They took me to the clearing first.
Smack in the middle of tangled woods—the trees leafless now, dead vines hanging like brown rope curtains around a small open area of yellow grass. It’d be hard to find if you weren’t looking for it. If you didn’t know it was there.
There was no gravestone. They didn’t dare.
In case Ben decided to tramp through here on his way to Eagle Cliff. Or someone else wandered someplace they shouldn’t. The clearing was part of their property, they said—but you never knew. Someone could go hiking, get lost, take a wrong turn.
There was an old gray stone set into the middle of the clearing—but it might’ve been there forever, part of the landscape. You wouldn’t think anything of it, give it any special significance.
Just a stone.
Unless you knew what was lying under it.
“We come out here from time to time,” Laurie said. “Just to say a prayer.”
Juvenile hall had automatic locks on both hall doors.
Meaning as soon as those doors closed, you were locked in tight. The guards had special door keys they kept in a gray lockbox. The lockbox keys they kept on them. Attached to their belts, mixed in with their house and car keys on NY Giants and Walmart key chains, or if you were Otis, who liked to doze off in his chair just to the right of the south entrance door, attached to nothing but his fingers. I think rolling that key back and forth in his hand helped put him to sleep.
That was the key to me getting out of that juvie hall.
Otis’s key.
Tiptoeing down the hall barefoot, sneaks in hand, Otis’s decibel-busting snoring doing a good job of covering up unintentional sounds, like me bumping into the wheeled cart that somebody had stupidly forgotten to store—then me gently lifting the key from the palm of Otis’s brown, open hand.
It was almost like Otis was offering it to me: Here, Jobeth, go ahead and take it.
I was sitting in the lake house thinking about that. About locked doors. Back from the visit to the clearing. I didn’t know if Jake had locked the front door or not. I’d heard a click.
“We had a choice,” Laurie said.
The three of us were arranged around the living room—Jake and Laurie on the couch, me across from them on a hard Adirondack chair. The tone had changed since Jake called me names back in the house. Like we were back to being the happy reunited Kristals, and we were maybe about to break out the Game of Life. Or leaf through the family photo album. Or talk about a murder.
“We could lose both our children,” she said. “Or just one. We had a choice. I don’t expect you to understand it. What we did. The logic.”
She was right about that.
“I found them that morning,” Jake said. “He’d choked her—with that cast on his arm. I think that’s what happened. He was out of his head. In shock—literally catatonic. She wasn’t breathing—I tried CPR. She was dead.”
That word hung in the air. Dead. Like it needed its own moment of silence.
“Ben’s never remembered,” Laurie said softly. “What he did to her. Trauma can do that—blot it out. Probably a blessing . . . I like to think it is. We made up a story for him. For everyone. I sent Jenny down the block to a playdate that morning. She never got there.”
“She almost killed him. Ben. In the closet, I mean. She was . . . sick . . .”
“Not always,” Laurie said. “It started somewhere around four. Her problems. One day she was a perfectly normal little girl—a really amazing little girl, our baby—and one day she wasn’t. As sudden as that.”
Normal. A sweet, adorable, six-year-old little girl.
“She just changed,” Laurie said.
“Why didn’t you uh . . . stick her in St. Luke’s? Or somewhere? I mean, when she started hurting other kids?”
Jake sighed, cracked his knuckles. “Willful denial, I guess—know what that means? You don’t want to believe what you don’t want to believe. Maybe her friends were making things up. Maybe Ben was. They were kids. She was a kid. You don’t want to think your daughter is . . . mentally unstable . . . dangerous even . . .”
“What would’ve happened if you’d told the truth?”
Sure, me asking someone else to tell the truth sounded kind of funny. Even to me.
“I mean after it happened. It was almost like self-defense what Ben did, wasn’t it?”
“We saw the closet afterward. Saw the fire damage. Figured it out. Jenny had brought the box of matches up to her room. He must’ve smashed the door in with that cast—it was just plywood. It didn’t matter. Two shitty choices. Admit to the world one of our kids was psychotic—and the other one a murderer. Have him sent to a psychiatric hospital till he’s eighteen. And have him always know what he’d done. That he’d murdered his own sister. Have him go through life like that. Or make up a story. For him. For the world. Save him. Save us too, I guess. From people pointing fingers at us every time we went out for a coffee—the parents of two monsters. We picked the less shitty choice. We lived with it.”
“But you did send Ben away. For a year . . .”
“He was acting out,” Laurie said. “Violently. His school was about to expel him. We were stupid thinking he’d be just fine—that he’d lose his memory of what happened that morning, but that would be all. That he’d be perfectly okay. Play Little League, go to school, be a kid. We had to do something. We couldn’t just leave him home. We needed to get him right.”
“You picked a Catholic mental hospital,” I said. “With priests as doctors. That was for in case . . . right . . . ?”
