Callie
She heads from Annabelle’s to Jane’s, needs to go straight there in order to arrive on time to help while Damien leads an evening snowshoeing group for a few hours.
She keeps the music off out of habit, though here she would get enough service to play anything on her phone or scan through more than three stations on the radio.
In the silence she hears the clicking of the knitting needles, the unlikely perfect shapes emerging in the laps of those milky-eyed women.
The bodies that remembered what their past selves had done.
She looks over to her passenger seat. Before she left, Annabelle had handed her a notebook. On the front, a jagged imperative. SAbrINA’S. KEEP OUT!!!
“I took it before I left.”
“The star drawing shows up twice. It’s the necklace he gave her.”
“Do you know why she and Billy Fauver fought about it? He said she yelled at him, that she claimed he ruined her life over a necklace.”
Annabelle had blinked. “Sorry. That name. I—”
“He’s still in the Pines. Runs an autobody shop.” Relief surges through her. Fauver is not the Coyote. Not her father. One small mercy.
“No, I don’t know why he would have said that. Sabrina said the Coyote gave it to her, but she was always taking things from him, too.”
“Like what?”
“The lighter, money … little things. She was a magpie like that.”
It makes Callie sad, the idea of this teenage girl so eager for someone’s scraps.
Taking whatever she could get, maybe even with the idea of provoking him.
It reminds her of something Jane told her about raising toddlers when Opal was acting up one day.
That they think any attention is good attention, that they don’t always care about the difference between annoyance and affection so long as they’ve got a hold on you.
And there had been other girls, according to Annabelle.
“Maybe the necklace was meant for someone else?”
“Probably,” Annabelle said. “I don’t think they had that kind of … that kind of thing.” Callie watched her bring a hand to her chest, where a tangle of gold necklaces, each one bearing the first initial of one of her children, lay against her skin.
Callie slid the notebook under her arm, the lighter in her pocket. It seemed like nothing, but she wasn’t going to say that then. She simply promised she’d make copies and mail the original back as soon as she could.
She gets to Jane’s and the house is a mess.
Bowls of congealed macaroni and cheese on the kitchen island, flies buzzing over spots of spilled juice.
A splatter of what might be yogurt on the floor near the dishwasher, days’ worth of dishes in an unsteady pile in the sink.
She files this away as more evidence: that Damien isn’t able to pull his weight, that he’s getting out of control.
She’s got the little green bag in her pocket, is waiting for the right time to show Jane that she knows, test out her theory that Luke’s in on the drug game and that’s why Jane hates him.
Callie practices her script, knows that she has to come from a place of concern without Jane feeling like she’s being condescending.
He needs help. He can’t take care of you like this. You and Opal deserve him at his best. He needs to go away somewhere, needs to get better. His parents can help you. I’ll move in. Whatever you need.
She can hear them all in the back bedroom, the cacophony of some tinny, musical song from one of Opal’s toys, Opal pleading for something—Mom, Mom, Mom—Jane trying to tell Damien that they need peanut butter from the store.
“Hello!” she calls, and Opal comes running, followed by Damien. She stares at him openly. Studies his pupils. Cuts her eyes to the mess in the kitchen.
“Sorry it’s a wreck,” he mumbles. “I gotta run.”
He slides by her and Opal tugs on her arm. Her dress is stained all over. In the hall there’s a heap of dirty clothes in front of the washer.
Jane steps out of the bedroom. Callie wastes no time asking her what’s going on.
“He’s super busy at work, between our stuff and working for Luke. And I’m up more but just … the headaches have been bad this week.”
Callie doesn’t bother calling the lie. That Christmas is over and the nursery is dead quiet. That no one is going on many hikes in January. “Call me next time, okay? That’s why I’m here.”
Usually Jane would roll her eyes, come back with something snarky, but she only nods. He’s wearing you out, Callie wants to say, feels the anger in the tightening of her jaw. “Go lie down. I’ve got this.”
Jane doesn’t argue, just lays a head on Callie’s shoulder before retreating down the hall again, her fingertips grazing the walls for balance, her left foot dragging.
Callie does her best to make a game of it.
She and Opal conquer Laundry Mountain, vanquish the Evil Dish Pile, and scrub the floor by sliding paper towels with their toes, dance with the Swiffer sweeper.
