by Sasha Dawn
“You think the Jane Doe in Georgia is my mother?”
“Authorities there think it’s more likely she’s Trina Jordan.”
Dad’s words replay in my head: when the dust clears, Trina Jordan will be living a new life of her choosing . . .
Or maybe she’s dead. Better her than Mom, but either way, it’s bad news. Either way, if the Jane Doe turns out to be Mom or Trina, they’re looking at my father. Lose-lose. “How did she die?”
“I can’t disclose that.”
With a slight tremor in my hands, I shove the photograph of the maybe-dead girl back across the table.
“All those years ago, before Trina was classified as a missing person, after you turned up in your neighbor’s basement and were so insistent that your mother was hiding in your neighbor’s house, I brought a team of dogs out. Do you remember that?”
“Vaguely.”
“The dogs alerted behind the barn.”
“They . . . what?” My hands are full-out shaking now, and splintered fragments of memories come back to me. The digging. The dogs. “What does that mean? Alerted?”
“It means there was a body there at one time.”
“But you didn’t find anything. I’d remember if you found something.”
He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “We didn’t find anything.”
He never told me that the dogs alerted, though. Maybe because, at first, I was too little to understand. And then, as I got older, I refused to listen to anything he said, shut him down with blanket denials and dismissals of my father’s possible guilt.
“At one time, you said.”
“The dogs aren’t always right. Could be they responded to something else, old remains, maybe.”
“But you didn’t find old remains. So that means . . . you think my mom was there, at some point?”
He pauses longer than usual. “It’s a possibility, Sami, considering what’s happening in Georgia.”
A slideshow plays in my mind. Memories of Mom placing a plate of cookies on the table. A hand reaching for one. A male voice: I might gain ten pounds if you keep making these cookies. Mom, laughing: You might try not eating the whole batch.
“This Jane Doe has spurred a theory,” Eschermann says.
I blink back to the present.
“Could be, if there was a body behind the barn, it was moved, maybe to Atlanta. Your father, at the time, drove a Chevy Express 1500.”
Big enough to hide a woman’s body in the back.
And Eschermann thinks my father may have transported one.
“But . . . Dad never went to Atlanta. You’d know if he had.”
“Actually, like I said, the missing persons report in your mother’s case wasn’t filed until six weeks after the disappearance. And in Trina’s case, no one reported her missing for nearly ten years. The police did talk with Heather and your father about their whereabouts during that six-week period, but as I said, the interviews occurred at the same time.”
“And they said they didn’t take a trip.”
“I’m hoping you can help me with that. Do you remember your father taking a trip?”
“No.” I can’t look at him. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I believe you think that’s true. Someday, though, a mundane detail may surface, and it may not even seem significant. But trust me when I say that those mundane details crack cases.”
I just shake my head. It’s such a long time ago now. And how can he expect me to remember something I didn’t even know at the time?
“I’ve mentioned it before,” he says. “Hypnosis. Your father will never consent to it—”
“Because he doesn’t want me to relive the worst day of my life.”
“—but if we’re still in this position a year or two from now, when you’re of legal age to consent, I hope you’ll consider it. The longer we wait, the more ineffective it will be.”
“So it’s probably a moot point already. It’s been ten years. And this girl . . . this Trina . . . she was hardly even married to my dad, you said so yourself. And you don’t even know that the body in Georgia used to be behind the barn—is there any way to tell?—and she’s been gone a long time—”
“The more sophisticated our networks become, the more easily information is shared across the country. Not uncommon these days for a Jane Doe to be identified a decade after remains are recovered.”
“It’s a coincidence,” I say.
“If she’d died in a car accident, I’d 100 percent agree with you, but—”
“I’m sorry this happened to Trina Jordan, but my dad doesn’t know anything about it. And I’m sorry my mom didn’t want to be a mom, but she isn’t dead. She just renewed her passport. And if she renewed her passport, she obviously wants to go somewhere even farther away. It’s all a coincidence.”
