was leaving the Target, approaching her car. Sherri woke up just as somebody reached for Katie.
The man from the U.S. Attorney’s office returned the next day at the same time. She poured more lemonade. He sipped and looked at her over the rim of his glass.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could help more. But I’ve done all that I can do. If I testify, somebody is going to kill me or my daughter.”
That’s when he leaned forward, and he set the glass down, and he looked at her without blinking. He had gray eyes—an unusual color, the color of storm clouds. He said, “I’d like to talk to you about a program that protects witnesses in certain cases.”
Sherri said, “Yes?”
The man said, “It’s unusual for a noncriminal to seek this protection, but it’s not unheard of, and in the case of you and your daughter we think it might be warranted.” Bobby and the others were being tried specifically for Madison Miller’s death, but the other evidence—the trafficking, the money laundering—could eventually implicate others. Bobby’s operation had tentacles, and nobody knew how far they reached. “Have you ever heard,” said the man with the unusual gray eyes, “of the Witness Protection Program?”
“I think so,” she said. “Like in the movies?”
“It’s not an automatic that you and your daughter would be accepted, but in a case like this, where your testimony is crucial, and where others who might be later convicted of criminal activity remain free, we can certainly talk to the right people about it, and see where we are. I think that’s something we should do. Do you agree with that, Mrs. Giordano?” He looked at Sherri intently and also indulgently, like she was a child, and he was offering her an ice cream. Somehow he managed not to blink as he waited for her to answer. He waited a very long time.
Finally: “Yes,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “Yes, please. I’d like to hear more.”
There were no cameras allowed in the courtroom; all media was banned. But they couldn’t ban the defendants from the courtroom—they couldn’t ban Bobby from seeing his wife, from hearing everything she had to say. They couldn’t ban Sherri’s heart from breaking anew at the start of each of the eleven days. Four defendants, one trial. Four convictions, four sentences. One protected
government witness.
And then Sharon and Katie Giordano disappeared forever and ever.
What Sherri remembered most about the time they spent preparing for their new lives was the bathroom in the room that she and Katie shared, in a dingy motel in an “undisclosed location.” She couldn’t disclose it now even if she wanted to because she didn’t know where it was.
All these motels look the same: a rutted parking lot, a row of doors with two plastic chairs set outside each, a front office that smelled like old French fries, a chain-link fence surrounding an underutilized pool. The toilet ran unless you jiggled the handle, and there was a rust stain in the tub. Bobby would never, ever, ever have taken Sherri to a motel like this. Or any motel.
Sometimes, when Katie was sleeping, Sherri went into the terrible bathroom and sat on the toilet seat and looked at the rust stain in the tub and cried and cried for everything they’d lost.
They lost so much. The money, of course. Their social security numbers. They got new ones, but they were hard to memorize and Sherri still had to look hers up anytime she needed them. Their last name, although Katie got to keep her first name and they both retained the G from their last names. They altered Katie’s school records to reflect attendance at a different school, essentially rewriting her past.
In the motel room they made Katie write her new name again and again and again. Katie Griffin Katie Griffin Katie Griffin. Sherri practiced hers too. Slipups could be deadly. They role-played meeting new people and introducing themselves. They practiced what was called “cocktail party conversation.”
What Sherri was supposed to say at a cocktail party was that she and Katie moved from Ohio after a nasty divorce. Then she was supposed to gracefully change the subject, but if anybody pressed her she had the details ready to go. (Columbus; Bobby took up with a woman at his office; they lived in a neighborhood called Livingston Park on a street called Carpenter Street; their house was made of redbrick.)
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