She has to go over all of Opal’s work but it keeps her busy, tires her out, and by 2:00 P.M. she’s down for nap after a single bedtime story.
Callie tiptoes out, shuts the door as quietly as she can.
She’s brought her backpack in with her, slides Sabrina’s notebook onto her lap.
More than a writer, Sabrina is a doodler. She’s drawn the shores of a lake. A raccoon. The doorknocker from the Riley house. The star in its circle takes up half a page.
Some pages are drawings only, without any kind of text, and she can still feel the way the pen pressed hard into the paper.
Sabrina filling the white space so urgently, the indents still there thirty years later.
Near the end of the notebook she finds a list, written in what must have been Sabrina’s best handwriting.
Not as neat as Annabelle’s, but deliberate and clear.
Gentle pressure near perineum to help head pass
Push slowly
Guide shoulders
Clean airways (nose and mouth)
Slip cord over neck if wrapped around
Wrap baby in clean towel or blanket
Put baby on skin for warmth
Deliver placenta
Cut cord
Massage belly below navel (mothers)
If not breathing, rub back or tap feet. If still not breathing do mouth to mouth (*look up mouth to mouth instructions!!!)
Callie looks up to the ceiling, feels a lump in her throat.
Kids. They were lonely, neglected kids. Kids who couldn’t google anything.
She thinks of that panicky feeling she gets when she passes through the densest parts of the woods and her cell service disappears.
That was their lives. It would have been the exception to be able to call for help, not the rule.
And here was Sabrina, dutiful, trying to help Annabelle the best she could.
She had so wanted to do this one thing right.
Maybe she thought it would redeem her. Maybe she thought the baby’s love, her sister’s love, were the only kinds she might be able to count on.
She turns the page and finds another picture of a shoreline—the same one from the second page, the crook of a tree branch reaching toward the water from the right-hand side.
Once in an entry from October and another from December.
Did it mean something to her? There was no water for miles from the Riley property—she checks the map to be sure.
Maybe Callie could text Annabelle a picture of the drawing and ask her if she knew what it meant.
“What’s that?” She had been so absorbed she hadn’t heard Jane’s door open, hadn’t heard her creep down the hall.
“It’s Sabrina Riley’s notebook.”
“Holy shit. How did you get that?”
“I found Annabelle.”
“You weren’t going to tell me that?” Jane leans over to get a closer look at the pages. “Can’t I see?”
Callie doesn’t feel right letting Jane see the notebook, wonders if it is a breach of Annabelle’s trust. An active investigation.
But, she does need to soften Jane for what she needs to say to her before she goes.
Opal asleep, Damien gone. They might not have a chance to have this conversation for a long time, if she doesn’t do it now.
She hands the notebook to Jane, who flips through the pages, frowns once, flips back between the two images of the shoreline.
“Not quite the confession you might hope for, huh?”
“No, not really. Annabelle had been the one who was pregnant. She is sure Sabrina was murdered. That she was supposed to be there when Annabelle gave birth but disappeared before it happened. Apparently she was off to threaten the guy. Demand he give her money. She said he was with other young girls. Teenagers. That he used to talk about them to Sabrina, taunt her.”
“She sure could pick ’em,” Jane says. She gets to the page with the picture of the star, traces her fingers around the points.
“A necklace that Sabrina took from the Coyote—that’s what she calls the father. They were both with him, apparently. But Annabelle doesn’t even know his real name. Sabrina was always nabbing stuff from him, trinkets and whatnot.”
Jane hums. “Taking whatever she could get.”
Callie looks down the hall toward Opal’s room. It’s now or never, she thinks. “Janie. There’s something we have to talk about.” Callie reaches into her wallet, puts the green glassine bag on the coffee table.
“What’s that?” Jane asks, but Callie can tell by her voice that she already knows.
“Opal gave it to me. She was keeping it in her room. It’s the packaging that the dealers use. For drugs. But I think you know that.”
“I don’t know where she got that. Must have picked it up outside. That’s fucked up. Here, I’ll throw it away.” Jane moves to pick up the bag but Callie slaps her hand over it.
“Jane.”
“Callie.”
“It’s Damien’s, isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t, Cal.”
“Come on, you can be straight with me. I’m not here to get him in trouble. But he needs help. If he’s on this stuff…”
“He is not on anything, Callie.”