by Lisa Unger
Four hours. Rain smiled, balancing Lily, closing the dishwasher, starting it.
“Dada!” said Lily, giggling, pointing at her father.
“I get it,” she said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “It’s a pretty massive tour of duty. I’m sure you’ll get better at it, the more you do it.”
He peered at her from under his arm.
She stopped short of thanking him. He wasn’t the babysitter; he was Lily’s father. Time with your child wasn’t a favor, or an added item on your task list. It was the life of a parent.
When she looked back over at Greg, he’d fallen asleep. How did he do that? Fall asleep the minute he sat down, in the middle of a conversation? Just—out. The hardwiring—definitely different. Anyone who thought otherwise did not have a husband or a child.
She left him snoring, carried Lily upstairs and gave her a bath. But her thoughts were still on Detective Harper, the look on his face, the things he’d said.
Some people are better off dead.
Cold words, hard and full of judgment.
But was he right?
Was the world a better place because people like Markham, Kreskey and Smith were no longer in it? She shampooed Lily’s hair while the baby happily splashed her duck.
Images swirled, crime scene reports and photos, the man in the hawk mask, the memory of Detective Harper’s face as he peered into the tree hollow. Agent Brower and her searing stare, her questions. Those piles of documents—newspaper clippings, transcripts, notes—from Greg and her father.
What was the heart of this story? Revenge? Justice? Was someone trying to get even? Or trying to save the world from evil men? Was there a connection? Who? What? When? Where? Why?
She lifted Lily, who wailed in protest at being removed from the warm water, and then dried her perfect chubby little body—that creamy skin, her perfect feet and starfish hands. The round of her cheek, the scent of her silky hair. Rain tenderly moisturized her skin, the baby giggling now, staring up at her with glittering eyes. Into the diaper, the onesie, legs kicking. Mamamamama.
Could a child this loved, this cared for, turn out to be a monster?
Greg had mused last night, What if you could go back even further, and save him? Sometimes it seemed that life was just questions without answers.
Later, with logs crackling in the fireplace, and big glasses of wine between them, she and Gillian pored over their notes all over the coffee table, analyzing Detective Harper’s interview, listening to parts of it, playing it for Greg.
“He’s hiding something,” said Greg.
“We thought so, too,” said Gillian.
“But maybe it’s just that he did a shit job, you know?” Rain offered. “Someone, as he saw it, did the world a favor. He didn’t look very hard at who that might have been.”
Greg shrugged. “Maybe he’s right.”
“That’s messed up,” said Gillian, ever the idealist, the humanist. “He was a person, killed in cold blood. No one has that right. I’m sorry, Rain. There’s no excuse for what he did to you and Hank, and Tess. But who has the right to kill him? If we all go around killing the people who do wrong, then who are the good guys?”
“What’s right, then?” said Greg. “That the taxpayer foots the bill for the rest of his life, a child killer?”
Rain stayed silent. They didn’t get it, not really. It was all abstract to them. They’d never felt his hands on their flesh, or the hands of anyone who wished to do them harm. They’d never looked into Kreskey’s eyes and saw what she’d seen—pain, rage, a kind of vicious fear, sadness. It was primal, filling her with terror. But it was human, recognizable. That’s what people never wanted to imagine, how close we all are even to the most murderous and deranged. Did she think Eugene Kreskey deserved to die for what he did? Maybe. Maybe not.
Gillian took a long sip from her wineglass, stared into the fire. She had her bags packed, waiting by the door. Rain knew she’d call an Uber in a bit and head home; she’d seen her texting more than a couple of times while they were cooking, under the table. They’d been so wrapped up in the story that they hadn’t talked about Chris Wright at all.
Glancing out the window, she saw a van move slowly up the street. She thought about the car she’d seen last night. She had enough distance from all of it that it seemed like she’d overreacted. A common car, probably nothing.
Or maybe it was him. Watching, always watching.
