Chapter 11
When I was fourteen, my first year in the foster care system following my stepmother Martha’s death and my father’s institutionalization for dementia, I got in trouble for playing mini-golf.
Janessa, a girl in my home, had invited me and we had just enough scavenged quarters to play, especially after the pimply cashier was convinced to let us pay half rate.
The place was empty. It was a beautiful fall afternoon, blue sky, crisp air.
I’d never played mini-golf before, and the little windmills and bright green turf made me feel like a kid again.
I was a kid, of course, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like a jaded adult.
Janessa had played before. She rolled up her flannel sleeves to the elbows, and I spent lots of time standing beside her, looking down at her hands and thin wrists, gripping the club, thumbs pointed down.
“They’re from my dad,” she said at the fourth hole.
“I wasn’t trying to stare. I was just watching how you swing.”
She made a dubious sound, shook her arms so the flannel sleeves settled farther down her scarred forearms, then smacked the little ball.
“You got anything like that?” she said after she’d finished the hole.
Cigarette burns?
“No.”
No burns, no scars, no poorly healed broken ribs.
“Then what do you got?”
“She sent my brother away.”
“Your mom?”
“Stepmom.”
“But before that?”
“She hated both of us. But him, most of all.”
“So, she never touched you.”
I wasn’t in the mood to visit any specific memory or to play the “my family was worse” game, so I said, “Not really.”
“Then after your brother was gone, she kicked you out?”
“Something like that.”
I didn’t tell people my full story. Benjamin didn’t know it; Robert thought he did, but I’d given him only partial details.
My mom’s death by stroke when I was eight.
Martha’s accident in the kitchen—one wrong step on a slippery floor, head cracked on the counter’s sharp corner edge—shortly before I turned fourteen.
Foster care for four years. It was only a couple of years ago that Benjamin did the math and said, You were twenty when you got pregnant with me? That’s not so young.
Oh, it was, honey. It was. I skipped over the next seven years. But things were better once I inherited a little money and could afford to start college.
But neither Benjamin nor the dream of college existed yet, during that mini-golf outing, long ago.
Janessa and I played a round, went home, and received a full reaming out: no dinner, lost weekend privileges, extra chores.
My foster father—Dan Baxter was his name, a church pastor—lectured us with his hand over his heart, incredulous that we could have chosen to do something frivolous on that day of all days.
But what else was there to do? Sit at home watching the news endlessly replay smoke and terror? September 11. No wonder the mini-golf place was empty.
I thought about that time and again, whenever a tragic public event happened and I found myself deciding whether to go to a movie, or the beach, or in today’s case, a private pool. It wasn’t like sitting at home, reorganizing the pantry or cleaning a toilet, would be more respectful.
So I said yes when Benjamin asked if we could go to the pool together, my first full day home with my Summit career uncertain, his last day of exams, one day after I’d made him talk about the underwear.
He’d admitted to having some kind of involvement with Izzy, and if I’d been his age, talking to my father or stepmother about some boy I liked but wasn’t steadily dating, I couldn’t imagine providing more details than he had.
Even if the picture was blurry, he’d given me something.
There had to be a reward for that, or at the very least, no punishment.
And anyway, for Benjamin, the pool wasn’t frivolous.
He was preparing for a lifeguard test, hoping for a first job, trying to improve himself.
Once I was in the pool parking lot, sliding my Mazda between a blue Audi and a silver Lexus, I started doubting myself again.
Maybe my judgment in this situation wasn’t the best. Maybe anyone who knew us—including Rita, the Summit Spanish teacher who let us visit Dartmoor as guests, under her membership—would judge me for showing up, today of all days, at the pool.
So far, I’d signed in as a “guest of Rita” only once.
But Benjamin had used her name a half dozen times.
He blended in easily, arriving by bike, whereas I arrived in a car manufactured before Benjamin’s birth.
As my son liked to remind me, there were only two crappy cars that showed up on this lot. The other one belonged to a janitor.
I texted Rita. Instead of texting back, she called.
“Are you okay?” her voice boomed once I picked up. “I heard they gave you a ‘soft suspension.’ What does that even mean?”
“It means a day and a half off, so far, and no renewal of my contract, I’m guessing.”
“Shit, woman, you need to come over for a glass of wine. It isn’t fair! What are they thinking?”
“They were thinking about parents’ donations and the school’s reputation. They were thinking about the Mayfields and the Scarlattis.”
“I can’t believe they already found someone to replace you.”
