That night, Lizzy didn’t wet the bed, but she didn’t stay silent either. She moaned, howled, spoke in gibberish. She called out for something or someone—the word a blur that sounded, to Rhonda, an awful lot like Peter.
Rhonda shook Lizzy awake.
“He’s outside,” Rhonda told her, trying to comfort Lizzy, whose eyes were wide with panic. Lizzy grabbed hold of Rhonda, dug her nails into Rhonda’s arm. “Peter’s just outside in the tent,” Rhonda told her. Lizzy put her head back down on the pillow and drifted off to sleep.
Rhonda got up and looked out her window to see Peter standing with Tock’s gun. She watched him walk the perimeter of the yard, then return to his tent. From her bedroom window, she studied him, positioned in front of his tent like he was standing guard—holding the gun tight in his hands, gazing off into the distance, looking not brave but somehow resigned, as he stood waiting for some imagined enemy.
JUNE 25, 2006
WHEN RHONDA PULLED into Peter and Tock’s driveway, the first thing she noticed was the two girls playing in the yard. There was Suzy, her heavy silver EPILEPTIC bracelet glinting in the sun, her hair nearly white blond. She had a red toy shovel and bucket in her hand. The other girl was smaller, all knees and elbows, with dark hair held back in pigtails. As Rhonda watched, the dark-haired girl dropped something into a hole. Suzy shoveled sand over it, covering it up. The other little girl leaned down and whispered something in Suzy’s ear.
Ernie?
“Hey, Suz,” Rhonda said, jumping out of her car. “What’re ya up to?” Rhonda studied the dark-haired girl: freckles, brown eyes. She looked an awful lot like the girl in the MISSING poster; the girl Warren said had fallen out of Laura Lee’s car.
“Nothing,” Suzy said.
Rhonda nodded. “Your dad inside?”
“Yep,” she said.
Rhonda went up the steps and knocked. Tock answered. Rhonda instinctively took a step back, remembering the other woman’s rage when they’d last met.
“Rhonda,” she said, stone-faced. “We were starting to think you weren’t coming.” Rhonda couldn’t tell from Tock’s expression if she was grateful or disappointed.
“I got held up,” Rhonda said. She heard voices in the living room. Peter and a woman.
“The girl playing in the yard with Suzy,” Rhonda said, “who is she?”
“Come in,” Tock invited, placing a hand gently on Rhonda’s back. Rhonda flinched. No, not a knife. Just a hand. Tock was guiding her toward the living room, pushing her almost. Rhonda half-expected the room to be full of people who would jump out and yell Surprise! People who would tell her that the past weeks had all just been a trick, a game. Warren would be there in the rabbit suit and say something like, See, Rhonda, things are never what they seem. Even Crowley would be there, peeking out from behind the drapes to give her a we-sure-fooled-you-didn’t-we? wink.
Rhonda looked in and felt all the air drain from her, like an abruptly punctured balloon. There was no party. Just Peter talking with a woman she recognized at once.
“Ronnie,” the woman said. “My God, Ronnie.”
“Lizzy?” Rhonda managed to whisper. The name came out like a question, but there was no doubt. Rhonda stood and walked over to her.
Lizzy wore her hair long still, but had it back in a braid. She had dark eyeliner on and was dressed in faded jeans, black cowboy boots, a white T-shirt.
Rhonda took Lizzy in her arms and clung to her. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“I have so much to tell you, Ronnie,” Lizzy said.
“You’re talking,” Rhonda pulled back and studied the face of her long lost friend.
“Not just talking,” Peter said. “She’s a singer. Tell her, Lizzy.”
Lizzy nodded. “I have a band in Seattle. Amazing Grace and the Disciples. We’ve put out a couple albums.”
“Seattle?”
“That’s where I finally landed.”
There was so much to say, so much to ask. Little by little, they sketched out their lives for one another in broad strokes. Tock brought out fruit, bread, and cheese. Peter opened some wine.
“When did you start singing?” Rhonda asked.
“Now there’s a story,” Lizzy said. “See after I left home, I hitchhiked. Ended up in Boston for a while. Lived on the streets and in a couple of shelters.”
