Cemetery Girl (9 page)

She swallowed and took a deep, phlegmy breath. She sounded mucus-choked from the tears and snot.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

“Someone saw Caitlin,” I said, speaking slowly, enunciating clearly. “A witness. She saw her.”

“Who saw her?”

“A dancer from a club in Russellville.”

She rolled her eyes. “A stripper.”

“Abby, don’t. Just listen.”

“You’re back to that again . . .” Her voice trailed off, and full realization dawned. “You were in a strip club during our daughter’s funeral.”

“It wasn’t a funeral.”

Abby stood up and started to walk away. “I can’t hear this. I can’t do this again.”

“Wait, Abby. Wait.”

She was in the hallway, but she stopped, her back to me.

“Listen, will you? Just listen. This witness went to Liann. She knows Liann. It wasn’t me, okay?”

She still didn’t turn around, but she said, “Liann knows her?”

“Yes.”

“How does Liann know her?” Abby asked.

“Can you at least look at me while I tell you this?” I asked. “Please?”

She turned around, slowly, and when she faced me, she raised her eyebrows as if to say,
Hurry up, let’s get on with this.

“Do you want to sit down? It’s not all pleasant—”

“Just tell me, Tom. How does Liann know her?”

“I guess this girl, the one who saw Caitlin, has been in some trouble before, and Liann helped her out.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not really relevant, is it?”

“Okay,” Abby said. “Just tell me what she saw. I can handle it.”

She showed no inclination to leave the hallway or return to her seat, so I plunged into the story. I didn’t tell her everything, but I told her a lot. When I reached the part about the man and the lap dance, Abby’s composure broke ever so slightly. She looked down at the floor, and the movement shook loose a strand of her hair. When she went to tuck it back behind her ear, her hand shook. I felt sick to my stomach just repeating it, so I left out the worst part . . .

Caitlin on her knees, in front of the man . . .

“You said this was about six months ago?”

“Yeah, about that long.”

Somewhere a clock ticked steadily, a monotonous back-and-forth sound.

“That’s a long time, Tom,” she said.

“Not that long.”

“It is in this instance. The police told us—”

“The police? You’re telling me about the police? Abby, they’re not working on the case that hard anymore. They’re on to other things.”

“The police have told us that we have a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour window here. After that, leads grow cold. They dry up. People forget things, or else they fabricate memories . . .” Her voice sounded flat. She was repeating talking points.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“And this woman’s a stripper. She’s probably on drugs. Or drunk. Is that how she knows Liann? Is Liann her lawyer? I value Liann’s advice about Caitlin’s case, but if she’s bringing this girl around with some crazy story—”

“Okay, okay, forget the witness. Forget what she said.” I moved forward and stood in front of Abby. I put my hand on her shoulder, rested it there gently, offering her support. She looked a little surprised but didn’t pull away or brush me off. “The point isn’t the witness here, okay?” I said. “What matters is that six months ago someone saw Caitlin. Our Caitlin. Alive. Not ten miles from here.”

I knew I’d reached her. When I’d said, “Our Caitlin,” she took a little breath, a quick intake of air that told me those words still meant something to her.

“We thought she’d be far away . . . or we thought—”

“She’d be dead.”

“Yes. That. We thought that about our own daughter. Abby, we shouldn’t have to think that about our daughter. We shouldn’t. And now we don’t. We have hope again, Abby. Real hope. For the first time in years . . .”

She looked at me, straight into my eyes, then down at my hand, where it still rested on her shoulder. She seemed to be considering me. Not the news or the witness, but me.

“But this is all dependent on this woman having really seen what she says she saw. She doesn’t know Caitlin. She saw a picture of when Caitlin was twelve, but she’d be so much older.”

“But Ryan came. He talked to her. They’re going to do a sketch and send it out.”

“Did he believe her?” she asked. “Did he say this was solid?”

“You know how Ryan is. He’s cautious. He has other cases he’s working. He doesn’t want to give us false hope.”

“Did he believe her?”

I hesitated. That told her all she wanted to know. She started to pull away, but I applied pressure on her shoulder, trying to keep her from backing up.

