Nowhere Girl (7 page)

“No, thanks.” He patted his stomach—which, as far as I could tell, was rock hard.

I followed him through the kitchen and into that cavernous foyer. I wanted to say something to keep him there. “Thanks for everything,” I said lamely.

Brady turned at the door and touched the handle. He had a way of standing on one hip that was movie-star sexy. As I was about to close the door behind him, he spoke. His tone was different, almost cold.

“I'm not sure I should come here,” he said. I felt myself almost step back as though slapped. “I don't know, Cady.” He looked at me one more time with those smoky eyes. “I'm a little fucked up inside.”

And before I could tell him I needed his help, I enjoyed his company, why didn't he join us for a Thursday dinner, he was halfway to his truck.

Out the door's beveled window, his taillights went on, and then he headed down the driveway and took a right toward the prison. I realized he'd added to that fantasy man I'd made up in my head. Not only was he the tortured bad boy, he'd given me the feeling that I might actually be able to save him.

*   *   *

After being with Brady, I felt different. I wanted to blame Gabby for telling me I should have an affair with him, but even before she'd said it, I'd been drawn to him in a way I couldn't explain, and when he left, I didn't feel like an overweight girl who by some dumb luck was a bestselling author. Running water in the bath after Greg got home that night so I could be alone with the feeling a few minutes longer, I felt beautiful, if that were possible, my cheeks flushed like those pretty pregnant ladies at Stop & Shop I saw on school day mornings, my normally dull hair a bit brighter. Brady seemed to leave me in a humid perspiration.

I never talked to Greg about my books, because he was too clinical with his input, too removed, so there was no reason for me to mention Brady. But also, Brady was a secret I wanted to keep. I let my head sink under the honey bath. If I said his name aloud, especially to Greg, that feeling I got when we were together, that melted feeling from those stupid romance novels I used to read as a kid, would have disappeared.

I was fantasizing, of course. And I didn't blame myself. Brady was the kind of guy girls dreamed about, the tough guy in leather who knew how to fight but could also recite the words to Shakespeare sonnets. The kind of guy that all my life I'd close my eyes and imagine saying my name, except I wasn't me. I was some other skinny, shiny girl with gorgeous eyes and to-die-for skin, the kind of girl Savannah would have been.

I relaxed in the bath for a long time, and when I finally got out, I thought about the flowers Brady had brought and how relieved I was they weren't daisies. The first summer Savannah and I had been allowed to walk to town by ourselves, my mother had given us five dollars each to go to the dollar store. I'd picked out a set of bangles and cherry Lifesavers. Savannah had bought five packets of daisy seeds. When we got home, she threw them like confetti on the lawn. A month later, daisies haphazardly dotted our yard, waving their happy faces in the breeze. From then on, Savannah loved daisies—daisies stuck in the buttonholes of her shirts, in her barrettes, between her toes when she sunbathed, and, little did my parents know, a daisy tattoo on her left hip she'd gotten after she'd bribed one of those senior girls to drive her to Dark Side Tattoo and lend her an ID.

 

CHAPTER

8

David was away at a model car workshop, and Gabby was in Florida with Duncan for Hoka Hey training, so I tried to work on my novel. I took my laptop into my office and closed the door even though Greg wasn't home. I was so used to him blaring classical music or practicing his bassoon that shutting myself in my brightly lit office was habit now. I sat at my desk and opened my computer. It came on, dim for a second, and then brightened like an old friend smiling at the sight of me. Writing was a solitary thing, not that I minded. For so many years after Savannah was murdered, I craved being alone. What could have been worse than running into an acquaintance on the street, both of us groping for benign and appropriate words? Even now, after I'd had countless offers to join and then lead writing groups, teach workshops, and head the English department at a small community college, I preferred to work alone.

My problem was that with every scene I wrote, I was starting to like the best friend in
Devils and Dust
a little more. Isabelle killed Susannah. And Hopper, Susannah's brother, a CO in a high-security prison, was bugging me because he kept getting the shit kicked out of him by corrupt guards. It was accurate in terms of the reality of prison, but it wasn't really good to have a main character who appeared like a victim.

