The Children

by Ann Leary

  “What?” Joan asked. “If he knew, then what?”

  “He’d have gone to the police.”

  The music had stopped. I wasn’t sure exactly when. Joan and I both held our breath, wondering if Sally was within earshot. But she started up again.

  “Whit was the one who told me not to call the police. I thought you knew that. We had a big fight about it. I don’t think I ever got over it. I thought you knew that.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I never forgave him. How could you not have known that?”

  * * *

  Spin was here at Lakeside that weekend; he would have been twelve or thirteen at the time. He was still living in New York with Marissa and coming up on alternate weekends. I remember that he came down to see what all the commotion was about. He had always been a light sleeper. We were all in the foyer, helping Sally; Spin was crouching wide-eyed on the stairs. The first time Joanie told him to go to bed, she used her normal voice. The second time, it was more like a scream.

  We should have just taken Sally to the hospital. I know that now.

  She had been really out of it when Everett and I found her. Everett had wanted to take her to the hospital, but every time we mentioned the idea, she would thrash around and scream, “I am not going to the hospital. You can’t make me.” She was so messed up. It wasn’t just booze. Everett kept asking her what she’d taken. “Vodka,” she’d mumbled.

  “What else?” Sally was still on the ground, just inside the tunnel, when he asked her. She was trying to stand, but she kept slipping because the tunnel floor was wet and starting to freeze. She giggled when she slipped. Everett kept standing her up and she kept sliding.

  “She doesn’t have her shoes,” I said to Everett. “She’s sliding because she just has socks on.”

  When Everett dragged her out of the tunnel, we saw that her jeans hadn’t been pulled up all the way. “Who would leave her like this?” I asked. That’s when I started crying—when I was hiking up her jeans. “Who would leave her like this out in the freezing cold?”

  I kept looking for her shoes. Sally, in her semiconscious state, heard me and started saying, “My shoes, Max, those are new. I want my new sneakers. Where the fuck are my sneakers, Max?”

  Everett picked her up and carried her down the bank and back to the truck. For some reason, I thought it was important to find her shoes.

  “Forget her fucking shoes,” Everett shouted. “We need to take her to the hospital.”

  “Where are my shoes?” Sally asked. She was giggling and playfully punching at Everett’s chest. “I WANT MY SHOES. Where’s Max? Who are all you other guys?”

  What if we hadn’t gone looking for her? What if we had fallen asleep in Everett’s room? What if she hadn’t told me that she and Max Osborne sometimes went to the tunnel? Max was her current boyfriend. He was a day student. Sally and I had gone to preschool with Max; I’d always hated him. Now she was hooking up with him in the Holden field house and, on occasion, down in the old railroad tunnel. What if I hadn’t known that? She would have frozen to death that night.

  The tunnel was a frequent destination for Holden students—had been for years. It was spooky and secluded, yet not too far from campus. It was a perfect party spot. But once the nights started getting cold, nobody went there.

  When I opened the door to the truck and the light came on, I could see that Sally had blood on her face.

  “Everett, look,” I said. “And her pants … I can’t tell if they’re wet, or if she’s bleeding, or what.”

  “Oh man,” Everett said, setting her gently inside the truck’s cab. “Quick, get in on the other side of her.”

  Soon we were speeding along the old service road and then we were in Harwich Center.

  “We need to call my mom,” I said.

  “We’ll call her from the hospital,” Everett said.

  “NO! I’m not going to the hospital,” Sally said. “They’ll send me to jail. I’m all fucked up.”

  “You won’t go to jail,” said Everett.

  “Sally, what happened?” I asked. “Who were you with? Was it Max?”

  “Yeah. Where’s Max? I wanna go home. I keep telling you that. I keep telling everybody.”

  “Who, Sally?” I said.

  She was dozing off.

  “Keep her awake,” Everett said, elbowing her hard. “SALLY! WAKE UP!”

  “I’ll go home, okay?” Sally pleaded. “Please, let’s take me home. I won’t say anything. I don’t even know you guys.”

  “Everett, we have to go near the lake to get to the hospital. Let’s stop and get my mom. There’s no cell service here.”

  “I’M NOT GOING TO THE HOSPITAL!” Sally sat up straight now and started wiping her mouth. “Ow, what happened?”

  “Sally, do you want to go home and see what Joan thinks?”

  “NO. I just want to go to bed. I’m fine.”

  I was relieved when Everett turned onto East Shore Road. Sally did seem improved.

  When we got to the house, Everett wanted me to go in and get Joan. He would wait in the truck with Sally. But Sally had sobered up somewhat during the short drive. I mean, she was still a mess, but she seemed a little better. She stumbled out of the truck and Everett and I walked her into the house.

  “I just want to go to the bathroom,” she said. I helped her to the powder room next to the foyer. I tried to go in with her, but she closed the door.

  “Privacy, PLEASE!” She giggled. She was alternating between silliness and anger.

  I went and woke up my mom. Whit kept snoring away.

  Downstairs, Joan and I persuaded Sally to open the bathroom door and let us in. She had a cut lip. Her hair was caked with mud.