“Ryan wouldn’t be having the sketch done if he didn’t believe her,” I said.

“I thought you had such a low opinion of the police.”

“I know they haven’t always told us the truth. They never once told us they thought she was dead, did they? But you know damn well they were thinking it. They just string us along, make vague promises and offer platitudes. ‘We’re still working on things . . . We still have leads . . .’ They don’t care. Liann’s right. They can’t care as much as we do—that’s just a fact of something like this. The cops go home to their own wives and kids, and the parents of the victim have to keep carrying the flag. That’s why we have to keep her memory alive. That’s why Liann is so important. She cares like we do. She understands. Her daughter was—”

I stopped myself.

Abby didn’t say anything. Where just a few moments earlier it felt as though I had been making progress with her, slowly thawing the ice and reaching an essential part of Abby, just as quickly things turned back away. I was losing her again. I could sense a turn in the air as palpable as the arrival of a cold front.

“What?” I asked.

“We’ve never talked about it, Tom.”

“About what?” I waited. “That she might be dead?”

Abby shook her head. “That she did run away from us.”

“No, Abby. Never.”

She became more animated. “She was so moody and withdrawn. I never knew what she was thinking or feeling. She could have lived a whole life we didn’t know about. And those Internet searches. Seattle . . . the trains . . . She was taking the dog to the park. Maybe she met somebody there, somebody she was talking to. We wouldn’t know.”

“What are you saying?”

“And now this story about the girl in the club. If it is Caitlin, if she was doing those things . . .” Abby’s lip curled as she spoke. “Maybe she wants to be gone and stay gone. Maybe . . . if she was right here, so close to us and . . .” She turned away, starting up the stairs to the bedrooms. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

“What?”

She stopped near the top of the stairs and looked back. “This has been difficult, Tom.”

“Of course. I know.”

“No, you don’t. I’m not talking about Caitlin’s disappearance.” She sat down on the top step. Her body weight seemed to go out of her. She almost collapsed. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how difficult it’s been for me to watch you go through this over the last four years. Ryan’s going to send out this sketch, and you come home all excited. Well, Ryan doesn’t know what hope has done to this house. To this marriage. Does he?”

“Abby—”

“Every time a piece of news comes in about Caitlin. It could be just a scrap. A girl would get assaulted across town, and you’d want to know who did it. Or there’d be an abduction attempt an hour away, and you’d be on the phone to the police telling them to check it out. Ryan humors you, doesn’t he? He always takes your calls, right?”

“He came out today as soon as he could.”

“I love and miss Caitlin as much as you—”

“No one said you didn’t.”

“I know. And I do appreciate that.” She rubbed her palms together, as though scraping something off them. “You asked me once why the church meant so much to me. You acted confounded by the fact that I wanted to go and spend my time there, as though just nurturing my faith wasn’t reason enough. I know you think people who talk that way—who say things like ‘nurturing my faith’—are beneath you, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Is there?”

I didn’t respond.

“I went to the church because your unreasonable hope didn’t leave room for anything else in our life together. I was squeezed out. And while you may not have questioned my love for Caitlin, you did question how invested I was in keeping her memory alive. You thought that if I didn’t pore over every missing-persons case in the country, or if at some point I wanted to stop spending my weekends organizing search parties, that I just didn’t care enough. That I was deluded or out of touch. But that’s not the case. I just chose to go on. It’s a little selfish, I admit, but I chose to go on with my life rather than to spend all my time as the poor, unfortunate woman who lost her daughter. And the church helps me do that.”

She paused. I still didn’t say anything. But I noticed a different kind of look on her face, a newfound relief or ease. She was unburdening herself.

“I didn’t want you to get rid of Frosty because he bothered me. I know you think that, but it’s not the case. I wanted you to get rid of him for you. I thought maybe if you did it, you’d be able to move on. It was a last-ditch attempt, I guess. I thought it might have worked. The last few days seemed better, and this morning at the church—”

“What do you mean by ‘last-ditch’?”

