Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  “What happened with Fisher?”

  I heard him intake a breath. “I can’t say. At least right now. If it goes to court—”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll help with Savannah’s case any way I can.”

  Silence. I thought maybe somehow we’d lost the connection, but then Patrick’s voice came through—strong, deep, and somehow so relieved.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I needed to hear that, today of all days.”

  “I’m here,” I told him. “I don’t care what it takes.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  My mother hadn’t wanted me to see Savannah in the morgue. “Please,” I’d said. We were about to leave the hospital. David and my father had already started toward the exit, and Fisher was writing on his pad after asking us if we knew anyone who’d want to hurt Savannah. Did she have any enemies? “She’s barely sixteen,” I wanted to tell him. “She’s beautiful. She’s always laughing. Everybody loves her.”

  We were almost to the glass doors when I’d turned to my mother and whispered that I needed to see my sister. Dr. Bassett and my mom looked at each other, and Tunney, who must have heard, offered to stay with my father and David in the private waiting room until we were ready.

  Years later, I’d learned my dad had been asked if he wanted to see Savannah, and he’d said no. When David finally told me, it was late at night in my Princeton apartment, and he’d come to help me pack up for the summer. We’d smoked half a joint. It was May, right after finals, and the air coming in my six-foot windows was balmy and humid. “He couldn’t handle it,” David had said. And my mild-mannered brother, who never seemed to get terribly angry, suddenly shouted, “If it was my daughter, I’d make sure I saw her!” He turned to me, and his eyes were wet, maybe from the pot or maybe because he was furious. “I’d never leave that fucking building until I laid eyes on her!”

  But the day Savannah was murdered, David and my father stayed in the tiny waiting room while Dr. Bassett led my mother and me down two flights of stairs. It was at least ten degrees cooler than Emergency, where we’d been standing shivering when the ambulance came in after blowing through four red lights and still not arriving in time to save her.

  We entered a brightly lit room. In the center of the back wall, a large window was covered with a plain white curtain. Next to that was an ominous black CALL button. Dr. Bassett touched my shoulder, and then she stepped forward and pressed the button. I watched her speak into a small metal grate. “We’re ready,” she said. The other side of the glass buzzed, and the curtain moved. We’re ready. We’re ready. I’d never be ready for this. I closed my eyes, thinking maybe when I opened them, I’d be back at school in that leather chair while Mrs. Wilcox typed away, that this was some horrible nightmare. I couldn’t possibly be about to see Savannah’s dead body, waiting to begin what was left of my life. My mother took my hand in hers, and I opened my eyes.

  Savannah was on a rolling metal table under a sheet. My first thought was that she must have been cold. Standing next to her was a guy with red, curly hair, earbuds snaking out from under his scrubs. I could tell by the way his knee was jiggling he was listening to music. I wanted to kill him. Dr. Bassett tapped the glass, and he stepped forward. She made a twirling gesture with her hand. The kid with the earbuds reached for the top of the sheet. And then he pulled it back.

  She was naked. I knew this from her bare shoulders. Her blond hair was spread like a fan, and her face was tilted slightly to one side. She was stark, stripped of color except for the purplish bruises on her neck.

  I’d only seen Savannah use makeup once. Cass, a junior she smoked with behind the school, had driven her to Blue Mercury on Palmer Square, and she’d come home with fifty dollars’ worth of liquid foundation, lip gloss, liner, and navy mascara to match her eyes. She never told me where she’d gotten the money. She just sat still while I made her up exactly like the article in Glamour said. When I was done, she’d paused in front of the mirror and then washed her face with Noxzema, muttering something about clowns and hookers. I’d made her bed and did her laundry for a month in exchange for her leftover makeup. I needed the foundation to cover the pink blotches on my forehead and chin, the blackheads that sprouted like tiny constellations on my nose. So the fact that she looked bare now did not have to do with makeup; rather she was so completely undone. And then I knew.

  “Where’s her necklace?” I turned to my mother.

