That night, I wake in the back seat of our car, which is parked in the garage. My father is in the driver’s seat with my mother beside him. I am in the seat directly behind her, unbuckled. I’m wearing my winter coat over my nightgown. The car is cold and silent. I ask where we are going, worried about Santa Claus. My mother turns around in the seat. Go back to sleep, she whispers.
And I do. I wake the next morning, Christmas morning, in my bed.
Janus listened wordlessly and still said nothing when I’d finished.
I had to prompt him. “Well?”
“Ask Michan, not me,” Janus said. “I wasn’t there.”
“Please,” I said. “My mother would have told you.”
Janus sighed. “Lissa talked about it, but almost everyone in the group talked about taking matters into their own hands and not waiting until they were helpless.”
“Don’t judge the plague years by the HAART years,” I said.
But Janus didn’t smile as he usually did when I recited his own words at him.
“You survived. Be grateful.” He spoke gently.
“But why did they change their minds?” I asked, unable to ask out loud why my parents had decided that I should live.
“Hope?” Janus said. “It was a death sentence, yes. But there were constantly rumors that a breakthrough was coming. Constantly.”
He rested his hand on top of mine. “Maybe they decided that however bad it was going to get, all three of you had to stay until you each reached the end. Just in case.”
I took the sketchbook back and closed it.
“I’m going to send you the name of a few therapists and I want you to think seriously about seeing one of them.” Janus held up a hand to cut off my protest. “Promise me you’ll consider it. You didn’t stop taking your medication because going to the pharmacy was an inconvenience. But for now, I will say try not to live in the past so much, Adair. Whatever this memory is of the garage, let it go. Don’t dwell.”
Don’t dwell in the past, he meant. But my parents were there, and Rowan as well.
Later that afternoon, as Janus was getting ready to leave, he asked if I’d ever considered curating my parents’ work.
“Curating?” I repeated.
“You have your mother’s photographs too?”
“I have everything.”
“Think about organizing all of it. A book. An exhibit. Off the top of my head, I can think of four friends of mine who’d be willing to help.”
“That would be . . . public,” I said.
“It would be telling, you mean,” he said. “Yes, everyone who sees it will know. You’d be disclosed, and not just to Michan’s readers and the writers who come here. Think about it.”
Lissa McCrohan, undressed, lying on a bed, her long brown hair spread over the pillow. One knee raised, her arms crossed over her breasts. She is smiling slightly, her gaze forthright, her eyes clearly on the artist.
To show this, what was lost? To show that before dying there was art, and beauty.
I promised Janus I would think about it.
19
Adair
2010
For Columbus Day weekend, Shannon was going away with her husband and children, and I had agreed to fill in for her on Friday, answering the phones, talking to couples who’d come to see the grounds and decided impulsively to ask about getting married there.
Friday was gray and wet, and I was glad. There wouldn’t be too many people visiting, so I would be mostly alone in the office, which was warm and inviting. Shannon had a green thumb, and she kept several plants around the room in vases she’d made in pottery class.
I picked up the Culleton Beacon and sat down at her desk.
On October 28, a candlelight vigil will be held at Maple Street Park in memory of Rowan Kinnane on the fifteenth anniversary of her disappearance.
A woman identified as a Culleton resident was quoted: “You think of the Moye story, ‘The Lost Girl,’ and how she comes back after fifteen years, and you can’t help but wonder, what if?”
I set the paper down. What if what? What if Rowan appeared at her own vigil, perfectly fine but refusing to say where she’d spent the last fifteen years?
Then I thought, almost laughing, that she would do exactly that if such a thing were possible.
The phone rang a few times, easy calls that I handled quickly. I skimmed the emails that had come into the general account, but they were specific questions that Shannon would have to handle, and I left them alone.
Shannon had told me I could leave at four o’clock instead of five. With no more than a half hour to go, the door opened, and I reluctantly looked away from the computer.
“Leo,” I said as he closed the door behind him.
He stayed on the welcome mat.
“I got you something,” he said. “My boots are muddy. You’re going to have to come a little closer.”
Slowly, I came from behind the desk, and when I was near enough he held out a pale wooden box that looked almost like an eyeglass case, except it was flat. The lid was engraved with Celtic knotwork.
I held it in both hands.
“Open it,” he said.
I slid back the lid to see seven small compartments, and above each, in cursive script, the days of the week. I looked up at him questioningly.
“It’s a pill organizer,” he said. “You don’t have one, do you?”
I laughed and shook my head. Shyly, Leo shoved his hands in his jacket pockets.
“I was reading about HIV and not taking medication. This is supposed to help, because you can leave it out on your dresser or the counter.”
I had also read those articles: How to Combat Pill Fatigue. Take your medication with a vitamin. Take it before/after brushing your teeth. Take with the meal you eat every day. And yes, use a pill organizer.
“Thank you.” I closed the lid and traced the knotwork with my finger. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s made of oak,” he said.
I laughed again. “You have a good memory.”