By the time Thursday-night dinner rolled around again, I was exhausted and worn out from working and wondering about Brady. I knew I should have been more concerned with whether Greg was fucking his receptionist, but I hardly noticed him anymore. I kept thinking about Brady saying he shouldn't come to my house. His prison notes were tucked in my computer bag, and whenever I pulled them out for reference, I got a sort of wavy feeling thinking about him. Even though Gabby would never approve, I texted him. “Going to David's for dinner at 7. You should come.” And then I wrote my brother's address. He responded right away with “At Hope's Place now. Will try to make it.”

Sometimes on my way to David's, I thought of driving with my mother down High Ridge Road while she frantically dialed her cell phone. It had been getting dark, and I could only vaguely make out the ghostly shapes of the oaks and maples along the side of the road. “Carol,” she'd said into the phone. “Tell David to wait outside. I am going to stop the car in front of the house, and he has five seconds to come out. No, everything's not all right.” She'd thrown the phone down between us, but it slid off the console and landed on the floor by my clunky sneakers. Savannah wore cute canvas Tretorns on gym day, and she always made fun of my sensible shoes. When she twisted her ankle playing volleyball, she said it didn't matter as long as she looked good doing it. I thought of that and tried not to know what I knew.

My brother was waiting in Chandler's yard when we drove up, jeans belted around the middle of his ass, hat on sideways, backpack slung over his shoulder. “Get in,” my mother said. Miraculously, David did. He smelled like pot. On the way to the hospital, he kept asking what happened. No matter how many times my mom told him Savannah had an accident, he kept saying, “But what happened?” until my mother finally said, “I don't know, David. Jesus, don't you think I'd tell you if I knew?” And then he shut up, because she never talked to us like that.

I'd been in the ER at County General one other time when I'd had an asthma attack in seventh grade after someone brought some kind of weird hamster to class. The school nurse dialed 911 while I lay wheezing on the small cot pushed up against the cinder blocks in her office. Three doors down in English class, Savannah was having a coughing fit.

It seemed so different now, disorganized, frantic. The last time, they'd laid me down on a bed behind a blue curtain and given me an albuterol nebulizer. When the doctor came in to recheck my pulse ox, I was at 100 percent, back at school by fourth period. But now, the loudspeaker was paging doctors to oncology, to labor and delivery. In the waiting room, a man was holding a towel to his bleeding head, a girl was cradling a crying baby, and an old woman, oddly slumped in a chair, was completely still.

Officer Tunney and the other cops were in the hall, standing around our pediatrician, Dr. Bassett, and when we got there, they made a break in their circle for us. Dr. Bassett touched my mother on the arm. “Come with me,” she'd said. My father had appeared, and the four of us, missing Savannah, left the cops behind and followed Dr. Bassett. I remember wishing Officer Tunney would come with us, but it was a vague thought, as though something buried deep in my subconscious knew I would be safer with him there. He was the only one who'd believed me that I knew where Savannah was. David, my parents, and I stood in a small room with suede furniture and southwestern art on the walls. None of us sat down.

Dr. Bassett pushed up her rimless glasses. “Lyndie, Bob,” she said to my parents. “Savannah was hurt very badly.”

My father had a spot of red sauce on his white oxford. It was Thursday, pasta night at the restaurant. He usually brought home leftover cavatappi, a chunky bolognese sauce, or vegetable lasagna layered with mushrooms and broccoli.

“Did she fall and break something?” he was asking. “Did she have an accident?”

My dad, the youngest of four and the only boy, had thought every little boy let his sisters dress him in frilly skirts and paint his fingernails a sparkly pink. His father traveled a lot, selling leather to companies like Coach and Gucci, so he'd spent his childhood surrounded by women and girls and girls becoming women. A self-described mama's boy, he cried at chick flicks and sappy commercials. He cried when I fell out of our tree house and broke my arm. But now, as Dr. Bassett's silence told us everything we needed to know, he stood stoically. I could see his fingertips digging into my mother's shoulder, but otherwise, he was as still as a soldier at attention.

