by Webb, Debra
Letty nods. “So that’s why you’re here.”
“Where else would I go except back to the scene of the original crime?”
The graceful line of Letty’s jaw hardens. “You know what PTSD did to my dad. How can you ignore the problem? Do you want to end up like him?”
This time I don’t bother with a genteel sip, this time I gulp down the remainder of the contents of my glass. I lick my lips and say, “Sometimes I think I’m already there. The nightmares.” I exhale, look away.
“So you don’t sleep.”
“Oh, yeah, I sleep. They make a pill for that. But I dream and the dreams aren’t worth the sleep.” I sit straighter, shift my butt in the chair. What I really want to do is stand and walk off the agitation. Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I’m a textbook case.
“How long has this been going on?”
“About six months. No matter how hard I work out or how much I drink, the nightmares still come.”
I can’t believe I’m telling her all this. I love Letty. She’s my oldest and dearest friend but we haven’t talked like this—shared the most unpleasant secrets—since I left for college. Our lives took different paths. Or maybe I haven’t allowed that closeness. Letty has shared plenty with me over the years. I’m the one who shut down. Yet, here and now, I am spilling my guts as if there is no tomorrow. I stare at her stunning face. Her rich cocoa colored eyes that remind me I am safe with her. Letty is beautiful, outside and in. She’s caring and loyal.
“While you’re visiting let me help you with that,” she offers.
I have no doubt that Letty knows as much on the subject of PTSD as any expert. Why not give it a shot?
“Okay.” I pick up my fork and start back in on my chicken and rice. It will take food and time to get my blood alcohol level back down in the legal range. I promised myself I would not drink here and risk going too far. So much for good intentions. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s good. She’s the postmistress now.”
Happiness floods my chest. “Wow, that’s fantastic.”
Letty’s mother had a hard go when James decided to end his life rather than face another day living with his mental illness and the cloud of suspicion related to Natalie and Stacy’s disappearance hanging over him. After years of cleaning rich people’s houses—maybe when Letty and I were fifteen or sixteen—her mother landed a spot as a substitute mail carrier. She only got to deliver the mail when someone was sick or needed a vacation, but it was a foot in the door. Letty was home alone more often than not, which was the reason she spent so much time at my house.
Especially after that day.
“I’m proud of her.” Letty studies me for a moment. “So tell me about the nightmares.”
“Same ones as before. I’m in the woods trying to find my way home.” I finger the rim of my glass. “Sometimes the forest turns into that sandy hole in Iraq and the dream is one big jumble of me as a child and as an adult. No matter how fast I run or how hard I try, I can’t find my way.”
“How’s the drinking?”
“I’m in AA.” I push my empty glass farther away. “Does that answer your question?”
Letty nods to my empty glass. “Not really.”
“It’s under control,” I admit, though possibly the answer is another of my lies to myself. “Barely. I’m careful but I also see the danger in assuming I can handle the situation.”
“You seeing a therapist?”
I draw in a big breath. “I stopped a few months back but then I had to start again. You don’t spend forty-eight hours in the psych ward at Mass General without a follow-up appointment as part of the terms of your release.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re here.”
Letty’s gaze presses mine. She’s playing bad cop. I recognize the strategy.
“Trying to avoid the shrink.”
My friend knows me far too well. “It’s possible.” I stare longingly at my empty glass. “I need some time to sort out all of this before I bare the full load to a stranger.”
“That’s going to be a little difficult given what’s happening around here. I saw you on the news, by the way. I can try to keep the media off your back but you know they’re coming for you, right? Two more missing girls…the twenty-fifth anniversary and all.”
“And I wish I could tell them—tell you—something that would help. I even dragged out all the old newspapers and read through the stories from back then to see if any of it would trigger something I’d forgotten.”
“Do you believe you forgot something?” A spark of hope flashes in her eyes.
I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s possible but I sure as hell haven’t been able to dig it up.” I laugh. “I’ve spent my whole life digging up things and I can’t unearth the unedited, full episode of one day from my memory banks.”
“It’ll come one day. In the meantime, I have to find those girls.” Letty stands and picks up her plate and glass. “It can’t be like last time.”
I do the same and follow her into the kitchen. She’s already told me this was her first night off since the girls went missing. I should leave soon so she can get some sleep. I lean on the counter and admire her kitchen. The place really is so Letty. A neat little bungalow just off the downtown square, it’s homey and pleasantly enchanting.
Maybe deep down I’m jealous because she has a real life. My “life” is about constantly moving to some place new. The next town or country. The next dig…the next mystery. As long as I’m moving I don’t have to think…to look back. And the past can’t catch up to me.
If I don’t have to look at it, I don’t have to deal with it.
Maybe that’s what happened to me in Boston. I stayed still too long.
“Tell me about the case.” I know what the news stations are saying but that is rarely the whole story by any stretch of the imagination. The police always keep certain aspects of any investigation out of the media while the media adds their own twist to the facts provided.
