Chapter 7
Violet
Self-sufficiency was in the nature of the Esmie children.
Though we grew up in a big house and had money—with the money for us children locked in trust funds—our parents never employed any help.
Rooms got dusty until one of us cleaned them.
When your pile of dirty clothes became unbearable, you did your laundry yourself in the semi-functional washing machine.
Our parents were almost never home for meals, so we each perfected the art of single-serve nourishment—an egg or two, or a bologna sandwich, or slices of toast.
Sometimes, when I got tired of timing my own soft-boiled egg, I ate at the home of my only school friend, Alice McMurtry.
Alice was a sweet girl with glasses and pimples on her receding chin.
She and I swapped notes in class and snickered about boys.
Looking back, it was remarkable that I had a friend—everyone thought I was strange and disagreeable, and I couldn’t argue the point.
But Alice either didn’t mind or was so desperate for friendship that she found me sufficient.
When I went to Alice’s house, Alice’s mother would always make us something delicious—gooey grilled cheese or bowls of homemade soup.
I loved eating at Alice’s because I didn’t have to make whatever it was, which made it taste better.
When we were twelve, Alice was found dead on the path running alongside the train tracks, the one we sometimes walked when we wanted to take the long way home from school.
I vaguely remembered the days after she died—wondering what had happened to my friend, getting my only answers from the rumors going around the halls.
Had someone hurt her? Was she murdered? Had she died in pain?
I remembered spending an hour in the library, scanning the local newspapers for news of Alice and finding nothing.
Even in Fell, wouldn’t a murdered child be news?
I’d walked by Alice’s house in the next neighborhood, a thirty-minute walk away, determined to talk to her parents, then balking at the last minute.
I’d lived in a fog of confusion that added to the loneliness and pain.
In an often invisible childhood, it was the most invisible I had ever felt.
No one noticed that I was upset and confused. No one told me anything.
I finally lucked into answers when I eavesdropped on two teachers gossiping over cigarettes outside the gym doors. There had been an autopsy—I couldn’t even imagine what this entailed, my friend pulled to pieces—and Alice hadn’t been murdered after all. “Heart defect,” one teacher said. “Poor kid.”
“Just one of those things,” the other teacher said.
“True. But it doesn’t make for much of a story, does it? What a letdown.”
When Alice’s parents put their house up for sale and moved out of town, I wondered if they agreed.
No one cared that I spent my school days in agony, wondering if I’d see Alice standing in a doorway or waiting for me when I glanced out the window.
I lay awake at night, wondering if I’d have to see my dead best friend, just like I’d seen all the others I wasn’t supposed to talk about.
When I talked about the dead people, everyone thought I was mentally ill.
The only people who didn’t think I was crazy were Dodie and Vail, but I rarely told them about the things I saw.
When we were in the house, someone might be listening.
I walked into the kitchen now to see Vail standing at the counter, his back to me as he stared out the window at the view over the rear of the property.
The toaster was on the counter. He’d made his own breakfast, then cleaned the dishes.
I felt a pang of familiarity at the sight of it, as deep and moving as pain that took my breath away for a second.
Then I got out the bread and put two slices in the toaster. I fished in the cupboard for the peanut butter we’d bought yesterday to make my own single breakfast. Vail didn’t speak, his only acknowledgment of me in the change of air in the room, his silent awareness.
There was a near-full pot of coffee on the counter, my brother’s only concession to anyone else living in this house. I poured myself a cup and said, “I’m going into town today.”
“Yeah?” Vail was wearing his ancient jeans and a thick navy blue cable-knit sweater with a tee under it. After his years as a diver, wearing next to nothing, it seemed he liked to layer up now, as if he’d been cold all that time.
“There must have been a police report,” I said, not having to explain what police report I might be talking about. “I remember police here. Lots of them.”
Vail nodded, still looking out the window. “Uniforms. Some guy sitting me down on the living room sofa and asking questions. Hanna? Manna?” He pressed his fingertips to the spot between his eyes. “I can’t remember his name. I remember thinking it rhymed with banana.”
I shook my head, smearing peanut butter on my nearly black toast. “I don’t remember a banana man. One of the cops was Bradley Pine’s dad. I remember that.”
Vail groaned. “Bradley beat me up twice in high school. I hated that kid.”
I focused on my toast, unwilling to admit to Vail that I’d had a wild crush on Bradley Pine, the big football jock, in high school. I’d been obsessed with him, and he’d had no idea. He’d looked through me like glass. “Anyway, if there’s a police file, the Fell PD will give it to me to read.”
“Do police departments do that?” Vail asked, glancing at me for the first time.
I shrugged and took a bite of toast. “They will,” I said with my mouth full.
He nodded, as if this made perfect sense. “What’s in those woods behind the house?” he asked, changing the subject.
For a second, I scrounged in my brain for an answer.
As a mother, you feel like you have to have an answer for every single question that’s asked of you, no matter how outrageous.
Then I remembered that I wasn’t a mother right this minute, and I didn’t have to know anything. “I have no idea,” I said.
Vail grunted. We’d never been the kind of kids who would wander the woods, exploring and playing imaginary games.
Our dreary neighborhood didn’t exactly invite it.
I loathed uncertainty, Vail would rather read books, and Dodie simply didn’t give a shit.
She was one of the least curious people I knew.
So the tangled trees and brush that extended behind the house weren’t mapped terrain.
We didn’t hang out back there, which had baffled the adults after Ben disappeared.
They were all certain that he must have wandered in that direction, wanting to play, and met some kind of accident.
I remembered being asked, over and over, where we usually went back there, if Ben might have gone to a spot he remembered.
No one had believed me when I’d answered that as far as I knew, Ben had never been to the woods in his life.
“They searched, remember?” Vail said, following my train of thought. “Like he would have just gone into the trees by himself.”
“Stupid,” I agreed. The adults had all thought this was plausible because they didn’t know Ben. He didn’t go exploring because he was an Esmie. He was one of us. He preferred to be wherever we were.
Even if Ben had gone into the woods, which he hadn’t, what did they think had happened to him?
Was there a cliff to fall over, a well to fall into?
It wasn’t the Mojave Desert. There were no fairy-tale wolves.
If a little boy wandered into the trees and got cold or scared, he could simply turn around and come home.
“I’m going to go back there today,” Vail said, looking out the window again. “I’m going to see what’s there.”
I nodded, popping the last of my toast into my mouth and washing it down with coffee. “Take Dodie with you.”
He gave me a glance that was both scathing and amused. “She’s asleep.”
“It wouldn’t kill her to get out of bed.”
A smirk crossed Vail’s lips, the big-brother kind of smirk that promised trouble for his little sister. “You know, I think I’ll do it, if only for the entertainment value.”
“I’ll bet it’s wet back there,” I said with some relish. “Muddy. Buggy. Somehow cold and sweaty at the same time.”
“Perfect,” Vail agreed. “Let us know how it goes with the police.”
“I will.”
“And let me know if Bradley Pine has been longing for you all this time and finally wants to marry you.”
I had a second of shock, then I dropped my coffee cup into the sink without bothering to wash it. “I hate you so much.”
“If I catch sight of him, I’ll break his fucking nose,” Vail said jovially. “It’ll be fun.”
I didn’t bother to answer. I just banged out the door.