My mom didn't move. She didn't seem to be blinking. I leaned against the wall and watched Dr. Bassett take off her glasses. Years later, I would understand she didn't want to see my mother's face when she said what she said next.

“It appears Savannah was attacked, sexually.”

I was having a hard time breathing.

“No, Michelle,” my mother said to the doctor. “No. No. No. No.”

They called each other by their first names, exchanged Christmas cards, and Dr. Bassett came to the Sotto Sopra holiday parties.

“What happened?” David asked again. Even with the faint smell of pot tangled in the fabric of his sweatshirt, I'd almost forgotten he was there.

“How?” My mother sounded impatient, as though this was a waste of time.

“He strangled her,” I said so quietly I almost couldn't hear myself.

Dr. Bassett nodded, nearly imperceptibly.

“He put something around her neck”—my voice sounded programmed—“and he killed her.”

My mother covered her mouth. “No. God, no. Oh, my baby.”

I knew what she was thinking—that being violated must have been so much the worse for Savannah because she was a virgin. She called us her twin angels, such good girls, never any trouble. She was so careful not to choose between us, but it was clear Savannah was her favorite, the prettier twin, more charismatic. It was hard not to look at Savannah, not to pay attention to her. She drew you in. And as I watched my mother crumble to the floor, my father and Dr. Bassett trying to comfort her, I wanted to run out of that tiny room, through the electric doors, into the parking lot, down Mareside Highway to Mulbury Street, to that tiny one-way, forgotten lane, grass growing out of its cracks, where broken glass lay along its crumbling curb. The lane that led to the Wolfe Mansion. I'd never been inside. I'd heard it was where kids partied because the cops didn't like to go there. You couldn't get a car past the curb; you could only walk single file on the lane. The place was surrounded by tall, knotty pines, I'd heard, and a root system so complicated you had to hold hands not to trip, almost impossible to enter, even on foot. Haunted, they said. I wanted to go there. I wanted to die in that exact spot where my sister had lain, suffocating. We were too late. I'd been too late. I hadn't looked for her.

Dr. Bassett came forward and stood beside me like a sentry. I felt her rubbing my back. She was warm and soft, and smelled like powder. “There's evidence of strangulation, bruising around her neck, and petechial hemorrhaging. We'll have to do an autopsy, but she was only partially clothed, which can be an indicator of—” But my mother put up her hand, and Dr. Bassett didn't finish her sentence.

My father had gone a pale, waxy color I'd never seen before. Someone killed my sister, and he was out there, right now, maybe washing his hands in the bathroom at a turnpike rest stop.

“Cady.” My mother was coming across the room, her face wasted, her brown eyes fierce. She squatted in front of me. I felt Dr. Bassett quit rubbing my back. “Tell us,” she'd said. “What else do you know?”

*   *   *

I opened David's back door to see Chandler and Odion at the stove. “It smells good,” I told Chandler, and he pulled me into a quick hug.

“Lover Boy met someone,” he whispered.

I'd brought a bottle of Chilean from Greg's wine cabinet, and I passed it to Chandler. “David?” I asked while he opened the wine. “Where?”

“That dorky workshop he went to last weekend.”

“The model car one?”

“That's the one,” Chandler said.

A girl who played with toy cars. Perfect. David came in wearing his microscope glasses on his head, his hair messy like he'd just gotten out of bed.

“How was it?” I kissed him on the cheek.

“It was what it was,” David told me. His eyes were red as if he hadn't slept. “Where's Gabs? Did she desert us?”

“She's on her way back from Hoka Hey training.”

And then there was a knock on the kitchen door, and when it opened, Brady Irons was standing there.

“You're here.” My voice was full of holes, breathy, the pudgy girl with her high school crush.

Brady was wearing jeans and boots, and his hair was slicked back. It suddenly embarrassed me, standing in David's kitchen with Brady—Chandler and Odion glancing up blankly.

“Come in,” I said.

But as he stepped through the door, he seemed so out of place.

“Look who's here,” I said to David, throwing my voice over my shoulder, hoping he'd act hospitable. “Brady Irons from high school.”

“Hell,” David said. “Great to see you again.” His hair stuck up like a jackknife. “It's been a while.” He put out his hand.