  My mom’s eyes were on Savannah, but her body was angled away as though it could not stand to bear witness. “Michelle,” she asked Dr. Bassett, her voice shrill, “did they take off Savannah’s necklace while they examined her?”

  Dr. Bassett hit the button on the wall again. “Andrew,” she said loudly. “Did you remove a necklace from Miss Martino?” He startled and then pulled out his earbud and answered her with a nonchalant no.

  He took her necklace. “We have to go back.” I pulled my mother toward the door. “We have to find it.”

  Dr. Bassett moved us up the stairs, pushing past nurses and orderlies and hustling us to the same waiting room we’d been in before. She cornered Officer Tunney, and I heard her say the words missing and cataloged.

  Tunney turned to me. “Cady, can you describe Savannah’s necklace for me?”

  I reached into the neckline of my sweater and pulled out a thin gold chain with a pendant that resembled a slanted, backward f. Two together were the Chinese symbol for twins. We’d been wearing them since before I could remember. Our midwife, a kind Vietnamese woman who had delivered most of the babies in town, gave them to my then hippie parents when we were born. “Very powerful, these girls, almost dangerous power,” she had told my mother in her thick accent, and then my parents had told us she had laughed, a silky laugh, a merry, happy laugh that defied what she’d said. It had made us feel like superheroes, and each time we grew, we’d gotten bigger chains to match our size. “We’ve never taken them off.” I had a terrible feeling that without her necklace, Savannah wouldn’t be able to come back to me, wouldn’t know how to find me. And I knew she would try. We were the same, after all. She was me. I was her. One zygote.

  Tunney spoke a series of numbers and codes into the radio on his shoulder. When he finished, he put a hand on my back. “CSU is still at the scene,” he said over my head to my parents. “If it’s there, they’ll find it.”

  They never did. At my dad’s insistence, after CSU finished their investigation, the police searched the woods and the Wolfe Mansion with a metal detector, but Patrick had shown up unannounced four days after Savannah’s funeral to tell us in person that the necklace hadn’t been recovered. I’d been sitting on the ottoman in the living room when I saw it in a flash, a hand holding it, a closed fist. But that’s all I could see. And then my mother had sent me to the kitchen to get coffee. I knew from her nervous eyes and the way she pulled at her fingers she was trying to get rid of me. So after I poured the coffee, I pressed myself against the bird-of-paradise wallpaper and listened as hard as I could above the microwave’s soft whir.

  Patrick Tunney lowered his voice as if he’d known I’d be eavesdropping, but I managed to make out assailant and taken it.

  That night, I took the jewelry box I’d gotten for my fourth birthday off my bureau, white with tiny painted roses and a spinning ballerina that sprang up when I opened it. It played some vague lullaby I’d never been able to name. I pulled out the bottom drawer where I kept my social security card and birth certificate. Swirling the clasp of the necklace around under my chin, I worked on trying to get it unlatched, but I couldn’t. And while I struggled with it and my chubby fingers fumbled with its clasp, I realized I’d never take off that necklace.

  Before I closed the lid, I had a strange feeling that I wanted to pull the tiny ballerina out, cease her endless dancing to that unknown song so I wouldn’t have to see her every time I opened the top, wouldn’t have to see her perfect little body, tiny blue eyes, th
e blond bun and satisfied smile. But I didn’t take her out. I left her where she was and closed the lid. When the music stopped, the room I’d shared with Savannah went unbearably still.

  It was Emma who had made me get a longer chain for it, so long I could hide the f underneath my clothes; it hung almost to my belly. Before that, I’d worn it on my breastbone, like I had when Savannah was alive. It was my senior year in high school, and we’d been at the Sotto Sopra Christmas party.

  “What’s with this necklace you always wear?” Emma had been in a red lamb’s wool sweater, and she tugged at it with her small, perfect fingers. Around us, people were getting drunk on screwdrivers and tequila.

  “It’s nothing,” I’d told her, reaching for it, but Emma had it in her grasp. She’d raised her shaped eyebrows.

