Zoe
Haddonfield, 2024
After Cherry disappeared, had done everything she could think of to find her, in the real world and the virtual one.
She’d gone through Cherry’s bedroom in painstaking detail, rifling through each drawer, reaching under Cherry’s mattress.
Online, she’d rummaged through months of Cherry’s social media history, tugging at the threads of every connection, contacting friends and everyone with whom her daughter had interacted.
Have you seen her? If you have, can you ask her to call? Tell her that her mother is worried about her.
Tell her we miss her.
Tell her I’m not angry.
Tell her that whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it.
She didn’t say those last parts.
She knew—or thought she knew—what had prompted her daughter’s flight.
Cherry wanted to be a musician, a performer, a star, and , who knew firsthand what that world could do to women, had shut her down at every opportunity.
“It’s impossible,”
she told Cherry, the first time her daughter talked about the band she was putting together, how they were going to be discovered, how they’d become the next big thing.
They’d been in the kitchen at the condo in Margate, where they spent most of the summer.
had been in the galley kitchen making dinner, shrimp and corn and fresh sliced tomatoes she’d bought at a farmstand on the Black Horse Pike, the four-lane road Jordan always insisted on taking, because he believed it got them to the beach faster than the newer, wider, and much more popular Atlantic City Expressway.
“The industry has changed.”
Cherry had rolled her eyes, in that special, scornful way only teenage girls could manage.
“Maybe it’s changed since you were performing,”
she said, in a tone suggesting that those performances might have taken place before the invention of electricity.
Or language.
had handed Cherry a stack of plates through the pass-through, and while her daughter set the table, she’d told Cherry how it was.
She’d explained to her daughter that musicians toured because that was the only way for them to make money from their music; that the streamers paid next to nothing to anyone except for the very biggest acts; that nobody bought albums or CDs anymore; that selling concert tickets and merchandise was the only way to earn a profit; and that these days, very, very few musicians did.
Cherry, who had milk crates full of old vinyls, who would, as often as would let her, take the PATCO train to listening parties at the record stores that had sprouted in Center City, like toadstools after the rain, had arched an eyebrow at that, but had plowed on.
“When the Griffin Sisters were around, we sold albums.
And we had a song on a big TV show—”
“People are still doing that,”
Cherry interrupted.
“TV shows still need songs.”
“A big TV show today gets maybe a million people watching, right?”
Cherry muttered something about how not everyone watched a show the day or even the week that it aired.
plowed ahead.
“A big show back then, or a commercial that played during the Super Bowl, you’d have tens of millions.”
“What about American Idol? The Voice?”
Cherry asked.
“Tell me one person who’s gotten famous from winning those shows.”
“Kelly Clarkson? Carrie Underwood?”
Cherry offered.
“One person in the last ten years.”
Cherry opened her mouth, then closed it.
She glared at her mother.
“You don’t think I’m good enough,”
she said, and set the last plate down on the table with a thump.
“It’s not that.”
could see a flush crawling up Cherry’s neck.
Cherry’s eyes were narrowed and her lips pressed tightly together, and she was so pretty, even when she was scowling.
Even with her piercings and her boy’s clothes, even after she’d chopped off her hair.
knew what the music industry did to pretty girls like that, girls who were eager to make their dreams come true.
She’d been one, once.
“I think you’re very good,”
she said carefully.
“I also think that it’s next to impossible to get discovered these days, and even harder to succeed if you do.
There used to be a clear path to making it as a musician.
There were steps you’d follow, and now, there aren’t.
I don’t know how to help you—”
“I’m not asking for your help.”
Which left with nothing to say except, “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You can’t Bubble Wrap me and protect me from everything!”
Cherry’s voice was high and indignant.
“Getting hurt is part of having an actual life.
Things happen.”
As if didn’t know that.
“I’ll survive.”
She thinks she’s invincible, thought sadly.
She could remember feeling exactly the same way, when she’d been Cherry’s age: bulletproof, and furious at anyone who’d tried to hold her back, to suggest, by deed or implication, that her dreams would not come true.
hadn’t been surprised that her daughter had left.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t sick and sleepless with anxiety about where Cherry had gone, what she was doing, and what was being done to her.
Jordan had soothed her as best he could, reminded her that Cherry was smart and capable, nobody’s fool, but still felt almost feral, half-crazed with worry about her daughter, her only girl, out there in a world with sharp teeth.
had gone to her mother, which had been bad (“What do you mean, she’s gone? She just left?”
