Chapter 46
CHAPTER 46
1970
Bernie
I’m in a deep sleep when the banging starts. Alice was cutting back teeth all week. Her cheeks were hot and fiery and she cried with a frustration to match. I’ve been through the teething terrors with the other two, but neither of my older girls had a temper quite like Alice’s. I rubbed some whiskey on her gums and said two Hail Marys that my daughter would sleep through the night. So when the clattering starts, I find it hard to rouse. I drag myself out of bed and, disoriented, make my way toward my daughter. Alice is sleeping soundly. The disturbance is coming from somewhere else. Outside. Goose bumps line my arms and I hurry back to the bed to wake Dan.
“Dan. Dan,” I call, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up.”
“What? What is it?” Dan says, his voice laced with sleep.
“Something’s going on. Someone’s outside. They’re trying to bang the door down.”
Dan sits up, instantly wide awake. He checks the bedside alarm clock. “It’s almost midnight.”
“I know.”
The banging continues. The door sounds as if it might rattle off its hinges.
“Stay here. Watch the girls,” Dan says.
He slips on his dressing gown and slippers.
“Be careful,” I call after him.
Voices fill the stairwell. And someone is crying, I think. A woman. Maura. I recognize her voice. I leap out of bed, close the bedroom door behind me, and hurry into the kitchen. I come to a sudden stop and my hands press against my cheeks. Maura looks as if she’s seen a ghost. Or as if she is one.
“Josie’s gone,” she says, trembling.
“Gone where? Home?”
Maura doesn’t reply. Dan helps her to sit down and I hurry over to put the kettle on. I make three cups of milky tea and Dan is rubbing Maura’s back and encouraging her to take some deep breaths when I place a cup in front of each of us and sit down. Dan and I reach for ours, but Maura seems frozen.
“Did it happen?” I say, warming my hands around my cup. “Did Mrs. Stitch’s drink work? Was it… er… erm… able to resolve Josie’s troubles?”
“No.” Maura swallows. “It didn’t work.”
“Oh.”
“She’s dead, Bernie. She died.”
I gasp, and yet it feels as if no air is making its way inside me.
“She took a whole bunch of pills from the medicine cabinet in the kitchen, I’m not even sure what, and she died.”
Tears trickle down my cheeks.
“It’s all my fault,” Maura says. “If I’d just left her be, she’d still be alive.”
“You tried to help. You tried to do your best. Josie’s father and that bastard he calls a friend are to blame. No one else.”
“She was only fifteen,” Maura says. “Still a child herself.”
“I know. I know.”
“What did the guards say?” Dan asks.
Maura dries her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. Her face is red and blotchy and she’s clearly been crying for hours.
“Not much. They said things like this happen more often than you would believe. They said runaways are trouble.”
“Runaways?” I say.
“They said runaways, especially young girls, break into houses looking for a bed for the night, or some pills for a headache or a cold.”
“Surely, they must know—”
Maura shakes her head. “They asked me how I knew her, and when I couldn’t answer, Christy spoke for me.”
My gut clenches and I push the tea away from me. “Dr. Davenport knows she’s not your cousin?”
“He knows. He took one look at me and he knew. He told the guards that we didn’t know who she was. Just some kid who helped herself to our spare room and our medicine cabinet.”
“And they believed him?”
“Yes.”
I realize I don’t even know the child’s last name. It’s all so unnecessary and so wrong that I want to punch something. Dr. Davenport. And Josie’s father. And that sick, disgusting creature who stole Josie’s innocence.
“What happens now?” I say.
Maura sighs. “I’m not sure. Christy is gone to the station to make a statement. And I came here.”
“But if he knows she’s not your cousin…” I say, my breath catching. “Maura, you can’t go home.”
Maura’s eyes glisten. I search them for fear, but it’s not there. All I see is sadness. Unequivocal, all-consuming sadness.
“Dan, say something,” I plead.
I’m desperate for my husband to do something to encourage her to stay here with us where we can keep her safe. But Dan is pensive and lost.
“I’ll walk you home, Maura,” he finally says.
“Jesus, Dan, no. She can’t go.”
“Thank you,” Maura says, standing up.
“Maura. No. Stop. Wait.”
Maura walks behind me and places her hands on my shoulders. “I’m all right. I’ll be all right.”
“But Dr. Davenport—”
“Christy is the most respected man in the community,” Maura says, cutting me off. “Everyone knows he’s a wonderful man.”
“But he’s not,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone knows he is. It doesn’t matter that what they are so certain they know is wrong.”
I watch my husband escort my best friend toward the door. I listen as their voices carry when they descend the concrete staircase and walk out onto the street below. I cry. I wrap my arms around myself and let everything inside spill. I cry for a fifteen-year-old girl. I cry for my friend. And I cry for myself, so full of rage at a world in which little matters save for the lives of our husbands, our fathers, our brothers, and our sons.