  “Anytime someone says it’s nothing,” she’d said, “it means it’s something. What’s the f mean?” She had fingered the tiny symbol, and because I was drunk, because Emma smelled of mint and perfume, and because she seemed so sorority-sister intimate, I told her. Told her about the midwife and how we’d never taken them off and how when Savannah died, it had disappeared.

  Emma had dropped the necklace and then said, as though somehow erasing me, “Cady, I’m sorry, but that’s really creepy.”

  In fact, I think that’s why David loved Emma, because she wasn’t sentimental. There was no chance in hell you could wallow when you were around her. She was a doer. She took action and moved on.

  “He wants an overly efficient mother,” Gabby said when David kept dating Emma even after he’d graduated.

  “He has a mother,” I told her.

  “Yeah, I know,” Gabby’d said, “and now that he’s out of the house, he wants another one.”

  Off went David, getting stroked by Emma’s pretty pink manicured hands. Until one day she stopped stroking.

  And now I stood at Witherspoon Bread Company, right when Deanna was breathing down my neck for another chapter, and I should have been home drowning that poor girl under the ice and figuring out about serial killers. Instead, I was waiting to find out from Emma why she left my brother. The lady in front of me was taking forever to order, blowing my plan to have my coffee on the table and my book open to a page I hadn’t gotten to yet so I’d appear relaxed. Emma made me nervous. And so did the Witherspoon Bread Company, solely because it was far from home. I was sure not only that Emma did not want to face anyone in Stanwich after her father was all over the papers but also that she was probably a little bit worried one of her pretty sorority sisters would happen upon her while she was with her fat ex-sister-in-law. Emma had gone to William Paterson, so she wouldn’t be too far from David, and as a result, her sorority sisters were everywhere.

  She was wearing knee-high boots and a black dress, and her silky red hair was tied in a neat ponytail on the nape of her neck. “Hi, Cady,” she called, coming up behind me with her black leather Coach bag, smelling like balsam. “Sorry I’m late.” She air kissed me, which I hated, and when she drew away, I saw, despite her lovely makeup job, Emma Fisher had dark circles under her eyes.

  “Hey,” I told her, and then by some invisible force of etiquette, I offered to add her to my order.

  “Oh, sure, yes, that would be lovely.”

  “I’ll have a vanilla latte,” I told the girl. I wanted to add a lemon cruller to the order, but I didn’t want to give Emma the satisfaction.

  The girl arched her eyebrows at Emma, waiting for her order.

  Emma smiled as though she didn’t notice and said, “Oh, I’ll take a green tea.” Emma was terribly underweight and hadn’t eaten a carb since Dr. Atkins said not to. “And, Cady, you don’t mind, do you?” She opened her brown eyes wide. “But I’d like to bring something to those homeless men on Lincoln, the ones who make sculptures out of soda cans?”

  “Be my guest,” I told her. Leave my brother in the cold, but be my guest.

  “I’ll take a dozen everything bagels,” Emma said, smiling sweetly at the girl, “and a tub of full-fat cream cheese.” She turned to me. “They love bagels,” she said in her daydreamy, see-through voice.

  “Great,” I told her.

  And then we waited in complete silence for the Princeton babe to bring Emma’s tea and homeless goodies and my latte.

  We found two leather chairs in the corner with a square table between them. I’d forgotten a sleeve for my cup, and it was too hot to hold, so I set it down and blew on my hand, which made me feel clumsy and awkward. I always felt that way in front of Emma. I didn’t even want my medium (not grande as the lady with the dog in her purse in front of me kept calling it) coffee, anyway, but Gabby said it was one of my best habits, a great diuretic. And because I needed something to get rid of the extra puffiness in my ankles, I thought it might be worth it. As it was, I had cankles, and that morning, I couldn’t even zip my low-heeled boots.

  “Listen,” Emma said. She had perfected speaking without moving her lips. Gabby and I called her the Muppet Master. “Tell him that I’ll send back his INXS CD as soon as I can. I didn’t realize it was in my car when I left.” She smiled quickly at me.