“Neither of the girls had issues at home. We’ve interviewed every damned body close to the family and anyone who has come into contact with them in the past few weeks.” She loads her plate and fork into the dishwasher and then reaches for mine. “We’ve got ABI, FBI, city, county—all on one big joint task force and we have nothing. The bikes were abandoned and the only prints we’ve found are those of the girls and a couple of their friends and family members.”
“So it really is like last time.”
She closes the dishwasher door. “In that regard, yes.”
“Last time the police believed the disappearance was simply happenstance.” I say this well aware that Letty knows. “The theory was that someone just happened to come along and took advantage of the opportunity.” The accident occurred on the road where Letty and I lived. Her father’s issues and the fact that he walked that road every day, in my opinion, were the two single, flimsy threads used to weave a theory around making him the prime suspect.
He was so convenient and the grieving town so desperately needed answers. James Cotton was the scapegoat.
Letty wipes her hands on a dishtowel. “We believe someone was watching these girls for a while and chose a time to grab them when they were the least likely to get caught. This was a well thought out, well-executed abduction in broad daylight. No evidence left behind. It feels like there should be a ransom demand but it hasn’t come.”
“Whoever it is, it can’t be the same person who took Natalie and Stacy, assuming they were taken by someone,” I argue. “Why would a serial offender wait so long between abductions? Have there been similar abductions in the surrounding counties or states?”
“Kids go missing every hour of every day. Many are never found, dead or alive. And there was the Aldridge girl—Jenny Aldridge. She was sixteen when she disappeared twelve years before Natalie and Stacy. Her case was not connected to theirs because of the differences surrounding her disappearance. The biggest being the note the parents found sayin
g she was running away to Los Angeles to be a star. Her family hadn’t lived here very long. They moved away not long after she disappeared. I couldn’t find any record of her showing up in California or anywhere else later on.”
“Jesus.” I close my eyes for a moment. I know all of this but, under the circumstances, it’s particularly disturbing. I had forgotten about the Aldridge girl. “Unless you get some sort of break, how can you possibly hope to find these girls?”
Letty leans against the counter next to me. “Hope is the one thing I’ve got. What else can I do but keep looking and refuse to give up hope?”
I take her hand in mine. “The people who’re saying it’s just like last time, are they the same ones who accused your father?”
Letty laughs. “Oh yeah. They can’t look me in the eye now but they know what they did to him. They all know.”
It was that handful of people, mostly powerful names in the county, who pressed the theory about Letty’s father. Those were the ones who ultimately pushed him over the edge with their witch hunt.
“We always knew he wasn’t the one.” I put my arms around her and pull her into a tight hug.
Whoever took Natalie and Stacy, that case and this one can’t possibly be connected. To agree with that ridiculous theory is to believe the perpetrator has been alive and well right here all this time. So much for the theory that Letty’s father was involved. Fools. Every damned one of them.
In the end, whether the person who took these girls is the same one who took Natalie and Stacy is irrelevant. The real question—then and now—is how could people live in a town this small and not recognize a monster?
I know the answer as well as I know my own name: monsters are most often someone you would never suspect.
It could be anyone.
Maybe I’m the real monster. Maybe if I’d watched more closely I would have seen the person or persons who picked up Natalie and Stacy. Maybe if I’d stayed on the bus I would have been there to tell the first person on the scene what happened as soon as the bus was discovered instead of the next morning.
Just more of those what-ifs that haunt my dreams.
8
HELEN
My hands fall away from the work of smearing moisturizer on my face. I stare at my reflection, see the wrinkles and the white hair. In December I’ll be sixty-five. I wipe my hands and shut off the bathroom light.
Like every night, I shuffle into the bedroom and climb beneath the covers alone. I miss Andrew so very much. I enjoy Howard’s companionship but he can never replace Andrew in my heart or in my bed.
I turn onto my side and stare at the framed photograph I keep on my bedside table. He was thirty-eight at the time and five-year-old Emma sits on his shoulders while twelve-year-old Natalie stands in front of him. Andrew was such a good father. A far better father than I was a mother. If he was still alive, he would deny the assertion. He always made me feel as if I was the perfect wife and mother.
Except I wasn’t. Especially after that day.
Losing Natalie and the baby damaged me in ways that cannot be undone. Ever. I tried my best to be a good mother for Emma but I’m certain the issues that plague her now are my doing. I should have done better by her.
Eight months after Natalie disappeared we moved into town to this house. It was the most difficult decision I have ever made in my life—other than the one to have that damned test. Once we made the move we worried about Sam. He refused to stay with us in town. Every time Andrew brought him to Tulip Lane he would stay for an hour or so and then walk all the way back to the farm. Sam refused to give up on Natalie. He lay on the porch every day and watched for the bus to pass, hoping it would stop and Natalie would climb off and run to him as she did for all those years before she was lost to us.
He was already an old dog at the time—almost twelve years old. Andrew and I decided it was best to let him live out his life whatever way he wanted. We weren’t doing much better. We hung onto the farm, leaving most everything inside just as it was before Natalie vanished. Emma and I went to see Sam every day after school. We ensured he had plenty of food and water. Andrew installed a doggie door so he could go in and out of the house as he pleased. And we left a note on the door for Natalie…just in case.
