by Gregg Olsen
I don’t know why it happened, but it did.
All it took was four words from my little brother.
“Mom really misses you,” he said.
“I can’t go there, Hayden.”
“Why?” he asked, leaning closer to me, scanning my face. “She’s our mom, Rylee. She hasn’t had it easy. She misses you. Don’t you even love her a little?”
I didn’t. Not even a drop of love for her. I couldn’t tell Hayden why.
“You’re one selfish bitch of a sister,” he said. “After all we’ve been through, you don’t care about anyone. Do you?”
I put down my gin and tonic. “I care about you.”
Hayden shook his head. “Really? That’s funny. You’ve only seen me three times since foster care.”
The thought of him in foster care stabs at me, even now. It was my fault. I own it. Nevertheless, he didn’t need to bring it up.
“You know, Rylee,” he told me. “I looked up to you. Now when I see you, I realize I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you’re even capable of being a sister or daughter or anything.”
My eyes were damp, but I didn’t let a single tear fall down my cheeks. I want to cry ugly—it’s how I felt inside.
My brother got up and turned to me.
“See you around, sister.”
Nothing came out of my mouth. It was not my style to say sorry. Or to beg for forgiveness. Why should it be? I remember thinking. I did what I had to do. I can’t take it back.
And then Hayden disappeared through the labyrinth of tables and the cacophony of people who laugh as though whatever their drinking partner has said is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
I finished my drink and got up to pay.
Nothing’s funny about my life. Never has been.
That’s the last time I saw him.
Fifteen
Snow Creek was punched into the hills and mountains by logging companies more than fifty years ago. After the spotted owl put a halt to things, Olympic, Weyerhaeuser and Puget Logging sold off parcels at bargain rates—because there were no public utilities like water or power or sewer. That was fine for the folks that decided they’d rather live in a lonely world of their own making than the cookie-cutter places they came from. Some were hippie types—at least by the looks of them. Beads, flannel shirts and jeans so dirty they could walk across town on their own. Others came to do things verboten in the outside world. Pot growers, mostly. Some were believers in the occult—or at least pretended to be. A writhing mass of naked people under the moon was something no one would ever see in suburbia where the nosey neighbors lived with 911 on speed dial.
Everyone who came sought seclusion.
As I drive from the Wheatons’ place I make a left, looking for the closest neighbors on that side of their farm. The woods break to a field punctuated with massive stumps, then back again to a black wall of old-growth timber. I can see where the loggers gave up and moved on. One tree looks big enough to tunnel through like the famous Redwoods in California. I slow to take it in. The first driveway is a quarter mile or so further. I follow it up to a small log cabin dripping in ferns and emerald moss. Smoke curls from the river rock chimney. It’s a pancake syrup commercial, I think.
As I open the car door, I’m immediately yanked from the quaintness of the scene.
Cats.
A lot of cats.
I can smell them. Anyone within fifty yards could.
An elderly woman peers from the window. I motion to her and she comes to the door.
She’s in her eighties if she’s a day. She’s wearing a pretty pink robe and boots. Her hair is black and white, almost skunk-like.
I’d rather smell a skunk right now, I think.
She squints at me.
“Do I know you?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m Detective Megan Carpenter, from Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, ma’am. I’m here on police business. Can we talk?”
Her lips tighten to a straight line. “I’m not getting rid of my cats. You can’t make me.”
“Oh, no. Of course not. I’m not here about your animals.”
“My babies,” she corrects me.
I ask her for her name.
“Maxine Jacobson,” she says.
“Ms. Jacobson, I’m here about your neighbors.”
“What neighbors?”
“The Wheatons.”
“Oh them. Religious weirdos. Don’t have much else to say about ’em. The girl and the boy are all right. Came over here a few times with food for my cats. Want to come inside and see them?”
I know I will throw up if I get any closer to that door; the acrid smell of feline urine is literally punching at my nostrils. I’d give anything for Ruth Turner’s wintergreen deodorant right now. I’d shove the whole stick up my nose.
“No,” I say. “Thank you. I’m highly allergic.”
It’s a lie. I actually like cats. Not a hundred at a time, though.
“That’s too bad. After my husband died, a pregnant cat showed up and, you know how it goes. Ten become twenty. Then more. I’m probably the luckiest woman on the planet. Never, ever lonely.”
I turn the conversation back to the Wheatons.
“Did you meet Ida and Merritt? What was your take on them?”
“Why are you asking about them? Folks out here don’t have block parties. We mind our own business.”
“I imagine that’s very true,” I say as a cat circles my legs, leaving a trail of gray fur on my pants.
“Cotton likes you,” she says.
The acknowledgment softens Maxine.
“She’s beautiful,” I say. “I so wish I wasn’t allergic.”
Maxine nods. “The Wheatons were weird. He did all the talking. His wife just stood around and looked lost. I couldn’t figure out the relationship. I even asked the kids one time if things were okay at home.”
“What did they say?” I ask.
