“We had a choice,” Laurie said.
The three of us were arranged around the living room—Jake and Laurie on the couch, me across from them on a hard Adirondack chair. The tone had changed since Jake called me names back in the house. Like we were back to being the happy reunited Kristals, and we were maybe about to break out the Game of Life. Or leaf through the family photo album. Or talk about a murder.
“We could lose both our children,” she said. “Or just one. We had a choice. I don’t expect you to understand it. What we did. The logic.”
She was right about that.
“I found them that morning,” Jake said. “He’d choked her—with that cast on his arm. I think that’s what happened. He was out of his head. In shock—literally catatonic. She wasn’t breathing—I tried CPR. She was dead.”
That word hung in the air. Dead. Like it needed its own moment of silence.
“Ben’s never remembered,” Laurie said softly. “What he did to her. Trauma can do that—blot it out. Probably a blessing . . . I like to think it is. We made up a story for him. For everyone. I sent Jenny down the block to a playdate that morning. She never got there.”
“She almost killed him. Ben. In the closet, I mean. She was . . . sick . . .”
“Not always,” Laurie said. “It started somewhere around four. Her problems. One day she was a perfectly normal little girl—a really amazing little girl, our baby—and one day she wasn’t. As sudden as that.”
Normal. A sweet, adorable, six-year-old little girl.
“She just changed,” Laurie said.
“Why didn’t you uh . . . stick her in St. Luke’s? Or somewhere? I mean, when she started hurting other kids?”
Jake sighed, cracked his knuckles. “Willful denial, I guess—know what that means? You don’t want to believe what you don’t want to believe. Maybe her friends were making things up. Maybe Ben was. They were kids. She was a kid. You don’t want to think your daughter is . . . mentally unstable . . . dangerous even . . .”
“What would’ve happened if you’d told the truth?”
Sure, me asking someone else to tell the truth sounded kind of funny. Even to me.
“I mean after it happened. It was almost like self-defense what Ben did, wasn’t it?”
“We saw the closet afterward. Saw the fire damage. Figured it out. Jenny had brought the box of matches up to her room. He must’ve smashed the door in with that cast—it was just plywood. It didn’t matter. Two shitty choices. Admit to the world one of our kids was psychotic—and the other one a murderer. Have him sent to a psychiatric hospital till he’s eighteen. And have him always know what he’d done. That he’d murdered his own sister. Have him go through life like that. Or make up a story. For him. For the world. Save him. Save us too, I guess. From people pointing fingers at us every time we went out for a coffee—the parents of two monsters. We picked the less shitty choice. We lived with it.”
“But you did send Ben away. For a year . . .”
“He was acting out,” Laurie said. “Violently. His school was about to expel him. We were stupid thinking he’d be just fine—that he’d lose his memory of what happened that morning, but that would be all. That he’d be perfectly okay. Play Little League, go to school, be a kid. We had to do something. We couldn’t just leave him home. We needed to get him right.”
“You picked a Catholic mental hospital,” I said. “With priests as doctors. That was for in case . . . right . . . ?”
Jake squinted at me—maybe he was surprised I’d figured that one out.
What had Tabs said over the phone?
C-O-N-F-E-S-S-I-O.
They must’ve figured if Ben said anything—if anything came back to him during one of those EMDR sessions—no one would be running to the police. It’d be protected. What happens in confession stays in confession—right? Priests can’t tell. Besides, the church was pretty good at keeping secrets—they’d had enough practice. Check out their latest sorry-ass apology on your favorite online news site.
“Look, you’re talking about an eight-year-old kid,” Jake said. “Zonked out on Thorazine. Ben said some stuff under hypnosis. His doctors held a staff meeting about it—was it true or not? Their diagnosis? Delusional wish fulfillment. Kids wish someone dead—their parents, their sister—because the dad didn’t get them that new Xbox game or their sister got a bigger portion of ice cream. Then something happens—the dad dies in a car accident, the sister drowns in a pool. And they think they did it. They truly believe it. Jenny had been trying to hurt Ben. Worse. He wanted to hurt her back. Then she walked down the block one day and disappeared. He made up this story in his head. They convinced him to believe our story instead. It sounded more rational to them. When he came out, he wasn’t beating up schoolkids anymore. Or ripping apart Jenny’s room. He turned into your normal dope-smoking turd. The script stuck.”
“Until Pennebaker.”
Silence.
“How’d you find out about him . . . ? I mean that he was . . . ?” Laurie didn’t get to finish.
Jake did.
“Yeah, okay. Pennebaker,” Jake repeated, saying his name the way you spit out a particularly annoying particle of food—something you just can’t seem to dislodge. “Like you said, he didn’t do a very good job. At first. Two years ago, he told us the case was still cold as Alaska. His words. Then he retired down to Georgia and it began warming up. In a hurry. He just wouldn’t let it go. He re-interviewed people. Went through all the files again—whatever cold-case detectives actually do. I’m guessing he didn’t have a whole lot else on his plate now that he’s officially retired. I imagine he’s not into golf. Maybe he even got someone at St. Luke’s to talk to him—dug up the same files you did. Don’t know. He was relentless. Wouldn’t stop calling. Three times a day sometimes. Wanted to know about Ben. Just Ben—he was zeroing in on Ben. We felt hounded, okay? Threatened. The story was threatened.”
