by Sasha Dawn
“What are you talking about? What’s going to happen to her?”
I take a deep breath. “I heard you recording your day last night. I heard what you said about Heather.”
“What did I say?”
“You said her name and ‘nothing happens.’ Why would you have to tell yourself that?”
“Sami . . . no. I never said that, Sami.”
“You’re lying again. I heard you say it.”
“Sami.”
I look up so he knows I’m listening, but I avoid looking him in the eye.
“I didn’t say what you think I said. I wasn’t even recording my day. I was talking to your grandmother. Now that she’s here, she has questions about the divorce, but I’m not going to tell her either. Heather and I agreed: it’s no one’s business. So what you heard was my telling Mercy nothing happened with Heather.”
Okay, so maybe I misunderstood what I heard.
Amid the awkward silence, I feel for the torn skin on my finger where the splinter went in. I clear my throat. “If you won’t tell me what happened with Heather, will you at least tell me what happened between you and Mom? Everyone says you’re the only father Cass has ever had. Well, I’ve started thinking Heather’s really the only mother I’ve had.”
“That’s not true, Sam. Delilah will always be your mother. And she was . . . she was wonderful with you. She was wonderful with me.”
“So what happened? Is Cassidy right? Was Mom cheating on you?”
“Henry Schmidt was not—”
“I don’t just mean Schmidt. I mean, with anyone.”
My father shakes his head. “No.” He unclasps his hands, but only for a second. “It was my fault. Me. I’m the one who cheated. Not your mom. Me.” He holds my stare. “With Heather.”
I’m dumbstruck for a breath. He lied about that too, then, all these years. “I always thought you and Heather got back together after the divorce.”
“I never wanted you to know. Especially after your mom left. I needed you to love Heather the way I knew Heather loved you.”
I push away from the table, feeling as if a thousand jolts of electricity just shot through me, and I get to my feet.
If my dad and Heather had a relationship before he divorced Mom, maybe they had reason to want her gone.
“Sam, I never meant to hurt your mom. My affair with Heather is one reason my drinking got out of control, one reason—”
“Does Eschermann know?”
“He knows Heather and I have been involved for some time. He knows we’ve known each other since we were kids.”
“That’s not what I asked. Does he know Heather’s the reason you and Mom divorced?”
There’s a long silence before he says, “When you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t hide anything.”
So Eschermann does know.
“I answer every question Ken has,” Dad says. “Because I want to get to the bottom of this, same as anyone else. Maybe even more. Find out what happened. Get closure. Bring her back for you, if that’s possible. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I always assumed you were glad she’s gone,” I say.
“Why?”
I shrug. “You were divorced.”
“She didn’t trust me anymore after she found out about Heather. And we couldn’t live together anymore, it’s true. But she’s still your mother.”
I’m gravitating toward him. “But you never missed her.”
“I did. And I missed her for you.”
“You did?” I reach for his hand. Tears well in my eyes.
“You don’t remember those early days?” he asks. “Waiting at the window for her to come?”
“No.” But as I say it, glimpses of staring out into the rain, or maybe through tears, flash in my memory bank. Snuggling against my father’s chest. Waiting. “Well . . . maybe. Bits and pieces of it.”
“There were days I thought you’d never forget, that you’d never get over losing her,” he says. “You were so sure she was still nearby. Schmidt’s barn. The passageway connecting our carriage house with Schmidt’s house. It never occurred to you she’d leave the neighborhood.”
We’re silent a moment. “I caught you trying to get into the passageway once. You were so convinced . . .”
That, I remember: you must never open this door.
He’s practically whispering now. “No father wants his daughter to grow up this way.”
Sure, he’s said these words before. But I think I believe him for the first time in a long time.
“One good thing came from her leaving. I finally got my act together. It took a while, but I was finally committed to being a better dad, committed to you. I sure as hell didn’t want you growing up like this. Cops at the door every time a lead develops, neighbors talking, reporters camping on the lawn—and still never hearing from her, never knowing.” He brings a hand to his eyes. He’s slumped over a little, and I think . . . maybe . . . maybe he might be trying not to cry.
His efforts to hide his tears from me only intensify my own urge to bawl.
“One parent gone,” he says. “The other under suspicion. I don’t know how you do it.”
No longer strong enough to stand, or maybe just lacking the desire, I lean against him. I believe him. I believe what I’ve always believed, despite the human remains in Georgia, despite Trina Jordan, despite what I think I heard last night. “We make do,” I remind him.
For a moment, I breathe him in. I flip through photographs in my mind until I settle on one that brings a warm memory: Dad trying to teach me how to throw a baseball.
You’ve heard people say “throw like a girl.” Girls don’t throw any differently than boys, okay? You just wind back, power through, and release the ball when you can’t reach any farther.
I realize I’ve reached for him my whole life. And he reaches back every time.
The chime of the doorbell echoes through our house.
I look out the window.
Eschermann is standing on the porch.
The sunlight is uncomfortably bright on the front porch.
Lieutenant Eschermann produces a burrito-rolled ELPD baseball cap from his back pocket and presses it atop his head. “Take a walk?”
