by Heidi Pitlor
He took a seat in an old rocking chair in the corner of the room. He considered all the tasks that remained before him: the stack of old blankets and sheets that had lain in a heap by the washing machine for a good decade now and would have to be washed; the boxes of gardening guides and travel books about France and Greece; the plastic crate full of poetry books, which would all need to go somewhere at some point. The seat of the chair sagged beneath him. He shifted his weight forward so as not to break it further. It had been Hannah’s chair, where her nanny had rocked her so long ago, the same rocking chair where Hannah herself had held and fed both Janine and Ethan when they were young. “Nanny? You actually had a nanny?” Lovell had asked Hannah when Lydia first brought the rocking chair to this house.
He brushed a clump of dust now from the arm of the chair. He gathered the grubby blankets and sheets and carried them upstairs to the washer.
THE KIDS WERE asking to go back to school. Ethan missed his friends. Janine was tired of having to mail in homework. Lovell was torn: They needed to get back to life. They all did. But those DNA results could come in at any time. “Soon enough, you can go back,” he told them.
In the days after Janine’s return, a weight had begun forming within Lovell, a gravitational force born of his finally allowing a now undeniable probability to enter his mind. There was a chance that the lab would find another woman’s DNA in those bones, but there was a greater chance that they would not.
Each day, he could feel himself hunkering down a little more, his body nearly solidifying in preparation for what would likely come. He could hear himself speak in a quieter, gentler voice to the kids. He kept the radio on low most of the time to fill the stark quiet. It was good to tend to their environment in these ways, to create a protected zone of comfort and warmth for them. For the first time in months, he felt as if he were kneeling down, keeping still on a raft that seesawed and bucked over ferocious water, holding steady and firm.
He cooked them soup one night, a minestrone from an old family recipe, and as they sat behind their bowls at the kitchen table, he looked over at his kids and said, “We are a family still,” although he could not quite say just what he meant.
Ethan said, “What else would we be?”
Lovell exchanged a look with Janine, who said, “Just say, ‘You’re right, Dad.’”
“‘You’re right, Dad,’” Ethan echoed.
After dinner, Lovell went for the scrapbook that they had made with Dr. Valmer. “Come take a look with me?” he suggested, and with some hesitation, each took a seat beside him on the couch. Maybe it would look different to him now, less treacly. Maybe looking at it together could get them talking about some of the happier times.
He opened to the page that had Ethan’s elephant-shaped card, the postcard Hannah had sent to Janine at sleepaway camp. He flipped back to the first page, “Our Mother,” with the list of words below: Thoughtful. Nice. Loved flowers. Pretty.
“I hated making this thing,” Ethan said.
“You did?” Lovell asked.
“Well, we didn’t know what was going on, and Dr. Valmer made us act like we did.”
“Plus,” Janine added, “what about all the other things that we could have said about her? What about how even though she liked to cook, it stressed her out? What about how she always complained about the crowds at Fenway, you know, those meatheads everywhere who chugged beer and the ones who fell on top of her? I wanted to put in something like how she always nagged me to stand up straight and stop chewing my hair. Where was the page for that? And how about how anal she was about us keeping our rooms clean?”
“She used to yell at me for watching too much TV,” Ethan added. “She told me I should ride a regular bike instead of my unicycle. She said it wasn’t safe.”
Lovell thought about it. Ethan had hardly ridden his unicycle since she had disappeared. He used to spend hours on the thing. “She was a good mother,” Lovell said.
“Yeah,” Janine murmured.
He thought to say more, maybe about how much she had loved them, or to make denials or jokes or resolutions or apologies—anything not to have to sit here with these children and listen to this silence. But none of the choices were quite right.
“I just thought the scrapbook was really stupid,” Ethan said at last.
“A total crock of shit,” Janine added.
Chapter 30
On the first day of February, Lovell woke to the sound of the doorbell. He bolted out of bed, threw on a bathrobe, and hurried downstairs before the kids woke. He heard the slamming of a car door outside somewhere, and as he stepped down the front hallway toward the door, he saw a news van pull up across the street behind another. Rain was pouring down outside. The sky was a murky gray. He had to do this. Once again, he had to open this door and let in something or someone with the potential to ruin them. He had no choice but to open the door right now.
On the front steps stood a girl, probably in her late teens or early twenties. She introduced herself as Melissa Michaels. She stood clutching the padded straps of a maroon backpack, her black bangs soaked and dripping. Standing here before him, she looked young enough to be his daughter.
They huddled on the porch to avoid the wind-driven rain. He did not want to invite her in. He did not want Janine or Ethan to come downstairs and see her here.
She adjusted her backpack and looked up at him before she spoke. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Hall.” She kept her gaze on the hair at his forehead. “The DNA results for the arm just came in,” she said. “Detective Ronson asked me to tell you that we can wait and not tell the news people yet, if you want.”
“Shit.” He bent forward and set his hands on his knees to steady himself. “Yeah. Please, yes, let’s wait, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m really, really sorry,” Melissa said, wiping raindrops from her glasses.
