Unloved, a love story

by Katy Regnery

  “Of course. But first, Miss Cadogan, we really need to hear your story,” says Marty, sitting back down at the desk. “Do you think you could just tell me what happened out there?”

  I take a deep breath and look up. “And then I can go see them?”

  “After we get your statement, I’ll drive you over there myself.” He clicks the top of a pen and positions it over a notepad. “Let’s go back to that day. You were hikin’ the AT . . .”

  “Not the AT. J-just Katahdin.”

  “Alone.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “With a group, at first. Two girls from Williams. They turned back because of the rain.”

  “But you kept goin’.”

  I gulp, remembering the girls trying to get me to go back with them. At the time, I was determined to keep walking for Jem. And if I hadn’t, I never would have met Cass.

  My broken heart weeps. Will I ever see Cass again?

  “Miss Cadogan? You kept walkin’ . . . and then what?”

  “The rain was coming down hard, and I slipped. I skinned my knee.”

  “Then what? Take your time.”

  “We had . . . we had met a man named Wayne at Roaring Brook. He was . . . aggressive with us. Called us names. He was . . .” You’re just tourists in my dreams. I shake my head. “He was off. We knew he was off from the start. Something wasn’t right about him, and we sensed it. He wanted to hike with us, but we said no and he got angry. And then these guys from . . . from, um . . . um . . .”

  “Bennington College?” asks Marty.

  My neck jerks up, and I search his face. “Yeah. Bennington. How did you . . .?”

  “We’ve talked to them a few times. Them and the girls. They were the last to see you that day.” He grimaces. “You skinned your knee. What happened next?”

  “I saw the lean-to through the rain, so I walked over to it, thinking I could patch up my knee and wait out the storm. But . . . but Wayne . . . Wayne was . . .”

  Well, if it ain’t Grandmaw.

  My heart is racing like crazy.

  “I . . . oh, God . . .” I sob, the events of that terrible day closing in around me.

  “Slow down, now,” says Marty. “Easy. Breathe in.”

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, opening them as I exhale.

  “That’s right,” says Marty. “Now back to this . . . Wayne.”

  “Yes. Wayne. He drank some . . . um, some tea and alcohol. S-scotch, I think. He was still angry that we didn’t let him walk with us. He threw me against th-the wall, and . . . and . . .”

  “And he stabbed you.”

  My hand has moved to my hip, and I slide up my shirt a little, looking down at two of the pink scars that are still healing. “Six times.”

  “All we ever found was your backpack. Nothin’ else,” says Marty. “How’d you fight him off?”

  “I didn’t.” I was dying.

  “How’d you get away?” asked Lou, who is standing behind Marty, staring at me intently.

  “I was saved,” I whisper, bowing my head as tears stream down my cheeks.

  “By who?”

  I look up at the officers and gulp over the lump in my throat. “A man named . . . Cassidy Porter.”

  Marty and Lou snap their necks around to face each other so fast, I’m surprised I don’t hear twin cracking sounds.

  “Porter?” confirms Lou, eyeing me like I’ve said something completely crazy.

  I nod. “Cassidy Porter.”

  Marty clears his throat, leaning away from me, his face a mixture of disbelief and confusion. He looks down at his notepad, then back up at me, tapping his pen between his fingers. “Let me be sure I got this straight. You say you were attacked by a guy named Wayne and rescued by a guy called Cassidy Porter.”

  “Yes,” I whisper, looking at Marty’s stunned expression.

  “Miss Cadogan,” says Marty, rubbing his chin before dropping the pen on his notepad and looking back up at me. “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “You can’t be,” he says evenly.

  “I . . . I am. A man named Wayne attacked me. A man named Cass—”

  “Miss Cadogan, Cassidy Porter is dead.”

  With those four words, all the air is sucked out of the room, and I am like a fish on the carpet, flip-flopping like crazy, trying to breathe.

  “Calm down, now. Miss Cadogan. Breathe deep.”

  Marty is pushing the cup of water into my hands, and I raise it to my mouth with a shaking hand, taking a messy sip.

