by Tom Ryan
“So,” she says. “What brings you here today?”
I take a sip of water and clear my throat. I don’t know what to say, and I realize now that I should have planned it out better.
“I’m not sure if you’ve heard about Terry,” I say.
She nods gravely. “Yes. I did read about it in the newspaper.”
“You still read the paper?” asks Sarah, genuinely surprised. “Not the internet?”
Sandy smiles and points toward a table in the corner of the room, where there is indeed a newspaper folded crisply underneath a flowered china lamp.
“I prefer to read my news the old-fashioned way,” she says. “As a matter of fact, I don’t have access to the internet. I don’t even own a computer, to tell you the truth.”
Sarah’s mouth drops open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Sandy laughs lightly, then her face hardens and she stares across at us with a fresh intensity that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. “The internet is a Godless place. A modern-day Tower of Babel. There are many young people being led astray by the notions they find online. I won’t be part of it.”
“Notions,” echoes Sarah.
Sandy nods once, then casts a judgmental gaze back and forth between us. “It isn’t my place to make assumptions, but there are many ways for a soul to be led astray.”
It’s obvious what assumption she’s talking about. Neither of us say anything, and I’m keenly aware of Sarah’s hand on the sofa just a few inches from mine. I want to grab it, to pull her closer to me, but I know that it would only serve to have us kicked out of this strange woman’s house, and I need to hear what she might have to say.
“But you have read about Terry O’Donnell in the paper?” I ask, bringing the subject back around.
“Yes,” she says. “Yesterday was the first I heard about any of it: the kidnapping, the charges against Terrance. A terrible business.”
She sounds like an old lady, although she can’t be older than thirty-five, thirty-six.
“It’s a strange coincidence, don’t you think?” I ask. “That the girl was taken from my old house? Almost exactly ten years after Sibby disappeared?”
“Is that why you’re here?” she asks. “To ask if Terrance had anything to do with the disappearance of Sibyl Carmichael?”
“You knew him better than anyone,” I say.
She laughs. “Terry and I weren’t together long,” she says. “He was a road bump. One of many, I regret to say.” She leans forward and clasps her hands together, her elbows on her lap. Her voice takes on a pious quality. “Girls, I don’t want to sound judgmental, because I was there. I was an impressionable young woman, easily caught up in a life of cheap promises. I’ve since learned that there is an easy path to happiness, but it isn’t the one I thought I was on. The only true way is to follow the Lord and trust in his goodness.”
“You still haven’t answered our question,” I say. “Do you think Terry could have had anything to do with this girl’s disappearance?”
She sighs, throws her hands up. “I honestly don’t know. Like I said, I barely knew him when we were together. I haven’t spoken to him since we split up, shortly after that awful situation. We went our separate ways. But I will tell you that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Sibyl Carmichael. Nothing at all. I was with him that day, along with Burke and Mara and Alicia. We’d gone to a movie. As far as this new girl, I know nothing about it.”
She stops talking and bows her head to stare at her hands, as if squeezing in a quick prayer.
“I don’t know what happened to Terry after that summer, girls,” she says. “When you’re my age, you’ll better understand the paradox of time. A decade goes by in the blink of an eye, but when you look back across it, it feels like a million years. Somehow, both things are true.” She turns back to look at us. “I always knew Terry needed guidance. He was a gambler, into drugs and bad characters and unsavory places. I was naive enough to think I was the one to guide him, but of course that never works out like you hope. It turns out I needed as much guidance as he did, and I’m happy to say that I found it in my savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I can only assume that Terrance allowed his soul to be led down the wrong path until he reached the point of no return. I can’t judge him for sinning, as I’m a sinner myself. There but for the grace of God go I.”
“Do you remember anything from that summer?” I ask her. “Anything weird that might stand out?”
“Not really,” she says. “I’ve obviously thought about it a lot over the years, racked my brain to see if there was anything I might have missed that could have helped. I’m sure everyone in that neighborhood did the same thing. But nothing ever comes up. I barely knew Terry’s family, let alone you neighbor kids.”
“So what do you think happened?” I ask.
She gives me an astonished look. “How on earth would I ever know what happened?”
“Everyone has a theory,” I counter.
She turns away and stares at the wall again, her lips pursed, as she thinks it over.
“I can’t for the life of me imagine why someone would take a child,” she says. “I suppose if I had to guess, I’d say some hunters just came across you and Sibyl, and the devil took control of them.”
Sarah lets out a burst of incredulous laughter. “Are you serious? You think the devil was responsible?”
Sandy gives her an agitated look. “I don’t know what to believe,” she snaps. “I wasn’t there.” She gets up from her chair and walks to the cross on the wall. Clasping her hands in front her, she stands and gazes at it.
“Maybe it was the exact opposite,” she says without turning to look at us. “Maybe she was taken into a home of faith. Maybe God decided she deserved a chance at blessed salvation.”
I exchange a look with Sarah. Her eyes are wide as she mouths, What the fuck? I know we’re both thinking the same thing. We stand at the same time.
“We should leave,” I say. “We have to get back to Redfields before dark.”
