by Heidi Pitlor
Lovell headed toward his bedroom, nudged forward the half-open door, and stood at the end of the king-size bed, looking over at the gold-and-turquoise damask comforter, the matching pillows set side by side, the identical wooden end tables with identical antique lamps, their nut-brown shades hung with amber beads, an ivory wool shag carpet at the foot of the bed.
The bed was positioned directly beneath a large skylight, now a saturated black. Lovell realized that he would never get any sleep in this room. He gathered the comforter and a pillow and lugged them down the hallway and onto the stairs. He spread out the comforter across the long couch in the living room. He looked over at the many shadows on the walls, the silhouettes of branches bobbing in the wind.
Chapter 20
They were not alone, at least. Thousands of students moved in and around the buildings behind them. Hannah turned from Jamie and walked briskly toward the lot, concerned that he might try to catch up with her, but when she looked back, he stood frozen, his eyes on her. She moved her gaze to the huddle of brick buildings before her. She would not give him the satisfaction of turning around again. But as she tripped over the curb and onto the concrete, she became aware of herself half rushing, half walking in a frenzied escape toward her car, a nervous woman thrown into a tizzy by a friendly stranger. And she could not help glancing back again, and there he stood in that same spot. He lifted his hand in a happy wave. She had overreacted to harmless flirtation. She had overestimated her own impact on him.
When she reached her car, she saw from the corner of her eye Jamie walking near the water. It was hard to know in which direction he was headed. She waited before she opened her door. She would take just another moment to show him that she was more than she had appeared. She leaned her head back and tried to look as though she were enjoying one last breath of ocean air. When she lowered her face again, there he was, walking toward her. He cocked his head as he came closer, stepping through the space between them, and she instinctively pushed her hand against his chest and felt the thumping beneath his shirt. She pulled back—she had kept her hand there for too long. But he did not move away. He just squinted, evaluating her eyes, and then he kissed her.
“Jesus,” she said as she pulled away, dizzy and short of breath. It seemed as if she had just woken after the longest sleep to find herself inside a burning room. I am Hannah Hall, she thought. I have children and a husband. She looked down at his watch and saw that it was already past noon. She could—now and always—feel nothing more acutely than time and with it the urgency of the next task. She had gotten this from her mother, she felt sure, this innate discipline. “Good-bye again,” Hannah said, and she reached for the door handle.
Chapter 21
Ten weeks after Hannah had disappeared, one month after Lovell learned about the arm bone, another detective from Homicide in Boston called him at work to say that a section of a metatarsal, or a bone from a foot—a woman’s—had been found behind a Burger King in Roxbury.
“God,” Lovell said.
“I wanted you to hear it from me and not those reporters outside your house.”
Was Lovell expected to thank him? Lovell’s mind raced: Hannah is Hannah, not some bones somewhere. This is not her, this is not Tu. “You can’t ID it though.”
“Not at this point.”
He wanted to say, Come back to me when you have something definitive, because this slow dribble of non-news? These updates that are not in fact updates? These are bullshit.
His colleague Lucinda stood watching him just outside his office. They had worked together for a decade.
“Lovell,” she said after he hung up, her face contorted with sympathy. She stepped into his office. She had coarse gray hair to her waist and wore a plaid dress with a white cardigan. She already knew, of course. She had probably read about it online. It was unbearable, the speed with which everyone else learned the news that he had only just learned himself.
“Luce.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else should I be?”
She just shook her head. She was only a few years older than him, but she could have been his aunt or even his grandmother.
“They can’t ID it. They don’t know anything at this point.”
“Go home and sit by the phone. You should be there for your kids.”
“I’m always there for them.”
She nodded sadly.
“The numbers from NOAA just came in.”
“So?” She left his office and returned a moment later with a cardboard banker’s box. “Get what you need and bring it home. I’ll tell everyone here. You can call in for staff meetings if we need you.” She stood there, waiting for him to pack up his office. She was not going anywhere. “Don’t come back here until it makes sense.”
“All right,” he finally said.
“And Lovell? The kids.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Luce. Cut me some slack, all right? I can’t be with them twenty-four-seven.”
“I was going to say you ought to call their schools and get them excused.”
“Oh.”
“When you’re done packing up, you close your door here and you do that. OK? Tell the schools that you don’t know when they’re going to come back.” She began to button up her cardigan. When she was finished, she crossed her arms. “You’ll do that?”
THAT EVENING, LUCINDA e-mailed Lovell the name of a psychologist who worked primarily with kids who had lost parents or siblings. “Feel free to ignore this if you want—I don’t mean to intrude. But she is supposed to be really good,” Lucinda wrote.
He wanted to remind her that his kids had not officially lost anyone. That no one was mourning anyone just yet. He began to type a response, but the sight of his words on the screen—the hard tone of them—made him stop. Ethan had begun sleepwalking again. For all Lovell knew, his daughter was pregnant. When he had told them about the foot bone that afternoon, he had reminded them that no match had been made and that murders were unfortunately not unheard of in Boston, so this really could have come from anyone. They listened and blinked and believed him, he thought. Even Janine, who said, “Grown-ups can be horrible people.” These moments would probably color the rest of their lives. “What’s her number?” he finally wrote to Lucinda.
