Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  “I’m a doctor,” Paul said, incredulous. “I took an oath to do no harm. That’s all you need to know about me. Are we finished?”

  Hallie swiped the screen on her phone, and the recording stopped.

  Clara stared at Hallie in stunned silence. Her mind was reeling. She shook her head vehemently, as if to physically jolt herself out of it. She’d think about what she’d just heard later. Right now she had to deal with what was in front of her. Hallie was looking at her expectantly, beaming as if her Pulitzer was surely coming any day.

  Clara looked levelly into the girl’s eyes. “Hallie,” she said sternly, “this is not how reporters operate. Sneaking around on private property? Eavesdropping on police? Recording their neighbors without their knowledge?”

  Hallie’s face fell. She crossed her arms defiantly across her chest. “Could have fooled me,” she said. “We learned about Watergate in school.”

  Clara was caught off balance for a moment, trying to remember exactly which grade Hallie was in. Watergate? Seriously? Clearly the lesson hadn’t quite come across, at any rate.

  “You have to listen to what I’m saying. Not only is this kind of snooping around illegal, it’s dangerous.” She flashed on an image of an unhinged Paul discovering Hallie outside his window—not while the police were there, but on a dark night, alone. Clara shuddered. “You can’t print anything you overheard in your paper, Hallie. And you can’t go sneaking over there anymore. Promise me.”

  “But it shows that she had a reason to leave! It’s important evidence! Everyone thinks Kristin was heartless or something. The kids at school are calling her ‘stone-cold,’ and ‘gold digger’! This shows another side to the story.”

  Clara cringed. Kristin, stone-cold? Paul had done that. Paul had made people think that. What else had Paul done? Still, she had to be careful not to show even the slightest sign of agreement that the girl had a point. Hallie was far too easily encouraged. Clara had to focus on conveying that this must not go beyond this kitchen.

  “All it shows is that Kristin Googled those things before she left,” she said calmly, stealing a glance at Thomas. He was zoned into the television—something Benny often poked fun at by pretending to tap-dance around him, to no reaction whatsoever—and for once, she was grateful. “Like Paul said, she could have Googled them to help a friend. She could be off with that friend right now, helping her. It doesn’t prove anything about Kristin, or about Paul.”

  Hallie’s face bore such disappointment and disbelief that Clara wanted to take it all back, to give her a hug, to tell her she understood the urge to plaster this over the front page but they couldn’t, because that wasn’t the way the world worked, and they had to let things take their course and hope the police would sort it out.

  And to tell her what a bunch of bullshit that all was.

  “Have you played this for your mom?” she asked.

  “No…”

  “Well, I’m going to get Maddie up from her nap, and as soon as your mom comes home from class, we’re all going to walk over there and have a talk.” Clara felt a twinge of guilt at her relief that she wouldn’t have to keep what she’d just heard entirely to herself. Natalie had seemed so unconvinced that there was more to Kristin’s story. What would she make of it now?

  Hallie stuck out her lip. “She’s always telling me I ask too many questions. This time all I did was listen, and apparently that’s wrong too. How am I supposed to get answers about anything?”

  “Sometimes we’re not meant to have the answers, Hal. Sometimes the answers aren’t any of our business.” Clara knew it was the responsible, adult thing to say, but the words pained her.

  “If you’re not going to let me report on the only real news going on around here, Chief, this paper is going to be L-A-M-E lame.”

  “Well, maybe now isn’t such a good time to be starting a paper after all.”

  Hallie hung her head. The toe of her shoe thumped the cabinet in a sullen rhythm.

  “Listen. If you have your heart set on doing this, why not make your paper different from all the others? Why not report on good news?”

  Hallie seemed to be concentrating hard on her kicking, her hair falling around her face, but Clara could tell she was listening. “I mean, that’s what I always think is missing from the other news.” She forced hopefulness into her voice. “I page through all those stories about one bad thing after another and think, Where’s the kind of stuff that would make me smile? That could be your role, Hallie. You could deliver news that gives people hope.”

