What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  This too he heard as if spoken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I have no idea what it’s been like for you. I know that. But I did see her. I was heading home from Poulsbo. Some of the local principals get together for dinner every few months, and I was coming around that long curve by the mill. Saw a tall guy getting out of an old navy truck, passenger side. When I got close, I realized it was Daniel. Just as I passed, the girl hopped down.”

  “You saw Evangeline?”

  “Pretty sure I did. I think Daniel was letting her out. That was my sense of it. He probably got back in, but I didn’t see that. I was already around the curve.”

  “A few days before the murder?”

  “Can you see now why I’m concerned?”

  “Are you sure about this? I mean, we all wondered if a girl was involved. What did the investigators say? They must have looked for the girl.”

  “I . . . I didn’t tell them that.”

  How could this be true? My son was missing for a week. We had been desperate for information.

  “I know it sounds crazy now,” he said, “but it was dark and such a fleeting thing. I mainly saw the hair. There’s that skinny kid from Chimacum. Derek something. The one who shows up at a lot of the games. He’s got long red hair like that. You know who I mean? I thought it was him. I’d never seen a girl like that around, and I know pretty much everyone. But today, seeing her, seeing that hair. That’s who I saw.”

  “So why not tell the investigators about Derek?”

  “I did. He denied seeing the boys around that time. But he cooperated, even gave a DNA sample. Nothing matched.”

  I rubbed my neck. “I’m confused. You just told me you didn’t tell investigators.”

  His face froze as if reviewing his exact words. “No. I didn’t tell them about a girl. That’s what I didn’t tell them. I didn’t know until today who I’d really seen.” He searched my face, likely seeking evidence of belief or apology or simple acknowledgment. He received none. “I should have told you at the time, but you know how social Daniel was. We all saw him with dozens of kids that first week of school. When Derek was ruled out, I didn’t think any more of it.”

  I pushed back from the table, trying to escape the words swarming me. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it was Derek.”

  His expression, which had been knotted in agitation, tightened briefly then broke free. For the first time since I entered the room, he seemed to actually see me. “Maybe,” he said. He sighed deeply. “Maybe.”

  And with that small grace, everything in me wanted to be spoken, to be shared with my friend: Evangeline’s arrival with filthy, torn hands; her concocted backstory; her surreptitious departures and late returns; her raiding of the pantry. And the small details that turned her real: battles waged for more light in the evening, jam licked from wrists, and only last night a lullaby sung to a dog behind the closed door of her room. Most of all, I wanted to tell him of her pregnancy, to rid myself of some of its weight.

  I jolted to a stand, overwhelmed and worried that I would say too much, would reveal secrets not mine to share.

  “What are you going to do, Isaac?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m here to help. The state can help too. There’s paperwork we need to file with DSHS. You know that. They’ll be able to place her in a good home.”

  “No!” I said, surprised at my fierceness. “She has a home with me.”

  He gave me a moment, then said quietly, “You’re a good soul, Isaac. She needs a place, and you’ve always had a big heart for strays. But give it some thought, all right? As for the forms, I’m with you. I’d skip them in a heartbeat, but we got our asses handed to us last time we tried that. Remember? With the Salconi kid? There are a lot of people to consider here, including yourself. We can’t know what she’s really after.”

  “She’s after a home, and I have one,” I said. “I have more of a home than I need.”

  Peter rose, placed his hands on my shoulders. “Okay. Let’s talk about this in a few days. For now, just . . . I don’t know, keep an eye out, will you? Who knows what we’re dealing with here.”

  20

  Walking home after school, Evangeline thought the day had gone as well as could be expected. Sure, it’d been awkward as hell, but a couple girls had joined her at lunch, and one in particular had made her laugh, made her believe she might find her place.

  She’d just taken her first bite of salad when a girl with wavy black hair swung up, wielding thick curves with an unselfconscious pride. She plopped down. “I’m Natalia,” she said, offloading her plate, shoving the tray aside.

  “Evangeline.”

