CS: I don’t know. She said he did, but I’m not sure that I ever really believed her.
RC: Callie, you understand that Chloe was involved with a pretty nefarious group, correct?
CS: (long pause) I guess I wasn’t all that surprised when I found out, honestly. I mean, it made me sad, but I wasn’t shocked or anything.
RC: You expected her to get involved with people like this after she left home?
CS: I guess I didn’t expect anything. Chloe was mean-spirited sometimes. I mean, I don’t like my parents, either, but I never thought about killing them or anything. You really think that group she was involved with was evil?
RC: My opinion is irrelevant. Do you know if Chloe was involved in any type of religious activity?
CS: Like, church and stuff? No way. Not unless she ran off and became a Bible thumper, but I don’t know anything about that.
RC: What about any alternative beliefs? Did she hold any nontraditional views? Anything dark like witchcraft, possibly satanic in nature?
CS: The group was satanic . . . ?
RC: We’re trying to figure that out.
CS: God. Did they really kill a baby?
RC: I’m not at liberty to discuss case details at the moment. Can you answer my question?
CS: I . . . I didn’t think she was satanic.
RC: Did you speak with your sister after she left home at all?
CS: Only once.
RC: When was that?
CS: It was around my birthday last year, so January of 1982.
RC: How did Chloe reach out to you?
CS: She called me, said she was heading up to see the redwoods with some friends. She asked me if I wanted to go. By then Chloe had been missing for almost a year. I hadn’t heard from her at all, and when she called me she sounded funny . . . so I told her no.
RC: Funny how?
CS: Just different, like when you haven’t heard someone’s voice in a long time. She was being really sweet, which was totally unlike her. I guess that’s why I knew something was up. Chloe was never nice to me.
RC: Did you tell your parents that she called?
CS: I mentioned it.
RC: How did they react?
CS: It didn’t really seem like they cared. Chloe always gave them a hard time growing up. I think they were kind of glad she took off, honestly. They seemed glad when Chris ended up getting arrested, too. Less people to worry about or something like that. (pause) Our folks aren’t exactly what you’d call superparents, you know? That’s why Chloe left. It’s probably why Chris got into the crap he got into. After Chloe called and offered for me to catch up with her in California, I sort of regretted telling her no . . . because maybe it would have been better than staying home. Thank God I didn’t though, right? (laughter, pause) Sorry. I shouldn’t even joke about that.
RC: Callie, what did Chloe say to you during that phone call? Did she talk about this group of friends at all?
CS: She just said that she finally found a place where she felt like she fit in, that she’d changed her name to symbolize her new beginning.
RC: Changed her name to what?
CS: Clover. She told me it meant “Chloe was over.”
RC: Did she say anything else?
CS: Yeah, that she felt bad for me that I was still trapped with my parents. She called them “oppressors.” She said she hoped that I had the strength of will to set myself free, and that there was another way. I asked her “Another way for what?” but she either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to answer.
RC: So, she was inviting you to join the group?
CS: I mean, I guess so?
RC: When you turned down her invitation, what happened then?
CS: She said that it was too bad and we’d probably never see each other again.
RC: Did she say why that was?
CS: Sure. She said that she was leaving her old life and everyone in it behind, and if I was content to keep living with our parents, I had obviously been brainwashed and she couldn’t talk to me anymore.
RC: And that wasn’t enough to convince you to join whatever group she was involved in?
CS: No. As I said, Chloe and me, we’re sisters . . . but we were never friends. For most of my life, I was convinced she hated my guts. Maybe she just wanted me to join so she could poison me the way she tried to poison our dad. The way she ended up poisoning herself.
25
Friday, March 26, 1982
Eleven Months, Nineteen Days Before the Sacrament
IT HAD BEEN one month and four days since Avis flushed Audra’s pills down the toilet, and she’d never felt better.
She and the girls had started a vegetable garden just shy of the cherry orchard. Soon they’d have cucumbers, carrots, and giant tomatoes as big as Avis’s swollen, bursting heart. The boys made improvements to the house, and while Avis hadn’t asked, she could only assume it meant they were planning on staying for good. Even Maggie was spending most of her time at the house, laughing with the group, partaking in the cooking and planting, acting like a childless woman rather than a single mom. Eloise remained with her grandmother while Maggie traipsed around Congressman Snow’s property, making it a point to regularly tell Avis how different she looked. Better. Like a new woman. And she never ever called Avis by her former name. It was almost strange how easily Maggie had taken to all the changes. Maggie was, by nature, a worrier, but not once did she voice any worry about the strangers that had become Avis’s surrogate family. And while Avis found Maggie’s lack of concern a little odd, she didn’t want to rock the boat. Acceptance was a good thing, and this new life was exactly what Avis needed.
That new life consisted of shared clothes and shared lovers—though, admittedly, the latter took Avis a bit by surprise. She discovered this particular departure from the ordinary during her routine of going from room to room to collect dirty laundry.
The door to the boys’ room had been left ajar and she simply walked in. There, upon the bed, she found a quartet of boys and girls in a tangle of arms and legs that seemed to pulsate like a writhing ball of flesh. She caught a glimpse of Lily’s fiery hair. She heard Robin moan from somewhere beneath the pile. She watched Noah throw his head back and regard her with his giant eyes, his hands gripping an indiscernible mound of muscle that didn’t belong to him. When she and Deacon made eye contact, she stumbled out of the room and slammed the door behind her. The snapping of the door against the jamb only amplified her mortification.
Avis rushed down to the laundry room and busied herself, trying to forget what she’d just seen. She had never thought of herself as particularly innocent, having suffered through a promiscuous streak as a teen between attempts on her own life. But now her own sense of naïveté left her flabbergasted. All at once, she was repulsed and excited. Had they really been doing what she thought they were doing . . . and would they ever invite her to join?
A cacophony of rivaling thoughts rolled around her skull. She sat down next to the washer and tried to concentrate on the tattered Aldous Huxley paperback she had stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans. But amid the clanging of snaps and zippers in the clothes dryer, she couldn’t shake the sound of Robin’s breathless pleasure.
Her thoughts refused to stay in line. She sat there for what felt like an hour, trying to figure out whether to be upset or amused, wondering if she should pretend she hadn’t seen a thing. Every mother has the miraculous ability of momentary blindness. Surely, Avis could summon the power of erasing memory the way one would wipe clean a crude picture drawn in chalk.
But before she could figure out how to handle any of it, her thoughts veered off in an altogether different direction, leaving her with a queasy, twisting ache in the pit of her stomach. Because if Deacon and Noah were sleeping with Lily and Robin—sleeping together rather than as exclusive couples—what did that mean when it came to Clover and Gypsy, to Sunnie, to Jeff, whose bed she was frequenting on a regular basis? She wanted to believe that she was special, that she was his and he was hers. She had assumed exclusivity. But as she sat there clutching Brave New World in a tight roll of soft pages and tattered cardboard, she realized that her assumption had been wrong. Maybe that was why Maggie was hanging around so often. Maybe, despite trying to forget how easily her best friend was able to capture attention, that same friend was going behind her back, sleeping with Jeffrey while Avis worked in the garden, told Avis how good she looked to keep her off track.