Sandy turns to us, her religious reverie broken. “I have to ask: Why are you digging this up again now?”
I’m ready with an answer. “It’s been ten years,” I say. “It’s been on my mind lately, and I need to ask questions now, so I can stop thinking about it as much in the future.”
She nods as if my answer makes perfect sense. “I’ll be praying that the poor girl is found,” she says. “Just as I pray for Sibyl Carmichael, every single day.”
We’re at the door when she reaches out and grabs me. I look down at her hand, clasped tight around my wrist, and I freeze. I allow my gaze to lift to her face and find her staring intently at me, almost furiously.
“I hope you know I’ll be praying for you too,” she says.
Back in the car, I lean forward and put my face in my hands.
“Are you okay?” Sarah asks, reaching over to put her hand on my back.
I sit up and exhale sharply. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
She leans across the seat and kisses me on the cheek. “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I do though,” I say. I reach down and take her hand. “Sibby has been gone for ten years, and everything I’ve ever learned about missing people is that the longer they’re gone, the greater the chance that they never come back, and when it’s been this long, the percentage is even steeper. I have to ask myself, what’s the point? Why am I doing this?”
She nods sympathetically, and I slap my hand on the dash and let out a small scream of frustration.
“It’s just too much,” I say. “I get crank emails all the time. It comes with the territory. It makes sense that memories of Sibby are bubbling up, and people are looking for ways to stay involved, especially now that it looks as if Layla’s gone forever. If it hadn’t been for my own connection, I wouldn’t have given this email another thought.”
“You have to cut yourself some slack, Dee,�
� she says. “This would be too much for anyone to deal with.”
“I just want to be free of it,” I say. “I need to just accept that I’m never going to find out what happened to Sibby. It’s time to move past it and focus on what I can do.”
“Like the podcast,” she says.
I nod. “This Houston case we’ve been profiling is turning into something. I can feel it. That’s something I can work on.”
“Then you should do that,” she says. She reaches over and runs her hand through my hair. “You should be proud. You’ve done amazing things.”
“I helped make amazing things happen,” I correct her. “And that’s enough for now. I don’t need to do more. I want to live my life like a normal person, without this huge tragedy hanging over me for the rest of my life.” I turn to look at her. “I want the podcast to move forward because it’s helping, not because I need it to help me. I want to go to the winter dance with my girlfriend, and be normal for a change.”
“Don’t be too normal,” she says.
I smile at her. “I promise. I’ll be just as normal as I need to be, and we’ll leave it at that.”
“That sounds perfect,” she says.
31.
Here’s the thing: I don’t do formal wear.
I like the way I dress, but when it comes to anything even close to formal, I’m out of my element. I haven’t even worn a skirt since I was forced to for a family wedding when I was, like, eleven. Since finding out that Sarah and I were planning on going to the Winter Carnival Dance, my mom has offered several times to take me shopping, but the thought of making my way through the mall with her, trying on clothes in awful women’s boutiques, worried about maybe running into one of the girls from school, Brianna even, put the kibosh on that idea.
Now that I only have a couple of hours to get ready, I’m beginning to regret my reluctance. The only thing remotely resembling a dress in my entire closet is this long sweatery thing that my grandmother gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. It goes down to my knees and is sort of a greenish-blue wool, with giant wooden buttons down the front. It looks like a cross between an old man’s cardigan and a housecoat.
I lay the sweater thing on the bed and consider it. Could I wear it ironically? Maybe with a belt and high boots? I sigh out loud and glance longingly at my laptop. I wish I could ask the Radio Silent army what they think. Maybe there’s an laptop detective out there who’s just dying to give the Seeker a makeover.
There’s a knock on the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“Dee?” my mother yells. “Can I come up?”
“Yeah,” I call down.
A moment later, she appears at the top of the steps and walks over to stand next to me, where I’m staring at the clothes I’ve pulled out and laid out on my bed. She reaches down and pulls up the sweater thing. She holds it in front of me, tilts her head to consider.
“It’s the closest thing I have to a dress,” I say, and she nods. She catches my eye, and we both burst out laughing.
“Over my dead body will you wear that to a formal dance,” she says. “Actually, you aren’t allowed to wear that anywhere. Good grief. Come on.” She turns and gestures to the stairs. “Let’s check my closet.”
Reluctantly, I follow her downstairs.
My parents’ room sits at the front of the house, big and cluttered. The bed is made, just barely, and on both sides are stacks of books.
She opens her closet and reaches up for the cord that turns on the light. She begins flipping quickly through racks, pulling things out and pushing them back in again, with repeated glances back at where I’m standing with my hands shoved into my pockets.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I don’t think this is going to work. Clothes don’t look good on me.”
“Hush,” she says. “I’m thinking.” She throws a pair of black pants on the bed and moves to my father’s side of the closet.
She begins pulling out button-down shirts, one after the other in rapid succession, holding them out in front of her for a quick, squinting look, before shoving them back onto the rack.