Eschermann’s nodding. “Could be.” Thumbs still twiddling, head bobbing in a nod. “One theory in Trina’s case names your mother as a person of interest. Ex-wife Number Two goes missing around the time ex-wife Number One’s last seen. And now that Number One may be identified as this Jane Doe, there’s suddenly a passport renewed—in the second wife’s name.”
I don’t have a choice now. I have to meet his stare.
“It would explain why your mother’s been gone as long as she has been, wouldn’t it? And according to your father, your mother had planned to go back to Georgia.”
I wipe tears from my eyes.
“All these years,” he continues, “it’s been an enigma I couldn’t wrap my head around. Why would a mother leave her daughter, drop off the face of the earth and allow the world to think she could be dead? If she had something to do with Trina Jordan’s disappearance, it might make more sense.”
My heart pounds. “So you think she’s been hiding because . . . because she murdered someone.” That’s just as bad as her being dead. Worse, maybe. “My mom wouldn’t hurt a fly. She’s a vegetarian, can’t justify killing animals to eat. She . . . she used to put cocoons in jars so the birds wouldn’t eat them, and she released the butterflies when they hatched! And you think she’s capable of putting someone in a ditch?”
“Huh.” A look of deep concentration crosses Eschermann’s face.
“And my dad doesn’t know anything about Trina Jordan.” There’s got to be a scenario that doesn’t involve one of my parents being a murderer. But if there is, Eschermann apparently hasn’t found it. I stand and hike my bag onto my shoulder. “And he sure as hell wouldn’t have done anything to my mom. And you”—I look to Neilla—“you should know that. You knew them! You saw them together. You know he couldn’t have done anything to—”
“Look, Sami,” Neilla says soothingly. “I’ve known you since you were a little girl. Your mother’s case is the reason I became a cop. Trust me. We just want to find her. The whole community. As much as you do.”
She slides a box of tissues toward me, and I instinctively reach down to take one.
“Then actually look for her instead of obsessing about my dad!”
Eschermann leans forward, his hands clasped on the table. “I know you think I want to pin your mom’s disappearance on your dad, but that’s not my goal here, Sami. If you can give me information to prove something in your dad’s favor, I’m looking for that too. My goal? Justice. Justice for whoever’s responsible for Trina Jordan. Justice for your mom, if indeed she needs it.”
I mechanically blot away my tears with the tissue I took. He’s not lying. That’s why I’ve never been able to hate him, as much as he infuriates me. “How long until you know? About the Jane Doe?”
“It takes about a month or so, depending on the backlog at the lab. It’s already been a few weeks.”
“Then pretty soon you’ll know. You’ll know this is all a coincidence.”
“And if it isn’t a coincidence,” he says, “I guess we’ll know that soon enough too. Your father has a third ex-wife now, doesn’t he?”
Heather.
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“Anything happens to her, and we won’t be able to call it a coincidence, will we?”
I stare at him, appalled at what he’s implying. “Nothing’s happened to her.” I can barely choke it out.
“Let’s hope it stays that way.”
Neilla drives me home. Just as she’s about to turn her squad car onto my street, she veers back onto Charles Avenue. “Channel Five,” she says.
I peer down the road as we pass through the intersection. Sure enough, there’s a crew standing outside my house, filming.
“I can escort you to the door, but you’ll still be on camera.” She sighs and drums her fingertips against the steering wheel. “Your call: you want to go to the Nun?”
I probably should, if only to apologize for being nasty to Cassidy earlier today, but I want to change clothes and fix my makeup first. “Can you drop me at Schmidt’s place? I’ll cut through the backyard.” It’s going to be a trick to get in without being seen, even through the back door, but it’s worth a shot.
Too bad the tunnel connecting our place and Schmidt’s is out of commission, or I might use it now.
