And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  “Okay . . .”

  “The girl said there was no Santa Claus, and Iris . . . strongly disagreed.”

  “So . . . Iris believes in Santa Claus?”

  “She didn’t just believe. Iris was adamant—argued it like a little lawyer. She said that when he wasn’t in the North Pole, Santa came to Tarry Ridge. She told the little girl that our town is Santa’s vacation home.”

  Brenna smiles a little. “Well . . . you did say that she has a wonderful imagination.”

  “Yeah, I know. And Iris did—does . . .” Her voice cracks.

  “I’m sure this is very hard. A missing child is—”

  “No wait. Here’s the thing . . .”

  Kaye closes her eyes for several seconds, puts her fingertips to her temples.

  “Are you okay?”

  The eyes open. “Yes,” she says. “This . . . It’s just a little weird.”

  Brenna nods, waiting.

  “Iris said that when Santa visits Tarry Ridge, he drives a blue car.”

  A truck swooped past Brenna’s parked Sienna, shaking her into the present. For several seconds she sat there, staring at that “Wax Attax!” sign, gritting her teeth.

  Enough thinking. She would visit Nelson Wentz, get a look at that computer, collect her deposit, and call it a night. But when she started up her car and drove up the street and Lee again told her to make a right on Muriel Court, Brenna found herself turning left instead. And when Lee intoned, “Recalculating . . .” Brenna switched him off and kept driving. She didn’t want to turn back.

  Chapter 6

  It was something Brenna always did at the start of investigations—visiting the last place her missing person had been seen. She found it helpful to put herself in the shoes of that person, to retrace steps in reverse. But this was different. Carol Wentz had never been seen at 2921 Muriel Court. Only her wallet had been seen there—a flimsy tie to say the least, as wallets went missing a lot more often than their owners. It was very possible someone had stolen the wallet from Carol—or even found it somewhere—before leaving it in the Neff living room.

  Yet Brenna was compelled to drive there—yanked, as if the Neff house was made of magnets. It all begged the question: Who is my real missing person? Brenna had no desire to answer that one, so she stared at houses instead.

  Main Street may have been a Growing Dinosaur, but Muriel Court—at least the western part of it—was a true time capsule. Everything about that stretch of street looked exactly the way it had back in 1998—the uniformly square and manicured lawns, staid New England homes looming over them like reproachful aunts. No add-ons or swimming pools or studio spaces. Other areas of Tarry Ridge had been overrun with mini mansions and gated housing developments, all of them so new that gift wrap seemed fitting—but not this stretch. As far as Brenna could tell in the dark, even the paint jobs were the same.

  Brenna passed the husky white colonial that Theresa and Mark Koppelson had shared with their five kids, two dogs, and, for a few hours on that overly hectic Labor Day afternoon, Iris Neff.

  The Koppelsons still lived in the house. Brenna knew because she recognized the car parked in the driveway—a gray Subaru Forrester, license plate NYX319. It had been brand-new when Brenna had last pulled in behind it eleven years ago, but now it trailed a buff white MDX and a shiny black MINI Cooper—the newer vehicles’ tired, aging relation. It was a good bet that the Koppelsons’ youngest daughter, Claire—Iris’s Labor Day playdate—was using it as a starter car. She was sixteen now, after all.

  Harder to explain than the Subaru, though, was the swing set still standing in the front yard. The Koppelson children were far too old for jungle gyms and slides . . . Maybe Theresa and Mark have had more kids since then . . . Though Brenna couldn’t help but see the swing set and even the car as attempts to stop time—to keep everything just as it had been the day a little girl disappeared from this house, so that Iris might return unchanged, unaged, unharmed, bringing the day back with her. Again she would bicker with six-year-old Claire over who got the last white chocolate chip cookie, feeling that righteous indignation only a first grader could feel. (It’s not FAIR! I’m the GUEST!) Again she would storm out the front door. Only this time, Iris would stop at the swing set, linger by the glimmering silver slide, and start to climb to the top. Theresa Koppelson would then put her finger on a pause button, and everything in and around her house—from sprinklers to lawnmowers to TV screens to bees—would go perfectly quiet and still. Calm now, Theresa would walk out of the kitchen, the water she’d put on for macaroni and cheese caught at the point of boiling. She’d move around her frozen pets and family members and out her front door and into the breezeless air, past suspended hummingbirds and mosquitoes. She would approach the slide and take Iris Neff into her arms like a life-sized cardboard cutout. She’d bring the little girl back into her house and lock the door and call Iris’s mother and never let her out of her sight until Lydia Neff came to pick her up. Then, only then, would she hit fast forward to tonight, to find the Subaru sold for parts, the swing set dismantled, other houses on her street changed, repainted, renovated, that one horrible mistake forever corrected . . .