Jake squinted at me—maybe he was surprised I’d figured that one out.
What had Tabs said over the phone?
C-O-N-F-E-S-S-I-O.
They must’ve figured if Ben said anything—if anything came back to him during one of those EMDR sessions—no one would be running to the police. It’d be protected. What happens in confession stays in confession—right? Priests can’t tell. Besides, the church was pretty good at keeping secrets—they’d had enough practice. Check out their latest sorry-ass apology on your favorite online news site.
“Look, you’re talking about an eight-year-old kid,” Jake said. “Zonked out on Thorazine. Ben said some stuff under hypnosis. His doctors held a staff meeting about it—was it true or not? Their diagnosis? Delusional wish fulfillment. Kids wish someone dead—their parents, their sister—because the dad didn’t get them that new Xbox game or their sister got a bigger portion of ice cream. Then something happens—the dad dies in a car accident, the sister drowns in a pool. And they think they did it. They truly believe it. Jenny had been trying to hurt Ben. Worse. He wanted to hurt her back. Then she walked down the block one day and disappeared. He made up this story in his head. They convinced him to believe our story instead. It sounded more rational to them. When he came out, he wasn’t beating up schoolkids anymore. Or ripping apart Jenny’s room. He turned into your normal dope-smoking turd. The script stuck.”
“Until Pennebaker.”
Silence.
“How’d you find out about him . . . ? I mean that he was . . . ?” Laurie didn’t get to finish.
Jake did.
“Yeah, okay. Pennebaker,” Jake repeated, saying his name the way you spit out a particularly annoying particle of food—something you just can’t seem to dislodge. “Like you said, he didn’t do a very good job. At first. Two years ago, he told us the case was still cold as Alaska. His words. Then he retired down to Georgia and it began warming up. In a hurry. He just wouldn’t let it go. He re-interviewed people. Went through all the files again—whatever cold-case detectives actually do. I’m guessing he didn’t have a whole lot else on his plate now that he’s officially retired. I imagine he’s not into golf. Maybe he even got someone at St. Luke’s to talk to him—dug up the same files you did. Don’t know. He was relentless. Wouldn’t stop calling. Three times a day sometimes. Wanted to know about Ben. Just Ben—he was zeroing in on Ben. We felt hounded, okay? Threatened. The story was threatened.”
“Then me.”
“Then you,” Jake said.
Me. Who they’d brought up to the lake. Where they must’ve taken Jenny’s body that morning. Before they’d raced back home to begin planting the lie.
“Kind of a gift from God you were. Obviously. We needed Pennebaker off our back. You showed up. Jenny’s home. She’s come back. A miracle. It was, for us. For Ben, too. Pennebaker stopped calling. The threat was over. Sometimes you just get lucky—did you hear that?”
It sounded like some wind through the trees. Jake went over to the window. Peered through it for a while, shrugged. Came back and sat down again next to Laurie.
“That stuff on the upstairs computer,” he said. “From St. Luke’s. How’d you get it?”
“I hacked it.” After I’d downloaded the file, I’d erased Tabs’s email.
“So you’re the only one who’s seen it?”
“Yeah.”
Jake looked at Laurie. Back to me.
“Okay.”
I’d asked a bunch of questions already. I had one more. The only one that mattered.
“So what now? Why’d you bring me here?”
“Ben’s home,” Laurie said. “We needed somewhere to talk about this rationally. Without Ben sitting in the next room.”
“Seems like it’s mutually beneficial we keep this to ourselves,” Jake said. “I mean, no one has to hear about Ben . . . what he did to his sister. Not now. No one has to hear about you committing another fraud. You’re not a kid anymore. You’d go to jail for this. So . . .”
“So . . . ?”
“It’s not working out. I mean, you were away from us so many years and you’ve been through so much. And you don’t just pick up where you left off and become a family again. You tried. We tried. It was just too hard. You aren’t six-year-old Jenny anymore. It isn’t twelve years ago. You’re grown up. You decided to leave. Out to the West Coast maybe. You’re not sure. You’ll try and keep in touch. It’s sad—but at least we know you’re alive now. Maybe one day we’ll be a family again. Maybe not.”
Okay, the door was locked. But not forever. There was a way out.
“Those FBI agents. They more or less called me a liar.”
Jake shrugged. “It won’t matter when you’re gone, will it? Don’t think they’re going to tack you on a wanted poster. For what? For being a little evasive on the details? For arousing some suspicions?”
“I think Ben knows.”
Jake snorted. “Don’t worry about Ben.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. I’ll leave.”
“And you’ll keep your mouth closed. Sorry—want to be perfectly clear here. Quid pro quo, right?”
I felt every scar left by Mother’s sewing needle. They burned.
“Sure thing.”
See? Mouth shut.