The students were already whispering, analyzing, deconstructing. “She just did it for attention,” Kristy McKenna said loudly to Tara Dunn, and Tara shrugged.
“Kristy,” Susanna said. “Keep your thoughts to yourself. Show a little compassion.”
Kristy’s brows were furrowed, her lips puckered. She looked as if she’d taken Emily’s reappearance as a personal affront, and Susanna realized that she was disappointed. Emily was more interesting to the eighth grade lost than found, and in being found she had stolen from them days of exciting speculation and breaks in routine. Yes, that was it, and many of the students seemed to share Kristy’s attitude; the day passed, not with celebration or widespread relief, but with an air of deflation, all of the electric charge from the morning spent. The movie had been stopped midreel, the picnic rained on.
Susanna didn’t know what to feel, exactly. She wanted to talk to Tony but understood why he hadn’t come to her—he had plenty to worry about, getting Emily to the hospital and figuring out how and why she was lost in the first place, and it wasn’t as if Susanna could slip out of her classes to have a conversation with him, anyway. She was glad, of course, that they had found Emily. More than glad. She was tenderhearted toward the girl. Emily was not, like Christopher, a natural writing talent with abundant style, but she was a hardworking student, one of the hardest working in the class, who read every story and poem and play with an earnestness that broke Susanna’s heart. Susanna remembered being thirteen and feeling sometimes that the books she read were more real to her and more valuable than the life she lived. She had read the things she loved most, such as Pride and Prejudice, over and over and over, until she knew whole paragraphs by heart, and she remembered her affection for Elizabeth and her passion for Darcy, how desperately she wished them real, how cruel it seemed to her that they weren’t. Emily was like that, lingering after class to talk to Susanna about characters, telling her what she thought would happen to them after the book’s end, even speculating about how characters from entirely different works would relate to one another. She thought that Finny from A Separate Peace would be friends with Leslie from Bridge to Terabithia, because they were both leaders who didn’t care what other people thought of them. She seemed to feel an almost profound connection with Jess from Bridge to Terabithia, and it wasn’t hard to see why: he was the grade’s poor kid, its outcast. It struck Susanna, as the students worked on a grammar quiz at the end of the period, that it was interesting, maybe not even coincidental, that Emily had drawn Christopher into the woods with her yesterday. Was Christopher not, like Leslie, a transplant from outside of the community? Didn’t Leslie and Jess have to go into the woods together to find Terabithia, their kingdom away from the school’s bullies and the pressures of their home lives?
But Emily had said something to Christopher about a body, Ronnie’s body, and this was the fact Susanna’s mind kept snagging on, the reason that her cheer over Emily’s being found was qualified. He was almost certainly right that Emily had lied to him, that she had fixed on the body as a means for attracting his curiosity and making him notice her. Her cheeks warmed a bit with anger at the thought of Emily’s manipulating him that way, and using Ronnie’s disappearance to do it.
Dale was late picking her up after school let out. This was typical, and so she graded quizzes at her desk, checking the clock intermittently and watching the minute hand move to 3:45, 3:50, 4:00, ten after. They used separate cars during the band season, when Dale had to stay after most days of the week for practice, but the rest of the time they took his Blazer and he did the majority of the driving, since the campuses were only about a mile apart. Without fail, though, he got caught in some kind of conversation between the band room and the car and arrived making excuses or—worse—not even realizing he was half an hour late. This was partly just because he was a good teacher, and high school students, with their own cars to get them home, could keep him occupied past the bell in a way that middle school students generally could not. It was also because he was social, willing to make the effort with his colleagues Susanna so rarely made, and in that way he was perhaps doing them both a favor. His goodwill within the system made up for whatever Susanna cost them by being quiet and keeping to herself. Small-town administrators appreciated glad-handers, and Dale was a glad-hander.
But now it was almost four thirty, and that was unusual. When he stuck his head in her classroom door, she almost snapped her pencil in half.
“Susanna,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know I’m late.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m OK.”
