Emma in the Night

by Wendy Walker

  Abby sat beside Leo on a park bench outside the small courthouse. The media had dispersed. The lawyers had gone back to their offices. And Judy Martin had just been sentenced and was on her way to the women’s federal correctional facility in Aliceville, Alabama.

  Cass had chosen not to attend the sentencing.

  “She doesn’t care. This wasn’t about justice,” Leo said.

  Abby sighed and shook her head. The system had failed Emma Tanner. And Cass had been a part of it. Her stories could have tipped the scales. But she did not want the truth about what went on in that house to see the light of day.

  “She just wanted to find her sister, Abby. That’s all.”

  Abby knew he was right. Watching Cass testify against her mother had been infuriating, so much so that Abby had struggled with the decision to continue protecting her, lying for her. And, in turn, asking Leo to lie as well.

  “No one is looking into the past, into how bad things were in that house, and so no one is looking for the child. Those two pieces—they go hand in hand,” Leo reminded her. “Remember what Cass said? People believe what they want to believe, and no one wants to believe that a mother could kill her own daughter. It’s so much easier to swallow an evil, controlling stepfather protecting his son than a ruthless mother. No one wants to see a mother like that. A mother that evil, even if it does come from an illness. It shakes us to the core.”

  Abby looked at him. “And no one did see. Not Owen Tanner. Not the court. Not the school. Not even the girls, until it was too late.”

  “Do you understand now? Why I didn’t want you to go after this three years ago? You would have been destroyed, Abby.”

  That was a hard one for Abby to swallow. Even after the truth had come out and the remains were found, the prosecution had chosen not to use any expert testimony or pursue any psychiatric evaluations of Judy Martin on the theory of narcissistic personality disorder. They didn’t have enough to back it up. It was too subjective. Too rare. And because of Abby’s past and the paper she’d written on the subject, it would turn the light back on the trap they had set for Judy and her husband. And no one at the Bureau wanted that.

  “I don’t know how to feel about any of this. I don’t feel relieved. I don’t feel vindicated about being right.”

  Abby stared at the courthouse. It was a beautiful but cold winter day. Blue skies. Puffy clouds. The air was crisp and cut right through her wool coat. She shivered and Leo put his arm around her.

  He had saved her from what could have been a disastrous outcome. If he had told the truth about the decision to lie to the Martins—that it was Abby who had wanted to set the trap—the case and her career could have come undone.

  But that was not his only deception.

  Somewhere in the Tanner file was a piece of paper with a name and a number, buried deep now, just in case he ever needed it. It was a witness from the train station in Portland. Leo would say he never called her back because the case was solved before he had the chance. He would say he forgot about it, or that she sounded like one of the other nutjobs who had phoned in tips on the case. After all, she’d said that a woman who looked just like Cass Tanner was riding a train for New York and had asked to use her phone to look up an address. And she was not alone. Beside her, curled up and fast asleep, was a little girl.

  Abby and Leo both believed that Cass had spent those missing two days delivering her daughter to safety before she returned home. And they had bets on Witt being an accomplice. They had said nothing, and done nothing about any of it.

  “What do you think she’ll do now?” Leo asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly. But I do know she’ll do whatever is best for her daughter.”

  “And the father? Hunter? God forbid, Jonathan?”

  “Jesus … my money’s on Hunter. It’s what Emma told her mother that got her so enraged, she pushed her over the balcony. The best lies are the ones closest to the truth.”

  “If she had told us what really happened in that house, it would have been enough. All the charges would have stuck. She helped her mother get away with murder to protect her child.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “And you know what that means?” Leo reached in his bag and pulled out a weathered bundle of paper clipped together in one corner. It was a copy of a paper titled “Daughters of Mothers with Narcissism: Can the Cycle Be Broken?”

  Abby smiled and nodded. She felt the tears wanting to come, but she held them back. Leo studied her face. He squeezed her shoulder and pulled her closer.

  It was ironic how she could know so much and still be so afflicted by the past. The cycle was a force that kept pulling her back in. But then she thought about Cass and this ability she still had to love selflessly. She had escaped the cycle. Love for her own child had been more important than revenge against her mother.

  Cass was not completely free. No one ever was after growing up that way. Maybe she would forever number things like Meg. And maybe she had an invisible shield that would make it hard to be loved, like the one Abby could feel starting to break under the weight of the evidence that was now before her. For the first time in her life, she felt hopeful.

  “You look tired, kiddo,” Leo said.

  Abby laughed, but then the tears broke through. “I don’t think I’ve slept for nearly four years.”

  Leo nodded slowly. “I know. Those damned ghosts always come at night, don’t they.”

  A moment passed.

  Then Leo stood and took Abby’s hand. “Come for dinner tonight. Susan wants to make you a cake.”

  “But it’s not my birthday,” Abby answered.

  Leo smiled then, his head tilted, one eyebrow raised. “Yes, it is.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Cass

  It was very hot the summer before I ran away. Records were broken. Everyone was complaining. People started talking about global warming again, even though the prior winter had also broken records for snow and cold. I think sometimes that having too much information can be a very bad thing. It pulls our attention this way and that way, that way and this way, until our heads are just spinning around and we are never able to see what’s right in front of us. We are not owls and our heads were not built to spin.