“Momma, is Natalie ever coming home?”
Natalie had been missing nine months and ten days when Emma asked me this question one afternoon as we visited Sam.
“I sure hope so.” We sat on the porch steps and I hugged her close.
Emma peered up at me through her glasses that always seemed to sit crookedly on her sweet little face. “But what if she comes home when we’re not here. She might think we forgot about her.”
“Daddy and I thought about that.” I reached into my purse and pulled out an envelope. “Hold this for me, Buttercup.” Andrew and I always called Emma buttercup. She reminded me so of the cute little persistent flowers that sprang up each spring with the promise that winter was almost over. Emma was like that…a promise of better things to come.
I dug a pen and the tape from my purse and set them aside. “Okay. Would you like to read what Daddy and I wrote and then you can add something?”
Emma nodded as she carefully opened the envelope. She unfolded the letter and I had to smile at her dirty little fingernails. How that child loved digging in the dirt.
“Dear Natalie,” she read aloud.
My mind drifted to the last time I saw Natalie. I helped her French braid her hair. She was so beautiful. Smiling. Laughing. Happy.
“Daddy and I decided to move Emma closer to school,” Emma read. “You know the old Bainbridge house on Tulip Lane. We will be there waiting for you. We have the most beautiful room ready just for you.”
That was another thing Andrew and I decided was necessary. We had to prepare a room for Natalie…for when she came home.
Except she never came home.
For five long years after she disappeared, I was angry with God. I refused to pray. I did go to Mass each Sunday but only because of Emma. I sat there, in His house, each Sunday and stared blankly at the priest. I couldn’t partake of any of the rituals that had once given me such comfort. God had let me down. I suppose I had let Him down first but I’m only human. He is God. He should have taken care of our Natalie.
“P.S.” Emma scribbled at the bottom of the page with the pen I’d given her. “I need you to come home. I miss you. Hugs and kisses, Emma.”
She didn’t say the rest out loud but I covertly watched over her shoulder as she wrote: P.S.S. Please come home. Momma is very sad without you.
I tried to do better after that. Emma deserved better.
9
Saturday, May 12
EMMA
I find it difficult to believe a Home Depot can be so busy on a Saturday morning. As I watch the swarm of colorful T-shirts, matching cropped pants and flip-flops flitting about in the garden department I wonder how all these people can simply move on with their lives while two little girls are missing.
That part is just like before all over again. People shop, people go to school and to work. Nothing changes…except the number of vacant desks at the local school and the empty beds in homes. Those first few months after Natalie didn’t come back, I watched out the window or wandered in the yard, checked her room, rambled through the house…expecting to see her at the next turn.
Each morning I woke up and ran to her room again. No Natalie. Mother talked about when Natalie came home all the time. She drove to a different town every day hanging posters about the reward she and Dad were offering. Ten thousand dollars. It was every penny they had in savings. She called the police and the FBI every week for an update. Four or five years later, I can’t remember exactly when, she stopped doing all those things. Stopped doing anything. I remember thinking she had become a zombie. Dad took me to school and picked me up every day during that period. Every night as he tucked me in he promised that she would get better soon.
He was right.
The zombie period didn’t last so long. The next thing I knew Mother was like everyone else, walking through life as if nothing had happened. She hardly ever said Natalie’s name anymore. She cooked and made extra special desserts—my favorites, never Natalie’s. She shopped and pretended life was exactly as it should be.
Like all these people browsing around in the Home Depot this very morning.
I have no room to judge, I’m here. Shopping as if all is right in my world.
But I’m here because if I don’t find a way to occupy myself I will lose my mind. I cannot help those little girls. The newspaper articles failed to prompt any new memories. They did, however, keep me awake most of the night by invading my dreams. Every time I drifted off to sleep I would smell the diesel fuel from the bus, see those faces and the endless sea of green interspersed with purple flowing across the unplowed fields. The woods…so dark I kept running into trees. Bushes scratching at me, pulling at my sweater. Falling to the ground because I simply couldn’t take another step. Then my eyes popped open and I paced the floor for half an hour before falling back into the bed so the whole process could start over again.
Eventually I dragged myself downstairs for a hearty breakfast of yogurt, fruit and grains. No Nurse Hayes frying up bacon today.
Mother told the nurse she didn’t require her services anymore since I was home.
“You look like hell.”
Leave it to Helen to state the obvious as I shuffled into the kitchen this morning in search of coffee like an addict in need of a fix.
“Nightmares?”
She guessed the problem right off the bat. I imagine she heard the floor creaking with my every step as I paced back and forth. She reminded me that I had nightmares as a child for years after that day. Like I could forget. I also recall hating myself for a very long time because Natalie didn’t come back and I did. Maybe I still do hate myself. As an adult I understood that no amount of wishing when I was a kid that I didn’t have to live in my sister’s shadow would make her disappear. Some evil piece of shit took her and Stacy Yarbrough or they were just lost some place no one had looked.
