The Things We Wish Were True

by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

  That day felt like a lifetime ago. She’d been a different person then, still believing she could hide the truth forever, and run from it if she had to. She thought of Zell and Cailey, of Jencey and Lance. Not one of them who’d gathered around that crying girl as the ambulance wailed its way out of the pool parking lot were the same people they were then.

  She walked slowly toward the door and took a deep breath before raising her hand to knock, tempted in that second to turn around. She thought about what Lance had told her about Ty, how Zell was too ashamed to show her face. She felt a kinship with the older woman. She exhaled and knocked anyway. Rigby watched with a curious look.

  It was Cailey who opened the door, her eyes widening when she saw who was there. She peered past Bryte. “Is Christopher with you?” She knelt down and petted Rigby.

  Bryte smiled and shook her head. “No, he’s at home in bed. But I’ll bring him by another time.”

  Cailey gave a despondent shrug and said, “I’ll be gone by then.” She dropped her hand from Rigby’s head.

  “Well, you’ll still be in the neighborhood.” Bryte gave her a smile that she hoped looked encouraging. She looked past Cailey to see if she could spot Zell.

  Cailey noticed her looking and waved her in. Rigby trotted on in with no hesitation, partly because the house smelled so delicious, Bryte guessed. “I’ll go get Zell.” Bryte watched the girl disappear up the steps, her shoulders stooped and her head down. Bryte took a seat at the kitchen table to wait, wondering idly as she did why Cailey didn’t seem happy about going home. Most children, she would guess, would want to go back home. She’d often wondered as Cailey’s brief stay stretched into a long one why it had been that way. But looking around at Zell’s home, she understood better why she wouldn’t want to leave. Rigby flopped at her feet and closed his eyes.

  She heard the uneven gait of Zell limping into the room. Zell paused as their eyes met, then proceeded to the table. She pulled out the chair across from Bryte and sat down.

  Cailey tromped loudly into the kitchen and retrieved a mason jar from underneath the sink. She held it aloft. “I’m going outside to catch lightning bugs with Lilah and Alec,” she informed Zell. She hustled out the door without waiting for the OK from Zell. The two of them watched her go, grateful, Bryte thought, for the distraction.

  “So she’s really going home?” Bryte asked.

  Zell nodded, looking bereft. “Tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry for interrupting your last night together,” Bryte said.

  Zell waved her words away. “I cooked her favorite meal. Later we’re going to watch a movie, stay up late.” Zell shrugged. “To be honest, I’m glad for the distraction. It was feeling a little maudlin around here.” Her grin was just a flash before she narrowed her eyes at Bryte. “So what can I do for you?”

  “I was just walking Rigby and saw your lights on and . . . I wanted to say that I’ve missed seeing you up at the pool. And . . . I hope everything’s OK.”

  “It will be,” Zell said. She folded her hands and studied Bryte. “It always is.”

  “You really believe that?” Bryte asked, hearing the waver in her voice.

  “I do. You don’t?”

  “Not tonight,” Bryte said. The two women looked at each other, an understanding passing between them.

  “I’m all ears,” Zell said, then stood up. “But first I’m going to pour us some wine. And you better start talking.” Bryte cleared her throat and began her story, watching her neighbor stump over to the refrigerator to get the wine. She began to speak, letting her words flow like the golden liquid that poured into the glasses, words that had been bottled up for far too long.

  CAILEY

  I stood outside with the mason jar in my hand and the lightning bugs flying around, uncaught. For a while I just watched them zing past me, their little bellies glowing as they gathered in the cluster of trees toward the back of Zell’s yard. From where I stood, I could see inside Zell’s house, right into her kitchen. Zell was talking to Christopher’s mom at the kitchen table. But they didn’t see me. They were drinking wine and looked really serious, nodding a lot, their mouths in straight lines across their faces. I knew better than to go back in and interrupt them.