Janice had asked.
“And you didn’t try to stop her?”).
She’d gone to her great-aunt Bess, who’d been Cassie’s favorite, and then Cherry’s, and that had been worse.
Bess had just looked at her with her penciled eyebrows lifted and her voice expressionless.
“No, I haven’t heard from her,”
she’d said.
At night, in bed, with Jordan sleeping on his back beside her, his CPAP mask strapped in place and his hands crossed on top of his chest, would stare up into the darkness, where a thousand horror movies played in limited-engagement runs on her bedroom ceiling.
Cherry murdered, dismembered, dead in a ditch.
Cherry sipping a drink that had been roofied, or swallowing a pill that turned out to contain a lethal dose of fentanyl.
Cherry raped; Cherry sold into a human-trafficking ring.
Cherry walking along the highway, late at night, not realizing that the cars couldn’t see her.
“Be patient,”
Jordan told her, after the Haddonfield cops sent them away.
The sergeant had explained, in what found to be an extremely condescending fashion, that her daughter was legally an adult and under no obligation to share her whereabouts.
(“Count yourself lucky,”
he’d said, after he’d taken ’s report.
“At least she’s not hitting you up for money like my kids do.”)
A few weeks after Cherry’s disappearance, came home from her errands to find a bright yellow Mini Cooper parked in their driveway.
She felt her heart sink.
Bix’s car had been a Christmas present from Jordan, a combination gift and bribe.
After none of the nineteen colleges to which he’d applied offered him admission, Bix wanted to find a job.
Jordan had convinced him to take classes instead.
He’d bought his son a car and, over ’s objections, had allowed him to move back home.
hadn’t wanted him there.
had wanted to send him away, to do a thirteenth year of high school at some boarding school.
wanted her stepson nowhere near Schuyler and Noah, and especially not Cherry.
She’d never liked him, not from the first time she’d met him, when he’d been just five years old, a fine-boned boy with big, dark eyes and delicate features.
“Bix, this is ,”
Jordan had said.
Jordan hadn’t proposed yet, but they’d talked about it.
knew that meeting Bix was the final hurdle, the last test she’d have to pass before she got her guy.
They’d met at the Please Touch Museum, just the three of them.
Janice and Sam were babysitting Cherry.
Jordan and his son had been waiting on the white marble steps leading up to the museum, which was housed in Memorial Hall in the middle of Fairmount Park.
knew it well.
She and her daughter had spent many rainy afternoons there, loading a tiny shopping cart with plastic food and wheeling it through the pretend supermarket checkout line, or riding the carved wooden horses on the antique carousel.
“Hello, Bix. I’m .”
She’d crouched down to bring her eyes to his level.
Bix had regarded her gravely, his expression oddly adult and unreadable as he’d studied her face, then let his gaze slide along the length of her body as she’d straightened up.
told herself she was being silly, as she resisted an urge to rub her hand against her skirt and tried to ignore her first impression, which was that there was something sly about his expression, something unsettling about his stare.
had done her best.
She had tried to befriend Bix, with the goal of being a supportive and loving adult in his life.
“I know I can’t replace your mother,”
she’d told him, in a speech she’d cribbed from one of the stepparenting websites she’d consulted, optimistically, after her third date with Jordan.
“All I want is to be an adult in your life who loves you.”
She’d said all the right things.
She’d even thought—she cringed to remember—that Bix and Cherry, who was just a year younger than Bix, could be friends, that they would grow up like brother and sister.
It would have been good for both of them to have a companion, an ally, a peer.
But had abandoned those fantasies almost immediately.
Six weeks after that first meeting, where Bix had walked through the exhibits ignoring them; ignoring her, talking only to his father, Jordan had invited her and Cherry to his place in Margate.
The house was a two-story, three-bedroom condo with beige vinyl siding that disliked, and two porches—one on the second floor, one on the third—and it stood just a block away from the beach.
There was a neat square of yard in the front and an outdoor shower on the side of the house.
On their first afternoon, they’d spent a few hours together at the ocean, before noticed Cherry’s skin turning pink, and had walked her back to Jordan’s place.
In the outdoor shower, pulled off her daughter’s swimsuit and her own, and was shampooing Cherry’s hair when she saw a single dark eye peering through from a hole in the door.
She’d screamed, and snatched Cherry into her arms.
“What happened?”
Cherry asked her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I saw a spider,”
said, through numb lips.
Quickly, she’d rinsed Cherry’s hair and body, bundling her into a towel and wrapping another towel around herself.
