Envy

chapter 23

THE EXCUSE FOR REVISITING THE BERKLEY HOUSE was the hideous scarf that Taylor had purposely left behind. With her sister off somewhere with Colton, Taylor took it upon herself to do what needed to be done. First, she stopped by the Timberline, but its owner wasn’t there. She saw Katelyn’s mother in her office behind the hostess station, looking grim as she typed on the keyboard of the old CRT that filled half of her tiny desk. Since Taylor didn’t want to talk to her, anyway, she quietly departed for their home next door.

Rain had left the remnants of snow on the sidewalk between the restaurant and house number 23 like a gray Slurpee. With each soggy step, Taylor wished she’d sprayed her lavender Uggs with more water repellent when her mother had suggested it. Hayley did. Hayley always did the practical thing. Taylor could feel the cold wetness pick at the tips of her toes, the chill working its way up her legs and the rest of her body.

Harper Berkley answered the door. His face was ashen and the stubble on his chin suggested that he probably hadn’t shaved in at least a day or two. His eyes were the saddest Taylor had ever seen. Katelyn was always close to her father, in the way that teenage girls often are. It wasn’t because their fathers were so much more wonderful; it was just that mothers always seemed to think that whatever road map they’d taken to get where they were would have been smoother if only they’d listened to their own moms. Of course, no teenage girl really wants to know that her mom had lived a life much like her own—twenty or thirty years ago.

“I’m sorry to bug you, Mr. Berkley,” she said.

“Hi, Taylor.” Harper was one of the few in Port Gamble, outside of her own family, who usually got the twins’ names correct on the first attempt.

“That’s me,” she said, not sure about what more she should say that she hadn’t already. She was sad about what had happened to Katelyn. She was guilty that she hadn’t been “there” for her. Seldom at a loss for words, she was embarrassed after the service when it came time for people to file up and say something nice about the deceased, and she was unable to do so.

“What can I do for you?”

She took a breath. “I left my scarf here the other day. My aunt Jolene made it for me.”

Katelyn’s dad opened the door wider and motioned for Taylor to come inside. “Cold out there,” he said. “Let’s look for it. I don’t know if I’ve seen it.”

He shut the door behind them.

“You’d know it if you had,” Taylor said, with a slight indication in her voice that the scarf might be memorable for the wrong reasons. “My aunt is nice, but the stuff she makes us …”

Harper smiled faintly. “I understand.”

Taylor looked beyond the foyer. The Christmas tree was still up, lights twinkling and casting a strangely cheery glow into the living room of what had to be the most pitiful place in Port Gamble. Through the kitchen doorway, she could see a mountain of dishes piled up everywhere. No sign of that obnoxious grandmother, which was good. Katelyn’s father led her to the hall tree a few steps inside the door, reached over to the top hook, and fished out the scarf, pushing aside a silver and black trench coat. Taylor knew the garment instantly. She hadn’t seen it in a while. It was a Burberry knockoff that Katelyn had bought on eBay. She remembered how Katelyn was showing off her purchase by her locker at Kingston High. She was beaming, but not overly so. After all, it was a knockoff, but a pretty good one.

“Oh, Katie,” Starla Larsen had said as she passed by the show-andtell scene. “Another one of your auction winnings? It is so cute. I love the slimming silhouette on you.”

“Thanks, Starla,” Katelyn said, obviously unaware that her friend had dissed her.

With an LED–bright smile, no less.

Taylor remembered how she had felt when she observed that encounter. Starla was being cruel, needlessly so, and Katelyn just kind of stood there and let her be. Why didn’t she tell her to F-off or something along those lines? Katelyn had it in her to push back. But not then. It was as if Katelyn were some kind of abused child, seeking the approval of a parent who never loved her—trying, but failing, then doing it all over again.

As the memory spun back into her consciousness, Taylor noticed a slip of paper protruding from a pocket of the faux Burberry trench.

She looked over at Katelyn’s dad and gently touched her throat with her fingertips. “Mr. Berkley, I’ve got something stuck in my throat. Can I have a glass of water, please?”

“Of course,” he said, turning in the direction of the cluttered kitchen.

Taylor lingered a half a second and grabbed the paper. It had been wadded, smoothed out, and carefully folded. She didn’t know why, but her heart started to beat faster as she unfolded it. Her eyes widened.

