Stacy, on the other hand, found solace out there. Even as a young child, she seemed to revel in the escape from our suburban rat-maze of school and extracurricular activities, of sport teams and popularity. She would wander for hours. She would pick leaves off the trees and collect inchworms in a jar. She would shuffle her feet across carpets of fallen pine needles.
I explained about the cabin to Tickner and Regan as we sped up Route 87. Tickner radioed the police department in Montague. I still remembered how to find the cabin, but describing it was harder. I did my best. Regan kept his foot on the gas pedal. It was four-thirty in the morning. There was no traffic and no need for the siren. We reached Exit 16 on the New York Thruway and sped past the Woodbury Common Outlet Center.
The woods were a blur. We were not far now. I told him where to turn off. The car wound up and down back roads that had not changed one iota in the past three decades.
Fifteen minutes later, we were there.
Stacy.
My sister had never been very attractive. That may have been part of her problem. Yes, that sounds like nonsense. It is silly, really. But I lay it out for you anyway. No one asked Stacy to any prom. Boys never called. She had very few friends. Of course, there are many adolescents with such hardships. Adolescence is always a war; no one gets out unscathed. And yes, my father’s illness was a tremendous burden on us. But that doesn’t explain it.
In the end, after all the theories and psychoanalyzing, after all the combing through her childhood traumas, I think what went wrong with my sister was more basic. She had some kind of chemical imbalance in her brain. Too much of one compound flowing here, not enough of another flowing there. We did not recognize the warning signs soon enough. Stacy was depressed in an era when such behavior was mistaken for sullen. Or maybe, yet again, I use this sort of convoluted rationale to justify my own indifference to her. Stacy was just my weird younger sister. I had my own problems, thank you very much. I had the selfishness of a teenager, a truly redundant description if ever I’ve heard one.
Either way, be the origins of my sister’s unhappiness physiological, psychological, or the deluxe combo plan, Stacy’s destructive journey was over.
My little sister was dead.
We found her on the floor, curled up in a tight fetal position. That was how she had slept when she was a child, her knees up to her chest, her chin tucked. But even though there was not a mark on her, I could see that she was not sleeping. I bent down. Stacy’s eyes were open. She stared straight at me, unblinking, questioning. She still looked so very lost. That wasn’t supposed to be. Death was supposed to bring solitude. Death was supposed to bring the peace she had found so elusive in life. Why, I wondered, did Stacy still look so damn lost?
A hypodermic needle lay on the floor by her side, her companion in death as in life. Drugs, of course. Intentional or otherwise, I did not yet know. I had no time to dwell on it either. The police fanned out. I wrested my eyes away from her.
Tara.
The place was a mess. Raccoons had found their way in and made a little home for themselves. The couch where my grandfather had taken his naps, always with his arms folded, was torn up. The stuffing had bled onto the floor. Springs popped up looking for someone to stab. The entire place smelled like urine and dead animals.
I stopped and listened for the sound of a crying baby. There was none. Nothing in here. Only one other room. I dived into the bedroom behind a policeman. The room was dark. I hit the light switch. Nothing happened. Flashlights sliced through the black like saber swords. My eyes scanned the room. When I saw it, I nearly cried out.
There was a playpen.
It was one of those modern Pack ’N Plays with the mesh sides that fold up for easy transport. Monica and I have one. I don’t know anyone with a baby who doesn’t. The product tag dangled off the side. It had to be new.
Tears came to my eyes. The flashlight cut past the Pack ’N Play, giving it a strobe-light effect. It appeared to be empty. My heart sank. I ran over anyway, in case the light had caused an optical illusion, in case Tara was nestled so sweetly that she—I don’t know—barely made a bump.
But there was only a blanket inside.
A soft voice—a voice from a whispery, inescapable nightmare—floated across the room: “Oh Christ.”
I swiveled my head toward the sound. The voice came again, weaker this time. “In here,” a policeman said. “In the closet.”
Tickner and Regan were already there. They both looked inside. Even in the dim glow, I saw their faces lose color.
My feet stumbled forward. I crossed the room, nearly falling, grabbing the closet doorknob at the last moment to regain my balance. I looked through the doorway and saw it. And then, as I looked down at the frayed fabric, I could actually feel my insides implode and crumble into ash.
There, lying on the floor, torn and discarded, was a pink one-piece outfit with black penguins.
eighteen months later
Chapter 8
Lydia saw thewidow sitting alone at Starbucks.
The widow was on a stool seat, gazing absently at the gentle trickle of pedestrians. Her coffee was near the window, the steam forming a circle on the glass. Lydia watched her for a moment. The devastation was still there—the battle-scarred, thousand-yard stare, the posture of the defeated, the hair with no sheen, the shake in the hands.
Lydia ordered a grande skim latte with an extra shot of espresso. Thebarista , a too-skinny black-clad youth with a goatee, gave her the shot “on the house.” Men, even ones this young, did stuff like that for Lydia. She lowered her sunglasses and thanked him. He nearly wet himself.
Lydia moved toward the condiment table, knowing he was checking out her ass. Again she was used to it. She added a packet of Equal to her drink. The Starbucks was fairly empty—there were plenty of seats—but Lydia slid up on the stool immediately next to the widow. Sensing her, the widow startled out of her reverie.
“Wendy?” Lydia said.
Wendy Burnet, the widow, turned toward the soft voice.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Lydia said.
Lydia smiled at her. She had, she knew, a warm smile. She wore a tailored gray suit on her petite, tight frame. The skirt was slit fairly high. Business sexy. Her eyes had that shiny-wet thing going, her nose small and slightly upturned. Her hair was auburn ringlets, but she could—and often did—change that.
Wendy Burnet stared just long enough for Lydia to wonder if she’d been recognized. Lydia had seen that stare plenty of times before, that unsure I-know-you-from-somewhere expression, even though she had not been on TV since she turned thirteen. Some people would even comment, “Hey, you know who you look like?” but Lydia—she had been billed as Larissa Dane back then—would shrug it away.