I'd Know You Anywhere

37

LIKE THE LOVELORN TEENAGER she never was, Trudy kept returning to Elizabeth Lerner’s neighborhood—the scene of the crime—over and over again. She would get in her car, intent on nothing more than buying a carton of milk or dropping off Terry’s dry cleaning and, next thing she knew, she was crossing the Potomac in a trancelike state. And once a river was crossed…well, everyone knew that saying. She did this one, two, three times, and ended up stuck in horrible traffic jams one, two, three times. On her fourth trip, she surfaced from a long blank spell just in time to apply her brakes and avoid rear-ending the car in front of her.

Then she discovered that she could walk to the local Metro stop and take the train all the way up to Bethesda, changing only once, in downtown D.C. It was a long journey, but the D.C. Metro was reliably neat and orderly, and it wasn’t dangerous to zone out on the subway; all she risked was missing her stop. But she never missed her stop. In sensible walking shoes, ones purchased for a London trip taken in dutiful honor of their thirtieth anniversary, Trudy made her way to Elizabeth Lerner’s house, hoping—for what? A glimpse of her? A confrontation? Could she really walk up to the woman and ask to know why she had not called Trudy? It had been only a week, give or take. But Trudy believed that Elizabeth would have called within the first twenty-four hours if she had intended to respond at all. Why was she ignoring her?

She had not told Terry about these trips. He wouldn’t forbid her to make them, but he wouldn’t approve, and she found that she still cared about his approval, more or less. She had gone back to hiding her cigarette smoking, for example, and continued to pretend she was taking her Lipitor. When would those subterfuges catch up with her, if ever? If Terry confronted her—difficult to imagine, but it had happened a few times during their marriage—she would say she was trying to even the actuarial odds, given their genders and the age difference. She was tired of outliving people. She felt as if she were going to outlive everyone—her husband, her sons, her grandchildren.

Everyone except Walter Bowman.

The prosecutor said there was no way he could get a stay this time. There may be some pro forma filings at the last minute, an assertion that lethal injection was cruel and unusual, but those would be token protests, lawyers earning their money. Still, it had been disturbing when that one man had been given a stay just last month and the Supreme Court had agreed to hear his petition. Third time’s the charm, Terry said grimly.

Unless Elizabeth Lerner had something up her sleeve. Why else would she be talking to Walter? Perhaps she was going to make some big show of forgiveness, issue a public statement about her opposition to the death penalty, make Terry and Trudy the bad guys.

Setting a brisk pace, Trudy began her walk around the neighborhood. She drew absolutely no attention. It had been a long time since Trudy had attracted attention, and she liked to think she had been gracious about that transition. Married young, the first three pregnancies coming so swiftly, she felt she had been on a shelf since her twenties. Interestingly, around the time that Holly entered adolescence—Trudy was in her late thirties, then—she had a second flowering. And although Holly had started drawing increasingly sexualized attention about the same time, Trudy had not felt competitive with her daughter. Quite the opposite. Like a good tennis partner, Holly elevated Trudy’s game, inspired her to take more care with her appearance. Her marriage picked up a little charge, especially as Holly began to attend sleepovers and they had the house to themselves for the first time since, well, the first nine months of their marriage, before the arrival of Terry III. Although she was, reflexively, a Democrat, Trudy had felt secure in Reagan’s America, secure in Middleburg. It had been a prosperous time, and the bad news—Lebanon, famine, the Unabomber, the Mexico City earthquake, Leon Klinghoffer—seemed so very far away. Or, in the case of AIDS, based on other people’s decisions. Terry’s gaze was the only one she craved.

In the wake of Holly’s death, Trudy became almost too visible, recognized—and therefore pitied—everywhere she went. In Alexandria, she settled into anonymity and was grateful for it. Granted, she couldn’t really take anyone new into her life because that would involve telling the story, which was unbearable. Better to have a child who was, in fact, the Unabomber’s victim, because that one word was all the shorthand required. Walter Bowman and his crimes fell into some muddy nether region. He wasn’t nickname famous, as Terry once observed, not like some serial killers. People in Virginia tended to remember him, but not by name. Once, after the move to Alexandria, Trudy had tried to speak of her life with a neighbor, only to have the woman blurt out: “Oh my God, you were the mother of that beautiful little blond girl.” Terry said she should take solace in Holly being remembered that way, but that wasn’t being remembered. “Beautiful little blond girl” could be one of many. In that moment, Trudy understood the world at large had lost track of her daughter. It was the crime that people remembered, not the victim. Walter’s execution would be the last chance to remind the world of a singular life lost.