In typed, block letters it said:

“Coming?” Harper called from the kitchen sink.

Without a second of hesitation, Taylor shoved the paper into the pocket of her jacket and secured it decisively with the pull of a zipper.

“No need,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m good. Thanks for the scarf. Take care, Mr. Berkley.”

Taylor didn’t wait for a response. She wanted to get out of there, right then. She twisted the doorknob and hurried outside into the slushy afternoon, her hand touching the pocket holding the note. Some younger kids were throwing wet snowballs in the field next to what had been old stables—before horses ceded their role to automobiles in Port Gamble. The kids’ laughter was wholly at odds with what Taylor was feeling right then.

Fear.

The note was like a heartbeat in her pocket, pulsing, and urging her to get home. Its discovery was huge. It told Taylor that whoever had been talking to Katelyn online had been close enough to her to give her a written, real message.

It wasn’t a long walk to number 19 by any means, but Taylor made it there in record time. She called hello to her father typing in his office and ran upstairs to her sister’s bedroom. Hayley barely looked up. She was immersed in the forensics book she got for Christmas.

“Taylor,” she said, her eyes transfixed to the contents of the page, “did you know forensic science was first used to solve a crime that occurred in 44 BC?”

Taylor knew better than to cut her sister off. Hayley liked to share her little factoids. And there was no sign of Colton, which was kind of a relief. Despite the bombshell in her pocket, a little slack was in order.

“Not since CSI went on the air?” she pondered, sure her sister didn’t hear her.

“You know, when Caesar was stabbed to death by Roman senators, a doctor named Antistius looked at the body and determined who the guilty senators were. Nobody’s sure how, but he did it.”

“Fascinating,” Taylor said, pulling out the slip of paper.

“Yeah, that’s how forensic science got its name. The doctor, medical examiner, or whatever he was, presented his findings in the Roman forum. Forensics is Latin for ‘belonging to the forum.’”

Satisfied that she’d imparted some amazing information, Hayley finally looked up from the book.

“Gotcha. I’ll remember that for Jeopardy,” Taylor said, “but for now let’s deal with something a little more current.” She pushed the note to Hayley.

“What is this?”

“Read it.”

Hayley unfolded the paper and read, her face growing grim and excited at the same time. “Where did you get this?”

“From Katelyn’s trench coat.”

“I liked that coat. She looked great in it.”

“She did look fab. Anyway, you know what the note means—at least, what I think it means?”

Hayley nodded. “Yeah, it means that the person playing games with Katelyn was close by. Close enough to give it to her.”

“It could have been mailed,” Taylor said.

Hayley got up and held the paper toward the window. “It wasn’t mailed,” she concluded, indicating a rectangular smudge of glue. “It was taped to something.”

“Her door?”

Hayley didn’t think so. “No, then anybody could have found it.”

“Like her mom and dad,” Taylor said.

Hayley handed over the paper. “Yeah, them. Maybe it was taped to her locker at school?”

“Feel anything just now?” Taylor asked.

“No, did you?”

Taylor shook her head, carefully folding the paper along its original creases. “Should I sleep on it?”

For most, that particular phrase was a call to mull over a problem. For the Ryan girls, it was more literal. “Sleeping on it” meant just that. One or the other twin would put the paper under her pillow and try to sync her dreams to the document, its writer, and the recipient. Taylor was better at that than Hayley, having discovered it when a note was left by the tooth fairy under her pillow when she was seven.

She didn’t dream about the tooth fairy, of course. Instead, she got the feeling that her parents were behind the dollar traded for the tooth and the note left behind, in teeny, tiny script. She saw her mother squint her brown eyes while writing one minuscule word after another. It was amazing to Taylor that what she’d thought at first was a little note from a faraway land turned out to be a note her mother had written in the kitchen downstairs.

Thank you for your beautiful tooth. It will be the centerpiece of a necklace that I will wear proudly, now and forever.

The Tooth Fairy

Taylor had believed for the longest time that what’d she’d seen and felt was only a funny dream. That changed one morning when she was nine and her mother, dressing for a book launch party, asked her to get her earrings from her jewelry box; Taylor found a little metal pill case. Inside, a cluster of small white teeth occupied most of the space.

Although it confirmed there was absolutely no tooth fairy, it gave crystal-clear proof of two things: there was magic in their mother’s love and, as far as her girls could tell, Valerie Ryan had unlocked a pathway to information that was not of this earth.

