Not That I Could Tell: A Novel

by Jessica Strawser

  Which she was going to need to turn him down.

  “What I’m about to say is completely unfair.”

  He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  “But I know myself—at least, certain things about myself—and I’m ashamed to admit that I’d be a horrible match for a police officer. I’m not built from the right stuff.”

  There was a weighty pause. “In a town like Yellow Springs, the job isn’t what you might think…”

  She shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s … well, part of it comes from my own job. Some people in the media get desensitized to the news—I’d guess it’s similar in your profession. But the reverse seems to be true for me. Let’s just say I’d be the opposite of a comfort to you. And I’d drive myself insane.”

  It felt good to follow through with something that was entirely the truth, for once to feel sure, even if it was with a certain sadness.

  He tilted his head, then nodded once. “If that’s a line you need to draw, better to know now.”

  “I’m touched that you considered me,” she said, handing over the cookies. What was it with her and baking? Now she could use it to summon the end of relationships she hadn’t even known were a possibility.

  He moved to leave, and she followed, to see him out. “About your friend and Paul Kirkland,” he said as they reached the front door. “The friend isn’t you, is it?” She could feel color rushing into her cheeks. In front of a detective. Damn it. She couldn’t have him think she was passing him over for Paul.

  “I’m not interested in him,” she said quickly. “But it might be the other way around.” Come to think of it, her initial relief aside, she really was surprised the detective didn’t know about the Second Date Update call. It had been aired with only the thinnest veil of discretion. What else could the authorities, even the most earnest of them, have missed?

  He looked at her for a long moment. “In that case,” he said, “between us, as friends? Since you asked…”

  “Friends,” she repeated, nodding.

  “If I did have a gut feeling, it wouldn’t necessarily be that Kristin and the twins are gone because he put them in the ground. But it might be that the reason they’re gone has more to do with him being who he is than it has to do with money.”

  “And who do you think he is?”

  “I can only say who I think he’s not: The good doctor who means well but is wrapped up in his work, the prince charming who swoops in and saves the day when she’s widowed and pregnant. Those descriptions don’t add up for me, at least not in such simple terms. I’d be careful.”

  She knew that in some ways she’d been horribly selfish lately. But in other ways maybe she should have thought of herself a bit more. Or at least in a higher regard.

  “I was a terrible witness for you,” she blurted out. “I remember so little of that night—only flashes, mostly of things I said, not anyone else. I was embarrassed to admit it, when you questioned me…”

  “I got the gist.”

  “I hope I didn’t let Kristin down. Or you.”

  He touched her arm. “If you’re going to have too much wine, from an officer’s standpoint a neighbor’s backyard is the perfect place to do it. No rowdiness, no driving. You didn’t let anybody down. You didn’t do a thing wrong.”

  “Well. Thanks for trying so hard to find her. And the twins. Nothing is the same without them.”

  She opened the door, and he started down the walk. She used to watch Abby and Aaron from here, pedaling their bikes as Kristin trailed behind them, and think how cozy it was. How quaint. Now she thought of Paul packing up the remnants of their lives there. Clara revealing her tragic, traumatized side. Hallie launching an underground newspaper. Randi and Rhoda holding court in their shop. The neighborhood really was a different place now. What was it Randi had called the energy? Off balance. She supposed scrutiny could do that to a group of people.

  “Detective?” He turned, and she saw that he somehow already had a half-eaten cookie in his hand. He shrugged guiltily, and she laughed. “I know it’s not likely, but call me if you ever leave the force.”

  He took a few steps back toward her. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not likely.” He grinned mischievously. “But call me if you ever bake too many of these again. They’re delicious.”

  He was standing close enough now that she caught a whiff of his cologne—something run-of-the-mill, maybe an inexpensive drugstore spray, but still nice. He caught her hand in his, and before she even registered his touch brought it to his lips and gave it a gentle kiss. She couldn’t help smiling as she headed back inside.

  It was an oddly gallant end to a mess of a day.

