Chapter Ten #2
“Well, it’s time to read it. Your body has been keeping score for a long time, and I have news for you. You’re losing.”
“Great. I hate losing.”
She laughs. “I’m serious, Rita. You’ve got to own your trauma.”
“I don’t have trauma.”
Willa laughs so loudly I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
“You lost your mother when you were ten.”
“I’m regretting telling you that.”
“It’s an important part of your history.”
“It’s sad. It’s tragic. But that was an aneurysm, not trauma. I know trauma. I see it up close. I talk to people who have lost a loved one in the worst way possible. When your mother is discovered dead and tangled in a fishing net off the coast of Key Biscayne, that’s trauma.”
She clears her throat. I sense her wanting to argue this, but instead she says, “And how does seeing that trauma affect you?”
“It doesn’t.” But even as I say it, the pain in my temple sharpens.
“What about Broken Bayou? It’s been six months. Have you spoken with someone about it, like I recommended?”
“What do you think?” I say.
“Rita.”
“I was unconscious. I don’t remember much about Broken Bayou. I woke up in an ambulance, and even that is hazy.”
“I can promise you your body remembers. Your mind has shut it out to protect you, but sometimes it’s the things we shut out that hurt us the most.”
I glance down at the journals.
“Can we get back on track here?”
She exhales. “Yep. Okay. So the three disorders you mentioned are actually pretty common in all teenage girls. Some therapists would even say they are in all teenage girls. We just outgrow them.”
“What about the last one?”
“BPD is tricky. Typical of a teenage girl in some ways. You never know what you’re going to get. The sad girl, the happy girl, the angry girl. Everything is a crisis. The roller coaster of emotion is quite exhausting. But like I said, most grow out of it.”
“What if a girl doesn’t grow out of it?”
“It’s not good. She would be the type of woman who would hold a grudge, who would feel betrayed by things that seem unimportant to most people. She could also be quite vindictive. And God help the men who date or marry them. Those men will ultimately pay a price.”
I think of the diary entry about the boy whose glass eye was found under the pillow of a girl at Poison Wood. Then of the skull and of Laura Sanders, tangled in a net and washed up on a beach.
“Could a girl like that kill someone?” I say.
Willa sighs. “Anyone is capable of murder. You of all people know that.”
I run my hand through the soft fur of the Aussie closest to me.
He squirms and rolls over, exposing his belly.
I think about cases I’ve covered. Willa’s not wrong.
Killers come in all shapes and sizes, and I’ve caught myself trying to label this killer just like the school labeled all of us. It’s not going to be that easy.
“Thanks, Willa,” I say. “I may have a few more questions about this later.”
“Call me anytime,” she says.
We hang up, and the two other dogs have found their way up to me. All three are pressing their small bodies against mine.
These items from my past feel like an itch that needs to be scratched.
Like a scab I need to pick at. It’s how I felt in Broken Bayou.
Like there’s something under the surface here too.
This is how I feel when I start on a story, like the truth is close and waiting.
But the truth around this story is different.
It’s why I’ve left it alone all these years. But it won’t be left alone much longer.
Soon Erin Stockwell will be stomping around it in her functional flats, digging in my past.
But I’m here now, and I can get a jump start.
There’s just one problem. And it’s a big one. My father.
My father’s reputation is about to be put through the ringer. A judge who received one of the nation’s highest judicial honors, a Rehnquist Award, allowed a possibly false confession to be admitted into evidence.
Evidence that is starting to look like it sent an innocent man to prison for seventeen years. A decision that could haunt my father for a long time.
I finish off the last sip of my scotch and disentangle myself from the dogs. They jump off the bed and follow me to the stairs.
If I’m involved in this story, I can help mitigate the damage to my father.
He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve this right now.
His health is fragile. For once, I can be the one to help him, not the other way around.
But as I reach the bottom floor, a knot starts forming in my gut.
Gristle twisted around doubt and what-ifs.
What if the honorable Judge Mac Meade does lie sometimes, when he thinks it would protect someone he loves?
A noise comes from the living room off the kitchen. It takes me a minute to figure out one of the dogs is growling.
