“What’s this?” With his little finger, Mike slid the newspaper article over in front of his plate.
“It’s the campus newspaper article.” I didn’t say where I’d found it, and he didn’t ask. “We were told our names were removed at the last minute to protect our privacy because we weren’t official suspects. But our photographs ran on the front page. One of the girls’ fathers, some hotshot alumnus, protested to the chancellor after it hit the stands, and our photos never made the papers again. I heard that the student newspaper editor who made the decision to run them was fired and lost an internship at The Wall Street Journal. He thought he’d gotten the scoop of his life. Some sleazy cop slipped a reporter our names. The cop was fired, too.”
“Which one is you?” he asked, pointing to the row of headshots. “You look alike.”
“Pierce had a definite type. I’m the fourth one over.”
“Really?” My husband stared at my face like he’d never seen it before, and then back at the picture. “I’d never know it.”
“No one recognized me from that picture. Even girls on the wing of my dorm. It’s one of the outtakes of a campus ID pic that was too blurry to use. I’m not sure how the editor got it. Or any of the pictures.”
Mike’s eyes bored into mine, searching. “Emily, do you really think he raped all these girls? The few old police reports we’ve been able to retrieve from Ithaca are unclear on that point.”
The quiet in the kitchen was like a silent church prayer going on too long.
“Yes.” My voice was steely. I was back in time again, defending myself. Defending them.
“I know you think this could be the work of your rapist’s mother. Can you think a little harder about whether any other relatives, or a friend, stood out as especially angry? Someone who might decide to avenge his death? Maybe you aren’t the only one of these girls being threatened.”
“Why not Pierce’s mother? Why not her?” Even though I was reaching the same conclusion.
“She’s old, Emily. We tracked her down. She’s been on a tour of Africa with a church group for the last five months. Lots of God-fearing people confirm that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just found out this morning.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I pushed away my second sandwich, half-eaten. He’d waited an hour to tell me about Pierce’s mother. That should have been the first thing out of his mouth when we hit the kitchen.
“There is another reason I think this is connected to Caroline,” he said abruptly. “We found an office off Caroline’s closet in our last search of the house. You weren’t wrong about her. She’s a nut. Kept files on half the town. It has expanded my suspect list exponentially.”
“Really? Wow.” I hoped to sound believable. I hated the lie. But I didn’t want to fall backward again. And what difference could it make now?
“Your instincts were right about Caroline. Do you have a feeling about any of the women you’ve met so far? Whether they’d want to harm her? Or taunt you?”
I’d spent more than a few minutes thinking about this before I shut my eyes the last two nights. Letty was too eagerly loyal, a Saint Bernard trying to keep up with the greyhounds and poodles. Red Mercedes and Beach House, aka Mary Ann and Jenny, seemed the type to leave clues when they were dragging a body out of a window. A Xanax pill that fell out of a Chanel bag, a little spit-up from the fourth martini they ingested the night before, a fake fingernail resplendent with DNA.
Gretchen Liesel was The Saint, above the fray. Tiffany, Puppy Killer, was deep into Caroline’s game and loving it. She probably thought hazing was as necessary as water-boarding. Lucinda? Holly? Maria? Giant, swirly question marks.
“Emily?”
“What about Harry?” I asked finally. “Maria told me he tried to get a blow job out of her, and Caroline intervened. You said he was mixed up in illegal stuff. And he’d be strong enough to drag her out of the house. She had a file-” I caught myself. “I’m assuming there’s a file on him. It must be loaded with reasons.”
“One file among hundreds. It’s going to take forever to get through them,” he said. “Caroline is now officially a missing persons case. The FBI is all over it.”
“I know. I know.”
He reached across to cover my hand with his.
“Whoever is behind all of this… they’re going to be very sorry they decided to pick on my wife.”
It was a tone I’d never heard before.
I was seven years old the first time I realized that I was capable of a deliberate, immoral act.
It was a little thing, I suppose, but then it’s the little things that turn the dial of our character slowly, a notch at a time, one way, then the other, until we reach the point in young adulthood where the dial is firmly stuck in place and it takes a lot of torque to coax it along again.
My mother didn’t believe much in the value of Barbies as role models for little girls, so the only one I owned was an old Skipper doll that I’d bought for fifty cents at a garage sale. I’d painted her bald spot with a brown marker.
The lady behind the card table threw in a pitiful wardrobe of a pink-flowered bikini. One inch of fabric, maybe. And a strapless wedding dress with a ripped hem and most of the beads missing. All a girl needs if she’s planning to live out her days with her lover on a desert isle.
But my friend Robin across the street owned an elite collection, so many Barbies and Barbie cousins that twenty of them served as mere decorations on a high, unreachable shelf that her father had nailed around the room. The plastic women were trapped inside their boxes, fake-smiling behind the cellophane. More well-loved Barbies were tossed in a large plastic bin in her closet or forgotten under the bed, arms and legs in unnatural positions, in embarrassing stages of undress.
Robin was fanatic about the accessories, using a tall plastic fishing tackle box with tiny drawers to store sun hats and veils, necklaces and hosiery, and the tiny, tiny shoes. My favorites were a pair of white heels with a minuscule white feathery puff on top, held down by a rhinestone that I imagined was a piece of a star.
Those shoes were stored in the third row, fifth drawer across. My fingers itched to see how they’d look with Skipper’s pitiful wedding dress. I wanted them. And one day, when Robin slipped away to the bathroom, I opened the drawer. She wouldn’t even miss them, I reasoned. It wasn’t fair.
I did hesitate. For a few seconds, I stared at them in my small, sweaty palm, wondering if I could do this, thinking how disappointed my mother would be if she found out.
“Those are pretty, aren’t they?” The voice wasn’t angry but it was adult and knowing. Robin’s mother.
“Yes.” Heat rushed into my face.
“Are you ready to put them back?”
“Yes.” My heart knocked against my chest as she opened the drawer and I carefully dropped them in.
She never accused me of anything, never told my mother, or even Robin as far as I knew. She saved me from myself, giving me the benefit of the doubt even though she was certain of my guilt. I loved her for it.
At my parents’ wake, three days after the crash, I told Robin’s mother that I’d never forgotten that moment, an early lesson about kindness and trust as a powerful teacher.
While mourners circled like restless birds, she spoke the words that comforted me the most that wretched week. I was certain by then that my lies had killed my parents. That if it hadn’t been for me, they would have been taking care of the granddaughter I gave away, instead of driving back from the mountains that day.
“You’re a good girl, Emily,” she told me. “But you’ve always been too hard on yourself.”