by Hester Young
“You sound like you’ve done a lot of thinking about the future.” I swallow down the lump in my throat. “That’s great, Adam. I’m proud of you.”
He doesn’t accept the compliment. “They’re going to send my mother to jail,” he murmurs. “It could be for a long time. She’ll never forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I say. “You’re not the one who did wrong. All you’ve done is tell the truth.” I search for a relevant Bible verse to quote at him. “‘The truth will set you free,’ right?”
“It won’t set her free,” Adam says dully. “Families protect each other. Mama always said that. But I didn’t protect her.”
“Oh, honey,” I say. “Families can do terrible things to each other. Look at Jocelyn and Lise. Look at what your mother did to you. Anyway, you did protect your family. You protected Elijah. You protected your son.” The word “son” feels hard and strange in my throat, but Adam has earned it. Young as he is, he’s raised Raph as dutifully and lovingly as any father.
“She said no one would ever love me like she does. Do you think she’s right?” He lifts his gaze to mine and in that naked, pleading look I see, with some discomfort, what has always drawn him to me, the need that propelled him to follow me around.
I am the mother he always wanted.
“I think your mother is confused about love,” I say. “Love is not about controlling someone, not about hiding them away from the world so they don’t leave you. I don’t know what happened to your mother growing up here on this ranch, but she’s sick, Adam. She’s sick, and she needs to get better.”
He takes a few steps toward me, close, too close for me to feel at ease. I draw away.
“I need to go,” I tell him. “Don’t want to miss my plane. I just came by to tell you . . . that I’m rooting for you. You and Elijah and Raph. I hope you stick together. I hope you make it.”
“Oh,” he says, and his disappointment is palpable. “Okay.” He turns away from me, despondent, a child that I’ve cruelly abandoned in his time of need. “Bye.”
* * *
• • •
RETURNING THROUGH THE WOODS, I find myself in a losing battle with mosquitoes. Just one more tropical nuisance to add to the list of things I won’t miss. By the time I emerge on the Koa House end of the jungle, my arms and ankles have gathered an impressive collection of itchy pink bites. I’m halfway across the yard, scratching myself like a flea-infested animal, when David pops out onto the patio.
“Charlotte! There you are! We couldn’t find you.” He stands nervously in the doorway, as if bearing bad news.
I rub a bite on my wrist. “Just thought I’d check in with Adam before I left. Everything all right?”
“Sue Nakagawa’s parked out front. I told her you were gone, but she’s been waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me? Why?”
David shrugs, but I know we’re both having the same thought. This can’t be good, not after I’ve implicated one daughter in the other daughter’s murder. I exhale deeply. Oh well. Might as well let her get it all off her chest. Anger and blame are part of the grieving process, and I can absorb whatever Sue decides to throw at me.
I find Sue in the driveway behind the wheel of a white Odyssey. She wears sunglasses, though it’s no longer sunny—perhaps an effort to remain incognito, or else an indication of how oblivious she is to her surroundings right now.
I approach the car gingerly. Sue waves me into the passenger seat, silent and expressionless. Her lack of outward emotion frightens me more than any hysterics could. What terrible feelings has she locked away? How and when will they surface? I slide in beside her, closing the car door to give us privacy.
“I figured I’d be the last person you’d want to see right now.”
For a few long seconds, she doesn’t answer. When she does speak, her voice is brittle and faraway. “You did what I asked of you, I guess. You found her.”
I bow my head and stare at what looks like a coffee stain on the upholstery. “I’m sorry, Sue. I had no idea. That wasn’t what I hoped to find.”
“No, I guess not. But we don’t get to cherry-pick the truth.” Her fingers flit across a metal lever that I imagine to be a hand brake or accelerator—some vehicle adaptation that allows her to drive. “It’s strange. I knew I had a problem child, I just . . . I always thought it was Lise.”
So Sue didn’t come here to protect Jocelyn, to demand that I retract everything I told the police. This is even worse. Sue believes me.
I fumble for words and come up short. “Your daughters . . . had a complicated relationship.”
“Complicated. Yes.” She makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh, something wild and unnaturally high. “She’s not going to serve time, you know,” Sue tells me. “Our lawyer says Jocelyn’s an ideal witness. Young and sympathetic, no priors. He doubts they’ll even press charges.”
My blood boils at the thought, but I’ve seen Jocelyn in action. Her lawyer’s probably right. “You and Victor must be happy about that,” I say.
“Happy? Hardly. Victor’s a wreck. He’s barely functioning.” She puts her hands on the steering wheel and stares ahead, eyes hidden behind the glasses. “He’s been lying to himself about Lise for so long. But now? You can’t tell yourself your child’s coming home once you’ve seen her in a morgue.”
I’m not entirely sure about that. Keegan has been dead four and a half years, and I still have moments when I see him running in a group of children or hear him calling from another room. I still have moments when, on the edge of sleep, I’d swear he’s close. Is it better to see the world with Sue’s clear and sober gaze, or to allow yourself the occasional comfort of delusion?
“Victor’s lost,” Sue says. “He’s grasping, anything to stay afloat. You have to understand, Jocelyn’s all he has left. He has to believe her. He’ll defend her to the end.”
