Arrowood

by Laura McHugh

“You heard us and woke up, and came running down the hall. Your father and I were both crying, and you said, ‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ and he said, ‘The twins are gone.’ Your face just crumpled. You told him all about the gold car that had driven away with them. You said you had a dream that it hadn’t really happened, that they were home safe in the bath, and you wished you hadn’t woken up. He told you it was a fever dream.”

  Like a trail of gasoline ignited by a flame, it zipped back to me. The dream I had, that the twins were home safe after all, the dream that had felt so real that I often replayed it in my mind to feel again that deep sense of relief, if only for a moment—it wasn’t a dream but a memory.

  I sat up, and my mother let go of my hands. She was staring at the wall, at an amateurish painting of a shepherd with a lamb. The perspective was off, the figures out of proportion. It was signed in block letters, GARY.

  “I took you to our bedroom and put on a movie and told you to rest,” she continued. “Your father and I both agreed. We dressed Violet and Tabitha in the clothes they’d been wearing that day, and we buried them in the basement, in a hidden place that nobody knew about, where they wouldn’t be found.”

  I imagined my parents rushing to dress them, grabbing a little white shirt off the floor, a button becoming wedged behind one of the tub’s clawed feet.

  “It was the hardest thing either of us had ever done. Grammy came over to get you, and we called the police. We told them what you had seen, and when they talked to you, you told the same story, too. You weren’t lying—you were scared and confused and your mind was just filling in the blanks, trying to come up with something that made sense.”

  I remembered, all those years ago, how she had stopped washing our clothes, how I had dug through my overflowing hamper each morning to get dressed for school. She had avoided the laundry room, knowing what lay beneath the floor. She had never again helped me with a bath, in the claw-foot tub or any other.

  “It was Heaney who told me,” I said. “He found them. He claimed Dad paid him to keep quiet.” I didn’t tell her what Heaney had done, and what I had done to him. I wondered if he was still on the island, if he was still alive.

  My mother sighed. Her face was dry; she was done crying. “Arden, I was stuck, like you, for a long time,” she said, her voice soft. “It doesn’t get you anywhere. Like it or not, you’ve got to find a way to move on.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “Nothing could change what had happened, so what did it matter?”

  “What about Singer? You let him take the blame, watched his life get torn apart when you knew he was innocent?”

  “We didn’t mean for that to happen. We didn’t know if there really was a gold car, or if they’d find it. There was no evidence against him, no charges filed. He was never even arrested.”

  “You could have told the truth,” I said. “That it was an accident, that they drowned in the tub.”

  “Then what?” she said, her eyes searching mine. “Would you have been better off knowing that? That you were responsible? We were trying to protect you. What do you think would have happened if we’d told the truth? You could have been taken away from us. We might have been prosecuted. And none of that would bring them back!”

  My mother spoke as though she bore no responsibility, as though all the blame fell to me. She claimed she’d hidden the truth to protect me, but surely she didn’t believe that. She’d been protecting herself; she never should have left us alone. Yet I did feel responsible.

  I had only been a child myself, but I had known better than to leave them in the bath. Even at eight years old I had been my sisters’ fail-safe, compensating for our parents’ inattention. I made snacks for them when they were hungry. Kept them from falling down the stairs. Turned off the stove when Mom left the gas burning all day. I had promised to watch over Violet and Tabitha, to keep them safe, and I had failed. I didn’t know how I could live with that.

  Would it have been any different, any better, had I known the truth from the beginning? If everyone had?

  —

  “Arden!” my mother shrieked as I fled out the door, clutching my muddy boots. “Come back here!”

  Snow had started to fall while I was in the house, and the windshield was coated with downy flakes. I started the car and stomped on the gas, my hands shaking on the steering wheel and tears blurring my vision. I caught a glimpse of my mother in the rearview mirror, her mouth wide open, still yelling, though I could no longer hear her. I switched off the ringer on my phone in case she tried to call.

  I drove past the outskirts of town and pulled over on an empty stretch of road. Weeds rustled around me in the bitter wind as I bent over and retched. My legs were too weak to carry me back to the car, so I crawled up the slope above the ditch and rolled onto my back. The sky was pale, nearly colorless, the snowflakes blowing in every direction, like those in a shaken snow globe. I lay there, the cold working into me from the ground below and the wind above, until the low whine of an approaching semi urged me up. I didn’t want anyone stopping to see if I needed help.

  After crossing into Iowa, I parked at a Flying J truck stop in Waterloo and slept in my car with the doors locked and the engine running. When I woke, stiff and hungry, it was well past lunchtime, and I decided to go inside and eat at the restaurant. I sat alone in a red vinyl booth that could have easily held six people, and ordered the lumberjack breakfast. I couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty, and the waitress nodded, unfazed, when I requested four drinks: coffee, orange juice, water, Coke.

  While I waited for my food to arrive, I pulled out my phone and checked my messages. My mom had called and left a voicemail, which I didn’t listen to. Mrs. Ferris had called to remind me to fill out the feedback survey on the open house. There was a flurry of increasingly concerned texts from Ben. Mom says there’s a police car in front of Arrowood…everything okay? Hey, if you can, text back and let us know if you’re all right, if you need anything. Mom went over to talk to the cops and they wouldn’t tell her anything…we’re all getting worried. I called Lauren and she said she hasn’t heard from you, either. Where are you??

