Nowhere Girl (11 page)

And now I stood at Witherspoon Bread Company, right when Deanna was breathing down my neck for another chapter, and I should have been home drowning that poor girl under the ice and figuring out about serial killers. Instead, I was waiting to find out from Emma why she left my brother. The lady in front of me was taking forever to order, blowing my plan to have my coffee on the table and my book open to a page I hadn't gotten to yet so I'd appear relaxed. Emma made me nervous. And so did the Witherspoon Bread Company, solely because it was far from home. I was sure not only that Emma did not want to face anyone in Stanwich after her father was all over the papers but also that she was probably a little bit worried one of her pretty sorority sisters would happen upon her while she was with her fat ex-sister-in-law. Emma had gone to William Paterson, so she wouldn't be too far from David, and as a result, her sorority sisters were everywhere.

She was wearing knee-high boots and a black dress, and her silky red hair was tied in a neat ponytail on the nape of her neck. “Hi, Cady,” she called, coming up behind me with her black leather Coach bag, smelling like balsam. “Sorry I'm late.” She air kissed me, which I hated, and when she drew away, I saw, despite her lovely makeup job, Emma Fisher had dark circles under her eyes.

“Hey,” I told her, and then by some invisible force of etiquette, I offered to add her to my order.

“Oh, sure, yes, that would be lovely.”

“I'll have a vanilla latte,” I told the girl. I wanted to add a lemon cruller to the order, but I didn't want to give Emma the satisfaction.

The girl arched her eyebrows at Emma, waiting for her order.

Emma smiled as though she didn't notice and said, “Oh, I'll take a green tea.” Emma was terribly underweight and hadn't eaten a carb since Dr. Atkins said not to. “And, Cady, you don't mind, do you?” She opened her brown eyes wide. “But I'd like to bring something to those homeless men on Lincoln, the ones who make sculptures out of soda cans?”

“Be my guest,” I told her.
Leave my brother in the cold, but be my guest.

“I'll take a dozen everything bagels,” Emma said, smiling sweetly at the girl, “and a tub of full-fat cream cheese.” She turned to me. “They love bagels,” she said in her daydreamy, see-through voice.

“Great,” I told her.

And then we waited in complete silence for the Princeton babe to bring Emma's tea and homeless goodies and my latte.

We found two leather chairs in the corner with a square table between them. I'd forgotten a sleeve for my cup, and it was too hot to hold, so I set it down and blew on my hand, which made me feel clumsy and awkward. I always felt that way in front of Emma. I didn't even want my medium (not grande as the lady with the dog in her purse in front of me kept calling it) coffee, anyway, but Gabby said it was one of my best habits, a great diuretic. And because I needed something to get rid of the extra puffiness in my ankles, I thought it might be worth it. As it was, I had cankles, and that morning, I couldn't even zip my low-heeled boots.

“Listen,” Emma said. She had perfected speaking without moving her lips. Gabby and I called her the Muppet Master. “Tell
him
that I'll send back his INXS CD as soon as I can. I didn't realize it was in my car when I left.” She smiled quickly at me.

I ran my hands up and down my upper arms. “Brr. Is there a draft? It suddenly got chilly in here.”

Emma's smile turned to a grimace. “You're exactly like him,” she said into her cup. “I hate to say this, Cady, but you really are passive aggressive.”

I dumped four packets of Splenda in my mug. When next I spoke, I lowered my voice and tried to sound unsure. It was a trick I'd learned researching. It was called
going one down
. Apparently, if you got all sad and pathetic, people might tell you what you wanted to hear. “Can you tell me why?”

“Why what?” Emma sipped her tea. Her giant bag for the homeless was sitting at her feet.

“You broke his heart.” I leaned in closer and said as pleasantly as possible, “Can you pretend you have one and tell me why?”

Her pretty cheekbones went pink, which only highlighted how gaunt her face was. “He hasn't told you?”

“He has no idea.”

A group of college students flooded through the door, noisy and happy. I envied them.

“Your family does not deal,” she said, “with Savannah.”