  A tiny, sputtering wail came through the baby monitor, then escalated quickly. “Zero to sixty in a second,” Benny would tell people in restaurants. “We got the model with upgraded horsepower.” They always smiled, no matter how loud or disruptive Maddie was being. Benny was masterful at defusing tension. She wished for him now.

  “Think about it, okay?” she told Hallie. “I’ll be right back.”

  Up in Maddie’s room, she glanced out the window and could see a light on in Hallie’s kitchen. Good. Natalie must have gotten home from class early. They’d go now.

  Hallie sulked as the four of them trekked through the backyards painfully slowly, so that Maddie could keep up, holding hands while Thomas sang out, “Five little monkeys, swinging from the tree, teasing Mr. Alligator, can’t catch meee…” Thomas, a grudging Hallie, and even little ear-to-ear-grinning Maddie all broke their link to put their hands together and do the motion of the alligator swimming through the water toward its carefree prey. The song was all the rage at preschool, but Clara found it disturbing. Whatever happened to the monkeys jumping on the bed? Was the danger of bumping one’s head not enough of a deterrent?

  They made their way across the patio and around Benny’s workshop, where the Tiffins’ backyard ended and the flat expanse of Natalie and Hallie’s grass began.

  The kids clapped their hands in unison and sang, “And it snapped that monkey right out of that tree!”

  The back door in front of them squeaked open, and the figure that filled the doorway was decidedly not Natalie. Its broad shoulders filled the expanse of the doorway; its gray T-shirt had U.S. AIR FORCE across the front in faded letters. Hallie yelped and took off running. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Natalie’s husband ran down the stairs to the grass and gathered his daughter in his arms. “Daddy, what are you doing here?”

  He pulled back to look at her, then hugged her to him again. Clara’s eyes filled. It was the best kind of holiday commercial come to life in the middle of September, and she pulled her children to her self-consciously, feeling as if they were intruding on a private moment.

  Yet here she was, geared up for an uncomfortable yet necessary parent-to-parent conversation about what Hallie had been up to.

  Hallie’s dad caught her eye. “Hi,” he said, smiling and standing, lifting Hallie so easily she might have been half her size.

  “You must be Jim.”

  “You must be Clara. Don’t think we met on my last leave, but I’m happy to have the chance to thank you for helping out with our girl here.” He beamed at Hallie.

  “She’s a great kid.” She waited for Hallie to look over at her—maybe she’d bring up the newspaper on her own—but she kept her head buried in his shoulder. “And it’s great that you’re home. Does Natalie know you’re here?”

  “I thought Hallie and I’d surprise her coming out of class. You up for that, Hallie-bear?”

  Hallie nodded, then brightened as if remembering the most wonderful thing. “Daddy, you said when you came home we could—”

  “Go to Lakeside Lodge? I’ve booked us for a long weekend!”

  Hallie squealed. Clara tried not to outwardly blanch. Lakeside Lodge was a resort with a huge indoor water park and conference center—along with, of course, the expansive lake—east of Cincinnati. The worst night of her life had occurred there. Otherwise, it was a wonderful place.

  Jim nodded at Clara. “Do you usually get her off the bus on Mondays? I�
�m taking them for a four-day weekend, so she won’t be back to her routine until Tuesday.”

  Hallie pouted. “Only four days, Daddy? And then do you have to leave again?”

  “Four days more than I thought we’d have, sweets. And I’m going to spend every second of them with you.”

  Clara paused. If they weren’t even going to be in town, she supposed she didn’t need to have the conversation about Hallie’s adventures in reporting just now. It seemed insensitive to bring it up to Jim under the circumstances, and knowing that nothing more could come of it while they were away. Best to let them have their family weekend and fill Natalie in right afterward.

  “Hallie, ask your mom to call me when you all get back, okay?” Hallie wouldn’t look at her, and Clara swallowed the uneasy feeling nagging at the corners of her brain. “Have a fabulous time,” she told Jim.

  He ruffled Hallie’s fine hair. “I’ve got everything I need for that right here.”