Lives, Trudy reminded herself. There was the other girl, Maude, possibly more. When she was at her lowest, Terry tried to cheer her up by saying that there were women who didn’t know what had happened to their daughters, who had endured even more than she had. Was it wrong that Trudy didn’t really give a shit?

She usually allowed herself to walk past the house four times, on a loop of her design. She felt that was credible, that someone might walk that way for exercise. She walked more quickly here than she did in Alexandria, feeling much more purposeful. But she never managed to see anyone coming and going from the house. Perhaps her note had scared them away, sent them into hiding? But, no, the house looked lived in. Over lived in.

Today, on her third pass, she decided to do something she had not yet dared. She walked right up to the door and knocked. There was a television on somewhere in the house, clearly someone was home, but it seemed an eternity before footsteps creaked toward the door. She was being inspected through the fish-eye.

“I hear you in there,” she said. “I know you’re there. Now open up and talk to me, Elizabeth Lerner.”

The door opened, but just a crack, and the eyes that met Trudy’s were considerably lower than she had expected, far beneath hers. Hazel eyes, in a tanned face. A girl’s face.

“I’m not sure you have the right house. My mom’s maiden name is Lerner, but she always goes by Eliza.”

Oh no, not always.

“Of course,” Trudy said. “But someone’s old teacher tends to be formal.”

“You were my mom’s teacher?”

“Yes, at”—amazing, the things that the mind could grab under pressure, the details about Elizabeth Lerner that were always there—“at Catonsville Middle School. She was one of my best students.”

The girl frowned, seemingly sullen at being told of her mother’s achievements.

“That is, she scored quite well on tests. She wasn’t always the most meticulous on her written work, or in keeping deadlines.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean my Aunt Vonnie? She’s the smart one. My mom says she just got by.”

Oh, didn’t she. “Your mother was always modest. Is she home? May I come in?”

“She’s—” The girl was struggling. Her mother wasn’t home, but she wasn’t supposed to reveal that information. She probably wasn’t supposed to answer the door to strangers. “She had to go to my school, but she’ll be right back. Right back,” she added.

A dog poked its nose through the door opening and gave a tentative growl. Trudy offered her closed fist, allowed the dog to sniff it.

“Shush, Reba.”

“Is that your dog?”

“Not really. I would have chosen a better one.”

“May I come in and wait for your mother? I don’t get up here very often and I’d hate to miss her.”

“I don’t know…”

“You can call her if you like, tell her my name. Tell her Mrs. Tackett has stopped by.”

“Oh, Mrs. Tackett. The one who left the note. I thought Mom said she went to school with your daughter.”

That hurt, but Trudy didn’t care, for the door was now open wide to her.

38

STRANGELY, OUT OF ALL the things that should have bothered her, it was the logistics of the call from school that had floored Eliza, at least in the initial moments of trying to take in the information. Iso had been caught stealing and was suspended from school, effective immediately. This meant Eliza had to come to school to pick her up, then return for a meeting at two, but that would make her late to pick up Albie for their walk home, so she had to arrange a playdate for Albie, a situation made more difficult by the fact that she didn’t really know the mothers of Albie’s friends. Desperate, she had done something she had never dreamed she would do—withdrew Albie early and taken him to the Barnes & Noble on Rockville Pike, then parked him in the children’s section with strict instructions to sit there, read a book, and speak to no one. If asked where his mother was, he was to insist she was in the store. She gave him Iso’s cell phone just in case. Lord knows, it would be a long time before Iso was allowed to use her phone, if ever.

Then it was back to North Bethesda Middle, where she had to sit through the humiliating recital of Iso’s transgressions. Stealing, lying—

“About the lying,” she put in, wishing Peter could have gotten away for this meeting, but it had been impossible. (“Even if I could get away from work today, I’d never get there in time,” he had told Eliza.) “It’s my understanding that she lied when asked if she had stolen something.”

“Yes, but that hardly mitigates her behavior,” said Roxanne Stoddard, magnificent today in a bouclé purple suit.

“No, but—she lied to cover her ass.” She flushed for speaking so crudely in front of the exemplary principal. “Sorry. It’s just that I understand why she lied, although I don’t condone it. We’ve always told our children that lying is the least acceptable offense.” In her disordered, rattled state, she went so far as to think—And she didn’t lie to me, her mother. She lied to you! As if that mattered. “Still, it’s harder for me to understand why she’s stealing something she already owns—an iPhone. She has one. Well, not an iPhone, but a perfectly good cell phone.”