In the 5,963 days since Savannah had been gone, I'd never really thought about how losing her affected David. Once the FBI pulled out, the story stopped getting played every night on the news, and Patrick Tunney no longer came by once a week to give a progress report, we rarely talked about her. Our parents made sure they never neglected David or me because they were too sad to come to a soccer game or too wary of having to answer the same questions over and over again to go to a school function. They plastered ridiculous smiles on their tired faces, gripped each other's hands, and carried on.

My family prided itself in carrying on. We patted ourselves on the back because we were coping. We all had good jobs. My parents toughed it out and remained in the 20 percent of couples who stayed together after the death of a child. None of us camped out at the cemetery anymore.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you never deal with your … shit.”

Maybe Emma was onto something. There was a part of us, a part that we rarely talked about, that wouldn't be right until we found the man who murdered Savannah.

“And you do?” I could feel myself clenching my fists.

Emma put her drink down. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“And are you dealing with your father getting fired by hiding?” I wanted to ask, but instead, I said, “And what does
dealing
mean, exactly?”

“Well,” she said, “for one thing, it would mean that David wouldn't have sent his little sister to do his dirty work. He had plenty of time to ask me what was wrong before I left. But no one in your family ever talks to each other.”

“We talk plenty,” I told her. “For example, we talk about why your father put Savannah's case in the fucking cellar.”

A woman and her friend, both in expensive cashmere, turned toward us. Emma gave them a curt smile.

“What my father does is not my problem,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

“Well, thank God for that, since he's on the front page of all the papers.” It was a low blow, but I couldn't help it.

Emma mashed her lips together. “I've asked your brother time and again to explore his feelings about what happened, to stop burying it in dinners with you people and his model car building, and he just gets mad. I'm done with people who are assholes when I try to help them.”

“You started dating him after…” I couldn't even finish that sentence. I hated it that Emma was right. “You must have known what he was like.”

She rolled her eyes. “We were eighteen years old, and David was a beautiful, laid-back tech geek. And we were crazy about each other. Maybe what happened to Savannah drew us together in some way that's difficult to explain; I don't really know. But the point is, we're not kids anymore, and now I realize that stuffing all his feelings down—”

“Like your father stuffed a very important murder case in cold storage?”

She went on as though I'd never spoken. “That was not healthy, and if you don't mind, I happen to want children and a family and someone”—she appeared to be lurching around her rather empty mind searching for a word—“
normal
.” She pushed the table toward me and stood up. “I've put up with your sad, wronged family for way too long.” She heaved her pretty Coach bag over her shoulder. “And you know what? I don't want to anymore. You.” She stabbed her finger in the air at me. “The whole lot of you is toxic.”

Toxic
. A therapist's favorite word.

“Why don't you try doing something your family never does?” She clutched her bag of goodwill bagels I'd bought. “Talk to each other, Cady. Ask your own damn brother what his problem is. Our town's so angry at my father for putting your sister in storage? Well, maybe you should be focusing on the truths none of you have ever been willing to see.”

The ladies had completely quit talking and were staring at us.

“What?” Emma said to them, and they quickly went back to their conversation.

I felt my cheeks go pink. She wrapped a light scarf around her neck in a fashionable way I never could manage.

“I know you think I'm a bitch for walking out on sad, sweet David, but after years of him shutting me out, I decided not to take it anymore. I couldn't save him,” she said. “Maybe you should start focusing on saving yourselves.”

“I'd say we're all okay.” I'd never told such a big lie. “My parents are happy. David and I have good jobs. We're happy.”

She snorted. “You people have no idea how to be happy. Your parents couldn't stand to be here anymore. David never leaves the house. And you.” She spit the last word at me. “At least I don't use my family's dirty secrets to bring me fame.” Then she twirled around on her pretty leather boots and walked out into the sunshiny day.

