Dr. Winter looked at me sympathetically. “No, Cass. You were fifteen. It sounds very normal.”
Mrs. Martin copied her. She was very good at taking cues when she didn’t want anyone to see what was in her mind. Or her heart.
“Yes, sweetheart.” Her words were nice but her tone was laced with frustration.
“I waited there for a long time before the driver’s-side door opened and closed and then we started to move. I remember feeling nervous about my plan to get her in trouble. The car stopped at the beach, in a spot in the very back of the lot. I heard Emma sigh really hard and long, like she was nervous, too. But then she got out of the car, left her purse, and the keys, and walked to the shore. I waited a few seconds and then got out, slowly and quietly. I followed her and I know she didn’t see me, because she kept going toward the water without looking back. When she got there, she took off her shoes and waded into the water. I stood behind the changing room, peeking out from the side. I could see her in the moonlight, and I thought maybe she was going to swimwith all her clothes on. But she didn’t move. She just stood there looking at the water and splashing it with her toes.
“And then there were headlights coming from behind me. They shined onto her and she seemed startled but then she started walking toward the car, away from the water. I know she was startled because she forgot her shoes. She walked right past the changing rooms where I was hiding and watching. The lights went off. Then the engine. A door opened and a man got out. There was also a woman in the car but she stayed inside.
“Emma started to walk toward the car, toward this man, and I felt this horrible fear that she was leaving forever. I ran toward the car and screamed her name. ‘Emma!’ I started to see him more clearly. He was older. He had brown hair and a kind smile and he folded Emma into his arms in a big hug.
“They both stopped when they heard me call out for her. The man looked at Emma, and his smile went away. Emma stormed over to me. She was so angry. She was desperate. She knew I had just spoiled her plan. She grabbed my arms and told me she was leaving, that she couldn’t take it anymore. I started crying, grabbing at her. I was so upset. I couldn’t imagine life without Emma. She was my sister and I had never been without her.
“She pulled away and walked toward the car. She said to the man, ‘Let’s just go.’ But he shook his head. They spoke in whispers. Then she shook her head and he grabbed her shoulders and looked at her sternly. She came back to me and she said ‘Now you have to come with us.’ I was scared. I didn’t know where they were going. We saw headlights coming down the beach. It was the sand groomer. It always comes at night. There was no time to think. Emma grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the car. I don’t know if I tried to break free. I honestly don’t know. My feetwere moving and they walked me to the car. We all got in and we drove away.”
I stopped there and looked around the room. Dr. Winter, Agent Strauss, Mrs. Martin—they were all staring at me now, mesmerized by the story.
It was Agent Strauss who broke the spell. “Do you remember anything else that this man said? Either on the beach or in the car? Did they introduce themselves, explain what was happening?”
I shook my head. “No one said anything. It was creepy. We just drove until we got to the boat.”
“Do you remember how long you drove? What time you left and what time the car finally stopped?”
“I wish I could. I know that would be helpful because we went right from the beach to the boat, and then to the island. I fell asleep for a while. We stopped for food and to use the bathroom. We stopped for gas another time and it was still dark out and much colder than it had been at the beach. It was still dark when we got to a dock. It smelled like pine trees. I’m sorry. I usually keep good track of the time.”
“That’s okay, Cass. Just continue the story. What happened next?” Agent Strauss said.
“I remember thinking that maybe I didn’t know my own sister at all. I mean, I had not known about Bill. I had not known about her plan to leave home. I had not even known she was pregnant. I thought she was going out to meet a guy. I was so stupid! It made me scared and I wanted to leave and run home as fast as I could. But then I thought I would be in so much trouble if I left without knowing where Emma was going, and for leaving in the first place and for hiding in Emma’s car. It’s so clear what I would donow, being older, and knowing what could happen to us. But then, in my mind, and not knowing, I felt like I had to stay with her until I knew where she was going. I made a plan to do that, and then to find my way home. I remember feeling better having this plan and I lay my head down against the window. The woman, Lucy, had given me a blanket and I pulled it over my head, over my whole face and everything.
“I woke up to the sound of music playing and the wind on my forehead. Emma had rolled her window all the way down. Her head was hanging far enough out so the wind could catch her hair and blow it hard away from her face. She was humming and Bill and Lucy were smiling. It was an Adele song. Do you remember how much she loved Adele?”
