Behind my father, I could see Mrs. Martin looking at me like I was crazy. She’d been doing that all morning and I wanted to scream at herMaybe you’re the one who’s crazy!and then watch her break into pieces.
Agent Strauss tried to reassure him. “We have a team of agents ready to begin the search. We will find this island.”
My father hung his head and held it firmly between his palms. He started to nod then, and I could read his thoughts—Yes, of course. That’s why a girl leaves home. That’s what was so compelling, she would leave everything behind.
He turned to look at my mother for some kind of solidarity. His shoulders lifted slightly, his palms now stretched out and open to the sky and tears streaming down his face.
“We couldn’t have known, Judy. We couldn’t.”
He was trying to be kind, but Mrs. Martin didn’t want his kindness.
My father used to make comments about the relationship between Emma and our mother, about how Mrs. Martin looked at Emma like a younger version of herself. He said she liked it when Emma got attention as a little girl. She would tell him that people did the same thing when she was little—turn their heads and ooh and ahh. She and Emma were cut from the same cloth. They were the same. What my father didn’t understand was that after Emma got older, Mrs. Martin didn’t talk about her likeness to Emma, because of pride. It was her way of stealing back the attention Emma got—attention that used to be hers.
I knew what my father was thinking as he tried to comfort her. That this ignorance of such an important fact about Emma might be a blow to her pride, to her ego. If she and Emma were so alike, how did she not know Emma was pregnant?
I was never able to sit still when this thing was happening between them—my mother silently brooding and my father prancing around like a circus clown trying to cheer her up. It made me feel rage inside because he couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t see that she still knew how to reach inside him and twist him up even after she broke his heart and stole his house and his children. Even then.
I was not surprised when this was Mrs. Martin’s response after he tried to comfort her on the day I returned.
“Of course I couldn’t have known! You drove a wedge between us so she never talked to me about these things. You did that! And look what happened!”
Dr. Winter did not seem surprised either that my father tried to comfort my mother, or that my mother used his kindness towhack him in the head. That was when I knew she had been involved before, when we disappeared. I imagine she had learned a lot about our family when they were trying to find us. But it was the lack of surprise she had in this moment that made me think she couldseeour family.
Agent Strauss stepped in. “I think we need to hear what happened—from the beginning. Please… let’s get things to the lab and let’s hear the story, Cass. If you’re up to it.”
Dr. Winter smiled at me and nodded. The people from the forensic team left. Everyone sat back down, my father on the end of the bed, my mother back next to me. Dr. Winter sat in a chair with a small notepad flipped open and a pen in her hand. Agent Strauss was standing beside her.
“We should speak to Cass alone,” he said to my parents. They looked at each other, then at me. They didn’t move.
“No…” I said. “I need them here. Please…”
My breath was choppy from the attack of emotions and I tried hard to steady my voice. I could not tell my story without my mother with me to hear it.
Agent Strauss sighed. “For now,” he said. He glanced at Dr. Winter, who nodded in agreement.
I asked if I should start from the very first night and Agent Strauss said yes. I let out two long breaths, like long sighs, and I started to calm down. Then I went back to that night in our house. The night we disappeared.
“The night we left, Emma and I were fighting. Do you remember that?”
Mrs. Martin answered. “Yes. Over that necklace.”
I had never forgotten the first time I heard her say this in an interview. I remembered everything she said about it, about the necklace. And about that night.
“I loved that necklace, so Emma wore it every day because she knew it upset me to see it on her neck. That day, at school, we were walking home together and Emma was nervous about something. I could tell. She was distracted. We walked in silence the whole way. When we got home, she went to her room and closed her door. She didn’t come down for dinner, remember?”
Mrs. Martin shook her head and stared at me like she was losing her patience. It made me want to ramble on and on.
“I don’t know, Cass. I don’t remember about dinner,” she said.
“I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t let me in her room. I pounded on the door until she opened it. She was afraid you would hear and she didn’t want to draw attention to what she was doing. I walked into her room and saw some clothes laid out on her bed. She had just taken a shower. So I asked her if she was going out, and where and why on a school night. I was trying to make her mad because she had been so weird all day. But she seemed different. Less interested somehow, like this was all beneath her. She started organizing her purse. She put on her clothes. Then she turned toward the bathroom door and just pushed me out of the way. ‘Come back here!’ I screamed at her.… Do you remember all of that?”
Dr. Winter answered. “I remember your mother telling us about that. How she heard you fighting and then she saw the car pull out of the driveway.”
My mother had this story down perfectly. And so did I.
“I knew she was leaving because she’d put her car keys in her purse. The necklace was on the bed next to the clothes and I snatched it up before she came back for it. I put it around my neck. ‘I have the necklace!’ I said. ‘You can’t have it back until you tell me where you’re going!’ She came storming out of the bathroom, yelling at me to give it back. She tried to grab it off my neck and I pushed her away. Then she finally got her hand on it and she ripped it off me. It broke the chain. But she didn’t care. She put it on her neck and tied the chain like a rope, in a knot, so it would stay. She looked in the mirror and adjusted the angel. Then she just turned and went back into the bathroom.
“I was so furious! I went out to her car and got in the way back. She keeps blankets in there for when they go to the beach to drink and I hid under them. I thought, ‘I’m gonna go where she goes and get pictures of her doing things she’s not supposed to be doing and then I’m gonna get her in trouble.’ It’s all so stupid, isn’t it?”