“Sam, are you and Mr. Schmidt . . .” Her head bobbles from side to side, like she’s trying to find the right words. “. . . neighborly? Do you see him around? Talk to him?”
“Not much. Why?”
“Something I keep coming back to.” She rounds the corner of Schmidt’s block. “I remember it from back then, but I also keep seeing it in the file. You said it more than once: right after your mother disappeared, you were sure she’d been at Schmidt’s place.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why?” She pulls up to the curb in front of Schmidt’s enormous Victorian.
“I’m not sure.” I study the place now. All its windows, like eyes, staring out at the world. All the nooks and secret niches it must hide within its walls.
“I used to think it was just because of the size of the place, or maybe because I couldn’t imagine where else she’d go, but lately, I’ve been wondering . . .” I stop myself. Does what I’m about to say sound utterly ridiculous? “I wonder if my mom and Schmidt were . . . more than friends.”
“Is that what you think?”
I shrug. “I have no proof. My father says it’s not true. But I remember spending time there.”
“Because of the nephew, maybe.”
Maybe.
“Let me ask you something.” Her brow furrows, as if she’s concentrating. “Do you think there’s any chance your mother arranged a playdate with the nephew that day? And then took off? It would explain why there’s no record of a sitter.”
“I don’t remember ever being at Schmidt’s without my mother. And the police checked him out back then, right? Schmidt?”
“They interviewed him.”
“Because, you’d think, if I insisted my mother was at his house, and then, with the dogs alerting—”
“They ruled him out.”
Of course they did. But I can’t afford to simply trust that the police would’ve thought to look into it—especially when all fingers are pointing to my dad. If they made a mistake with Dad and Heather’s alibi, maybe they made a mistake with something else. “Could you check for me? Make sure?”
When she meets my gaze, the afternoon sun washes her hair an even lighter shade of blonde, and her eyes look as green-gold as leaves about to mellow in the fall. “Sure,” she finally says. “I’ll check on it.”
“Thanks.” I get out of the car.
I see our carriage house and our enclosed breezeway, which connects the carriage house to our home. Couple hundred feet, and I’m home free. I wave to Neilla one last time.
I’m off the driveway now and walking across the soft grass, alongside Schmidt’s barn, which he now uses as a garage. When I was little, Schmidt grew his sunflowers against this barn. I remember weaving in and out of them, following them along the perimeter of the old wooden structure. Later, after my mother left, I’d wondered if the smiling faces of the flowers would ever grow tall enough to see into the hayloft. And if so, what would they see? Perhaps my mother was camping there, waiting for the right moment to come home to me.
How idiotic of me to think such things, considering a German shepherd sniffed out a cadaver here: either a body my mother put there, according to Lieutenant Eschermann, or my mother’s own body.
Instinctively, I drop to my knees and press my hands against the cool, dry soil.
There are no sunflowers now. No fuzzy stems to tickle my fingers. No stray petals raining down on me when the wind blows. Just a mystery in the dirt, and the line of shagbark hickory trees that stood witness to it all.
I cup the dirt in my hands and imagine it filling in the caverns around my mother’s lifeless body, filtering into her blue eyes, her nostrils, her ears, her mouth. If she had to be buried, she would’ve wanted to be buried under sunflowers, I think. But it’s a gruesome image.
“You okay?”
I jump. Ryan, Schmidt’s nephew, is suddenly standing before me in flannel and a work jacket, the epitome of strong farm boy.
“Yeah, I’m—” I wipe away tears with the sleeve of my shirt and scramble to my feet.
“Sami.” He’s about six-two. Broad-shouldered. A far cry from the boy whom I used to match, stride-for-stride, during games of tag. He smells of a combination of earth and Calvin Klein. Hazel-brown eyes look down at me. He’s offering a hand clad in a garden glove. “Hi. I’m Ryan. We used to play together.”
His voice carries a hint of the South. My heart warms. I’d forgotten that about him, the accent.