“Wait,” Rhonda interrupted. “Shelters? But I thought you were with Daniel.”
Lizzy shook her head, looked away.
“But that’s what you said in your postcards,” Rhonda explained.
“That’s what I wanted everyone to believe. Maybe, on some level, I wanted to believe it too,” Lizzy said. “The truth is, I was on my own. No one knew who I was or where I’d come from. I still wasn’t talking. I didn’t talk until I was sixteen. Five years of silence. I was in San Francisco then, pregnant with Kimberly, living in this home for pregnant girls. This gal Trish, she asked me if I wanted to be in her band. They needed a guitarist. So one day, I just sat down with them, picked up the guitar, and the next thing I knew, I was singing. I don’t know if it was music or Kimberly that gave me my voice back, but the way I look at it, it must have been the combination, ’cause that’s been what’s kept my life afloat ever since. Kimmy and the music. The centers of my little universe.”
“That’s Kimberly in the yard with Suzy?”
Lizzy smiled and nodded.
AFTER A WHILE, Peter patted the cigarettes in his shirt pocket. “Ronnie, come have a smoke with me,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you smoke,” Lizzy said.
“Once in a while,” Rhonda admitted.
“Once in a while won’t hurt,” Peter said. “Me, I wish I could give the damn things up.”
“You’ve always got a choice,” said Rhonda, thinking back to how she used to obsess over the choices others had made. The choice to leave, which she thought Daniel and Lizzy had made. Now it turned out Daniel hadn’t left after all. He’d been buried in the woods the whole time—right next to the bogeyman.
“Peter, I’m so sorry,” Rhonda said once they were alone on the front steps, where a tangled hedge of rugosa roses was encroaching on the left side, scratching Rhonda’s leg on the way down. Once settled on the step, Rhonda looked up—at the peak of the A-frame was a huge paper wasp nest, a startlingly large layer of gray combs buzzing with activity.
“For what?”
“For thinking you could have had anything to do with what happened to Ernie.”
Rhonda looked out into the yard, where, at the edge, Suzy and Kimberly were digging little holes, burying things.
“You were just following the evidence, Ronnie. And it’s not like I was very forthcoming with you.”
“It was Lizzy and Kimberly you were with that day at the motel, wasn’t it?”
Peter nodded. “I actually tracked her down just after Suzy was born. We talked a few times, then she moved again and we lost touch. She called me last year, totally out of the blue. I begged her to come home, meet Suzy, let me meet Kimberly. She finally broke down at the end of May, said she had some shows to play in New York and Boston, and that she and Kimmy would stop by after. She was really skittish about it and made me swear not to tell. She got in late Sunday night and left the next day before supper to catch her plane. We only went out once to get sandwiches and she made me drive clear down to Wells River for them. I never even got a chance to introduce her to Suzy.”
“But why didn’t she want anyone else to know she was back?”
Peter shrugged. “I guess she needed to do things at her own pace—take baby steps. It had been such a long time—so much had happened. Coming home was overwhelming.”
“God, I was such an idiot!” Rhonda exclaimed. “I thought you two had kidnapped Ernie. And later, when I saw you with that rope…”
“It was for moving furniture,” Peter explained.
“And the little red shoes?”
“Suzy’s. She’d been hanging out there with
me most afternoons while I fixed the place up. She brought toys, clothes. Left her stuff all over. Ronnie, I’m sorry, too. Sorry I wasn’t honest. And sorry that things turned out the way they did. I don’t know what was going on with you and Warren, but finding out he was involved, and everything that happened there in the garage that night…it must have been tough.”
Rhonda nodded. “I trusted him, Peter. I thought he was the only honest person in my life these last weeks. I really cared about him. I haven’t felt that way about anyone since…” Rhonda hesitated. “Since you.”
Peter took a drag of his cigarette. Exhaled smoke. “Are you gonna go visit him?”
“I just can’t. It’s not even so much what he did. I admit, it was horrible, but I don’t see him as this evil criminal. Just a guy who made some lousy choices. It’s that he lied. He lied for so long. And he seemed so genuine. That’s what hurts the most. And how can I ever trust someone like that again?” Rhonda looked at Peter. It felt good to be talking to him, saying something honest. To be able to go to him with her problems, as she had when they were growing up.