It didn’t unsettle her the way it should. The way it surely would Greg. If he knew, he’d call the police. It’s stalking, he’d say, which is just the beginning of something worse.
His watching. The letters. It was his way of staying with her even though they couldn’t be together, not in this life. Not in the life that Kreskey had created for them. It would be impossible to make anyone understand that.
She walked to the window while Gillian and Greg chatted.
The street was quiet, no strange cars parked. No stranger lurking in the shadows.
There were two Hanks. The one who had moved on, and the one who hadn’t. Where was he tonight?
She rejoined her husband and friend, popped open her laptop and scrolled through the Instagram feed she’d found. Greta Miller had a lovely, peaceful feed of northern birds—the chickadee, the red-tailed hawk, the robin, the swallow, the American crow. The images were crisp and detailed—the shining texture of blue-black feathers, the glint of a beady eye, shiny as glass, the delicate grasp of a clawed foot on a birch branch, an owl, fluffy and ferruginous, peering out from the hollow of a tree.
Rain had called Greta Miller. The phone number she’d managed to unearth from the online directory just rang and rang and didn’t allow her to leave a message. There was an autoresponder to the email account listed on Greta’s website that stated quite clearly that Greta didn’t answer mail, that images were for sale at a local gallery and that assignment queries should be directed to her agent at Lang and Lang, in New York City. She was semiretired.
Rain felt the agitation of the modern world. Didn’t everyone want to be instantly available all the time? Couldn’t the internet connect you to anyone in a millisecond? She left a message on Instagram; Greta Miller apparently couldn’t be bothered with Facebook or Twitter.
An introvert. And thank goodness for them. Every journalist knew that they are the only ones paying attention. The only people who aren’t hypnotized by their devices, not chattering away on the phone, not staring at some pointless app, or playing some time-sucking game. They’re watching.
Rain googled, scrolling through images of Greta Miller herself. The only pictures of her were from the early 2000s. She was slender and petite as a young woman, fine-featured with doe eyes, russet hair, starkly arched eyebrows—it could have been the same woman she saw in the woods. But she couldn’t be sure. She’d have to do it the old-fashioned way, show up for a visit.
“So,” she said, looking for a distraction. She snapped the laptop closed. “What happened with Chris?”
Gillian peered at Rain over her phone with a cryptic smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I thought you two were done,” said Greg, draining his second glass of red.
“We are,” Gillian answered, sounding final. She twirled a honey strand of hair. Then, “Or we were. The truth is, I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Is that who keeps texting you?” Rain pressed.
Greg cleared his throat. “This sounds like girl talk. I’ll go check on Lily. Then I’m going to veg out in front of the game.”
He leaned in to kiss Rain on the head, then tossed a wave to Gillian.
“You’re lucky,” she said when he was upstairs. There was that phrase again. Lucky Rain Winter. “He’s a good one.”
“He could have been yours,” Rain reminded her. Gil dated him first, then moved on to someone else—the tattoo g
uy, actually.
She waved Rain off with a laugh, and a sip of wine. “Oh, no, why would I choose the smart, kind, upstanding man when I could have the bad boy who talks me into a tattoo I’ll regret for the rest of my life?”
“Chris is a good guy,” Rain offered.
Gillian wrinkled her eyes at Rain. “Is he, though? Sometimes he seems like a good guy. Sometimes he seems like an asshole. Distant. Uncomfortable with real intimacy. Controlling, a little. Then absent.”
Maybe we all have multiple selves. The trick was finding someone you could live with—all of them.
“You slept with him?” nudged Rain.
“He’s hot,” Gillian said with a roll of her eyes. She leaned back, stretched lean arms over her head. “So, so hot. That’s the problem. When he puts those hands on me, I melt.”
“I think maybe you love each other.” She meant it. Which didn’t necessarily mean that it would work. “I hope he steps up and acts like the man you deserve.”
Gillian raised her glass to Rain, and they clinked over the coffee table. “Here’s to the men we deserve.”
