Janie Face to Face (7 page)

“What are you talking about?” he said. His voice was belligerent.

“You think I don’t know Calvin Vinesett’s cell phone
number when he’s included it in every single message to me? You took that horrible photograph solely for Calvin Vinesett’s book.”

Michael looked around, as if there might be a cue card somewhere, and a script. “Listen,” he said.

“I deleted myself from your contact list. Don’t add me back. You’ve always known that I’m Janie Johnson, the face on the milk carton. Calvin Vinesett told you to find me.”

His poise was gone. He didn’t know what to say. Even when she had taken his phone, he had not realized that she knew about Calvin Vinesett. He just thought she didn’t like the photo. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Okay, that’s partly true. But what’s really true is that I’m in love with you. Anyway, maybe I didn’t tell you the truth, but you didn’t tell me anything! I was closemouthed, but you were sealed shut. I brought you little presents and we went on walks and—”

“You were paid to do it, weren’t you?”

He glared at her. “You know I want to be a writer. It hasn’t been going well. I answered an ad. The guy’s doing a book about the kidnapping and not everybody in the family is cooperating. He needs a little help. It’s good money.”

I gave up Reeve? she thought. Who has apologized and asked for forgiveness a hundred times? In order to have a guy who dated me for money? For future fame? For a paragraph? A guy who’s not even going to admit that was wrong? “Add it up,” she said. “I’ll pay you back. There’s your train. Get on it.”

“But Jane—”

“Get on that train, Mick.”

He flinched.

“And don’t stalk Sarah-Charlotte again either!”

“Listen, Jane.”

Janie did not listen. She stepped onto the escalator to the upper level of the station. She did not look back. I loved you, she thought. How will I ever survive in this world, now that I know I am a lousy judge of character? I couldn’t judge character when I was three years old, and I can’t judge now that I’m twenty.

She checked the schedule board for the next train.

She didn’t want to get on a train. She wanted to throw herself on the floor and sob. She wanted to beat Michael/Mick up. Even more, she wanted him to explain how he really did love her, and he had not stalked her, and he had not been paid to get information from her.

Her cell phone rang. One of the lovely things about cell phone technology was that you always knew who it was.

It was Reeve’s ringtone.

She almost wished it could have been Michael, pleading. But if he wanted to plead, he would have taken the escalator after her.

Back at the Harbor, only an hour ago, she had asked herself if she still loved Reeve. Her answer had been yes—but not enough. She stared at his face on the screen.
Reeve
loves
me
enough, though. This man to whom I have been rude and unforgiving—he loves me enough.

A wave of knowledge passed through Janie. Reeve’s voice on the radio was nothing. Reeve in her life was everything.

It was a true gift. Not a powdered doughnut. A gift in her
soul. She trusted Reeve again. It was like taking off a winter coat. She was light again. “Reeve?”

“Sarah-Charlotte called me,” shouted Reeve. “What’s going on? Who is this guy? Are you all right? Do I have to kill somebody?”

Oh, Reeve, she thought. I’ve leaned on you for so long. And here you are again.

“Keep talking,” she said. “I need your voice.” The sobs she had been holding inside defeated her. She held the phone at an angle so Reeve couldn’t hear her cry. She curved her elbow over her face so strangers couldn’t see her break down.

“Some creep dated you in order to pass information to that true crime writer?” yelled Reeve. “He’s using two names? Michael for you, Mick for Sarah-Charlotte?”

“You knew about the book?” she whispered.

“We all know. We all got letters. We knew you wouldn’t want it. Nobody’s talked.”

A sentence of Michael’s came back to Janie:
Not everybody in the family is cooperating
. Which meant that somebody was.

“Where are you right now?” asked Reeve.

“Train station. I don’t know what to do next, Reeve. First you betrayed me and then I fell in love again and now he betrayed me.”

“Ah, Janie. I grew up. That was the worst mistake I ever made, and I thought you had sort of taken me back. Listen. Get on a plane. Come down here for the weekend.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. I’m on my computer right now getting you a plane ticket. You’re about two blocks from the airport limo
pickup. Take a taxi to that hotel or walk over. I’ll make your limousine reservation too. Okay, there’s a seven-forty flight from JFK to Charlotte. And an aisle seat. Bingo. Got it.”

