Envy (29 page)

Taylor begrudgingly thanked her. She had to write a paper for art class.

“Can’t you just do a drawing or something?” Hayley asked.

“I wish. I thought art would be easy. This teacher is actually making us write papers on technique. I’m doing mine on chiaroscuro.”

“Yum … I love churros,” Hayley teased.

Downstairs, things were quiet. Valerie had gone out to gas up her car so she wouldn’t have to do it in the morning, and Kevin went into his office to catch up on e-mail.

He was pleased to see two fan letters in his in-box. The first was from a woman in Alabama who said she’d never written to a “real life” author in her entire life, but after reading Kevin’s
Handsome as the Devil
, about Dylan Walker, a charismatic serial killer who stalked women and girls in the Northwest, she felt compelled to do so.

The next one was from S. Osteen. Her tone was too familiar for a mere fan letter, which he instantly knew it was not.

From: S. Osteen

To: Kevin Ryan

RE: WARNING!

Mr. Ryan, hopefully you remember me. I observed your girls for the linguistics project from the U. I’m Savannah Osteen. I have done something terrible, and I wanted to warn you. I apologize for it, and I truly hope no harm comes to you or your family. I showed a reporter named Moira Windsor a tape I made when I was there filming your girls. Maybe you know what was on that tape. Maybe you don’t. I know Mrs. Ryan does. Please forgive me.

Kevin could feel his heart sinking. He hit the
PRINT
button on his computer and fumbled for an aspirin in case he had a heart attack. Sweat collected above his brows and wicked in his shirt under his armpits.

Val, hurry home. You’ve got to see this.

UPSTAIRS, TAYLOR REREAD HER PAPER for art class. There had been a two-page requirement, and she’d managed to meet that by using a fourteen-point font. She was sure the teacher would call her on that, but she’d done her best. She knew other kids would basically wiki their whole paper, but she’d tried to do them all one better by using web sources from other sites, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The New York City museum was hosting a traveling exhibit from Italy called “Chiaroscuro: Our World in Light and Dark.”

The wiki kids were so lazy. It really didn’t take any more time or effort to actually use a search engine to find something beyond the very obvious.

Taylor popped her head into her sister’s room and told her that her “sympathy” homework could end.

“Good,” Hayley said, “because I’ve been Facebooking for the last hour anyway.”

“Thanks for the support,” Taylor said as she made her way down the hall and downstairs to their dad’s office, where the networked printer commanded a little table next to the door. She noticed the bathroom door was shut and wondered if the dinner she’d made—a kind of beef stroganoff without beef—had made him sick.

Taylor picked up her report and returned to her bedroom to proofread. On her computer screen, she could never find the mistakes that spell-checkers missed. Somehow they just leaped off the page when it was actually a
page
.

She pulled out a yellow highlighter and positioned it to mark whatever she needed to fix.

First page, perfection. Not a single mistake, grammatically, thematically, or otherwise. The second page, not so much. She’d switched the first name and the surname of the Italian artist. She wasn’t too hard on herself. It could happen to anyone.

Underneath was a third, and ultimately devastating, sheet of paper.

It was an e-mail to her father and she almost didn’t bother reading it. But the subject line caught her attention:
Warning!

Before she even finished reading she had it in her sister’s face.

“Holy crap,” Hayley said. “What’s she talking about?”

Taylor shook her head. “Dunno, but let’s ask Dad.”

As they went downstairs, they could hear their mother and father talking by the kitchen sink in slightly hushed tones. Valerie had just gotten home from filling up the car. She hadn’t even removed her coat. Her face was ashen, her eyes pinched together in worry. Kevin, who had his back to his girls, noticed Valerie’s eyes track the twins as they entered the room.

“Hi, girls,” he said, turning to face them. He wasn’t a very good actor, but he tried valiantly just then. He put on a smile. “Great dinner tonight. Mom and I were just talking about how you both are giving her a run for her money when it comes being Top Chef around here.”

Taylor held up the e-mail. “That’s not what you’re talking about, Dad,” she said.

He looked at the paper. “Where did you get that?”

“She picked it up from the printer by mistake,” Hayley said.

Taylor spoke up. “Mom, Dad, what is this woman …” She looked down at the paper. “What is Savannah Osteen talking about?”

Kevin took the paper and pretended to give it a cursory read. Its contents were already burned into his memory. If a radio game show host called just then and asked for a word-for-word recounting of the “worst letter you’ve ever received” for a $10,000 prize, Kevin would be able to start spending the cash right then.

Instead, he lied.

“I don’t know,” he began, clearly struggling before gaining some steam. “Nothing. She’s a nut. I get letters like this every day from people who want to marry me or want to kill me.”

Valerie studied Hayley and Taylor. It was clear that Kevin’s blame on a crazed fan was a complete failure.

“Girls, I think we should all sit down for a moment and talk,” she suggested.

Taylor glanced at their father, who was still muttering about the crazed fan. “I agree, Mom. Let’s talk.”

Hayley joined her sister and peered at their father, who now looked embarrassed and a little irritated.

Valerie led them to the old pine kitchen table, finally peeling off her coat and setting it along with her purse and keys on an empty chair.

“I’ll go first,” she said, while Kevin, paper now folded discreetly in half, slid into a chair next to her. It was happening so fast, he wasn’t exactly sure what his wife was going to say.

Valerie began by reminding the girls of their short stint as subjects for the University of Washington study.

“We’ve mentioned that,” she said, “remember?”

The girls nodded.

“We were exceptional, right?” Taylor said.

“In every way, of course. Just like me,” Kevin said, meaning it, but also trying to lighten the mood in the kitchen a little. “And your mom, yes, let’s not forget her.” Ordinarily, he didn’t mind tension, because it was a great motivator—but not when it came to his family. His attempts to smooth things over fell completely flat.

