by TE Carter
“Your parents have a cottage there?”
Kailey nods. “It’s a little place, but we go there in the summers. Except. Well, they’re selling it now.”
“How did you meet Caleb Breward?” Gomes asks.
“Like I said, I was running. I liked to do at least six miles, but it was warm. I was on mile four and the sun was really bad that day. Even that early. I’d paused to catch my breath, and he was in his car. I didn’t see him at first. I was so focused on how hot it was.”
Caleb and I spent a lot of time at the lake. I wonder if it was a morning before he came to get me. Before we’d spent the evening in his car, kissing and whatever else we were doing. I wonder if he’d cleared the taste of Kailey Howe from his lips with me.
“I’m sorry. Can I have some water?” she asks, and both Thompson and Gomes stand to get it. He nods and Thompson heads out, before Kailey continues. “I’m not from around here, so I didn’t know him. He stopped and he started asking me where I was from, my name, you know, typical stuff. He asked if I needed a ride. If I was okay.”
“Did you get in the car with him?”
She shakes her head. “That’s just it. I didn’t. I talked to him for maybe … ten minutes. Then he left and I continued my run. But there’s this hole. In my memory, you know? Like we talked, I shook off the heat, and I went back to running. But then I don’t remember how I got from the side of the lake to that house. I remember the house, though. Or at least I remember the room where they had me.”
Officer Thompson returns with the water and Kailey drinks it, giving Gomes a chance to review his notes. Where Gretchen was angry, Kailey is sweet. She’s easy to root for. Vulnerable. She has none of Gretchen’s bad attitude. No inherent expectation that nobody will believe her.
They’re both telling the truth; it’s just easier for Gomes to hear it from Kailey.
“Thanks,” Kailey says, handing the plastic cup back to Thompson, who takes it and sits, holding the cup, waiting. “It was … I don’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t a real house. Does that make sense?”
“Not really,” Gomes admits, and Thompson sighs.
“He means he doesn’t understand how it wasn’t,” she says. “Could you describe it?”
Kailey nods and looks down at her shoes. They’re new running shoes, top-of-the-line quality, but they look too new. Too unused. It’s well past Christmas, but I get the impression she got them from her parents, that they tried to encourage her to keep at it, to start running again. That’s what makes a girl. She builds an escape for herself and someone comes along and turns it into the one thing she dreads.
“I don’t think anyone lived there,” she explains. “It wasn’t a model home, though. It was … It felt dead.”
“And you woke up there?” Gomes asks.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if that happened or if I just can’t remember. I remember running. I remember being on the side of the road, talking to him in his car. And then I remember him on top of me on the bed. I remember that house, and I remember them coming into the room. Both of them. There were two of them. After he … he brought someone else in. And then they both … at the same time.”
Officer Thompson stands, putting the cup on the table. She heads toward the tissue box and Kailey shakes her head.
“I don’t need those. I don’t cry about it anymore. I can’t. It happened. There’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m trying to move on.”
“What made you decide to come forward only now?” Gomes asks. “It’s been almost a year.”
I remind myself it’s his job. That he needs to prepare the girls for what’s to come, if this gets to trial. It makes sense, but I hate how he pushes them, how he passively accuses them, how he makes it their fault. I hate that he has to do these things, because it’s more important that Kailey is ready for it than that anyone looks at her. Hears her. Helps her. She has to be ready to convince people, because they can’t simply believe her.
“I didn’t know them,” Kailey says. “I didn’t know how it happened, and I knew nobody would believe me. So I tried to pretend. I tried to be okay. I wasn’t okay, though. My parents asked why I was different, but I just told them I was fine. I quit running. I was afraid to go outside. I went back to school and I did my work, but I stopped spending a lot of time with people. I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”
Gomes clears his throat and reaches across the table to grab the cup, but Kailey flinches. He sees it and pulls back, making a note in the file.
“I spent a lot of time online,” she continues. “Looking for them. For anything from this town, anything that could validate what happened to me. I heard about Ellie when she went missing. I thought maybe … but then she disappeared again, even from the Internet. People forgot. And then, a few weeks ago, I saw the posts. I saw what Gretchen wrote and I e-mailed her. I asked her to tell me about where it happened. That was what I needed to know. I had to know if it was the same place. She tried to tell me about them, but they weren’t that different from so many other guys. It was the place that made me sure. They did it again after me. To her. And I’m positive they know where that girl is. Ellie. I think they did something to her.”
“Unfortunately,” Gomes says, “while we can try to find a connection with Ellie, this isn’t about her. We’re working on building a case against them for your assault.”
“I’ll never win,” Kailey says. “There are too many things I can’t remember. But there must be something. Something about that place. I know I’m not the only one. There isn’t just me and Gretchen.”
“We’ll try,” Thompson promises. “We’ll fix it, Kailey.”
I don’t know what bothers me most. That Kailey Howe, a girl I don’t even know, may be the catalyst for them to look harder into what happened to me. That last summer, as I thought I was falling in love with Caleb, he was doing this to her. Or that every time something like this happens, someone promises to fix it.
