Hyacinth Girls (27 page)

A police officer came by the hospital on Monday. He introduced himself as Gary Gatewood and carried a manila folder full of computer printouts. As I looked through them, he stood patiently beside me, like a notifying officer in military shoes. There was a picture of Callie beneath the words “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?” and I wasn't surprised when I saw Dallas and Ella's names. I wanted to kill them, but I wasn't surprised.

Officer Gatewood showed me the e-mail Ella had sent out late on Sunday night, where she bragged about how she and Dallas got away with bullying. There was a list of her victims, and she described what she'd done to Callie. She'd tried to drown her in the lake, she'd heckled
her at school, and over the past month she'd repeatedly threatened to kill her. Ella sounded shamelessly triumphant as she recounted her crimes, and I wished, for a spiteful moment, that it was her in the hospital instead. “We've talked to Ella and she claims she didn't write this,” Officer Gatewood said. “We've got reason to believe Callie hacked her account.”

He showed me another paper that looked like the group I'd seen before, but then he pointed out the headline.

I Killed Callie McKenzie

This is not a joke. By joining this group you have committed murder. A girl died tonight because of you. Callie McKenzie—who you called Babyshits—was not nothing. Her life wasn't meaningless. But you decided to kill her anyway.

I started to shudder. I pictured them gathered around her in the lake. But there hadn't been anyone there. Just Callie and Lara.

Every time you think about hurting someone else, she'll be there. She'll feel like a choke, or a thick swallow, and you'll remember her and stop.

“Does this sound to you like something Callie would write?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It sounds like her.”

Then I asked him if the woman who carried her out of the lake had been found.

I made the call from the hospital lobby, just inside the sliding glass doors. Every few seconds the automatic doors opened and closed, shoop-shoop,
shoop-shoop. A regular doo-wop as people came and went. I was calling my mother to find out what she knew.

“Did you know that Lara's out of prison? They let her out early.”

“What happened?” She sounded groggy. “Is Callie okay?”

“Callie's the same. But it was Lara at the lake with her. Lara was in the water. I thought I was dreaming.”

“Lara was there?”

“Yes! She was carrying Callie!”

“Okay. Just stay calm,” Mom said hurriedly. “I'll see what I can find out.”

There were things that I needed to do. I started telling Danny my plans. He'd showed up at the hospital after texting me, carrying a bag full of doughnuts. First, I would get Callie out of here. Second, we would move far away. Then I would find a place with a really good oven so I could bake Callie bread. Cinnamon loaf brushed with melted butter. Herb bread laced with thyme and parsley. Great chunks of hot cornbread that would crumble on her tongue. I'd brush the crumbs from her bed and bring her loaves full of walnuts and raisins. Maybe I could even sell it. Start a new life making bread.

I watched Danny play with the collar of his T-shirt, his long, blunt fingers searching the neckline for holes. He listened in his decent way, but I knew I sounded crazy. His gray eyes steadied mine and I wondered what else I could do. Insanity was the only thing that made sense right now.

Danny cupped his chin in his hand, rubbing the sharp, sandy bristles. He'd talked to the police about Robyn and reassured me that she was okay. She'd been at home the whole time. Callie was just using her as
a cover. I stared at her in the bed and reminded myself of the bread. We'd devour it by the fistful. Sourdough and cheese bread.

“Is that made with cheddar?” Danny asked, and I looked at him gratefully.

“Sharp cheddar cheese,” I said. “And two tablespoons of honey.”

That afternoon, I watched as my mom and Aunt Bea shuffled through the sliding doors. Bea looked like a patient who had come here to die. She had an oxygen tank on wheels, and she stood with a hunch, like she was shielding from bad news. Her skin was the color of mushrooms, and Mom gripped her by the elbow as if she might collapse on the floor. Mom handed me granola bars and bottled water in an old plastic bag. “I brought you some clothes.” She held out a pink jogging suit. I looked down at what I was wearing: gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They weren't mine, and I couldn't remember putting them on. I must have peeled off my wet clothes at some point, but I had no recollection.