By the time she opened the door, she’d figured, Bix would be long gone.
She was surprised to find him standing there, in his blue board shorts staring at with his wet dark eyes.
had sent Cherry inside to get a juice pop.
She waited until the door had slammed before turning to her boyfriend’s son.
“Were you looking at us?”
’s lips felt stiff with fury.
She could barely breathe, could barely form words.
She was trying not to yell, reminding herself that he was just a kid, and that all the books she’d read had been very clear about how discipline was the parent’s job, not the stepparent’s.
Bix hadn’t answered.
He’d just kept staring at her, his thin lips lifted in the tiniest of smirks.
His expression said, I know what you look like naked.
Which, she supposed, he did.
“That’s—that isn’t—that is not an okay thing to do.”
Bix had extended a spindly white finger, pointing toward her crotch.
“You have hair down there.”
stared at him, numb with shock.
“Most grown-ups do,”
she finally managed.
“My mommy was prettier than you are,”
Bix announced.
“Your mother was very pretty,”
said, a little stiffly, because her lips still felt frozen.
She was remembering some advice she’d read, about validating your stepchildren, no matter how uncomfortable they made you feel.
Plus, she refused to let the little weirdo know how much he’d hurt her.
“Bix, what you did is not okay.”
He didn’t respond.
He turned and started walking toward the house and didn’t stop until caught up with him, putting her hand on one small, bony shoulder and holding him still.
“Spying on people is not okay.
You need to apologize to me, and to Cherry, and I’m going to be discussing it with your father.”
“Sor-ry,”
he’d singsonged, his voice and face both utterly insincere.
And he’d strolled off, still with that little smirk on his face.
Inside, had gotten dressed and had paced the length of the bedroom, trembling, hating herself for becoming the kind of woman who’d say, Wait until your father gets home! How had it come to this? Once, she’d commanded stages in front of tens of thousands of people (or, at least, she’d been on stages, in front of tens of thousands of people, even if her bandmates had done most of the commanding).
She’d been on TV! She’d been on the cover of Elle and People! How had she ended up here, undone by a five-year-old boy?
sat, stewing, until Jordan hurried into the house, with his towel wrapped around his shoulders, dark hair wet and his cheeks pink with new sunburn.
“?”
he’d called from the back door.
He sounded out of breath and panicked.
“Did Bix come back with you guys?”
“He’s here now.”
“Thank God.
I couldn’t find him, and I got worried.
I’m going to grab a shower.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Can it wait?”
he’d asked, indicating his bare chest and sandy feet.
shook her head and stepped into the backyard, taking a seat in one of the chairs around a metal firepit.
Jordan had looked at her curiously, then taken the chair across from hers.
As told him what Bix had done, she assumed that Jordan would be just as outraged as she was.
She was wrong.
“You’re saying he made a hole in the door to look at you?”
Jordan had asked, after had walked him through the unsettling event twice.
“I don’t know if he made the hole or found it.
But he was definitely looking at us.”
And it was creepy, she wanted to say, but did not.
Your son is creepy.
Jordan had sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Look,”
he finally said.
“I’m not condoning this, at all.
But boys get curious.”
“So help me, if you say ‘boys will be boys’ . . .”
made herself be quiet.
She reminded herself that she was an adult and that Bix was a child, a kid who’d lost his mother.
Of course boys were curious, and of course Jordan would stick up for his son.
Jordan’s loyalty was one of the things she loved most about him.
Still, she couldn’t help feeling angry and betrayed, and ashamed about being seen naked, a violation that felt almost biblical (had it been Noah whose sons had been punished for looking at him unclothed?).
Most of all, she was worried about Cherry.
“I’m not saying boys will be boys.”
Her husband’s tone had become patient and lawyerly, just shy of condescending.
“And I understand that you’re upset.
Look.
I’ll give his therapist a call, see what’s going on.
And I’ll talk to Bix.
I’ll let him know it’s not okay, and that he can’t do it again.”
“You don’t think . . .”
stood up and started pacing again, walking from one end of the tiny yard to the other.
“You don’t think he’d do anything to Cherry, do you?”
Jordan tilted his head, frowning at her.
When he spoke, his voice had cooled by a few noticeable degrees.
“What do you mean?”
“Like spy on her.
Or bother her. Or—”
didn’t know exactly what she was suggesting, or how exactly to communicate her feelings.
He’s creepy, she thought again.
But she couldn’t say that.
Jordan would get defensive, and angry.
