Lie Still

34

My surgical instruments lay strewn across the table: an X-ACTO knife, an old butter knife, a sponge, and a small cereal bowl of warm, soapy water. I wiped the cover gently with a wrung-out sponge, revealing burgundy-colored plastic stamped with a fake leather grain. The words FAMILY ALBUM were almost worn off.

I ran the butter knife lightly under the three edges of the first page. So far, so good. In fact, that page opened fairly easily. My heart sank. Blank. I took a hit of mildew up my nose, then moved the knife to the second sheet.

This required a bit more negotiating, but I was rewarded with two black-and-white pictures of the same scene, different angles. An attractive couple and a girl in an old-fashioned frilly dress posed with a muscular Thoroughbred horse. The reins were held by a jockey about the same height as the girl. I recognized the girl as Caroline and her early, graceful handwriting underneath: Kentucky Derby with Mama & Daddy.

It was the first time I’d seen Caroline’s father. I rubbed my thumb over his face, unsuccessfully trying to bring a picture blurry with age into better focus. He didn’t strike me as a monster who would ask unspeakable things of a little girl; but then, isn’t that exactly why most monsters succeed? This predator hid under handsome features, graying hair, and the hauteur that clings to the wealthy. Even if he didn’t rape Caroline, he helped destroy her. His wife was a striking, fit woman who looked like she’d be comfortable riding either beast in the picture. The horse, or her husband.

The next seven or eight pages reflected a timeline of photographic technology and Caroline’s privileged post-adoption childhood. Her parents owned a colonial-style mansion, eerily similar to Sophia’s, plunked in the middle of a sprawling wonderland of grazing Thoroughbreds.

In one shot, their four barns were dressed with giant evergreen wreaths and twinkling white lights, every one of them nicer than almost every house I’d seen near Hazard.

Caroline had been launched from here onto another planet. Hazard was a depressing display of poverty and hopelessness, lawns littered like junkyards. It was hard to understand decent human beings banishing anyone to Hazard, especially a scared, pregnant sixteen-year-old.

But these were the early, quasi-happy times, and Caroline dashed off a few notes to record them.

The Christmas I got Izzie!!! under an image of Caroline and a gentle-looking horse with black socks.

My Best Friend, beneath a shot of a teenage Caroline and a grinning girl in a striped halter. They shared a hammock hung between giant oaks, their hair in French braids they’d probably fixed for each other.

I had almost reached the end of the album. Not a whisper that Sophia lived on the earth, much less in the same house.

The next page abruptly thrust me onto planet Hazard.

Baby pictures of Wyatt. Random, placed at careless angles, some merely thrown in, loose. No sentimental footnotes. A color Polaroid of a blasé Caroline and Dickie together on a plaid blanket by an open picnic basket, one of Dickie’s hands a little too high on her thigh, a beer in the other. Caroline’s eyes were dulled, too. Maybe she’d already made friends with Valium. A baby was crawling unattended off the corner of the blanket. I wondered who snapped the shot.

Sophia was right about one thing. The young Dickie oozed a lazy, James Dean sexuality. After flipping through more pages, I halted at the scene of a backyard birthday party. Someone had made a halfhearted effort with balloons and streamers. A grocery store birthday cake with thick, sugary icing sat on a picnic table, surrounded by a small tumble of presents. I counted thirteen candles.

Wyatt’s face shone with genuine happiness, so much so that I felt an immediate, warm connection, which I pushed away. The boy stood in the center of a group of ten kids of varying heights and ages. Caroline posed reluctantly on the end, a few awkward feet from the children, wearing a flowered sundress with an apron. Her haggard face was blank, unsmiling.

I peered closer. I wiped the corner of the sponge over one of the tiny faces under the plastic sheet.

The smile, the curly blond hair, and the glow of her personality were unmistakable. The little girl under my finger was the same as the one in the framed picture in Misty’s house.

It is the happiest day of my life, Misty had said about that picture in her great room, after snatching it out of my hands.

My eyes skipped quickly over the other faces. I stopped short at an older girl, about ten, her dark, stringy hair pulled in a ponytail. Petite. Harlequin face. In short shorts and a halter. Sunburned. Underfed. Mosquito bites ran up her bare legs and arms. No scars. Not yet.