The scent of peppermint wafts from him; I see he’s just popped a stick of gum into his mouth, and he’s offering one to me.
I take it.
Side by side, we descend the porch steps in silence.
Eschermann says nothing all the way down Kenilworth, nothing when we hook a left onto Charles. The lake is straight ahead now. If I listen closely, I can hear the waves rushing up on the shore. In my mind, I see lakes on the map. Mom would have liked to live near water. How many lakes can there be in this world? Too many to count. There’s no way to check the perimeter of every one of them for a woman who loves to bake cookies and has questionable taste in music.
A scenario plays out in my mind: she’s on a sandy beach, building castles, wearing that navy blue bikini . . . the one with the white polka dots. I can practically feel the grit of the sand accumulating under my fingernails, practically hear the laughter of children in the periphery, calling to her: Mom!
But this isn’t a warm, comforting memory. This is my mind conjuring someone else’s reality, imagining other children who can call to her and get an answer.
Could my mom have a whole other life by now? Other kids?
The scent of burning leaves meets my nostrils. I imagine the soft crackle of flame meeting twig.
My mother loved this time of year, loved the changing of the scenery. I wonder why she never minded the death of it all. Summer is dying. The leaves . . . they’re dying. They’re most beautiful right before they fall.
I close my eyes, and a picture of her materializes in my mind too. Beautiful. Right . . . before . . . she . . . fell. Fell into nowhere, fell into nothingness.
“Samantha, where did you find the jacket?”
“Heather’s. I told you.”
/> “In a box, you said? Where was the box located? Hidden? Out in the open? Was there anything else in it?”
I look at him out of the corner of my eye, but the sun is too bright, and because of the way he’s positioned, he’s backlit. I can’t read his expression.
“Sami, this is important.”
There’s a sense of urgency in his voice, when I normally hear only determination.
I’m acutely aware of the sounds of his footsteps, and mine, on the pavement: his shalep to my step.
“The box was in the closet in the laundry room. On the top shelf. But I wouldn’t say she was trying to hide it. It was right there for anyone to see.”
“Any particular reason you chose to wear it?”
“I don’t know. I was in a hurry.” We’re turning left onto Reston, onto the block populated with only a few houses—among them, Schmidt’s—turning away from the lake. I look for one last glimpse of it on the horizon. “It was my mom’s favorite color.”
“It looked like something your mom might wear?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Anything else in the box?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Do you remember your mother ever wearing the jacket?”
I stare at him. “You think it’s Mom’s?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Eschermann pulls his mobile phone from his pocket. “Bear with me, Sami. I have to . . .” He’s dialing. “Yeah, it’s Eschermann. I’m going to need a warrant to search the Funky Nun. Mmm-hmm. And the residence above it.”
Warrant?
My insides are twisting again, wringing like a wet rag, trying to squeeze everything out of me. I feel like Eschermann is pinning me into a corner.
Am I incriminating my dad? Heather? Should I be talking this freely about things I know nothing about?
Eschermann hangs up and looks at me again. “Sam, I have to ask you to—”
“No, no.” I’m backing away from him. “I’m not saying anything else without my father here. Or . . . or a lawyer. Or someone. Anyone who cares about—”
“I care about you, Sami.”
“No you don’t! You care about solving this case. And for what purpose? So you can retire? Run for mayor?”
“Calm down, Sam, all right?”
I don’t know how to calm down under these circumstances. It feels as if a black hole has opened beneath my feet and it’s swallowing me. It feels as if there’s no one on earth I can trust.
“I want to go home.” But even as I say it, I wonder if home is far enough away. I wonder . . . I wonder if this is how my mother felt right before she left. Disoriented and alone, as if she didn’t have a friend in the world. She knew about Heather. Maybe she knew Schmidt liked her too much. Maybe she even knew about Trina. I wouldn’t blame her for disappearing, if this is how she felt.
“I’ll take you home,” Eschermann says, “but first, I need you to calm down. Sami, listen.”
I try to calm down. I listen.
“I need you to think hard about what else you saw in that box.”
My fingers tremble as they wipe away tears. “I really don’t think there was anything else in it.”
“Just a jacket in a box. Nothing else.”
“And if the jacket was my mother’s, it’s another piece of her. It should be mine. I should be able to wear it. It should be with me instead of at the station in a sealed bag. If it’s my mother’s—”
“No. Sami.” He sighs heavily. “The jacket you were wearing . . . it matches the description of a jacket Trina Jordan’s wearing in one of the last known photos taken of her. I think that jacket belonged to Trina Jordan.”
He may as well have thrown a brick at my chest. “What?”
“I took it to the station and compared it to the description. But maybe it was a mass-produced jacket. Maybe they sold it at Target, I don’t know. The label’s been cut out, so I won’t know more until I send it to the lab.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. Why would Heather have Trina Jordan’s jacket? It doesn’t make sense . . . unless . . .
Unless Heather was involved in Trina Jordan’s disappearance. Or my dad was involved, and Heather somehow ended up with the remnants.
Not Heather.