“Cheers,” said Rain.
“Okay, so what’s next?”
“I’ll see Greta Miller.”
“And I’ll proofread the proposal and outline you put together and get it to Andrew for his meeting.”
Teamwork.
“Thank you,” Rain said.
“For what?”
“For being you,” Rain said. “For being a great friend, a partner in crime. All of it.”
Gillian hung her head a moment, was a little teary when she looked up again. “No, my friend. Thank you. I have to be honest—this last year without you. It has sucked. Big-time. I’m glad to have you back.”
Rain helped her get her stuff together, and they waited on the porch for the Uber.
“Just be careful, okay?” said Gillian.
Rain looked out into the night. No mysterious car drifting up the street. No monster lurking in the shadows.
“Careful?”
“He’s quicksand,” she said. “You know that. You have a life, a good one. Don’t let him pull you under.”
Rain didn’t need to ask her friend what or who she was talking about. Of course I’m going to be careful, she could say. Of course she wasn’t going to let Hank or this story ruin her wonderful life. But she didn’t bother pretending she didn’t know what a dangerous path she was on.
“He won’t. I promise.” It felt like a vow she had no way of keeping.
“I promise,” she said again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Must be something in the air; my patients are all struggling. My otherwise quiet Saturday is filling up with emergency sessions.
Peter, despondent after his disastrous homecoming date, has locked up like a vault. We spent a silent hour in my office while he sketched the events of the evening. The sketches—charcoal on thick white stock—practically radiate his despair, his feelings of helplessness. In the final sketch, he sits alone, head sunk into his hands. I get it. He has no idea how to be in the world, how to navigate the treacherous terrain of relationships.
“I’m sorry your night wasn’t what you expected,” I tell him, again. “Try not to take it personally. In the history of school dances, I promise that you’re one of a legion whose night has gone horribly wrong. It’s nothing you did.”
Nothing. Not even an eye roll. I’m not crazy about his flat affect. I’ve asked his distraught aunt to call me tonight if he doesn’t snap out of it. It’s been a week. Wallowing like this, sinking further into despair, instead of moving away from it, not a good sign.
Grace has started cutting again. Her mother found the telltale cotton balls dotted with blood in her wastepaper basket.
“It’s my fault,” her mother confesses over the phone. “I let her back on Instagram for an hour. She begged, and I relented. She said that she felt like a freak, isolated from everyone she knew because she wasn’t online. That she was better, stronger. So I gave in.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. “You do your best, we all do. The choice is hers. We can only try to help her make better choices. Give her the tools to deal with her anxiety.”
“We’re the first generation of parents to deal with this,” she says. “I wish I could take all her devices and set them on fire.”
“Kids have always struggled to find their place in the world,” I tell her. “But, yes, social media, the internet in general, is making it harder because their friends can present these fake perfect feeds of their lives, because there is so much information, not all of it true. And it’s so hard for kids to understand that what they’re seeing is not the real thing.”
“It’s hard for all of us,” she says, sounding wistful and lost.
You remember what it was like, don’t you, Lara? To be so unsure of who you were, and where you fit into the bizarre social structure that is teen culture. I think it’s worse now. I wouldn’t want to be a teenager in the age of social media. Try being a real person when everyone around you is an avatar—a multidimensional girl in a world of airbrushed paper dolls.
“Bring her in,” I tell her. “I can meet you at the office at two if that works.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
I’ll be late to Angel’s party, but that will have to be okay.
When I hang up with Grace’s mom, I dial another number. I am still saying dial, are you? I don’t know if they say that anymore. It must mean I’m getting old.
“Andrea Barnes.”
“Hi, it’s Hank Reams.”
“Oh, Hank,” she says. It doesn’t sound like she’s a hundred percent happy to hear from me. I don’t blame her. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. No complaints,” I say. Which is a lie. I have plenty of complaints, as you well know. “How about you?”