  I texted back and told him that there had been a family emergency and I’d had to drive to my mom’s unexpectedly. He replied immediately to ask what had happened, and I stared at the blinking cursor, not sure how to respond.

  I opened a packet of Advil and swallowed the pills with juice. Another text popped up on my phone as the waitress delivered a platter loaded with pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and scrambled eggs. The message was from Josh. Where are you? Call me ASAP. They’re looking for you.

  —

  The closer I got to Keokuk, the more worried I grew about what would happen upon my return. Had the police figured out that I was the one who had called 911 about Heaney, or had they only gone to my house because Heaney worked there, and his truck was parked nearby? Had he been found alive and taken into custody? What if the police hadn’t taken the call seriously, and hadn’t sent anyone to Little Belle Isle? Heaney could have called someone to come get him, and he could be looking for me. I didn’t regret what I had done to him, though I knew there might be consequences. I was thinking of the woman who went to trial for kicking her attacker in the head more times than were necessary to escape. I had used a shovel. I would tell the truth, that something inside me had shifted, and I had chosen to survive.

  I would tell the police, too, about the twins. No one knew the full extent of what had happened except for my mother and me, and I could choose to keep it that way, but after a lifetime of secrets and lies and unanswered questions, I didn’t want to hide anything. And there was another reason: Harold Singer deserved to have his name cleared, even if it was far too late to undo the damage that had been done.

  I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the message my mother had left. I knew she would want me to leave the past buried, and I doubted there was any way to prove, or disprove, her
story after all this time. If it was deemed to be an accident, that would likely be the end of it, as the statute of limitations would have run out on anything short of murder, though maybe they would find a way to hold her responsible for all the time and money wasted searching for the twins. There would be news coverage, for sure. There always was when a cold case got cracked, especially one involving missing children. It wouldn’t take long, though, for other stories to push it out of the spotlight. Every day, kids disappeared, families were murdered, women escaped from locked rooms after years of indescribable torment. The demise of the Arrowood twins wouldn’t hold anyone’s attention for long, at least not outside of Keokuk.

  It was past dark when I exited the highway at Fort Madison and drove through town to Josh’s apartment. I knocked, hoping that he was home. The door opened, and his face flooded with relief.

  “Thank God,” he said, throwing his arms around me before I could say anything. It hurt my ribs, but I hugged him back. He let go and stared at me with disbelief. “You’re okay. Mostly okay,” he corrected, taking in my appearance. “Come in. Everyone’s been looking for you.”

  Files were spread out over the coffee table and stacked on the floor, and the apartment smelled like Chinese takeout. He offered me a carton of fried rice. “Are you hungry?” I shook my head. “Here, let me make room.” He cleared papers from the couch so I could sit, and fetched me a glass of water.

  Josh sat on the floor across from me. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked. “They found blood at the cabin on the island, but neither of you were there—”

  “I’m all right,” I said. The blood must have been Heaney’s. I hadn’t been able to tell, in the dark, how badly he was injured. Not badly enough that he couldn’t get away, apparently. “I’m just a little banged up.”

  “I heard on my police scanner last night that officers were dispatched to Little Belle Isle to search for a wounded assault suspect. You know how my ears perk up at things like that.” He shot me an apologetic glance. “I don’t know all the details, but my cousin Randy called me a few hours ago, when they figured out it was you who made the 911 call. They still hadn’t located Heaney. I got ahold of your friend Ben, and asked if he’d heard from you. He said you’d gone to your mom’s. Then he warned me to leave you alone, and wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” I said. “He didn’t have anything else to tell.”

  “He was worried about you. We both were.” He was silent for a moment, watching me. “Anyway, when you didn’t call, I was hoping it was because you didn’t feel like talking to me, and not because Heaney had done something to you.”

  “I needed time to think.” I’d spent my last hours in the car running through the movie in my head. The gold car. The door slamming. My dream about the twins being safe at home. The memories I was looking for weren’t there, any lost footage long since swept from the cutting room floor. I couldn’t remember pouring the Mr. Bubble or twisting the handles to fill the tub, though that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. If my mother was lying, I would never know, any more than I would recall the truth.

  I sipped my water and set it back down. “You said people were looking for me?”

  “Yeah. I mean, not like hunting you down. You’re not in trouble, that I know of. The police just want to talk to you and find out what happened, make sure you’re okay.” He thumbed through the stack of folders on the coffee table between us. “I don’t understand why Heaney would want to hurt you. What was going on? Why were the two of you out on the river at night? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but—what happened, Arden?”

  I’d decided, well before I pulled off the highway, that Josh would be the first one I’d tell. I explained what had happened with Heaney, and tried to hold myself together as I told him what I’d found in the basement. The tarp, the two small skulls. The conversation with my mother. When I finished, Josh got up off the floor and came to sit next to me, carefully wrapping first one arm and then the other around my stiff shoulders.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing, his head tilted against mine. “You know that, right? You were just a kid. She never should have put you in that situation.”