She looked down at her hands. “Chris and I have been talking. He’s been counseling me. Ordinarily, he doesn’t encourage people to divorce—Well, I guess if we had children to consider . . . But we think—
I
think—it would be for the best. It seems inevitable in a way. This happens to a lot of couples who lose a child.”

She looked up at me for a quick moment, her eyes full of tears. Then she stood and walked into what used to be our bedroom.

“Hold on.” I scrambled along behind her. The evidence was all over the bedroom. Two suitcases open and full of clothes. The closet door thrown wide and nearly empty.

Abby stood in the middle of the room, chewing on a fingernail.

“You’re really doing it?” I asked.

“One of us has to, Tom.”

I pointed behind me, toward the stairs and the lower level of the house. “Is there something else going on here? Is this about—?” I couldn’t say his name. It tasted like ash in my mouth. “Him?”

Abby looked at me, her eyes full of pity. “Oh, Tom. If it were only that simple.”

“If you’re fucking another man, it
is
simple. If you’re not the person I thought you were, the person you claim to be—”

“Don’t be crude,” she said. “Chris is helping me. There might be a job at the church, something to get me started. They have a place I can stay, in their retreat housing. It’s temporary, of course. I talked to someone at Fields, someone in the School of Ed. I think I’d like to go back to teaching. It wouldn’t take me long to get recertified here. And there are jobs. Maybe working with children again, teaching them, would fulfill me in some way my life isn’t fulfilling me right now. I wouldn’t expect you to leave this house. You’ve always liked living here, and I know you think one of us should always be here in case Caitlin . . . if she ever came back.”

We were quiet then. I sat on the edge of the bed, letting my body weight sink into the mattress. Abby came over and bent down. She planted a kiss on the top of my head. I reached up and took her hand. We clasped tightly for a moment; then she slipped loose.

“I know you think this is my fault,” I said.

“It’s no one’s fault. Not really.”

“I don’t mean us,” I said. “I mean Caitlin. I know you think I let her get away with too much, that she shouldn’t have been allowed to walk the dog in the park alone. She was too young, and Frosty . . . Frosty was too big . . .”

“That’s all over, Tom.”

“I just wanted her to run toward life and not be afraid of it. You know, my family, growing up—it was awful, so smothering. It was like living without oxygen.”

“I know, Tom.”

But I wasn’t sure she did. Abby’s parents were frighteningly normal: upper middle class and traditional. A little repressed, a little concerned with appearances, but next to my family they looked like royalty. I don’t know if Abby ever really understood what it was like to come from a family like mine, even though she often said she did.

“I didn’t want her to be tied to us,” I said. “Like we held her back.”

“It’s late, Tom . . .”

“Do you remember what it was like when Caitlin was little?” I asked. “Just the three of us in the house together. Watching TV or playing games. Hell, it didn’t matter what we were doing.”

“It was good, Tom,” she said. “Back then, it was good.”

“Back then,” I said, repeating her words, letting them hang in the air between us. “I tried to get Frosty back today. I went to the shelter and asked about him, but he was already gone.”

Abby raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “It happened that fast.”

I shook my head. “Not that. Somebody adopted him. Some family, I guess. They wouldn’t give me the name, even though I said I wanted to get him back.”

“He’s probably okay then. Somebody wanted him.”

“He and I could have lived here together. He was good company.”

“It’s going to take me a little while to get all my stuff out. There isn’t much room over there at the church. It’s like a dorm, I guess.”

“Hell, maybe I’ll just go get another dog.”

Abby made a noise deep in her throat. No one else would have recognized it, but I knew. She started to cry. Her tears always began that way, and then she quickly began taking deep, sobbing breaths, so it sounded like she couldn’t get enough air. Then I started crying, too, the tears stinging my cheeks and falling into my lap. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, first one side, then the other. “One dog’s pretty much the same as any other, right?”

Chapter Ten

R
yan showed up with a sketch the following week. Abby was slowly moving her things out of the house, one box at a time, so there was some disarray, which caused Ryan to raise an eyebrow. But he stepped around the mess without saying anything or making a comment. It was one of the few times he didn’t wear a tie. He wore the collar of his white shirt open, revealing a strip of T-shirt and some straggly black chest hairs.