This whole town has been built on promises nobody remembers to keep.
chapter thirty
A town like ours, a town that lost before it even started, makes it easy for people like the Brewards. We see them as an example of what can be. Amid broken factories, a river so shallow it seems like it’s close to giving up, the endless snow and winter, and entire streets of houses that just didn’t work out, the Brewards keep holding it together. They succeed off the pain of others, but people have a strange way of admiring the strength of it.
Hollow Oaks was destined to fail. Our history is of failure. Before any of us, before we were a town or even a state, the area was passed from one group to the next. It was native land, and then British, and then American. But it was a place that wasn’t fought for, wasn’t worth keeping.
After the factories came and went, the town went on. What else is a town supposed to do? But in the last ten years or so, when people realized that the loans they had were impossible to maintain, especially with no jobs and the weather what it was, Hollow Oaks slowly turned into a ghost town. There are still people here, but when I was growing up, the high school had more than a thousand students; when I disappeared, we were down to 349. I was 350.
Now, the media has nearly doubled our population.
Cassie stands in front of the hardware store, the dim evening light making her a shadow. She’s shivering, of course, but she’s learning to fake it better. Her cameraman waits beside her.
“Ms. Haddom?” The man behind her isn’t from here. The people in this town look aged. They look years older than they are, but he doesn’t. This man is old, but not aged. He’s distinguished; that’s the word I was taught means you have money.
“Charles?” He nods. “Great, we’re about ready, so I’ll do a quick intro and then we can get started.”
The cameraman points the camera at Cassie and, apparently, Charles. She smiles and waits for him to gesture it’s time to start.
“Good evening. This is Cassie Haddom reporting for WLKV,
again from the town of Hollow Oaks. We’ve been following the investigation into claims of sexual misconduct against Noah and Caleb Breward, sons of Wayne Breward, real estate developer and local politician. Although the police have not indicated what kind of progress has been made in this case, we have been told that the Brewards already retained the services of Attorney Adrien Deschaine and that they are confident, if charges are brought forward against the boys, that the case will be settled swiftly and without further disruption to the family. With me now is Charles Schaffer, a local businessman who has recently started a group to assist the Brewards. Charles, I understand you’re friendly with Wayne and his sons?”
“That’s right, miss. Wayne and I have known each other a long time. I’m the VP of business development over at J&M Holdings, a mortgage and financial firm. We’re in St. Agatha, so I’ve done business with Wayne multiple times over the years. I know what kind of man he is, and that extends to his sons.”
“I see.” Cassie swallows. “I understand you’ve begun a fund-raising campaign to generate support for the Brewards?”
“These boys have their entire futures ahead of them. It’s concerning that they’re being forced to take from their college savings to defend themselves against baseless accusations. We would like to help by showing them we all know what kind of people the Brewards are, and that everyone in Hollow Oaks, St. Agatha, and our neighboring communities is standing behind them.”
“From what we’ve been told, the Brewards are among the wealthiest families in Hollow Oaks. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t understand your point,” Charles says.
“It seems perhaps fund-raising would be unnecessary, that they have the funds to hire an attorney and that—”
Charles cuts her off, his distinguished expression growing feral. “You’re not from around here. I’ll excuse your assumption that this is about money. This is about the fact that these boys, models of integrity and perseverance, are being denigrated by a corrupt press, the biased media, and an inept local police force. They are watching their futures be dismantled slowly. Their potential careers. Families. Their entire lifestyle is being destroyed. All because some young women have a hard time being responsible for their own actions.”
“Oh?” Cassie asks. “You know these young women as well?”
“I don’t need to know them, miss. I know their type.”
“What type would that be?”
“The girls who desperately want to catch the eye of boys like Noah and Caleb Breward. They’re well-liked. As you noted, they have money. They represent some kind of conquest for these girls. And they’re boys, after all. Boys like that kind of attention. But this … this circus … it’s too high a price for a little fun.”
“From what we’ve been told, these boys have a strange idea of fun, Mr. Schaffer. What about these girls and their futures? Are you saying they’re not entitled to those?”
“I don’t like your tone, sweetheart.”
Cassie pauses, and I watch her balance her career and her reputation with the desire to hit him. Her shoulders square and she tenses, but she stands tall. She breathes in and smiles.
“I apologize. I appreciate your time, Charles. There’s a reason you’re here, I believe. You have a website you’d like to share, where people watching can donate to your … fund-raiser?” It’s in the word fund-raiser she says everything she can’t actually say. The way the word curls up at the beginning and she mumbles its close.
“Yes, we are at www.brewardsupportfund.org, and we’ve had a wealth of success already. I assure you that this town and the towns around here know the truth.”
“Thank you again. As I said, we do appreciate your time. Our viewers will reach out with further questions.”
Cassie wraps up the interview and Charles leaves, less distinguished and less respectable now. When she’s done and he’s gone, she turns to her cameraman, her hands shaking.
“I’m going to get fired for this, Gus,” she tells him. “This case is going to ruin me. This town is a mess.”
