If the Witness Lied (5 page)

All these months, has Madison essentially stayed in bed whimpering?

The feel of that parking brake is still in the palm of Madison’s hand. Her fingers curl around it. Her thumb finds the tip.

What really happened that day in the Jeep?

Madison is disgusted with herself. Is she going to be one of those pathetic creatures who sees a conspiracy in everything? The police must have tested Dad’s Jeep. They must have towed it to their lab, fingerprinted it, run tests and concluded that it was an accident. They must have questioned the one and only witness and decided she was telling the truth.

No. Madison cannot barrel into her old house and accuse Cheryl Rand of murder.

It’s because of Daddy’s birthday, she tells herself. I got all emotional and sentimental on Thursday. I wanted a way out. Well, there isn’t one.

In the room she shares with Kimmy Emmer, Madison dresses carefully, like her mother, taking into consideration weather, fabric, color, fashion and utility.

Now she is all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Maybe she’ll drive over to her house anyway.

For once, the road home is not blocked by rage or despair. In fact, today looks pretty safe. All four Emmers are at work or at school. Jack is at school. Tris is at day care.

Cheryl is a woman of few interests: she will be watching TV or she’ll be out shopping.

“Cheryl” is a soft, round, pleasant name. “Cheryl” sounds like a person who listens to classic rock, irons aprons and plays bunko. In fact, she’s not an aunt at all. She’s a glorified housekeeper.

In Aunt Cheryl’s case, that word is literal: she wants the house and she wants to keep it. Once she’s in charge, she inches through the rooms, gaining control of a corner here and a bit of wall space there, making it her own. Madison figures that by now Jack is down to a few square feet of old carpet.

What will Jack think if Madison shoulders her way back into his life? Jack has a great heart. The few times they’ve talked on the phone, he hasn’t sounded angry. He’s never said how hard it is for him. On the other hand, he’s never asked her to come back.

Reminding herself that she can change her mind, she packs a bag. It’s just pajamas, a toothbrush and a change of clothing; it doesn’t mean anything. She’ll toss it on the floor in the back of her car where nobody can see it. She doesn’t have to act on it.

Madison leaves the house, setting the alarm and locking up behind herself. Their own house has an alarm system that Dad
disabled, because he and Mom and her brother and sister came and went so much, it made everybody crazy. Cheryl likes to set the alarm, not realizing it doesn’t work. Nobody tells her, and she doesn’t seem to notice that she’s never billed for it. Maybe she thinks it comes with the house, like the garbage disposal in the sink.

Madison gets into her Celica. She loves to drive it, wash it, vacuum it and use the cup holders. It used to be her life’s dream to have her own car. It took a few weeks for her to realize: it’s only a car. The real dream, the one that won’t come true, is to have a family, with a mother and father.

Madison backs out of the Emmers’ driveway.

Like the Jeep, the Celica does not have automatic transmission. When Madison first got it, she had trouble finding reverse. But now she’s got the gears down and she loves shifting. The engine’s crescendo is so satisfying.

Madison takes the turnpike. She loves speed, too. If she gets there fast, she won’t have time to think about this act of intentionally going home to see if she can stand it there and learn to love her family again. Her whole family. The dead ones and the guilty ones and even herself.

She’s trembling, as if she’s been living in Australia or China for decades and now, at last, home is in sight.

*   *   *

Jack prays to the God who has not yet answered his prayers.
This
time! Jack prays. You can’t let me down
this
time, God. It’s for Tris! You owe Tris one.

He has to have divine intervention. On his own, Jack has no power. Not in court, not with the media, not with the family lawyer, not with his sisters. “God!” he yells.

He reaches Route One. Nobody calls it that. It’s called the Post Road. South of the Post Road, a narrow strip of land is packed tight with houses, and then come the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. North of the Post Road are railroad tracks and the turnpike. West stretches the rest of America.