Once, one night when we were together, I’d told him how I’d gotten my name from Edward Adair, the artist. Adair meant oak. Neither my mother nor my father had known that Darragh meant oak as well, and so I had been named, accidentally, after my grandfather.
“Fuck my memory. I felt like shit about what I said.” Leo would not meet my eyes.
“What did you say?”
“When you were at my place, what I said about how I’d take a pill a day if it would fix my life.”
“Oh, that, yes.” I nodded, unable and unwilling to pretend it hadn’t hurt.
“Use it, okay?”
“I will, I promise.”
He smiled and then turned as if to go. I was about to tell him to wait when I saw a woman in a gray jacket heading straight for the office.
“Looks like I have a customer. Can I find you later?” I asked.
Leo looked out the window reflexively, nodded and stepped aside.
The door opened and a teenager came in and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it as though she were being pursued.
“Hi,” I said, mystified. “How can I help you?”
She was far too young to be a bride. Perhaps she was the daughter of one of the writers, killing time before 4 p.m., when visiting hours started.
She pushed off her hood and I looked more closely at her face. A moment before she gave her name, I realized who she was. I looked at Leo and saw that he already understood.
It’s easy to say fifteen years and to understand that it’s a long time, but seeing Libby Brayton was a visible measure of how very much time had passed since Rowan had last been with us.
Libby was three when her father took her away to live on Long Island, while Evelyn remained in the house where she’d lived with Rowan. Did David Brayton believe his wife was guilty? Some said yes, and this was proof. Another year passed before Evelyn moved away herself. Whenever I’d thought of Libby, I pictured
her as a baby, as though her life had also paused on October 28, 1995.
I couldn’t quite remember what David had looked like, except that he’d been a big, imposing man, graying at the temples. This tall, slender girl resembled Evelyn so strongly, it was hard to believe there was any trace of her father in her.
She said her name and added, “The lady in the kitchen told me you were here.” She glanced at Leo without a hint of recognition. But that was not surprising. Surely, if she’d seen him at all, it was only in photos taken when he was nineteen.
He tilted his head toward the door. I understood that he was asking if he should stay or go.
“It’s okay,” I said.
We exchanged a look over her head—his pained, mine panicked. What to say to her? What did she want?
Leo closed the door and walked away. I fought the urge to throw the door open and call for him not to leave me alone with her, though I knew he would not want to be seen around her and risk whatever rumors might arise from that, on the off chance someone who knew them both stumbled upon the scene. Sister of Missing Girl Confronts Suspected Killer.
When he’d gone, Libby began to speak. Most weekends, she said, she visited her mother, and she’d heard from a friend in Culleton that I’d come back to Moye House.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you,” Libby said.
“Sit, please.” I gestured to the couch, but she sat in the chair in front of the desk, leaving me behind it as if I were the principal at her school. But I’m not the grown-up, I wanted to say. Not me.
“I always wanted to talk to someone who knew her. My mother says to leave it alone.”
“Well, that’s—understandable,” I said, lacing my fingers together to keep from fidgeting.
Libby shrugged. “You’ve met Rowan’s brother?”
“Yes, he’s doing a residency here.”
“I know,” she said impatiently. “I read in the paper that he’s writing a book about Rowan. I want to tell him something. I mean, I want to meet him because he’s Rowan’s brother, but also I have something to say.” She unzipped her jacket and then yanked the zipper back up.
“Ciaran’s working right now,” I said slowly. “A lot of the writers don’t check their email or phones during the day. But I can try and reach him.”
As I thought it would, his phone went right to voicemail, so I texted him.
“I can’t say when he’ll see that,” I said.
“Can I wait for a while?” Libby asked.
I nodded and she sat back, tucking her hands beneath her thighs.
“Is this where my mother worked?” Libby asked, looking around.
“No. Back then, the office was in the house itself, in one of the downstairs rooms.”
“Oh.” Libby jiggled her leg. “I stay with my mom over the summer. She doesn’t live too far away. Do they ever hire you here if you’re in high school?”
The answer was yes, actually—not Moye House itself but the company that handled the catering. Summer was a busy time for events. But I said I didn’t know. Libby narrowed her eyes as though she knew I was lying.
“Did Rowan like school? Was she smart?”
“She was smart, but she didn’t like school much,” I said.
Libby leaned forward. “How come?”
I wondered if it was the first time anyone had said anything about Rowan that didn’t make her sound like a saint. I explained that Rowan had not been happy at the Catholic school. She’d wanted to go to Culleton Elementary.
“Yeah, my mother said once she should have let Rowan do what she wanted.”
“Does Evelyn know you’re here?” I asked hesitantly.
“God, no.” Libby made a noise that was part sigh, part laugh, a familiar sound. Rowan had made it almost every time she mentioned her stepfather.
“I told you, she’s all leave it alone. The past is the past. Except it isn’t! That’s stupid, since we still don’t know what happened.”
Libby was right, of course.
We lapsed into silence. I glanced at my phone, willing it to ring or buzz with a text. I didn’t really know how to talk to teenagers. The years I was one were mostly a blur, probably a deliberate trick of memory.
