“And you’re pretty sure of that? Not, let’s say, Tuesday?”
“I’m sure.” On Tuesdays my mother and I always had what she called our “tea date” after school, and she would have picked me up.
“And you took the shortcut so you wouldn’t be late?”
“Right.”
“At about what time did you find the body?”
“Around three thirty, I guess, or maybe a few minutes before.”
She drops her gaze slowly to her notes and then looks up again, her eyes leveled at me.
“What held you up at school that day, do you remember?”
“I don’t remember very clearly, but I have this vague sense of watching some older kids on the soccer field. I didn’t realize how long I’d stayed.”
“Had you ever taken that shortcut before?”
“Only with my mom, and only a couple of times.”
“You discovered the body along the shortcut?”
“Uh, not exactly. It was a little farther away. I guess I’d wandered off the path by mistake and I was trying to make my way back. That’s how I ended up trampling through the pile of leaves.”
“And the day you reported what you’d found was...?”
Why isn’t that in her notes? Was she not writing everything down? I’m suddenly remembering fragments of my sessions with the police years ago, when they repeated the same questions again and again.
“Friday. I told my parents before dinner and the police came to the house a short while later.”
She flips back another page, squinting as she scans it.
“Is there any chance you actually found the body the day before and don’t recall correctly?”
I shake my head. “Definitely not. I remember two nights of lying in bed and worrying and then finally getting up my nerve to talk to my mom and dad.”
She nods and taps the open page of her notebook. “Great. I think I have the timeline down. Just a few more questions.”
“Sure,” I say, relieved she’s almost done. “Any way I can help.”
“Do you recall if the body was fully covered with leaves before you stumbled on it?”
“I think so. I only knew something was there when I hit the body with my foot. And then I kicked more leaves off so I could see what was underneath.”
“And did you recognize her?”
Her question, which I hadn’t anticipated, makes my heart skip.
“No. Like I said, at first I thought it was a doll, and even after that, I didn’t realize it was her.”
“You knew Jaycee, though?”
The police must have asked me the same thing years ago, but I don’t have any recollection of it.
“I didn’t actually know her, but I’d seen her in the yard of her house. She lived a couple of houses down from a friend of mine.”
I remembered feeling so sorry for her as she played with a stick in the dirt, dressed in ratty clothes. She seemed to be totally ignored by her family. And one day I’d seen her mother plop her down so hard she cried.