  Or maybe the Koppelsons were just procrastinators. Brenna had to stop projecting.

  She had questioned Theresa Koppelson during the morning of October 20, 1998, but not for very long. Theresa hadn’t heard anything about a blue car. All that Brenna now knew about that Labor Day afternoon—the macaroni and cheese, the girls’ argument, the fact that Theresa was so busy, she hadn’t noticed Iris’s disappearance until two hours later, when she’d called Lydia Neff and left a message on her machine—all that information, Brenna had learned from the police report.

  The only thing she’d gotten out of that five-minute conversation with Theresa Koppelson in the driveway of this house was “Blue car? No. Sorry.” And, at the mention of Iris’s name, that flash of shame. “She had walked home from our house twice before, you know. The news reports never mentioned that. She’s a very headstrong and independent little girl, and when Lydia never called back, I . . . I assumed everything was . . .”

  I know, Brenna had wanted to say. I lost someone, too.

  Brenna fiddled with the Sienna’s radio until she found a music station. Some boy band from half a decade ago was whining in harmony about filling their empty spaces with holes. She picked up the speed and forced her eyes back on the road and kept them there until she reached 2921 Muriel Court—thinking about nothing but spaces and holes and spiky-haired boy banders, spinning in slow motion.

  Muriel Court ended on a cul-de-sac. The Neff property filled the left side, bounded by huge elms and pine trees. For a suburban house, it was very secluded and private—the row of tall hedges in front a few feet bigger, making the place look as if it were the home of a reclusive movie star. Ten years ago, Brenna had a clear view of the driveway from across the street and up—a good bead on the top story of the house, too, which at the time sported window boxes and curvy white shutters with cut-out hearts—awfully smorgasbord-restaurant-whimsical for a house so suddenly empty and sad. But now, all you could see of the house was the roof. The driveway was a tunnel of leaves.

  Brenna pulled to a stop in front of the hedges, got out of her car. The house on the right end of the cul-de-sac, the neighbor’s, was one of those split-levels—you just knew that at some point in its existence, the whole interior had been doused in wood paneling and macramé plant holders, that the rugs were shag and Tang-colored and felt stiff and oily to the touch. Even today, you couldn’t look at it without getting the Brady Bunch theme song stuck in your head. Brenna thought they’d bulldozed most houses like that during the Reagan Administration, but there it was, standing out on this Tudor-infested street like a Brooks Brothers oxford in Trent’s closet. She hadn’t thought much of it the last time she’d been here, but now she understood the need for all the hedges and elms. Lydia Neff’s way of avoiding guilt by association.

  Brenna moved past the
Neffs’ “For Sale” sign and up the path between the hedges. She’d never been this close to the Neff house. All she’d ever done was stake it out from across the road and up, and so this was all a new experience—no memories attached. The surprise of it kept unfolding.

  Envisioning this visit, for instance, she’d never anticipated the smell of wet grass. She’d never expected the paint to look so fresh. She’d never expected the outdoor lights to be working, let alone on, nor had she expected a thick row of mums to be flourishing under the first floor windows. The word “abandoned” had conjured images of neglect, yet this home was anything but neglected. It was protected. Coddled.

  And like the other houses on this street, unchanged. It was still the same pale yellow, with the same deep red roof and those cuckoo-clock shutters, red and white pansies spilling out of the window boxes, just like ten years ago.