  “Oh no, oh my God, oh sweetie, what happened? What happened?” Joan said.

  “I don’t know, Mommy,” Sally said. Now she was even more lucid. “I can’t remember. I need to take a shower.”

  I pointed to the spots of blood on Sally’s jeans, and Joan got very upset. It was the only time I’d ever seen my mother really cry.

  “Sally? Sally? What happened.”

  “I want some water. I’m hot.”

  We followed her out of the powder room. Everett was standing by the front door, and when I looked at him, he nodded at the stairs. That’s when we saw Spin. Joan sent him upstairs.

  “Come in the kitchen, dear.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  Sally was walking fine now, just a little slowly, and my mother had her arm around her.

  “She seems so much better,” I said.

  “There’s no way that was just from alcohol,” Everett said.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I have no fucking idea, but she didn’t get that fucked up and then recover so fast just from vodka. And she didn’t get to that tunnel alone. Somebody took her there. Who’s this kid? Who’s this Max?”

  “Max Osborne.”

  “We have to call the police,” Everett said.

  We went into the kitchen, but Joan and Sally had gone up the back stairs. We could hear the water rushing through the old water pipes.

  “Tell her not to take a shower, Lottie. She might have been raped. What the hell’s wrong with your mother? She should know better.”

  I ran upstairs, and sure enough, Sally was in the shower and Joan was standing there helping her wash the mud out of her hair.

  “Joan, Everett wants to call the police.”

  “WHAT? No!” Sally said.

  “Shhhh, sweetie, it’s okay,” Joan said. Then she said to me, “Tell Everett to go home. I’m going to wake up Whit. We’ll call the police.”

  “NO!” said Sally.

  “We’ll take her to the hospital,” Joan whispered.

  TWENTY

  I had received another e-mail from Matt.

  SUBJECT: Have you checked the children?

  I guess you’re not much of a movie buff.

  Matt

  I was about to respond to
the e-mail, when a new message popped onto my screen. It was from Laurel.

  Dear Lottie, I’m so, so sorry that we had to leave this morning with everybody so upset. Spin and I had a long conversation on the way to Long Island. He’s so sad now, I can’t even begin to tell you how sad he is. He and Perry went and sat on the beach for almost two hours, I don’t know what they were talking about, but Spin said he’ll explain it all to me later. I want you to know that the two weeks I spent with you, your mom, and Sally were two of the best weeks of my life. I felt like I found a new family with you, and I won’t let a misunderstanding drive Spin, who I love more than I can ever express in words, and you guys apart. Please tell me that you are all okay, especially Sally, I was so worried about her. XOXO L

  I was relieved to get Laurel’s e-mail. I knew that she wasn’t the cause of Spin’s anger. In fact, she was going to help us sort it out. I immediately e-mailed her back, expressing my relief and gratitude. I urged her to have Spin call me if he felt like it.

  Then I Googled: “Have you checked the children movie.”

  I’m not a movie buff, but as soon as I saw the results of the search, I got the reference. When a Stranger Calls. The baby-sitter is all alone; the children are sleeping upstairs. She gets calls from a creepy guy, who keeps asking, “Have you checked the children?” The calls are coming from inside the house. Scary as hell.

  I replied to Matt: “HAHAHA regarding the movie reference. If you could see the state of our house, you’d know that Mr. Clean doesn’t live here.”

  Everett e-mailed me in the middle of this.

  SUBJECT: Can you come over?

  That was it. Nothing in the body of the message.

  He was out on his porch with the dogs. When I walked up, he took my hand and kissed it. It was the sweetest thing he’s ever done. He just held my hand there, kissing first the back of it and then the palm.

  “Isn’t it buggy out here?” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

  He got up without letting go of my hand and followed me inside.

  I remember that when Whit died, our lovemaking was really intense for a while. Intense isn’t quite the word. It was especially passionate, I guess. There was the same kind of passion the night that Spin and Laurel left. We both seemed to be grieving, for some reason.

  Everett usually goes right to sleep after sex, but that night he didn’t. He just wanted to keep cuddling. I was starting to doze off when he said, “Charlotte?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not gonna be seeing anybody else anymore. Just you. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much I was taking you for granted.”

  I pulled his arms tighter around me.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? What brought this on?”

  “Nothing. It’s just how I feel.”

  “Did Laurel have something to do with it?”

  Suddenly, Everett stiffened up.

  “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

  “Nothing, why?”

  “Why did you bring her name up?”

  “She’s been talking to me about our … setup. She has lots of advice, seems to know a lot about relationships. She’s been talking to me about you. I thought she might have said something to you, that’s all.”

  “No, she didn’t say anything to me.”

  I realized that he was hurt because I assumed that somebody had influenced him.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” I said. After a few quiet moments, I said, “Everett, Joan told me today that Whit knew about Sally. About the night in the tunnel.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know why that’s making me so sad. He used to make jokes about Sally and me sneaking onto campus, long after that. Why would he tease us about that if he knew about that awful night? We never went back after that. It’s so surprising. Aren’t you surprised?”

  “Not really. I mean, I guess I always thought that he probably knew.”

