Whatever Happened to Janie? (13 page)

What had motivated Hannah to pretend Jennie was hers? Had she given Jennie to the Javensens from fear of jail or of the cult? Or had Hannah become so demented from years without love that she was too confused to know herself? Had Hannah, kidnapped herself from her cult by her own parents, thought what she was doing was normal?

Unless Hannah was found, nobody would know those answers.

They had one answer to one question, at least: why hadn’t the Javensens heard about the kidnapped Jennie Spring and realized it was this child?

They’d been running from the cult they were sure would snatch the baby back. That week there
was no time for television, radio, or newspapers. And like any sensation, coverage of a missing child two states away ended, replaced by other sensations. By the time their lives reached normal (if name-changing and child-acquiring could ever be called normal), publicity on the Jennie Spring case had ended.

Why “Janie” instead of Jennie?

They could only suppose that when Jennie said her name, Hannah misunderstood.

Memories of her first three years faded. The little girl ceased to be Jennie Spring and became completely and wholly Janie Johnson, daughter of Frank and Miranda.

Then one day, the little girl looked down at a carton of milk, and all their intertwined lives were once more irrevocably changed.

Jodie took her mother’s hand. She might have pressed a Scream button, the way Mom reacted.

Mom cried out, unable to bear Mr. Mollison asking all the questions. Asking, in her opinion, the wrong questions. “Did Hannah force you?” Mom sobbed.

Jodie began to cry in spite of her vows not to.

“No,” said Jennie. Her voice broke. “I think I wanted to go. I think I was having fun.”

Jodie’s mother—and Jennie’s—said softly, full of love, “I’m so glad. I saw you torn from limb to limb. I saw you beaten and bruised and left to die in some swamp. I saw you assaulted by horrible evil people. But you were okay. I’m so glad.”

It was a cue, in Jodie’s opinion. Jennie should have gotten up to embrace this real mother. The
Springs should have hugged all around. That would be the door to let them forgive and accept.

But Jennie held a pillow instead of a mother and looked away.

M
r. Mollison relaxed into the sofa cushions, as if he were the one who lived here. He slouched down till his feet stuck out into the room and began chatting comfortably and easily. He’s trying to soften me up, thought Janie. She tried to resist him, though why she was resisting and whom she was protecting, she did not really know.

“Practically nobody,” said Mr. Mollison, “is ever kidnapped by a stranger. In spite of the hype you see on television, there are probably no more than fifty children a year taken by strangers. Those victims are usually abducted for sexual purposes, and let go by their captors very quickly. In fact,” said Mr. Mollison, rearranging the crystal candlesticks and the stacks of magazines on the coffee table, “these kids are usually home within a few hours. Most of the time the police aren’t called until
after
the child is home and has told the parents what happened. Furthermore, most of those children are not babies and not toddlers. The children taken by strangers are young teens.”

Janie was not in the mood for background material.
She wanted Mr. Mollison to get to the point, get out of the house, and get out of her life.

It was her brothers and sister who listened. Stephen was astonished. “But then—who are all these missing children?”

“You have to define missing,” said Mr. Mollison. “Missing includes late. Children who are late getting home. They misunderstood what time their parents told them to be home or they went somewhere else. Missing includes lost. A family can’t find the kid and they live near a river, and maybe missing means drowned. Missing includes runaways. Children who purposely leave home, who don’t want to be home. Missing includes children of divorce where one parent keeps them longer than he’s allowed to by visitation rights. The other parent knows exactly where the child is and has probably talked to the kid on the phone. Missing is an inclusive word. Missing hardly ever means kidnapping.”

“So you didn’t know I was kidnapped,” said Janie.

“Nobody knew anything. You were a three-year-old redhead in a polka-dotted dress who couldn’t be found. Your family searched the mall. Security searched the mall. They made loudspeaker announcements. People didn’t panic for a while,” said Mr. Mollison. “Even when panic really set in, everybody figured you’d just wandered off. State troopers brought dogs to find your scent. Volunteer search teams held hands and inched through fields and woods for a half mile behind the mall. People waded through ditches and opened the trunks of abandoned cars.”

Opened the trunks of abandoned cars?
Janie’s hair prickled. What if they had found her like that? A body thrown carelessly inside a rusting wreck, lying dead on mouse-chewed upholstery.

“Altogether,” said her father in a queer collapsing voice, “there were six abandoned cars.” He gave a funny strangled laugh. “Six,” he repeated, and Janie knew that he was seeing each one of them. Mrs. Spring crushed herself against her husband’s chest, protecting herself from the memories.

Six times, Janie thought, among the rats and the garbage, they poked and prodded to find a corpse. Mine.

For the first time she knew what they had been through.

Get up, Janie told herself. Go hug them both. These are your mother and father. You’re the kid they thought would be found dead in the trunks of those six cars. Go to them!

But she did not. She looked down at her small sturdy hands and the shape of her fingernails. Her parents in Connecticut had completely different hands. Naturally.

“When the police began questioning people in the mall,” said Mr. Mollison, “a waitress remembered a young woman with long blond hair and her little girl with bright red hair. She remembered them laughing together and leaving together. Holding hands.”