  She started to head around back, when she noticed something glinting out of the shadows between the far end of the house and trees bordering the driveway.

  The closer Brenna got to it, the better she could make it out, and her heart began to pound. Explanations spilled into her head. Maybe someone recently left it here—kids daring each other to sneak onto the property, the child of the Realtor or maybe a prospective buyer . . .

  That all felt like a plausible, if a sort of sick coincidence. But when she got close enough to put her hand on it, the skin pricked up on the backs of her shoulders.

  It was a child’s bicycle with the Strawberry Shortcake logo on the wheels, training wheels still attached. This wasn’t just left here, Brenna thought, setting a new bar for stating the obvious. The bike’s entire body was caked in rust. A spiderweb glistened across the handlebars.

  And then there was the seat. On it, the name “IRIS” had been scratched, in the careful, rounded scrawl of a very young girl.

  Brenna made her way around the house, where she was greeted by a sudden cold mist; timed sprinkler system. She hurried through the lawn and up to the back door, shaking the water out of her hair, all the while thinking about that bike . . . A rotting thing, hiding in the shadows of this coddled house. Over the phone, Nelson Wentz had told Brenna that after Lydia left town, she’d placed her home on the market fully furnished. She wanted to leave it all behind, Brenna had thought. All the furniture, all the memories . . .

  But Iris’s bike, standing in that spot like it hadn’t moved in years . . . That was something different. Was it a provision of Lydia’s? Sell the house, do what you want with the furniture, but the bike stays. Maybe Lydia saw the bicycle as something for Iris to grab on to, should she ever come back alive. Something to tell Iris that her mother might have left, yes, but here, Iris, look at this. Kick the training wheels, run your hand over the seat, feel the imprint of your six-year-old signature. Here is your yellow ribbon, Iris. Here is your proof that you’re still missed, still loved, still my child, always my child . . .

  Or again, maybe Brenna was projecting. She had a habit of attaching such deep meaning to inanimate objects when the truth was, sometimes a cigar was just a cigar—and the same could be said for swing sets and bikes. Things got left outside for years because they’d been forgotten—not remembered.

  A sprinkler caught Brenna in the back of the legs. She moved closer to the window and peered in. The house was dark, but when Brenna pressed her face to it, she could make out a wooden kitchen table, a straight-backed chair at either end, a tall coat stand, and a dry sink, stacked with plates. Fully furnished, all right.

  Brenna stepped back. To the right of the door was the alarm system, its red light glowing over the keypad. She got her penlight out of her purse and shone it on the numbers. Odds were, the Neffs’ alarm system was as unchanged as the rest of the house. And if that was the case . . . Well, most people used significant dates when coming up with combinations, so it was worth a try.

  She would go back to the day she met Lydia Neff.

  Brenna closed her eyes and took a few breaths. She shut out the crickets’ chirping, the whisper of the breeze through the trees behind her. She focused her whole mind on the swish of the sprinklers, because it was water that was important to the memory, the controlled splatter of a fountain.

  The date came to Brenna first—October 23, 1998. Soon after, she felt the air start to chill, for, as she recalled, the two-week-long heat spell had broken on October 22. Instead of the cotton skirt she was wearing, Brenna could feel her old black jeans hugging her legs, the tug of Jim’s hooded Knicks sweatshirt, which she’d put on that morning for comfort and to cover the bruises on her neck.

  Next, Brenna could taste the bottom-of-the-pot coffee she’d forced down before leaving her house. Her mind ticked off that morning’s events: kissing Jim good-bye as he left for work, dropping Maya off at day care, taking the subway to a new car rental place—a Budget on Lexington and Forty-third; accepting a dark blue Chrysler LeBaron from a clerk named Cindy with a distractingly shiny nose; Cindy warning her that the previous renter had been a smoker and giggling before and after the word—as if “smoker” were some sort of euphemism.

  Then she was behind the wheel and heading up Fourteenth Street to the West Side Highway and over the Major Deegan bridge and the Cross County Expressway, all the while trying to ignore the stale ash-stink in the car, how it brought out her headache, how it crept into her skin and made the damage from last night . . . the ache in her face and stomach, the cuts on her knuckles, the bruised flesh about her jaw and shoulders . . . how that smell somehow caused all that pain to come alive again, to blossom . . .

