We sat on the ground when we couldn’t watch anymore. I stared at Emma’s face, not sure what she was going to do. Cry, laugh, scream. She just sat there staring into the darkness and shaking her head. Then she took my hand and pulled me toward the basement door so we could drink and smoke and try to erase what we had just seen.
Dr. Winter
They waited in Abby’s car down the street from the top of the driveway, toward the end of the cul-de-sac, which had no outlet. A row of wild shrubs protruding from the woods hid the car from view.
They had supplies—sandwiches, chips, coffee. They were prepared to wait out the night, and the next night and the next.
Talk of the investigation got them through the first few hours. The blood found on the dock and the bow of the boat matched that of Richard Foley. Agents were interviewing employees at the major train and bus stations, and a plea had been made to the public to help find the missing couple, Emma Tanner and her daughter.
After that, the silence set in. There were many things Abby wanted to say, things about the past, her rush to judgment, how she’d shut out Leo and his family, who had been so good to her. It made sense in her heart, but when the words began to form in her head—words that could explain what she had felt when he hadn’t backed her up before, and what she felt now as he put his own career on the line for this crazy hunch—they sounded absurd and she could not bring herself to say them.
And so they sat in the darkness. Watching. Waiting.
Cass
On the night they told us Emma had been found, my mother finally lost control of herself. It had been building the whole time I had been home.
Emma would have been proud of me.
When Emma came to me in the night, she would tell me about the future.One day when we’re older, we will tell her the truth. We will tell her that she’s not that pretty and that she’s not that smart, and that she is not a good mother. We will tell her that she’s old and ugly and stupid and horrible and mean. And she will not believe us at first, but our words will eat at her like acid until there is nothing left.
When she said these things, I could feel her heart pounding so fast against me and I could feel the heat of her breath like it was coming from a fire. I could feel her scream in the night when shecame to my room. And then I would feel my own heart break because nothing I could do or say could ever make it better.
On this night when my mother broke apart, I heard her and Mr. Martin fighting again. I could not make out their words except forfucking idiot!Mr. Martin yelled that a few times before their voices grew hushed, and then finally stopped. I peeked my head out and saw them as they disappeared into the mudroom, Mr. Martin pulling my mother by the elbow.
When I heard the garage door open, I ran down to the mudroom and found my mother’s keys hanging on the rack. I waited for Mr. Martin’s car to disappear down the driveway and then I took her car and followed them. I kept the lights off until we were on North Ave. Then I just stayed far enough behind so they wouldn’t notice me, although I don’t think they would have noticed an alien spaceship hovering over them that night. They were lost in their anger. Lost in their fear. Lost in the past.
Dr. Winter
“Here we go,” Leo said quietly when they saw the car pull out of the driveway. Abby started the engine and began to pull away from the brush, but then they saw the second car.
“Cass?” she said.
Leo was watching the cars begin to disappear down the road in front of them. “Just go.”
Cass
They parked at the river gorge and got out of the car. Mr. Martin was carrying a shovel in one hand and dragging my mother by the arm with the other hand. She was screaming,I don’t believe you! You’re lying to me! You’ve been lying all this time!And he was seething with anger.You’ll ruin us both! You fucking idiot!
I parked down the street and then had to run to catch them. But then when I hit the woods where there was no trail, I had to stop because my feet were making the ground crackle. I walked a few yards, then hid behind a tree, listening for the sound of their voices and my mother sobbing. They were not being careful about the crackling, so it was not hard to follow them.
The river gorge is a seventy-acre park belonging to the neighboring town. It has a lot of wetlands and walking trails. Our father used to drag us there when we were young because he thought we should be in nature. But we hated the bugs and the soft ground that sucked in our sneakers and covered them in mud. We hadn’t been there since we were little girls.
When Mr. and Mrs. Martin stopped, I stopped also and crouched behind some prickly bushes. They were whispering now and Mr. Martin was digging with his shovel in the soft ground near the wetlands. Mrs. Martin was crying even harder.
That’s when I felt the hand cover my mouth and pull me to the ground. I thought then that this was how I would die, that somehow Mrs. Martin was not standing in the distance with Mr. Martin, or maybe Richard Foley wasn’t really dead, and instead he was here and he was going to kill me for doing this. I thought,So… this is how it ends.
The night Emma and I disappeared was just over one week after Mrs. Martin had sex with Hunter. Hunter had gone back to Hamilton, all puffed up by his victory over all of us, but especially over Emma. He didn’t even know that we knew, but inside he had the kryptonite and I could see that he would get great pleasure plotting out how and when he would use it on my sister.
Emma came to my room after dinner. She had not been able to calm down since that night. Not the vodka or the cigarettes oreven the pot she stole from Hunter’s stash had helped her. She was losing her mind.
I’m gonna tell her tonight. I’m gonna tell her what we saw.
I begged her,No!I told her that we could use the information in a better way to get something, like maybe being able to live with our father finally. But Emma didn’t want to live with our father. She had become just as addicted to the war with Hunter and the competition with Mrs. Martin as they were addicted to their wars and their jealousies.
Tell her something else, Emma. Tell her you’re pregnant! Tell her it’s Hunter’s baby!
Emma shrieked.You’re a genius, Cass! Oh my God! This will kill her. It will actually make her die inside!She left my room laughing even though she was not happy. I did not follow her. I went to the edge of my room, right by the door. A few moments later, I heard the murmur of talking from down the hall, inside Mrs. Martin’s bedroom. The talking began to escalate until it turned to yelling. It was then I could hear the words.