Emma didn’t like to drive me places. But sometimes, when something bad enough had happened in our house, she’d get very drunk and then she would take me in her car and she would make me drive, even though I was not old enough. We would go down North Ave because it was straight and we could go very fast. She would roll down the window, stick her head out just enough for the wind to catch her hair. And she would sing so loud and so hard, she would start to cry. Sometimes she would smoke a cigarette. But mostly she would sing until she cried and I would just drive and watch her from the corner of my eye and be frozen by the sight of her. It was like watching a tornado. Beautiful. Terrifying. Sometimes I wished I could be like that, and feel things like that. But Emma felt enough for two people, and I was mostly grateful that she had her role and I had mine.
I think there are two types of people. Ones who have a scream inside them and ones who don’t. People who have a scream are too angry or too sad or laugh too hard, swear too much, use drugsor never sit still. Sometimes they sing at the top of their lungs with the windows rolled down. I don’t think people are born with it. I think other people put it inside you with the things they do to you, and say to you, or the things you see them do or say to other people. And I don’t think you can get rid of it. If you don’t have a scream, you can’t understand.
As I watched Dr. Winter that first day, I got the sense that she had a scream. She was not a normal person. It takes one to know one, I guess, and I could just tell. She was beautiful—blond hair, very fit, big pouty lips and high cheekbones. Her eyes were pale blue but suspended in a perpetual state of anxiety, and she walked and talked and moved with strength, more like a man than a woman. Her eyes, and the way she moved, stood in such stark contrast to her otherwise feminine traits that it made her intriguing. Mysterious. I imagine men found her irresistible. And yet she did not wear a wedding ring. People like Dr. Winter, intriguing, mysterious people, always have a scream inside them.
I didn’t know I had one until the night I finally escaped from the island.
No one answered my question about Emma liking that music, so I continued my story. “I can still remember exactly how I felt when we got to the dock and Bill opened the car door and the cool air came in with that smell, the Christmas tree smell, and also the smell of the water. It was nothing like the water here, or even when we went to Nantucket that summer when I was ten I think, or maybe nine. There was no fish smell, or seaweed, or you know that rotting smell that comes when it’s really hot and there are all those open shells? There was none of that. Just water and Christmas, cool against my face while my body was warm under the blanket. And then, also, there was a sense of adventure andsomething else that I’ve thought about all the time since that night because it was part of what made me get out of the car and get on Rick’s boat instead of running away into the woods.”
Agent Strauss interrupted me to ask about the woods. “What kind of woods? Were there streets and houses, like a neighborhood or just trees and the shoreline? And what about the boat?”
I told him what I remembered—that when I woke up, I felt that cool air and then saw water on one side, with the dock and a small motorboat. And the boatman. Behind us and all around was a forest of pine trees and brush. The road was not paved. There was no parking lot or building. Just a small wooden dock and one boat and the boatman.
“So this boatman, Rick, he must have taken the boat to the dock from somewhere else? Sounds like he didn’t keep the boat there, or you would have seen his car.…”
It went on like this for several minutes. I had already described the boatman to them, and not just his accent but that he seemed as old as Dr. Winter, and he was always tan and had a scruffy layer of light facial hair all the time—never cleanly shaven and never a full beard. He was not much taller than I was, maybe five nine with a thick, muscular build. His neck seemed larger than it needed to be, or maybe his head was small by comparison. And he had very short hair, dark brown. His eyes were brown as well. He wasn’t ugly but he wasn’t someone Emma would have even looked at twice. He was the kind of guy who passes in a hallway without being noticed.
I knew that the Pratts paid him to come back and forth to the island and that I thought he relied on them a lot for money because he was very loyal to them. I did not know how loyal until much later. Until the first time I tried to escape.
Dr. Winter was not a patient person. I could tell by the wayshe shifted her body in the chair, crossing and recrossing her legs. Fidgeting with her pen. But she let Agent Strauss go on until he was done even though she didn’t seem to care much about the woods and trees and cars, or even about the boatman. When she asked me the next question, I started to believe that we would actually find my sister.
“Cass, go back to that night. Go back to that feeling you had—the one that made you get on that boat.”
I took a long, deep breath and closed my eyes. This part was important and I wanted to make sure everyone knew it.
“I told you that I had a plan to go home in the morning, but that I wanted to find out what was going on and where we were and why Emma knew this man and why she had run away. When I knew all of that and I knew she was safe, I would go home. And because I had this plan that would make it impossible for anyone to blame me for anything, and then the smell of the trees and water—it just felt so clean. I felt so clean. And because I was clean, I could let myself enjoy this one night when everything was being turned upside down, when everyone would have to stop and open their eyes to see that things were not perfect for Emma because she had left this way and taken me with her. I felt alive. I felt hopeful. It’s hard to describe. Something had lifted off me. Something heavy.”
