Bone Deep

by O'Brien, Kim;

  The room is a mess, with stacks of books and papers littering the floor. It feels like days, not hours, ago that I swept them off my father’s desk. I can’t even begin to let myself think about my mother and Stuart.

  A radio crackles. Rodriquez presses a button and speaks into her shoulder. “Good,” she says a couple of times, and then her brow wrinkles as a voice on the other end squawks out something unintelligible. “Make sure you get the names of all the searchers and run background checks on all of them. Anyone leaves without showing you an ID, I’ll have your ass.” When she finishes, she pushes back in the chair. “So,” she says, looking at me, “You’re what? Sixteen? I have a son—thirteen going on twenty-one.” She chuckles, but when neither Dad or I comment, she keeps going. “He’s always texting. I started him out on five hundred texts a month and then had to upgrade to an unlimited plan. The penalties were killing me.”

  After a long, silent moment, my dad says, “I’m glad you worked it out.”

  “What kind of plan are you on? I’m always looking for a better deal.”

  My father hesitates. “We have a family plan.”

  “A family plan,” Detective Rodriquez repeats. “That would be how many phones?”

  “Three. Paige, my ex-wife, and myself.”

  The policewoman nods. “An ex-wife.”

  “She lives in New Jersey,” my father says.

  Detective Rodriquez appears to mull this over and then dismiss it. “So you have unlimited texting?”

  “Yes.”

  What about Emily? Why isn’t the detective interested in her? I clench my fists to keep from screaming.

  “Internet? My son wants that.”

  “Of course,” my father says. He gives me a half-smile.

  “Unlimited data?”

  I try not to squirm. Aren’t the first forty-eight hours supposed to be the most important? Or is that just for television and movies? My father starts drumming his fingers along the edge of the desk as the detective rambles on about the merits of various cell phone plans.

  “Mr. Patterson,” the detective says, leaning forward, “would you mind telling me how you got those scratches on your hand?”

  My father’s drumming stops abruptly. For the first time, I notice the three claw marks standing out in vivid red against his freckled skin. My stomach clenches.

  “A cat,” my father says, pulling his hand out of sight. “It was sitting on top of the Jeep this morning. It scratched me when I tried to shoo it away.”

  The detective nods sympathetically, but her black eyes fix unblinking on my dad’s face. “Neighbors’ cats can be a nuisance, can’t they?”

  My father swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobbles. A hint of sweat shines on his face. “I don’t think it was a neighbor’s—it was probably feral. I didn’t see a tag.”

  The detective steeples her fingers and holds her gaze steady on his. “So there’s no way of verifying your story,” she states, pleasantly, almost sympathetically. “Would you mind telling me when the last time you saw Miss Linton was?”

  My father shakes his head. “Look, I had nothing to do with Emily’s disappearance.”

  “Then you won’t mind answering my question, Mr. Patterson. This is just standard procedure.”

  My father shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I suppose I saw her at yesterday morning’s briefing…” He thinks hard. “Things got busy…”

  They’re doing it again—wasting time—and I can’t take it any longer. “You need to talk to Jeremy Brown,” I blurt out, and both of them look at me.

  I feel my cheeks get hot as the name hangs in the air, like a bad smell waiting for me to claim it. My heart thumps in the quiet room. I realize I’m twisting my hands in my lap and force myself to stop.

  “Who’s Jeremy Brown?” Rodriquez asks.

  “Jeremy?” my father repeats, disbelief all over his face. “Why would you say that?”

  “Just who is Jeremy Brown?” Detective Rodriquez’s voice carries a note of authority that makes it clear her questions overrule my father’s.

  “One of my PhD students.” My father stares at me. “Why would you think that, Paige?”

  I’m sweating now, despite the air-conditioning. Just thinking about him brings everything back—the darkly pungent taste of him, the suffocating intensity of his kiss, the strength of his hands. “Because he’s a jerk.”

  “Talk to us, Paige. Tell us why he’s a jerk.” Detective Rodriquez leans slightly forward, her plump lips forming an encouraging smile.