  Natalia stopped fussing, studied her. “That’s a good name. Evangeline. I like it.”

  This pleased Evangeline more than seemed reasonable. She was about to ask Natalia something stupid like what grade she was in when Natalia twisted around, called to two girls at another table. “MJ! MJ! Over here.” Turning back, she said, “Masie and Jillian. Masie’s the little one. Everyone just calls them MJ.”

  As the girls gathered their belongings, Natalia started in complaining about the chunks of fat in the pulled pork. She stopped in midsentence, leaned over abruptly, and whispered, “See that teacher over there, the lunch monitor? She still wears pantyhose. That’s why she’s such a bitch.” Evangeline must have looked confused, because Natalia shrugged. “It’s a circulation thing.”

  So yeah, it had been an okay day. Evangeline imagined telling Isaac about Natalia. Maybe she would hang around the kitchen, offer to help with dinner. Remembering the chicken breasts thawing in the fridge this morning, she stopped, tried to picture a particular magazine page, attempting to read it in her mind. Satisfied, she flipped around and headed in a new direction.

  * * *

  —

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, her jacket pockets were loaded with a small jar of capers, a lemon, and a wedge of Parmesan cheese. It was easy lifting small items like that. She would have been home by then, but the first store didn’t have capers, and she’d had to go to one farther away.

  She had taught herself to cook the previous spring. Nothing fancy. Mostly overly spiced pastas and soups. Her most successful production was chicken piccata, a recipe she’d torn from a waiting-room magazine. Her mother had taken a bite and looked up, surprised. “Wow, this is really good.”

  Maybe it was guilt, but during those early months in Port Furlong, Viv was nicer to Evangeline than she’d been in years, always thanking her for the simplest of meals and insisting on cleaning up though clearly exhausted. There were even moments when Evangeline felt a tenderness toward her mother. Viv would be soaking her feet in a plastic dishpan or falling asleep five minutes into her favorite sitcom, and Evangeline would think about offering to massage her tight neck. She never did, but it filled her heart with gladness that she half wanted to.

  Naturally, that period was short-lived. By May, Viv had met Gus, a supposed born-again construction worker who came into the deli every afternoon for a roast beef sandwich and a bout of sexually charged flirtation. At least that’s the way her mother told the story, giggling like she was in middle school when she described the way Gus ran his tongue over his lips after each bite of the sandwiched meat. Evangeline wanted to flee, but she didn’t, because that would mean she had actually heard her mother say these things, and she was trying to convince herself she hadn’t.

  By June, Evangeline was back on the pullout sofa in the living room and she could do nothing right. As best she could tell, Gus’s appeal lay exclusively in his disgustingness. With his close-set eyes, black hair sprouting from nostrils and ears, and breath that smelled like a limp boiled hot dog, her mother had little worry that Evangeline would be tempted to steal him away.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t stop Gus from tracking Evangeline’s every move, doing so with the very lasciviousness Viv had moved to Po
rt Furlong to escape. Evangeline took to wearing baggy sweats and not showering. Even then, her mother accused her of wearing “sleepwear” and developing an “earthy scent” to subconsciously seduce the lowlife.

  At dinner one night, Evangeline reached across the table to score one of the soft rolls her mom had brought home from work, and her tee rode up and showed a bit of midriff. She could feel the cool air on her skin, but it was too late. Gus noticed that bare skin, and her mother noticed him noticing, and that started her off. She slapped Evangeline’s hand, knocking the roll into the oily salad, and told her she was getting fat. Not only that, she was slothful and unhygienic and ignorant, and it was high time she got off that sloppy ass of hers and did something to help out.

  “You can’t keep mooching off us forever,” Viv said. “I was only fourteen—”

  “—when I got kicked out,” Evangeline said, finishing the familiar refrain.

  “That’s right, missy. Fourteen. You know what that—”

  “—was like? I’ll tell you what it was like.”

  “You want me to slap you, is that what you want?”