She picks up Cotton and a cloud of fur scatters in the breeze. “Nothing really. It was a while ago. It was the last time I saw ’em too. They were real regular visitors. After that, nothing. Why all the questions, Detective—”
“Carpenter,” I tell her, giving her a card. “The parents are missing. Been gone for a few weeks now. Supposed to be in Mexico at an orphanage. Never got there.”
“Orphanage? What for? To get another worker?”
I look at her eyes. They’re slits now, but she’s studying me.
“No, to do some work for charity.”
Maxine lets Cotton slide from her arms to the ground.
“That’s a crock,” she says. “That man had a mouth like a sailor. Always yelling at those kids, especially his wife and the boy. Charity? What a joke that is. I bet they were headed down there to get another boy. Joshua wanted to bolt.”
Cotton is back to rubbing against my legs.
Help me, I think.
“He told you that?” I ask.
“Yes, he did,” Maxine went on. “He told me that he didn’t want to live out here. It’s not for everyone. Kids don’t have a choice. Parents get to decide everything. My husband moved us out here and I hated it for the first twenty years; now I wouldn’t trade places with the Queen of England.”
I imagine the queen would feel the same way.
I ask her if there are any other neighbors up the road, off the grid.
“Not anymore. Since marijuana became legal in Washington, our local growers packed their tent—and I do mean a tent—and moved on. Nice couple. No one else up this far. Few folks back the way you came. Saw ’em a time or two, but don’t know them by name. Not even by sight. Sorry.”
I thank her, nudge Cotton away, and head to the car.
“Come by again, Detective. Haven’t had a visitor out here for a year or so.”
I tell her I will, but I hope I don’t ever have to. I’m sure I smell of cat pee.
I wind my way down the bumpy road, stopping at a couple of places
. No one seems to be home. One mobile looks abandoned. Yet it hasn’t been. I peer through the window after I knock and see a sweet potato vine growing suspended by three toothpicks over some water. The water’s full. I leave my card with a note to tell them to call, though I doubt whoever lives there has a phone.
When I get to my office, I fill out the paperwork for the lab work on the samples. The courier hasn’t left, so Joshua’s cheek swab and his mother’s hair will be in Olympia tonight.
I write an email to the crime lab:
RUSH NEEDED.
The DNA samples I’m sending your way need your urgent attention. Looking for evidence of a familial match. Please do it first thing. We have a dead woman and a missing man out here and we need confirmation from you.
That night I eat the one slice of pizza I somehow managed to resist the night before. I sit at the table in my underwear, windows wide open and a fan blowing over my body. I hear the sound of the washer down the hall, separating Cotton’s fur from my black pants. I catch my reflection on the open windowpane. I look tired. The roots of my hair are showing. I’ll need to get to the salon. Maybe I should get some Dark and Dangerous.
Sixteen
Sheriff and I arrive at the office at the same time the next morning, an unusual occurrence. Port Townsend’s only all-season panhandler is setting up by a fountain that no longer spouts anything but a green swill of algae.
“Morning, Chad,” Sheriff says.
“Going to rain today,” Chad says, looking skyward, as he unfolds the carboard sign that hits all the right notes for his job.
Army Vet. please help. Family needs food.
I give him a side eye. He drives a better car than I do. Better apartment too.
Nan looks up from her keyboard, while the modern jazz she prefers leaks out of her headphones.
“Lab tried to reach you, Sheriff. You too, Detective,” she says, adjusting an owl pendant that hangs from her neck. “I told ’em that you were on assignment in a remote part of the county.”
Sheriff gives her an affirming nod. “What did they say?”
“Shooting at one of the malls in Tacoma. Case came in and crime lab gave them priority. Lots to process.” She looks down at her notes. “Late tomorrow. Next day. Can call in the morning for a better idea.”
The DNA results will only confirm what I know to be true. The Missing Person’s report and BOLO for the Wheatons will become a murder case with a chief suspect.
Seventeen
Regina looked at her wife and smiled reassuringly. They were still in the bed, curtains pulled, doors locked.
Regina got up and poured water onto a towel from a pitcher on Amy’s nightstand. Amy sat up and let Regina wash her.
“Feels so good. I wish we could go swim in the creek like we used to.”
“When you’re stronger,” Regina said, dabbing the moistened towel over Amy’s brow, then down her cheeks to her neck. Next, she put a very small amount of olive oil on her palms and worked it gently into her skin.
“Stop that, Reggie. You’re making me feel sexy.”
“It’s what I do,” she said.
Amy snuggled tighter against Regina.
“I’m so sorry for everything. Your eye. The things I said.”
A tear fell from Regina’s eye. She put her fingertips against Amy’s lips.
“Shhh… I don’t want to cover this ground ever again. We can be sorry and wallow in our own self-pity or we can move on and love each other forever. It’s what we chose to do, babe. Remember? We chose love.”
Amy didn’t say anything more.
Regina stayed quiet too. She had said everything that truly mattered. Their love was stronger than any disagreement ever could be.
Eighteen
This is how my brain works. Little things spark big things. It would be far easier for me if I could just forget. Forget who I am. Where I come from. That my brother hates me. That I haven’t had a boyfriend for three years—and that’s being generous. A one-night stand from a Tinder pick-up doesn’t really count, right?
