by Kate Moretti
Lucia never moved.
When the bell finally rang and all the students filed out, Lucia stayed. Bridget followed the group out the door, leaving Lucia there in the classroom, feigning a bathroom break, scrolling distractedly through her phone, just to leave.
Just to get away from that girl.
CHAPTER 6
Alecia, Saturday, April 25, 2015
The breakdown of a marriage happens in phases, almost imperceptibly, Alecia had discovered.
Alecia charged in the house, a bull seeing red, ready for a fight. Ready for the goring. She gave little thought to Gabe, who would witness the whole thing. All this information was ready to burst out of her mouth, her chest full, her stomach roiling. A student? Which student? Alecia’s mind spun with the Rolodex of girls she’d seen at baseball games or in the hallways the few times she’d gone to school events. Cute, bubbly blondes and perky brunettes. Long, tan legs. Smooth, sun-kissed faces. Which student? She didn’t even know their names. Kaylee or Kilee or Brenna. Something New Age and invented.
Instead, the house was empty. She panted in the kitchen, looking for Nate and seeing only the note: Took Gabe to therapy. This will be good for all of us. Relax.
The note was pinned under an ice bucket, a bottle of pinot grigio sweating in the middle, a single stemless glass turned upside down next to it. Alecia would have been gooey at the gesture a week ago. Hell, a few hours ago. Now it just felt suspicious, a deliberate attempt to derail or distract her.
It was a good thing, she realized. She needed to mull this over, decide what to do with everything she’d been told. The idea that a reporter would break the story before she could confront Nate herself left a slick, oily taste in her mouth.
In the bedroom, she sat on the bed, and everything looked different to her. The thin layer of dust on the wooden dressers looked negligent, the fingerprint smudges on the pictures looked grubby. Yesterday she might have called it all lived in. Small piles of clothes that needed to be put away, mended, or dry-cleaned sat on the chaise longue, untouched for months. Nate’s clothes. Hems that needed stitching. Had she neglected him? Where does a person start to deconstruct their life? Is it possible to isolate a single point in time and say here is where I lost him?
Almost three weeks ago, she knew the date exactly, April 2; she’d sat around a long table in the elementary school’s guidance counselor’s office with the special-education director, the guidance counselor, the principal, the reading specialist, and the math specialist. Their names slid around her tongue, familiar but not yet known. Alecia had taken Gabe for testing two weeks prior. They called it kindergarten readiness testing: cognitive, emotional, social, and intellectual assessments. Long days where Gabe became exhausted, retreating into himself to the point of being mute. She’d had to cancel therapy that week, which would set him back. He’d started to control the tics, the stims, the knee slapping and jaw popping, and now they were skipping therapy and it would all come back, but he was just so damn tired. He fell asleep during the car ride home.
During the testing days, Nate would pop in and out with a quick smack of a kiss on Alecia’s forehead. Except for the day of the big meeting, the result meeting, the one where everyone got together and talked about Gabe, like he wasn’t a person. Like they knew everything there was to know about him because he could finally put the red ball in the red box. Alecia sat on the edge of her plastic chair, her nails digging into the curve, ready for a fight. The clock ticked as they waited for Nate.
The school-affiliated psychologist avoided her eyes, picking at her cuticles as the seconds turned into minutes. Alecia grew restless. Gabe was home with the neighbor. Mandy was eighteen, still living with her parents, doing a year at community college. She could handle Gabe, could even sometimes reach him when it seemed like Alecia could not. But even she had her limits.
At six fifteen, the principal kindly asked, “Should we just proceed without your husband, Mrs. Winters?”
“He’s probably held up at the school. You understand,” Alecia offered lamely, and texted Nate one more time to be sure. Still no response. When she had called him an hour before, it had gone straight to voice mail.
The principal cleared his throat at the same moment the psychologist started to talk and everyone laughed nervously.
“We think Gabe would be best served in a special-needs school.”
