Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Days later I still hadn’t heard anything from Porter and I was in the car with Dominic bound for East Buford, Pennsylvania. He had discovered there was a behavioral school there and wanted to follow the lead.
“Did Abel ever say anything about this place?” I asked.
“No. He has no idea where she ended up. Once he signed those papers, he lost all his rights.”
“Why would he do that though? Doesn’t seem like him from what you’ve said.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about Marin, but he has mentioned a few times that he thinks she’ll come back to him. He’s not worried.”
Gross. And so typical of my father’s ego. It’s so invasive and destabilizing for another person to believe they have such control over you. Even if it isn’t true. Even if it is.
Hearing that should have been a catalyst for my own empowerment. Instead, I felt immaterial.
“Even if you’re right,” I said, “and James Calhoun brought Marin to this place, they aren’t going to tell you. There have to be confidentiality rules out the wazoo at a place like this.”
“How good are you at lying?” he asked.
“Average,” I lied.
“We’re going to pose as a couple with a messed-up kid. I’ve scheduled a tour already.”
“Well, first maybe settle on a better diagnosis than messed-up.”
He gave me one of those get-over-yourself looks before ignoring my input. “At some point I’ll slip away and sneak into the records room.”
“I’m going to ask you something and I want you to be completely honest with me.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Did you get this plan from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective?”
He hesitated for a second and then burst out laughing. “No, not on purpose, but you’re right. It worked though.”
“They’re going to notice if one of us wanders off,” I pointed out.
“I’ll say I’m having stomach issues.”
“This is giving me stomach issues,” I muttered.
- - - - -
I’d spent four months in upstate New York after my parents were arrested. James Calhoun had located a relative. More likely, Abel had told him where to look. He was an uncle, but distant. Generations of infidelity and children out of wedlock had left Abel’s kin with loose connections.
The man was seventy-eight years old. Nimble enough to get himself to and from the local bar but not much else. He barely spoke to me or even acknowledged my presence much beyond bringing home highly processed snacks and tossing them in my direction.
James told me it would be short-term. Just enough time for the paperwork to go through.
Once my uncle was given full custody, the rest was easy.
The paperwork was sealed and I was in the custody of a relative in another state; the State of Massachusetts never gave me much thought after that.
Oswald would eventually request the name change, sealing those records as well, and then Marin Haggerty would be nothing but a ghost. He just needed a little time.
I didn’t know my place in the old man’s home. I’d been treated my whole life as someone special, the center of the universe, and now I ranked somewhere between the armchair and the trash can.
Love, therapy, safety—all the things I probably needed—were none of the things I wanted and none of the things I got. Instead, I kept to myself, inside my head, surrounded by the teachings of my father, clinging to every memory, trying my best not to forget who I was.
There was comfort in being alone. I didn’t miss the attention, the pressure to please my father, the punishments when I failed.
No one expected anything from me. No one could hurt me.
But it was lonely, and over time I started to accept I wasn’t on some little break from my normal life; I was transitioning to something new.
James Calhoun returned unannounced on a Saturday afternoon.
Everything was settled. I was Gwen Tanner now, and Gwen Tanner was newly enrolled in a boarding school somewhere in Pennsylvania.
We left that day; nothing was exchanged with the uncle other than the five hundred dollars James had promised.
Over the next two days, the long drive, a night in a motel when we got there, it became clear to me that the boarding school was not going to be the plaid-skirts-and-legacy-admissions type.
It was a boarding school in that students lived there full-time, but that was because these children were not welcome in their homes.
It was a residential treatment facility more than it was a school, an educational institution with the emphasis on institution.
As far as the facility was concerned, my parents had died in a fire and I was having a hard time adjusting.
I had no other close family and they shouldn’t expect any visitors.
James told me it was just a cover, a place to hide out until the dust settled, but there was a part of me that knew he thought I belonged there.
- - - - -
I followed behind Dominic, more timid than I would have expected. It had a different name now and the landscaping was better maintained. The bars on the windows were gone and there were new tan awnings—but the silhouette was the same. New windows couldn’t stop old memories.
I remembered the day James brought me there—whispering in my ear to stick to the plan as he led me inside.
I said goodbye to him in the reception area; he wasn’t allowed to see me to my room, which was a real red flag.
There were a lot of unsettling sounds on the other side of that door.
I remembered hearing kids crying, yelling, TVs turned on way too loud to cover up other sounds.
I didn’t make a peep while an attendant led me inside.
I spent a whole month segregated in a sterile fish tank because of my fictional propensity for self-harm—an easy sell given the five carvings down my side.
James said I had to pretend it was true so no one would wonder who had actually done it to me.
I was technically under observation at first, but there wasn’t much observing going on.
Not much to see other than a little girl on a mattress on the floor.
I was eventually moved to a standard room where there was no lock on the door, and I could finally attend classes, which were a total joke. It was another month before I got a roommate. That little girl required a lot of attention and sometimes I think the staff forgot I was even there.
I didn’t want to go inside. How had I ended up there again? My pace had slowed down and Dominic noticed.
“Are you okay?” he asked, stopping so that he could give me his undivided attention.
“Aren’t you nervous? What happened to the guy who flipped out when Porter broke into the Haggerty house?”
“That was different,” he said.
“Yeah, this is way worse.”
“Not really,” he argued.
I wasn’t going to scare him out of this mission, and if I kept acting like this, it was going to start raising questions. “Just don’t be stupid,” I said.
“I’ll try my best,” he promised, content that my apprehension was directed toward his incompetence and not due to my paralyzing unwillingness to revisit this place.
The reception area was barely recognizable and it was immediately apparent that Dominic’s plan wasn’t going to work.
There were several locked doors and a check-in desk behind a thin layer of glass.
Behind the glass, behind the desk, behind a controlled-entrance door were the files—files that, for all we knew, didn’t even go back the almost twenty years he needed.
I shot him a look full of judgment and disappointment, masking my true feeling of Thank God.
- - - - -
We drove home in mostly silence. I could tell he was embarrassed, and he should be.
We’d suffered through a whole tour of that place with no hope of getting anywhere near the files.
All it did was bring back more memories for me.
It was eight years of my life that I had effectively blocked out.
I had to use so much of my brain power to remember details from my life as Marin Haggerty that I think my mind was tired and needed a break when it came to those years.
After the first half hour in the car, the silence started to feel tense, more than it needed to be. I shifted around in my seat to try and reset the mood. “My neck,” I said, massaging it. “I think I slept funny. Why is it always the neck? Why don’t you ever wake up with anything else stiff?”
“Tell that to twelve-year-old me.” He laughed; I had succeeded in resetting the mood. It was the perfect alley-oop for a dick joke, but I giggled like it hadn’t crossed my mind. He needed to feel clever in order to stop pouting.
“Hey.” He paused, ready to address his misstep. “I’m sorry for dragging you all the way out here for nothing.”
“It’s fine. Now I can say I’ve been to East Buford, Pennsylvania.” I laughed. Ha ha. What a strange little place that I totally have never been to before, ever, like, definitely never lived there.