“What was she like?” Libby asked.
I wanted to say that she’d been a cross between Harriet the Spy and Claudia Kincaid, but I doubted Libby would have read those books.
“Smart, like I said. But unless she was interested in a subject, she didn’t exactly try too hard. She had a good memory,” I said. “She didn’t like to sit still.”
“Did Rowan hate me?” she asked, not meeting my eyes.
“Hate you?” I said, startled. “No, no, of course not.”
“I’ve read a bunch of stuff about Rowan online. There was a posting on this website, this true-crime forum thing where people post theories about cases.” Libby spoke with her eyes on the floor. “This one person said they thought she’d tried to hurt me, and so my mother . . . did something. Maybe not on purpose, but then she had to cover it up.”
If you believed Brian Kelly was right, that scenario was indeed more plausible than Evelyn, who had no history of abuse, lashing out at Rowan during a fight between the two of them. But Evelyn protecting Libby from a jealous Rowan? A rough shove, the back of Rowan’s head connecting with a sharp corner of the walnut table in the hallway.
I pressed my palms to my eyes, willing the image away. Behind Libby, near the window, Rowan, her arms crossed over her chest.
She’s pretty. I always knew she would be. That would have been my whole life.
I turned my head, banished her to my peripheral vision.
“Being the stepdaughter was hard for her,” I said, “but she never would have hurt you.”
I didn’t dare tell Libby that of Rowan’s two half siblings, Ciaran was the one who had truly interested her. Libby belonged to David.
Libby gathered her hair in a ponytail and then released it.
“I wasn’t allowed over your house,” I said. “I don’t know if you know that.”
“The AIDS thing? Yeah, I know,” she said, looking bored.
“I have HIV, not AIDS,” I told her reflexively.
“Huh?”
I wondered if her high school—or any high school—covered HIV in health ed or sex ed, or whatever it was called.
“Never mind.”
She caught something in my tone and her mouth thinned. I saw Evelyn, aggravated at Rowan.
“Dad said they didn’t know as much about it then as they do now. That’s why.”
I could have told her precisely what “they” knew in 1995, and how her father was not only misinformed but cruel, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter anymore.
It matters. It will always matter.
Rowan perched on the wide windowsill.
Libby’s frown cleared. “Well, anyway, there’s this guy online who says he can hypnotize people and retrieve memories from before they were two.”
I stared at her. “Libby, no. You can’t. That wouldn’t work. It’s impossible.”
Rowan laughed. She should do it.
“I was there. It would solve everything if I tell what happened. It would clear my mom. You should read the things they say about her online. She’s a murderer. She’s a bitch. My dad was going to leave her because of Rowan being a brat, and so she—none of it is true.”
“If anyone believed what you said, but most wouldn’t.” I leaned forward. “They’d say the memories were planted, or that you made them up, maybe not even on purpose.”
Libby made the noise again, a laugh that was not a laugh.
“Yeah, well, he won’t do it until I’m eighteen anyway.”
“He shouldn’t be doing it at all. Because it’s not real.” I tried to sound stern, but I had to admit that if I were in her position, I might be tempted too.
“If I remember something, and then it leads to actual proof, then we’d know,” she said.
But al
l Libby could hope for was to recall driving away from the house with Rowan in the car, and then Rowan taking off across the parking lot, their mother calling after her. Memories did not leave DNA behind. They were not stains sunk into fabric, waiting for technology to catch up and name them.
Libby stood up. “Come someplace with me?”
“Where?” I asked, but I was already on my feet. I would follow Libby as I had not followed her sister.
“Into the woods,” Libby said, tilting her head as though she’d explained it a dozen times already.
I placed my hands flat on the desk. “Why?”
“I have to get home soon. I’ll tell you what I want to tell Rowan’s brother, and if I don’t get to see him today, you can tell him. He can call me if he wants to. What’s your phone number?” Libby pulled out her phone.
I recited my number, and she entered it into her phone, barely glancing down, pressing buttons with an ease I’d never quite have.
Rowan grinned. You’re so old, Adair.
Be quiet, I thought. My God, be quiet, unless it’s to tell me where you are.
The chilly air smelled of smoke and rain. I let Libby lead. We walked mostly in silence, except for an occasional question she asked about the house or gardens.
Soon we reached Chapel Road, which was marked by a brass sign installed for tourists that explained the history of the Rosary Chapel. Libby started walking and I followed.
In the woods, afternoon darkened to twilight. Libby stopped when the chapel came into sight, and I stood beside her.
“We’re cousins, you know,” she said without looking at me.
“Yes,” I said, briefly closing my eyes. “I know.”
Libby walked until she reached the quicken tree.
“Do girls in town still come here on Quicken Day?” Libby asked.
“They haven’t in a long time,” I said, “as far as I know.”
“Because of Rowan?” she asked.
“No, before.”
Maybe long ago, the ritual had belonged to the popular, the kind who always led the way, but by the time Rowan and I were of age, it had become the province of the bookish girls who knew the history. Like Rowan.
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