  The freshness of the hurt makes her nervous—as if she’d managed to cast a disappearing spell on the wounds, but only for this morning, and now it’s wearing off. Brenna checks the side of her face in the rearview. The jaw’s a little swollen, but the bruise is still hidden under all the makeup she put on at 5 A.M., before going back to sleep.

  Thank God.

  Jim didn’t notice the bruises this morning, but how long is that going to last? He’s a journalist—a good one. How long before he figures out that last night, Brenna got chased ten blocks by a cheating husband after he caught her taking his picture, that the husband had yanked her into an alley, thrown her against a brick wall, grabbed her by the neck, punched her in the stomach? How long before he sees the cuts on her knuckles and figures out that instead of giving up her camera, instead of running, Brenna had fought back, hard? How long before he puts two and two together and it hits him that last night, his wife broke the one promise he’d ever asked her to make? “Stop.” Brenna said the word out loud, followed by the first three lines of the Pledge of Allegiance. She needed to remember one moment, not the whole day. Why did her memory work this way? Why was Brenna’s own mind so completely beyond her control?

  She jammed her eyes shut. The fountain. The goddamn fountain at the goddamn Waterside Condominiums complex. Late morning. October 23, 1998. That. Just that . . .

  The Waterside complex isn’t as big as she’d thought it would be. Right next to the visitors’ parking lot is the club area, with fenced-in tennis courts, meeting house, pool, gym, and then a dozen or so evenly spaced condos on either side of a wide empty road that stretches out to the west, overlooking the Hudson River, all of them so new you can practically still smell the paint.

  Brenna gets out of the car. Her muscles ache when she stands, and the cuts on her hands sting from the cold.

  She likes it here, though. She likes the quiet, the calm. No wonder Lydia Neff comes here every morning to “meditate.” Brenna had thought it so strange when Lydia’s neighbor told her that. Meditation among the mini-mansions. But now she gets it.

  I’d do the same.

  Brenna hears a distant lawnmower, then a staticky sound. Running water. The fountain. She moves toward the sound—past the club area to a marble sign that reads “Garden” in gold letters. It marks a path, running through a row of maple trees shading dwarfish, just-planted bushes.

  Brenna heads up the path. She follows
it until it widens into a circle, bordered by trimmed-down rose bushes, potted ficus, and Asian maples.

  At the center of the circle is the fountain—made of a smooth white stone that makes Brenna think of sculptures and then, for the briefest moment, of her mother, sculpting.

  Four wrought-iron benches stand evenly around the fountain. Everything so perfectly placed. So balanced, except . . .

  A slender, black-haired woman sits alone on the farthest of the benches, her head down. She wears a long black coat. Her hands are folded in her lap.

  Brenna moves closer.

  On the back of the woman’s right wrist is a tattoo: a dragonfly with a red body and blue and green wings.

  When she looks up, Brenna recognizes the high cheekbones, the dark eyes, the down-turned mouth, laugh lines like faint parentheses . . . She recognizes Lydia Neff’s face from an interview she saw on Good Morning New York, three days after Iris’s disappearance. And for a moment, Brenna has the strangest feeling, an almost starstruck feeling, and the question she’s planned to ask this woman, the one she’s rehearsed in her head and used on half a dozen other people, the one about Iris getting into a blue car, couched in the explanation that Brenna was an investigator, helping out with one small part of the case . . . those carefully organized sentences crumble and scatter, and instead Brenna hears herself say, “I know how you feel.”

  Lydia stares at her.

  Brenna clears her throat. She looks into the black eyes. “My sister got into a car. The car drove away. I didn’t know who was driving that car, or why she got in, but it drove away, and she was gone. This person I woke up to every morning, who knew most all my secrets—this person who was such a part of my life that her presence in it was . . . It was like . . .” Brenna’s gaze moves to the fountain—water hitting pale, sculptors’ stone. And then back to Lydia’s pale face. “It was like breathing.”