She started wearily packing her tote bag with the ungraded quizzes and her teacher’s edition of the class reader. She didn’t have the energy to be annoyed with him. “Well, that’s good.”
“Hey. Sit down for a sec, please.”
She looked at him. “We have to go get Abby.”
“Abby can wait a little while longer. Sit.”
Susanna took a nearby student desk, just as she had that day—how long ago it seemed now—when Christopher Shelton’s mother came in to complain about the open-response questions. Dale took the adjacent seat, long legs bumping up against the desktop.
She wondered for an instant if Dale knew about her and Tony, if he was about to tell her that he was going to leave her. A part of her yearned for this; another felt a first flutter of panic. Where would she live? How would a judge split custody of Abby? Her mother’s words echoed: If you’re going to leave what you’ve got, you better know what you’re getting. This thing with Tony had developed so quickly, too quickly, but it forced a question she hadn’t yet allowed herself to consider: What had she been waiting for? Even in the lowest depths of her unhappiness with Dale, she’d harbored a certainty: that this was the life she’d chosen, the commitment she’d made. Perhaps it wouldn’t get better. Perhaps it would. And if there were too many days strung together when she felt she was living in silent contempt of her partner, of the father of her beloved child, what could be done about it? There were days, too, when she liked him well enough, when they enjoyed each other’s company. Days when she registered the ways that their partnership had, if nothing else, simplified her life. She hadn’t even missed the romance much—not until seeing Tony again and remembering how it had been to be her younger self. The joy of being love-struck. Of being rendered stupid with longing.
But Dale took her hand and looked at her earnestly, and she knew he wasn’t leaving her.
“They found Emily Houchens over in the woods by Harper Hill.”
“I know they did,” Susanna said. “My student Christopher is the one who led them there.”
He looked surprised at her knowledge, even a little ruffled by it. “What else have you heard?”
“Just what Wally Burton announced. That she’s at the hospital for observation and should be all right. Why?”
“I drove over to Harper Hill after school to check things out.”
“To check things out,” she repeated. There was the annoyance—she wasn’t too tired for it, after all.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. There were state police cars parked on the side of the road, not just town cop cars. And there was a van that was marked ‘KSP Forensic Labs.’ That didn’t make sense to me, because they’d found Emily, and by all accounts she’s OK.”
“Oh my God,” Susanna said. She knew all at once what he was getting ready to say, and her breath started hitching.
Dale squeezed her hand. “Listen to me. I went home and made some calls. There’s nothing definite yet, but the word is that they turned up a body when they were hunting for Emily. I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else first.”
“Oh my God,” Susanna repeated. This thing Dale had told her—it was too big for her to see or understand. It was like trying to look through a gap in the trees and make out the curvature of the earth.
The pressure of his hand increased, almost hurtful. “What do you want to do? We can take Abby to your mother’s
and go to the police station. We can call that detective, that Tony guy. We can go home and wait and trust that they’ll tell us when they have something to tell us. What do you want to do?”
Susanna snatched her hand away. “Why are you pummeling me with questions? Why can’t you give me a minute to think?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Sure, you’re trying to help. You didn’t care about Ronnie. You told me that she’d probably just run off somewhere. Now you’re suddenly interested . . . and concerned . . . and I’m just supposed to, what—” She stood, hanging her hip in the desk and hurting, probably bruising, her hipbone. “Damn it,” she muttered, tears of pain springing to her eyes, and she rubbed furiously at the spot she’d hit.
“Susanna,” Dale whispered, “there are still people in this building.”
“I’m supposed to let you comfort me?” She felt utterly empty and sorrowful, and she realized as she asked the question that she meant it honestly. That it wasn’t rhetorical, wasn’t just a cheap shot.
He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then covered his mouth, so that his thumb pressed up against his cheekbone and his nose rested on his forefinger. When he spoke, his voice was muffled. “I don’t know. I want to comfort you. But I don’t know how.”
“You say, ‘I’m sorry, Susanna.’ You say, ‘I’m sorry about Ronnie.’ ”
“I am sorry about Ronnie,” he said fervently.