“Sometimes,” Peter said, “it doesn’t seem like there’s any choice but to lie.”
Rhonda shook her head. “He should have come forward, told everyone what happened. That it was an accident.”
“He kidnapped the girl, Ronnie. He wasn’t going to get off scot-free. Even if it was all Pat’s plan.”
“Pat! I still can’t believe that I never even suspected Pat,” Rhonda said. “It all makes perfect sense now, in some twisted way. It’s all just so—sad. So very sad.”
Peter nodded.
“Crowley came by as I was on my way out,” Rhonda said.
“So you know what they found in the woods?”
“When you told me about the body under the stage, I thought you meant Ernie.”
“Yeah, they wouldn’t have stumbled across him if they hadn’t been looking for her. I’m sure her body will be next. And I’m sorry Rhonda. Sorry I didn’t tell you on the phone. I wanted you to hear it from me not some asshole cop.”
Rhonda nodded. “All those years, we just assumed he was out there somewhere, living another life.”
Peter eyed her cautiously, then nodded. “So what else did Crowley ask?”
“He wanted to know what I remembered from that summer. I told him what I could. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help.”
Peter looked at her for a few seconds, then turned away to gaze down the walk and driveway to the road.
“So what do you think happened?” Rhonda asked. Peter glanced back at her and raised his eyebrows. “I mean to Daniel. Crowley said he owed a lot of money to people.”
“Ronnie, I…” He cut his eyes away from her and then back again, searching her face for something he didn’t seem to find.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, crushing his cigarette butt out on the step, putting the spent butt in the pocket of his shirt. And these words, the way he said them, reminded Rhonda of his usual mantra, I don’t remember—the words he used to defend himself, to keep himself distant whenever Rhonda asked him some question about the past, like about how Daniel had once dressed as the Easter Bunny.
“Tell me about the night we tore down the stage,” Rhonda said, a touch of Joe Crowley in her voice.
“You know the story,” Peter replied.
“I used to think I did. Now I wonder if I’m missing something.”
“Tell me what you remember,” Peter said.
“I came out into the clearing and found you, Lizzy, and Tock. Lizzy was crying. You’d all had some kind of fight. And you said I was just in time to help tear down the stage.”
Peter nodded.
“We were angry and sad and going too fast. Lizzy was holding a hammer, smashing boards apart. Tock had a crowbar. You were sawing apart the back wall.” Rhonda was talking quickly now, almost a recitation. “And then, we pulled the back wall down, and you and I, we were under it. The next thing I remember is you dragging me out from under there, pulling off boards, untangling me. There was sheet on top of me—the backdrop from the play, the shoreline from Neverland, and I was twisted up in it. I was crying then, definitely crying. And blood was dripping down my face, down into my eyes, and they burned and I thought maybe I was going blind. And you were bleeding too, cut on the forehead by some rusty nail. We had to get tetanus shots, remember? And I thought they were like rabies shots. I thought we had to get a whole bunch in the stomach and I cried again in the emergency room when the nurse told us about the shots. I didn’t cry about the stitches. They didn’t hurt at all. And you, I’m sure you didn’t cry. They had us in the same room, but they pulled the curtain to do our stitches, remember? They didn’t want us to see. And we had to stay in bed after, to rest for a few days, and our parents were supposed to wake us up every few hours, just to make sure we were okay, that we hadn’t slipped into a coma or something.”
Peter was silent, staring at Rhonda as he lit his second cigarette. Rhonda leaned over and let herself brush the hair back from his forehead, revealing the thin white line as if she would find her answers there spelled out in a childish cursive: This is what happened.
“Am I interrupting?” Lizzy stood in the open doorway, peering down at them on the steps.
“Rhonda was just telling me about the night we tore down the stage.”
Lizzy looked down at Rhonda, smiled, then held out her hand to pull Rhonda up.