The happiest day of my life. I’d misunderstood. But I knew for sure now. The little girl in that picture wasn’t Misty.

I stared at the little blond girl. She was a little younger here. Who are you? Are you the girl who disappeared? She remained stubbornly silent, stuck in time, leaning into Wyatt Deacon, his arm draped over her shoulders, as if this were the most comfortable, safe place in the world. My eyes moved back over to Misty.

Misty, Caroline, Wyatt.

The little girl.

All linked from the very beginning.

Icy water dribbled in little rivers down my back, the old pipes cranky from a couple of days of disuse. They needed more time to heat up and get going than I had the patience for right now.

I had called Mike immediately. Things were happening.

As I soaped up with a bar of Ivory, my hand traveling over my newly protruding belly button bump, the old snapshot of Misty and the little girl was wending its way over the fax to the FBI in Louisville.

No messing with the local cops this time. Within three hours, the FBI would be knocking on doors and businesses to find out who they were. I sat down awkwardly in the cold tub, shivering, running the shower wand across my front and over my shoulders, a process that grew more difficult as I enlarged and battled an ever-changing center of gravity. My naked, swelling body was still a strange sight to me. I wondered without caring how much of this would be permanent: the widening hips and stomach, the flattening feet.

My eyes focused on the crosses formed by the lines of the tile grout. A grade-school nun had taught us to look for a cross at any moment of despair or worry. Windowpanes, electricity poles, fence posts. Once you began to look, crosses were everywhere. I sent up a prayer, for me, for Mike, for Misty, for Caroline, who didn’t deserve to die that way, and for the smiling girl in the picture who probably never grew up.

No, I told Mike on the phone, there weren’t any names written on the back of the photograph. Yes, I was sure it was the same girl. No, I hadn’t heard from Misty. Yes, I was fine. Just fine. No need to worry about me.

I braced my hand on the edge of the tub as I stepped out, my feet slippery on the slick tile. I dried off with a faded blue-striped beach towel, the only one that now comfortably fit around me.

All at once, my brain felt drugged. A thin white cotton robe hung on the hook of the back door; it took all my effort to tie it around me and hang up the towel in its place.

I didn’t feel like making dinner anymore, especially a solo one, but I wandered that direction, down the hall, to the kitchen, aimlessly opening and closing the refrigerator, the pantry, the freezer. The answering phone light blinked like a warning signal.

“You have one unplayed message,” a computer voice intoned before Jesse’s voice rushed into the room.

“Mrs. Page, my niece had a seizure at a track meet in Nocona and my aunt can’t get to the hospital as fast as I can. She’s diabetic. My niece, I mean. She’s already doing fine, but my aunt’s on the edge of a stroke she’s so worried no family is with her. I’ve got someone filling in for me here in about an hour, but don’t leave the house without phoning the chief to make sure the new guy’s in place, OK? The chief said you turn off your phone when you take a nap, that’s why you aren’t answering the cell.”

I was instantly filled with concern for Jesse’s niece. And then I started to giggle. This was just like the kind of movie I watched through my fingers. The lookout, misdirected. The girl in the underwear with the big breasts abandoned to her bloody fate. In my case, I wasn’t wearing any underwear under the robe, and Letty said my breasts weren’t that impressive. That made me laugh harder. I plopped down on a kitchen chair, gasping for air, tears running down my cheeks.

I stumbled out of the chair into the living room, and yanked up the window blind.

A cruiser sat comfortably at the curb, directly in the path of the front walk, its occupant reading a newspaper. Maybe not as vigilant as Jesse, but I wasn’t alone.

Reinforcements already in place. Mike wouldn’t leave me unprotected. My chest relaxed a little. My breathing slowed. Still raspy, but more normal.

I wish I could see what was gunning for me. The face. The weapon.

My rubbery legs made it to the kitchen sink. I promptly threw up. Bending my neck under the faucet, I let the cool water wash my face and run into my mouth. I sloshed it around and spit out the bitterness.

What to do now? I glanced at the clock on the microwave. A little past five. Mike wouldn’t make it home before midnight, I bet.

