Chapter 42
Fiona has tried calling again. Wallace, too. But not Tim Mooney. One message, though, leaps out: Glacier Elementary.
Sam’s school.
“This is Wanda Collins from Glacier Elementary. I have you down as a contact for Sam. I’m calling because school got out a little over half an hour ago, and Sam is still here without a ride.
I didn’t hear from his mom or dad regarding this matter, and I haven’t been able to reach her or Patrick on their phones.
If you could please call us, that would be great. ”
Fear shoots through me. I call the school but it’s long past closing hours. Voicemail. I hang up and call Jess. She doesn’t answer. Voicemail number two. I can barely live with myself now, but if something happens to Sam, I’ll die.
My heart hammers against my chest. If someone has targeted Jess’s vehicle, they know who she is, where she lives, and they could easily target Sam, too.
“Jess. Call me. I got a call from Sam’s school, and I have no idea what’s going on. Call me. Immediately.”
I hang up and listen to Fiona’s and Wallace’s messages in case they know something I don’t, but neither seems to have anything important to say other than that they’re checking in and still worried.
I drive faster than I should, gripping the steering wheel, panic closing in on me. My heart feeling like it’s going to beat itself right out of my rib cage.
It’s dark out when I pull up. The lights from Jess’s kitchen and living room shine onto her front lawn. I’m about to bolt out of my car and run inside when I see her cross in front of the kitchen window.
“Thank God,” I say out loud. But Sam? Where is Sam?
But even as my mind is registering that Jess would never be calmly shuffling around in her kitchen if Sam weren’t there, I see him, too, through the main room’s larger windows. He’s in the living room on the couch, his head bowed, looking at something.
I close my eyes and sag back into the seat. The fact that they’re both safe washes over me like a wave. I squeeze my eyes tighter to keep away threatening tears.
A memory from when Jess and I were little pops into my mind. We were playing unattended with some miniature toy cars Les had provided us from his office at the back of his grimy auto shop, the thick smell of oil and gasoline around us.
We pushed the little models around on the pavement beside his shop, real cars surrounding us like giant, ticking beasts.
We made little zoom sounds as we laid tracks in the gravel.
Road dust covered our fingers and clothes as we crashed the little models into one another, pretending we were bad drivers.
But eventually, I got bored and wanted to push mine farther away, to venture out on my own, away from Jess.
“Wait,” she called. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer her. I was sick of her copying everything I did.
I shoved my little Mustang along, away from her, toward some gravel off to the side of the lot.
Suddenly, our stepdad’s voice roared.
I turned to see him snatch Jess up by the arm as an old Ford pickup backed up to the spot she played. He held her tight against him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He glared at me over her shoulder.
He squeezed her arm so furiously that he left welts on her pale skin.
“You’re both so pathetic. You,” he said to Jess, “always letting yourself get hurt. And you . . .” He pinned me with his glare while Jess wailed by his side, her arms tiny and thin in his clenched, oil-stained hands.
Tears smeared her cheeks. “You should protect your little sister, not get her hurt.”
Those words—straight from that dusty lot—seem to have followed me down every turn in my life. And still, I’m doing a poor job of it.
When I open my eyes, I notice a car parked across the street in front of the Johnstons’ house. Behind Jess’s car is an unmarked sedan. The same police detail that showed up earlier today with Alderson and Greene.
I walk over, tap on the window. “When did they get in?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
I ask her if there’s been anything strange going on. She shakes her head, bored as they come.
When I walk in, Sam launches himself at me from across the living room and wraps my waist in a big hug. “Aunt Crosbie,” he says to my belly, still pronouncing it Cwasbie. He’s in his green-and-black dinosaur pajamas, his little belly popping out.
Tears leap to my eyes. I’m still staggered by my relief that he’s okay. And yes, his mom, too, though I have a bone to pick with her. Why didn’t she call me back when I was panicking on the drive over after getting that call?
When he tries to release me, I don’t let him go and take one more whiff.
He smells like a combination of lavender and something fruity, like bottled innocence and sunshine.
When I finally let him go, I drop to my knees, tousle his hair, and ask him about school.
He tells me it’s been good and wonders if I’ll come read his Creature Cards with him.
“I will if it’s not that scary one about the Japanese girl,” I say, pulling my face into a mask of terror.