He’d take his son’s side, and would be his enemy, and she’d end up right back where she’d started, looking for a needle in a haystack, a winning lottery ticket, a unicorn—a good, stable, employed, non-crazy man who’d want to marry her and support her unskilled, has-been ass.
Her, and her daughter.
Jordan sounded aggrieved when he said, “Look, .
I understand that this was upsetting.
But let’s not blow things out of proportion.
I’ll talk to him.
He won’t do it again.”
He’d dropped a kiss on her head and headed off to the shower, leaving unhappy, unsatisfied, and deeply unsettled.
The next morning, Jordan had patched up the hole, nailing a square of wood over it, and told her he’d spoken to Bix.
She’d resisted her urge to press for more information, to ask what he’d said and how Bix had explained himself; whether Bix was going to be punished and whether Jordan had had this kind of trouble with Bix before.
She resolved, instead, to keep a close eye on the little creep, even as she tried not to think of him as a little creep.
Over the years, she’d done her best to make sure Cherry was never alone with him, but when her own sons had come along, admitted, her focus had shifted.
Cherry had been older, and Bix was mostly out of the house by then.
She’d always thought that her daughter had been safe.
No, thought, as she sat behind the wheel of her Range Rover, staring at Bix’s yellow Mini Cooper.
She could be honest, even if it was just in the privacy of her own head.
She hadn’t thought that her daughter had been safe.
She’d just stopped thinking about Bix at all.
She’d pushed all of her concern, and her memories of what he’d done, into some dark corner of her brain, where all her regrets resided, and she’d left them there, ignored, but not resolved.
She hadn’t wanted to push too hard, hadn’t wanted to risk upsetting Jordan.
Hadn’t wanted to—what did the kids say?—blow up her spot.
Risk her comfort.
Rock the boat.
Slowly, climbed out of her car.
She pulled her purse and gym bag over her shoulder and walked into the house.
She found Bix in the kitchen, drinking almond milk.
At nineteen, he was still slight, pale-skinned, fine-boned, with a carefully blank expression that still struck her as sneaky and sly.
“He gives me incel vibes,”
she’d told Penny.
made herself smile at her stepson.
She fought the urge to fidget, or to pull the zipper of her cashmere hoodie all the way up to her chin.
“How was your day?”
Bix smirked and gave a shrug.
“How are your classes?”
“Fine.”
Bix was smart—at least, according to the standardized tests—but he’d always been an indifferent student.
He did just enough work to get by, sometimes managing a B in math or science, getting Cs or even Ds in the courses that relied more on essays and class participation than memorization or multiple-choice tests.
The only subject he seemed to enjoy was computer science.
The better to hack the government, or to invent an app that would digitally undress images of celebrities, thought.
“You haven’t heard from Cherry, have you?”
Bix shook his head.
“Nope. Sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry at all.
“You don’t have any idea why she left, do you?”
Bix stared at her blankly.
“Or where she might have gone?”
He shrugged a little and shook his head.
“If I hear anything I’ll let you know.”
He tossed the empty carton into the trash (not, noted, the recycling bin, where it belonged) and went upstairs.
moved the carton into the proper bin and washed her hands, staring out through the window above the sink, into the backyard.
Sleety rain was spitting down.
The sky was a listless gray.
She wanted to shower—barre class had left her sweaty, and talking to Bix had left her, as usual, feeling greasy and soiled—but she hated being naked when she was alone with Bix in the house, no matter how many locked doors were between them.
So she refilled her water bottle and sat at her desk in the kitchen, paying bills, checking her daughter’s social media accounts, untouched in the weeks since Cherry’s departure, until she’d come up with a plan.
A quick trip to the liquor store let her buy the bait she needed, plus ingredients for dinner.
Once she had what she needed, she went to pick up the boys.
At home, gave everyone dinner, then cleaned everything up, all the while keeping tabs on the bottle of whiskey she’d purchased and set on the bar cart in the dining room.
She’d seen Bix eyeing it, had watched how he’d licked his lips.
At some point, between the time she’d put the last dish into the dishwasher and when she’d gone upstairs at eleven p.m., the bottle disappeared.
Good, thought.
She set an alarm on her phone to go off at three in the morning.
When it woke her, she crept out of bed and padded down the hall.
Bix’s bedroom door was closed but unlocked.
stood with her hand on the doorknob, for what felt like a very long time.
She did not want to open the door, did not want to go looking for what she was afraid she might find.
But she had to do it.
She couldn’t keep pretending.