“Better than leaving students stranded for the last few days of school.” There were only two exam makeup days, now.
Benjamin was done; the kids who had skipped after hearing about Sidney still had exams to complete.
“Hey, listen. I was texting to ask if it’s really okay for Benjamin to keep signing in under your name.
I don’t know if there’s a maximum number of visits. ”
“Don’t worry about that. If there’s a problem, they’ll tell me. Dartmoor isn’t shy about slapping members’ wrists. But how about you?”
“Swim, you mean? I’d like to. I’m just not sure if it’s a good look, coming here today.”
“A good look?” She sounded confused. “Oh, that. I don’t really see how one thing has to do with another. I mean, every Summit teacher is distraught about what happened. We’re all still allowed to get some fresh air, aren’t we?”
I lowered my voice, not that anyone could hear me. “You’re allowed, maybe. I’m not sure I am.”
“Oh, honey. Whatever the police and parents find out, I know you did your best. I don’t know which is worse—that those girls took their lives, or that someone did something to them.”
“Both girls,” I said, testing her knowledge, trying to fill in the blanks left by Robert. “I heard something about Izzy’s death being ‘complicated,’ or maybe both? If the detectives are saying ‘homicide,’ that covers a lot, even something unintentional, like an accident—”
“Abby,” she stopped me. “They’re not talking accident.
They’re talking murders, plural. And screw those detectives.
Duplass is getting it straight from Geneva Mayfield and Sofia Scarlatti.
Those moms are ready to rip this town apart if the police department doesn’t get its shit together.
Didn’t you read what Duplass put in the chat? ”
She was referring to a teachers’ and support staff chat group from which I had been promptly removed.
“No. I don’t have access.”
Rita started talking about how she hoped I’d get back into the group, and in the interim she could screenshot everything and email me later. But I didn’t want to wait, and I didn’t need screenshots. I just wanted her to tell me.
“They know someone was in Sidney’s house when she took the pills,” she said. “The family’s security systems were turned off—”
“Why were they turned off?”
“Because Geneva and Jack had had endless fights about all the deliveries being made to their door, due to Geneva’s shopping habits.
She didn’t like him getting the notifications.
Anyway, the neighbors’ doorbell cameras on either side showed a figure heading toward the house and then running away, maybe forty minutes later. ”
“A figure.”
“Person. Man, probably. They couldn’t see him clearly. And the police have gone back to dust for prints—especially in Geneva’s bathroom, if that’s where the pills came from—which they probably should have done the first time, right?”
“Right,” I said. Even though the car was warming quickly with the engine and AC off, I felt a chill.
“And Izzy’s parents took one look at her so-called suicide note and said it wasn’t her handwriting. The whole thing could be a setup, like someone gave her the pills that killed her. It didn’t take much, because she had an allergy that made her tongue swell up.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Her parents told the police that Izzy’s sister has an allergy to an ADHD drug, so they’re wondering if it was something chemically similar.”
“So, the person . . . knew that would happen?”
“Maybe not. Maybe he just wanted her—you know, drugged—and then she died. Inconveniently.”
I thought about my attitude yesterday, talking to Jack Mayfield, feeling stubbornly sure that Sidney’s death didn’t look like a suicide.
But now that the details were coming to light, there was no pleasure in being right, only an anxious distaste for the specifics.
Every new fact conjured up a new image. Izzy accepting a pill, maybe thinking it was no big deal, a recreational drug to try in the presence of this person—friend—whoever he was, not realizing she had an allergy.
Sidney drinking tampered wine, not realizing someone had put a cocktail of ground-up drugs into it.
Different girls, different situations, but drugs in each case, and an unidentified person. Maybe the same person.
“Anyway,” Rita said, “I think you should put it out of your mind for the day. Go for a swim. Say hi to Benjamin.”
The car was sweltering now, the black steering wheel soft and greasy feeling.
I’d mishandled things, at work, at home, in life—now and before.
I felt lightheaded and anxious every moment I tried to imagine why someone would have wanted to hurt Izzy or Sidney.
It didn’t feel right to go into Dartmoor, just as it hadn’t felt right to be at home. Nothing felt right.
I stared numbly at my phone for a minute before texting Robert. You promised to call.
I waited, but there was no reply.
I texted Benjamin back. Sorry for taking so long.
I saw Benjamin was typing. Before his next message rolled in, I added: If you’re ready to go I could just give you a ride home. I don’t need to swim.
Come in, his reply read. Water’s warm.