  I almost laugh, although it isn’t funny. She’s treating me like a child, or as if I’m injured, in shock, and she has to be careful or I’ll completely shatter. It’s Emily, though, who’s missing. Emily who needs me to tell them what happened.

  The minute hand on the wall clock clicks loudly. It’s ten-thirty. As the seconds tick by, I think of Jeremy Brown touching me as I lay there waiting for something magical to happen, and then the anger that flowed into those hands when I asked him to stop. I imagine Emily provoking him, Jeremy losing it and shoving her hard enough to make her stumble, hit her head…

  It’s difficult to talk about, but I make myself start at the point where I went down into the basement chamber. I admit that I gave Jeremy mixed signals, but that, when I asked him to stop, I was very clear about it.

  Next to me, my father shakes his head as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. I can’t bring myself to look into his face, but I hear the changes in his breathing—the sharp intake and the longer, sad-sounding exhales. When I get to the part where Jeremy got angry, my father stops breathing all together. I glimpse his white knuckles clenched on the armrest of his chair.

  When I finish, there’s silence. I look down at my hands, twisted in my lap, different somehow, as if they belong to someone else. I jump as my father tentatively touches my arm. He says my name like a question, but I don’t have an answer.

  “So this boy…” Detective Rodriquez says very slowly, “Did he rape you?”

  My father flinches at the word.

  I shake my head, trying not to imagine what my father is thinking. “No. Jalen came, and Jeremy stopped.”

  I imagine Jalen’s dark face peering down into the tunnel—his eyes flickering with what looked like rage and concern, the strength of his hand pulling me up the last rungs.

  “Who’s Jalen?”

  “God, Paige,” my father says gently. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Mr. Patterson. Please. Who is Jalen?”

  “John Yazzi’s son. He works in maintenance,” my father replies impatiently. He turns to me. Beneath his brows, his eyes are intensely blue and the black pupils barely larger than dots. “Are you okay?”

  I twist my hands together again, wishing he’d just be mad. I don’t want him suddenly pretending that being my father means something. Like he really cares what happens to me. We both know that’s a lie. I shrug with an indifference I don’t feel and force my face as blank as I can make it. I ignore the part of me that wants to curl up in his arms and let him handle everything.

  “You could have told me. I would have listened.”

  I look away from him. And then what? Kicked Jeremy out of his precious program? I don’t think so.

  “Paige,” Detective Rodriquez prompts, “what happened after Brown let you go? Why do you think he did something to Emily?”

  “After, I…I wanted to forget what happened, but the next day Emily guessed. She was angry. She wanted to confront Jeremy.” I take a breath to steady myself because I have to stay calm. They have to believe me. “And tell him to resign from the program or she’d go to my father. We fought about it. She wouldn’t listen…” I squeeze my eyes shut picturing her hard, set face. “You can’t ever make her listen when she doesn’t want to.”

  “When did this conversation happen?” Detective Rodriquez asks.

  “Yesterday afternoon. Around one o’clock.”

  “The day after the alleged assault?
”

  My father sits up straighter. “If my daughter says there was an assault, there was an assault.”

  “I need evidence.” Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “Physical evidence. Bruising…torn clothing…witnesses.”

  “There are bruises.” I think of the red and purple marks circling my left breast like a ring of fire. The scratches just below the line of my shorts.

  “Can I see them?”

  I look sideways at my father, silently begging him to turn away but he doesn’t. I lift the hem of my shirt, show her the scratches on my stomach. I don’t show her the bruises on my breast. Hopefully the marks are enough to make her understand that Jeremy is dangerous and she needs to send the police to his house.

  Frowning, Detective Rodriquez narrows her gaze at me. “Shit,” she says. Then she sits back in her chair and folds her hands together, obviously thinking, deciding if she’s going to believe me or not. Finally her gaze lifts to my father’s. “I want you to take Paige to the emergency room right now and have her examined by a doctor. Any bruising should be documented. And I’m going to need a statement.”