  37

  Items in the Lost and Found will not be held indefinitely. Please take inventory of your child’s belongings daily, as well as of your own (coffee carriers, keys…). We cannot be held responsible for anything gone missing, or for authenticating claims of ownership.

  —Memo to all Circle of Learning parents

  Halloween had never looked so friendly as it did at the Circle of Learning. The lobby was filled with artwork assembled with a level of care that Clara would have been hard-pressed to replicate with her lone one-year-old underfoot, let alone a whole building full of toddlers. Maddie loved nothing more than to rip paper, no matter whom the paper belonged to—and thus Thomas was understandably losing his enthusiasm for art while his sister was on the premises. But here, the youngest children had made orange paint handprints that the teachers had cleverly transformed with black marker into five little fingertip pumpkins sitting on a fence. The preschoolers had pressed googly eyes and pipe cleaner hair onto silly monster shapes formed from homemade playdough, which had then been carefully arranged in a miniature pumpkin patch shelved in a Plexiglas display case. Clara smiled at the few that had more eyes than hair. Glittery bats hung from the ceiling, and in the corner a few bales of real hay framed a plywood mural of sunflowers with holes for the children to poke their faces through.

  Clara was overcome with affection for the place in spite of herself. As much as she’d joked with Kristin about the over-the-top policies—why not let kids be kids and eat a little Halloween candy?—the truth was, she loved the school. Thomas had been well cared for within these walls, and as a first-time mom whose own mother was several states away, so had she. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that she’d turned to the preschool teachers for advice the way other parents consulted pediatricians. Do you think this is just a heat rash? Is it normal for his letters to be backward sometimes? And the Circle of Learning’s coordinated cuteness eased some of the pressure to achieve a perfect Pinterest parenthood, freeing her to focus on her own kind of less photogenic but never wavering love.

  It had been easier to be angry with Pam than to feel hurt or betrayed. But now, she felt none of those things. Only determined.

  Miss Sally was standing just inside the office, laughing with the director, when Clara stepped in. She immediately recognized this as one of their “Silly Hat Days”—Pam was in a wizard’s cap while Miss Sally wore a crown of flowers, ribbons trailing her shoulders. Thomas loved these days, even though he always wore the same thing—his red plastic fireman’s cap, really not very silly at all. At the sight of her, Miss Sally’s smile brightened even as Pam’s faltered.

  “Clara! Oh, Miss Lizzie and the kids have all been missing Thomas. How is he? Will he be ready to come back soon?”

  Ready to come back? Clara frowned. Had Pam not had the decency to tell the staff she’d asked Thomas to leave?

  Never mind. It was better, perhaps, if she hadn’t. Clara didn’t want any lingering tension with anyone. A lack of communication might work in her favor if she played along.

  Clara matched the wattage of her smile. “Absolutely. He wouldn’t miss next week’s Halloween party for the world! And neither would I. The lobby looks amazing.”

  Sally clapped her hands together in delight. “You know, I think I have a few extra dough monster kit
s, if you’d like to take a couple home to him and Maddie? You’d just have to watch that she doesn’t try to mouth the tiny eyes.”

  “Really? They’d love that!” She wasn’t being polite. They would love it.

  “I’ll run and get them. Have him bring his monster when he comes back, and we’ll add it to the display.” She disappeared through the doorway in a flourish of rustling ribbons, and only then did Clara take the seat Pam was gesturing toward with barely masked reluctance.

  Clara perched on the edge of the chair, not wanting to seem too comfortable. “You probably gathered I’m here to tell you Thomas will be back next week.” She held her smile.

  Pam cleared her throat, and Clara could tell she was trying to work out how she might holistically tell Clara that the decision was not up to the parent.

  Clara lowered her voice. “Not that it should matter, but—off the record—I have it on good authority that the investigation next door won’t be actively ongoing after this week.” She leaned forward, careful to keep any smugness from her voice. “Ergo, we won’t be associated, however tangentially, with any more ‘distractions.’”