Jack doesn’t slow down at intersections, let alone stop. He feels as if he has insect eyes, with extra eyeballs on stalks. He can see through things and under things. Another mile and he shoots into the day-care parking lot. No BMW—Jack feels reasonably sure the TV guy will not travel in Aunt Cheryl’s heavy gray Lincoln with the car seat in the back—but they could be here any second. Chances are, they already phoned.

He imagines Aunt Cheryl giving instructions to Tris’s teacher, Brianna. “I want Tris to look really cute. If he’s dirty, change him into his extra set of clothing. Brush his hair. Wash his face. He’s going to be on TV! We’re all going to be on TV! Yay!”

Jack takes a deep breath to subdue his heaving lungs. He doesn’t want to look panicky. He often picks Tris up, so they’re used to him here. But they’ll know that on a Friday at noon, Jack should be in school.

The entrance is locked. No easy access to a day care. Jack presses the bell and the director says on the intercom, “Who is it?” which is annoying, because she can see him just fine; there’s a camera. He smiles at the camera. “Jack Fountain. I’m here for Tris.”

She buzzes him in.

Jack forces himself to stroll past the infant room, the art room and the kiddie computer room, all windowed into the hall, so every teacher can see everything. Teacher eyes follow Jack’s progress.

In Tris’s classroom a riot of balloons is painted over the walls and ceiling. The door is open, but a gate keeps the kids in. Tris is playing with a three-piece jigsaw puzzle. The best thing Tris has going for him is this place, where he’s happy and busy, and they don’t seem to care about an accident involving a little guy who didn’t know what was happening. Tris’s original day care refused to take him back, a decision that still twists Jack’s gut.

Brianna is changing a little girl’s diaper. Jack likes Brianna. He has never seen her treat Tris differently from the other kids. “Hi, Brianna.”

She looks over her shoulder, surprised. “Jack! What’s up? How come you’re here?”

“Half day.”

Brianna’s only a few years out of high school. She knows the meaning of the lovely phrase “half day.” She grins.

Jack steps over the gate and into the room. His little brother races over. “We had finger painting, Jack! Mine is blue! It isn’t dry yet!”

“We’ll leave it here till it dries,” Jack says. “Because you and I are headed out.” Jack is skin-crawly with nerves. Does he hear a car engine? Will the producer arrive, complete with cameras? Will Jack’s attempt to snatch his brother from the jaws of reality TV end up on film?

He swings Tris up to sit on his hip. Tris isn’t big. He’s still easy to hold toddler style. “Have a nice weekend, Brianna. Say bye-bye, Tris.” Jack steps back over the gate.

“Where are you going?” asks Brianna, not to rat on him, but so that next Monday, she can ask Tris about his big adventure.

Jack does not have the slightest idea where they are going. Plan A is to get Tris before Aunt Cheryl can. Plan B, and for that matter, Plans C through Z, haven’t come to him yet. “Secret,” whispers Jack loudly, so Tris is in on it.

Brianna is smiling. People love it that Jack stayed with Tris. It’s weird to be popular just because he lives in his own house. Of course, his sisters partly bailed because of Aunt Cheryl, but the world doesn’t know that. And they partly bailed because people made offers—you can stay with us; you can live here. Nobody made such an offer to Jack.

He gallops to the front door, but not fast enough. The day-care director is hurrying toward him. “Hey, Mrs. Griz,” he says, aiming for casual. Her last name has more syllables, but nobody uses them.

Mrs. Griz bobs down the hall. “Your aunt just called!”

*   *   *

Smithy has no way to get home from this isolated boarding school. It’s about an hour and a half to Boston, where she could get a train or a plane. There are no taxis in the nearby village, and hitchhiking is against the law. She doesn’t have a car. No
student has a car. No teacher will give her a ride. They’ll give her counseling.

More counseling—can you imagine? “Have you come to terms with the accident?” they like to say.

Smithy no longer cares about the accident. She cares about going home.

She could ask Mrs. Murray to drive up and get her. But Diana’s mother would probably say “Finish the semester, dear, and then come home.”

Smith Fountain has finished the semester. She’s finished mourning. She’s finished being furious.

It’s time.

