Her descriptions about him having normal development and suddenly crashing backward sound like childhood disintegrative disorder, but there’s no mention of it in Mason’s chart. It’s not even listed as a rule-out by any of his doctors. Childhood disintegrative disorder is a heartbreaking disorder for parents, because their children experience normal development for years and then, out of the blue and very drastically, start regressing. They stop growing forward and grow backward, some of them all the way back to infancy. They stop talking. Eating. Toileting. All of it.
Nobody knows why. Occasionally, the parents can point to a trigger, and head injuries always throw a wild card into any diagnostic picture, but most of the time there’s no identifiable cause. It’s all very similar to what Savannah is describing, and if that was the case, then Genevieve would’ve brought it up to the pediatrician as soon as she noticed it happening. It would be the most alarming symptom and the first thing out of any mother’s mouth—My child was developing normally, and then he took a nosedive. But that’s not anywhere. All Genevieve describes is a child who’s been impaired since birth. She describes all the symptoms, behaviors, and signs of autism spectrum disorder. Mason is a textbook case.
What if he’s too textbook?
Savannah interrupts my thoughts. “Sometimes I think I made our childhood up, you know? Like those days never existed. It’s hard to remember Mason ever being another way other than what he’s like now, and according to my mom, he never was. Part of you starts believing her lies. You’ll see. Everyone does.” She gives me a pointed look. “She’s amazing that way. She turns your own thoughts against you. She’ll take your words and twist them until you don’t even recognize them. Until you find yourself apologizing to her for what she’s done. Feeling bad that you did something wrong by being angry about it or questioning her.”
“Last time we talked, there were lots of things that went unsaid about Genevieve, and I don’t want us to do that this time. I want you to be straightforward with me. I understand how difficult that is because talking about family secrets is hard, but this is about helping your brother. There’s too much at stake to beat around the bush.” I do my best to sound commanding and intimidating like Detective Layne.
“Okay.” She nods slowly, like she’s not sure what to think about my intensity.
“Lots of times after something awful happens—a husband abandons his wife, a child overdoses on drugs—people say that the signs were there all along, but they just never imagined the person they loved being capable of doing something so dark. Sometimes when we’re close to people, we put them in a box and think we know everything about them. After everything that’s happened, is there anything that you’ve thought of that didn’t seem significant at the time but feels important now? Anything stick out?”
She shakes her head without giving what I’ve said a moment’s consideration. “Mason would never hurt anyone on purpose. Period. I already told you that.”
“I’m not talking about Mason. I’m talking about your mo—Genevieve,” I quickly correct myself.
“Genevieve?” She blinks rapidly at me.
I nod. “I’m asking if there’s anything that’s happened in the past that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time but now, given everything that’s happened, you find yourself wondering about?”
She shrugs. “Not really.”
I lean across the table and lower my voice. “Does Genevieve have any reason to get back at Annabelle?”
She flinches, taken aback. Her shoulders stiffen. “Why would Genevieve want to hurt her?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I don’t think so,” she says slowly, shaking her head.
“Did she ever talk about her?” She shakes her head again. “Did they serve on any committees together?” Genevieve runs in lots of circles. All of them upper class and privileged and right where Annabelle would’ve been too.
“Not that I know of, but I could be wrong. I don’t know everything she does. It’s not like she was reporting to me, so it’s possible they’ve done charity work together. I mean, she’s worked with every nonprofit in Alabama.”
“Is your family close with the Chapmans?”
“No.”
“What about your dad?”
“My daddy?” She sits straight up, instantly at attention. “He’s been dead for six years. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have any kind of relationship with the Chapmans.”
“But did he at one time?”
She narrows her eyes to slits. “What are you getting at?”
I choose my words carefully. “Maybe they had issues or a relationship together in the past?” I’ve racked my brain for a reason ever since Detective Layne posed the question about Genevieve’s motive, and it’s the only explanation that makes any sense to me. Women kill their husbands’ mistresses all the time.
“Still. Six years ago?” She tilts her head and grimaces. “Who cares about it now?”
“Genevieve might have just found out about it,” I offer as an explanation, since I’ve thought about that too. Finding out the man you’d been pining over wasn’t who you thought he was would be a traumatic event. Might even be big enough to tip someone over the edge, especially if they were unstable to begin with, and Genevieve clearly isn’t the most emotionally stable person.
“I’d know if Genevieve found out my daddy was having an affair. Believe me. Everyone would. She’d make a huge fuss about it.” She turns up her nose at the suggestion.
But I’m not so sure. Affairs are utterly humiliating. Would Genevieve have been able to stomach other people knowing that her husband had cheated on her? Doubtful.
“What about while he was still alive? Do you remember any talk of affairs? Any of the fighting about that?”
She sets her lips in a straight line. “My daddy would never cheat on my mom. He wasn’t that kind of man. He was one of the good ones. Faithful. Loyal. A super-hard worker. And besides, I would’ve totally been able to tell if he was running around having affairs, and he wasn’t.” She crosses her arms on her chest.
We never know. We always think we’ll know, but we don’t. Every woman I know whose husband had an affair never saw it coming even when the signs were obvious. They were there with Davis too. Not that he left me for an actual woman—just the freedom to go find one who was nothing like me—but his unhappiness and jitters were there. The way he no longer spoke about our life like he was happy about it or like it was something he wanted. He talked about our life like he was enduring it, surviving. I was so shocked when he announced he was leaving me that I just started laughing hysterically. I’ve never laughed like that since.
“Do you think Genevieve had something to do with Annabelle’s death?” Savannah comes right out and asks, done prancing around the issue.
“I don’t know and I can’t prove anything, but something about your mom doesn’t sit right with me.” It takes all my strength not to tell her everything—the coaching on the tests, the faking diagnoses, and the injuries on Mason’s body—but Detective Layne swore he had to keep her on the periphery until we had a better handle on things. We want to know what she knows, not the other way around, he instructed before I left, laying things out for me like he always does. “It’s tough imagining how someone could take another person’s life so savagely, but I have a harder time wrapping my brain around Mason doing it than your mother. It’s easier for me to envision her doing something like that than it is him.”