“And you?”
Her head drops. “You must think I’m a fool. That I didn’t know my own daughter. But I had a . . . feeling, maybe. Too nebulous to act on.” She bites her lip. “Jocelyn’s always had a temper. Both of the girls did.”
Outside, Thom joins David on the front porch of Koa House. Though he tries not to stare at Sue and me too directly, his curiosity is obvious. Whatever conversation he and David appear to be having is just an excuse to keep tabs on us.
“You never asked about my accident,” Sue says. “How I ended up in a wheelchair.”
Her paralysis seems like an odd thing to bring up now, but I run with it. “If you’re comfortable telling me, I’d like to know.”
“Mangoes,” Sue says. “I was picking mangoes.”
I fight the urge to scratch my mosquito bites. “Mangoes?”
“We used to have a big tree in our backyard,” Sue explains. “Mangoes were Victor’s favorite fruit.” Her voice is quiet now, remembering. “I was up on the ladder one afternoon, picking from the higher branches, when Jocelyn ran over. She was very upset. Lise had been invited to a birthday party, and she hadn’t. Jocelyn wanted me to call the parents, to insist she get an invite, too.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I refused. I’ve never catered to that kind of silliness. I said, ‘Jocelyn, you and Lise aren’t the same person and you won’t always get the same things in life. Some people might just like her more than you.’”
“How old was Jocelyn?” I ask, wondering how many years Lise eclipsed her in the popularity department.
“Eight.” Sue pauses. “Too young for that kind of honesty? I don’t know. I’ve always been plainspoken. She didn’t take it well, regardless.” Sue sounds oddly detached from the story she’s telling. Perhaps severing her mind from her heart is the only way that she can cope. “I don’t know if it was a conscious effort to hurt me or just blind anger,” she continues, “but Jocelyn kicked the ladder. She
kicked it, and I fell. I landed exactly the wrong way.” Sue runs a finger down her spine. “I’d still be walking if it weren’t for her. Jocelyn knows it and I know it, and knowing that changed our relationship forever.”
The brutality of her words startles me, even coming from Sue. “You blame her, then?”
“Oh, I forgave her,” Sue says, so quickly I’m not sure I believe her. “She’s my child. But it made her . . . indebted to me. Afraid to rebel.”
“You think that’s why she’s pushed herself so hard? She felt she owed you?”
Sue nods. “Part of her always wanted to be Lise. To have friends, to slack off, to quit swimming. But she never did. Jocelyn thought she had to be my legs. She thought she had to do the things I couldn’t. That she had to earn my love. And I let her think that. Because it was easier.” Her voice has a noticeable tremor. “No wonder she hated her sister.”
Now at last I understand how two identical girls could grow to be such different young women. Lise wasn’t some sad, stunted version of her overachieving sister. All this time, Jocelyn has been the sad and stunted version of Lise, desperate for approval, desperate for absolution.
“You aren’t the only factor in their relationship, Sue,” I point out. “Lise didn’t do herself any favors when she took up with Jocelyn’s boyfriend.”
“That’s what I can’t wrap my head around,” Sue says. “That they would hurt each other like this for a boy. A stupid, nothing boy.”
“He wasn’t nothing,” I say. “He chose Jocelyn, and that was everything.”
“Boys.” Sue pronounces the word like a curse. “They inspire so much passion, and for what? Kai wasn’t worth it. They’re never worth it. You think they’re fulfilling your dreams when really they’re just dimming your star. Why can’t we ever see that before it’s too late?”
She’s not just talking about her daughters now. I wonder at the ways that marrying Victor derailed her life, how bright her so-called star might have been.
Sue turns on the car, which has grown rather stuffy, and cracks the windows. “I don’t have any illusions about who Jocelyn is or what she did,” she says. “I take responsibility for it. I raised her to succeed. I said, let nothing get in your way. And she didn’t.”
“No, she didn’t.” I’m growing impatient. If this is Sue’s roundabout apology for my near-death experience in a freezer, it’s falling short. I still don’t know why she’s here, what she wants from me. “Listen—is there something I can do for you? Anything?”
She takes a breath. The sky is a serene and deepening blue; soon the stars will be out. “Your story. The article you were writing on Victor.”
“Forget about it.” I start to open the car door. It’s late. Rae and I had better be getting to the airport. “The article’s dead, I promise. It wouldn’t be appropriate now.”
“Oh,” she says. “I think it would.” She finally lifts her sunglasses. If I was expecting waterworks, I fundamentally misjudged the woman. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen but resolute. “A story about Victor, that would be a hard sell. But the story of Lise—that would be entirely appropriate.”
“You want me to write about Lise?” This feels like a trap. “Why?”
“A human life is so little in the scheme of things,” Sue says. “So fleeting, so easily forgotten. I accept that. But Lise was mine. She was my daughter. I want her life to mean more than nothing.”
I’m still not convinced of the woman’s motives. “You know I can’t tell Lise’s story without telling Jocelyn’s. She’s a minor. Even if I could manage the linguistic gymnastics to ethically pull off this story, why would you want me to? I’m hardly unbiased here. Whatever I wrote, it wouldn’t do Jocelyn any favors. She tried to kill me.”