“I don’t even have a toothbrush with me.”

“It’s Charlotte, North Carolina, not Antarctica. There are stores. The only thing you need to get on the plane is an ID. Are you headed for the airport limo, Janie? Pick up the pace.”

“Why do you want me there?”

“Because I love you. I’ve always loved you. I always will.”

Janie Johnson walked over to the taxi stand. “Don’t hang up.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not taking the limo, Reeve.”

“Janie! Please! I don’t want you crying up there without me.”

“I’m coming for the weekend, Reeve. But the limo is too slow with all those stops. It’s too annoying. I’m taking a taxi all the way to the airport. I have lots of money. Even if I did inherit it from a grandmother who thought I was somebody else. With you I don’t have to be somebody else.”

Why hadn’t she noticed that when she was with Michael, she was in a constant struggle to be somebody else? Somebody without a history? Somebody whose soul was unmarked by tragedy?

She slid into the backseat of a cab. “JFK, please,” she told the driver, holding up a sheaf of bills to prove she could pay.

“Janie, I can’t wait to see you,” said Reeve.

“You don’t have to wait.” She loosened the red hair from its tight tension in that silly fat bun. She took off the drugstore
glasses. She had hidden the real Janie Johnson for two years. She shook her head hard. For a moment the hair stayed tight, and then it relaxed, taking up its portion of the backseat. Janie focused her cell phone camera on herself, took her picture, and wrote,

xoxoxoxo, Janie

After the mall event, and the Connecticut event, the woman formerly known as Hannah drifted around the country, trying to find the old members of her group. But they had all moved on. Briefly, she traveled by train. She wouldn’t mind spending her life looking out a window and showing up in the dining car a few times a day while somebody else drove.

The train trip ended, and Hannah found herself on the West Coast, that day in New Jersey as remote as elementary school.

In California, the weather was perfect but the loneliness deeper.

How did everybody find all those friends with whom they laughed and ate?

It didn’t matter.

Her father would send money to Tiffany Spratt’s post office box. Hannah wouldn’t be the only one back in Boulder who skied and hiked, took a class or two, and then picked up their
checks. Well, except she didn’t plan to ski or hike or take a class. What would she do? With all that money, she would have choices.

And so Hannah made her way to Colorado and the post office box.

The post office box anchored her to the world. Stuff filled the box. It was so packed she had to pry everything out. Ads and flyers. Requests for donations. Giveaway newspapers. Even free credit cards, although they never worked when she tried them. She unfolded every piece of junk mail carefully, because her check was in there somewhere.

Yes!

The envelope was crushed, but the check was safe.

She headed for a bank, her Tiffany Spratt ID in her hand.

But they would not cash it.

In the end, she had to open a bank account with that check and wait day after day for the bank to decide it was real. Only then could she have the money. But not all of it! They insisted that she had to leave some in the bank, and furthermore, they charged a fee.

The establishment was so greedy!

But the real shock was, Frank’s check wasn’t enough money to live well.

It wasn’t even enough money to live poorly!

Frank was probably lavishing money on that little girl. But would he pay Hannah’s bills? No! She would have to get a job. And that had never worked for her. She was too fragile.

Back there in Connecticut, she had forced herself to give
the little Janie creature a hug and a kiss when she was leaving, as if she really were its mother. As Hannah had gotten into her stolen car, Miranda’s voice had floated after her: “We have to go to the store, Frank. We need sippy cups and pajamas and a car seat. We need …”

Frank and Miranda were out there buying things for somebody else’s child while refusing to give enough to
Hannah
! Their
real
daughter!

Hannah hated them.

She wondered if the police had found her parents yet, and if they were headed to prison. It occurred to her that if her parents were imprisoned, they could not support her.

On the other hand, if they were in prison, their money was hers.

Hannah did not read newspapers, and when she was in the location of a television, she certainly didn’t waste it on the news. She did not know if her parents were doing time for kidnapping.

She didn’t feel like talking to them, but the telephone was her only choice.