  Pam dropped her professional façade and knitted her brow in concerned lines. “But that means they’ll stop looking? For Abby and Aaron?” She wrung her hands on the desk in front of her, and Clara sat back in her seat, caught off guard.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “Just until something new comes in.”

  “Is that as unlikely as I think it is?”

  Clara shrugged. “The twins’ father might be hiring his own investigator.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. She was trying to distance herself from this, not reestablish herself as the closest contact to the drama.

  “Whatever for?” Pam snapped. Her hands clenched into fists, and she looked up toward the ceiling. “Never mind,” she mumbled. “I know what for.” She shook her head. “Sorry. It just strikes me as … insincere.”

  Clara nodded carefully. “Detective Bryant did say he thinks we all need to accept that things might be left as they are. To move on. Which is what I’m here trying to do. I’m sure you can understand…”

  But she could tell Pam’s mind wasn’t on Thomas. She took the wizard hat off her head and sat it on the edge of the desk, sighing heavily as she ran a hand over her hair to smooth it. “Frankly, I was hoping you might turn something else up,” she said. “That newspaper was such a gift to Kristin, though no one can say it out loud. I think I even thought that seeing you and Thomas out playing, without his usual playmates, might get to Dr. Kirkland. Convince him to own up to … whatever there might be to own up to.”

  In all the times she and Kristin had chuckled about Pam—from her oxymoronic “rules for fun” to the political correctness of even the most benign holiday parties (“the notion of a leprechaun may be perceived as disrespectful to little people”)—and as much as Clara had been missing those chats more than ever, she had never, until now, stopped to consider Kristin through Pam’s eyes. The impeccable parent with impeccable children who made everything look easy. The doctor’s wife who had it all but made sure to pay it forward. The all-star activities volunteer with a table full of handmade party favors, right until the end.

  How many hours must the women have spent together? Clara could picture them standing on chairs, laughing, after the recycled newspaper streamers hung for Recycling Week had come loose and tangled the twins as they walked through the door. And though there were several sets of twin parents at the Circle, Kristin had been the one Pam stopped, en route to the parking lot with Clara, to ask if she might meet with a new mom to offer tips on managing the morning drop-off. (Clara had often thought that if she could not so much as drop her kids at day care without enlisting the aid of a massive double stroller, she’d never have the energy to leave the house.) It was Pam who had, with expert efficiency but also empathy, handed Kristin the whole box of tissues the afternoon Aaron sprained his wrist and Kristin burst into tears at the mere thought of him in such pain. Pam might not have known the real Kristin—or, rather, the whole Kristin—any more than anyone else did, but of course she’d cared about her, and especially her kids.

  Maybe Clara wasn’t the only one with certain blind spots.

  Clara blinked at her. “Surely that’s not the real reason you asked us to stay home?”

  She stared back for a beat too long. “Of course not.” Clara wondered if she knew something more than she was letting on, then decided to let it drop. She could hardly fault Pam for having Kristin at the center of her thoughts. Frankly, if she’d known the director had felt this way all along, she might have thought of her as an ally. But that wasn’t why she was here. This wasn’t about Kristin anymore.

  It was about Thomas.

  “I want you to know I get your earlier point, about how your job is to have the best interest of all the children at heart,” Clara said. “And I know you requested a cooling period after Benny reacted badly to your judgment call. I’ve respected your wishes, but now I need to get back to doing my job. Which is to have the best interest of my child at heart. He wants to come back. I want him to come back. His dad wants him to come back. Please.”

  Pam studied her for a moment, then nodded. “I’m sorry if—” She grappled for the right words, then gave up.

  A whoosh of ribbons announced Miss Sally’s return. “Two kits,” she announced triumphantly. Clara stood, and Miss Sally met her eyes as she took them. “Thomas usually went trick-or-treating with the twins, didn’t he?”

  Clara nodded, glancing at Pam for good measure, lest she rethink what she’d just agreed to. “That’s why he’s so excited for the Halloween party here, I think,” Clara said. “There aren’t a lot of other kids on our block.”