Alecia had been expecting a buildup, a review of the tests and their outcomes. Analytics, discussion, something. He was only five, he had a full year before he was required to start school. She’d expected them to say things like we have time, we can revisit this next spring. The authoritative finality of the words threw her. They said it like there was no hope for Gabe to “become normal.” They didn’t use those words, they used words like neurotypical and test-in, but it all meant to “become like other kids.” They weren’t the first people to insinuate such a thing: therapists and preschool teachers and social workers had all shunted Gabe along, someone else’s responsibility. Alecia would always feel wild, flinging anger at this: both at the people who wanted to “normalize” Gabe and then, horribly, at Gabe himself for refusing to comply. Just once, she’d wanted him to comply, but he never could, not even for the smallest thing.
Mainstreaming felt right to Alecia because unlike these suited, tired men and women, she knew her son. She’d seen it now that he was in intensive five-day-a-week therapy. His self-awareness was new, in its infancy. She knew what he could do if he was only challenged, even just a little. She also knew the risk. Gabe was big for his age. His meltdowns had grown rarer, but they were mighty and unintentionally violent. She had nightmares about him throwing chairs, hurting kids, getting expelled.
Nate had lobbied hard for special-needs schools in the past. Now he would get his way and he wasn’t even there. Sometimes it seemed like it was Alecia and Gabe against the whole world.
“Mrs. Winters, you should prepare yourself for Gabe’s life. I feel like you might be denying the depth of his issues. Or overestimating him. Both are unfair.” The psychologist rummaged casually in her purse as she spoke, as though for a lipstick. She pushed a shiny black card across the table with a manicured finger. Learning Support Services was lettered on the front. “Do you have support?” Her brows knitted in concern.
Alecia shook her head. Everyone else exchanged glances. “What?” she asked, uncomprehending in the pregnant moment.
“Mrs. Winters.” The reading specialist reached across the table for Alecia’s hand and stopped halfway. “You do realize that Gabe is not likely to graduate a mainstream public high school, right?”
The words were icy knives to her heart. High school was thirteen years away.
“There are lots of options. We have other schools, there is home schooling, and there is an autism school in Scranton,” the psychologist said. Scranton. Close to thirty miles away. She tried to imagine a thirty-mile drive, twice a day with Gabe, his feet kicking relentlessly against the seat in front of him.
Alecia left the meeting, dusk settling over the parking lot, and drove home. She paid Mandy and went through their nightly routine. Bath and bed. Gabe was, for once, calm. Compliant. After all this, he was compliant, finally.
She called Nate and his phone went straight to voice mail. She texted him: Should I call the police? Where are you? You missed Gabe’s kindergarten meeting. No response.
Later, when he crawled into bed next to her, his arm snaking around her waist, she murmured, “Where were you? I’ve been calling you.”
He sighed into her hair, his palm flat against her stomach. “I’ve had a hellish day. A student, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was life and death. I forgot about the meeting.” His voice came in fervent whispers, huffs of air, and when Alecia turned her head, she thought she smelled cigarette smoke.
“I wouldn’t have missed it if it wasn’t urgent.” He massaged the tops of her thigh, kissed the back of her head. “Do you believe me?”
When she didn’t answer
, he asked again. “Do you believe me?”
Now her mind skipped back to that night. The smell of cigarettes on his hands. The roughness of his fingertips across her midsection. The coldness of his sweatshirt, like he’d brought the outside early spring chill in with him.
When she had questioned him about it the next morning, he would only tell her in vague terms a student needed his help. If she pressed him on it, he grew impatient.
“Do you trust me, Alecia?” He had put his hands on his hips, staring her down. Of course she did.
Alecia picked up her phone and looked through her calendar. Highlighted April, right swiped till she found the date, right there: April 2. Kindergarten readiness meeting, 6 p.m.