  Everything I’d been holding back came bursting out, and I wailed into his chest until my throat burned and my tears finally began to slow. I let myself relax against him, let him hold me, and tried to think of nothing more than the intake of breath, the contraction of my heart, the merest elements necessary to survive. When I was ready, I pulled away. “Will you go with me to the police station?”

  “I’ll go wherever you want,” he said. “You shouldn’t go anywhere alone, not until they find Heaney.”

  “Do they think he got off the island? I took his boat, and I didn’t see any others at the dock.”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “There could have been other boats stored somewhere on the island, I guess. And it’s possible that he’s still there, but you’d think there’d only be so many places to hide. All I know is that they checked the buildings, and they didn’t find him, only that small amount of blood at the cabin.”

  “Were you surprised?” I asked. “That it wasn’t my blood? That I got away?” It had surprised me, the strength of my desire to survive.

  “No.” He shook his head, and the faintest smile crossed his lips. “Not at all. You’re stronger than you think you are.” The smile faded. Josh squeezed my hands in his. “They’ll find him.”

  I nodded, and we sat there together in silence until I stopped shaking.

  “What’s it like?” he asked. “To finally know?”

  I couldn’t explain what it was like to have an answer that wasn’t the one I wanted, to know the real reason I had been left behind. Closure, as I had imagined it, did not exist. I couldn’t cauterize my wounds as my mother had done. Closure for me meant moving forward with a cathedral of loss inside my chest. I was no longer waiting for the twins. They were with me because I remembered them, and that had to be enough. What I had done as my eight-year-old self I would have to learn to forgive, though I couldn’t fathom how I might begin to do that. My guilt was a hole that gaped wider with each passing moment.

  We locked up the apartment and I left my car behind, riding in Josh’s van to Keokuk, where we walked into the station together.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  I stayed at Josh’s place, wearing his flannel pajamas, eating pizza delivered from Sorrento’s down the street. He clicked away on his laptop, trying to keep up with the message boards on Midwest Mysteries, while I sat in a chair near the bay window looking out to the street below, where a police car would periodically cruise by. Now that the mystery of the twins’ disappearance had been resolved, Josh had abandoned his book about the Arrowoods. There were other stories to write, he said, ones that still needed endings. He’d leave the Arrowood story to me.

  A week after Heaney attacked me on Little Belle Isle, I received the call that his body had washed up at the dam, though my wait wasn’t over until the autopsy results came back and I learned that he had drowned. I went limp with relief. It wasn’t known whether he had drowned accidentally, while swimming back to the mainland in the frigid current, or if he’d taken his own life. Either way, Heaney had walked to shore and entered the water on his own, and there was no indication that the injuries I’d inflicted with the shovel had led to his death.

  There was no such relief when it came to the twins. I still couldn’t reconcile what I had done. It consumed my waking thoughts and my nightmares as I struggled to understand how I could have turned on the water and left them to die.

  I’d barely spoken to my mother since the day I drove up to see her in Minnesota, though I finally listened to the message she had left on my phone after I ran out of her house. She had begged me not to tell anyone about the twins. She feared that she would lose the new life she’d built with Gary, the second chance she’d been given when she
was born again. I had doubted from the beginning that my mother was a true believer, certain that she’d embraced faith and forgiveness in only the most self-serving ways, but she clung to Gary and his church, finding strength in them, and they stood by her, unwavering.

  Josh had gone to see Singer, who had charged him twice his former rate, claiming he was being courted for interviews by Inside Edition and Dr. Phil. When Josh asked how it felt to be cleared of any involvement in the twins’ disappearance, Singer had said, “Too little, too late,” with a few choice curse words thrown in. I wrote him a letter, though I didn’t hear back, so I couldn’t be sure he read it. He had hinted to Josh that he was considering a lawsuit, though he hadn’t figured out on what grounds. I hadn’t meant to falsely accuse anyone. It was one more thing that I couldn’t undo, that I would have to learn to live with.

  Once we knew that Heaney was gone, I returned to Arrowood. The twins were gone, too, their remains sent off for forensic examination before they could be released to me and buried in the Catholic cemetery. I kept the doors of the laundry room and bathroom closed, unable to look at the hole in the floor, or at the claw-foot tub. I tried not to see the news, either, but the story was everywhere, and traffic on Midwest Mysteries hit an all-time high. A lot of people were disturbed by the way my parents had lied to cover up the twins’ deaths, and plenty doubted that it was an accident. What made it slightly less painful were the individuals who offered their condolences, strangers who had been haunted by the case and were sorry to learn that my sisters had died.

  I was overwhelmed by the reactions in Keokuk. People from the community reached out to me, sending cards, offering prayers, filling my refrigerator with casseroles and homemade pies. Ben came over on my first night back, bringing takeout from Sonic, and we sat together on the leather sofa in the drawing room, talking late into the night, no tension between us, no awkwardness, nothing left unsaid. It felt just like the old days, when we were friends who could tell each other anything.