They took two seats in the lobby, but I didn't join them. I didn't want to sit down—I needed to keep moving. Bea wore a pair of acrylic pants and a cheap yellow sweater. She fiddled with the clear oxygen tube in her nostrils and her expression was tense.

“So,” Bea said. “I heard the EEG was normal.”

“They say she'll wake up soon, Rebecca, isn't that right?”

I nodded and looked at my mom. I could hardly recognize her. She pressed her eyelids for a moment and then told me to sit down. “We talked to Lara,” she said. “We went to see her after you called.”

“You sat down and talked to her?”

“Yes, and your aunt has something to tell you.”

Bea rubbed her fingers fussily across her scalp, and then frowned at the wall. “Lara saw Callie at my house.”

“What! How?”

“Lara visited me last week and Callie peeped in through the window.”

“She didn't let them meet,” Mom said. “Callie didn't meet her.”

I turned on my aunt. “You let her in your house?” I felt like dropping to my knees, grabbing her wrists and screaming. She'd hated me since Curtis died, and I wanted to know how this could happen. How could she hate me and let
that woman
into her house?

“I never planned it this way,” Bea said, then she told me about Lara's letters—the apologies and pleas, postmarked from York Correctional. Lara had written that she wanted to trade. Her life for theirs. She said she would die in Curtis's place if she could figure out how to go back.

“I told her to rot in hell.” Bea winced. “I wrote the nastiest things. All I wanted was for her to suffer.” Bea pinched her thighs as she spoke, hard little tweaks for punctuation. “I knew her since she was fourteen years old, but that was a whole other person.”

When Lara wrote back to my aunt, she agreed with all of Bea's insults. So my aunt responded with more and worse: Lara was poison. Unfit for society. A terrible wife to Curtis. She couldn't have been a mother. She deserved every one of her miscarriages.

Bea looked at me and her expression was awful, like she'd been dipped in ice water, the color draining out of her lips. “She agreed with that, too,” Bea said, “and then I couldn't do it anymore.”

Those babies—Bea's grandchildren—she and Lara had mourned them together. Bea couldn't wish those children away, and Lara's suffering wasn't helping. Bea was as miserable as ever: her son wasn't here. Neither one of them could do anything to change that. When my aunt finally picked up her pen, she knew exactly what she wanted to say.

Dear Lara
, Bea wrote.

I understand how you feel
.

When Lara was released from prison, she went to visit my aunt, and when they were together in Bea's living room, Lara started to cry. She said she wouldn't have made it without Bea's understanding; Bea's letters, no longer hateful, had helped Lara to survive. Bea had wanted to tell Lara that she still couldn't forgive her, but before she could say the words, she heard someone banging on her front door. “Grandma, Grandma, Grandma, Grandma!”

“She took a taxi,” Bea explained. It had happened last Tuesday. When Callie was supposed to be home sick, she had seen her through Bea's front window.

Lara saw Callie, too, and she had always wondered. Now Curtis's daughter was right in front of her like some kind of sign. She looked at the piercing green eyes, the chin like her father's, and she planned to Google Callie only once, but then she ended up on Facebook. She clicked on Callie's friends' profiles and then she saw the page: “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?” Just like Officer Gatewood had showed me.

Lara started scanning the web compulsively, watching for new comments, clicking the report button as the filth built up. She even sent Callie an anonymous message, suggesting she ask someone for help. “Didn't she think she should tell you?” I asked Bea. “Or call the police?” But Lara was in a precarious position, spying on her husband's daughter. And she didn't know how it would escalate in just a couple of days. Late on Sunday night, as I was driving to the bridge to meet Danny, Lara spotted the page “
I Killed Callie McKenzie
.” And as I waited on the road for Robyn, believing I could save her, Lara was driving to our house, thinking it was too late. She thought Callie's tormentors had already killed her. She didn't know Callie had written it herself. Then she saw Callie walking down our steps and out into the night.

“She followed her,” my mother said, and I couldn't help choking.

“In a car?”

“No. On foot. She thought someone might hurt her.”