  As Clara led her own little ones back home, she heard the slamming of a door from Kristin’s backyard. Apparently Paul wasn’t the most receptive audience for someone else’s happy reunion.

  12

  Regrets only.

  —The only comprehensible line, to Izzy, of Penny and Josh’s wedding invitation, buried under the request to RSVP

  Early Sunday morning, frustrated with her inability to sleep in, Izzy slowly opened the door to the spare bedroom where, with no prospects for overnight guests now or in the foreseeable future, she’d stashed everything she either hadn’t yet gotten around to unpacking or couldn’t bring herself to unload—literally or figuratively—into the untinged space of her new home.

  “Be aware of the relics of your reality,” the meditation teacher had intoned as Izzy sat riveted by the sheer intensity of Randi and Rhoda’s group at the Intuitive Healing Studio. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—soft mats, dark rooms—but the place emanated a glow of warmth and light. Seated cross-legged in rows covering the full expanse of the hardwood floor—with so many of Kristin’s coworkers from Antioch in attendance, along with parents and teachers from the Circle of Learning, they’d had to give up on forming a circle—Izzy had obediently followed along the warm-up exercises that the instructor explained would guide them in finding “the most centered spiritual space” from which to send positive vibrations to Kristin and the twins. “I am of my surroundings,” they’d all repeated in unison, earnest and transfixed, while Izzy tried not to feel skeptical about how any of this admittedly buoyant energy would ever reach, let alone help, her missing neighbors. She wanted it to work. She wanted to believe.

  She wanted to belong.

  “Remember,” the teacher had concluded the session, glancing around the overcrowded room and resting her eyes, at last, on Izzy, “your vibe attracts your tribe.”

  Well, here were the relics of her reality. The sliding doors to the closet were open, and even in the dim light she cringed at the sight of the lone bridesmaid’s dress hanging inside. Admittedly it was a little Miss Havisham of her to leave it alone in here, but she couldn’t bear the thought of it mocking her from her own closet. The gown was quite beautiful as far as wear-them-only-once bridesmaid dresses went and would be a welcome donation at Goodwill, but Izzy couldn’t escape the nagging worry that one day Penny would ask her to dig it out and get her feelings hurt if Izzy didn’t have it anymore.

  She supposed she should be heartened that she was still worried about hurting her sister’s feelings. If by Tuesday evening she could manage to conjure an emotion other than despair over her pregnancy, she’d be on her way back to being a decent human being.

  Stepping through the maze of unpacked cardboard in her stocking feet, she gently lifted the lone decorative box from the closet’s top shelf. She sank to her knees on the worn carpet and pushed the pale blue lid aside. A snapshot of her and Josh dressed as Bonnie and Clyde at a Halloween party stared up at her, Josh’s arm slung confidently around her shoulder in a way that had once seemed natural. For a moment she sat quietly, breathing in the remnants of their friendship—the heart-tugging array of ticket stubs and photographs and gallery pins and festival programs and trail maps and guidebooks and the leather-bound travel journal they’d shared for a while. She didn’t need to riffle through the box, to touch them or to see them. But she liked to be in their presence, to remind herself that these memories were real, that she hadn’t imagined them after all.

  Izzy had booked a neuroscientist last Valentine’s Day to talk on Freshly Squeezed about what happens to your brain chemistry when you’re in love—or trying to come out of it. “What a bad deal,” the expert had joked, explaining that the regions of the brain most active after a rejection or a breakup are areas associated with love, craving, focus, and deep attachment. “All you want is to forget about this human being and go on with your life—but no, you just love them harder.”

  Great, Izzy had thought. Even science is against me.

  If she flipped through the journal, inevitably she’d land on the page where Josh had sketched the Yellow Springs themselves, before she’d ever had an inkling of making her home close by. Even then her mind had wrapped itself around the quick moves of his fingers holding the thick pencil, his other hand cradling the open journal as if it were a fragile thing, the way he’d occasionally stop and lunge for her share of their trail mix. “Not on your life!” she’d shrieked, ravished. As usual, they’d made their plans at the last minute, and she hadn’t prepared enough for the journey. Not the right snacks for this length of time, not the right shoes for this much hiking, not the right words for what she wanted to say.