Dormitories always had public phones, and sure enough, she wandered into a student lounge and found three wall phones, each in its little cubicle, waiting for her coins.

If the police hadn’t found Frank and Miranda, she’d threaten her father:
Give me money or I’m coming for my little girl
.

If the police
had
found them, the police might even answer the phone. But they couldn’t find Hannah even if they traced the number. This was a dorm; hundreds of people used this phone.

She dropped her coins into the slots and poked the little buttons, oddly pleased that she remembered the number after all these years.

But the phone number of Frank and Miranda Javensen had been disconnected.

Brendan Spring had been the most successful person in his family, and the least liked. Brendan thought of sports first, and everything and everyone else second. To be precise, he thought first of himself excelling in sports.

In his dreams, Brendan was courted by Big Ten schools, flown in to tour campuses, treated as a prize. In high school, he rarely concerned himself with books and academics, because he was going to be a star on the basketball court. His grades were low, but so what?

His favorite dream was the television interview where he was introduced as a legend. He would duck his head in a humble fashion, although he would be such an icon that sneakers were named for him.

His kidnap sister’s boyfriend, Reeve, had graduated from college and gotten a job with ESPN. Brendan liked to imagine the day Reeve would beg for an interview. “It will help my career,” Reeve would plead.

When Janie had been found—or rather, when she had
found them—her appearance at their house, her failure to thrive, and her return to the kidnap family had hardly made a dent in Brendan’s life. The missing Jennie Spring was just an annoying girl who increased the wait time for the one bathroom. She wouldn’t even use her name, but insisted she was a person named Janie. She left before Brendan had really noticed that she’d arrived. In his mind, he referred to her as J/J.

His older brother, Stephen, his other sister, Jodie, and his twin, Brian, pursued Janie, following her up to Connecticut and even becoming friends with the other parents, Frank and Miranda, and hanging out with the boyfriend, Reeve. Brendan couldn’t work up any interest.

It had no longer been necessary for the Springs to keep the shabby little house with the street address they hoped a lost child might somehow remember. The lost child
had
remembered, had come home, and didn’t like it there.

So the Springs moved to a big house, with a bedroom and bath for each kid.

A separate bedroom changed everything. Brendan no longer had his twin to hold him back. Brendan wanted success more than he wanted kindness. His family suspected this but pretended it wasn’t so. The Spring children were supposed to have all the virtues and think of each other first. But the minute the twins were no longer confined to a single bedroom, Brendan forgot he even had a twin.

Anyway, his twin was embarrassing. If Brian had been a computer nerd, that would have been acceptable. But Brian just sat around reading stuff nobody cared about, like medieval history. While Brendan dreamed of being a sports
legend, Brian dreamed of getting an e-reader to load with history books.

Senior year in high school arrived and Brendan waited to be courted by the finest basketball coaches in the country.

But they did not come.

He waited for the athletic scholarships at the top schools.

But he was not offered any.

Brendan was not even accepted at a Division I school.

He endured the end of senior year pretending to be proud that he was going to some loser college nobody had ever heard of.

When his mother said, “Well, you never did study; you’re lucky you got in anywhere,” he wanted to leave his family forever.

When his dad said, “Make the best of it,” Brendan wanted to shove him.

When Jodie snapped, “Oh, stop whimpering,” and Stephen said, “So life isn’t fair; so you just noticed?” Brendan thought, Who needs these people, anyway?

His twin got into the school of his choice.

I’m going to Nowheresville and he goes to Harvard, thought Brendan. Brian probably did it on purpose to show me up.

More than anything, Brendan hated his twin’s sympathy.

He seriously considered joining the army, which would have been better than showing up at that stupid college. But that summer, he was lethargic. This had never happened to him before. He was usually exploding with energy. His parents didn’t notice. They were dreaming of how it would be when, the first time in decades, they would have no kids at
home. They were either packing suitcases for Brendan and Brian or rejoicing that old J/J showed up once in a while. Then didn’t his crazy sister Jodie decide to go off on some mission year to Haiti? Jodie got treated like a goddess because she was giving a year to the poor. Who cared about the poor?