The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  I know how to begin, at least. I’ve been in the podcasting game just long enough to know that everything is a narrative. That Andrea means it when she says to start at the beginning. Not of Colin’s case, but of my story. I have a part to play in this, whatever it will be. And I am the one our listeners trust, whether or not I’m truly worthy of it. The Virgil in this particular hell.

  “So, this was the morning after the APA awards,” I say into the mic, and Andrea gives a tiny nod. This is what she wants. I launch into the story, recounting the mysterious phone call from Ava, my first impression of her when she walked into the bar, when I discovered how close the house on Galley was to my childhood home, how Ava convinced me to review Colin’s case.

  “And she’s right,” I continue. “There’s a discrepancy in the case file. Whatever did happen in that apartment, it’s not as airtight as the state’s attorney wants you to believe.”

  “So, you think this single blond hair in Sarah Ketchum’s shower drain is enough to create reasonable doubt?” Andrea asks, clearly elated at being able to play the prosecutor here, though she’s good at hiding it. Andrea, who probably would have been sucked into the legal world if journalism hadn’t gotten her first.

  “Alone? Probably not,” I say. “But when you take into consideration the other problems of the case—like, how does Colin move the body within the CPD’s established time frame?—suddenly it all seems very thin. And when you take into consideration the similarities between Sarah and Maggie, as well as the geographical proximity between the two . . .” I trail off, because this is the most tenuous of all my arguments. I can’t appear to want too badly for the cases to be connected. I cannot demonstrate my own hunger for answers. Dispassion is what our critics will demand. I try to choose my words carefully.

  “Look, it’s true that these cases happened many years apart. But if they hadn’t, if they’d been even a couple of years closer together, as soon as Sarah was reported missing, the similarities would have been more obvious. There are only two factors here that argue against a linkage: time, and the fact that Colin McCarty was convicted of Sarah’s murder. But if the CPD hadn’t focused only on Colin, you’d have two unsolved crimes involving teenage girls with similar physical descriptions, both of whom lived within view of each other for a period of time, transported by a man in a car at about the same time of day. So, I think it’s worth investigating. I think there’s more here than is apparent on first glance.”

  “Okay, so assuming that all of that is true . . . ,” Andrea says, but I can already see that I have her. Her knee is hopping beneath the table. Pent-up energy, waiting to be unleashed in the right direction. “Where do you think we should start? The case is already seven years old, and Colin has already lost two appeals.”

  “I think we have an advantage, because we have a case to compare this one against. If we’re operating under the assumption that Sarah and Maggie were linked in some way, we should start there. Try to find out as much about Sarah Ketchum as possible, and see how much crossover between them there actually is.”

  “Okay,” Andrea replies. “So, here we go, I guess.” She hits a button on the keyboard, ending the recording. She pulls off her headphones, and I follow suit.

  “What do you think?” I ask, as if I haven’t been talking to Andrea for the past hour. As if only now I’ll get the real version of her.

  “How much coffee have you had?” she asks.

  “Why, do I sound manic?” I ask. The answer is three cups already, but I don’t tell her that.

  “Not quite, but I don’t want it to sound like you’re too invested in this.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I reply, motioning toward her bouncing knee. It immediately stops. Still, Andrea is full of tells. The minute she tries to tamp one down, another surfaces. It’ll be a few minutes, tops, and she’ll be picking her cuticles or playing with the zipper on her hoodie.

  “You know,” she says, and then pauses, as if reconsidering what she was about to say.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she says. And then, “Eric called me.”

  “My Eric?” I ask, though even as I say it, I admonish myself. He’s not mine anymore.

  “Yes,” Andrea replies, kindly I think. “He said he hasn’t heard from you in a while.”

  “Well, we’re getting divorced,” I reply. “I’m not sure this is really the time to be keeping in touch.”

  “I think a proof-of-life here and there would be appreciated.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’ll try to be more regular with my Instagram posts.”