Heather couldn’t have done anything . . .
She’s the only mother I have, and she wants what’s best for me. Always.
Except that lately, she’s been different. Lately, it feels like she and Cassidy don’t believe in Dad anymore. It seems so unexpected, so unnatural after all the years that Heather stood by him. Is it a cover? Are they throwing shade at Dad to hide something Heather did, or to hide something she knows?
I look up into the canopy of gold and auburn leaves above us; the colors blur through the tears accumulating in my eyes.
“My dad didn’t do anything wrong,” I burst out, because I’ve said it so many times for so many years that it’s become its own kind of comfort mechanism. “I know all of this looks bad. I know that. But he wouldn’t . . . he isn’t capable. And I don’t know how all this connects to Heather, but . . . you know Heather. You know she wouldn’t do something—anything—like . . .” Like what? Murder? Transporting a body? “And if she did, why would she have kept the jacket? Why keep something like that for ten years? When it’s only going to make things look bad for her later?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“You think they’re guilty of something.”
“It isn’t my job to decide. But there’ve been some more developments in the Trina Jordan case, and if this checks out—”
“What developments?”
He gives me that look again, the one that tells me I don’t want to hear what he has to say. “For one thing, Trina Jordan’s social security number resurfaced earlier today in a small town in Georgia.”
Momentary relief. “So she’s alive. You found her.”
But that relief—if she isn’t dead, Dad can’t be accused of killing her, Mom can’t be accused of killing her—is instantly replaced with panic: if Trina’s alive, that means my mother has no reason to be hiding.
“More likely, her information was simply sold. Happens all the time. Identification gets separated from the body of a victim, someone picks up a wallet, sells the ID on the black market after enough time has gone by.”
“So she’s probably dead.”
“Probably, but we don’t have proof of it. That’s the other development. Test results showed that her DNA didn’t match Georgia’s Jane Doe.”
“You sent my DNA to Georgia,” I say. “To test it against the body.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, now that Trina Jordan is ruled out . . . yes. We’ve decided to run labs to see if there’s a DNA match to your mother.”
My gut goes hollow. It’s not like I didn’t know this was a possibility, and nothing’s changed. Not really. “What about the passport application?”
Eschermann holds my gaze for a second, long enough for me to realize that the way Trina Jordan’s social security number surfaced could be the same way my mother’s information was used to obtain a passport.
“Oh.”
But I can’t wrap my head around this. I’ve spent so many years dismissing the possibility. Until someone shows me definitive proof that my mother’s gone—dead—no one can convince me it’s true. Even if part of me thinks it might, just might, be possible.
“Point is,” says Eschermann, “Trina Jordan is presumed dead now, even though she isn’t the Jane Doe. And if that jacket checks out, it’s another connection between your father, Heather, and the case.”
I have nothing to say in response. So I run.
I turn and bolt down Reston. Footfall after footfall brings me closer to Schmidt’s door, closer to Ryan.
It’s all an illusion. The closeness I felt with my mother last night . . . a lifetime with Heather, with Cass . . .
I quicken my pace, as if racing
against the route on the map. There has to be a quicker way, a faster path out of here.
“Samantha!”
I trip up the front steps of Schmidt’s house, and this time I can’t catch myself before I fall and scrape my knee. But I don’t care about that, about the stream of blood I feel trickling toward my ankle. I yank on the bell pull.
“Sami.” Eschermann is on the brick walk leading to Schmidt’s door now, about ten feet behind me.
“Stop it,” I say through tears. “Please, just stop. Do you understand the position you’re putting me in? You’re putting me in the middle, putting me between my parents, between Dad and Heather, even, and I—”
“Sami, if the DNA is a match to your mother, we have to find out how she ended up in Georgia. You don’t remember. But someone must.”
“Maybe Henry Schmidt knows! He had some of Mom’s things! Here! And this is where I thought she’d gone!”
“Henry Schmidt has given us permission to search the premises again. He’s cutting his vacation short to be here. He’s cooperating.”
Finally, the door opens, and everything is silent. No one says a word. Not Ryan, dusted with the remains of the hickory; not the cop behind me, trying to do the best and the worst things for my family at the same time; and not me, with tears streaming down my cheeks.
I think Ryan heard us. Heard me, accusing his uncle of having something to do with my mother’s disappearance.
It feels as if time has stopped.
My throat feels like cotton, as if it’s closing up on me, as if I may never speak again.
I take in a sharp breath, only to find my gum sticking in my throat.
My throat constricts another inch, I feel I might choke, and my knee burns where I scraped it.
I slip into the house, ducking under Ryan’s arm and booking it down the arched-ceiling hallway, through the serving pantry, to the kitchen.
“Sami?”
I can’t tell which of the two insists on following me, but I don’t turn around to acknowledge either one. Get rid of the gum.
I find the garbage, spit it out.
Water. A neat stack of plain white dishes occupies the sink. I grab a glass from the drying rack and pull the lever on the faucet. For a second—just a hiccup, really—a sense of relief washes over me. Easy does it, I tell myself. Tackle one problem at a time. Job one: drink.