“Mrs. Benedict—based on what teachers have told me, Iso is a very angry, unhappy girl.”

“Well, she’s moody. She’s an adolescent.”

“Yes,” the principal said dryly. “I have some experience with adolescents.”

Eliza blushed, although she didn’t believe that the principal’s life among hundreds of young teens gave her any moral authority in this discussion. She may have more quantitative experience, but no one could know more about her children than Eliza did.

“I want to show you an assignment that Iso wrote for English class recently. The teacher asked students to recast a real-life experience as the plot of a well-known television show.”

Eliza decided this was probably not the best time to roll her eyes, but really? A television show? Peter would be apoplectic when she told him, probably start talking about private school again.

“This is Iso’s story.”

The principal passed three sheafs of paper across her desk to Eliza. On the first page, in Iso’s almost too-neat handwriting, was the title: Everyone Loves Albie.

She skimmed down the page, to the next and the next. “It wasn’t anything like this,” she said. “It’s true, we didn’t choose the dog that Iso wanted, but Reba was so forlorn, so needy. But it was Peter’s idea—”

“No one assumes it’s a factually accurate portrayal of your home life, Mrs. Benedict. I don’t think even Iso would maintain that. She was clearly going for humor—in fact, you’ll see she got an A, because she fulfilled the main objective, which was working within an existing form.”

Great. North Bethesda Middle is training my daughter, thief and liar, to be a sitcom writer. I feel so much better now.

“By the end of the semester, they’ll be writing sestinas,” the principal said, as if privy to Eliza’s thoughts. “Mr. Klemm knows what he’s doing. Which is why, given all the other things going on with Iso, he knew to share her written work with me. This is an angry child.”

“I honestly don’t know what Iso has to be angry about. If she thinks we favor her brother—that’s all in her head.” The principal kept her gaze steadily on Eliza’s face, and she found she couldn’t stop talking. “But it is a vicious circle, in some ways. Albie is a sweetheart, very kind and compassionate, he’s like a little love sponge, soaking it up, giving it back. Iso has always been cooler, much more self-contained.”

“Has she ever told you how distraught she was to leave England?”

“Distraught? Far from it. She treated it as an opportunity, a chance to fashion a new identity for herself.”

“Just because she treated it as an opportunity doesn’t mean she really feels it is one. She lived in London for six years, Mrs. Benedict, almost her entire school life. She’s homesick.”

“This is home.”

“To you.”

Not really, I have fewer friends than Iso.

“Well, she’s never said a word to us.”

“No, I imagine not. And if it weren’t for this, I’m not sure I would understand how desperately she misses it.”

The principal passed the contraband iPhone toward Eliza, its screen showing the latest log of dialed calls. The numbers all began with the 011-44 prefix for England.

“But…we would have let her call from home. Peter even has Skype on his computer. She could have used that. We encouraged her to stay in touch with her friends.”

“Yes, but then she would have had to tell you who she was calling.”

“And that would have been so difficult?”

“The texts are rather explicit. Not what people call sexting—I think that’s overblown—but a little provocative. And the boy is seventeen,” the principal said. “Iso thinks you wouldn’t approve.”

“Seventeen? I don’t approve.” She realized her voice was too loud, but she couldn’t help herself. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out who the boy was, when the connection had been made. Iso must have been sly about it, because Albie would have spilled whatever he knew, no matter how keenly he yearned for Iso’s approval. What had Eliza told Peter, not so long ago? Iso was good at keeping her secrets, no one else’s.

“They’ve been communicating via Facebook, on the school’s computer,” the principal said. “Iso was sophisticated enough to know how to get around the school’s block—you just add an s to the http address—but didn’t realize that she was still leaving a trail despite cleaning out the cache. She was lectured on this earlier in the semester and she begged the media center director not to turn her in. At the time, the messages and postings were pretty innocuous, so we let it go.”

“I actually asked Iso if she wanted to set up a Facebook account when we moved. She said Facebook was queer.”

“Clever of her, you have to admit. Because then it never occurred to you to look for her there.”

“It never occurred to me to look for anyone there. I’m not much for social networking.”

The principal’s smile was sympathetic. “Look, we had to suspend Iso. We have a zero-tolerance policy on theft. But I think the things happening at school are just a sideshow to the anger she’s bottled up. Iso’s having a very good time playing Romeo and Juliet, in her mind. My hunch is that this boy didn’t become a big thing to her until there was an ocean between them. Iso’s not interested in sex. Like most of my girl students, she’s fascinated by love. If a flesh-and-blood boy—if this boy—showed up on her doorstep, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do. Who were the teen idols of your youth?”