Janine was reluctant when Lovell presented the idea. “I don’t know. I mean, I assumed that you’d want us to talk to someone,” she said. “Is it a man or a woman?”
“Woman.”
“Figures.”
“What?”
“That you wouldn’t want us talking to a man,” she said.
“What does that mean? Would you rather see a man?”
“It makes no difference to me, Dad.”
“I have no idea what to say to you anymore.”
“That’s because you are really limited when it comes to emotions.”
“I am your father. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be here,” he said. He added, “It’d be good if you were a little nicer to me.”
“Maybe you need to earn it.”
He burned with the urge to slap her. “This,” he said, using whatever restraint he could muster, “can be something you talk about with the therapist.” He walked out of the room and called upstairs for Ethan.
“What is this doctor gonna want to know?” Ethan asked.
“Probably whatever you want to tell her,” Lovell answered. “She’s there to help you get through this stuff.”
“Well, who is she?” Ethan asked.
“Listen, Lucinda said this woman is supposed to be really smart. Although you may not believe this, I do worry about you guys. A lot.”
“That must be why you pawn us off on Grandma all the time,” Janine said. Lovell could not have traveled to Los Angeles without his mother’s help. Since his return, he had been relying on her to drive them to some practices and other activities.
“Would you rather I had pulled you out of all your afterschool stuff because
there was no way I could get home in time to pick you up?”
Both kids glared at him. He instantly felt guilty.
“Fine, I’ll go. But I’m only saying what I want to say,” Janine insisted. “She can’t make me act like some big victim.”
“Believe me, no one thinks of you that way,” Lovell said. Janine and Ethan began to walk away, and Lovell said, “Also, I think you guys should take a break from school for a while.”
“Why?” Ethan asked.
Lovell should have thought this through. He looked at his kids, side by side in front of him. “There’s just too much going on right now.”
“But you said that bone was someone else’s,” Ethan said.
“I did, I know.” Lovell’s heart dropped. “I just think it’s a good idea.” Why had he told Lucinda that he would do this? Maybe it would be better for them to continue on with their daily routines.
“OK,” Janine said somberly.
“You can do your schoolwork at home. I’ll call your teachers and ask them to send us a bunch of stuff. And we can go see this doctor and be together, and I promise, it’ll all work out.”
DR. VALMER’S OFFICE was two towns away, in the attic of her stately Tudor home, a dusty but happy-looking space with heavy yellow and gold tapestries draped from the slanted eaves and a patchwork of amber and brown Turkish carpets on the scuffed wood floor. Dr. Valmer had suggested she meet with the two kids together. “If they want to come to me on their own sometimes, that’s fine too,” she had said over the phone. She had sounded as if she recognized Lovell’s name, maybe from the news, but she had not admitted as much.
Lovell walked Janine and Ethan toward a white couch and hovered behind them. Dr. Valmer was a middle-aged Germanic-looking woman with spiky blond hair and a red silk scarf patterned with fruit. Lovell waited for her to say something, maybe pull him aside for a chat before they started. Janine lifted off a knit skullcap to reveal her short hair. Ethan began to chew on a thumbnail. “OK,” Lovell said. “So, anything else?”
“We’re ready to start,” Dr. Valmer said.
“I guess I’ll come back in fifty minutes?”
She nodded, and the floor creaked beneath him as he made his way out of the room and back down the stairs. He got into his car and sat for a moment, wondering whether he had done the right thing by bringing them here. The conversation he’d had with the doctor over the phone had been cursory, a couple of questions from her about how long Hannah had been gone, the names and ages of the kids. What if there was some sort of grief counseling being pushed on them right now? Talk of death and healing and moving on, all of that? He should have told the doctor more, the state of the case and all the questions that remained.
This was a neighborhood of towering Victorians and Tudors, slate walkways, three-car garages, and sprawling, mature trees. In Dr. Valmer’s driveway a silver Mercedes sat before a copper-roofed pergola that, from what he could see, led to an enormous, sloped backyard, now coated in snow. How much would this woman up in that office really comprehend about their lives? And his troubles with Hannah, her disappearance, the dribble of shadowy updates, this dark, unpredictable new world in which he and the kids lived—what could Dr. Valmer or anyone else really do to fix any of that?
He stayed in his car for the remainder of their session, listening to news radio. He could not think of what else to do.
“They did nicely,” she said when he went back inside the house to pick them up. She suggested the two come twice weekly. “You and I should set up a time to touch base in a week or so.”
“Sure, yeah,” he said, and he went for his checkbook.
Janine had already slid on her jacket and skullcap and moved toward the door.
“So?” he said once they were in the car.
“Can you turn on the radio?” Ethan asked.
Lovell shifted into drive. “Tell me how it went first.”
“It went,” Janine said.