She leaves the cafeteria and enters the big front hall, where her coat hangs on a hook, her book bag under it. Most of the school year in the hills of Massachusetts is during cold weather. Taking off and putting on coats, hats, scarves, mittens and boots are constants. Some kids deal by wearing nothing. They race from building to building in shirtsleeves, taunting the cold. Others wrap themselves like packages, blocking out every wisp of wind. This morning is very chilly, but nobody’s in full winter gear yet. Smithy is wearing jeans, a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and a tangerine zip-up sweatjacket with a hood. She bought the jacket when she was staying with Kate and Kate’s mother took them to the mall. Smithy loves using her own credit card. The card has a limit, but this person Wade just pays the bill, so it doesn’t feel like a limit.

Idling on the pavement in front of her is a yellow school bus, like the one Smithy and Jack and Madison used to take back
home. Smithy is calling it home again. Is it? Can she walk back in that door and be home? What will Jack and Madison say? Will they still like her?

Around her swarm kids who are in a great mood. It seems that two art classes are taking this bus to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. There’s nothing like a field trip to make kids laugh. Smithy bathes in their exuberance, as if she could rub it in like lotion.

The art teachers talk so intently to one another they could be plotting a murder. They climb onto the bus, leave their purses on the double front seat close to the driver and hop back out. One has a clipboard on which she checks off names.

There are not enough kids to fill the bus. Most kids prefer the back. Those seats fill immediately. Others scatter according to whatever friendships or lack of friendships they have in art class.

Smithy hangs her book bag back up. She fishes out her little purse, slides her cell phone into her jeans pocket and pulls the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. Not that tangerine is camouflage.

One teacher returns to the building for a last stop in the ladies’ room. The other teacher and the driver stand on the sidewalk, studying a map.

Smithy boards the bus.

*   *   *

Madison turns left on Chesmore Road.

Connecticut is tree-covered. There are no long views. Even
in fall, when the bare branches of maples are like ink drawings against the sky, the thick green hemlocks and pines keep each house a secret from the next.

She can’t see her house yet. She isn’t ready to see it, either. Her gut clutches.

She stops several houses short of her own. She hasn’t mastered parallel parking. But she likes pulling over as if she
could
parallel park. Madison gets close to the curb and turns off the engine.

Cheryl is probably at home. What is Madison going to say about being gone all this time and now being back?

It’s my house. I don’t need to give an explanation.

Her mouth is dry.

She thinks of Tris. Against all odds, Madison loves the tiny brother who entered their lives at such high cost. She was the best at getting baby Tris to fall asleep. She rocked, sang, swaddled and walked the floor. Tris was always exactly the right weight in her arms. She loved his scent after a bath, the amazed expression on his little face when he started noticing the world, the belly laugh when Madison nibbled his bare toes.

I’ve missed Daddy’s birthday. But I haven’t missed Tris’s. I’m home in time for his third birthday.

She locks the Celica, even though this may be the lowest-crime zip code in the nation, and walks toward her house. The jutting garage will prevent Cheryl from seeing Madison approach. First, she’ll peek in the garage window to see if Cheryl’s big Lincoln is sitting there. Then she’ll decide.

A van passes Madison. It’s white. Medium-sized. No windows
except for the front seats. It sports a television station logo. On the roof is a tower of antennae, to let you know this isn’t a repair vehicle. It’s the camera crew.

Madison never knew how the camera crews of last year arrived in the driveway so fast. Who called them? How had they known that Dad’s death was a story they’d want to follow for days? The TV van parked on Chesmore Road had induced strangers to stop and neighbors to call. Everybody wanted to be in on it. Television sucked them forward, like incredibly strong lips sucking on a straw, slurping every drop of the Fountain children’s lives.

Madison slows her pace, waiting for the TV van to leave Chesmore.

But it does not leave. It turns into a driveway.

Madison’s heart falls while her body rockets forward. No! It can’t be
her
driveway!

But it is.

Something is wrong. What’s left to go wrong? Anything that can go wrong already has!

Oh, Tris! Oh, Jack! Please be all right! I’m not back yet!

Madison races to her front door.