“I listened to Madonna.”

“No, I mean who were the safe boys, the ones you felt free to fantasize about when you were Iso’s age?”

“Seriously?” Eliza was laughing even before she could get the answer out. “George Michael, in his Wham! incarnation. Can’t get much safer than that.”

“Yes, and I liked Tito Jackson. All very safe, like these Twilight books. In my experience, most girls, smart girls like Iso, are pretty savvy about their limits. They find a way to explore sex and love without putting themselves in harm’s way. I’m just sorry that Iso has taken it to this level.”

“Me, too,” Eliza said.

“Not to pry—but do you talk to your daughter about such things?”

“Sex, you mean?”

“No, sex, the birds-and-bees part, is easy. I was thinking about love.”

“Love? Romantic love? I don’t know. I suppose it came up sometimes when we read fairy tales together. I actually did my undergrad and some grad work in children’s literature. I didn’t want Iso to be overly invested in prince charmings. In fact, we read a lot of the Oz books together because the heroines are strong and completely indifferent to romance. But then Albie came along, and I couldn’t help noticing how hapless the boys were. The one good boy character turned out to be a fairy princess in disguise. The other one is Button-Bright, and all he does is get lost….”

Her voice trailed off as her words reached her own consciousness. The principal was nodding, not unkindly. Eliza added on a feeble note: “Iso had moved beyond bedtime stories by then, anyway.”

“I don’t doubt it. And I don’t think there’s anything the least bit unusual about Iso. It’s natural for girls her age to be secretive and sly. Healthy, even. But she crossed a boundary when she stole this phone, and it was important to intervene now. After all, it’s not only the phone, but the cost of these calls, which were outside the family’s plan. Unfortunately, the girl who owned the phone thought she had lost it and was scared to tell her parents, so this has been going on for two weeks.”

“Well, Iso will make restitution. That’s easy.”

“Yes, but it’s not enough. My suggestion and it’s just a suggestion? Take her out of the soccer league for the rest of the fall.”

“She’ll die. She’ll hate me.”

“She won’t die. But, yes, she will hate you for a while. Still, she needs to understand how serious this was.”

ELIZA TRIED TO CALL PETER on the way home, but his assistant said he was in the kind of meeting that could be interrupted only in a life-or-death emergency. Eliza was tempted to say, “Well, this is it,” but thought better of it. She would have liked to speak to Peter before she confronted Iso back home, but Albie was in the car, and that little pitcher really did have enormous ears. It would be unfair to Iso to discuss her situation in front of her brother. Eliza would go home, invoke the sitcom line, “Wait until your father gets home.” (It was quite the day for sitcoms. Eliza felt a laugh track should have been bubbling beneath the scene in the principal’s office.) She wouldn’t use the phrase ominously, simply make it clear to Iso that this was such a serious matter that it required two parents, united.

“Iso?” she said, coming in through the garage.

“I’m in here, Mom.” Her voice showed not a hint of apprehension, which was maddening. She should be a little afraid to face Eliza after a meeting at school.

“Here?” she echoed.

“In the dining room, with your old teacher. We made tea.”

Oh, so that’s why you’re calm. You have a witness. You know I can’t bitch you out. Then: Old teacher?

She and Albie entered the formal dining room, which the family seldom used. The table had been set for a small but proper tea, the fish-shaped teakettle sitting on a trivet, cookies spread fanlike on a plate. They were Eliza’s secret cookies. More stealing? Was Iso trying to impress her mother, or the visitor, an incongruously well-dressed woman who was instantly, tantalizingly familiar to Eliza, her name just on the tip of her tongue, but the context made no sense. Teacher? She didn’t remember ever having such an elegant teacher.

“Trudy Tackett,” the woman said, standing up and holding out her hand. “I’ve been enjoying getting to know your daughter. She reminds me so much of my daughter at the same age.”

39

WALTER WAS OUTSIDE FOR HIS hour of recreation for the first time in almost a week. Legally, the men on Sussex I were supposed to get an hour a day outside, but something was always coming up. They claimed they found a weapon, put the whole place in lockdown, then they said there was a piece of fence that needed repair, although they could have just not used that particular dog run, as Walter thought of the individual recreation yards the men used. Today, for example, there was no one on either side of him, no way to talk, or play a hand of cards. That was okay. He wasn’t feeling very sociable today. He was happy to be with his own thoughts, feel a little light on his face. He always had looked better with a tan, bad as it might have been for his skin, according to Barbara.