Make that five years.
I think of Maxine Jacobson and all those cats. I think of Joshua and Sarah. The case is spooling through my head. The sweet potato vine. I grew one just like that when I was a girl.
I text Sheriff a reminder that we’ll need a search warrant.
We need to find the hammer.
DNA results will be all we need. Have a good night. Enjoying a bowl of rabbit food for dinner, wishing for a taco.
Your wife wants you to stick around. We all do. Good night, Bugs.
I reach for the next tape and slide it into the recorder. Dr. Albright is telling me to lie back and tell me what happened after we got off the ferry.
Me: Okay. I remember seeing the front page of the Seattle Times. It was right there, you know. Staring at us. It was our house. Our photographs. I remember the headline: “Port Orchard Murder Mystery Stuns Neighborhood. Father Dead, Mother and Children Missing.” (pause: noise of static on the tape) Sorry. Just thinking of how real it all became. I knew it was real, of course. It was that by seeing our photos and Dad’s name and Mom’s and reading what the neighbors thought of us. Just made it real.
Dr. A: I’ll need to turn the tape over now.
Me: Okay.
As I do the same, my mind wanders back to that time. How I looped through the ferry collecting all the newspapers and tossing them in the recycle box. I knew that I looked different than the photograph. Hayden too. But I wasn’t about to take a chance.
The tape starts playing again.
Dr. A: You were on the ferry. You were making a plan, isn’t that right?
Me: I was. Or I was trying to. I knew that the key I had since I was eleven was to the safe deposit box. I knew I had to get there. Hayden is only thinking about Mom and Dad. I was thinking about them too.
Dr. A: What were you thinking, Rylee, when it came to your mother at that time?
Me: At that time? Right. I was just thinking about how we needed to find her.
Dr. A: Why?
Me: Like I said before, I knew he took her. I knew that she was alive because he wouldn’t kill her. He wanted her. Killing her would take away his motivation. His reason for being.
Dr. A: Which was?
Me: Owning her.
I remember the reason for the long pause that fills the tape just then. Dr. Albright looked at me with a mix of horror and disbelief. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d said “owning her” with a bizarre casualness or if it was because the very idea of it shocked her.
That’s enough; I remove the tape and put it back inside its little clear plastic holder.
The breeze moves the kitchen curtain and the sound of laughter from the kids next door wafts into the room.
I was about seven when I first started to understand that we were a little different from other families. It might have been earlier, but when you’re not of school age, you don’t mark time the same way. Seasons blend together, and time seems to go on forever. No rituals divide the months. No back-to-school shopping. No carnivals. No winter breaks. I’m not even sure where we were living then, except I remember the smells of the country. Cow smells. A dairy farm was nearby. The land was flat, long and green all the way to the edge of the horizon. Later, I learned we had been living in eastern Nebraska, not far from the Iowa border.
Mom was on the sofa talking to somebody on the phone. It wasn’t a cell phone, but a landline that ran from the wall in the kitchen all the way to the living room. Her voice carried a sharp edge that brought me from my bedroom upstairs. She was crying. Seeing Mom cry made me cry too. I watched from the hallway. Something told me to stay put. Just listen.
“…what am I supposed to do now?” she was asking.
I moved a little closer, though still out of view. It was nighttime, and I was wearing a pale yellow flannel nightgown. On my feet were slippers made to look like pink bunny rabbits. I loved those slippers more than anything. I never saw them again
after that night.
“…tell me just how that’s supposed to work?”
After a long silence, Mom hung up the phone. She stayed very still on the sofa and wrapped an old crocheted blanket around her shoulders.
I remember something else just then. It was Christmas time. Our tree was up next to the fireplace. Why hadn’t I remembered this before?
I take my mind back to that place. I stood there frozen, watching Mom. I had the impulse to run over and hug her, but I was too scared. Later, when I thought about the reasons for my reluctance to interfere, I figured that it had to do with the fact that my mother was a private person. To see her crying almost seemed like a violation of her privacy.
Then she saw me. I felt a jolt go through my body. I was caught. She recovered a little and motioned for me to come closer. I followed the trajectory of her finger to a spot next to her on the sofa.
“Honey,” she told me, “I’m all right, but I do have something to tell you. It’s about tomorrow. We’re going to take a little trip tomorrow. It’ll be fun.”
Her eyes were red and nothing that came from her lips seemed like it could possibly be fun.
“Where?” I asked.
“That’s the fun part,” she said, trying to sound upbeat. “I don’t know. We don’t know.” Her eyes left mine and wandered around the room. I followed them until her gaze stood still.
On our coffee table was a travel magazine with the image of a log cabin in the woods.
“We’re going out West,” she said.
Her random choice scared me. It felt desperate. “Why?” Yet my mother had pulled herself together now. She was in full-on survival mode, an affectation that I later knew to be a complete façade. “Because we have to get away from someone. Someone bad. Someone who wants to hurt me.”