  I looked over at the house next door. Lilah and Alec weren’t home. Ever since their mom showed back up, they were always off doing stuff with her. Zell told me to give them time, but I didn’t have time. Everyone said I’d still be in the neighborhood and nothing had to change, but I knew that sometimes things just changed and there was nothing you could do to stop it from happening. That was what the whole summer had been about if you thought about it. All around us things had changed, and changed again.

  Since there was nothing better to do, I walked toward the front yard just to see something other than lightning bugs. At least in the front yard I could sit in my favorite spot by the pond and watch cars going by, when a car did come by. In this neighborhood it wasn’t often that even happened. I put the empty mason jar on the grass and rested my chin on my knees, listening to the sounds of the nighttime all around. I tried to look up at the moon, but it was covered up by clouds.

  Mr. Doyle’s house was right in front of me, but I couldn’t look at it. Since the kiss had happened, I’d thought of little else besides his tongue filling my mouth, about to choke me to death, his coffee breath nearly making me gag. He’d told me not to tell anyone what happened, and I didn’t intend to. It was too embarrassing, and there was no one to tell anyway. Zell would overreact, and my mom didn’t need anything else to deal with. Sometimes I thought of warning Lilah not to ever go to his house, but I had a feeling Mr. Doyle wouldn’t mess with her because he’d be afraid of her dad finding out and kicking his butt.

  I watched his house and thought of his mother dead in the ground, and the pond he was building even though she’d never see it now. I thought of how we’d worked to finish his pond and the curtain I saw move, how that nagged at me almost as much as the kiss, though I couldn’t say why. No matter how much I told myself it was just my mind playing tricks on me, the heat getting to me, I kept seeing the curtain move and the lock on the basement door—one after the other, like a movie playing in my mind on repeat.

  Sitting there thinking about it all, I got an idea. His car wasn’t in the driveway, and I knew he’d gone over to play poker at a friend’s house because I heard him talk to him on his cell phone when we were working on the pond. I’d seen him whistle his way to the car hours earlier, hating him with all the hate in me. The lights were out except for a faint blue glow coming from Jesse’s room. That meant he was playing one of his video games so he would be distracted. If I hurried, I could do some spying before he came back.

  Before I knew it, I was up on my feet and heading toward the house, feeling a bravery I’d never felt in the light of day. I crept closer and closer, knowing no one could see me. I know a lot of folks are afraid of the dark, but I learned something important and true that night: sometimes darkness can work to your advantage.

  I stood on his patio just looking at the locked sliding glass door I couldn’t possibly get into, wondering what had made that curtain move and whether I’d be brave enough to go in there if I could figure out a way to get in. I had no key and no idea how to pick the lock. There was a small rectangular window that led into the basement, but there was no way I was going to fit through it. I looked around for another way to get in, but saw nothing. My body felt cold and hot all at once, my heart had moved into my throat, and I thought about hightailing it back to Zell’s. I could run away and not look back. I could leave in the morning and pretend that I’d never gotten this close. I could let whatever was weird about Mr. Doyle’s house stay weird and spend the rest of my life trying to forget what he did.

  I thought of the way he looked at me after he kissed me, how he gave me that smile at the same time his eyes went flat in his head, like his mouth and eyes weren’t connected to the same brain. And I got so angry I wanted to hit him,
to pound my fists into him until it hurt. I spied my reflection in that glass door, saw my puny little self that couldn’t hurt a grown man no matter how much I wanted to. Then I remembered the river rocks we’d used to make the border of the pond. And I got an idea.

  If I got in trouble, well, what did I have to lose? I would only have to deal with the fallout for so long before I went home. Zell didn’t like Mr. Doyle anyway. I smiled and walked over to pick up the biggest, heaviest rock I could find. I lugged it over to stand in front of the sliding glass door again, watching the reflection in the glass, someone I wasn’t sure I knew anymore. The rock was so heavy I had to hold it like when I used to take granny shots at the basketball goal in gym class. I kept my eye on the glass door and got ready to take a granny shot of a different sort. I was about to let the rock fly when I heard a car on the street. The engine sounded like it was slowing down, maybe even fixing to turn in to Mr. Doyle’s driveway.