“Here, boy,” I say. Two dogs come running, but the third is still out of sight.
He growls again. I follow the sound to the French doors that lead to the backyard. I open one, and all three dogs bolt into the dark, barking. Something in the woods across the lake catches my attention. A light. No, two lights, like headlights.
I remind myself the gates closed after I came in, but my heart rate still kicks up.
Then the lights extinguish, and the dogs stop barking and run back to me.
I shut the door and lock it, then walk to the kitchen, where my father’s shotgun is still propped against the far wall. I’m debating a call to 911 when the back door swings open and the dogs run for it, barking again.
“Hi, boys,” Debby says from the back hallway.
I exhale. “Was there anyone else driving around out there on the property?” I ask when she walks into the kitchen. “Thought I saw headlights across the lake.”
She shakes her head and shrugs off her coat. “Just me out there.” She walks to the electric kettle and turns it on, then pulls out honey and chamomile tea. “Want one?” she says.
“No thanks.” I hold up my empty glass. “I shot past chamomile already.”
I refill my glass in the bar and circle back to the kitchen table, where Debby is sitting, drinking her tea and looking exhausted.
“How’s my dad?”
She looks up at me. “I’m worried about him.” She rubs her face. “You know first the universe whispers, then it taps, then it punches. Your father got his punch.”
And it’s not done punching, I think.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and see it’s Carl.
“I’m heading up,” I say to Debby as I answer the call.
“Rita,” he says. He sounds out of breath.
“I know Erin’s there,” I say. “Dom told me.”
“Ah, Rita. This thing is taking on a life of its own. It’s crazy here.”
“Hang on.” I race up the back stairs and lock my bedroom door behind me.
I clear my throat. “I can imagine it is crazy.”
“How’s your dad?”
“He’ll probably be home soon,” I say.
“Good. Good.” There’s a pause and he says, “I know you know about Laura’s alias.”
“Mulholland?” I say.
“Mulholland,” he repeats. Then he says, “If the DNA comes back and confirms Laura Sanders was an alias for Heather Hadwick, Erin and I will be coming to Riverbend.”
I’m not surprised, but hearing it tightens a vise around my stomach. “I want to be included,” I say.
“We’ll see, Rita. That’s up to Dom. Have you talked to him?”
I lean back against the pillow. “Yes,” I say. “Has Erin learned anything else about Laura?”
He pauses just long enough.
“We are on the same team, Carl.”
“There’ll be time to talk about that later, Rita. For now, Erin’s got it. I just wanted you to know we might be in your backyard soon. I’ll be in touch.”
He ends the call, and I try to control my breathing. His voice was curt and professional. None of our typical sarcasm and joking. The ripple effects of my decisions.
I crawl under the sheets without caring what time it is. I’m exhausted. But as I lie still in the quiet room, a voice fills my head. Summer’s voice saying “Heather’s gone.”
It wasn’t until the following day we learned how gone she was. The police descended on Johnny’s cottage in a wave of blue and brown uniforms. We watched from our dorm window as they escorted him to a waiting cruiser and drove off.
We slept with our door locked and barricaded. My father showed up to get me the next afternoon. He grabbed me and looked me over as if I had physical wounds, but my wounds from that night had already burrowed deep into sinew and bones. There was nothing to see.
Over Thanksgiving break in 2002, the four of us, Heather, me, Summer, and Kat, had stayed behind for the week with a skeleton crew consisting of one teacher, a cook, and the maintenance man, Johnny Adair.
Heather’s aunt and uncle were visiting their daughter in Michigan.
My dad’s brother had a medical emergency in West Texas, and he’d had to go help out.
Summer’s and Kat’s parents were traveling together abroad in Gstaad or some such ridiculous place.
So the four of us were left to our own devices at Poison Wood, bored but on edge after what had happened there the month before.
I roll over and fish the drawing my father made earlier today from my tote. I study the cross-sectional diagram. The width of the drain. Someone could have been pushed in here, he said, pointing to it. I shut my eyes.
It wouldn’t have been the first time someone was accused of being pushed at Poison Wood.