  “I wasn’t sure whether I should take his call, to be honest,” she says then. “I mean, should I be freezing him out? You haven’t been very specific about how angry I should be with him.”

  “Not angry,” I reply, though the idea of Andrea’s righteous anger being deployed on my behalf is seductive. But Eric doesn’t deserve it. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “I’m married, honey,” she replies. “So I find that hard to believe. Plus, everyone always says infidelity is just a symptom of a larger problem.”

  A symptom of a larger problem, I think. Or a thousand tiny problems, every truth I kept from him, all those years.

  “Of course it was,” I reply.

  * * *

  * * *

  THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between Andrea and me; I have good control over my tells. When one of mine breaks the surface, it’s because it’s become tectonic. Built up so much power the whole world shifts.

  It wasn’t Eric’s fault that I hid it all from him for so long. That he came into my life just as I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be, outside of Sutcliffe Heights and away from the people who knew me only as Maggie Reese’s sister. Eric, at twenty-one, was delightfully serious. An economics major at Northwestern, like a middle-aged man trapped in the beautiful body of a high school lacrosse player.

  And I was a puzzle to him, which I adored. His ordered mind seemed to have trouble teasing me out; his brow furrowed at my brashness and my sarcasm and at the fact that I kissed him in the middle of our second date, instead of waiting to be kissed after he walked me home. I loved the experience of being confounding, away from all the people who knew me so well. I loved being the focus of his gaze, after spending so much of my short life failing to draw the attention of my parents. So it also wasn’t his fault that I decided—without consciously realizing it—to become the girl he wanted. Whomever she was. I wanted to be her.

  I moved into his off-campus apartment at the end of my junior year, when I grew tired of the dorms, tired of my roommates. Eric was sweet, and reasonable, and he cooked and never let the trash get too full before taking it out. I wanted to be out in the world with him. And it was so easy, to love a life that was simple and clean and orderly and thrillingly adult. It was easy to love Eric, too, for all those same reasons.

  We were married the year after I graduated. We bought our three-bedroom condo, with the backyard where we planted tomatoes in the spring. And in those first years, I made myself believe I could be normal. I could make Maggie small, a footnote only, like Eric’s lost childhood sweetheart. After all, there was so much to lose in the life we shared. We were the sort to buy secondhand records and make reservations at Alinea when it wasn’t an occasion. Wednesday is reason enough, for us. We went to dinner parties and dazzled Eric’s coworkers—that couple, the one that seems especially charmed because they have survived something, my story the stuff of cocktail-party lore. We got season passes to Ravinia and went to every show, from the Chicago Symphony to the seventies cover bands that cycled through every year, sitting on the lawn and drinking cheap wine amid the tang of citronella candles. Eric introduced Andrea to an old ex-girlfriend–turned–friend—a thoroughly lovely designer named Trish—and the two of them were living together by that same time the next year. Eric dropped hints about children, and I pretended to b
e content.

  It took effort, keeping my sister from my thoughts, in those years. Physical effort. I frayed at the edges. Picked the skin from my thumbs and developed stress fractures from overtraining and drugged myself to sleep at night, afraid of the nightmares that never seemed to stop. I smiled wide when his coworkers asked me what I did for a living, as if all my pretending was not work enough. Trying to hide the fact that beneath the woman Eric had married was a humming shell of bone, a woman with unblinking eyes, fixed on a single moment in the past. Unable to sleep, unable to settle. And all it took was a body in the morgue to summon her out.

  * * *

  * * *

  ANDREA AND I arrive at the hospital at dusk, just as the sodium-vapor glow of the streetlights flickers on around us. Illinois Masonic Medical Center, its imposing brick structure overseen by the platforms of the Wellington L station. The same hospital where Jane Doe’s body was left, outside the ambulance bay, her veins full of heroin and antifreeze. On a night not unlike this one, I imagine. The moment that began my undoing.