Later, I sat in my car and tried to breathe. It was horrible that little redheaded Emma could make me want to cry, but it was as if, out of every single button she could have pushed, she'd chosen the one that made me feel the worst about myself. I called Gabby, and while it rang, I remembered years ago my whole family had been invited to a wedding. The chef at Sotto Sopra was getting married. His older brother was a groomsman, and his younger sister was a bridesmaid. I'd watched the three of them all night with fascination and hope. On the ride home, my eyes heavy with sleep and my dad's tuxedo jacket draped over me, I saw David, Savannah, and me all grown up. We'd live near each other; we'd have cookouts and parties and vacation together in the Outer Banks. Even after we lost Savannah, I'd been determined to keep that dream alive, but I realized now as I listened to Gabby's voice telling me she wasn't available that the dream hadn't ever had a chance in hell of surviving, considering whom David had wound up marrying—never mind my workaholic husband, who was probably fucking the receptionist.

 

CHAPTER

12

My weekends with Greg were predictable. He came home around eight on Friday nights and liked to go to bed at what he called a “reasonable hour,” which meant pajamas on and case files stacked on the bedside table at about nine thirty. Then he got up at some awful dawn hour and ran about fifteen miles. When he got back, he put classical music on the stereo, and I'd hear him in the office with his mini tape recorder, dictating notes on patients.

Saturday nights, we often went into the city if we had tickets to Lincoln Center to see the symphony, the opera, or, once in a while, the ballet. I never knew what to wear, but I had a couple of black dresses that I'd gotten over the years, so I'd put on one of those with stockings that itched and my mother's long string of pearls she'd given me when I graduated from Princeton. We usually met up with another couple at a midtown restaurant, and I'd feel fat because the portions were miniscule and I was always hungry after dinner, and I'd make polite conversation with the wife while the men talked about their work or with the husband if the wife was a psychiatrist, or sometimes they were both psychiatrists. They seemed to marry each other. I liked the opera, I loved it, but I always cried, which no one else in the audience ever appeared to do.

Greg would hold my hand in the car afterward and kiss it, and when we got home, sometimes we'd make very tired love before drifting off to sleep. This is how I got pregnant already three times and had miscarriages every time, so the sex part was somehow both hopeful and scary.

Sundays, Greg went to Gratitude Yoga in Princeton, and he came home flushed, carrying a green drink, and ready to practice his bassoon.

I admired it all very much. I wished I were the kind of person who wanted to jump right up and jog and do yoga, and I wished I liked sophisticated, learned couples and tiny portions, that the symphony didn't bore me and that I didn't get so emotionally involved with opera. But here was my secret: not only did I want to sleep late, I wanted to throw rock-paper-scissors to see which of us would go down and get coffee and crullers at Cookies, and then I wanted to loll around in bed eating pastries and drinking java and reading
The Times
. I wanted to stay in my PJs and cook in the afternoon. I loved finding new recipes and wanted to try every one of them, whether it was fattening or not. And then it would be nice to go on a dusk walk and look in people's windows and tell each other stories about them. I wanted a smaller house with a woodstove, where we could snuggle up and read aloud to each other. I wanted to watch TV shows on Saturday nights, to curl up with a big bowl of popcorn. I wanted someone else's life.

But none of that ever happened, and so on Sundays, after I'd gone to Cookies with Gabby, I'd drive the narrow dirt roads to Ravenswood to see Savannah's little bay gelding, Bliss. Savannah had fallen in love with horses when she was twelve, and by some miracle that defied the economics of our family system, she'd convinced my parents to buy her Bliss and keep him at a barn in town. We couldn't stand selling him after she died, so I'd taken over grooming him and cleaning his stall. Eventually, I started taking lessons on him. When he got too old to ride, I moved him to Ravenswood, a retirement barn in Hunterdon County. Now he was twenty-six, old for a horse, but he was fat and happy, and I secretly believed he'd live forever.

This Sunday, I'd brought carrots with the greens still attached. I went out to the paddock and gave one to Bliss, and then I brought him in to pick his feet and clean him up. When I went to the tack room, I left him on crossties, and I could hear him pawing in the aisle. He nickered when I came around the corner, his forelock covering a Texas-shaped star on his forehead. I took another carrot from the bunch and fed it to him. His whiskers were too long, and tiny bits of flaxseed stuck to them.