The Last Good Day of the Year (26 page)

A caterpillar dropped from the ceiling and landed on my plate. I was watching it squirm around in my mashed potatoes when Mrs. Souza began to holler at her husband in Portuguese next door. Their dogs started barking their heads off.

Darla covered her eyes and turned away from the TV screen, foamy champagne sloshing over the side of her cup and onto the carpet. “Turn it off, Ed.”

He was still holding a mouthful of champagne. He stared at my father and swallowed. “Did that just happen? Oh, Jesus. Oh, my God.”

“There's a caterpillar in my food.”

My father and Ed looked at me, their expressions puzzled and horrified.

“The shuttle exploded, Sam.” My dad looked like he was about to cry.

Abby hadn't been watching with us, but now she was standing in the doorway to the basement. She was breathless from running upstairs in such a hurry. She picked up my plate and took my hand, leading me into the kitchen.

“Is it true? Did it explode?”

“Yes,” Abby said. She hooked her finger around the caterpillar on my plate. It was covered in buttery mashed potatoes, damp and wriggling in her palm. She wet a sponge and dabbed at the caterpillar's fur, but it wouldn't keep still long enough for her to get it clean.

“Let's go home, Sam.” Behind me, my dad put his hands on my shoulders.

“Wait. Abby is saving the caterpillar.”

“No, I'm not. It's too late.” She dropped it into the sink and turned on the water, rinsing it down the drain. All that work to
save it, and she just gave up. She flicked the disposal switch beside the sink, and I heard the blades spinning, grinding the caterpillar into pulp. That's when I started crying. I'd witnessed the deaths of seven people on live television minutes earlier and felt nothing, but when Abby killed the worm in my food I cried.

We thought Gretchen had been asleep the whole time we'd been gone, so we assumed she hadn't seen the explosion. When we got back to our house, my dad turned off the television and went upstairs to check on our mom. I stayed downstairs with Gretchen. I was trying to crawl under the blanket with her. Our faces were almost touching when she opened her eyes to stare at me.

“Did you see it?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“They're all dead.”

“Abby killed a caterpillar.” I started crying again. “She ground it up in the sink.”

“Shh. Come here.” My sister pulled me beneath the blanket and put her arm around my shoulders. Our house was so quiet that I could still hear the Souzas' dogs barking all the way over in their yard.

“She tries to save them,” Gretchen said. “She kills them only if she knows they're going to die anyway.” She held me so tightly that her fingernails dug into the flesh on my ribs. “She tries to save them,” she repeated, “but she doesn't want them to suffer. Sometimes she has to kill them in order to help them, Sam. Sometimes it's the only thing to do.”

Summer 1996

Abby is unusually calm as she leads Remy and me into her living room. “Gretchen is upstairs,” she says with her back to us. “She'll be down any minute.” She pronounces each word so carefully that I feel certain she's on something: Xanax or Valium or Klonopin. I've seen enough people on heavy meds to recognize the signs.

The caterpillar infestation might be gone, but the Tickle house is still a cluttered mess, which doesn't surprise me at all. Neither Abby nor Gretchen has ever been the domestic type.

“Who do you have there?” Abby's lazy gaze settles on Boris, whom I've placed on the sofa between Remy and me. “Oh.”

“We know what you and Gretchen did,” Remy says to her. “Sam heard you both in the kitchen. Where did you get the bear, Abby?”

She doesn't answer the question, or even look him in the eye.
“Maybe we shouldn't have done it that way. But we're running out of time.” She seems to be speaking more to herself than to either of us.

We hear the stairs creaking, and Gretchen walks into the room, stopping in the doorway when she sees us on the sofa.

“Is he still awake?” Abby asks. She means her father.

Gretchen nods. “He's having a lot of trouble breathing.”

I look at Abby, expecting her to say something or to go upstairs to help Ed, but she doesn't seem the least bit concerned. She's still looking at Boris.