Her heart pounding, she opened the laptop, opened Nate’s email. She knew his passwords; his commonly used ones anyway. He’d never tried to keep any of it a secret. It took her two tries: Gabe2009. Of course. Nate wasn’t secretive, he wasn’t even very good at subterfuge; any truth was evident on his face, in his voice. Nothing about any of this felt true deep down true. When she thought of Nate, she thought of that affable laugh, the way he touched her shoulder when he talked. The way he’d stand, a hand clapped on Coach Berkit’s back as they discussed players, or an arm slung over Bridget’s and Alecia’s shoulders while they made dinner in Alecia’s kitchen. My two girls now, he’d said. They’d laughed.
A student?
Emails from Coach Berkit, another teacher she didn’t really know; one from Tripp Harris; two Dick’s Sporting Goods flyers. One from Bridget on April 2. Alecia hesitated, then double clicked.
Hey, found a sweatshirt of H’s, want it? It’s UNC. Let me know, I’ll bring it in. PS. Tried wasabi chips, are you nuts?
Alecia almost laughed. Emails about potato chips and here she was clicking through them, quick and suspicious, pounding heart. She closed the window and navigated to their shared bank account. No activity on April 2. She flipped the laptop lid shut and sat for a moment, stumped. She had to know; she could just ask, right? Tell Nate about the reporter, the accusation, the date she couldn’t get out of her mind.
Without thinking, she clicked open the computer again and typed an address in the navigation bar. She opened her wallet and typed in all sixteen digits off their single credit card, mostly maxed out. Nate had argued for an additional credit card: we have no safety net at all, Alecia. She’d been firm. They lived so close to the line every month, she had to be careful when she paid specific bills. She remembers what it was like when they were dinks. They’d laughed about it then: dual income, no kids. Swank restaurants in the city, bar tabs she signed her name to, and the only reason she looked at the total was to drunkenly calculate a decent tip. She’d kill for that freedom again.
She never looked at the credit card balance, just paid her two hundred bucks a month, which may or may not have been covering the minimum. It was like gas, right? Why did anyone ever look at the price of gas? You needed your car, you’d put gas in it no matter the price. Her eyes scanned the statement, skipping over the total. Gabe needed his therapy, every blessed one. Knowing the cost would only keep her awake at night.
She scrolled through the charges in April, her finger tracing down the screen: Whispering Pines (horse therapy), The Balance Center (Gabe’s yoga), A&P (sadly, charged groceries, not an uncommon occurrence, but one Alecia avoided dwelling on). Deannie’s MH, $125. Her finger paused there. She searched her memory for a therapy or maybe a lunch at someplace called Deannie’s.
In another tab, she opened Google and typed it in and clicked enter. When she scanned the results, she knew she’d found it and tugged on the ends of her hair, the roots aching.
Deannie’s Motel Honesdale.
I saw a blackbird yesterday, right on the sidewalk in front of the house, stuck between the concrete and the weeds. He was dead, and weirdly perfect, but they always are. I always know that something bad will happen on the day I see one. And then you came home, you see?
You’re so stupid, ugly, skinny. I tend to believe I’m the only one afraid of you. Who would be? You think smack makes you do bad things, but really, you’re just a bad person. If I said that, you’d kill me. I really think that, that someday you’ll kill me. Jimmy would hate what you’ve become. I’m almost done with you, only a few more months.
CHAPTER 7
Bridget, April 2, 2015: Three weeks before the birds fell
Lord, Bridget missed Georgia. April already and just still so damn cold, some nights you could hardly inhale, your lungs seemed to freeze midbreath.
Bridget sat at her desk long after the final bell, distracted, thinking about her mama. She’d spent the week south, in Colquitt, Georgia. They’d had off Monday and Tuesday, some slim semblance of a spring break, although to Bridget that had always coincided with Easter. She guessed they didn’t do that anymore, separation of church and school and what have you.
So she’d taken a personal day and made it a five-day weekend and flown south, like a snowbird. Down to Mama, her mobile home propped up on a poured foundation on thirty acres of land. Aunt Nadine in a unit behind Mama, on the same plot, the path between their homes worn thin from the sisters traversing the lawn in the dark. Bridget sat outside with them on the nights that it spiked up into the seventies, legs thrown over lawn chairs while they played canasta at a card table on the in-between dusty grass. Aunt Nadine surrounded the table with buckets of citronella candles to keep the skeeters away, and they sang loud as anything because who cared, they hadn’t any neighbors. The air was sticky wet, even in winter, the swamp behind the trailer vaporizing into the air and hanging there like a thick fog.
