Shirley peeled her face off the wall. “How come her body was never found, then?” She laced her fingers in a beggar’s prayer and shook them at me. Please. Let this sink in. “It’s been five years. They found the body of the other girl who went missing that day. But not Ruth’s. That’s not strange to you?” Shirley threw me a reproachful look—have some sense, it seemed to say.
“Because no one’s looking for her!” Tina thundered. “That other girl’s mother was on every news outlet that would have her. She showed up at the police station every day for three months. She was a goddamn dog with a bone!” Tina banged a fist on the wall and cried out in frustration. “But you. The only thing you’ve been relentless about is making sure no one looks for her! If the mother of a missing girl is telling the detective assigned to her daughter’s disappearance that, actually, nothing suspicious is going on here, they believe you.”
“They do,” Shirley said, and she did this sickening little shimmy, pleased as punch with herself, “because I am a mother. And what are you? You have nothing.”
At this, Tina stumbled, injured, reduced. I felt a protective fire ignite within me, as though Tina were not just my sister but my younger one. In grief, the world treated me like I had seniority anyway, because there was nothing about mine that others found unsavory.
“I don’t think you’re delusional at all,” I said to Shirley. “I think you would much rather everyone believe your daughter ran away. Because if her name is connected to all this, people might start digging. And they might find out that she was living her life in a way that you find shameful. So you would rather never know what happened to her, or learn where your own daughter is buried, than risk people finding out that she wasn’t ‘perfect.’ What kind of mother is that?”
Shirley blinked at me, speechless, and burst into tears. Or at least she pretended to, bringing her hands to her face and making all the requisite boo-hoo noises. She did this long enough to realize I wasn’t going to take back what I’d said, to comfort her and tell her I didn’t mean it, that she was a mother and therefore sacrosanct. When I did nothing but let her blubber on, she dropped her hands and focused her dry, flinty eyes on me. “I’d like to leave now,” she said with a courageous wobble to her voice, as though we were keeping her there against her will when she was the one to seek me out.
Tina opened the door for her, swept her arm in an exaggerated half circle. You can see yourself out. “Well!” Shirley tutted. She straightened her blouse and regarded me in a way that let me know how profoundly disappointed she was in me. “For once, a reporter was telling the truth. You are completely under her spell. Good luck to you, young lady.” She rocketed out the door, her face a livid shade of purple.
Tina and I stared at each other for a long time after Shirley left, incredulous but also not. There should be a word for that. How very little people can surprise you. I suppose the word is jaded, but that’s not what I am. Because on the other side of this is someone like Tina, who taught me not to be surprised that people can be so good you will miss a week of work, drive through the night, and put yourself in harm’s way for them. Some people are your black swan event.
PAMELA
Tallahassee, 2021
Day 15,826
Carl is wearing a T-shirt that says Make Orwell Fiction Again, and despite everything he did to us, I am unbearably sad, picturing him designing the item on Redbubble from one of the community desktops in the Internet room at the assisted-living facility where he now resides.
“When I arrived in Seattle,” Carl said, referring to the day we parted ways in Aspen, “I spoke to as many people as would speak to me about the case. And I heard a rumor.” He held up a single finger, Holmes-like. “Actually, it was more of a theory.”
It is one o’clock on a Thursday, and Carl is cogent. His best hour is immediately after lunch. Sundowning is setting in earlier and earlier, and it’s taking Carl longer to shake off the morning fog, as evidenced by our first encounter during the previously safe hour of eleven a.m. I was released from Tallahassee Memorial with no sign of a concussion or internal bleeding, and the stitches in my lip will dissolve in two weeks. My injury pales in comparison to the brain bleed one of the aides suffered recently after Carl threw a chair at his head. That was when Dr. Donnelly started requiring Carl’s visitors to sign a waiver.
“What was the theory?” I ask benignly, interested but not desperate. The moments that Carl comes up for air are infrequent, and they can turn on a dime, as I experienced firsthand. If Carl detects anything threatening or impatient in my tone, the Carl who has information that he’s concealed from us for four decades will go, and I may never see him again.