Remy gives me an uncomfortable glance. I know he doesn't want to be here; he wanted to skip the visit altogether and go straight to his parents, or the police, to admit what we'd done and show them the bear. He thinks we should let someone else figure things out from here, but I'm not so sure. It didn't go so well the last time. “Is your dad okay?” he asks Abby.

“He's suffering terribly.” She pauses. “But he's still alive.”

Gretchen stares at us. “You two shouldn't be here. Go home, Sam. Take the bear with you. Mom and Dad need to see him for themselves.”

“Why?” I demand.

“Because it's the only way they'll listen.”

“Where did you find him?”

“Don't worry about it. You'll know soon enough.”

“We need to tell you something. It's important.”

“Not now. You both need to leave.” She tries to wipe something from her fingers with a dirty napkin that's been balled up in her fist and nearly shredded to damp bits.

“Come on,” Remy says, tugging me up by the elbow. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Wait a minute.” Abby steps in front of him. “Where will you go now?”

“To the police.”

“To tell them what?”

I glance at Remy. He shrugs. “Gretchen wants us to leave. We're going.”

“If Gretchen doesn't want to know, you can tell me.” Abby stands with her arms crossed, her face tight with impatience. She's sweaty and exhausted, not at all pleased to see us even though she's trying to convince us to stay.

“Tell me where you got the bear,” I repeat.

She looks from me to Gretchen, then back to me. “You go first.”

I'm not sure how to start. “I did something wrong the night Turtle got kidnapped. I lied about something.”

“We both did,” Remy adds.

My words are enough to crack through the hazy veneer of whatever drug is running through Abby's bloodstream. “What was the lie, Samantha?” She glances at Gretchen again, and the two of them exchange a series of quick, indecipherable thoughts with their eyes.

“I told the police I saw Steven take Turtle from the basement. I was so scared, and I knew everyone wanted an answer so badly.” My mouth is so dry that I can't even force myself to swallow in the heavy silence that follows. I want Remy to say something, or at least to try to comfort me somehow, but he's too busy keeping
himself calm to bother with anyone else. He's started crying again, and I can tell he's embarrassed to be so emotional in front of my sister and Abby, which is crazy.

“I saw a man dressed up in a Santa costume. That much is true. But it wasn't Steven.” I pause again, managing to swallow once before I look Gretchen in the eyes. “I'm sure of it.”

My sister can barely speak; her voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “What makes you so certain it wasn't him?”

“His teeth.” It's Remy who says it. “It was his teeth,” he repeats. He seems as stunned as any of us by the revelation. “He had straight, perfect teeth. That's right—isn't it, Sam?”

I nod. Until this moment, I wasn't sure whether Remy had been awake that night, despite his insistence. Right from the beginning, I'd suspected he hadn't seen the man's face at all, and had only echoed my accusation of Steven because he trusted me.

“I had my eyes closed for most of it, but when he bent over to pick Turtle up off the floor … I knew something bad was happening, and I was too afraid to scream. I was afraid he'd kill us.” Remy stares at the drab, gray carpet. He doesn't want to look any of us in the face. “I peeked out of one eye when he was leaning over beside me. His beard was hanging down below his mouth as though it didn't fit him right. The room was dark except for this tiny sliver of light across his face. He was opening and closing his mouth, wiggling his jaw while he adjusted the beard, and I saw all his teeth.” His whole body trembles. “That's when I pissed my pants,” he whispers.

Any traces of Abby's stupor are completely gone. “What about you, Sam? Did you see his face?”

“No,” I admit, “not the whole thing. He was wearing the beard, and it was dark—but there were other things. There were little things about him that weren't like Steven.”

“Like what?”

“He didn't walk the same way Steven did. And he seemed older somehow … and it was as if he breathed differently.” I look helplessly at Gretchen—my big sister!—whose palm is pressed against her stomach as though she might throw up any second.

“You could have helped him,” she says. A look of puzzled horror creeps onto her face. “Why did you lie to everyone, Sam? What's the matter with you?”

