“Not at all,” he said. “We have plenty of time. You were saying that Caroline had problems.”
“Yes. Caroline was a little off. At night in bed, she used to whisper to her dead sister, the one who burned up. And she always wrote like a fiend in those stupid diaries of hers. I stole one once and she near about went insane. My parents didn’t pay attention, but Aida worried about her. Told her to stop living in her head or people would think she wasn’t right and she’d get sent back.”
Sophia took a measured puff on the cigarette, exhaling coolly. I sat back down beside Mike, and she stared at my pregnant belly, annoyed, as if I might give birth all over her Persian rug.
“She straightened up a little.” Sophia blew another smoke stream at the ceiling. “We had a good couple of years around fifteen, sixteen. We were only a year apart. Both of us made high school cheerleader. Then she met Dickie, got pregnant, and her little life went up in flames again.”
“Why Dickie?” I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Wasn’t it clear the kind of boy he was?”
“Oh, honey. It was perfectly clear.” She tossed her head back so the wrinkles melted into her skin. Sophia had never been beautiful, I was sure, but she had been coy, and that is enough for horny teenage males. “Every girl in school wanted to taste that fire. Didn’t you ever want a dangerous boy?”
She glanced slyly at Mike, then back at me. “It didn’t hurt that Dickie knew how to catch a football and run all the way to Tennessee. He had a real shot at getting out. An Ohio State football scholarship. But he was set on getting into Caroline’s pants. Told her they were alike deep down. Called her Sweet Caroline. Swore he was the only one who truly loved her. That might have been true, although, like I said, Aida had kind of a fondness for her. Caroline followed Dickie like a lost dog. And if you’re wondering, I know most of this because I read it in her diaries.”
“So she married him and moved out at what… sixteen?”
I admired Mike’s single-minded focus. I tried not to let my loathing for Sophia show.
“Yes, sixteen, almost seventeen. My parents built them that house near Hazard. They didn’t disown Caroline, but they had an unspoken agreement she wasn’t to come back. Reputation was everything to Mama. And, after all, Caroline wasn’t blood. I think they saw the little bastard once, on his first birthday. Mama and Daddy mailed them a monthly check, and Christmas presents in a big box, all of ’em bought and wrapped by Aida.” Her eyes narrowed. “I will say, the fifty-fifty split on the estate was a bit of a shock to me. Daddy’s guilt money, I suppose. After the reading of the will, I didn’t hear anything about Caroline for two years, until that little bastard of hers was connected to that missing girl. I’ve tried to stay as far away from that mess as possible. I heard she divorced Dickie and moved to Texas. Now you guys show up after she’s butchered to death. Not a fairy tale, is it?”
“I appreciate your time and straightforwardness.” Mike placed his hand on my knee, my clue that we were done here. Almost. “Is there anything else you think I should know before taking off?”
Sophia leaned in closer. She’d been waiting for this. Her face was ugly with pleasure.
“I did see Daddy sneaking out of Caroline’s bedroom late at night more than a few times.” She stubbed her cigarette in the flesh of a lime and, smirking, met Mike’s eyes. “I guess we’ll never know, will we? I mean, whether her baby was Dickie’s or Daddy’s.”
It was the shocker she intended, even for Mike, whose shoulders tightened.
A trapped princess. A jealous sister. An ogre. No locks on the bedroom door. Who said this wasn’t a fairy tale?
I tried not to picture Caroline as a child, with a sweet face and scarred feet, lying in bed every night, waiting to be raped.
One true thing rose up in my mind.
Caroline hadn’t lied to me.
Her sister, her real sister, was dead. She died in a fire.
Mike snored and the baby tossed fitfully, leaving me to stare at the cracks in Mrs. Drury’s ceiling that reminded me of Sophia Browning’s blueblood veins. I was home again, in the time it would take to watch a TV movie of the week.
I wondered how Mike could possibly sleep. In the morning, as soon as he left, I threw on some stretchy workout clothes, backed the station wagon out of the garage, waved to Jesse parked out front, and drove the ten minutes to Misty’s house. As Jesse had pulled out behind me, I realized there was something unspoken between us, that he wasn’t reporting my every movement.
I knew in my heart that she was gone, but I had to see for myself. I rolled to a stop at the curb. All the clues were there. Tall windows now black and shiny and uninviting. Three newspapers abandoned in the driveway. A yellow flyer already wedged in the door handle. The grass a hair too long.
Less than a week. How little time it took for a house to lose its spirit.
Where did you run, Misty? What is your story?
After several seconds, I shifted the car into gear. My mind was already jumping ahead to Caroline’s photo album, still tightly wrapped up in white plastic bags and rubber bands. Lying on the kitchen table, waiting for me.
34
My surgical instruments lay strewn across the table: an X-ACTO knife, an old butter knife, a sponge, and a small cereal bowl of warm, soapy water. I wiped the cover gently with a wrung-out sponge, revealing burgundy-colored plastic stamped with a fake leather grain. The words FAMILY ALBUM were almost worn off.
I ran the butter knife lightly under the three edges of the first page. So far, so good. In fact, that page opened fairly easily. My heart sank. Blank. I took a hit of mildew up my nose, then moved the knife to the second sheet.
This required a bit more negotiating, but I was rewarded with two black-and-white pictures of the same scene, different angles. An attractive couple and a girl in an old-fashioned frilly dress posed with a muscular Thoroughbred horse. The reins were held by a jockey about the same height as the girl. I recognized the girl as Caroline and her early, graceful handwriting underneath: Kentucky Derby with Mama & Daddy.
It was the first time I’d seen Caroline’s father. I rubbed my thumb over his face, unsuccessfully trying to bring a picture blurry with age into better focus. He didn’t strike me as a monster who would ask unspeakable things of a little girl; but then, isn’t that exactly why most monsters succeed? This predator hid under handsome features, graying hair, and the hauteur that clings to the wealthy. Even if he didn’t rape Caroline, he helped destroy her. His wife was a striking, fit woman who looked like she’d be comfortable riding either beast in the picture. The horse, or her husband.
The next seven or eight pages reflected a timeline of photographic technology and Caroline’s privileged post-adoption childhood. Her parents owned a colonial-style mansion, eerily similar to Sophia’s, plunked in the middle of a sprawling wonderland of grazing Thoroughbreds.
In one shot, their four barns were dressed with giant evergreen wreaths and twinkling white lights, every one of them nicer than almost every house I’d seen near Hazard.
Caroline had been launched from here onto another planet. Hazard was a depressing display of poverty and hopelessness, lawns littered like junkyards. It was hard to understand decent human beings banishing anyone to Hazard, especially a scared, pregnant sixteen-year-old.
But these were the early, quasi-happy times, and Caroline dashed off a few notes to record them.
The Christmas I got Izzie!!! under an image of Caroline and a gentle-looking horse with black socks.
My Best Friend, beneath a shot of a teenage Caroline and a grinning girl in a striped halter. They shared a hammock hung between giant oaks, their hair in French braids they’d probably fixed for each other.