  Evangeline said, “Not particularly,” and her mother lunged across the overdressed salad, getting oil all over her last clean work shirt, and slapped Evangeline hard enough that if someone walked in right then, they’d know exactly what had happened, not only by the bright red splotch on Evangeline’s cheek but by the startled, angry tears in her eyes.

  But now she had reached Isaac’s gravel drive. She shut Viv out of her mind, imagined Isaac instead, his surprise when he took his first bite of her delicious chicken piccata. A warmth came over her again, like that coat tossed over her shoulders, and she felt almost . . . she struggled for the right word. Loved? Like family? The closest word was “safe.” She could hardly believe it. For the first time in what seemed forever, she was feeling the tiniest bit safe.

  21

  I strode down the corridor, Peter’s final words looping in my mind: Who knows what we’re dealing with here. I almost went back, threw open his door, and shouted, “We never know what we’re dealing with! Don’t you get that?”

  A year ago, my wife of twenty years informed me that she’d been having an affair, packed her belongings and moved across the state. Then my son, my powerful, indestructible son, was slaughtered by a small, unathletic boy, a gentle boy, a boy I knew to be devout.

  I kept shouting it in my head: We never know what we’re dealing with! We never know what we’re dealing with! The problem wasn’t in the not-knowing. The problem was believing that I should. Peter was right. I didn’t know what I was dealing with. Not with Evangeline, not with my wife or the boys, not with Peter or my students, not with Rufus. Not even with myself.

  I had almost escaped the building when a classroom door burst open and Samantha Askelson, Daniel’s longtime girlfriend, nearly knocked me down. She lurched back, kids piling up behind.

  “Mr. Balch,” she said, untangling herself and moving off to the side.

  “Hi, Sammy.”

  Her fair skin reddened. “I meant to stop by your classroom today.” She spoke fast, her eyes skittering. “You know, to say hello. I mean, I heard you were back, but then Mr. Nelson—”

  “I’m sure you knew my first day back would be swamped.” I rarely cut people off, but there are times when it’s a gift.

  She managed to settle a little, meet my eyes. “How are you doing? I mean is everything . . . ?” She trailed off, ran a hand through long blond hair.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I saw in the paper that you took first in freestyle at the last meet. Sounds like you have a shot at the state record.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling a little. We’d always been our best when talking about her athletic endeavors. “In fact, I’m doubling up on my practice time, kind of heading to the pool right now. So . . . I should probably . . .”

  “Oh, sure, go,” I said. “It was good to see you. Stop by the classroom anytime. Or the house. Rufus would love to see you.”

  She said she would with such sincerity that, for a second, I thought she actually might.

  * * *

  —

  AS I DROVE HOME, I again went over what I knew of Sammy. She and Daniel had been a couple since the end of their sophomore year. If my son had ever been in love, it had been with her. She was tall like Daniel, as popular as he, with fine skin and the sculpted limbs of a swimmer. They made a striking couple. And while that was important to Daniel, it was more than that. Sammy had a sharp wit. Whenever she got going on one of her stories, Daniel would step out of the limelight and watch her with a fascinated pride.

  When Daniel went missing, Sammy told investigators she had broken up with him “for good” that very afternoon. At the time, I wrote it off as Sammy being Sammy. The girl needed to be the axis around which every story turned, and Daniel had said nothing of them having troubles. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Daniel had been agitated that last week, particularly that last morning. Perhaps he knew what was heading his way.

  After the murder, a new rumor started—some claimed by Sammy herself—that Jonah had a secret crush on her and that his jealousy of Daniel caused the murder. It was true that Jonah was jealous of Daniel. I think he had always been. But not about Sammy. Once, when Jonah and I were walking home from meeting, I mentioned her. I don’t remember why. He shrugged and said, “I don’t get the whole Sammy thing, why everyone thinks she’s so amazing. I mean, I know she’s pretty and all, but is it weird that she just doesn’t appeal to me?” This wasn’t sour grapes. He was simply confused. So no, Jonah didn’t kill Daniel in a jealous rage over Samantha. But still, I wondered if she’d played a role somehow, set the sequence of events into motion.