“That’s the best one!”
“Well, maybe.” It’s all I can do not to haul him into another embrace, but I don’t want to scare the poor kid.
But the pressure that’s been building like megatons of water against an unstable dam creates a fissure in me.
Taking risks, like letting Jeremy into my house and meeting him in a semiremote place, is one thing.
But if I’m endangering Jess and Sam, too, by my unwillingness to confess and bear the consequences, that’s quite another.
As I look at my nephew’s innocent, sweet face, I decide that I need to start somewhere. And that’s with Jess.
“Give me a sec to talk to your mom. You go pick out the cards, okay?”
He agrees and is gone like a shot.
I find Jess in the kitchen, washing dishes. “I tried calling you. Why didn’t you pick up?”
“I just saw,” she says, flashing me an unfocused glance and refocusing on the plate she’s sponging off. “I’ve been making dinner for Sam, and I had to get him in the bath.”
“I left messages to call me. Immediately.”
“Yeah, I just saw.”
“Jess, the school called.”
“I’m sorry. I got held up. There was an accident on LaSalle.”
“You should have called to tell me.”
“Sorry,” she says, moving on to a big pasta pot. She hasn’t properly looked at me yet. “I didn’t realize they’d called you.”
“Why is your car in the street?”
“Those agents informed me that there would be an unmarked car across from my house. So, when I saw it when I came home, I pulled in in front of them to speak to them before going in. After we chatted, I decided to leave it there. Figured someone would be less likely to mess with it with them right behind it.”
“Good point,” I say, staring at the side of her pretty face.
I can’t read her. It’s one thing to not be able to read Jeremy Fisher.
It’s another entirely not to be able to read my own sister.
It’s like everything with her has gone haywire.
The old Jess would have called the school if she was just five minutes late.
One night after the rape, she told me that she wanted to take her own skin off and climb out of it.
It almost feels like that’s exactly what she’s done.
I return to the living room and sit on the couch with Sam and read several cards, moving from actual creatures like the Giant Orb Spider and some dinosaurs to scarier mythological ones like the Wendigo and the Kraken, at which point Sam begins to rub his eyes.
Jess comes in from the kitchen and declares that it’s time for bed.
Sam fights her, saying that he wants to fully see me off when I leave.
It’s our little ritual, when he stands at the big living room windows at the front of the house and waves at me until my car is officially out of sight.
Jess tells him “Not tonight” and takes him to his room. Twenty minutes later, she returns while I’m picking up Sam’s stray toys—minus a Star Wars Lego project in progress.
Jess sits, places her face in her palms, and rubs. Hard. When she looks up, she says, “Look, Cros, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Vivian.”
“It’s okay,” I say. I don’t want an apology from her. I want to give one.
Yes, it dawns on me. I really do.
Maybe not to the world, but at least to her. It’s time. Her anger at me feels like it’s growing, like it’s taking on a life of its own, becoming its own monster stalking the edges of our relationship. It’s as if she senses that I’m the cause of all the toxic things in our lives. And I guess I am.
After the flood of fright I felt after receiving the message from Sam’s school, I have to start somewhere. I need to confess, ironically, as the Confession Artist wants me to do, at least to her.
“I’ll tell those agents about it if you think it’s wise,” Jess says. “I’ll have to give Vivian a heads-up, but she’s not going to be able to tell them anything that I haven’t already told you.”
“They should know about the boy and his connection to Askens,” I say. “You know that, right?”
Jess begins to weep and shake her head. She’s brittle. A soft breeze might take her down. I want to weasel out of what I’ve suddenly decided I need to do, but the tug to protect her pulls fiercely.
I won’t back down. I can’t. Not with my guilt building, wanting to burst past its dam, knowing that my dirty secrets might be putting them in danger, too.
Plus, there’s a tiny voice whispering in my ear: Your sister, the one who was helplessly crying in her bed just earlier in the day, is not that helpless.
This morning, I wouldn’t have thought so, but after seeing those files in her office and how she held that information back from me, I’m wondering how much of her I’ve misunderstood.
But I need to plow forward, for her, for me.
“Jess,” I force myself to say, “there’s something I need to tell you, too.”
She stops crying and swipes at her eyes. “What?”
“About Mark Coleman.”