I closed my eyes and remembered the shock I'd felt when Lara hit Joyce and Curtis. She'd been a normal woman—how could she be a killer? How could anyone transform themselves so completely? And how could she change again now, coming back to save Callie's life? I knew there was no such thing as mind-reading. The ESP we once dreamed of was fantasy. Lara had checked online at the right time; she saw Callie leaving our house. It was just timing, luck, chance, circumstances. She wasn't a hero; some of us never would be.

If I'd seen her on the street I might not have noticed her. She wasn't a striking figure; she looked mild, harmless. If I hadn't recognized her I might've guessed she was a middle-aged waitress, or a cafeteria worker, taking a much-deserved break. Her skin was pale and doughy, her dark red hair had faded to blandness; even her eyebrows were too sparse to give her face any definition.

The hospital's cafeteria was clattery and dim in late afternoon, a large, smelly place full of plastic chairs and tables. Families came here to eat tasteless food in the midst of tragedies and miracles. The scent of ketchup and tater tots contrasting with the jumble of emotions. She didn't look up when I sat down across from her, and I was surprised that my hands weren't twitching, that I wasn't grabbing for her throat the way I'd imagined thousands of times.

“I'm not here to bother you,” Lara said, staring down at the table. “I just wanted you to know I was only there because I was worried.”

Her face was so stark that I wondered if she'd learned this in prison: how to make herself appear so distant, fully absent from reality.

“I also wanted to tell you I'm sorry,” she said automatically. “And I hope she's doing okay. But you don't have to worry, I'll stay away after this.”

I heard the cash register dinging, the scrape of knife and fork against plate. I looked at the elderly couple sitting near to us, sharing a bag of chips. Lara tugged her sleeves, glanced at the paper cup on our table. I realized with disgust that she had bought herself a cup of coffee.

“How's the coffee?” I asked, a greasy tang at the back of my throat.

“The coffee?” she asked uncertainly. “Do you want me to get you a cup?”

“I can't drink anything right now,” I said harshly. “I don't want anything.”

I stared at her cup, willing her to drink. Willing her to display her most inhuman qualities. She folded her hands together. Her nails looked pink and healthy, and her skin wasn't rough or chapped. She'd been taking care of herself.

“Callie doesn't know anything about you,” I said. “I never showed her your letters. I couldn't let her find out what you almost did to her, too.”

“Rebecca, I w—” Lara stopped and pressed her lips together. I knew the drill: she was holding back her stutter. “I wouldn't,” she finally managed. “I didn't mean to.”

“Imagine how she would've felt,” I said. “If she had to think about that.” I waited for Lara to absorb this, to taste the bile in her throat. “Callie always had a vivid imagination,” I continued. “She would've imagined it. After Joyce died, she used to wait for her every night. She would see her in her bedroom. She thought her mom would come in to visit, and they'd talk about the dirt in her grave, the dirt that Joyce had to sleep in.”

Lara still hadn't given me her eyes. She watched the table like it might turn into an exit, an escape route right out of this conversation. I noted
irritably that her wrists were unblemished. Her neck was unmarked. There were no signs that she'd ever been suicidal.

“So what changed?” I asked meanly. “Why are you still here?”

I think Lara understood what I meant. I wasn't asking about the cafeteria. This was about the rope, the noose, the opportunities she must've had. Her lips crumpled. I thought of Bea's letters. Making her suffer might not help, but it felt good at the moment.

“You shouldn't have been at that lake,” I said. “You should've called the police.”

“Rebecca, I know. I didn't realize until later.”

“I didn't realize at all,” I said bitterly. “I never do until it's too late.”

Lara's eyes when she raised them were watchful, serious. She held my gaze, unblinking, and it was me who had to look away. “I wouldn't hurt her,” she murmured. “I regret everything. I think of Joyce and Curtis every day. I know…” She paused. “What we lost.”

It was too much. I couldn't let her.

“There's no ‘we'! Don't lump me in with you. What I lost—what Callie lost—is completely different.” My hand shot out, but it didn't strike her. Instead, it sank down like a stone in the water. Lara looked up in surprise as my fingers landed on hers: the fingers that grabbed Callie as she disappeared under the surface. Lara's hand was cold as I clutched at her spotted knuckles. I hadn't got to the lake in time; Callie wouldn't be here.