Back in the day, when Walter realized what his future was—what his lack of future was—and found that he could accept it, his first thought was: I’ll probably learn to play chess. He wasn’t sure where this idea came from. Like most people, he knew what he knew about prison from the movies, but this was before The Shawshank Redemption, before The Silence of the Lambs, although he now knew about both films from talking to men who had arrived here later. The one prison movie that Walter could have described in detail was actually about a juvenile facility, and no one there was playing chess, that was for sure. Bad Boys, with Sean Penn. He had never met another person who had seen the film, not since he was inside. Say Bad Boys and people immediately assumed you were talking about those other movies, which came way later.

Elizabeth had seen Bad Boys, though. She shouldn’t have—it was R-rated and she was only thirteen when it was released. He told her as much, but let the lecture drop because he was keen to know what she thought of it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I like Sean Penn, but I wish he would do more movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. This one was so depressing.”

“That movie where the girl took her top off?”

“Yeah. He was funny in that.”

“He was stoned.”

“His character was.” Oh so prim and proper, as if he didn’t understand the difference.

“I just don’t think that’s funny, being high,” he said, and they had dropped the subject. They never agreed on movies or music. Still, he wished they could have talked more. He wanted to ask her if she thought the movie was right, about how much rape there was in prison, or if that was only in the juvenile places. Even then, in the back of his mind, he knew it was going to be prison or death for him, and he was actually more scared of the first. He could imagine death. He had seen death. He couldn’t imagine life in a cell.

But over the weeks, months, it took the system to sort out his crimes and decide how to punish him, Walter had come to understand and accept the contours of his life. Contours—a lovely word, exactly what it sounded like, a big round vase. He wasn’t going to be found innocent, not in the case of Holly or Maude, and that was all because of Elizabeth, the state’s star witness. Without her, they wouldn’t have had anything. She had found him at Maude’s grave, she had been there the night Holly died. It was lucky that he hadn’t given her specifics of the other things he had done. Oh, he had made vague references, especially in the beginning, when he had to get her to obey him. “If you knew the things I’d done…I’ve snapped a girl’s neck before and I’ll do it again.” But he had been cagey enough to withhold the specifics, and she couldn’t tell folks anything more than what she had seen. If only he had killed her—but he hadn’t, and that was that. Certainly he had known what would happen if they were caught, and he had realized, after Holly died, that such an outcome was more likely. Holly wasn’t the kind of girl whose disappearance and death went unavenged. This time, he had stolen a princess, and the kingdom was going to rise up, outraged. Sure enough, he was in custody less than forty-eight hours later, and that began the second half of his life, the part spent behind bars.

Still, in the early years, his days had some variety. There were the trials and, in the case of Holly, appeals and retrials. The first retrial had been filed before the twenty-one days expired, and no one could complain about that. Stupid woman juror had talked about the penalty phase, said she knew for a fact that he wouldn’t get death in Maryland, so they had to give it to him in Virginia. And the bitch would have lied, too, perjured her way through the investigation if she could have, but there were other jurors who were honest enough to admit the conversation had taken place. Then he had petitioned on the grounds of incompetent counsel, which hadn’t gotten him a new trial but had gotten him Jefferson, who was quite the busy little beaver. He was the one who had started poring over maps and begun to question whether Walter was in Virginia or West Virginia when Holly died. Yes, he knew folks were outraged when they got the order to send the surveyors out, that they talked about technicalities, how it was just a line on a map. But, hell, who wouldn’t want to be on the right side of a line that was literally the difference between life and death? If that campsite was on the West Virginia side, then he should have been tried in West Virginia, and West Virginia had no death penalty. Who could blame a guy for trying?

Eventually, life had settled into a slow gray haze. He did some of the things he set out to do. He read a great deal, especially military history. He practiced yoga. He corresponded with people who wrote to him, although no one had the staying power of Barbara LaFortuny. It seemed that the people, the women, who contacted him wanted something he simply couldn’t give. He thought about a religious conversion, but he found he believed less and less as time went on and he respected faith too much to fake it. If there was a God, then the world would make more sense. That much seemed clear to him.

But chess? No. He tried it, especially during that period when that nice army retiree was next to him in the yard. That guy, Hollis, said it was possible to hold a chessboard in your head and talk the moves. Over time, Walter learned to do that, but it was all he could do. The strategy of chess—the necessity of sacrifice, the impossibility of keeping every piece safe—bothered him. He hated sending those little pawns out into the world. And the games were long. He liked things that moved faster.