  When I see and hear exploding news stories, like that summer with the heat wave, and when it makes me get worried about things, I make myself remember something I learned in the sixth grade. We were studying the solar system and we learned about how the earth began 4.5 billion years ago and how the sun will die in about the same amount of time. It’s so easy to think that we are important and that the things that happen to us are important. But the truth is, we are so small, so insignificant in the scope of even just our solar system, which is itself meaningless in the scope of the Universe. The truth is, nothing really matters unless we decide it matters. We could set off every nuclear bomb we’ve ever made and kill all life on the planet, and the Universe would just shrug and yawn because within the next five billion years while the sun is still shining, some kind of new life would come and we would be talked about by them the way we talk about dinosaurs.

  After my escape, I could have taken that train anywhere in the world. Or at least anywhere that train was stopping all the way down to Florida. I could have stayed gone forever. My father was sad, but it was three years old, his sadness, and it had become more of a scar than an open wound. The same was true for Witt. He’d gone to law school and gotten married. I’m sure he missed me, but his life had filled in whatever hole my leaving had caused, like when you make footprints in the sand and then the water comes in bringing more sand and more sand until they disappear.

  It was not necessary that I come home. It was not necessary that I find Emma. It caused a lot of upheaval to everyone, including myself, and in the scope of the Universe, it was irrelevant and unimportant. But in my years on the island, I made a theory for myself about the meaning of life. I decided that life would be about choosing things to make important eve
n though they are not, and cannot ever be. I took this theory and I started to make a list of the things I would choose to be important and that I would honor. I decided that I would measure myself against my list and whether I had been true to that list of important things.

  Finding Emma was on that list.

  The summer before we disappeared, Emma had left for Paris in early June. I did not leave for my program in England until two weeks later. I had not been alone in the house with Hunter, Mr. Martin and my mother before. Not ever. I always went to my father’s house when Emma was away.

  The truth is, I could have gone to my father’s house. My father wanted me to stay with him, and with the war going on at the Martins’ house, I was like a bird on the battlefield. I knew I would be fine if I just flew off when the soldiers returned. I also knew that no one sees a bird on the battlefield when they’re always on the lookout for the enemy soldiers. It was hard to be that bird that no one saw and that would be crushed if it didn’t fly away when the fighting began again.

  I was fifteen that July. But that is no excuse. I felt invisible and powerless in my family and in my life. But that is no excuse. There is no excuse for what I did that July.

  The idea came to me one night at dinner. Mrs. Martin had wanted to go to the club, so we all got dressed up and went—me, Hunter, Mrs. Martin and Mr. Martin and Hunter’s girlfriend. Hunter was still being annoyingly flirtatious with my mother, so she wore a sexy dress and put on extra makeup. I saw Hunter’s eyes run up and down her when he knew his father was looking at him. He was relentless in his efforts to keep them estranged until Emma got back from France. It was part of his plan to destroy her. Or maybe to win her back. To this day, I don’t know which it was, with love always turning to hate, hate turning back to love.

  I got dressed in Emma’s room. I wore one of Emma’s dresses and I used her special flat iron and I put on her makeup. I knew what I was trying to do. None of this was subconscious. I did not want to be invisible and powerless anymore.

  Hunter’s girlfriend was very talkative at dinner and she was also very nice to me, which was almost as annoying as my mother and Hunter’s flirting.

  Nothing really happened at that dinner, except for one small look. Emma had talked to me about how you know if someone likes you and how you can tell someone you like them, and I had trouble believing her because I had never done it or had it done to me.

  It’s hard to explain, Cass, she said one night in my room, her arms around me.

  It’s a look that comes in a different way or that you send out in a different way. It’s just a tiny bit longer than a normal look. And it’s completely still, it’s not moving with a smile or talking or even eyes squinting or your eyebrows lifting up or anything at all. It’s totally frozen, like a deer in the headlights. It’s frozen by a thought that has just hijacked your brain for that second and that’s why it lasts too long, because you have to rescue your brain from the hijacker.

  I asked her what that thought was that could hijack your brain and freeze your face like that.

  It’s the thought that you want that person.

  That night at dinner, I finally understood what she meant. My mother had noticed the dress I was wearing and the makeup and my hair, and she did not like it one bit. She did not like that I was trying to be like Emma and take attention away from her. She had made a few comments to me as we were leaving the house and I ignored them, but inside I was smiling because my plan was working. I was reappearing from my state of invisibility. I was finding some power of my own.

  When we were at the table at the club, Hunter’s girlfriend said how pretty I looked. How grown-up I was becoming. My mother smiled at me and said, Isn’t that Emma’s dress? I said it was but that Emma didn’t want it anymore. I lied and said that Emma told me I could have it. My mother smiled again and said, Well, remind me on Monday and I’ll take you to the tailor. It really needs to be brought in around the bust. You definitely got your father’s side in that department. All the women are flat as boards.

