I put it out of my mind. Called myself suspicious and cynical, looking for lies when there were none to be found. If you would just relax and let her grow up, I told myself, you might be able to enjoy your own life.
And then she went with him to that frat party.
It was the Rolling Stone article that made me go into her room. All those lies Harris Blanchard told about how “mature” and “worldly” Emily had been. How she’d lied to him that she was eighteen, claimed to go to community college, told him she lived on her own in a mountain house she shared with a group of roommates. He said the sex was consensual—that she was drunk, yes, they both were. But this was no innocent schoolgirl. She knew what she was doing. He said, It wasn’t the first time we’d been together.
Matt never read the article. I have no desire, he said, to know what that prick has to say. He didn’t even want to hear about what was in it, with the trial just weeks away. And the thing was, he had that luxury. Matt wasn’t getting stares at his office, because he worked out of the home, and as is the case with so many brainy people—make that brainy men—his coworkers were interested in his skills, not his home life. Not me. I had to read that article and find out what we were up against. And after I did, I needed to see if any of it was true.
Emily’s phone had gotten lost that night in the woods, but I opened her laptop, looked through what few photos she kept on it—a few friends laughing, a dog, the sun setting over the Ashokan Reservoir, dresses she wanted to buy . . . Nothing worldly or mature. But still, I bagged the laptop, along with her pajamas and bathing suits and schoolbooks, her YA novels and old teen magazines. There was no evidence here, nothing to back up anything Harris Blanchard had said in the article, but I still wanted to get rid of it all. I’m not sure why—maybe I was afraid there were secret codes scratched into the schoolbooks or encrypted into the innocent-looking photos she took. Maybe the bathing suits and thong underwear would be judged as too revealing for a girl her age. Whatever it was, I just had this feeling that I couldn’t trust my own instincts and there was something I was missing, something she’d been hiding in plain sight that I was too dense and self-absorbed to understand. I was best off getting rid of everything.
And that’s what I did. It took around two hours, Matt asleep the whole time. I got to the bed and folded up her starry black comforter, the matching sheets and pillowcases . . . and that’s when I saw the mattress.
By the time Matt woke up, I’d lugged everything outside and into the garbage bin behind the garage. The room was completely empty except for the dust. He asked me why I’d done it, and I couldn’t explain. Couldn’t tell him what was running through my mind or what I’d seen or why it was even important when all teenagers have secrets and a blood spot on a girl’s mattress could mean any number of things.
I told him I just wanted to give her some privacy. It was the truth.
I lie back on the new mattress, the springs pressing into my spine. Joan once told me she thought compartmentalizing gets a bad rap—especially when it comes to people like us, who have been through something so traumatic; ignoring it for long periods of time can be a means of survival. When you’ve been through fire, you can’t feel that burn every day, she explained. You have to go on with your life.
As perceptive as she was about so many things, Joan thought she was teaching me something new. But the truth is, I’m a pro at compartmentalizing. I’ve been doing it since Emily was alive, glossing up the cookie-baking, keyboard-playing honors student part of her and locking away the other parts—the ones that made her not just my sweet child but a separate human being beyond my understanding. It took extra work to shut away that morning and never think of it again. But, pro that I am, I managed to.
On the ceiling, I can still see a few stubborn remnants of the double-sided sticky tape Emily used to put up her posters. They cling to the plaster like blisters. Like scars.
Thirteen
The billionaire’s name was Gary Kimball. I’ve known this all along, of course, but I haven’t really thought of him as having a name until now. In fact, when I hear the name over the radio at Analog, I don’t recognize it for a few seconds. “Financier Gary Kimball,” the announcer says, during a brief news break on the classical station, “was reported missing yesterday morning by his wife, Marietta.”