“Jo says you were best friends.” Lydia’s daughter is begging me. For anything.
Aurora’s arrival seems a little too pat.
She might be telling the truth. Or she might be a pawn of her mother’s.
“She was loyal,” I lie. “Like no one else.”
September 1995
MS. BELL: No. Tessie is not afraid of my dad. He could be a little mean after a few beers but he never bothered Tessie. She was so tough sometimes. Stood up for everybody. One time I told her that I could never handle it if I’d been the one to wake up in that grave. Don’t get me wrong. She’s messed up. Or maybe she’s just mortal now like the rest of us. But I’d be totally nuts. And you know what she said? She said, that’s why it happened to me and not you. Not to make me feel guilty or anything, or be martyr-y, just because she really can’t stand to see anybody else hurt. You need to know something… Tessie is the best.
MR. LINCOLN: Again, try to keep your answers short and confine them to my questions. I’m sure Mr. Vega has told you this, too.
MR. VEGA: I’m not objecting.
MR. LINCOLN: Lydia, let me ask you this. Are you ever afraid of your dad?
MS. BELL: Only sometimes. When he drinks. But he’s getting help for that now.
MR. LINCOLN: Lydia, your dream sounds pretty scary to me. At the bottom of a lake with no one coming to your rescue.
MS. BELL: I never said that no one comes to the rescue. My dad always dives in after me.
MR. LINCOLN: Interesting that you never mentioned that ending when I took your deposition. How can you be sure your father wasn’t going for that college ring he loved so much?
MR. VEGA: OK, your honor, now I’m objecting.
12 days until the execution
“Reconstructing memory doesn’t work this way,” Dr. Giles says. “It’s not a magic act. And I’m not the expert on light hypnosis. I’ve told you that.”
I’m staring down the same empty velour chair as last time, the one where Dr. Giles suggested I picture my monster and give him a pop quiz. There’s a frizzy blond Barbie nestled in the corner, her arms confirming a touchdown. “So tell me how it works,” I beg.
“Some therapists use the imagery of a rope or ladder. Or tell you to watch a painful event from above, as a voyeur. There’s a famous quote-that traumatic memory is a series of still snapshots or a silent movie and the role of therapy is to find the music and words.”
“So, let’s find the music,” I say. “And the pictures. I pick… watching from above. Let’s make my movie.”
I don’t tell her about Aurora, who is safely back in Florida with her foster mom.
I don’t tell her that I’m giving Lydia the starring role today. She always wanted it, and I was always snatching it away. I was the little girl with the dead mommy. I was the Black-Eyed Susan.
I’m hoping Lydia will appear in that chair and tell me something I don’t know. She usually does.
“If you really want to try hypnosis, I’ll recommend another therapist. I’m not on board here. This is not what I do. I thought you understood this.”
“I don’t want another therapist.”
My forehead begins to sweat. I’m hanging from the ceiling, a bat in the dark.
There I am. In the back of the parking lot. Tying my Adidas shoe with the pink laces that were in my Christmas stocking. Glancing up. There’s Merry, gagged with something, pressing her face against a backseat window of a blue van. Me, running. Clinging to a sticky pay phone. Praying the silhouette turning the ignition in the van didn’t see me. Sudden, excruciating pain in my ankle. Concrete slamming up. His face, looming. Strong arms, lifting me. Black.
“Tessa. Are you seeing something?”
Not now. I can’t stop the movie to talk. I want more. I close my eyes into a light so bright it burns. There’s Lydia, dancing with the Susans. Pushing them off the floor. Voguing to Madonna in my kitchen. Brushing my hair until my scalp tingles. Imitating Coach Winkle’s sex talk: Every time you think about doing it, I want a picture of my head to pop up. I’ll be saying: “Genital warts, genital warts!”
Images, smashing into my brain. Lydia’s drawing of the red-haired girl and the angry flowers. Mr. Bell, drunk. The dogs yipping and spinning in crazy circles. Mrs. Bell crying. Lydia and I pedaling our bikes to my house with our bodies slung low and forward, feet churning as fast as they can. Mr. Bell’s Ford Mustang breathing like a nasty dragon in the driveway while we hide in the flower garden. My father talking to him in calm tones on the porch. Sending him away. It was one night, and a hundred nights.
Me, the protector. A sob catches in my throat.
Cut. New scene. Here comes the doctor. Right on cue. I’ve seen this part of the movie before. There’s Lydia. And over there, under that tree, are Oscar and me. Such a pretty campus to take a walk. If I’d let Oscar tug me the other way, I never would have seen them.
The camera weaves in close. I can almost read the titles of the library books crammed in Lydia’s arms. Lydia, the pretend college girl. Yammering up at the doctor in her usual, earnest frenzy. The doctor, hurried, trying to be polite, looking like he wants nothing more than to get away.
September 1995
MR. LINCOLN: Your honor, permission to treat the witness as hostile. I’ve been patient but I’m in the home stretch here. This witness has skirted around my last five questions.
JUDGE WATERS: Mr. Lincoln, I see nothing hostile about a hundred-pound girl wearing glasses unless it’s that her IQ is larger than yours.
MR. LINCOLN: Objection… to you… your honor.
JUDGE WATERS: Ms. Bell. You need to answer. Did Tessie lie about anything related to this case?
MS. BELL: Yes, your honor.
MR. LINCOLN: OK, let’s go over this one more time. Tessie lied about the drawings?
MS. BELL: Yes.
MR. LINCOLN: And she lied about when she could see again?
MS. BELL: Yes.
MR. LINCOLN: And before the attack, she lied about where she was going running?
MS. BELL: Yes. Sometimes.
MR. LINCOLN: And your father also lied about where he was going sometimes?
MR. VEGA: Your honor, objection.
9 days until the execution
A little more than a week before Terrell is scheduled to die, and I’m cleaning out Effie’s freezer.
The judge rejected Terrell’s habeas corpus appeal five hours ago, news leached to the bottom of my stomach. Bill delivered the announcement by phone. I could barely listen after I heard the word rejected. Something about how the judge felt it was a tough call but there was no convincing evidence that Terrell was innocent and the jury got it wrong.
It’s not like the police aren’t still plugging away with Igor’s new theories. They’ve turned up sixty-eight names, all females in their late teens to early twenties from Mexico and Tennessee who went missing in the mid-to-late ’80s-Jo’s best estimate on the age of the bones.
The problem is, that list of sixty-eight translates to hundreds of searches for family members who have moved or died or who don’t answer their phones or who simply won’t give up their DNA to help identify the Susans. At least fifteen people contacted by the police are family members still listed as suspects in some of those cases. Some of them are probably killers, just not the one we’re looking for. Eleven girls on the list turned out to be runaways found alive but never removed from the missing persons database. It’s a slog that could take months or years, all of it surmised from an ancient code from the earth. It seems impossible. I can’t even figure out the best way to scrape purple Popsicle juice out of Effie’s freezer.