  “What are you talking about?” I rasp, my voice breathy and breaking. “That’s . . . that’s . . . no! No, no, no! I was just with him! Just last night. What do you—”

  “Slow down.” Marty holds a hand up, turning slightly to Lou. “We got a blanket back there? I think she’s in shock.”

  “I’m not in shock! Cassidy Porter is not dead! He’s . . . he’s . . .”

  Marty backs his chair away from the desk and rolls it over to me until we are almost knee to knee. His voice is gentle. “You’ve been through a tough time.”

  “Cassidy Porter isn’t dead,” I sob, circling my thumb and forefinger around the bracelet he gave to me.

  But honestly? I can’t account for the time between falling asleep last night and waking up here. Something could have happened to him. Maybe that’s how I ended up here.

  “He is,” says Marty. “I can say that with one hundred percent certainty.”

  My heart drops like it’s made of lead.

  “This happened last night?” I shake my head as more tears blur my vision. “What happened to him? Oh, my God. Please, no. Please, please, no. I don’t understand!”

  Lou returns with the blanket and puts it around my shoulders. Although I didn’t want it, I pull it around myself. My hands are shaking and my mind is racing.

  “Please . . . tell me.” I beg, looking up at Marty.

  Marty nods, sliding a folder from a mesh basket to his desktop and opening it. His fingers trace neatly typed details, finally stopping at a paragraph midpage. “You were reported missing on June 25. Your parents received a call from an anonymous source who left them a voice message saying you had been injured but you were okay. With no other information, they were understandably concerned. They reported you missing and arrived here on June 26 to look for you.”

  I don’t care about any of this. I need to know what happened to Cass.

  “Cassidy Porter! What happened to Cass?” I sob.

  “Just follow me here, Miss Cadogan,” says Marty. He drops his eyes back to the typed page. “We found a man in the lean-to you’re talking about. He was found dead on the morning of June 20th, reported by a couple of early-morning hikers. He was found on his stomach, and there was a knife through his heart. He’d been dead for about eighteen hours by the time we recovered his body. We found your backpack nearby and your, well, a good concentration of your blood in one corner of the lean-to. What we found was a match to your parents, so we know you were attacked there. But a week of bloodhounds searching the mountain turned up nothing. You were in the wind.”

  “Because Cassidy carried me home on his back.”

  “Cassidy,” Marty mumbles, shaking his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. What I do know is that the dead man didn’t have any ID on him, so we ran a DNA test to see if there were any matches in the system.” He pauses, and I brace myself because I can sense that something terrible is coming. “There was one parental match, with a 99.9 percent certainty. The man who attacked you . . . the dead man you keep callin’ Wayne . . . was born Cassidy Porter, the only son of Paul Isaac Porter.”

  My mind flashes back.

  Paul and Cass. Father-Son Cookout. 1995.

  “You know who he was? Paul Isaac Porter?”

  “Paul,” I say. “Cassidy’s father.”

  “Er, um, yes.” Marty is staring at me like he’s afraid my head might explode. “But he was also—”

  “Wait. So y
ou’re saying . . .” I clear my throat. “You’re saying that Wayne, the man who attacked me . . .” My aching brain is desperately trying to keep up. “You’re saying that Wayne’s real name was Cassidy Porter?”

  Marty nods slowly. “Yes. I am sayin’ that I am positive, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the man who attacked you in a lean-to on June 19, and died in that lean-to on June 19, was born Cassidy Porter. His DNA was a match to Paul Isaac Porter, who only had one son, Cassidy, born at Millinocket General Hospital on Sunday, April 15, 1990.”

  “But . . . that makes no sense! I was saved by a man named Cassidy Porter.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible,” says Marty, flipping through the file until he comes to a DNA test, “unless there are two Cassidy Porters, which feels mighty unlikely. The man who attacked you had a birth record on file. The DNA match was definitive. Father was Paul Isaac Porter.” Marty flips through a few pages in the file and stops at the results of an official DNA test. “And just to be absolutely certain of his identity, we compared the DNA to his only living relative, a great-uncle on his mother’s side named, uh . . . Lou, you remember the uncle’s name . . .?”

  “Name of Bert Cleary,” says Lou, over his shoulder. He’s sitting back at the reception desk, listening to our conversation.