  I pulled into the drive, unsettled. Nothing made sense. And for every mystery Samantha held, Evangeline, behind her curtain of lies, held a dozen.

  * * *

  —

  I SET UP IN THE KITCHEN AS I HAD BEFORE, wanting to catch Evangeline as soon as she walked in. When twenty minutes passed without her arrival, I wondered if she had beaten me home and gone down for a nap, suffering as she did with the fatigue of early pregnancy. I went to her room and knocked. With no response, I stepped in.

  A glance made clear this space was private. Katherine’s old nightgown lay wadded on the floor, and little bits of makeup—blush and a tube of lip gloss—were tossed on the unmade bed with a small mirror. The box with Katherine’s clothes had been dug through, its contents left in a pile. Several outfits had been laid out in a corner, a combination of Evangeline’s new things and Katherine’s, tops knotted at the waist, pant legs rolled. I imagined Evangeline standing over them, mixing and matching, picturing how she would look.

  I told myself to leave. It wasn’t that Evangeline might catch me. Rufus would make a fuss at her return, and she would never suspect me of trespass. But it was that very trust I didn’t want to breach.

  Still, I stayed. When I moved, it was to invade her closet. The large walk-in was all but empty. A few tops and the dress she’d bought hung from the rod. A small pile of clothes lay in the back. I assumed they were dirty, yet on closer inspection I could see they were summer items, worn but clean tank tops and shorts.

  That’s when I noticed a strap poking out from under the pile. I nudged the clothes with my shoe, averting my eyes as if to disavow a foot that had gone rogue. When I checked again, the duct-taped backpack, the one she’d carried everywhere when she’d first arrived, lay exposed. No longer bursting, it wasn’t empty either.

  Again I tried to leave, to end my violations, but my eyes kept returning to it. Who was this girl? If she had known Daniel and Jonah, been with them in their last days, then her falsehoods were not minor misstatements of personal history but lies as to her very purpose in my house. And she was long overdue. For all I knew, she’d decided to move on. Or maybe something had happened to her. Perhaps an old boyfriend
was stalking her. Didn’t I have an obligation to discover who she was and why she was here? Not only for my own protection but for hers?

  I lowered myself to the floor, placed the backpack in my lap, feeling its weight. She had so little she could claim as her own. I was returning it to its original spot when I grabbed the toggle and unzipped it, fast and violent, a kind of slashing, leaving myself no time to change my mind. Inside I found the jar of peanut butter I’d been missing, a few stale cookies I’d forgotten about, some energy bars I didn’t recognize. This hoarding of food despite its ready availability, storing it in dark corners like a rodent that could be stomped, saddened me enough that I almost stopped there. I almost put everything back and left. I almost did.

  Here is what I learned that day: one trespass begets another, each one lowering the threshold for the next, until a man who wouldn’t do a load of the girl’s filthy laundry for fear she’d feel it as an intrusion is crawling around her closet floor, pawing through her most private possessions, justifying it—as all such men do—by claiming these violations are for her own good.

  22

  Evangeline stood before her old trailer in a gloomy drizzle, firs twitching black limbs in the falling light. The sofa she’d slept on for months lay open in the overgrown yard, sagging under a pile of garbage bags. She tore one open and found her mother’s abandoned clothes. In others, she discovered everything she’d ever considered hers. Even the table lay in shattered pieces as if heaved airborne, broken under its own weight. The trailer itself—now scraped clean of her—had been fortified, plywood nail-gunned over its windows and door. Something savage in it, that nail for every inch, as if to make a point about the foulness of girls like her.

  And she was foul, wasn’t she? Isaac thought so at least. The chicken piccata plan hadn’t exactly worked out. She’d had to flee his place with nothing more than what she carried. Now, tired from the trek, she tossed bags off the sofa and collapsed onto it. Her mind was blank. She left it that way. There was a peace in it, the way she could ignore her growling stomach, not worry about the cold. Adults were always preaching at you to “use your brain,” “think things through,” but sometimes, lots of times, it was not-thinking that allowed you to go on.