She hadn’t seen Mama since Christmas, when she’d barely managed to get the tree up, a spindly teetering thing, propped up in the corner, strung with big colorful outdoor lights and only a handful of ornaments. When Bridget had asked her about it, Mama only muttered and waved her hand around in a circle, it’s good enough, bebe. Mama wasn’t Cajun French, but she claimed she spent a summer on the bayou as a teenager. With Mama it was hard to tell what was real and what only existed in her mind.
Mama’s crazy seemed to keep getting a little crazier and Nadine had gotten a little more watchful, but Mama took her pills and Nadine set limits on her wine and it all seemed to be working. Nadine, the spinster, took care of Mama, the widow. Sometimes Bridget couldn’t believe she’d followed in her Mama’s footsteps, a widow at thirty-seven. Sometimes she wondered when Mama’s crazy would get her, too.
Bridget left as tired as she’d come, but for drastically different reasons.
She’d gotten so lost in her own brain, thinking that it had been too long since she’d been down there, that she needed to make more time, more often. Thinking about how Nadine would cope when Mama went first, which she surely would, lifelong bipolar medication eating away at her liver like a Georgia swamp parasite.
“Mrs. Peterson?” Taylor Lawson stood in Bridget’s doorway, her messenger bag slung across her body, her shoulders hunched forward with the weight of it.
“Hi, Taylor,” Bridget said with a smile, but she was tired. She wanted to go home to her sandwich and her tea and Sunny the cat.
“Um, can I talk to you?”
“Sure.” A dark green plastic and metal chair was pushed against the whiteboard and she pulled it to her desk with her foot. Bridget motioned for her to sit. “What’s up?”
“I’m worried about Lucia.” She pushed her bangs away from her face with her hand. “I know you don’t like her.”
“That’s not true, Taylor. I don’t dislike her. I think . . .” Bridget paused, because her feelings seemed irrelevant, but then also because Taylor was Lucia’s unlikely best friend, inasmuch as Lucia could have a friend. Taylor, dark and petite, friendly but a bit of a follower, trailed by Lucia like a pet. She gave Lucia what little social credibility she had, got the duo invited to parties and events. People mostly liked Taylor and tolerated Lucia’s strangeness. Or were at least fascinated by it, until she became some
kind of oddball fetish: where’s the weirdo? Then later: where’s the witch?
Bridget thought it odd, these mixing of classes. When she was in school, the juniors and seniors stuck to their own like cattle in a chute. These days, everyone was all mixed up in some kind of bubblegum soup.
But Lucia and Taylor had been added to the right table in the cafeteria, between Andrew Evans—King Evans—and Porter Max, vying for the attention of Riana Yardley. Josh Tempest, with his arms thrown around Kelsey Minnow, protective and needful, his face in her hair while she chewed iceberg lettuce from between two fingers. Lucia perched on the end, her legs thrown to the side, as though ready to bolt at any time. She rarely saw them talk to her. If Bridget had to guess, she’d wager most kids were afraid of her.
“I think Lucia needs attention. Everyone is looking for the same thing, to feel loved. Lucia’s no different,” Bridget finally said.
“I just don’t know who else to talk to. It’s weird, because she’s eighteen.”
“What’s weird?”
“Lucia said she ran away. She said she’s been living at the old paper mill.” Taylor ran her fingernail along a ridge in the wood top of the desk. Bridget felt her heart speed up. Oanoke Paper stood on the edge of town right before a thick impenetrable woods, part of the twenty-two thousand square acres of preserved game lands in northern Pennsylvania. While some well-traveled areas contained winding but clear trails, most of the forest was left untamed, dense and disorienting.