This, his dance with Elizabeth—it had gone at just the right pace. True, he had played it a little close to the edge, as Barbara kept saying. Elizabeth was due at the prison next Saturday, and he was to be transferred Monday morning to Jarratt, his third trip to the Death House. In fact, no matter what Elizabeth decided, he would still probably have to make that trip, but he didn’t mind. At least it was a variation in routine and it would end up making him the stuff of legend. Walter Bowman, the only man to come back from the Death House three times. He would be seen as invincible.

And if she didn’t cooperate, as Barbara kept fretting? They would still have enough time to sic the reporter on her, to let her see how quickly her world could be broken. But he hoped it didn’t come to that. It would be much nicer if she would just see that there was a right thing to do and she had to do it. He had no desire to antagonize Elizabeth, nor hurt her. But he was trying to stay alive and all was fair, etc., etc.

He had really come to enjoy their conversations these past few weeks and wondered if she felt the same. He wasn’t ignorant. He knew the pain he had caused her and didn’t expect her to understand that there had been pain for him, too. When they first began to speak, he was intent on his plan, his agenda, and couldn’t loosen up much. But as he got into the swing of things, figured out the rhythm of their talk, just how hard he could push, he had risked a few digressions. He had told her about his reading and how he had finally read Travels with Charley, which hadn’t been at all as she had described it. He had teased her about Madonna, her big idol, and asked if she went to her last concert in rubber bracelets and lace leggings. Her present life was clearly off-limits, and she shut him down if he probed too much, or dropped hints about what he knew. But they did, in fact, have a shared past.

Once, only once, had he invoked Holly. “You didn’t like her much,” he said, and she had become heated, told him she didn’t want to discuss Holly. But he knew he was right. Elizabeth hadn’t liked Holly. She was fearful of being displaced by her and—she was right to be. Holly was the one he wanted. Elizabeth was the one he got. Further proof that life wasn’t fair. And proof that he was long overdue for a lucky break. Not just overdue, but utterly deserving.

40

ELIZA EASED HER BODY INTO BED, joints aching as if she had completed a marathon. She had, in a sense, run a marathon of mothering today. A biathlon, if one threw Trudy Tackett into the mix, only what would you call the second event?

Without saying a word, Peter reached for her shoulders and began to knead them. She was grateful he didn’t want to talk further about the afternoon, that he knew to leave her in peace.

“You didn’t call,” Trudy had said, almost accusingly. It seemed to be Eliza’s day to face down older women who were disappointed in her, in her manners, in her parenting. “I waited, but when I didn’t hear from you within the first few days, I knew you weren’t going to call.”

“I didn’t have anything to say.”

“To me. It’s my understanding that you’ve been speaking quite a bit to another old acquaintance of ours.”

Eliza was almost grateful then for the humiliation of the trip to North Bethesda Middle School. It gave her a reason to speak to Iso, if not Albie, in the controlled measured tone she needed. “Iso, go to your room. I don’t think you’ll be surprised to find out that you’re grounded again. We’ll talk more about this later. Albie, Reba’s been cooped up for a while, as have you. Why don’t you take her into the backyard?”

Both children did as they were told, although Iso seemed puzzled, as if her mother’s reactions were hard to fathom. Eliza waited for the whine of the back door, the slam of Iso’s bedroom door. But the latter was actually closed with quiet decorum. It was so quiet that Eliza went halfway up the stairs to make sure the door was shut, then came back and closed off the dining room.

“What did you tell her?”

“She told me. I’m the mother of a childhood friend—according to you. She has lovely manners. Is that the English education? She talked a great deal about London.”

“Yes, she misses it.” Or so I just learned, Eliza thought. Did Iso confide in everyone but her mother? Could Trudy tell her about this seventeen-year-old Simon with whom Iso had been exchanging texts and calls on her pilfered phone? “What did you tell her? What do you want, Mrs. Tackett?”

“I want to make sure that you’re not up to anything.”

“Up to anything?”

“I know you’re speaking to him. Don’t deny that.”

“I didn’t deny it. Not that I’m accountable to you.”

Trudy Tackett’s composure was hard fought, which became apparent as it cracked. “You most certainly are. My daughter would be alive if it weren’t for you.”

“No,” Eliza said. “No.” She cocked her head. Was that a door opening in the hall? Had Albie and Reba returned to the house? She lowered her voice. “I couldn’t save Holly. I’m sorry if it seems that way to you, but it’s true.”

“Save her? You were an accomplice. You lured her into his truck. If it weren’t for you, she never would have spoken to him. She knew better than to engage with some strange man. You made everything possible.”