“I know what she did. That’s why you need to write this.”
I shoot her a questioning look.
“I’m her mother. I can’t say the things you can.”
I raise an eyebrow. Is Sue attempting to exact journalistic revenge on her child, or is she trying to perform a public service?
“Anything I wrote could follow Jocelyn for the rest of her life.”
Sue’s gaze is hard and black, but I can still feel the heat that flows beneath the surface. “Yes,” she says, “exactly.”
thirty-three
On the flight to San Francisco, Rae trades seats to get a spot next to me. Days of dealing with law enforcement have left us both exhausted, and I’m more than happy to join her in watching a campy Channing Tatum sci-fi flick. We laugh at the bad acting, we whisper snarky comments about the nonsensical plot, and we lose ourselves. It’s everything a Girls’ Week should’ve been.
Afterward, I fall asleep and do not dream. I awake, disoriented and drooling, to find Rae smiling at me. “Here,” she says, handing me a napkin.
Only on the ground, when we’re about to part for separate flights, do I finally address the craziness that we’ve just shared.
“I’m so sorry about this week, Rae,” I say as a trio of Silicon Valley types brush past us. “You know how much our Girls’ Weekends mean to me. I didn’t intend for it to go down like this.”
“Sorry? Are you kidding me?” Rae looks genuinely mystified by the apology. “It was an incredible week.”
“Incredible as in you can’t believe it happened?”
“Incredible as in intense, unforgettable, amazing. I don’t know, you’re the wordsmith.” She grins. “What I’m saying is, I’m glad we did this. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was totally what I needed right now and it felt . . . important.”
Now it’s my turn to be mystified. “We destroyed that family, Rae.” I step out of the path of an oncoming vehicle, barely aware of the hordes of people moving around me. “Sue and Victor . . . they’ll never be the same. Sue lost everything. Not just one daughter, but two.”
“How about what Sage didn’t lose?” Rae reminds me. “Kai would’ve gone sailing off that cliff if you hadn’t known where to go. And don’t you tell me the Nakagawas lost Jocelyn. That girl has her story all lined up. A couple years, and she’ll be phoning home from Stanford, just like she always wanted.”
I kick at my suitcase. “This world is so messed up.”
“But we tried to make it better,” Rae says. “We tried, and I think we did. Naomi will end up in jail because of you; that’s something. And Jocelyn might get away with it, but you changed the narrative. If you hadn’t found Lise in the freezer, sooner or later someone else would’ve. And Elijah Yoon would’ve taken the blame.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I hadn’t considered that before. It does make me feel a little better, to imagine the ordeal we might’ve spared Elijah. God knows he has enough other battles in his life right now.
“Seriously, Charlie, if I could do this every day, get out there and help families, look for bad guys—I mean, that would be the life. A job that meant something.”
“You have a great job,” I protest. “And you worked so hard to get it.”
Rae sticks out her tongue. “Back in college, I thought I’d be working in a lab, creating something new. And here I am, some soulless corporate sellout. I have the house, the husband, the kid—and a job that makes me want to jump off a tall bridge.”
“Oh, Rae.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re not allowed to say that, are we? When you’re gainfully employed and making bank, you’re not allowed to say how boring it is, that your soul is withering away one day at a time. I mean, why do I do this? Am I really living my best life?”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve been so focused on the Nakagawa girls, I missed the fact that Rae was having a midlife crisis before my very eyes. “If you need a change, then make one. No one wants you to be miserable.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. “This week with you really got me thinking. What would it be like to have a vocation? Not just a job you show up to and collec
t a paycheck, but something that gets you excited. Something that fulfills a purpose. I look at you, diving into this story, unwrapping all the layers. You’re doing what you want to be doing.”
With all the chaos in our home, I have little time to reflect on how much I love my work, but Rae’s right. I’m doing what I want to be doing—although whether that can last in the face of all this tabloid noise is anybody’s guess. I wish that we could talk further, but according to the flight bulletins, my plane has begun to board thirty gates down. I’ve got to get moving.
I wrap my arms around Rae, the one woman in this world that I can hug without feeling awkward. “I love you,” I tell her thickly. “Whatever you decide to do.”
“I know.” She casts me an impish grin. “And since you seem to be making a habit of these little investigations, just remember, I’m in the market for a new career.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Who’s joking? We make a good team. Every Sherlock needs his Watson . . .”
“No. Hell no. Not in a million years.” I take off down the terminal with a smile. “Keep dreaming, though.”
“No, you keep dreaming!” Rae calls, and I groan. Walked right into that one.
When I glance back at her, she’s studying the flight bulletin, one finger fiddling with a curl. Real life and all its attendant problems await, but I know she’ll land on her feet. Jumping is the hardest part.
* * *
• • •
I ARRIVE HOME around lunchtime. Noah’s at work, the kids are at school, and whatever reporters have been hanging around seem to have abandoned me for another hot story. Either no one got wind of my return, or they’ve ceased to care. There’s just one mud-spattered station wagon parked in front of my house, a blond woman staring at the maps app on her phone, apparently lost.