  “Right. Bert Cleary. Lives over in, uh, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Matched up perfect. Rosemary Cleary was his mama; Paul Isaac Porter was his daddy. Just like on his birth certificate. Open-and-shut case. The man who attacked you, who died in that lean-to, was Cassidy Porter.”

  “Why did he call himself Wayne?”

  Marty shrugs. “Maybe an alias? I don’t know, miss.” He pauses, staring at me with narrowed eyes, his voice level but heavy. “Miss Cadogan, have you ever heard of Paul Isaac Porter? I mean, aside from his being Cassidy Porter’s daddy?”

  I shake my head, a sixth sense telling me that I am about to hear something very bad.

  He looks sorry for a minute, then pulls a black-and-white photograph of a man from the back of the folder. He spins it to face me, and I recognize the face immediately as the same man from the photo of Cass and his dad at the father-son cookout. Hair slicked to the side. Heavy black-rimmed glasses. Shirt buttoned all the way to the top.

  A few seconds ago, I wondered if there were two totally different Cassidy Porters who coincidentally lived in this area of Maine—one who attacked me and one who saved me. But now I know that’s not probable, because this man is connected to one by DNA and the other by a photo I’ve seen with my own eyes. It’s all somehow connected, though I haven’t the slightest idea how to unravel it.

  “Miss Cadogan?”

  “I recognize him,” I murmur.

  Marty sighs heavily. “Ain’t no good way to say this, I guess, but that man right there, Paul Isaac Porter, was a convicted serial killer. Killed over a dozen women. Arrested in 1998. Tried and convicted back in 1999. Killed in a prison fight in 2000 while awaiting execution.”

  “You’re . . . you’re saying . . .”

  “Cassidy Porter’s father was a serial killer.”

  My entire motherfucking universe spins out of control as my feeble, overworked, aching mind tries to process what the fuck is going on here, what the actual, ever loving fuck is being said to me.

  Paul Isaac Porter was a convicted serial killer. Killed over a dozen women.

  Cassidy Porter’s father was a serial killer.

  My stomach heaves, surprising us all by emptying its meager contents onto Officer Marty’s shoes. I retch and sputter, my tears falling endlessly as I vomit water and bile onto the police station floor.

  “Christ, Lou! Get the mop! She’s sick!”

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, and a moment later someone puts an ice pack on the back of my neck. A mop appears by my feet, sopping up the mess, and another cup of cold water is shoved into my hands. I drink cautiously to get rid of the taste in my mouth, then take a handful of tissues from Lou to wipe my face.

  When I look up at Lou and Marty, I find them staring down at me with concern.

  “You, uh . . . you okay, now?” asks Lou with a kindly grimace.

  My shoulders are still shaking from the retching and crying. My head is still throbbing, and I can’t begin to process the information I’ve been given. Cassidy’s father was a serial killer. And Cassidy isn’t Cassidy. Then who . . . who . . .

  It’s too much.

  All I want is a hot shower and to fall asleep wrapped up in my mother’s arms.

  “I need my mom,” I sob. “Please.”

  “Yeah. Of course,” says Marty. He turns to Lou, throwing him a set of keys. “Will you bring my car around to the front?” Lou hustles off, and Marty looks at me. “It’ll just be a minute.”

  “Thank you.”

  He sits down across from me again. “To be honest, it wasn’t such a huge surprise that the son of a serial killer would get into some trouble of his own. We heard from the Bennington and Williams kids that Cassidy Porter was harassing hikers that day down at Roaring Brook. We figured he got into it with someone on the AT and ended up falling on his own knife.”

  “No,” I whisper, recalling Cassidy’s retelling of what happened after I blacked out. “He was thrown.”

  “Thrown?”

  I nod slowly. “Cassid—” I look up at Marty and blink twice. “I mean, the man who saved me . . . he . . . he caught my attacker stabbing me and threw him off my body. Wayne, uh, the dead man . . .” I cannot bear to call him Cassidy. “. . . must have landed on his knife.”

  “Hmm. Well, no other prints on the knife but his, so you’re probably right. It’s a closed case now. He attacked you. Fell on his knife. Thrown. Whatever. Ask me, he got what was comin’ to him. Just glad that other fella come along when he did. He’s a hero for saving you.”

