It was hard to look at Forrest as he was now, seated at a long wooden table next to the only lawyer he could afford—a man so young, he appeared to be dealing with acne. Now Vivian Latournier called me up to the witness stand. I took an oath to tell the truth.
As he always had—with the exception of during his brief and disastrous affair with Brenda Barnett—Forrest listened intently to every word I said. Even when I found myself delivering what I came to see was coming across as incriminating testimony, I saw no sign of anger or resentment on his face. Only sorrow. Only regret.
Forrest and I had not exchanged a single word since the night of Regina’s death. Now was the first time we’d been in the same room together since then.
The DA wasted no time. “We understand you kept a diary while you lived at Wonderland,” she said.
A diary? Maybe they were talking about the little spiral notebook I’d kept in the pocket of my shorts, where I’d scribbled down times Forrest went off for his swim or his bike ride, and the rest of it. If so,this was bad, but I knew already that the police had found the notebook on Regina’s bed, the first day of their investigation.
Only it wasn’t my little spiral notebook the DA was talking about. She reached for an oversized manila envelope. Slowly, she pulled out my long-lost leatherbound journal. Somehow it had ended up in the hands of the police. Someone must have given it to them.
The room started to spin. I knew well what that journal contained. I wished I were dead.
“That journal was just ... crazy things I thought up,” I said. “I used to like making up stories.”Used to. That was over. Like riding my yellow bike and playing tennis. Like my summer in Wonderland.
“You like making up stories, Frances?” the DA said. “Maybe you’re making up more stories now?”
She opened my leatherbound journal. There were those birds on the cover, those thick, creamy pages. Vivian Latournier shifted her stance in such a way that she was partly facing me, but more so directing her performance to the jury. She began to read out loud from the pages I’d written the summer before. Her voice was low and husky.
“His finger made its way down my neck and my chest. Then further down.”
“‘Don’t ever change,’ he told me. ‘I love you just the way you are.’”
There was more, but I tuned out the rest. Page after page of the words I’d written in my little bed that summer, looking out at the stars. Pretending something was happening that wasn’t.
“This is your handwriting, isn’t it, Frances?”
“You don’t understand,” I said.
I looked out to the people assembled in the courtroom, starting with the members of the jury, looking uncomfortable. Regina’s parents. Prudence. Pam Oliver, even. My mother hadn’t come with us to Maine, but there sat my father. He didn’t look angry, or shocked, even. Just heartbroken. Then I spotted someone I hadn’t expected to see there: Jonathan. Unlike my father, my tennis coach—my friend—did not look down as he heard the words I’d written in my journal that summer.Not unlike how it was when I was playing my match at the tennis tournament—the one and only tennis match of my life, which definitely wasn’t going well—his eyes met mine. I could hear him speaking to me, though he wasn’t really, of course.Forget everything else. Just focus on your breath.
Eyes on the ball.
From somewhere far away, I heard the voice of Forrest’s public defender, Ted, utter the word, “Objection.” He said it as though it were a question.
Overruled.
The DA turned another page of my journal. She started reading again.
“As we were clearing up the dishes in the kitchen after dinner, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, so nobody else could hear him. ‘I wish I could take you out on the lake tonight,’ he told me. ‘Just the two of us in the moonlight. I think about you all the time.’
“‘I’d love that too,’ I said. ‘I never stop thinking about you.’
“‘I want to wrap my arms around you and never let go.’”
It all seemed so long ago now. Feeling that way. Wanting to be with Forrest Emerson that way, without even knowing what being with Forrest that way would look like, without knowing what sex actually was. Just knowing it was something important.
Then wanting to please Regina. Wanting to do whatever it was that might make one of them love me, when it felt as though nobody ever had.
I looked over to Jonathan again. I pictured myself hitting my five hundred balls against the backboard. I remembered how strong I’d been then. I didn’t feel strong anymore.
“I made all that up,” I said.
“You told Officer Reynolds you’d seen a tattoo on Forrest Emerson’s buttocks,” the prosecutor said. “Did you ever see Forrest Emerson’s naked body?”
“It wasn’t what you think.”
“So even though you took an oath to tell the truth, you’re telling us now that you lie. Is that right, Frances? No wonder it’s hard for the rest of us to figure out when you’re telling the truth.”