“Mrs. Tackett—it’s not my fault that I was there. It’s not my fault that I had gotten used to doing what he told me to do. I was fifteen, not much older than your daughter.”

“Holly was young for her age. She was a child, no matter what she looked like, and you offered her up to that monster.”

Eliza held Iso’s cooling mug of tea in her hands. The worst thing about this conversation was—she understood. She knew what Trudy Tackett felt, and she couldn’t fault her for it. If Iso had been harmed under the same circumstances, Eliza would be inconsolable, desperate to find reasons, someone to blame. Where would her anger and rage go? It would cut a path to the sea.

“I’m sorry. You have to believe that. But you also have to believe that I was as much Walter’s victim as anyone else.”

“Then why are you talking to him? And considering a visit, last I heard.”

She must know someone inside the prison. Certainly, neither Jefferson Blanding nor Barbara LaFortuny would confide in Trudy Tackett. “It’s what he wants.”

“Why do you care about what Walter wants? You were his victim, as you said. What hold does he have on you?”

She was tempted, of course, to tell Mrs. Tackett what Walter had promised, to let her know that she was on the side of the angels, beyond reproach. She hadn’t killed Holly, but she hadn’t saved her, either. Was that the same thing? She had resolved to live. Was her decision to live the same as willing Holly to die? It was a question beyond psychology, beyond philosophy, beyond theology. She had chosen to live, which she believed meant doing whatever Walter said. Holly was the one who had fought and run.

“I don’t, not really. I have my reasons to see him, but they’re my reasons.”

“He’s not to be trusted.”

“With all due respect, I don’t need you to tell me that, Mrs. Tackett.”

“You’re not to be trusted.”

That was unfair. At least, she thought it was unfair. She felt feverish, then all-over chills. The flu season had started early this year. Great, all she needed was the flu, when the visit to Walter was so near. Would a prison stop her from entering if it was determined that she was contagious?

“Mrs. Tackett, I don’t know what you want, and I’m not sure I could provide it even if I did. I can’t make Holly alive. I can’t. Don’t you think I’ve revisited, time and again, what I did. What I didn’t do? But I was a victim, too. I was.”

Even to her own ears, she sounded unpersuasive.

“Your children—they don’t know, do they?”

“No.”

“Is that because you’re ashamed?”

“It’s because I want them to feel safe.”

“No one is safe in this world, ever. I proved that to you today, didn’t I? Your daughter let me into your home, simply because my name was familiar to her. I could have been anyone. I could have done anything. I could have hurt your child.”

A sudden memory. The Lerners were in a beach town where parking was at a premium and the street was crowded. Eliza couldn’t have been more than seven. Her father started to back out of his parking place just as a little boy burst away from his mother and ran behind the Lerners’ car. Her father stopped in time, but the mother turned on him, screaming. Later, as they crossed the main boulevard, the same woman leaned out of her car and yelled: “I ought to run over your kids, see how you feel about it.”

“Your husband was an army surgeon, wasn’t he? Assigned to hospitals where he treated casualties from Vietnam, as I recall. Was it only when your own daughter was killed that you figured out the world wasn’t safe? Or was that simply when you began to care?”

“You think you care. You think you know. Believe me, you don’t.”

“That’s probably true.”

Mrs. Tackett bit her lip, apparently more offended by Eliza’s concession than anything else she had said. She gathered her purse and stood to leave. “The book—the book said you might have been his girlfriend.”

“The book is wrong. He raped me.”

“But Holly and the other girl”—the other girl. Couldn’t she hear herself? Was it asking too much that she know Maude’s name? “They never found any proof of sexual assault.”

“He wore a condom. At least he did with me. I can’t speak for the others.”

“A rapist who wore a condom. But we only have your say-so for that.”

“My say-so? Do you think I’m a liar, Mrs. Tackett?” She felt the color rising in her cheeks, a pulse pounding in her temples, her neck.

“I didn’t trust you then, and I don’t trust you now. I’ve waited a long time for justice, and it just seems terribly coincidental that you’re talking to Walter now, when he’s scheduled for execution.”

“What would be justice in your eyes?”

She steeled herself to hear: For you to die and for my daughter to come back to life. But Trudy Tackett was not that cruel.

“This. The execution. This is what Terry and I get. It’s not enough, but it’s all we get. Please don’t interfere.”

“I assure you—”

“Your assurances don’t carry much weight with me. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s true. You’ve never been completely truthful about what happened. No one’s ever called you on that. But now I have.”