  “I don’t want to go to the hospital! I don’t want anyone taking pictures of me! You need to go to Jeremy’s house!” My voice gets louder, but I can’t seem to help it. “You need to go there now.”

  My father puts his hand on my arm, and I jump at the touch. His face is ashen; his lips are tight, shrunken-looking. It makes him look a hundred years old. “Paige,” he says wearily, “we need to do exactly what she says.”

  Someone knocks on the door. “Just a moment,” Detective Rodriquez calls. “It’s very important that you do this, Paige. I know it’s hard, but I wouldn’t ask you to if it wasn’t absolutely essential. It needs to go on record.”

  “But Emily…” I begin and then stop. All of this needs to be documented because of Emily. Because the policewoman believes me, believes in the possibility that Emily is missing because of Jeremy.

  This isn’t a story I made up in my mind, something to scare myself so I would feel fear, like Emily and I did all those years ago. Detective Rodriquez is building a case against Jeremy Brown because she believes he might have done something even worse to Emily than he did to me.

  I taste something thin, bitter at the back of my throat, and my stomach clenches. Standing, I look around desperately as everything gets worse—the vile taste rising in my throat, the rolling of my stomach. I barely make it to the wastebasket before I throw up.

  SEVENTEEN

  Paige

  In my bed, I lie with the covers pulled high looking up at the ceiling. Although I’ve been trying for hours, I can’t sleep. The room feels cold, much colder than usual—as if the thermostat is set around fifty degrees.

  I flip over. It’s just after two o’clock in the morning. I’m so tired my hands tingle, but I can’t sleep, not when Emily’s missing. I wonder if the police have Jeremy in custody. If they’ve found Emily. Another chill goes through me, and I tuck the quilt more tightly around my shoulders.

  I’m thinking of getting up and putting on a pair of sweats when my door creaks and Emily walks into the room.

  In the moonlight, her hair looks disheveled. Half her face is in shadow, but as she nears, I see it’s not the lack of light, but dust coating her left cheekbone.

  “Oh my God! Emily!” I sit up straight. “You’re okay!”

  “Paige!” She hurries to the edge of my bed. Her long pale hair falls forward as she leans over me. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

  “Where were you?” I study every inch of her. She’s very pale, and there are small chunks of something plaster-like dangling in the strands of her hair.

  “I got lost,” she states, a little sadly. “I’ve been walking for a while.” She looks down at her feet. “I lost my sneakers. Isn’t that funny, Paige? They disappeared when I was sleeping. I just woke up, and they were gone. Have you seen them?”

  The question is odd, but I’m so happy to see her I don’t care. “No.”

  Her shoulders sag. “Oh.”

  “They’re not important,” I assure her. “What matters is that you’re back and you’re okay. What happened to you?”

  Her face wrinkles. “I don’t know.” Her eyes move to the top left corner of their sockets, as if she’s thinking really hard. After a moment, she shakes her head. “I can’t remember.”

  “Were you in a car accident?”

  “I don’t think so.” She feels the back of her head with her hands and then grimaces. “God, my head hurts.”

  Throwing my covers off, I swing my legs over the side of the bed. Emily stands very still as I throw my arms around her. “Stop trying to remember. It doesn’t matter what happened. I’m just so happy to see you.”

  She smells strongly of roses, as if she has doused herself in perfume. It’s so unlike her that it takes my mind a second to register that her body is stone-cold in my arms and her skin feels hard and smooth as polished marble.

  Stunned, I pull back far enough to look into her face. Only instead of Emily, she morphs into my mother, who leans over me, the strap of her silk nightgown slipping from her pale shoulder, her eyes black and angry.

  “You didn’t see him, Paige,” she says. “You were dreaming.”

  My alarm goes off, and I jolt upright. Heart pounding, I fumble for the off button and switch on the lamp. The room is empty, and it’s 2:13 in the morning. I pick up the clock to reset the alarm and discover it’s already set for six—my usual time. So why did it go off? The dream was about Emily. So why then did my mother say, you didn’t see him?

  What was a dream—and what wasn’t?