  I felt my face flush as the blood rushed in. I felt adrenaline seething through me. Hunter’s girlfriend looked horrified but that was because she did not know the kind of mother Mrs. Martin was and that I had incited her fury by trying to take some of her attention for myself. She wiped the horror from her face and said again that she thought I looked beautiful.

  It was at that moment, in the chaos of blood and adrenaline and horror, that I saw that look come my way, the look Emma had told me about. It was coming from across the table. It was coming from Hunter.

  I looked away as fast as I could, but I would soon learn that I had not been quick enough. I had not rescued my own brain from the hijacker in time, and now I had seen Hunter’s hijacked brain and he had seen mine.

  I knew that our hijackers were different types of criminals. I won’t pretend that I came to see this after I was older and wiser. I knew it then, right then, at that dinner. Hunter saw that I was no longer irrelevant to the war. With one dress and some makeup, I had made myself a weapon he could use against my mother, and then against Emma when she returned from Europe. And I saw that Hunter could make me a weapon and I wanted to be a weapon because a weapon is, at the very least, seen by everyone on that battlefield. I was tired of being a bird.

  Three days later, after more hijacked looks had passed between us, Hunter came to my room. I was asleep. It was past 2 A.M. He got into my bed. He got under the covers. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything. He started to touch me and not only did I not say anything but I didn’t do anything either. Not one thing to help him as he struggled with my pajama bottoms and the covers and then his pajama bottoms. And not one thing to stop him as he climbed on top of me. I lay still, very still, for as long as I could. Denying that I was letting this happen. Lying to myself that I wanted it to stop. Because I didn’t. I hated Hunter Martin. But there were things about my life that I hated even more. When he was done, he fell asleep beside me. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. I did not sleep the rest of the night. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Thinking.

  It happened only three more times while Emma was gone. That was all he needed. And that was all I needed. I did not care that he kept seeing his girlfriend. I did not care that there were no more hijacked looks. And I did not care that when Emma returned, they still treated me like the bird. I did not care, because I knew I was not the bird anymore. I knew I was the weapon and that I had power, and knowing was enough for me.

  I also knew I was pregnant by the time school started. I ignored it at first, but then we saw our mother with Hunter, and Emma was wanting to confront her about it. This was my chance to see what would happen if she knew what he had done. This was my chance to see if she would help me if I told her I was the one pregnant with Hunter’s baby. If she would help Emma, then maybe (maybe) she would help me.

  I got my answer.

  I had the baby on the island. It was horrible and I won’t pretend it wasn’t. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. But then I had my baby, my little girl, and she became the first thing on my list of things I decided to make important.

  They took her from me slowly after the first three months, not the way I told them it happened to Emma. But the rest was true. When I resisted and cried, they let me see her only once a day. We had been inseparable before that. She slept in my bed. She stayed in my arms all day. We took long walks in the woods. And I sang her lullabies from a book Lucy bought us. From my heart and out through my hands, love gushed out of me and into my baby. All the love I had felt for Emma. All the love I had felt for my father and Witt. And all the love that I had wanted from my mother when I was a little girl.

  When they took my daughter, I hid that book under my bed and I held it in my arms every night and cried myself to sleep. I waited outside their door at night and listened for the sounds of sleep. And on the nights I could be sure of it, I would crawl across the floor and sit by my daughter’s bed. I would sometimes r
each my hand onto her back and let it rise and fall with her breath.

  When I finally woke up from their spell, I added to my list escaping from the island with my daughter.

  I am afraid now. I am afraid of myself and what I am capable of. I am afraid of my own mind.

  The Pratts were sick people. I know now why they became psychotic about having a baby and how their isolation on the island made it worse, so they could no longer make sense of reality and understand that what they were doing was wrong. Dr. Winter explained this to me before she learned that I had told so many lies. They had been turned down for adoptions for fifteen years, then lost the one child they were given. They took me in so they could mother me. But then came my baby. She was the gift from God they had been praying for. And I was just an evil force trying to get in the way of God’s will.

  But Dr. Winter told me something else after that night in the woods. She wanted me to be prepared. She told me that when they find the Pratts, or the Petersons, if they ever do, they will tell a different story. They will tell the story of a scared teenager who showed up at their home, asking for help. Asking to be saved from a wretched family. They will explain that I was always able to leave. They will use the things I did in my moments of weakness, laughing with them, eating with them, letting them hug me and kiss my forehead and tell me they loved me. I have been such a liar. And they will use that against me.

  But it won’t matter. Because I will find a way to make them pay.

  It was not easy to wait those last two years to escape. Being nothing more than a sister to my own baby, yearning to come home so I could find the sister who had disappeared—I would binge on their kindness until it made me sick. I was so hungry for it, and my hunger disgusted me. I told myself I was just working at my plan, to make them trust me. But that would also be a lie.

  It was even harder to make Rick see me and want me and make me his lover. And when I was pretending to love him, I feasted as well on his love, what I thought was love, what I pretended was love. I feasted until I was sick from that, too.