“The tests, they’re definitive?”
She nodded gently.
“Shit,” he said again. Ethan was just nine years old. Janine was only fifteen. And Hannah. Thirty-nine.
“Do you want me to stay?” Melissa gestured toward the door.
“Maybe just a minute.” He knew he should invite her in.
She edged forward as if to hug him but then stepped awkwardly back. He wondered whether he was her first case.
He could hardly ask her to remain out here in the rain much longer, neither of them saying anything. He finally said, “OK.”
“I think Detective Ronson said he would contact you. The trial date hasn’t been set yet. But I’ll let you know when it is. I’ll call you.” She repeated, “I’m—I’m so sorry.”
The rain began to gust and trill around them. He looked down at her black rubber boots. He would remember these boots, he knew. If he passed them in a store or on someone else on the street, they would send him right back to this moment.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye, Melissa.”
He watched her walk away and step into her car. He saw her sit for a moment behind the steering wheel, her head down, before she pulled her seat belt across her chest and turned on the ignition, shifted into reverse, and slowly pulled out of the driveway. A policeman waved aside another news van pulling up in order to let her pass. Lovell watched her car drive slowly down the street, breaking to avoid a squirrel, and finally disappear.
“Good-bye,” he heard himself say again.
He wondered how long he could stand here on his front porch facing the reporters, getting drenched by the rain, before Janine or Ethan would come outside and ask him what was wrong.
Chapter 31
Later, he considered the not insignificant amount of will and bravery that it took to walk back inside that house, wake the kids, deliver the news to them, call Hannah’s mother and father, her sister, Sophie, his own parents, everyone in the world, it seemed. He granted a few interviews with reporters, and this time he let himself say whatever came into his head: “How does this
feel? It feels like fucking hell on earth, if you can’t guess for yourself.” Let them bleep out what they needed to.
Of course, what option was there but to tell everyone what had happened? Go back in his house, get his keys, and drive away from his kids and his life? It certainly crossed his mind.
He had done pretty well, he thought. He had held it together while the kids sobbed against him. He had invited Hannah’s family to come to the house so that they could be together. He had extended an open invitation to Sophie as well, if she wanted to come and see the kids. And later, he had taken some time to himself in the bathroom to stare into the mirror and splash water on his face and hold the bottle of her lemongrass hand cream to his chest and say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” To sit inside the empty bathtub and fold his huge body into itself, the bottle still in his hands, and say, “I’ll do better. I will love them better. I will love them so much.”
He had jumped headfirst into a massive, rocky canyon and was somehow still in one piece.
AFTER THE FUNERAL service at the church, once the kids returned to school, the day before Lovell went back to work, he stood in line to check out at Stop and Shop. He looked over, above the gum and candy, at a small TV showing the news. There was Susan Sperck saying Trobec’s name. Lovell instinctively raised his hand to cover his eyes. He went to turn his cart and move to another aisle, but for some reason he stopped himself. He turned his eyes back to the TV. Trobec was seated across from Sperck in his oversize orange coveralls. His voice sounded younger than Lovell might have expected, higher and thinner, as if its lower register had been shaved away. Susan asked some questions about his life as a husband and father and then directed the conversation toward the inevitable. Trobec admitted that he had killed Hannah Hall and the other women, of course he had, and he supposed that he did regret it. “Especially now that I’m sitting here in this shit house.”
Lovell considered grabbing the TV and hurling it to the floor. He was dizzy as the woman at the register checked out his groceries. He felt sickened as he slid his credit card through the machine.
After Melissa had left his house that day, Lovell’s questions had nagged at him, despite what he now knew. In what way and to what degree and at what points had he himself contributed to her each and every move that day? It was excruciating to think about all those possible images, the words that may or may not have been spoken. He tried to imagine what she had seen and heard, what she must have thought, her memories and fears. The unthinkable fear.
Was it penance that he was after? A form of retroactive witnessing, the accompanying presence, himself there with her, if in hindsight, watching and promising to remember? Maybe it was a form of self-punishment. Maybe, but also proof that those “irrelevant unknowns” were in fact relevant. If they had not mattered to the police or Trobec or the lawyers, they certainly mattered to her—and to him. After all, these were the last moments of her life.
In the parking lot of the grocery store, something inside him began to loosen, a rock-hard knot that had pulled and twisted within him for months now. There were moments of her last day that he could or would not fathom. He understood that at some point he would have to let those parts go. He would have to leave them to her, because in the end, all of it was hers and hers alone, October 4, 2007.
Chapter 32
Jamie fished around inside his backpack. He pulled out a Swiss Army knife.
“Jesus,” she said.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Here, you take it,” he said, handing it to her. Better she have it than he, she supposed. “Open it,” he said. “Pick one of the knives or the saw and pull it open.”
She looked at him. Her mouth grew dry.
“Here,” he said. He stuffed his hands under himself. “See? No hands. You be in charge.”
She dug her fingernail into the groove of a long, thin blade and lifted it, but immediately pressed it back inside.