  Emily’s face is on the television when I walk into the kitchen. My father and I sit at the butcher-block table and stare at the small flat-screen television on the counter. It’s the photo I gave the police, the one I took at Whale Rock. Emily’s pale hair looks more silver than blonde against the back drop of the blue sky, and she wears a wide, confident smile.

  In a flat, detached voice, the reporter summarizes her disappearance, the Amber Alert, the search underway at the park. Viewers are given a number to call if they have information, and then it’s over. The next story starts and it’s like Emily never was.

  I glance at my father, stroking his unshaven face, the circles under his eyes dark as bruises. He catches me looking at him, gets up, and dumps his uneaten cereal in the sink.

  “We need to talk,” he says, rinsing the bowl.

  I eat a bite of Honey Nut Cheerios. They’re mushy and flavorless, and they stick in my throat like dread. Maybe he knows something more than the report on the television. “Did they arrest Jeremy?”

  He shakes his head and pours himself a cup of coffee. “No. Look—I didn’t want to talk about it last night, but why didn’t you tell me what happened with you and Jeremy?” He leans back against the sink. “Did you think I wouldn’t believe you?”

  Even soggy Cheerios float. I push them down with my spoon and they pop right back up like things you don’t want to think about.

  “Paige,” he tries again. “I’m on your side.”

  Maybe that was true a long time ago, but I’m not the same little girl who idealized him. And he’s not the father who read me petroglyphs or fixed my Barbies, knowing I would only pull them apart again, excavate them, and then pretend I was an archeologist, just like him, and try to piece them together.

  “Damn it, Paige. Why won’t you talk to me? I’m your father.”

  I drown more Cheerios. The answer is so clear it doesn’t need to be spoken. Being my father doesn’t mean he has the right to know what I’m thinking or that he can make me explain myself to him.

  “Paige,” he prompts.

  I look up. “Why did you walk out on me and Mom?”

  My father doesn’t answer. The goose bumps rise on my arms. Why is it so cold in here? It reminds me of the cold in my room, of my nightmare of Emily walking in, her long hair tangled and matted and her face hal
f-coated in fine, white dust.

  “I didn’t walk out on you,” my father says. “Your mother and I divorced.”

  “I know, but why?”

  He shakes his head. “We’ve talked about this. People grow apart. It wasn’t right for a long time. You know that, Paige.” He rubs the empty place on his fourth finger. I wonder if he even knows what he’s doing.

  “You flushed it down the toilet,” I say, and he looks up, startled. “Your wedding band. Don’t you remember?”

  The color rises in my father’s face, and his hands drop. “Yes,” he says evenly. “I remember. I shouldn’t have done that, but it’s in the past.” His mouth tightens. “I know you’re still angry at me for what happened, and I don’t blame you. I’ve never been good about telling you that I love you, but I do.”

  I drop my spoon with a clang onto the table. “Were you having an affair, Dad? Is that why you left Mom and me?”

  My dad’s head jerks back as if I’ve hit him. “What?”

  “Were you having an affair with a student at Rutgers?” I make myself look him in the eye, but inside I’m a mess, just one step away from losing it. Maybe this is why I can finally ask that question.

  He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “Why would you even think that?”

  He hasn’t denied it, and a sick feeling spreads in me. “I heard you and Mom arguing in your bedroom. She said something about all those little girls hanging out in your office, that she knew about them and she wasn’t stupid.”

  My father considers my words for a long time and then he pinches the bridge of his nose. “I never had an inappropriate relationship with any of my students.”

  Part of me wants to believe him, but another part of me feels like he isn’t telling the full truth. I clench my fists. Arguing with my father is pointless. It’s like he wears a verbal shield and you can hit and hit and hit him but never touch him. Have I not witnessed this a hundred times?

  “Paige,” my dad says. “I love you.”

  I stand so I look down at him. “You don’t love me. You don’t love anyone. All you love is being Dr. Duke Patterson—digging up dead things and then spending all your time looking at them, thinking about them. It’s all you care about!”