  We ask for Ava at the reception desk, and a bored-looking security guard emerges from a pair of double doors to lead us inside to a small staff lounge, just a couple of couches, a table, a little kitchenette with industrial coffeemakers on its counter, and a flickering pair of vending machines. Ava rises from one of the couches when we enter, and I introduce the two of them.

  “Feel free to set up here,” Ava says, motioning to the couch and the coffee table. “I’m just keeping an eye on things until the night shift comes on.”

  “Thank you for letting us interrupt you at work,” Andrea says.

  I watch Andrea carefully as the two of them size each other up. I know what Andrea sees: Ava’s perfect manicure, the expertly applied makeup—its effect making Ava look both glowing and barefaced. An ingenue in a movie, waking with perfect skin and lush eyelashes in the soft morning-after light. But there are also the scrubs, the white coat, the sneakers gone beige and soft from wear. The practical digital watch on one wrist, its screen scraped and nicked. And I know Andrea, her practicality. I know she will only hold Ava’s beauty against her until she realizes how unfair it is to do so. After all, despite their differences, it’s only a matter of time until the two of them recognize each other for what they both are: overly bright girls, finally grown old enough to be seen as savvy and capable instead of simply precocious.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind us holding you up after your shift?” Andrea asks, setting her recorder between us on the table, quickly unfurling a mic and plugging it in.

  “Whatever I can do to help,” Ava replies. “I’d probably stay late anyway sending emails. Since it’s a little late in the evening to be calling congressional offices.”

  “And that’s what you’d generally be doing?” Andrea asks, turning on the recorder and checking the audio levels, before turning her attention back to Ava. “Spending your free time reaching out to members of Congress?”

  “There have been four high-profile convictions in the past twenty years that have been overturned after a senator called for a review,” Ava replies, all business. It’s difficult not to be impressed with her, as if she instinctually knows that Andrea will appreciate this approach. Speaking in a way that will make the interview easy to cut together. “It’s one avenue I’m exploring right now.”

  “And the others?”

  “In the absence of grounds for another legal appeal, I’ve been trying to get the Innocence Project and other criminal justice–reform organizations to review his case. And lobbying the governor for a pardon.”

  “And you’re doing all this in addition to twelve-hour shifts in the ER,” Andrea says, less of a question and more of a way to state facts for the podcast’s audience.

  “Yeah,” Ava replies. “My husband hates it. He thinks I’m going to burn out. He hates all the night shifts especially. Being apart, me coming home in the morning and just sleeping all day. I think he assumed this situation would be a lot more temporary than it has been.”

  “Colin’s case?” I ask.

  “And the job,” she replies. “Like, once our fifth anniversary rolled around, I think he expected me to be downshifting. Getting ready to have kids, all that. But we’re in this constant state of limbo, with Colin’s case the way it is. I feel like I can’t do anything that would shift my priorities right now, or take away from the little energy I have to put into his case.”

  I think of the way Colin joked in the prison visitation room, about missing Ava’s wedding. And I know how Ava must be feeling, to perpetually delay life events in hopes that Colin will not miss many more. It’s why I skipped both my high school and college graduations. It’s why I convinced Eric to get married at city hall, with only his best friend and Andrea as witnesses. Despite the fact that he was just Catholic enough to feel guilty for not getting married in a church, and my mother was just pushy enough to insist on throwing us a reception after the fact. I’d finally had to tell him the truth to convince him to elope: I didn’t want to have a wedding without Maggie there. I did not want to walk across a stage and get a diploma, because Maggie should have gotten hers first.

