Florida heat is brutal. You don’t need to live here long to know that. I’ve lived here all of my life so I’ve grown accustomed to a thin layer of sweat coating my skin at all times. My mother and Shea don’t mind the heat. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. They love going to outdoor concerts even on the most sweltering days. Today we’re at Vinoy Park, a waterfront park on Tampa Bay, for a folk music and food festival, the sweet and spicy smells of barbecued meats traveling through the warm air.
My mother and Shea are in line at the beer tent while Clarisse and I sit on a blanket in the field. There are families with toddlers waddling around. There are babies sleeping in strollers, canopies shading them from harsh ultraviolet rays. There are older couples holding hands, white shorts to match their white hair. There are rich people who have docked their boats at the nearby marina, their gold watches glinting in the sun as they walk by.
“So I’ll come get you tomorrow morning around nine. Bright and early.” Clarisse is going over the details of our trip to Celebration one more time. Onstage, a guitar player closes his eyes as he plucks the strings, fuzzy amplified tones emanating from two speakers stacked on either side of an elevated platform.
“That’s fine with me,” I answer. We’re both sitting with our legs stretched out in front of us, leaning back on our palms. Concertgoers walk around us—women in sundresses with spaghetti straps, men in skinny jeans and fitted tees that look like magazine models. A girl in all black—black linen shorts, black tank top, and black gladiator sandals—walks in front of us. Her eyes are on Clarisse until I notice her staring. Then she looks away.
“It will be fun to see the mermaids again,” Clarisse says. “I remember wanting to be one so bad when I was a kid, but I was sure I’d never be able to grow my hair long enough.”
She’s playing along with the story we’ve made up about the trip we’re taking tomorrow. Of course our mothers don’t know we’re going to Celebration. They think we’re going to Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, a tourist attraction about an hour north. The park’s most famous feature is an aquarium-like setting where you pay to watch women in mermaid tails swim in circles beneath the clear natural spring water. Clarisse and I both went to Weeki Wachee as kids so we’ll have a frame of reference, believable stories to tell about our trip when we return. We’re going to see a mermaid show and then ride the glass-bottom boat on Weeki Wachee River.
“Remember, Weeki Wachee closes at five thirty,” I say. “So I told my mom we should be back in Pass-a-Grille around six thirty or seven. That gives us time to stop for something to eat on the way back. I’m sure you’ll be hungry.”
Clarisse shakes her head, trying not to laugh. She touches the top of my hand with hers and then takes a sip of the giant plastic cup of fresh lemonade that sits between us, sold from a stand at the edge of the park. You stand in line and watch as they load lemons into a stainless steel press and pull the lever to squeeze. They scoop ice into a silver tumbler, pour in water and sugar, and shake it up. Then they finally hand you a sticky cup of refreshment—so cold, so sweet.
There isn’t a cloud in the sky today, nothing to block out the sun, that ball of white light beating the tops of our heads at high noon. Onstage, they are between bands, instrumental music playing while they tear down and then set up for the next act. The woman in all black walks past us again, this time smiling at Clarisse and then taking her phone from her pocket and tapping the screen as if she’s sending a text.
“Do you know her?” I ask Clarisse.
Clarisse puts her hand to her forehead to form a visor to shield the sun from her eyes, squinting in the distance to consider the woman. She shakes her head no.
The next band takes the stage, and I can see my mother and Shea are right in front, where they usually are at concerts, if they can help it. Shea is standing behind my mother, her arms wrapped around my mother’s waist as my mother holds their plastic cups of beer, one in each of her hands.
The woman in all black walks past us one more time. Maybe she’s lost her friends. Maybe she’s a little drunk or a little stoned. Or maybe she’s just trying to sneak another look at Clarisse. Does this woman know who Clarisse is? Her identity isn’t secret, and if you follow the stories of murderers, of their families and their victims, you might be able to recognize her. There is nothing to protect her, to protect me, and why should there be? We are both a part of history, another entry in the archive of facts about our fathers and what they did.
Sometimes things unravel quickly, as they did with my father. The lever is pulled, and sanity is broken, the madman gone mad in what seems like an instant. My father didn’t seem to have planned his attacks so some refer to his murders as a crime of passion, which is usually defined as a violent act committed because of a strong sudden impulse rather than as a premeditated crime. Crimes of passion are common in cases of infidelity, but it was my father who was unfaithful to his wife, not the other way around. My mother was the other woman, although I’m not sure if she knew that at the time. My father told my mother he was recently divorced, and my mother believed him.
Other times, things unravel slowly, as they did in the case of Clarisse’s father, whose name is Benjamin. Jenny found a few clues here and there, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away—an odd sock in the dryer that didn’t belong to anyone, a strange charge on a credit card statement. He could always make it work, could always clear the air of any suspicion, until one day he couldn’t.
Benjamin was handsome and charming, a family man who doted on his daughter. He was nothing to fear. Sweet and approachable with an easy smile, that is how one reporter described him when covering his trial and sentencing.
One morning, Jenny and Clarisse woke up to a sheriff’s deputy knocking on their trailer door. The deputy told Jenny that the little girl next door was missing, and that’s when Jenny rubbed the sleep from her eyes and realized that Benjamin was gone too. Jenny called friends and family, hoping to find him, surely not wanting to connect his disappearance to the little girl next door. Her name was Jocelyn, and by the end of the day, a search team had found her body buried in a shallow grave near the lake.
By the next morning, Benjamin had surrendered to police, confessing to everything. Jenny and Clarisse moved in with George. Clarisse was seven years old. She understood what was happening. When I read the details of her father’s case online, I longed for a time machine, so I could go back in time and comfort little Clarisse, holding her hand and telling her that everything was going to be okay.
One night at Clarisse’s, when I was sure she was asleep, I crept out of her bed and into the closet, where I had seen a clear plastic box on the shelf that appeared to be full of photos. I slid the lid off and ran my hands through its contents, and eventually I found what looked like Clarisse’s baby book, one of those memory keepers with spaces to write important milestones—first word, first tooth, first haircut. I flipped through the book until a page caught my eye. Clarisse’s third birthday. There’s a photo taped to the page—little Clarisse sitting on her father’s lap. She’s wearing a blue dress with yellow stripes, her small toes peeking out from white sandals. She’s holding up three chubby fingers on one chubby hand. Her father is laughing so hard that his face is wrinkled and you can barely see his eyes. There’s a cake on the table next to them, a round layer cake with thick scallops of hard white icing. Clarisse is just a little girl, so happy to be with her father. Close the book there and you can pretend that’s the end of the story. The happy little girl blows out the birthday candles. The happy little girl makes a wish.
“I’m ready,” Clarisse says, and I know she’s talking about tomorrow. She’s ready to take the test, to rid her body of the question that gnaws at her, threatening to consume her. The question that haunts her most nights if she’s not careful. She’s been smoking her brain into mush before bed, getting so high she forgets who she is. Only then can she fall into a sleep without nightmares, without dreams in which she relives what her father did, over and over. If Clarisse can prove she has her own fate, one different from his, then she will be free. She’s counting on it. And I’m counting on her.