“Then me.”
“Then you,” Jake said.
Me. Who they’d brought up to the lake. Where they must’ve taken Jenny’s body that morning. Before they’d raced back home to begin planting the lie.
“Kind of a gift from God you were. Obviously. We needed Pennebaker off our back. You showed up. Jenny’s home. She’s come back. A miracle. It was, for us. For Ben, too. Pennebaker stopped calling. The threat was over. Sometimes you just get lucky—did you hear that?”
It sounded like some wind through the trees. Jake went over to the window. Peered through it for a while, shrugged. Came back and sat down again next to Laurie.
“That stuff on the upstairs computer,” he said. “From St. Luke’s. How’d you get it?”
“I hacked it.” After I’d downloaded the file, I’d erased Tabs’s email.
“So you’re the only one who’s seen it?”
“Yeah.”
Jake looked at Laurie. Back to me.
“Okay.”
I’d asked a bunch of questions already. I had one more. The only one that mattered.
“So what now? Why’d you bring me here?”
“Ben’s home,” Laurie said. “We needed somewhere to talk about this rationally. Without Ben sitting in the next room.”
“Seems like it’s mutually beneficial we keep this to ourselves,” Jake said. “I mean, no one has to hear about Ben . . . what he did to his sister. Not now. No one has to hear about you committing another fraud. You’re not a kid anymore. You’d go to jail for this. So . . .”
“So . . . ?”
“It’s not working out. I mean, you were away from us so many years and you’ve been through so much. And you don’t just pick up where you left off and become a family again. You tried. We tried. It was just too hard. You aren’t six-year-old Jenny anymore. It isn’t twelve years ago. You’re grown up. You decided to leave. Out to the West Coast maybe. You’re not sure.
You’ll try and keep in touch. It’s sad—but at least we know you’re alive now. Maybe one day we’ll be a family again. Maybe not.”
Okay, the door was locked. But not forever. There was a way out.
“Those FBI agents. They more or less called me a liar.”
Jake shrugged. “It won’t matter when you’re gone, will it? Don’t think they’re going to tack you on a wanted poster. For what? For being a little evasive on the details? For arousing some suspicions?”
“I think Ben knows.”
Jake snorted. “Don’t worry about Ben.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. I’ll leave.”
“And you’ll keep your mouth closed. Sorry—want to be perfectly clear here. Quid pro quo, right?”
I felt every scar left by Mother’s sewing needle. They burned.
“Sure thing.”
See? Mouth shut.
FIFTY
I was upstairs killing time.
“I’ve got a few things to do around here,” Jake said. “Amuse yourself. We’ll drive you back later. Then we’ll pack you up and get you to an airport.”
Okey-dokey.
There was a computer in the upstairs loft.
I played Candy Crush—making it to level three before I lost all five lives. Though I had already lost five lives. Karen Greer, Alexa Kornbluth, Terry Charnow, Sarah Ludlow.
Jenny Kristal.
I felt tempted to do what I usually did on computers when I was about to get booted. I felt the pull like a drug. Like my mom must’ve felt every time she got bored going straight.
You’re not a kid anymore. You’d go to jail for this.
Yeah, I wasn’t a kid anymore. I’d already done enough jail time at juvie hall, thank you very much.
Sorry, Mom. Time to break with the family tradition. No more other childhoods for me. No more impersonating other girls. Alert the media.
Or don’t.
I thought about Ben. About what he’d done. About what they’d done for him. Was he a monster? Were they? Ben had been a kid in true peril, who’d felt entirely alone. I could relate. They’d been out-of-their-mind parents faced with a monstrous choice.
Lose one child. Or both.
Okay. Sure.
Speaking of threats. Of going to jail.
I thought I should probably hold on to Ben’s file. Why not? As collateral. Just in case.
I’d create that hole-in-the-wall like Tabs had told me to.
Bury it right here. In the lake-house computer. Close to where something else was buried. If I ever needed it, I’d know where to find it. In a new file, deep in some random program directory. With its very own password protection. Something simple I wouldn’t forget.
Let’s see . . . how about J-E-N-N-Y P-E-N-N-Y?
Sure.
The computer wouldn’t let me.
Ever play hide-and-seek and stumble across another kid in the very hiding spot you were going to use, telling you to get lost? Sorry, no room.
There was already a hole-in-the-wall in the computer.
That password was already being used.
J-E-N-N-Y P-E-N-N-Y.
Okay. I went where it led me. This way. When I clicked on that file—her picture appeared. Jenny’s. The one from the poster they’d nailed to the telephone pole in front of that pizza place—her first-grade school photo.
Why would Jake bury it? I was assuming it was Jake—Jenny Penny had been his nickname for her.
Because he couldn’t bear to look at it. That’s why.
Because even after all this time, it hurt too much.