“I don't know! It was like … like Steven's name was just
there
, in my head. He was someone Mom and Dad hated. Dad had been getting into all those arguments with him and trying to get him in trouble, and when I said his name out loud, it felt like the whole world stopped moving. I can't explain it, Gretchen. I panicked. It just happened, and the minute I said it, I wanted to take it back. But I couldn't—I didn't. I was so scared, Gretchen,” I say, crying. “And then everything started happening so fast. Steven got arrested, and it made
sense
that he'd done it. Everybody believed it. What was I supposed to do? The longer it went on like that, the harder it was to imagine telling anyone the truth. I kept telling myself I really
had
seen Steven. I told myself for so long that eventually I believed it, with all my heart. It was as if my memories had managed to correct themselves so they would fit the narrative: when I thought about that night, I saw Steven's face in my mind. It was as real to me as anything else.”

It's the honest-to-God truth. I believed it for years. We moved
away, and Steven went to prison. Gretchen went to college. She dropped out and got married, and she seemed to be doing okay for a while. Our parents survived after Davis Gordon's book came out and broke their hearts all over again. Hannah was born. Life went on, as much as it could, and every new day took me farther and farther away from that night. The truth got smaller and smaller until it eventually vanished. At least I had thought so.

Until last winter, when Kate O'Neill disappeared from church. My synapses crackled with alarm when I saw her photograph on television. At first it was just a vague, unsettling feeling that I couldn't quite understand. My parents didn't watch the news much, and they went out of their way to avoid reports about Kate. But Noah's mom was obsessed with the story; I got all my updates from watching the news with Noah at his house.

We watched Kate's parents as they pleaded for their daughter's safe return. They shared a slew of details designed to make Kate's abductor realize that she was a real human being with feelings and thoughts—she was somebody's child, not an object to be destroyed and discarded.

Kate is counting the days until our church carnival this spring. She can't wait to eat funnel cake. It's her favorite treat
.

Someone was paying attention to those details. He made sure Kate got her funnel cake. Then he killed her.

Who could do something so awful? Was he the same kind of person who would have made sure Turtle got the Space Barbie she wanted so badly because he felt sorry for everything he was about to take away from her?

It was a special kind of cruelty. It had been only a few weeks
since the photograph of Turtle had shown up in our mailbox on Christmas morning, and it was as if her image on the glossy paper had sounded a single, sustained note of despair in my mind; now here was another one beside it. A few more and they'd make a melody.

“I went all the way to New Jersey this March to find Davis Gordon. Noah Taylor took me in his mom's car. Did you know I disappeared for two days like that?” I ask Gretchen. “Mom and Dad don't know the real reason. They don't know I saw Davis. They think I ran off with Noah to have sex at a hotel. Did they ever mention it?”

“No. We hardly ever talk about things like that.”

“Davis told me to ask you about Frank Yarrow.”

“I know,” she says. She pauses. “I talk to Davis sometimes.”

“Gretchen, I
did
ask you about Frank. Remember? I showed you the picture from the birthday party, and you told me to forget about it, and about him. You said he was nobody.”

“I remember.”

“But he wasn't nobody.” I look at Abby. “He helped your dad build the playhouse, didn't he?”

“Yes,” she says flatly. “Frank was Amish, so he knew all about woodworking and construction. My dad said he felt sorry for him. He gave him a job at the store, but only for things that didn't require him to interact with the public. He was too strange for that kind of thing. My dad said he would have made the customers uncomfortable.”

“You told me he died a long time ago,” I say to Gretchen. “Is that true?”

Abby picks up Boris and holds him against her chest. “Tell Sam where Frank lived, Gretchen.”

She's silent for a moment before saying, “He lived in the house that caught on fire.” My sister thinks I don't know what house she means. How could I possibly misunderstand? “The fire in the woods that Steven's dad and his friends got called to fight on New Year's.”