Valerie went on to talk about the protocol for the study, how excited they’d been to have the university learn more about language development by studying the girls.

Hayley smiled a little. “We did say some crazy stuff, didn’t we?”

Taylor cut in. “Yeah, remember ‘levee split poop’?”

A look of recognition came over Hayley. “I’d forgotten that one. That was one of our classics.”

“So what’s with this Savannah?” Taylor asked, guiding the conversation back to the e-mail she’d accidently retrieved from the printer.

“I didn’t have my training back then,” Valerie went on, “but looking back now, I can clearly see that she had some serious emotional problems.”

“Very unstable,” Kevin added. “She just kind of fell apart on us. She was supposed to come back to do more follow-up sessions and she just vanished. Quit the program. The university. We never heard from her again.”

“As I recall, neither did the university,” Valerie said. “You made multiple calls there, didn’t you?”

Kevin nodded.

“What happened to her?” Taylor asked.

“Who knows? With the kind of work your mom and I do, we probably know better than any family around that the world is full of misfits, tortured souls, and the wholly unbalanced,” Kevin said.

“Why is she talking to Moira Windsor?” Hayley asked, knowing the answer.

Kevin looked away. “Moira’s writing an article and wants info on you two.”

Taylor spoke up. “So, what does that have to do with Savannah?”

Kevin looked at Valerie. She wasn’t answering, so he did. “You know that the ten-year anniversary is coming up,” he said. “We’ve talked about that.”

There was no need to say
what
anniversary. In the Ryan household there was always …
IT
.

V
ALERIE
:
I have a conference in Port Townsend Thursday and Friday … crossing that bridge only makes me think about IT.

T
AYLOR
:
Tell me about how you and mom stayed by our sides at the hospital after IT happened.

H
AYLEY
:
Even though I have no memory of IT, every time a short bus goes by I wonder about IT.

K
EVIN
:
IT almost cost us everything.

“Someone at the
Herald
probably tipped off Moira about the anniversary and the tragedy of Katelyn’s death. Linking all of you together, though none of it is related whatsoever,” he said.

“Talk about someone trying to capitalize on a tragedy,” Taylor said, looking at her father. Despite the seriousness of the moment, it was a playful poke at her dad’s true crime writing.

“Thanks for that, Tay,” he said.

“What video is Savannah talking about?”

“She taped you girls,” Kevin said. “You know that. I asked the school for a copy after she quit, but they never got back to us.”

Valerie smiled as a happy memory crossed her mind. “Yes, we wanted it because we didn’t have the money for a video camera back then. It would have been nice to have. You girls were so tiny.”

Kevin suggested a slice of Dutch apple pie, like it was some worthy distraction from the conversation that was really going nowhere. Hayley got up to get the plates.

Taylor looked at her mother directly, without saying a word. She was playing the old chicken game, a stare-down, just to see what she could read in her mother’s eyes. Valerie turned away first.

Later that night, Hayley and Taylor talked through the outlet cover.

“I hate it when they lie to us,” Hayley said in a soft whisper.

Taylor rolled over to get closer to the outlet. “No kidding,” she said. “I felt like calling them on it.”

“Me too. We’re going to have check out Atlanta Osteen,” Hayley said, deliberately using an incorrect first name.

“Savannah,” Taylor said.

“Whatever,” Hayley went on. “I hate it when parents name their kids for the states the moms got pregnant in.”

“It’s a city.”

“Okay,” Hayley said. “I hate when parents name their kids after cities too. Geographic names are just plain dumb.”

“Remember how we had four Dakotas in fifth grade?”

“Good night, Taylor.”

And though they were joking a little, both girls felt very uneasy about what had transpired that evening—the e-mail, the discussion with their parents. There were things about their own lives that were foreign to them. Undeniably, there was some irony to all of that. On separate occasions, Colton and Beth had remarked about how open-minded their parents were. Hayley and Taylor knew there was an invisible wall there too.

Some things were hidden behind a curtain. But no more. Not if they had any say in it.

WHEN WORD GOT AROUND to everyone else in Port Gamble (thanks, Beth!) that Jake Damon had been picked up in conjunction with the death of Katelyn Berkeley, tongues wagged in the way they do in small towns where everybody has an opinion about someone else’s business. Jake had few fans to begin with. Most people were sure he was nothing but a male gold digger, though with Mindee Larsen, he was surely digging in a depleted mine. Although she never told anyone, her husband, Adam, had disappeared with more than the remnants of a fraying marriage. He’d taken more than $100,000, which had been her inheritance from a distant and very, very rich uncle.

Sandra Berkley went up to Katelyn’s bed, where she’d been sleeping for the past three days, and called her husband to let him know that Jake had been arrested. Harper was staying in a Kingston motel, saying he needed some space to sort things out.

“Are they saying he killed our daughter?” he asked.

“No. They really won’t say why, only that he’s been arrested. I’m not sure.”

“Should we go down there?”

“No, the police say not to. They say they are working on things and the gossip around town is way out of hand.”

“I hated that guy.”

“I know.”

“I miss you,” he said.

“I miss our daughter,” she said.

Sandra hung up and thought about what Dr. Waterman had disclosed.
AB blood
? That was not the most common of blood types. She knew someone who had that type.

Starla Larsen did.

Sandra remembered how Katelyn once remarked on it when she and Starla had typed their blood in middle-school biology. They were cleaning the grills in the restaurant and Katelyn had wanted to talk about Starla.

“No one else in our class had AB, Mom. Only she did. Doesn’t it figure?”

Sandra wasn’t sure what her daughter was getting at. “How so?” she asked.