“And do you feel better?”

Trudy Tackett had to think about this. “Never.”

LYING IN BED WITH PETER, who had fallen asleep even as his hands worked her shoulders and stroked her hair, Eliza wondered if Mrs. Tackett—she could never call her Trudy, nor had she been asked to, she realized—was replaying the conversation in her head, in her bed. Was Dr. Tackett with her? Was he still alive? Yes, she had spoken of him in the present tense. Did he know what his wife had done today, what she had been doing? She had been to their house at least once before, delivering the note that Eliza had mistakenly ignored, and Eliza supposed she was the source of the off-hour calls on the Walter phone, as she thought of it.

The thing was, Mrs. Tackett wasn’t wrong. Eliza had never told everything. The part about McDonald’s—Eliza had been forced to testify about that in open court, the prosecutor reasoning that it would seem far more damaging if the defense introduced it. Not that Walter’s overmatched attorney knew what to do with the information. His only objective seemed to be to get Eliza off the stand as quickly as possible. But the fact was, after she had seen the prosecutor’s reaction, not to mention her own parents’ momentary dismay, Eliza had stopped being completely forthright about what had happened during her last forty-eight hours with Walter. She didn’t lie. Even she knew she was no good at it. But, like the daughter she would one day have, she was exceptional at keeping secrets, and that was the path she had chosen. Certain things would remain unsaid. No one was ever going to look at her that way again.

After their McDonald’s supper, their unhappy meals, they had driven up a switchback in the mountains, near the national park, but not a part of it. Walter hadn’t wanted to pay to enter the park, much less interact with the ranger at the gate. It was dark, and they had to move slowly, the headlights catching deer, who looked malevolent to Eliza. Holly was weeping openly, constantly by then. Eliza yearned to comfort her but didn’t know how. She tried, at one point, to pat her shoulder, only to have Holly recoil as if Eliza intended harm.

Once he found a place to camp, Walter set up the tent he had bought at a Sunny’s Surplus and unzipped one of the sleeping bags, telling the two girls to lie on it. The night was chilly, but Eliza understood that Holly wanted no contact with her. “I’d give you both sleeping bags,” Walter said, “but I need something to pad the bed of the truck, if I’m going to sleep there and give you your privacy.” Eliza curled up into a ball, shocked by the cold, wondering how much longer they could sleep outside at this rate. The tent was another one of Walter’s big ideas. It had been expensive, but he had argued it would pay for itself quickly. Only, it hadn’t, not by a long shot. He hadn’t realized, when he bought the tent, that most camping sites, the ones with showers and restrooms, had charges, too. It had been days since he had landed any work. Holly’s money was the first real cash they had known in a while. She wondered how much there was, if they might check into a motor court the next night—

“Elizabeth?” Walter had entered the tent and was standing over them.

“Yes?”

“Go sit in the truck for a bit. I want to talk to our new friend here.”

She did. She always did whatever Walter told her to do. She went and sat in the truck. Not in the bed, as Walter had probably intended, but in the cab, in her usual seat, the windows tightly rolled up. Still, she couldn’t help hearing what happened next. Screams, sobs, a terrible bellow, like a lion’s roar, then a streak of white, which must have been Holly’s hair flying behind her as she ran, Walter not far behind her. She studied the keys in the ignition, which hung from a chunk of turquoise. Even if she could figure out the clutch, she could never drive back down that switchback. Still, she reached for it, flicked it, hoping to turn on the heater. No, you had to press the clutch in to turn the engine on, and Walter would be mad if she used just battery power. She slid behind the wheel, managed to turn it over after a few tries, then returned to her seat. Warm air filled the car, along with the sounds of a country song, “Have I Got a Deal for You.” She and Walter had worked out a compromise on the radio. He controlled it for forty-five minutes and then she got fifteen. He said that was fair because he was older and it was his truck. He said he really didn’t have to let her listen to those pop stations at all, that he was a good guy. He told her they were bad girls, Madonna and Whitney Houston and the Mary Jane Girls and Annie Lennox, and even Aimee Mann, although all she did was let the world know that her boyfriend was hitting her. He didn’t like any of the songs that Eliza liked except for one, “Every-y body Wants to Rule the World.” When that one came on, he would nod in agreement, say it was very true. He also liked—

“Why’d you turn the engine on?” Walter asked. His face was scratched, and he was breathing hard. “You know better than that. You’re wasting gas.”

“I was cold.”

“Then why are you still shivering?”

She hadn’t even noticed. But she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering so loudly it was amazing she could hear the music at all.