And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  The kiss, soft and distracted, hits her collarbone. Brenna turns and puts her hand on Jim’s just-shaved face and kisses him on the mouth.

  His lips, soft on hers, his hand tangled in her hair . . .

  The TV chirps, “Elmo’s been thinking about trains!”

  From the living room, Maya calls out, “Daddy! Bring me home a surprise!” And Jim pulls away and smiles. Brenna looks into his eyes. Like somebody lit a match behind them.

  She whispers, “Bring me a surprise, too.”

  The plane bucked. “Oh God,” the design prof said. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  Brenna looked at her. “It’s okay. Just rough air,” she started to say. But the woman’s eyes narrowed and Brenna realized she was a little teary. She forced a smile. “Allergies.”

  The plane dipped again, and the seat belt light flashed on. “You need to fasten your seat belt,” Brenna’s seatmate said—weirdly insistent, as if universally fastened seat belts were the only thing that could possibly keep the plane in the air.

  Brenna complied.

  “Thank you, I . . . I just really hate flying.”

  “Never would have guessed.” She put out her hand. “I’m Brenna, by the way.”

  “Sylvia.” She didn’t take Brenna’s hand, though, because she was too busy working the rosary. Brenna sighed. Trent was a nervous flyer, too—ever since his plane got struck by lightning en route to the MTV Beach Party in Fort Lauderdale—but he was nowhere near as bad as this. Those times when she was forced into flying with her assistant, Brenna could usually calm him with a gin and tonic and/or a lie about the flight attendant wanting him.

  “Please, please, please . . .” Sylvia was whispering.

  Brenna didn’t get it, the fear of flying. Sitting in an airplane was so safe, compared to what could happen to you on the ground.

  The plane hit an air pocket and bounced sharply. Sylvia let out a yelp that sounded oddly like three-year-old Maya, and Brenna was back in October 16, 1998, only thirty minutes later . . .

  “Mommy! Can I have some apple juice?”

  “Sure, honey.” Brenna pulls the bottle out of the fridge, pours it into a purple sippy cup with a spotted cartoon dog on the side.

  “Mommy! Radio!”

  Brenna sighs. She hurries into the master bedroom, handing Maya her juice as she passes. Jim bought a new clock radio five weeks ago, and they’ve both read the manual and still, neither one of them can figure out how to keep it from randomly going off several times a morning.

  The only thing that seems to work is unplugging the clock, then plugging it back in and resetting it. The digital face reads 9:23 A.M. Brenna has the cord in her hand when she hears the radio announcer say, “Possible break in the Iris Neff case.”

  She stops.

  Brenna knows the Iris Neff case—everybody does. Six-year-old girl, goes to a Labor Day barbecue, just forty minutes out of the city in peaceful, suburban Tarry Ridge. The party winds down, her mother leaves for home, and Iris stays on for a playdate with the hosts’ children—perfectly normal, until Iris wanders off when the hosts’ backs are turned.

  No one ever sees her again.

  The announcer says, “An unnamed witness saw the child in front of her own house, getting into a blue car with a dent in the right rear fender.”

  Brenna’s eyes widen. It couldn’t be the same car. That was seventeen years ago.

  But still. Still.

  Maya calls out, “Mommy! More juice?”

  “Just a minute, sweetie!” Brenna grabs the bedroom phone. She calls information. She asks to be connected to the Tarry Ridge Police Department and then for the detective in charge of the Iris Neff case.

  “That would be Detective Nick Morasco,” the desk sergeant tells her.

  On hold now, Brenna tries to picture the blue car that took her sister—the make, the sound of the engine running, the feeling that must have been welling within her as she pressed her face against the screen of her bedroom window at dawn, watching Clea lean into the passenger’s side window and say, “I’m ready,” watching Clea open the door and get inside . . . And then hearing that voice—his voice—the voice of the shadow behind the wheel. She can’t. The event that triggered her perfect memory is hazy in her mind, dim as the childhood that came before it.