IF THERE WAS ANY “SPECIALNESS” IN THE FAMILY, an understanding of it was only courted once. Just after their first birthday, Taylor and Hayley were studied by University of Washington linguistics researchers documenting early talkers. The twins had started talking in full sentences at ten months, and Kevin, never missing a chance to make a connection with someone who might be an asset later, answered an ad and submitted a video clip of the girls. Unlike some of his other endeavors, it worked. Sort of. A research assistant named Savannah Osteen was assigned to the Ryans, and she came to Port Gamble to tape them for a four-hour period a few weeks later.

Naturally, Kevin had been particularly proud of the girls’ unusual verbal skills. Whereas most kids, months older, only pointed and called out one word for whatever it was they desired, Hayley and Taylor actually strung words together in a completely coherent fashion. No “Kitty!” for them; rather, it was, “I want to play with Kitty!”

Other times they called out phrases that made no sense to anyone but them.

That was at ten months.

And while it wouldn’t surprise anyone who has studied twins, the Ryan girls did indeed develop a language that was unique to them. Savannah called it the girls’ idioglossia, a language of their own. Neither Valerie nor Kevin quite understood what “levee split poop” meant, for example, but it clearly did signify something very important because Taylor and Hayley called it out many, many times. Outsiders, like the UW observer, considered it to be a descriptive phrase for a bodily function, with poop being the most crucial word. It seemed to be directed at certain people, however, not at the contents of a diaper.

Through the course of the observation period, Savannah captured the action on a videotape recorder mounted on a tripod discreetly stationed in the corner of the living room by a Christmas cactus, which once served as a focal point in Valerie’s father’s office at the prison.

The resulting report submitted by Savannah Osteen to the UW language department focused on the girls’ unique language skills, of course, but it also touched on the intricacies of their relationship:

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Savannah Osteen

TO: UW Language Department Twin A seems slightly more dominant than her sister, Twin B. On at least two occasions Twin A cut off Twin B when she was speaking in the language that they’d developed. In addition, Twin A was somewhat aggressive with the evaluator. A second session will take that into consideration and will mitigate any potential conflict by separating the sisters during the evaluation. Keeping them apart is an optimal protocol for this particular case.

Valerie and Kevin never really got a sense for how the girls performed in relation to other early talkers in the study. A third session was scheduled for about three weeks after the second. Since this one called for the evaluator to join the family for a dinner-time observation, Valerie made her famous planked salmon with balsamic vinegar and shallots. She even sprang for a better bottle of wine—a California Chardonnay—than she would have if she and Kevin were dining alone.

Evaluator Savannah Osteen, however, never showed. She didn’t even call to say she wasn’t able to make it to the taping session. Port Gamble often felt like the ends of the earth for those who lived there or those who had to come and visit, but honestly, everyone knew phone service worked just fine there.

Kevin called the university the following day to see if anything had happened to Savannah, and her advisor indicated in a somewhat curt manner that she was no longer working there.

“She abruptly quit the program,” he said. “Didn’t give us one bit of notice. Maybe we can reschedule?”

Kevin, the crime writer, was suspicious. He was good at that. It came with the territory. “Hope she’s all right. Safe?”

The advisor sighed. “She’s fine. Just undependable.”

“Really? She seemed to enjoy what she was doing,” Kevin said. “She said it was very rewarding, and she thought our daughters could be quite helpful in the study.”

“Changed her mind, I guess. Young people today don’t stick with anything.”

Kevin thanked the man and hung up the phone, a white kitchen wall mount that would stay put for five years before the standards committee of Port Gamble would rule it was not historic and could be removed after the Ryans switched to cell phones. Kevin thought the situation with the UW researcher was a little bizarre and certainly annoying, but ultimately he didn’t mind too much. He’d had second helpings of the salmon the night the observer didn’t show up. He normally hated leftovers. The sole exception was his wife’s planked salmon. Hot or cold, it didn’t matter; it was the best thing he ever ate.

Kevin was still relishing the meal when he took out the trash, which was heavier than usual. As the black Hefty dropped to the bottom of the metal garbage can, he heard the sound of glass-on-glass rattling, echoing in the night.

Curious, he tugged at the drawstring and peered into the bag. It was full of baby food jars—all of the same kind.

ABC pasta in organic tomato sauce.