  Don’t do this to yourself, a familiar voice inside her warned.

  Oh, but she had. Done it to herself. From the start. She’d failed to recognize that all of life was like those warnings about being good citizens of this world where extraordinary tragedy could be averted by ordinary people: If you see something, say something. And she had seen—not at first, but eventually—the evidence no one else seemed to. The image of what was meant to be. It had taken years to come into focus, but when it had, how obvious: It was right there all along. Yet she’d been too cowardly to open up to Josh; neither had she said a word to Penny in the early days when real damage had not yet been done. Things had escalated quickly.

  “Explosive,” Penny had called her early days with Josh. And everyone knew you couldn’t undo a bomb once it went off.

  Izzy had kept her feelings to herself then, so she had no choice but to deal with them alone now. She wasn’t crass enough to hurt her family with the truth, or naïve enough to think it would do anything other than make matters worse, or crazy enough to believe that if she missed Josh hard enough, she could make him miss her too. She knew that her vibe was off, that the meditation teacher hadn’t landed on her by accident. But she didn’t know how to stop.

  She snapped the lid back on the box. She would not waste her Sunday morning this way, would not squander these rare hours where there was a moment of Zen to be found. At least for a short time her feet would be rooted to the ground, and hope would be in the air, and she would not be trapped by her secret sadness. She’d feel like herself again.

  She could come back to this later.

  * * *

  The sun was starting its rise into the sky as Izzy pulled out of the driveway and caught sight of Paul, bending to pick up a bundled Sunday paper from the end of his driveway. He raised a hand in silent greeting, and she rolled down the passenger window and slowed to a stop.

  “Nice to see someone still get an actual newspaper these days,” she called.

  She caught sight of the headline through the thin plastic cover—“Still Missing: Day 7”—and instantly regretted her words.

  “You’ve got to hand it to them,” he said dryly. “They keep putting it out, even when there’s nothing new to report.”

  All weekend she’d had a nagging feeling that she just wanted to know for sure that Kristin was okay. Which was ridiculous. Of
course Kristin was okay. She’d taken her mother’s china from the dining room. She’d cleaned out her bank account. It was Paul who was not okay.

  “Well, I’m glad I ran into you, because I think you forgot to bill me for the auto repair services.” She offered a half smile. True to his word, he’d fixed her taillight and left her in peace.

  “I didn’t forget.”

  “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  “Lucky guess.” He looked like a man who had absolutely no idea what to do with himself. Izzy, for once, did know what to do with herself—and she preferred to do it alone. But the look on his face was so familiar that she knew if she pulled away from this curb right now, she’d leave feeling even worse than she already did.

  Paul seemed to have no one, yet for some reason, here she was. Just as when she’d been whaling against her broken car in her driveway, he’d magically appeared. And for that, she owed him a favor. Even if it was one she didn’t particularly want to give.

  “If you won’t let me pay you, how about a trade?”

  “For?”

  She gestured to the passenger seat next to her. “A change of scenery.”

  As the words hung between them, she halfway hoped he would say no.

  He hesitated, but only for a second. “Why not.”

  So it would be, then. She looked him over. His jeans and fleece would do, but definitely not the Dockers. “Got any not-so-nice shoes to change into? Old sneakers? Hiking boots?”

  He shook his head. “In my apartment. By where you turn toward John Bryan State Park? I’ve been meaning to go get another load of stuff. I keep hoping I won’t need it, but…” He coughed into his hand, avoiding her eyes. “It’s been a week.”

  “I’ll take you. John Bryan is where we’re going. Hop in.”

  She waited while he locked up, and they sat in precarious silence on the short drive through town until Paul directed her to a nondescript two-story brick building dotted with tiny balconies, identical save for their dingy assortment of plastic furniture. She looked over at him, certain she’d turned in to the wrong place—this seemed so far beneath his pay grade. But he was unbuckling his seat belt, reaching for the handle, unfolding his long legs onto the pavement.