  “This is Detective Morasco. What can I do for you?”

  “I . . . I heard something on the news about a blue car.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Brenna Spector. I’m a former private investigator.”

  “Okay, well listen. That never should have been leaked to the press.”

  “No, I’m glad it was leaked because—”

  “It was a bad lead.”

  “A bad lead?”

  “It was false.”

  “So . . . you’re saying that she didn’t get into a blue car.”

  “We aren’t looking for a blue car. Thank you for calling.” Click.

  That was cold, Brenna thinks.

  “I’m sorry,” Sylvia said now. “Were you talking to me?”

  Brenna blinked. “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  The engine roared as the plane settled into a new altitude, and soon the bumps smoothed out, the seat belt light switched off, and Sylvia removed her glittery specs and drifted into a deep, post-traumatic sleep. Brenna plucked her iPod out of her purse and jammed the buds in her ears and put Lust for Life back on. She listened to Iggy’s yawn of a baritone, begging for some weird sin—not just any sin but a weird one. Brenna loved that—loved it ever since she first heard the song—February 21, 1988, her second and final year at Columbia, while sitting cross-legged on the unmade bed of Dan Price—green-eyed, scrawny, agonizingly attractive.

  But Brenna didn’t go back to that night. And she didn’t go back to the morning of October 16, 1998, either. She didn’t remember the week that followed her conversation with Morasco or all that time she spent in Tarry Ridge, searching for Iris Neff . . . She didn’t allow herself to recall the people she met, the questions she asked, that awful, crawling suspicion. Nor did she let herself remember the way her heart had beat all the way up into her throat as, finally, she picked up the kitchen phone and tapped in the number she’d promised never to call again . . .

  Brenna didn’t let herself remember any of that week. But she knew that once she spoke to Morasco, once she finally met him face-to-face and heard that voice again, once he asked her what he needed to ask, whatever that could be, Brenna would remember Tarry Ridge. She would remember Iris Neff. She would remember that week—the week her marriage ended—whether she wanted to or not.

  Chapter 3

  Five hours later, Brenna was back in the city, climbing the stairs to her apartment on Twelfth and Sixth, Trent calling out to her as she opened the door. “About time you got back! I’ve got something to show you—and it is so cash.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  Trent LaSalle had been working for Brenna for nearly six years, yet his presence in her apartment still made her cringe a little. Technically, it was only the front part of her apartment—an unusually spacious rent-subsidized two-bedroom she’d found eight years ago, shortly after her divorce. The bedrooms—one for Brenna, one for Maya during the three days a week she spent here—were located in the rear of the floor-through space and strictly off-limits to Brenna’s assistant, who’d set up his desk at the start of it, in the far corner of her otherwise tasteful office/living room.

  Aesthetically speaking, Trent’s desk was a form of assault. Neatness wasn’t the issue; Trent was very tidy. It was the Megan-Fox-in-a-bikini screensaver, the World’s Best Booty trophy he’d received from an ex-girlfriend, the Mardi Gras beads and lacy garters strung over the back of the chair. Most of all, though, it was the bulletin board tacked with pictures of Trent—flexing his pecs on the beach, using a bottle of Grey Goose as a microphone, at various clubs, making kissy lips and/or gangsta rap–style hand gestures next to a series of beau
tiful young babes he’d managed to rope into photo ops, the discomfort on their faces obvious to everyone but Trent himself.

  Trent was twelve years younger than Brenna—and as far as she was concerned, the worst type of twenty-seven-year-old male. He could’ve benefited from an old-fashioned withholding father—coddled as he was into thinking he was a superstar in the making, a sparkling wit, every inch of him spectacular. He also had that weird macho/effeminate thing that a lot of young guys had today. He wolf-whistled women and bragged to his friends about how much quality ass he was tappin’, but waxed his chest, plucked his eyebrows, sprayed himself a glowing, orangey tan. In short, Trent was a douchebag. But he was surprisingly sharp and organized, and a genius on the computer. Over the past few years, he had created and perfected an aging program for missing children’s photos that rivaled the one used by the FBI. And outside of the one time Brenna overheard him on the phone referring to her as a “grade A MILF,” he was respectful of her, too.