“But see, I don’t believe you now,” she said. “Not after you didn’t believe me. And not after how you treated Ronnie when she was—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word. Not yet.
“Ronnie had problems. You and I both know it. And I’m not just talking about the drugs and the sleeping around. She was a user, Susanna. She used people. She used you and she used your mom, and I didn’t like it, and I never will like it, no matter what.” He had put his glasses back on, and his eyes were damp and magnified through the lenses. “But I’m not glad she’s gone, and I’m not glad you’re suffering, and I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I am.”
“She might have been a user,” Susanna said, “but at least she wasn’t a phony.”
“You think I’m a phony?”
“I think we both are.” She had been clutching her tote bag so tightly her fingers were numb. She relaxed them, drew the strap over her shoulder, then wiped her face as clean as she could with her shirtsleeve. “I want you to take me home so that I can get my car. Then I want you to get Abby and keep an eye on her until I can come back. If you really want to comfort me, that’s the best way you can do it.”
“OK,” Dale said.
She went to him, put her hands on his cheeks, and kissed his lips—a slow, soft kiss. Then she put her forehead against his. The tears were spilling again, but she didn’t move. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he said. Not understanding.
He drove her home, and she didn’t kiss him again when she said good-bye. She just climbed out of his car and got into hers, thinking that this is what she had been waiting for: a conclusion so terrible that it eclipsed her everyday unhappiness—so terrible that it showed her the stupidity of thinking all this time that she had to live with it.
2.
Tony went to the door, took a deep breath, and knocked.
He had stopped at the Fill-Up on the way out of Wyatt’s subdivision and purchased another soda, a package of cheese crackers, and a box of Vivarin. In his car, he ate the crackers, drank half the soda, and then took one Darvocet and two of the caffeine pills. Then he finished the soda. He got out of the car and walked briskly around the block, noting how the pain in his back gradually receded, so that each step stopped feeling like it was setting off a thunderbolt through his torso. He worried about the pills; he didn’t want to get to Susanna’s jingling and jangling. But the walk helped. It reminded him, in a way, of his Bluefield days of trying to guess that exact right moment in a night of partying to approach a girl. Too early, when his buzz wasn’t quite buzzing, and he was stiff, flat. Too many drinks in and he was liable to slobber all over her. The trick had been drinking right up to that moment when he felt smooth and easy and right with the world, and then making his approach. Now the trick seemed to be walking until he’d worn the sharp edge off his nervous energy. He had walked a lot today, not to mention that first sprint through the woods that morning when Maggie was tracking. He could smell the musk of exhaustion and exertion on himself, and his skin was clammy under the weight of his long-sleeved shirt and wool jacket. He wished he had time to go home and shower before seeing Susanna, but he understood that it didn’t really matter, considering the news he was delivering. That she wouldn’t be noticing him much one way or the other.
There was the click of a turning deadbolt, and the knob rattled. Tony stood very straight and folded his hands in front of him. He had thought it possible, even likely, that her husband would be home, but he hadn’t imagined Dale answering the door; nor had he once, forming this plan in his head, remembered Susanna’s child. But here they both were, husband and daughter, Dale holding the girl on his hip, though she was big enough that her legs dangled almost to his knees, and the little girl narrowing her eyes at Tony with what seemed to him righteous distrust. She was unmistakably Susanna’s: the same large eyes that were set just a bit too far apart, the same heart-shaped face and dwindling chin. Her brown hair was fine and limp and had been trimmed into a chin-length cap, and she was wearing thermal pajama pants that cuffed at the ankles and a stained T-shirt. He saw all of this in just a matter of seconds, but it felt to him like he couldn’t take his eyes off her, this person who had been, until this moment, theoretical and therefore unimportant to him. You couldn’t look at her without seeing evidence of love and effort and exasperation, a whole life behind the closed door of this house that he hadn’t really thought about, even when he was turning that pink-skinned baby doll over on its stomach with his foot.