  So I understand Ava’s single-mindedness. Her obsession. By the end of my marriage, Maggie was like a poltergeist in our house, rattling dishes in their cabinets and making lights flicker in the night. I could no longer sit still; I could no longer sleep. Suddenly I was back to the habits I’d had as a teenager. Walking through bus stations and strip clubs and shelters, showing Maggie’s picture to anyone who would talk to me. Spending sleepless nights on crime-solver forums online. Scrolling through Facebook, the profiles of anyone who had ever reported living in Sutcliffe Heights, searching their pictures for the man in the car. The Jane Doe had been a reminder, in the placid adult life I’d crafted, that my sister was still out there somewhere. Maybe in the ground, rotting. Maybe alive and suffering. And I could not be allowed to be comfortable, I could not allow myself the possibility of happiness, after that.

  But the hellish truth of it is that you simply can’t delay your future forever. Or you end up like me. Nearly thirty, with nothing but ruins of the half-lived life I tore down before it could become any more real. A monument I’d built to my own selfishness.

  I glance up from the recorder churning away between us, picking up the hum of our silence. Meet Ava’s eyes. There’s a recognition there, between Ava and me. The things we can see, just by looking at each other—the things our listeners will never know.

  “So why emergency medicine, then?” Andrea asks. “Wouldn’t another specialty have you home in time for dinner most nights? Give you more time to work on Colin’s case?”

  “Am I an adrenaline junkie, you mean?” Ava replies. “My husband certainly seems to think so. But honestly? I think it has more to do with Sarah. I’d gotten to know her pretty well, in the year she and Colin were dating. And seeing what happened to her . . .” Ava swallows. “I think I wanted to be in a position where I could fix some of the horrible things that people do to each other. Balance the scales of violence a bit, for women like her.”

  I watch as Ava picks at a small chip in her nail polish with her thumbnail, worrying at the small, imperceptible defect. Making it bigger because she can’t leave it alone.

  “Or maybe it’s just because we spent a lot of time in emergency rooms when we were kids.” She says it offhand, a note of black humor in her voice. “So I just . . . I never wanted to be anything more than I wanted to be an ER doctor.”

  “That’s quite the dream,” Andrea says.

  “Yeah,” Ava replies, motioning to the room around her. “And the hell of it is, I can’t feel it. After everything, after all the work it took to get through college, med school, the loans and the studying and the crazy hours during residency, I still can’t let myself feel like I’ve achieved it. Not with Colin in prison. I can’t let myself feel like I have the thing I’ve a
lways wanted. Even if it’s true.”

  I watch Ava, transfixed. By her honesty, the way in which she articulates the thing I’ve always felt. The splinter inside me that is Maggie, the sharp thing that will not let me rest without a bit of pain. I look at Ava. It’s a moment before I realize that Andrea’s gaze is fixed on me instead.

  “It’s like,” Ava says, “I’m not allowed to dream for myself anymore. Not until I fix this.”

  * * *

  * * *

  WE SPEND THE next hour sporadically recording in between Ava’s last few patients, weaving from topic to topic so Andrea will have plenty to cut together as she edits. Ava’s background in medicine. Context about her childhood in Albany Park. What Colin was like as a kid. It’s ostensibly a slow night, but that doesn’t stop her from being paged or summoned by a nurse every five or ten minutes, usually just as we’re getting somewhere. Still, I can tell it’s going a long way for Andrea, to see Ava in this environment. To see how capable she is, how competent. After all, could someone like this—someone who rattles medication dosages off the top of her head for the nurses and stitches up the split fingertip of a three-year-old across the hall—really misjudge her brother so egregiously? It seems impossible that Ava could be trusted to treat illness, to evaluate pain and resuscitate the dying, and not be trusted to be a reasonable arbiter of her brother’s innocence or guilt.

  The night shift is coming on when we finally pack up our things. Ava offers to buy us dinner, but I am bone-weary from my last shift at Club Rush and Andrea has to get home in time for Olive’s next feeding.

  “It’s the one flaw in the two-mommy plan,” Andrea says, pulling the milk she pumped earlier out of the lounge’s refrigerator and tucking it next to the recording equipment in her bag. “I’ll tell you, if I could draft Trish into taking a nursing shift, it would make all the difference.”