He nods, and she stares out into the evening, shaking and shivering.
The ringing comes in a matter of minutes. Cassie rolls her eyes and picks up her phone.
“Hello?”
There’s a pause. Someone on the other side is yelling. Cassie nods at Gus and he unwraps a pack of cigarettes. It’s a brand-new package. He hands one to her and she takes it, listening to the yelling on the other side of the phone, waiting for Gus to light her cigarette. She coughs when she inhales.
“No,” she says to the person on the other end of the phone. “I’m not sitting here and defending that. I’m not listening to it. These girls … they’re in college. High school. Where are they going to come up with money to hire an attorney?” The person on the other end speaks again, and Cassie sighs. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter if the state will prosecute. If they even do. It’s bad enough that, if this goes to court, those girls could end up on all our TVs. It’ll be impossible to keep their names secret in a town like this. I’m not being a part of demonizing them before we get started. He wants to claim the girls are just heartbroken? That the boys’ futures are being ruined by some kind of drama? Well, I’m not doing it, Gwen. I’m not feeding into it and I’m not giving them more to work with.”
Gus watches her, flicking his cigarette.
“I can’t, Gwen. I just can’t,” Cassie says. She hangs up and crushes the cigarette she smoked once under her foot. “This shit is disgusting. How do you do it?”
Gus shrugs. “Bad habit.”
“That was Gwen.”
“I figured.”
Cassie paces, but she doesn’t go anywhere. She looks around, although it’s only them on the street right now. “She’s pissed,” she tells Gus. “I’m being too confrontational with the locals.”
“She’ll get over it. She hired you for being confrontational.”
“I want to do something. I’m sick of waiting for updates and interviewing assholes. I want to actually help.”
Gus finishes his cigarette and picks up his camera. “So let’s help. You lead. Let’s go talk to someone who knows something.”
“Who?” Cassie asks.
“Alex Frias? He’s got to be wondering what’s going on, right?”
“No. That poor man … No, he’s been through enough. He’s keeping his distance right now. Let’s let him have that. If this turns out like it might … like it looks like it’s going to, he’ll have plenty of time to talk to us.”
“I don’t know then. But eventually we’ve got to find someone. We can just start asking. Someone will have something to say.”
“People aren’t going to want us intruding.”
“Well, maybe this town needs some intruding. It’s been almost half a year since a fifteen-year-old girl went missing, Cassie. And now two other girls are saying there’s something else going on here. It sounds to me like this town has a hell of a lot to dig up. Go grab yourself a shovel.”
chapter thirty-one
They’re so smug. Both of them. All of them. Adrien sits with Noah and Caleb around a large conference table. Officer Thompson and Detective Gomes wait. There’s a tape recorder, but it’s recording nothing but pens scratching down questions and notes and the sound of the ceiling fan spinning.
They won’t say anything. Every question must go through Adrien first. It’s an exercise in futility, but the police should get something official on record. Should try to do their jobs right.
I hate how I feel captive, that they can do this, that they control me even in death. How do we let another person have this kind of power over us?
“I’m not sure there’s much more we can tell you,” Adrien says. It’s been a circus of vaguery. Lies and excuses.
“We still need to clarify a few things,” Gomes explains.
“As we’ve said, these young women are confused.”
“There are several things that are unclear,” Thompson adds. “H
ow did Kailey Howe get to the house? What house are both girls referring to? Their descriptions are consistent, but they don’t match the Brewards’ home. Is there an existing relationship with Noah and Gretchen? Because he says there is, but she says they were barely acquaintances. That she was only with him to loan him her class notes. And while we have alibis from the boys for the time Ellie Frias disappeared, we aren’t clear why these two girls, who don’t know each other and are not connected to Ellie, are insisting that there’s more to that story. So where would you like to begin?”
I like how she will walk out of here, exhausted, maybe head home and cry, stressing about how little she can do. But in here, in front of them, she refuses to let them get away with it. She makes them answer the questions nobody else pushes them to answer.
“You have a lot of questions, and I’m not sure we need to go through this again,” Adrien says. “However, I will allow the boys to answer if they like.”
Allowance. It’s the way they live. The world allows.
“Gretchen has wanted me since day one of class,” Noah says. “I don’t know the answers to the rest of it, but there’s nothing in her accusations.”
Gomes nods. “Caleb? Anything to add?”
“About what?”
“Officer Thompson just pointed out where the inconsistencies are in your stories versus the accusations from these girls. Were you listening?”
Gomes may not be a good man. He doesn’t really understand about the girls, but he’s also not all bad. He doesn’t believe the Brewards, and he likes truth too much to let his doubts about the whole thing interfere.
“Not really,” Caleb says.
“Tell us about Kailey Howe,” Gomes pushes.
“What about her?”
“How did she end up with you? She can’t remember.”
Caleb shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember, either. But she’s probably just upset because I didn’t call her after.”
“How did you meet?” Thompson asks, and I admire her for not reaching across the table and throttling him.