“Pull it out again,” he said. “You choose some part of me, my arm or leg or chest.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“All right, I’ll pick.” He looked down at his feet. “Here, my left leg.” He lifted himself off his hands and leaned his knee toward her. He took her hand and directed it toward his calf. “Now touch me with the blade. Just for a second.” Together, they tapped the flat of the knife to his skin.
“Again,” he said, “but this time, leave it there. See what you can do.”
He moved her hand toward him again, and she continued in this way, touching him with the knife, holding it against his skin for seconds longer each time. She had no idea what would happen, whether she would slip and cut him or whether he would grab her hand and turn the knife on her. There was, as he had promised, some horrible thrill to the weight of the knife in her hands, the warmth of his leg now against hers, and the way that he at once guided her hand and allowed her to choose the amount of pressure she exerted—this not knowing what she could or would do.
“Now turn it,” he said.
She twisted the blade and brought it back to his leg. He nodded her forward, and she hoped that her trembling was not visible to him as she tried, with as little force as possible, to touch his skin without nicking it. But a line of red appeared below his knee and formed a trickle that rushed down his leg.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she set the knife on the sand. “No more.”
“I barely felt that.” He scooped up the drop with the pad of his thumb. “You sure you want to stop?”
“Yes,” she said. She wiped up the rest of the blood on his ankle with the back of her hand. “What is this? What are you doing?”
He reached for the knife. “I want you to try again, and this time, make it hurt.”
She tried not to show any emotion. She stood and carried the knife toward the water, but he raced to catch up with her. “That’s not yours,” he said. He snatched the knife and he dropped it inside his backpack. “Don’t be ungrateful,” he said. His face darkened. He was finally tired of her and tired of the back-and-forth between them.
“I’m going,” she said.
He dropped the backpack on the sand. He suddenly looked hideous, a feral thing let out of his cage.
A heaviness dropped from her head through her chest, a brick of nauseating recognition of all that faced her now—and all that had faced her from the moment she first saw him. Everything that she had chosen not to see.
He nodded at her as if he could read her thoughts. He was ready now.
She had made an enormous mistake. She wanted Ethan and Janine and Lovell—she wanted them, she missed her family for the first time in so long. She wanted her mother and father, her sister and friends and everyone she had ever known. She wanted everything about her life. Was driving here and meeting this person the only way that she could have come to this?
But maybe she could still leave. She knew that she had to at least try. Her bare feet planted at the edge of the bitter water, she measured herself against him. She was nearly his height, but slighter, of course. He had a compact strength like a runner’s, a leanness and force that she did not. But she had to try to escape. She would trick him in some way—and she had thought to try, and this itself was progress, an agreement or a decision at least, one with herself. If she was able to leave now, she would forever think back to the decision she had made on this day and the fortitude that she was able to gather.
She would have to wait until he had turned around or was otherwise occupied and she could get a few seconds on him before she ran.
His leg had begun to bleed again, three discrete lines that ran from the side of his knee to just above his ankle. Her pulse thumping in her ears, she knelt before him and licked her thumb, trying to steady her hand. “Here,” she said, wiping away each line from the bottom toward the top, unsure of what she should do next, only that she had to keep on. “You should put pressure on those.” She looked around them for rope or even seaweed that could be used as a tourniquet.
“Me?” And then she understood what he meant. “No.”
“You just start slow, like we did with me. You just barely touch your skin.”
She saw herself as if from above, recoiling and thereby allowing him to direct her every move again. She forced herself to lean down and take the knife away. “Fine. Me. Here we go.” She pulled out the blade. The blood in her arms and legs, her face and back, seemed to thicken and warm with the thought that she was here, she was in fact here on this beach. She was here with this person. He remained a few feet from her, watching with a new impatience as she tapped the blade against her forearm. He nodded her on—“Keep going, Hannah”—and she turned the knife, and it took the slightest pressure, barely any, the smallest sting, to produce a sprig of blood.
Three short lines, just as she had given him, and then he grabbed the knife back, folded it shut, and shoved it into his pocket. “All right, come on,” he said, and he yanked her upright. He pulled her forward by her wrist. Three men wearing paint-spattered clothes leaned against a black van in the lot, and Jamie nodded at them as if in some kind of complicity. They stamped out cigarettes with their work boots and stepped back inside the van and were gone. The only car left in the lot now was hers.
Jamie shoved her back toward her car, his hand crushing her wrist, and with his other hand he opened the door and fumbled around in her backseat. He grabbed the willow branch and kicked the door shut, his hand still clamped around her wrist.
“Stop. Don’t. Please, don’t,” she said, but he pushed her across the lot and over the curb and again toward the water.
She turned back to the parking lot. No cars drove on the road behind them, no one else walked along the beach. He knocked her down next to a rotted old pier where the water rumbled in low waves. She struggled upward but he held her against the rocky sand, and just before he kicked her down under the wood slats, she was able to say, “Good-bye,” to the sand, to her children and Lovell and her mother and father and sister. In her last moment, Hannah looked up and saw a faint pinkish-white cloud in the sky shaped like an orchid. Smog, maybe.