  “You did? Didn’t you hate him when you got arrested? You couldn’t go back to college because of the charge. Why didn’t he speak up?”

  “I guess he felt that he didn’t really know what happened. None of us really knew. It would have been bad for Sally to go through a trial.”

  “You had to go through a trial.”

  Now Everett sat up and leaned against the wall.

  “It was a hearing, not a trial. Why is this important now? Who cares about something that happened more than a decade ago? I hated college. Remember how I came home every weekend? I was homesick. I missed it here. I missed you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I must have,” he said, lying back down. “I feel like I must have told you hundreds of times.”

  “Oh,” I said. I lay there and listened as his breathing finally slowed. He was asleep.

  * * *

  I always thought that it was Joan’s idea not to go to the police. I always blamed her.

  When Sally got out of the shower that night, she went straight to bed. By the next morning, our mother’s sadness had turned to anger. I heard them in Sally’s room. The door was shut, but I listened from the hallway. “Why were you drinking in the woods? What did you think was going to happen? Who else was there?… Well, why did you think three boys wanted to go in the woods with you?”

  Joan took Sally to her gynecologist. Apparently, Sally told the doctor that she had gotten drunk with her boyfriend and that they had had unprotected sex. I guess he gave her something to help prevent STDs. A morning-after pill. When they got home, Sally’s face was swollen from crying and she went up to her room. I went in to talk to her.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  She went and threw open the door and looked out into the hallway, then she shut it and came back to her bed, where I was sitting.

  “Shhhhh—listen, do you hear that?” she said.

  “I don’t hear anything, Sally.” Sally could be a little paranoid, especially when she was tired. She thought people were listening in on conversations sometimes. This had started long before the night at the tunnel.

  “I don’t remember much,” she whispered. “Max and two of his friends, Sam—a kid from Westchester—and another boarder.… I can’t even remember the name of the other guy. They wanted to go to the tunnel. We were gonna get high. I had some weed. The kid Sam, he had vodka in a Starbucks thermos. It was mixed with orange juice and it wasn’t that big, so how much could we have drunk?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how I got so fucked up so fast. I only remember having one cup of the stuff.”

  “I thought you were drinking out of a thermos.”

  “No, they had these cheap paper cups. The kind they have on tennis courts, the kind they have in the field house at Holden. We each had cups. I only remember drinking one. And then I was driving up to the house with you and Everett. And then this morning, when I saw my lip…”

  “Sally, you weren’t just bleeding there.”

  “I know.”

  “So what’d the doctor say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he examine you?”

  “Yeah.” Now she was crying, and I hugged her.

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked me if it was my first time. I said yes. I lied and said it was. He was so old and mean-looking.”

  “Oh Sally, stop crying. We have to tell Joan.”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That you were drugged. That they had sex with you when you were … They raped you, Sally.”

  “I told her, Lottie. I did. I told her, but she didn’t believe me. She said that she knew about us sneaking onto campus. She reminded me that Whit’s a trustee. I said that Max Osborne and his friends forced me to go to the tunnel, but she said nobody would believe me. He’s the fucking class valedictorian, Lottie. He’s already been recruited by Amherst. Who’s going to
believe me?”

  Her voice was slowly rising, and I begged her to lower it, but I was becoming enraged. It was just like Joan to worry more about her reputation than about Sally’s welfare. I was certain that she hadn’t told Whit; I knew that he’d be enraged if he found out what had happened to Sally.

  “I’m going to talk to Whit,” I said. “They left you there, Sally.”

  “NO,” Sally said. “I don’t want Whit to find out.”

  “Sally, he’d want to know. He’d help. He’d be on your side.”

  “No. I begged Joan not to tell him, and I’m begging you. I don’t want … I would die if he knew. And Spin’s here. What if he heard about it?”

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Everett was furious. “This is insane,” he said later. “We should have taken her straight to the hospital. We should have called the police. I hate that whole Osborne family. His brother, Clod or Clay? He was on my Little League team, always hated his fucking guts.”

  “Well, Sally’s not going to see him anymore.”

  “Oh, is that a fact? Now that he and his buddies gang-raped her, she’s calling it off?”

  “Everett. She doesn’t remember anything. She just remembers coming home.”

  “Well, I remember what shape she was in. You remember. She could have died.”

  “She seems okay now. Let’s forget about it. Sally has. She watched Gilmore Girls all morning, now she’s out playing with Whit and Spin. Whit just finished a new banjo, they’re playing music. I could hear her laughing on my way over here, all the way from his shed.”

  It was the following weekend when Everett caught up with Max Osborne. His uncle Russ was the head of security at Holden and he told Everett there was going to be a dance on Saturday night. That meant that the dorms would be open late, until eleven. Everett waited in his truck a little way down the road, about halfway between the Holden gates and the Osborne house. The Osbornes’ house is almost on the Holden campus. Everett told me later that he wasn’t at all surprised to see Max pull out of the gate in his dad’s BMW.

  “Yup, he took Daddy’s car to drive across the road,” he said.

  Everett watched Max pull into his driveway. He drove up behind him. Max got out and walked toward the truck, sheltering his eyes with his hands. He was blinded by the headlights; he couldn’t see.