  Still, he was not the type of guy she relished having in her apartment. And when Trent said, “I’ve got something to show you,” it wasn’t always a thing you wanted to see.

  “I hope you’re talking about something related to our case files,” Brenna said, after she’d opened the door and dropped her suitcase on the couch and acclimated herself to her assistant’s cologne.

  Trent grinned. “Not even close.” Before Brenna could turn away, he whipped up his tight, lime green AX T-shirt, revealing two silver nipple rings. “Pierced ’em yesterday during lunch hour. You likey?”

  Brenna winced. “You are aware of my condition, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So you know it means that every time I hear, feel, or see something, it’s burned into my mind forever?”

  “Yeah, duh, of course I know that.”

  “So in other words, if you ever show me anything remotely like what you just showed me again . . .”

  “Whoa, sheesh, here’s a dollar, buy a sense of humor. I was just trying to make you smile before—”

  Brenna held up a finger. “One sec.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, tapped in Maya’s number.

  “Mom?”

  “Hi honey. For once my flight wasn’t delayed, so I could come pick you up now, so long as you’re . . .”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Brenna saw Trent gesturing at her, his hands flying out in front of him as if he was trying to guide a small plane to safety. She turned away. “You’re back from school, right? You all ready, or do you have other plans first?”

  Several seconds of thick silence. Maya’s phone skills had long left something to be desired. Laconic to begin with, she went even quieter when talking was the only thing required of her. Still, Brenna could tell there was more to it this time . . . “Maya,” she started to say. I’m so sorry I’m a day late in getting you . . . But Maya spoke before she could get any of the words out. “I’m spending the night at Larissa’s tonight. I told Trent.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “We’re going to study for the science test together. Dad and Faith said it was okay.”

  “Wait. Larissa?” Brenna said, a memory flashing through her mind. “Her mother left you two alone in her apartment. You were just eight years old.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Maya. Remember? May 4, 2001. You came home all proud. You said, Larissa and I got to babysit each other!”

  Maya sighed heavily. “Mom, she just went downstairs to get the mail. Like for three minutes.”

  “A child can disappear in less than three minutes, Maya. Her mother should have known that. She should have—”

  “You’re breaking up, Mom,” said Maya, though Brenna knew the line was clear. “See you tomorrow. Try not to be late.”

  Brenna put the phone down.

  Trent shrugged. “Kids.”

  Brenna said nothing. Just stared down at her quiet phone, the way it sat on her desk, so smug in its stillness. She wanted to throw it across the room.

  “You wouldn’t have been able to get Maya right away anyway,” Trent said. “Military’s due here at 0-fourteen hundred.”

  “Huh?”

  He deepened his voice. “Detective Nick Morasco, Tarry Ridge PD.”

  Brenna sighed. “What the hell does he want?”

  “No idea, but he is a serious piece of work. So freakin’ intense.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to know when you’d be here. I told him around four, and it’s what . . . four-fifteen now so—”

  The bleat of the front door buzzer cut into his words, and when Trent answered it, there was that deep voice again, that Brooklyn accent. “Detective Morasco. Is Mrs. Spector back?”

  Trent looked at Brenna. “What’d I tell you?” he said as he buzzed Morasco in. “Intense.”

  At first glance, Morasco was neither military nor intense, but he was a lot of other things, all of which bothered Brenna.

  What irked her most was his age. Barring plastic surgery, the detective was forty, tops. It would have put him at less than thirty eleven years ago—a contemporary of Brenna’s, which, to her mind, gave him no right to be so patronizing and dismissive over the phone. We aren’t looking for a blue car. Like he was chastising a child. Thank you for calling. Please.