The photo album Laurie pulled out that night had been covered in dust. Maybe Jake climbed the stairs to the loft sometimes so he could stare at her picture by himself. Allow himself to cry over his dead daughter. Alone. Without Laurie seeing.
I hoped it was like that. It made me like him a little more. Made the times he called me Jenny Penny seem less like playacting and more like wishing.
I clicked on the picture to enlarge it.
Other pictures suddenly popped up.
Hundreds.
Even as I tried to stop the vomit hurtling up my throat, even then, I remembered Tabs saying you could hide stuff in pictures too.
The door opened.
“Two more things to do,” Jake said. “Then we’ll get going.”
I nodded—it taking every ounce of my remaining strength to get my head to move because I was using almost all of it to stop myself from screaming.
“You on the computer?” Jake asked.
I nodded.
The desk faced the door, so the computer faced away from it. Away from Jake. He hesitated. Like he wanted to walk around the desk and see what I was looking at. Like he thought he really should do that.
“Just checking out Twitter,” I said.
He stayed there in the doorway.
“Okay. Another hour maybe, that’s all.”
I waited till I heard him walk down the stairs and into the back of the house.
I threw up. Over the computer. Onto the rug.
I lurched back off the chair.
I went out the door he’d just left through.
Down the stairs.
Seeing the pictures.
Those pictures.
Jake’s.
I went out the front door and ran into the woods.
The vomit-covered computer. I hadn’t bothered turning it off.
FIFTY-ONE
Ben
He wasn’t aware of actually driving.
He glimpsed pieces of road, the bleached-white sound walls that lined the New York State Thruway, a toll booth or two.
He was seeing something else.
A couple of times he almost turned on the windshield wipers to clear away the raindrops. It wasn’t raining.
Doing some chores up at the lake, Mom had texted. See you tonight.
When he’d jumped in the car, he hadn’t known that’s where he was going. He was running away from the house. That’s all. It took him a while to realize he was headed to another house.
There was this show he’d seen on Netflix where everyone had to wear blindfolds so you wouldn’t see the monster and end up killing yourself. Just the sight of the monster was enough to push you to do it.
This was Ben. He was trying to not see the monster. He was trying to not kill himself.
A couple of times he’d thought of steering the car right into the sound wall.
Two seconds and it’d all be over.
He stuck to the road. Tried to concentrate on passing signs.
ALBANY—112 MILES.
OVERLOOK MOTEL—6 MILES.
ROCKING HORSE RANCH—NEXT TURN.
Goldy was eating a blue carrot in the picture on Jenny’s door. She’d spelled Goldy’s name with a backward G.
He passed a state police car squatting on the highway shoulder like a spider waiting for passing flies. Stock-still until it was ready to pounce.
Hey, Officers, might I have a word with you?
Jenny was talking to her imaginary friend again.
Through the bedroom door.
Do I look pretty? Do I really?
He thought of the broken highway lines as a fence—his job was to stay behind it. On one side was him. On the other, the sound wall. Which would make the sound of Ben’s head-on crash disappear maybe. The police looking through their windshield and seeing a silent thunderbolt of flame.
The smoke was still there in his lungs. In his eyes. The fire was in him now.
Count the miles. Something to do. The odometer moving in tiny, painstaking increments.
Fifty-two and one-tenth miles . . . and two-tenths . . . and three . . .
Miles to go before I sleep. A poem they read in English clas
s. He had miles and miles to go before he’d be able to shut his eyes. So he could finally stop seeing. Please.
He shoved her door open.
NO, BEN!
He shoved her door open and there was Jenny.
PLEASE, Ben! NO!
He shoved her door open and there were Jenny and Dad.
GET OUT!
Jenny and Dad.
On the bed. With no clothes on.
Dad was hurting her. Hurting Jenny. Trying to stop Jenny from screaming now. His arm around her mouth. Around her neck. Squeezing.
NO, DADDY . . . PLEASE . . .
He raised his arm—the one with the cast. To block out the sight forever. To stop him from hurting her.
The world went black.
Black as sleep. Black as nothingness. Black as death.
Over and out.
FIFTY-TWO
I didn’t know where I was running.
It didn’t matter.
Through the woods. Fast as I could.
Branches whipped at my face. Thorns ripped my pants. I tripped over a tree root and went down.
I was multitasking. Running and thinking. Thinking and running.
When he’d looked at me on the couch that night. That gagging nausea that overtook me like a bolt from the blue.
It was Father’s look.
Those times they’d get out the video camera and pose me. Open your legs a little bit more . . . good girl . . . that’s right . . .
Jake had been trying to watch the Knicks that night. When I opened my legs, he’d watched me. That same sick, sweaty stare—why I’d almost thrown up.
Those same sick pictures. And I had thrown up.
I found myself in the clearing of yellow grass. Stumbling past the gray stone.
I whispered a prayer. “Sorry, Jenny . . . sorry . . . God bless . . .”
I was in mourning.
For her. For me. There wasn’t a difference now.
I kept running.
Lurching into the thick trees. My heart hammering.
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