Dale shifted and bounced, scooting Abby higher up on his hip, and stuck out his free hand. “Detective Joyce. I thought you’d probably come.”
“You did?”
Dale nodded. He took Abby by the armpits and lowered her to the floor. “Go play in the kitchen, Ab. I need to talk to this man for a minute.”
“Can I go get an oatmeal pie?”
“Yeah, go to the kitchen and eat an oatmeal pie.” He waved Tony over to the sofa. “Have a seat if you want. Susanna’s not here. She’s probably out looking for you, or maybe she went to her mother’s. We heard about the body.”
Tony shook his head with disbelief. “I’m so sorry. I came over as soon as I could.”
“Is it her? For sure?”
“Not for sure,” Tony said. “The lab is fingerprinting and comparing dental records tonight. There were a couple of clothing items in the bag, and we may need Susanna or her mother to come look at them tomorrow to see if they recognize them. But the lab tech told me that the state of—” He had been about to say decomposition. “The state of the body, given the condition we found it in, suggests it’s been there no more than a few weeks. At the most. And that’s consistent with when Ronnie went missing.”
Dale, hunched forward in his chair so that his elbows were resting on his knees, rubbed his palms together and nodded. “Hey,” he said suddenly, sitting upright. “She had a tattoo. Here.” He pointed to the nape of his neck. “Just under the collar, so you couldn’t see it unless she had a tank top on.”
“Susanna put it in the missing-person report,” Tony said. “A four-leaf clover, right?”
“Yeah.” Dale’s mouth contorted into a slanted smirk, and he sighed through his nostrils. “Yeah. Anyway, I thought it might be something to look for.”
“Well, there’s another thing.” Tony hesitated. It seemed to him, in talking to Dale this way, that he was shrugging off some of his responsibility, ceding it to Susanna’s husband. “The body was not . . .” Again, he searched for a word. “Intact.”
“Intact?” Dal
e looked over his shoulder at the kitchen, but Abby was still out of view. “What does that mean?”
Tony lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “There were three garbage bags at the scene. I didn’t get a close look—I couldn’t. But it’s bad.”
“Dear Lord,” Dale said.
Tony felt an immense, guilty relief at unburdening himself of that secret. You had to love the person who told you a thing like that, because otherwise you would come to hate him. He didn’t want Susanna to hate him.
“I’ll tell her,” Dale said. He said it with force, as if to steel himself for the task, and Tony was struck by a wave of pity for him. He had known before the wrong of what he and Susanna had done, but he hadn’t truly felt it. Perhaps Dale was all of what Susanna had implied about him—self-centered, insensitive, more worried about what people thought of him than his wife’s feelings—but Tony didn’t think he was a bad man. He plainly loved her. Who had he been to come into this man’s own home and make a fool of him? If Tony had really wanted to be with Susanna, to love her, to take her away from this life, that would have been one thing. And maybe that was the story he had been telling himself these last few days. But he didn’t love her, he realized. What he wanted was to find her sister’s killer. For her, yes, and for Ronnie’s spirit, if such a thing existed, but also for himself. Because maybe he wasn’t through with all of those major league dreams, after all.
“I’m so sorry,” Tony said.
“Don’t be sorry for me,” Dale said. “Be sorry for my wife.”
They stood and walked together to the front door, then shook hands again. Tony could see the little girl peeking around the door frame and wondered how he must have appeared to her. Big, dark. Bringing with him an air of sorrow.
“I’ll call tomorrow about having Susanna come by to identify those clothing items,” Tony said. He thought for an instant of mentioning Wyatt, then stopped himself. He still had that paranoid, almost superstitious feeling from before, and he wondered if anything short of getting a search warrant tomorrow would rid him of it. He figured that he’d drive back by Wyatt’s house again on his way home; if he wasn’t there, Tony would perhaps try to find an inconspicuous parking spot and wait him out awhile, since he was still feeling a boost from the soda and caffeine pills. Seeing the truck in the drive wouldn’t completely ease his mind, but it was a start.
The Next Time You See Me Page 32
