Chapter 36
“So, let me see if I’m understanding,” Willa said on Monday evening, our normal check-in.
“You have a new job, which might lead to an even better job. You got some unexpected money from your last employer. You have a clean apartment that will stay clean, because you’re the only person in it.
And you don’t need to worry about your teenage son for the rest of the summer. ”
“Two weeks,” I clarified.
It’s what we had agreed on when I brought Benjamin over for what would have been their last therapy session but now, since my about-face, represented the beginning of a new therapeutic phase.
Willa asked, “This isn’t the psychologist you gave your phone number to weeks ago, is it?”
“Yeah. Curtis.”
I’d kept most of the details of Benjamin’s therapy from her, as well as his diagnosis, something I didn’t plan to tell anyone, ever, if I could help it.
“Wasn’t Benjamin trying to get a job at a pool?”
“They told him that members’ kids got first dibs. They put him on a list but his only chance will be if another kid quits.”
“And does Benjamin think he’s going for vacation?”
“No, he knows it’s work camp,” I said with a weak laugh. “You should have seen Benjamin’s face when Dr. Campbell explained everything they’d be doing.”
“He’s ‘Doctor’ now. Didn’t you just call him Curtis a minute ago?”
“There’s some sort of shed to be assembled, aside from the yard work, and Dr. Campbell said he wasn’t going to help. He handed Benjamin a printout of the steps, just as a preview, and I could tell at that moment that Benj shares my phobia of assembly instructions.”
“He’ll figure it out.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s the point. Make him sweat. Give him challenges. Plus, he has to take a tech break. No phone for the first week.”
“Sounds exactly what every teenager should be made to do. Now tell me about your new job.”
I told her about my first day at Grove, working with a group of six Chinese, two Japanese, two Arabic, and one Spanish student, all of them so fluent in English that we’d have no communication problems—or so I thought until the end of the day, when I realized that quiet Min and even quieter Basma had been nodding automatically to hide their complete lack of comprehension.
We’d have six weeks to figure it out. Whether or not they picked up on “study skills and college-prep mental health strategies,” they’d get lots of English immersion.
“If they hire me in the fall, I won’t just be a counselor, I’ll also teach a high school level psychology class. And I’ll oversee a small team of student mental health advocates.”
I trailed off, voice flattening.
“It sounds great, hon. But for some reason, you don’t.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone,” I told Willa, finally—the truth, but not the whole truth.
After a phlegmy guffaw, Willa said, “For godsake, woman, count your blessings.”
The next day and the one after that were the same.
Rewarding days with the international students, followed by too-quiet dinners, at home.
Curtis and Benjamin had left Monday afternoon.
Today was only Wednesday, and I didn’t feel used to Benjamin’s absence, I only noted it more with every passing hour.
Something already felt wrong, and it was more than just a change in routines or an early preview of emptynest syndrome.
I regretted the phone detox plan, though I’d believed at first it would be good for Benjamin.
I wanted, at the very least, to know they’d made it to Fond du Lac okay.
I’d simply have to wait—four more days, possibly, until Curtis had decided the one-week detox had worked and Benjamin could have his phone back.
In the dim, hot silence of my apartment each evening, I had plenty of time to think.
I continued to ponder the details of Harper’s murder, and Veronica’s snatching and release, and Robert’s criminal files, which had managed to convert the landscape of my childhood—northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin—into a geography of bodies lost and found.
I thought about the hypnosis transcript, including all the parts I hadn’t remembered.
From there my mind traveled further back, looking for proof of my dark side.
But it didn’t add up. If I really had antisocial personality disorder, why did I feel so guilty and remorseful about what the transcript had revealed?
And then again, psychopathy was complicated.
Now, with more free time, I sifted through some of the latest research online.
I read papers that claimed there were different kinds of psychopaths—primary and secondary variants, with heterogeneity within each, and primary and secondary subtypes, and continuums within each.
And there were different personalities and different etiologies, or causes, and quite possibly, someday, we’d all be talking about psychopathy as a spectrum, our assumptions reorganized, as they had been already in terms of autism.
Spectrum. Like a rainbow. I tried to find the beauty in that word.
Perhaps Curtis had understood all this. Perhaps it’s what he’d meant when he said he wouldn’t give Benjamin a simplistic label—and wouldn’t have, even if Benjamin were eighteen, the age when the antisocial personality disorder label was sometimes applied.
It was fortunate that I’d found a therapist who wouldn’t force Benjamin into a box.
In time, the research seemed to be suggesting, the boxes and labels would all be changing anyway.
I kept trying to remember how I’d felt when Benjamin first started therapy—that, like my friend Marta, whose daughter, Camila, was in an inpatient program, I could appreciate the feeling of handing over control to another responsible adult, one who knew much more than I did—and on top of that, didn’t have my shameful past. I kept trying to locate a feeling of resolution, acceptance, or some kind of optimism.
But instead, I only felt a sense of emptiness and foreboding.
I wanted to hear Benjamin’s voice. I wanted to see him.
I wanted to tell him I loved him. Maybe he wasn’t an easy kid to love, but I did, even his wiseass remarks, even his impatience.