I moved over to the desk and popped open my laptop, reassured to see the butt of my gun still peeking out of Mrs. Drury’s cubbyhole. I pulled the laptop out of its niche and powered it on. I deleted junk mail, read a nonsensical note from Lucy about a very bad date with a Saudi Arabian oil magnate, and a mass email from Letty inviting five hundred people to a memorial planned for Caroline next month. She requested we each bring a white balloon and recommended we buy them at the Albertsons on Highway 36, where she’d set up a group discount.

I was about to shut down the computer, when another email popped up.

Bhell@mojo.net.

Subject line: Keebler Elf Unmasked.

Something from my witty reporter friend Brad, with an attachment. He was thinking of me at this very moment. In a way, technology was so intimate.

Emily,

Left a message on your cell that I was sending this old picture of Avery Crane. Got it from a yearbook. Is he the man who impersonated me? He’s the frat bro who was so forthcoming about Pierce’s girlfriends. I’ve also included a current shot of him from his work profile. I’ve tried to get in touch with him, but he won’t return my calls. I also wanted to let you know that Crane lives nearby, in Euless. He transferred there several years ago. Life’s a strange bitch, huh?

Hope all is well with you and the baby.

Brad

My finger clicked on the attachment and, in seconds, I stared numbly at the first picture of Avery Crane. It was a posed fraternity-album headshot of him in the requisite red tie and blue jacket and plastered-on smile. I scrolled down slowly and scrutinized the second image. Less hair, the edge of a double chin, a smoother complexion. A brief work biography offered up his job title, a director of Global Services, followed by a list of bullshit qualifications for “team-building.”

His office: Mobile.

His location: Dallas/Fort Worth.

Forty-five miles away.

Life’s a strange bitch.

Fate is a compass inside us that takes our feet where they need to go.

Brad’s words. My mother’s words. Saying the same, ominous thing.

I closed out of the attachment, hit “reply,” typed a single word answer, and punched “send.”

Yes.

Yes, it was Avery Crane who accosted me that day on campus, years ago. I shut the lid of the laptop a little harder than necessary, not wanting to chat further with Brad, a man whose agenda was questionable. Not to think about the Keebler Elf, an hour’s drive away. It must be a lie. I double-checked on the cruiser out front. Still there. Just as I started to twist the blinds shut, the cop turned his profile, and my stomach flipped. The new man on duty was none other than Cody Hill, the jerk who interviewed me after Caroline’s disappearance. Maria’s nemesis. Rojo.

The phone rang, jangly and intrusive. I don’t remember crossing over to the receiver, but I found it in my hand.

“What is it, you son of a bitch?”

Silence.

“Emily, it’s me.”

Mike.

“Are you OK?”

“Why did you pick him to watch over me?” I demanded, a little too shrilly.

“He’s decent at what he does, Emily.”

Decent.

“Did you just call to check on me? I’m perfectly fine.”

“Uh-huh, you sound fine. Yes, I called to check on you. I also wanted to let you know the FBI hit the jackpot in Peggy’s Salon in Hazard. The old girls napping under the hair dryers were only too happy to talk. Misty’s sister is the blond child in the photo. The girl who went missing, the one connected to Wyatt Deacon. She was eight when she disappeared. Dirt poor. Misty got out of there as soon as she graduated high school. Was accepted at Berea, changed her last name, and never looked back.”

“Berea?”

“A college in Kentucky that takes in promising kids, mostly from Appalachia, no tuition required. Transforms their lives.” Where Misty was reborn, I realized, into someone who could fool me.

“We learned something else. Do you remember that Dickie wired money across the country to Wyatt?”

“Yes.”

“In every one of those towns on Dickie’s list, two or three days after he wired the money, a little girl disappeared.”

I let this sink in, feeling sick.

I knew the answer, but I asked anyway.

“What did you say the girl’s name was?”

“I don’t think I did. It’s Alice.”

Present tense. My decent, hopeful man.

Alice.

The name scribbled on the back of a fortune, the sweet face held hostage in a frame at Misty’s. The girl at the birthday party with her killer’s arm draped around her shoulders.