  “I was thinking about that,” Miss Sally said. “I know it’s a small town and you could head anywhere, but you have an open invitation to start and finish at my house, if you’d like. I’m on the other side of campus and can’t pass more than a couple of driveways without running into a Circle of Learning kiddo out playing. He’d have plenty of company, plenty of fun. Maddie too.”

  “That’s really kind,” Clara said. “Thanks. I’ll run it by Benny.”

  She tucked the craft kits into her purse and turned to leave.

  “About the Halloween party,” Pam called out. Clara turned, and the director’s all-business smile was back. “There’s still time to sign up. Thomas’s class is set on snacks, but there are open slots for party favors.”

  “Oh, sure,” Clara said, relieved at escaping another year of veggie scarecrow assembly. This sounded easier: Grab and go. “What’s the head count now—eighteen?”

  Pam nodded. “Of course, we want to be sensitive about how some families choose not to celebrate Halloween per se. Nothing too blatantly scary—witches, vampires, things that could be associated with death, or the occult.”

  “Nonscary Halloween. Got it.”

  “We’re also trying to steer away from superheroes and princesses. We don’t want to encourage violence, or dated gender roles, poor self-image…”

  “Of course.”

  “Wonderful. Oh, and none of those temporary tattoos. Some parents are having an issue with the fact that they can only be properly removed with rubbing alcohol.”

  Clara hid a smile even as she wondered what was left. If someone had to step up to fill Kristin’s shoes, it might as well be her. And if she fudged the rules here and there, or if what she contributed was a little uneven, so be it. At least it would be honest.

  She swept the wizard hat off the desk and placed it gallantly on her head. “Challenge accepted.”

  38

  Don’t keep good news to yourself!

  —The Color-Blind Gazette “Contact Us” column

  Izzy was cocooned sleeplessly in bed, the house dark around her. But for once she wasn’t awake because she was stuck thinking about Josh. And it wasn’t the sweet detective who’d taken his place, nor was it Paul, much as the run-in at Moondance had le
ft her cringing and uneasy.

  It was Penny.

  After Detective Bryant had left, she couldn’t stop thinking about one of the last things he’d said: “I can only say who I think he’s not. Those descriptions don’t add up for me.” It put her in mind of what Clara had told her of Kristin’s estranged sister, who had felt all along that something wasn’t right. And Izzy had pooh-poohed it. Sisters don’t always know.

  But often, they do.

  Her first memory of Penny was of complaining to her mother, “Penny is a pain in the bum.” Or maybe her mother just told the story so often that it had become a false memory. As the older sibling by a mere two years, Izzy didn’t remember Penny coming home as a newborn, or life before her arrival. She suspected she’d largely ignored the baby, as toddlers tend to do. But that changed when Penny turned mobile and could insert herself into Izzy’s space, knocking down her block towers, yanking the headbands out of her hair, trying on her shoes and leaving them strewn around the house. She supposed, from watching Maddie at Clara’s, that Penny had been around one, which would have made her three.

  The louder moments of her memories were of Penny shadowing her with infuriating innocence, imitating her, sabotaging her, but what she couldn’t stop thinking of now were the quieter moments in between. Whenever she’d be put on time-out—even if the time-out was for being unkind to Penny—Penny would creep quietly into the dining room and sit with her, her diaper rustling as she plopped down cross-legged so their knees would just touch. Their mother tried to separate them, to explain that Izzy was being disciplined, but Penny wouldn’t budge.

  Even as a baby, Penny would stop what she was doing and come pat Izzy’s shoulder if Izzy was hurt or sad or angered by the unfairness of a world ruled by grown-ups. Her parents would sometimes do the same, but with them there was exasperation, judgment about whether the tears were proportionate to the situation, an adult perspective that by its very nature was not her own. It was Penny who brought the real comfort, the wordless, unconditional support, the sense of a shared station in the world that no one beyond the two of them, with these specific parents in this specific house in this specific time and circumstance, could ever fully understand.