  I laid the rock down and rushed over to peer around the side of the house. I watched as a big SUV pulled up across the street in front of Alec and Lilah’s house. I could see that it was Jencey, idling there at the curb just staring at the house. The windows were rolled down, and I could hear her radio playing some sad love song. She kept on sitting there without noticing me at all, so I went back to what I was there to do, hefting the rock back into position, my eyes once again leveled at the intended target.

  I imagined how loud the glass would sound as it shattered, the mess it would make. I feared Jesse running out and catching me, Mr. Doyle coming home to find me before I could get away. I tried not to think about what might be behind that curtain—maybe it would be something I didn’t want to let loose. But I couldn’t let any of that stop me. I was there to do something, and though I didn’t really understand it, I had to see it through.

  As I went to raise my arms, it felt as if another set of arms came underneath mine, making me ten times stronger and ten times braver than I’d ever been. I looked at the glass, and with every ounce of strength I had, I hurled the rock into the window, these mysterious arms helping it go faster and harder than I ever could’ve on my own. I covered my ears as the sound of breaking glass drowned out the chorus of crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs I’d just been listening to over in Zell’s yard.

  When the noise died out, I took in the scene I’d created, my heart going a mile a minute. The glass scattered across the patio looked for all the world like a million diamonds shining in the moonlight. It took my breath away. But not nearly as much as the face that appeared in the hole the rock had made. It was a face I’d seen about a hundred times, the face that had been on TV and posters and billboards nearly everywhere we’d gone that summer. “Have you seen me?” the posters asked.

  And now I had.

  JENCEY

  Jencey hadn’t meant to stay outside Lance’s house as long as she had. She’d intended to just drive by, to see if his car was in the driveway. The irony wasn’t lost on her: the stalked somehow becoming the stalker. But the music on the radio had been perfect, one song lapsing into the next, the night air like a caress on her bare arms through the open window. Her parents had taken the girls out to a movie, and she had nowhere else to be. She’d stopped frequenting the hideout when Lance came into her life.

  It had been a normal night in the neighborhood, one like any other, except on this night she’d given in to the urge to venture over to the last place she’d been truly happy in a long time. She didn’t blame Debra for returning; she just wished she’d come back sooner, preferably before she’d had the chance to fall in love with the woman’s husband. She wondered if this summer had just been a step out of time, if Sycamore Glen had simply been their own version of Camelot. She thought of Lance’s stupid joke about being named after Lancelot, how she’d believed him for a moment, how gullible she’d been. She pounded her palm into the steering wheel a few times. She’d been so stupid.

  She thought she heard something—a disturbance of some sort—and turned down the radio to listen closer. She needed to get out of there and was about to pull away when the sound of four feet thundering across the road stopped her. She looked toward the noise to see two girls running as fast as their little feet could carry them. Curious, she emerged from her car. “Girls?” she called out, looking back to see where they’d come from. Someone came out of Mr. Doyle’s house, a dark figure on the porch. Danger crackled in the air; Jencey started to follow the girls up the driveway. They disappeared into Zell’s house, and she looked back to see that the figure was gone.

  Lance’s car pulled into his driveway, and she stepped into the shadows, hiding uselessly. She knew he’d seen her car parked in front of his house, but the last thing she wanted to do was face him. She didn’t want to see the happy, reunited family emerge from the car. She turned away and cursed herself for ending up here in this place she no longer belonged. She would take the job in Virginia. She would start over . . . again. She heard three car doors slam and looked over, waiting for the sound of the fourth door. But only three people stood in the driveway, their eyes turned toward Zell’s house. They didn’t see Jencey because they were looking at Zell on her stoop, yelling for them to come and help.