Heart pounding, mouth dry, skin prickling with nerves, she opened the door and shuffled her bare feet along the carpet, letting her eyes adjust until she could make out the contours of the dresser, the desk, the bookcase, the bed.
Bix slept on his back, like his father.
His mouth was open, and she could hear him snoring softly.
She looked at his dresser, at the backpack, unzipped and crammed with what she was sure was dirty laundry she’d be, at some point, expected to wash ...
but Bix was sly.
If he had evidence, or—she shuddered—trophies, he wouldn’t keep them here, to be discovered.
No.
Like every other member of his generation, Bix lived on his phone.
If there was anything for to find, she’d find it there.
His phone was charging on his desk.
She unplugged it, hoping against hope that it was unlocked, unsurprised when she saw that it wasn’t.
Holding her breath, tiptoed over to her stepson’s bed and aimed the screen at his face, holding her breath until his features had unlocked it.
Once she saw the rows of apps appear, she slipped out of his bedroom again and stood in the hallway, heart pounding, holding her prize.
She started with his photographs, scrolling through dozens of shots: Bix at school, Bix at parties, Bix smirking as he held a joint in someone’s passenger’s seat and a beer in someone’s dorm room.
She swiped through November and October and September, until she was looking at August’s pictures, which was where she hit pay dirt.
There were two pictures of her daughter at the beach, in her swimsuit, bending down to retrieve something.
The pictures weren’t especially revealing, save for the fact that the subject was clearly unaware she was being photographed.
’s blood felt blazing hot.
She clenched her fists to keep herself from kicking Bix awake and raking her nails over his face.
She could almost smell onions and male sweat, could almost feel a man’s hands on her bare breasts, calloused fingers pinching, too hard.
Come on.
You’re not a prude, are you? Let’s give the people what they want.
She pressed her fist to her mouth, moaning softly when she scrolled to a picture of Cherry wrapped in a towel, in the bathroom just down the hall.
For a moment, she couldn’t do anything except stare at the screen, feeling punched and breathless, furious at Bix, but even angrier at herself ...
because she’d known.
At some level, in some part of her mind she didn’t let herself visit, she had known.
Not suspected, but known.
“He looks at me,”
Cherry had told her, back when Cherry had been how old? Eight? Nine? Her voice had been tiny, her little face downcast, and could hear her own voice, sharp, almost hectoring, as she’d replied, “Did he say anything to you? Did he touch you? Did he try to make you touch him?”
Cherry’s head had wobbled as she’d shaken it, back and forth.
“No, Mom.
Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Only he’s always too close.
He stands too close and he sits too close.
And he watches me.”
Cherry had shivered.
“All the time.”
should have listened.
Believed her daughter.
Defended her.
Forced Bix to confess.
Fixed it.
Instead, she’d been invested in making things with Jordan work, and so she’d told herself that Cherry was being too sensitive, that maybe Bix annoyed Cherry but that he wasn’t actively harming her.
She’d ignored her daughter, ignored her instincts, tried to silence the voice in her own brain saying This is not good, do something.
And now Cherry was gone.
’s hands were steady as she pulled her own phone from her bathrobe’s pocket and snapped pictures of Bix’s screen.
She was already imagining what Jordan would say, how Jordan would find a way to excuse this: he’s unhappy, and he lost his mom, and—her favorite—he’s in therapy.
Jordan’s voice would be calm, his expression sincere.
These pictures aren’t that bad, he’d tell her, and—oh God, the thing he always said, the thing that made her want to put her hands around his neck and squeeze and not stop squeezing—No harm done.
The way he’d use the passive voice made her skin prickle with loathing—the way Bix wasn’t even a part of the sentence, as either subject or object; it was just harm, just some random thing that hadn’t happened and had not been inflicted by any particular person, most certainly not his unnamed son.
bowed her head.
When her heartbeat slowed down enough, when she was certain she wasn’t going to vomit, or scream, slipped into Bix’s bedroom and replaced the phone.
She walked back to her bedroom.
Jordan was still asleep on his back, mask in place, the covers drawn up neatly under his chin.
looked down at him for a long moment, wondering, What would happen if I told him the truth? What would he say if I told him everything, about me, and Russell, and Cassie? Would the world crack open? Would he throw me out?
And what would happen if she didn’t tell? Would the secret start leeching its poison inside of her, rotting her from the inside out, ruining her even more than she was already ruined?
lay down beside her husband.
She stared up into the darkness.
And then, very quietly, she started to cry.