  I ran my hands up and down my upper arms. “Brr. Is there a draft? It suddenly got chilly in here.”

  Emma’s smile turned to a grimace. “You’re exactly like him,” she said into her cup. “I hate to say this, Cady, but you really are passive aggressive.”

  I dumped four packets of Splenda in my mug. When next I spoke, I lowered my voice and tried to sound unsure. It was a trick I’d learned researching. It was called going one down. Apparently, if you got all sad and pathetic, people might tell you what you wanted to hear. “Can you tell me why?”

  “Why what?” Emma sipped her tea. Her giant bag for the homeless was sitting at her feet.

  “You broke his heart.” I leaned in closer and said as pleasantly as possible, “Can you pretend you have one and tell me why?”

  Her pretty cheekbones went pink, which only highlighted how gaunt her face was. “He hasn’t told you?”

  “He has no idea.”

  A group of college students flooded through the door, noisy and happy. I envied them.

  “Your family does not deal,” she said, “with Savannah.”

  In the 5,963 days since Savannah had been gone, I’d never really thought about how losing her affected David. Once the FBI pulled out, the story stopped getting played every night on the news, and Patrick Tunney no longer came by once a week to give a progress report, we rarely talked about her. Our parents made sure they never neglected David or me because they were too sad to come to a soccer game or too wary of having to answer the same questions over and over again to go to a school function. They plastered ridiculous smiles on their tired faces, gripped each other’s hands, and carried on.

  My family prided itself in carrying on. We patted ourselves on the back because we were coping. We all had good jobs. My parents toughed it out and remained in the 20 percent of couples who stayed together after the death of a child. None of us camped out at the cemetery anymore.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means you never deal with your … shit.”

  Maybe Emma was onto something. There was a part of us, a part that we rarely talked about, that wouldn’t be right until we found the man who murdered Savannah.

  “And you do?” I could feel myself clenching my fists.

  Emma put her drink down. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “And are you dealing with your father getting fired by hiding?” I wanted to ask, but instead, I said, “And what does dealing mean, exactly?”

  “Well,” she said, “for one thing, it would mean that David wouldn’t have sent his little sister to do his dirty work. He had plenty of time to ask me what was wrong before I left. But no one in your family ever talks to each other.”

  “We talk plenty,” I told her. “For example, we talk about why your father put Savannah’s case in the fucking cellar.”

  A woman
and her friend, both in expensive cashmere, turned toward us. Emma gave them a curt smile.

  “What my father does is not my problem,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

  “Well, thank God for that, since he’s on the front page of all the papers.” It was a low blow, but I couldn’t help it.

  Emma mashed her lips together. “I’ve asked your brother time and again to explore his feelings about what happened, to stop burying it in dinners with you people and his model car building, and he just gets mad. I’m done with people who are assholes when I try to help them.”

  “You started dating him after…” I couldn’t even finish that sentence. I hated it that Emma was right. “You must have known what he was like.”

  She rolled her eyes. “We were eighteen years old, and David was a beautiful, laid-back tech geek. And we were crazy about each other. Maybe what happened to Savannah drew us together in some way that’s difficult to explain; I don’t really know. But the point is, we’re not kids anymore, and now I realize that stuffing all his feelings down—”

  “Like your father stuffed a very important murder case in cold storage?”

  She went on as though I’d never spoken. “That was not healthy, and if you don’t mind, I happen to want children and a family and someone”—she appeared to be lurching around her rather empty mind searching for a word—“normal.” She pushed the table toward me and stood up. “I’ve put up with your sad, wronged family for way too long.” She heaved her pretty Coach bag over her shoulder. “And you know what? I don’t want to anymore. You.” She stabbed her finger in the air at me. “The whole lot of you is toxic.”

  Toxic. A therapist’s favorite word.

  “Why don’t you try doing something your family never does?” She clutched her bag of goodwill bagels I’d bought. “Talk to each other, Cady. Ask your own damn brother what his problem is. Our town’s so angry at my father for putting your sister in storage? Well, maybe you should be focusing on the truths none of you have ever been willing to see.”