When she gets to one shirt she stops, holding it in front of her and chewing on her bottom lip. She turns and holds it in the air in front of me, squinting. Then she nods and shoves it toward me.
“I don’t think this is something I want to wear,” I say.
“Please, Dee,” she says. “I’m good at this. Will you just try it on?”
I sigh and step past her toward their bathroom.
“With these,” she says, handing me the black pants.
I pull the clothes on in the bathroom, tucking the shirt into the waistband of the chinos and trying not to roll my eyes when I look in the mirror.
When I come back out, my father is flopped on the bed. He whistles. “Great shirt!”
“You’re only saying that because it’s yours,” I say. “I look like a backup dancer at the Grand Ole Opry.”
But my mother is already back into her side of the closet, moving quickly through the rack. She stops abruptly and smiles, pulling out a wool blazer. The fabric is woven into a bold black-and-white pattern, almost dizzying.
“I love this jacket,” she says. “I spent too much money on it, but it never really suited me. I think it will look great on you.”
“I’m not sure that’s my style,” I protest.
“It’s houndstooth,” she says. “Classic. Just trust me.”
She holds open the arms, and I reluctantly turn around and spread my arms behind me to slide into it. She spins me around to face her, smiling as her eyes track up and down the outfit.
Dad whistles. “Looking fine as fuck,” he says.
“Jake,” my mother warns.
“Well, she does!”
I turn and step in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of their room.
The coat has made such a difference that I can hardly believe it. Alone, the shirt made me look like a country bumpkin, but with the crisp, tailored jacket above it, it has the opposite effect, geometric and bold, the shirt popping out with the perfect splash of dramatic color.
“It looks good?” I say.
“It looks great,” says Mom, coming up behind me and putting her hands on my shoulders. I let her mess around with my hair a little bit, but eventually she has to admit that there isn’t a lot she can do to it, other than add a bit of pomade and slick it over to the side. Still, the effect works, and by the time she’s done, I am feeling fine as fuck, if I do say so myself.
“Group hug!” yells Dad, and he jumps up from the bed and envelopes us.
“Delia,” says my mother once I’ve managed to pull away. “Your father and I are really proud of you. Things can’t be easy for you lately, with that girl missing, and all the stuff about Sibby dredged up like this…”
“It’s cool,” I say, desperate for the conversation to end. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
“We just think you’re great,” says Dad. “And we’re allowed to tell you that, because we’re your parents.”
“We really like Sarah too,” says Mom. “We know you guys are going to have fantastic night.”
“Okay, guys, thank you for all that, but I feel like this conversation was written by a bot. We should go downstairs. Sarah’s going to be here soon.”
When she does show up, my parents insist that she comes inside for a couple of photos. She looks like a million bucks. Her hair is done up into soft waves, and she’s wearing a vintage black cocktail dress with a little fringe around the bottom.
“Wow,” I say. “You sure clean up nice.”
“The feeling is mutual,” she says, giving me a smile that makes my stomach flip as she reaches to take my hand. “You look amazing.”
We spend the first hour sitting on the bleachers at the back of the gym, making fun of people for dancing like fools. Brianna is marching around the gym making sure everything is running smoothly. She reminds me of a school governess from a vintage children’s book.<
br />
Finally Sarah stands and reaches down to grab my hand. “Come on,” she says. “It’s a dance after all.”
I’m a bit nervous, but after a few minutes on the gym floor, I loosen up and it feels good, like this is how I’m supposed to behave. We dance and joke around, and near the end of the night, when the lights go down and the music slows, we end up swaying around in circles, breathing each other in, and everything is perfect. Settled.
When we leave the dance, laughing and kind of giddy, stepping out of the hot, sticky gym into a chilly night, it’s snowing. The sky is full of the perfect kinds of snowflakes: tiny, glittering, like diamond shavings in the air.
We stand with everyone else, looking up at the night, oohing and ahhing at the sight of the snow. I feel like a normal person for a change, and when Sarah reaches over and slips a hand into the crook of my arm, drops her head onto my shoulder, I think for a moment that if I had the choice, I might actually freeze into the moment forever and stay like this, a perfect glistening statue of ice.
“Remember to drive carefully!” yells Mrs. Bellamy. “This weather is supposed to keep up, so the roads won’t be clear for too much longer!”
“What do you think?” asks Sarah. “You feel safe with me driving?”
“Of course I do,” I say, and when I turn to grin at her, she steps up on her tiptoes and kisses me sweetly on the lips.
“We can always stop and park somewhere if the weather gets too bad,” she says. “We can probably keep each other warm.”
I’m saved from having to respond, which is great, since I don’t know what the hell I’d say, because I spot Burke for the first time, sitting on the stone wall across the street. He’s bundled up in his parka, an oversize green stocking cap pulled down low. When he sees me notice him, he raises a hand in greeting.
“Can you hang on a minute?” I ask Sarah.
“Sure,” she says, noticing Burke. “I’ll get the car warmed up.”
I cross the street behind a group of giggling girls a couple of years younger than me, obviously heading home to recap their first night out at an actual high school dance. They chatter off into the night as I walk up to where Burke is sitting.
