You’re going to ruin this family! You stupid whore!
Me? What about you? You were fucking Jonathan while you were still married to Daddy! You brought them into our house, and now look what they’ve done!
Look what you’ve done, Emma!YOU!
Lights came down the driveway and shone into the window from the upstairs balcony. Mr. Martin was home. The screaming stopped for a second, so I peeked out from behind the door. The light had shone into Mrs. Martin’s room as well—I could see it lighting up Mrs. Martin’s angry face. Emma ran out but Mrs. Martin grabbed her by the hair and she screamed again, first from pain and then from rage.
Get off me, you bitch! I’m telling him! I’m telling him! I’m telling him what his son did to me, how he raped me and got me pregnant!
Mrs. Martin pulled harder. Emma swung out her arm like she was about to slap her face, but her hand caught the edge of a framed portrait hanging on the wall and it crashed to the ground. Mrs. Martin grabbed both her arms before she could try again. Emma squirmed and spun her around, and they both fell against the railing of the balcony, Emma’s back to the railing and Mrs. Martin’s body pushing against her from the momentum of their struggle. Emma screamed one last time as she felt herself hovering over the top of the railing. I know what that feels like, when you are about to fall unexpectedly, when your body sends you an alarm to grab hold of something or adjust your feet or brace yourself with an open palm. Her back arched. Her arms reached out for our mother. But Mrs. Martin swatted her away like a pesky fly and then stepped back so she had nothing to hold on to. Nothing to save her.
I was lying on the ground in those woods, the hand over my mouth, staring into the eyes of Dr. Winter as I remembered the sound my sister made when she fell over that railing, over that balcony, and hit the ground below, as I remembered the sight of my mother staring at her still body, hands covering her mouth and finally silent.
Dr. Winter
When Cass saw who was holding her, she stopped fighting. Abby put a finger to her lips to tell her that they needed to be quiet and she nodded. She sat up then, beside Abby, and they both watched as Jonathan Martin dug into the ground with his shovel with Judy standing beside him sobbing like a small child.
Agent Strauss was on the hill, crouched behind a wall of bushes, watching them dig.
Cass
I scurried like a quiet little mouse back into my room that night. I was shaking. I couldn’t think. I heard Mr. Martin come inside, and I peeked out the door enough to see him. He cried out in shock when he saw Emma lying on the ground, not moving. I did not see her with my own eyes, but I know she must have been still. I know there was no blood because they tested for blood all over our house when we disappeared and found none. But from the urgency in their voices, I knew it was bad.
Mrs. Martin screamed from up above that it was an accident. That they’d been fighting and Emma pushed her and she pushed back and then she just fell!
Mr. Martin sat beside Emma.Call 911, for Christ’s sake! Why are you just standing there? Oh, God!
Mrs. Martin rushed down the stairs. Emma had told our mother that Hunter had raped her and that she was now pregnant. She said she was going to have the baby and that Hunter’s life would be ruined because he would go to jail and be a sex offender for the rest of his life. She said she was going to tell everyone whose baby it was so the world would know what kind of house this had become.
I heard this explanation come from my mother’s mouth in a panicked voice after Mr. Martin asked,What happened, Judy! In the name of God, what happened here!Then they went back and forth with things likeWhat do we do? What will happen to my son? They’ll find the baby inside her! They’ll find out who the father is! What will happen to him? What will happen to me? Dear God! What do wedo?I was too scared to cry and could barely see through the haze of fear that covered my eyes like a white blanket. But I was able to see enough to notice the necklace that lay against the wall where my mother hung her treasured photos of us. It had broken from Emma’s neck and fallen into a little tangled ball between the wall and the edge of the carpet runner.
I grabbed the necklace, then ran back into my room. I could only hear whispering because they had calmed down and were deciding about what to do. And then I heard shuffling and huffing and moaning coming from my mother and Mr. Martin and then walking and then the mudroom door and then the garage door and then a car leaving from the driveway. Emma’s car. Then I heard the mudroom door again, and my mother’s crying and babbling to herself as she stood in the foyer where Emma had landed.
At some moment, she realized that she had not seen or heard me all afternoon. She walked up the stairs and down the hall and she came into my room. The light was off.
Cass? Cass, where are you?
I did not answer. I was hiding beneath my bed.
When she left to look for me in the rest of the house, I lay there for several minutes letting this new realization sink in. Of all the things I had come to understand and regardless of how grown-up and clever I thought I was, I had never, ever considered this before. I had never imagined that my mother might actually kill me.
Dr. Winter
Jonathan Martin dug for close to an hour. The earth moved easily because it was more like silt, but he was digging in very deep. By the time he stopped, Judy was no longer crying but instead shining a light from her phone into the hole of soft dirt. She was staring into that hole with a blank expression. Jonathan reached down and pulled at something. It looked like some kind of bright green landscaping or lawn tarp. He used his hands to move the dirt away from it. He seemed frantic, like he wanted to get it over with, like he was desperate to move that earth and find what he was looking for.
Abby held Cass tighter because she already knew.
Cass
Something green came from the ground. Then there was more digging. I could not see well, but I could see enough. He dug and dug, on his knees, until finally he pulled something else from the hole he’d made. He held it in the air and then looked at Mrs. Martin long enough for her to understand that what he was holding were the bones of my sister’s hand.
When he drove away that night in Emma’s car, I had prayed that he was driving her to the hospital. Even though I had feared my mother might kill me that night when she came looking for me, I still would not believe Emma was dead. And even as I climbed from my bedroom window, without a coat or a purse or anything, climbed down from the roof and ran from that house, into the night, I did not believe it. Mr. Martin carried Emma to her car. That was the last thing I heard. And it was very possible he was taking her to get help.
I walked four miles to the train station. I hid on a train to New York and then I walked to Penn Station. I remembered going there once with our father and he said you can get a train anywhere from there. I saw an ad pinned to a wall along one of the passageways. It said to call if you were a teenager and if you needed help. I called the number collect the way it said to. A mananswered. His name was Bill. He talked to me for a while and said he could help, but I said I wasn’t sure and I hung up. I did not know where I should go. I considered calling Witt. I considered calling my father. I fell asleep before I made a decision.
When I woke up, a man named Bill was sitting beside me. He had a cup of hot chocolate and a doughnut and a kind smile. There was a woman with him, and she looked nice. They asked if I was hungry. And I was. So very hungry.
Dr. Winter