  ZELL

  When Cailey came bursting through the back door, she wasn’t alone. Zell looked up from her conversation with Bryte, her mind struggling to process what was happening. She’d been so wrapped up in Bryte’s story she’d—and she was ashamed of this—forgotten all about the girl in her care. Now there were two girls in her kitchen, one of them as familiar as her own reflection, the other vaguely so. She rose from her chair and gripped the table, blinking at them, her mouth working to find words as a million questions came to mind. She was trying to place the dirty, disheveled child with Cailey. She’d seen her somewhere before.

  The child spoke, her breathing heavy, her eyes confused and darting. “I’m . . . I’m Hannah.” She paused. “Sumner. I’ve been kept in that house for”—she looked to Cailey, who nodded—“ninety-four days.” She turned and pointed at James’s house, her hand quivering as she lifted it. Zell took in the snarled, matted hair, the hollowed-out eyes, the skinny frame underneath a dirty man’s undershirt. Blood dripped from a gash in her arm. Improbably, her nails were painted a garish purple that stood out against her pale, pale skin.

  Cailey rushed forward and grabbed Zell’s phone from the charger, thrusting it into her hand. “Call the police, Zell!” she hollered. “Call them now before he comes over here!” Next door a car pulled up in the driveway, scaring them all half to death. Bryte leaped up, tugged the girls farther into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind them, twisting the lock. She turned to Zell, panic on her face, the story she’d been telling all but forgotten. There were some things more important than the mess of their own lives.

  Zell looked at the house next door, as had been her habit for so long. She saw Lance and his two children standing there, but not Debra. She walked over and unlocked the door, stuck her head out, and waved Lance over. “Hurry!” she yelled. “We need your help!” Then she dialed 911, amazed at how steady her fingers were as she pressed the numbers.

  When Zell spotted Lance in the yard after Cailey and Hannah went whizzing away in the ambulance, she figured she should be a few minutes late getting over to the hospital. It’d be best to let Cailey’s mom be the first one to arrive, leaving her with a good time to speak to Lance. She walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to her, his eyes still wide with shock. “Thank you,” she said. “For your help in there.”

  Lance shrugged. “I don’t know what I did. You were the hero.”

  “No, Cailey’s the hero.”

  He nodded. “That she is.” His eyes strayed back to the scene across the street. “I asked Debra to leave,” he said, addressing Debra’s absence without provocation. “I tried to make it work, but there was just something . . .” He waved his hand in the air, dismissing it.

  “What do you mean? There was something?
” she pressed, easing the conversation in the direction she needed it to go.

  He gave a little laugh. “Nothing. It’s not worth going into.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe it is.”

  Now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Like how?”

  She crossed her arms. “Why’d she tell you she left?”

  He hung his head, ashamed. “She said that I wasn’t supportive. That she lost all this weight and I didn’t appreciate it. That she was depressed and I didn’t even notice. She said I did emotional damage, and I’m sure I did. She had to go away to work out her feelings about it all, to decide if she wanted to continue in the marriage.”

  He was a good guy—probably one of the best—and that bitch had convinced him he’d done this. She wanted to wring Debra’s neck. Zell shook her head. “She was lying.”

  His eyes widened, telling her she should press on. She was eager to be done with her confession, to finally get off her chest the weight she’d been carrying for far too long. “Well, you know she and I became running partners.” He nodded. “And we ended up becoming . . .” She weighed the next word before saying it. “Friends.” She took a deep breath and noticed he’d turned his face away again, watching the house across the street as it became a crime scene.

  “She started telling me things, and mostly because she knew I was right next door and would see him coming and going, she told me when she started having an affair. At first I was just looking out for them. And then I just . . . started watching them. Together.” His neck jerked as he whipped his head back in her direction. “I’m not proud of it.” She made herself meet his eyes when all she wanted to do was look at the ground.