  Also setting off Brenna’s annoyance meter was the bookish look he was working. Morasco was at Brenna’s desk now, lanky and bespectacled and in a tweed jacket for chrissakes, hair like Orlando Bloom in a pirate movie. He really was the farthest possible thing from any police detective Brenna had ever seen, and she’d seen plenty. “Nice to meet you Mrs.—”

  “Brenna.”

  “Brenna.” Morasco was rooting through a beat-up canvas bag that seemed to be serving as his briefcase—one of those earth-friendly shopping totes from a big, guilty supermarket chain, “Go Green” printed on the side in look-at-me letters—and he didn’t glance up when he said her name. In fact, he’d yet to look her in the eye, having made straight for her desk after telling Trent sure, he’d like a cup of coffee, black with sugar (the request directed not at Trent’s face, but at some spot on the wall behind him). Call her demanding, but when law enforcement was in your living space and it wasn’t there to arrest you, eye contact was the least you deserved.

  Brenna thought of her ex-husband with his thinning crew cut, his big build, his tweed-free wardrobe and well-honed people skills . . . It hit her that Jim Rappaport, a reporter turned op-ed page editor, more closely resembled a cop than this supposed detective—and then Morasco finally found what he was looking for in the bag and dropped it on her desk.

  It was a library book. Lieberman’s book.

  “This is you, right?” Morasco said as he cracked it open. “Chapter five?”

  Trent returned carrying Morasco’s cup of coffee and read the chapter title out loud: “The Girl with the Tape-Recorder Mind.”

  “Yeah,” Brenna said. “That’s me—Well . . . me when I was a kid, anyway.” The book, Extraordinary Children, had first come out in 1990, with Brenna referred to simply as B. But after she was outed in the Science section of the New York Times on April 14, 1995, the book’s editor called and got permission to use her full name in subsequent editions.

  “I didn’t know you were in a book,” Trent said.

  “It was a long time ago.” Brenna’s gaze ran down the page. She saw that she was called B. in this library copy—a first edition—and her own signed first edition clicked into her mind, the one that Lieberman had sent her right after it was published, the one she couldn’t bring herself to read, but used to keep by her bed because she intended to read it, someday.

  She could see the book on the green wicker nightstand of her first New York apartment on 112th and Amsterdam, her white metal reading lamp trained on the cover . . .

  “Yo!” barked Trent.

  Brenna cleared her throat, focused on Morasco, who was watching her intently behind his wire-framed spe
cs—making up for lost time with the eye contact, as it were. His eyes, she noticed now, were quite dark, with a disarming softness. Brenna suspected that the quality was a result not of inherent compassion, but of myopia—the glasses were very thick. But it probably helped Morasco a lot when questioning witnesses.

  He said, “You were remembering something, weren’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  “The book—looking at it triggered something in your mind.”

  Brenna nodded. “It’s just the way this . . . condition works, so . . .”

  “I have to show you something.”

  Unfortunately, the way he said “show you” triggered the image of Trent and his nipple rings—she could have killed him for that—but Brenna blinked hard and squeezed the thought away.

  Morasco was back at the bag again, rifling through it. “You asked about Iris Neff over the phone. Did you know Iris Neff?”

  “Huh? Oh . . . No, I—”

  “How about me?”

  “You?”

  “How did you know who I was before I told you?”

  “I talked to you on the phone once.”

  “Once.”

  “October 16, 1998,” she said, “9:23 A.M.”

  He stopped rooting through the bag and looked up at her. “Must have been some conversation.”

  “I happened to be looking at a clock.”

  Morasco went back to the bag. “What was the conversation about?”

  “I called the station to ask a question. You blew me off. Lasted about thirty seconds.”

  Trent said, “Dude, she remembers the exact date when they aired that master-of-my-domain episode on Seinfeld. You know, where they all make the bet about who can go the longest without—”

  “So the conversation she had with me is in good company.”

  Trent nodded. “She also can tell you when Shirley MacLaine called David Letterman an asshole, the date Star Wars: Phantom Menace opened at the Ziegfeld, and . . . oh, and the one day last year when Hostess Cupcakes were half-price at Gristedes.”