Like Mom’s. Not an all-out twang, but a lilt, particularly evident in the I.
“Yeah, I know.” I take his hand and feel the residue of dust or dirt from his glove on my fingertips once he pulls away. “I remember. You’re the one who lives in . . .” I used to know this.
“Kentucky.”
That’s right. “Yeah. Hi.” Brilliant, Sami. I catch another tear on one of my knuckles before I remember they’re dirty. My eye burns as the soil mixes with my tears. “Holy Jesus.”
“Whoa.” His left hand cups my elbow. “Hold still.” With his right thumb, now out of the glove, he wipes the corner of my eye.
“I should get this rinsed out.”
“I agree. But . . . with what’s going on over there . . . what is going on over there?”
“What?” I look at him with one eye pinched shut. “You mean a reporter standing on someone’s front lawn, surrounded by a camera crew, isn’t normal?”
“It is if you just won the sweepstakes.”
“Yeah, you guessed it. My family’s notoriously lucky at games of chance.”
He chuckles and gestures toward Schmidt’s back door. “Come on inside. I have something of yours anyway.”
“Something of mine?”
“Well, sort of. I was going to drop it off later, but . . . come on.”
A few minutes later, with enough grime and mascara staining one of Schmidt’s dish towels that I feel I should replace it, I’m sitting at a counter stool at a freestanding worktable in the middle of my neighbor’s kitchen.
The air smells like a mixture of lemon furniture polish and old library books no one’s checked out in ages. But it’s comforting in a way, and I wonder if that’s because I used to spend time within these walls—which happen to be painted the same sugar-cookie yellow Dad referenced yesterday.
On the far end of the room, narrow cabinets, with what appears to be a recent bright white refinishing, reach from the floor to the ceiling. To my left, a sink perched on cast-iron table legs is skirted with a striped curtain. Dishes are stacked on bracketed, open shelves astride the window.
The floor practically dances with a tiny hexagonal ceramic pattern—black and white—and if I stare at it too long, it starts to screw with my vision. It moves. I do remember that. I remember staring at it, daring the floor to move beneath my feet.
And there’s a serving pantry . . .
I meander to the far end of the kitchen, toward the small niche of mullioned-glass cabinetry fitted into a hallway between the kitchen and enormous dining room. I remember seeing dishes adorned with ivy and pink roses stored in this little pantry. I take a breath before I peek at the niche now.
I crane my neck to see around the corner, and sure enough. Ivy. Pink roses. And if I were to continue through the pantry, and out to the left instead of to the right, there’d be a hallway, and off the hallway, a bathroom big enough to house a sofa . . . and it did, once . . . with the same mosaic tile as the kitchen.
“Here we are.”
I jump a little when I hear Ryan’s voice.
But he doesn’t seem to notice or care that I’ve ventured from my seat.
He’s carrying a cardboard box—it’s about fifteen inches cubed—that he places atop the worktable.
I slip back onto my counter stool.
“I was reading The Great Gatsby the other night. My uncle collects hardcover editions of the classics.”
I do a double take. My mother did too. Well, not only classics. Mom had wide-ranging literary tastes. In addition to Hemingway and Hawthorne, we have Ray Bradbury’s entire collection, as well as Mary Higgins Clark’s. Still, I wonder if our neighbor talked about books with my mother.
“He used to read to us,” Ryan says. “Huck Finn, as I recall. Anyway. I found this box in the barn, and this was in it.” He slaps a book down in front of me. “Maybe I wouldn’t have looked at it twice, if I didn’t happen to be reading the same book in hardcover right now. But . . . here.”
It’s a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby.
“I was looking for the chainsaw,” he says. “For trimming the trees. And I found this box, tucked behind the lathe.”
“Like, in the wall?”
“Sort of. I mean, there’s no plaster, but it was in a crevice over the wine cellar. Uncle Henry asked me to board it up, to stop critters from getting in there.”