“Good,” she says, falsely bright. “Great. What can I do for you?”
Andrea and I dated briefly. It ended badly, like all my relationships seem to. I wouldn’t have called her, except that she’s my last resort for finding out about Angel’s former foster parents. I tell Andrea about Angel’s claims, give her the relevant names and details. She’s quiet when I’m done, and I hear her tapping on the keyboard.
“It looks like these allegations were investigated,” she says after a pause. “No wrongdoing on the part of the foster parents was discovered.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
“But?”
“I can’t shake it,” I say. “She’s a deeply traumatized kid. Has a history of lying. There’s just something about her story I can’t let go. She says there was a boy there, someone they had locked in a cellar.”
“According to what I see here—and the system is slow to update—there hasn’t been anyone placed with them since Angel. They’ve had fifteen children cycle through their home over the last three years, no allegation of abuse. Looks like they have refused placements since Angel.”
Andrea is a child advocacy lawyer. It’s gritty work with few untethered successes and some bone-crushing, nightmare-inducing loses. She’s a passionate, determined, dogged champion of kids who have fallen through the cracks of a system that doesn’t always work to protect them. She’s the person you call when everyone else has given up.
“I’ll look into it a little more closely,” she says. “Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yes,” I say. “Not a favor. I’ll pay your rate, of course.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says. “But you’re aware that the incidence of false abuse allegations in the foster care system is high. There’s a one-in-four chance that foster parents will face one type of accusation or another.”
“I’m aware,” I say. “I just want to do my due diligence for this kid. And for any other kid who might wind up there.”
She�
��s gone quiet again; I hear her tapping on the keyboard. “Okay,” she says. “Give me a couple of days. I’ll call you.”
She hangs up, and I’m left holding the phone. I’ll cop to a familiar sense of mystification I have when it comes to relationships. Doctor-patient, fine. I get it; there are clear rules and standards of behavior. But friendships, romantic relationships, even family—I’m a bull in a china shop.
I don’t know exactly why Andrea distanced herself from me. It was never a clear break. To be honest, it wasn’t a clear beginning. We just had a little too much to drink one night after an especially brutal court loss—a kid going back to an abusive father—and she wound up back at my place. There were a couple of dinners, a few more pleasant—I thought—sexual encounters. Then she basically ghosted me—isn’t that what “they” call it now? Stopped answering calls and texts. I didn’t pursue because—why? Maybe it’s respect for boundaries, but maybe a big part of me didn’t want to know why someone so smart, sensitive, attractive felt like she wanted to put space between us.
It’s not just what happened with Kreskey.
I was awkward before—only you and Tess ever made sense. I was okay with my mom; still am. She’s in Florida now, a yoga instructor with a new boyfriend who is good to her. She and my father divorced after Kreskey and our move away. She asks about you sometimes, Lara.
I don’t talk to my dad as much. I always had the vague sense that my jock, engineer father was a little embarrassed by his skinny, uncoordinated, brainiac kid. Straight As, test scores off the charts, and you can’t hit a ball with a bat? As if one thing had anything to do with the other. Even now, my degrees, books, television appearances seem to unsettle him a bit, like I am an equation that he just can’t solve. In our awkward monthly phone calls, he’ll bring up some team or another that’s going to some playoff or another. I’ll remind him gently that I don’t follow sports. And it’s as if that’s a fresh disappointment to him every time. Chemistry. Sometimes it’s just not there, even between parent and child.
If I could go back and heal my inner child, which frankly is the least of my problems, I’d tell him what I tell my troubled patients: just be yourself. It’s perfectly okay to be the flawed, quirky, awkward, unique individual you are. No matter what you think, or how things appear on the surface, everyone around is grappling with similar issues. Maybe that football star secretly worries that he’s stupid; maybe that superhot girl thinks that’s all there is to her; maybe that kid who is even smarter than you are wishes he was superhot and athletic. Whatever you are, it’s enough.