I had always felt he might grow into his personality, or that he’d find new interests, or a purpose, or love, and all of that would make him feel more comfortable in his own skin, more tolerant of others, so that he’d no longer seem belligerent, only confident.
I’d seen that happy, relaxed confidence at times.
I washed the few dishes I’d dirtied—a single plate and fork from dinner, a coffee cup from earlier.
The garbage hadn’t needed emptying all week—one person, less waste—and I hadn’t checked the mail daily since Monday evening.
I’d already changed into an oversized nightshirt that went down to my knees.
Half dressed and barefoot, I walked around to the side of the house, where the mailbox and garbage cans were.
As soon as I opened the mailbox flap and saw the envelope—the third of its kind in two weeks—I tensed up. But then I told myself: Ewan can write all he wants to write. It doesn’t matter. Benjamin isn’t even here.
I walked slowly back around the house, opened the door, and continued to the kitchen, where I held the letter up to the light. The note inside was smaller than the previous ones had been, not even the full width of the envelope.
I could simply not open it. I didn’t have to give him the power of my immediate attention.
And then again, if I never read it, I’d think about it even longer.
I opened the envelope and took out the folded piece of unlined paper. In the very center was the briefest note Ewan had ever written.
Did it work?
I turned the note over. That was all of it.
Only three words, all in block letters. Three words that made my heart pound. I wanted to rip up the letter, but I knew I shouldn’t.
Did what work?
God damn him!
I returned the folded note to its envelope, which I left on the kitchen counter. I willed myself to continue with my bedtime routine. I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it now.
Did it work?
The answer came to me in the bathroom, just as I stuck my toothbrush in my mouth.
I remembered the day in the car, on the way home from the police station.
The discussion about the naked photo of Izzy.
Benjamin’s assertion that he’d kept it as a way to threaten Manny.
His cocky assertion that it had been smart.
Good advice.
Good advice from who?
Benjamin hadn’t answered while we were in the car, but not much later, I’d decided it had to be Ewan.
Advice given, advice taken. Stupid. Enraging. But it was over. At least Benjamin hadn’t read this latest note. At least Ewan wouldn’t get the satisfaction of an answer.
I finished brushing, shaking my head and breathing hard through my nose.
If it was really over, why was my heart still beating too fast, my chest tight and my vision starting to dim around the edges?
I washed my face and resoaked the washcloth in cold water before placing it on the back of my neck. I walked back to the front door to check one last time that it was locked.
In the kitchen, I took the recently washed glass from the drying rack and filled it with cold tap water. I reached into my purse. I pulled the clonidine bottle out and set the pill on my tongue, hand on the water glass I was about to bring to my mouth.
Did it work?
The pill dissolved, bitterness coating my tongue.
It wasn’t about the photo of Izzy.
When I felt the glass slip through my fingers, I didn’t yelp. I didn’t curse. I just stared at the exploded shards and spilled water at my feet. Then I carefully stepped over the mess and proceeded to the far corner of the living room.
My feet were wet from the water. My mouth was abnormally dry. The bitter chalky taste remained.
I looked down to the bottom shelf, at the thick Physician’s Desk Reference—the book that had gone missing, though I hadn’t been able to figure it out at the time. It was back in place now, in the middle of my college psychology textbooks, filling the slot that had puzzled me.
Benjamin had borrowed it. Not after Izzy’s death, out of an understandable curiosity to know why she might have died, but before.
I couldn’t prove that, but it didn’t matter.
Because what I did know for sure was that my clonidine refill bottle had gone missing as well.
That’s why I’d missed several days of doses.
That’s why I’d passed out in the police station. Benjamin had taken it.
Did it work?
Ewan’s advice about keeping the photo of Izzy was old news. Did it work? was a question about the next step. How to win Izzy over. And the answer was giving her what she asked for. But it hadn’t turned out the way anyone expected.
Benjamin had stopped home after the pool. I’d never understood why, and even the police had forgotten in time.
Benjamin was the one who gave Izzy the clonidine, which she didn’t take until she was in the motel.
Not to kill her. Not intentionally. No one could have known it would kill her. But maybe to satisfy a request.
Girls want things. They get things.
She was using me.
But he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
Shock rooted me to the spot where I now stood, in the dark living room.
But . . . Christopher Weber?
They’d found him and his car. They’d found photos, and pills—the same kind, but not the same brand.
It had all been too neat—the bad guy, not only caught but fatally punished.
It had seemed wrong from the start. Because why would he have the same pills?
If it was a coincidence, it wasn’t a satisfying one, but right now that particular mystery was less important than understanding my own son’s troubled state of mind.
I pictured Benjamin how he’d seemed since Weber’s death—if not haunted, at least burdened. Still afraid of being caught. Still struggling with anger—he hadn’t wanted Izzy to go meet Weber in Wadsworth—which was easier to deal with than grief.
Because he had cared for her. I believed that.
Benjamin hadn’t been able to tell me. I knew how it felt to know something that no one else knew.
My troubled, unreachable son.
Carrying a secret he probably thought he’d be carrying to his grave.