“Take a walk with me, Ronnie.” Rhonda stood up and walked with Lizzy down the steps and out across the gravel driveway, past the two girls playing in the overgrown yard, burying an army man in the dirt; they were so like herself and Lizzy that she shivered.
“I have a story to tell you.” Lizzy’s voice was calm and sure of itself. It was a smooth and mellow voice. The voice of lullabies.
Lizzy was leading Rhonda toward the woods, as the rabbit had led her in her dreams. She was still holding Rhonda’s hand, and she turned now and looked at her, to gauge Rhonda’s response.
“I’m going to tell a story and you are not allowed to interrupt. You have to listen carefully to everything I say. You don’t have to believe it. Right now, I’m just asking you to listen.”
Rhonda nodded, her throat tightening a little.
Lizzy clasped Rhonda’s hand tightly and let out a breath. “Are you ready?” she asked.
Rhonda nodded. Together, they stepped into the forest.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1993
RHONDA STOOD WATCHING until Peter crawled into his tent with the gun. A few minutes later, she saw Tock cross the yard, open the canvas flap, and join him.
Rhonda left the window and got into bed beside Lizzy. Lizzy’s back was to her. Rhonda put her arm around Lizzy’s stomach, curled her knees up into Lizzy’s, their bodies making one giant question mark under the sheet.
“Remember the story our moms used to tell all the time?” Rhonda asked, not sure if Lizzy was asleep. “How we once had our own language? We were the only ones who understood each other.”
Rhonda felt Lizzy’s body stiffen then relax. Then she felt the quiet motion of Lizzy starting to cry.
“I wish,” said Rhonda, “that I could remember some of those words now.”
But she couldn’t. So she just held Lizzy as tight as she could, rocking her gently, until they were both fast asleep.
JUNE 25, 2006
ONCE UPON A time,” Lizzy began, “there were two little girls who told everyone they were sisters. And they were, for all intents and purposes. They looked alike, talked alike and had this weird way of finishing each other’s thoughts and sentences. They loved each other very much.”
So far, this story, their story, sounded like the beginning of a fairy tale. Hansel and Gretel. Two innocent children who were somehow doomed from the start.
The trail beside Tock and Peter’s house took them through the woods that had been logged several years before Peter and Tock bought the land. All around them was evidence of the forest reclaiming its
elf: paper birch, pin cherry, and poplars mixed in with some old sugar maples that had been left alone during the logging. The path took them down to the stream that fronted the property. It felt like a good ten degrees cooler by the water. The banks were covered in ferns. Around them grew birch and sassafras with the funny lobed leaves that reminded Rhonda of mittens. When they were kids, they’d broken off sassafras twigs and chewed them, pretended they were root beer–flavored cigarettes.
Lizzy lay down in the bed of ferns on her stomach and Rhonda joined her, gazing down at the quietly burbling stream, which was clear as a magnifying glass. Water striders skated at the edge. A green frog hopped from a nearby rock and Rhonda watched it glide underwater. She thought of frogs she’d dissected. The drawing in her living room. Then, she thought of metamorphosis. Change. What did the frog remember, Rhonda wondered, from its life as a tadpole?
“The thing is,” Lizzy continued, “one of the sisters had a terrible secret. Something she was afraid to tell the other. Are you paying attention, Ronnie? ’Cause here’s where things get tricky.”
Rhonda nodded, studying Lizzy’s face, noticing the tiny lines around her eyes and lips.
Does the frog trust its own memories? Does it think nothing of them? And what, Rhonda wondered, of the frogs who are kissed and turn into princes? What do they remember? What do they know?
Rhonda suddenly felt seized with panic. She didn’t want Lizzy to tell this story, whatever it was. She’d been searching for the truth for weeks, but now that she was on the cusp of finally understanding everything, she wanted to go back. But it was too late.
When Lizzy spoke again, she was direct, no more fairy tale musings.
“When I was ten years old, my father began coming to my room at night. He’d say he’d come to tuck me in. Maybe it actually began before then. When I look back, I remember him visiting me in the bathroom for years. Washing me all over in the tub, asking to wipe me after I’d gone to the bathroom. It was only when I was ten that he came to me in my room. It was only then that he not only touched me, but had me touch him.”
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