  That other fella. A hero.

  Cassidy. My Cass.

  Except he isn’t my Cass. His name might not be Cassidy at all. I have no idea who he is, and I wonder if he even knows who he is.

  I look up at Marty.

  “Who saved me?” I ask in a whisper, more to myself, maybe, than to him.

  Marty shuts the folder on his desk and picks up his pen again, holding it over the notepad for a moment before drawing a large question mark.

  “I think we’ve got a bit of a mystery there. You say that the man who attacked you was called Wayne, and that Cassidy Porter saved you. Only that’s scientifically impossible. I can’t rightly say who saved you, or why in the world he goes by the name of Cassidy Porter.” He shrugs. “Just count your lucky stars he found you when he did.”

  I gulp, staring up at him, letting tears of exhaustion, confusion, and sorrow slide down my face.

  “I guess you have a guardian angel,” he says, giving me a kind smile as Lou returns to tell us that the car is waiting.

  I follow Marty through the station, to the waiting car, letting him open the rear door, and slump into the back seat as I look out the window. More useless tears stream from my eyes.

  I have a beautiful, nameless guardian angel hero whom I love.

  Who left me here.

  Who doesn’t know who he really is.

  Who is as lost to himself as he is to me.

  Brynn

  “Brynn, sweetheart, do you need anything?” my mom asks through the bathroom door.

  She’s hovering.

  Not that I blame her, but I need a little bit of alone time after: 1.) Being abandoned by Cassidy, 2.) My disturbing, illuminating conversation with Officer Marty, and 3.) The intense reunion I just had with my parents.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I’ll be out soon.”

  “Your dad got back with the clothes. He found, uh, some shorts and a T-shirt at the gift shop.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thank you.”

  “Well, sweetheart, take your time. We’ll be right out here. Call out if you need something.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I’ve been soaking in their hotel tub for about
twenty minutes, keeping my bandaged wrist out of the water. The rest of my tired, aching body feels like it could stay in the hot water for days.

  Officer Marty called ahead to the Ferguson Lake Lodge as he drove me over, and my parents were waiting at the front door. I fell into their arms the moment I exited the police car, all of us crying and my mother leaning back again and again to cradle my face in her palms and assure herself that I was here and alive.

  We feared the worst . . . back from the dead . . . what happened?

  I returned the blanket to Officer Marty, who advised, again, that I make a stop at Millinocket General Hospital to have a checkup, but I don’t believe that’s necessary. My stab wounds are healing nicely, and I feel fine. I mean, my body feels fine. My heart is broken. And my mind? My God. My mind can’t stop spinning. I can’t seem to fit all the pieces together on one hand, but on the other, so many of my questions have suddenly been answered.

  No matter who my Cassidy is, I know one thing for certain: he believes that he is Cassidy Porter, the son of convicted serial killer Paul Isaac Porter.

  Perhaps he is a second son of Paul Porter? It’s possible, but it doesn’t feel right. Cassidy was the exact opposite of evil: he was all goodness, through and through. I can’t imagine even a cell of Paul Porter’s evil nature alive in Cass. More likely, I think he might be a second son of Rosemary Cleary Porter, the mother for whom he felt a real, strong, and genuine affection.

  But why would she name two of her sons Cassidy? It doesn’t make any sense.

  What does make sense, suddenly, is the way Cassidy refused to talk about his father, always changing the subject when I tried to mention him. That father-son picture was of my Cassidy standing beside his “father,” a serial killer. No wonder I sensed uneasiness in his posture. Did he know what his father was? My God, he lived for years with a monster. Did he sense it? When did he find out?

  I take a shaking breath, wondering what he has seen in his life, the horror he has possibly known. Because I can’t bear it, I switch gears and put together the pieces of his timeline that were missing.

  He was born in 1990, and the picture at the cookout was taken in 1995, the same year as the portrait of him with his mother and grandfather. The newspaper photo from the Little League game was in 1997, and from the normal, everyday way it referred to his parents, I think it’s safe to assume that Paul Isaac Porter was keeping his crimes under wraps at that point.