“Did you like her?”
“She talked a lot,” Ethan said. “Radio?”
“What did she say? What did you guys talk about?”
“The Red Sox. The weather,” Janine joked. “And Mom, of course. And you.”
Lovell drove through the neighborhood and came to a stop sign, skidding briefly on a patch of ice. “Did it seem like she knew what she was doing?”
Janine, her eyes still out the window, said, “As much as anyone does.”
“She gave us peppermints,” Ethan added.
“Oh?” Lovell said hopefully.
“They were gross,” Janine said.
“But do you think she was helpful?” Lovell tried again.
“She’s a little traditional,” Janine said.
“Meaning?”
“Like, she was asking about how it was for us not to have someone to do our laundry and cook for us these days.”
“Well, that’s a piece of this,” he said.
Janine looked at him in the rearview mirror.
“No?”
“Mom’s more than just our maid.”
“Of course she is—was. Is.” Not one part of this was easy.
He wanted to know more about what approach Dr. Valmer had taken. Had they opened up to her right away? Or had she just taken this session to get to know them? Did she have a plan for them? He wondered what they had told her, whether they had even begun to talk about Hannah’s disappearance. Or maybe they just talked about Hannah herself? And him—what exactly had they told the doctor about him?
WHEN THE TIME came for Lovell to meet with her, Dr. Valmer greeted him in the cramped waiting area that had been set up outside her office, her red reading glasses halfway down her nose. “Hi there.” She smiled and ushered him forward. A heart-shaped bowl of individually wrapped peppermints sat on the coffee table before the white couch. “I’ve heard about these mints,” he said as he moved before the couch. “But not much else.”
She sat opposite him on a rust-colored wingback chair, her worn black flats propped on a crocheted stool cushion. “They’re great kids,” she began.
“I think so.”
“Janine’s exploring some different identities.”
“You mean her hair? Yeah, that was a surprise. I wasn’t totally in favor of it. I only found out after the fact.”
“And the gay neighbors.”
“She’s not gay. She just wants to get knocked up and carry their child,” he tried to joke.
Dr. Valmer looked at him. “She’s exerting control during a time when there is little of this. She’s angry. She’s grieving. They both are. They miss their mom. Sounds like she was an incredible woman.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “We may not have reached the point of grief yet.”
“Meaning?”
“We don’t have all the information here. There’s still a lot of evidence that’s not come in.”
She nodded slowly, as if diagnosing him with something. She tilted her head. “So tell me about your wife.”
“Hannah was pretty great.”
“Have you talked to anyone about everything that’s happened? Any counselors?”
“Not yet. I probably should.”
“If you decide you’d like some names, let me know.” She gazed at him kindly.
“I guess you’re primarily here for the kids.”
“I am,” she said. “But there are plenty of names of good people I could give you.” She rose with a flourish, went to the corner of the room, and shuffled through some papers behind her desk. “So, Janine and Ethan and I are creating what I like to call a ‘lasting legacy’ for their mother. Here it is.” She produced a wide black scrapbook with the word Memories inscribed in gold on the front.
Lovell went cold. He thought about telling her, Thank you, but we’re all done here. You won’t be seeing my kids again.
“Go ahead, you can look,” she said.
“This isn’t confidential?” he tried.
“They know you’re going to see it.
They’re making it for the three of you as a family.”
She waited for him. He had no choice but to lift the front cover. On the first page he saw a rectangular white label with the words “Our Mother.” Under it, in various colors of Magic Marker, they had written: Thoughtful. Nice. Loved flowers. Pretty. Good mom. Great cook. Liked holidays. Lovell adjusted his posture and turned to the next page, where beneath another label marked “Important Moments” he saw small objects that had been attached with Scotch tape: an old elephant-shaped birthday card for Ethan, a postcard sent to Janine her first year at sleepaway camp.
Lovell shrank into his seat.
“What is it like for you to see this?” she asked.
He looked up at her. “A little weird, I guess,” he managed. He had the sense that his family and their messy, wonderful, excruciating lives had been placed inside some hulking steel machine, flattened into a piece of paper, cut into the shape of a heart, and run through a laminator. “I didn’t know that—I mean, I guess I thought you’d be talking with them about other things.”
“Yes?”
“I just wonder, you know, will this actually help them? Is it really making them feel better?” He had imagined more talking and crying, less arts and crafts. More talk of fear and anxiety, less talk of remembrance.
She peered at him from above her reading glasses.
“I mean, it’s really nice that they’re doing this,” he said.
“I’m trying to help them turn a negative memory fraught with trauma into a more positive one.”
“Good luck with that,” he said.
“They need to reclaim their power of agency, Lovell. Victims of violence find these kinds of activities incredibly helpful.”
“Did Janine let you use that word, ‘victim’?”
“I didn’t need to.”
He turned the page and saw a list that the kids had made under the heading, “Favorite Things”: Emily Dickinson, the Red Sox, classical music, kiwi fruit, the ocean. “If you think it’s working.”