“So you did know!” cried Janie. “You knew Hannah took me. What were you looking in cars for? Why did you make my parents go through that?”

“How could we know why the woman took
you?” said Mr. Mollison. “Maybe to kill you. Maybe she knew it was stupid and pushed you out of her car as she was driving away. At any rate, once the waitress identified your photograph, it ceased to be a missing-child case and became Abduction by a Stranger. Not one of the police involved in the case had ever before—or ever since, for that matter—handled that crime. Statistically, ninety-five percent of all police stations will not encounter child-abduction by strangers. Forget what you see on TV. It doesn’t happen.”

“Except to us,” said Jodie.

There was a long period of quiet.

Janie could distinguish separate breathing, her mother taking air in little shudders, her father breathing hard through his nose, Stephen regulating his lungs like a machine, Jodie holding her breath, waiting.

“Except to you,” agreed Mr. Mollison.

One of the policeman passed around two large boxes of Dunkin Donuts. Of course the good doughnuts ran out right away and the twins complained that there should be more chocolate-covered and fewer cream-filled. Mrs. Spring brought out perked coffee, a pitcher of milk, and plenty of mugs and glasses.

The Springs were great milk drinkers, going easily through a gallon a day and often more. Janie found herself with a glass of milk in her hand. She set it back down.

“I’m sorry, I forgot your allergy,” said Mrs. Spring. She poured Janie a glass of apple juice instead.
Janie found apple juice a dull excuse for a liquid but she took it.

“If you can’t drink milk, what were you doing with a milk carton to start with?” asked one of the twins.

“I had a peanut butter sandwich,” she said, “and you have to have milk with that.”

Everybody nodded.

“Sarah-Charlotte was flirting with Pete. She wasn’t looking. I had had my juice and I needed milk, so I took hers and drank it. And when I set it down …” Her mind had spun like a color wheel, each of the bright primary colors screaming:
No!—you have a father and a mother—a happy childhood—you were not kidnapped.

As the facts spun like evil wool, weaving a truth Janie did not want, she had tried to think of nobody but Reeve.

This was fine by Sarah-Charlotte. They intensively studied the prom issue of
Seventeen
because Sarah-Charlotte was sure Janie’d be going to the senior prom with Reeve. “He hasn’t asked me,” Janie had objected.

“Boys never think farther ahead than the next meal. But you can’t wear just anything, with that red hair. Let’s pick a gown.”

He’s asked me, thought Janie, and I still have to pick a gown. But my life—where did my life go since then?

She stared through the doorway into the kitchen, where there were no eyes.

The knobs on the cabinets were white porcelain with tiny blue tulips. Dog-eared phone books curled
over a rack by the wall phone. Over the sink a small window was lined with African violets. A frilly polka-dotted curtain was held back by red ribbons. On the wall was a plaque, painted by a child in an art class. A very out-of-proportion house with a stick family leaning out of the windows bore an address in willowy script.

“We never moved,” said her father, following her gaze. “If the day came when you could get in touch, we had to be here.”

Janie let go of the rest of her doughnut. Timidly, Mrs. Spring rested her hand on Janie’s. Janie turned her hand over, curled her fingers one by one, and held her mother’s hand.
These are my parents.
I know them by their suffering. I know by the price they paid.

I’m not sorry anymore that I saw the milk carton. I’m glad they don’t have to worry. I’m glad they don’t have to think about the trunks of abandoned cars. I’m glad to know them. But what about Mommy and Daddy? Are
they
going to be all right?

“You knew about Hannah before you came,” she said to Mr. Mollison. “You’ve already found out most things. Why are you really here?”

“We need to find Hannah,” said Mr. Mollison, casually, as if it hardly mattered, as if finding Hannah were just another boring activity.

“No, you don’t,” said Janie. “Everybody agreed we would let that go. We promised each other. Through Lizzie. It wasn’t Hannah’s fault, and even if
it was, it wasn’t my parents’ fault, and even if it was, it doesn’t count. We’re not counting it. We agreed.”

Mr. Mollison said gently, “Lizzie was wrong. She never studied criminal law, and she got her facts wrong.”

Lizzie? Wrong? This had not happened in neighborhood history. Lizzie had never been one of Janie’s favorite people. Lizzie had never been one of Reeve’s either. His older sister was infuriating, pompous, and first in line even if she had to break other people’s ankles to get there.

Janie could hardly wait to pick up the telephone. Reeve, she would say, it’s me, and guess what—great news! Lizzie was wrong!

She and Reeve would party.

“I’m the victim,” said Janie. “I was the one who was kidnapped and I refuse to prosecute the kidnapper. It’s okay with me. I know it was wrong, and it hurt everybody, but Hannah is my parents’ only daughter. You have to leave her alone. We agreed.” She looked at Mr. and Mrs. Spring. “Didn’t we?” she said.

A grief Janie could not identify crossed their faces: not grief for the pain of the last twelve years, but a grief for today. For Janie. The room expanded with things to come, pain waiting to attack.

“The law doesn’t work that way, Jennie,” said Mr. Mollison gently.

All this soft-spoken gentleness was getting on Janie’s nerves. “Don’t hurt my parents,” said Janie, and weirdly, dizzily,
parents
meant all four adults who called themselves her mother and father.

“Nobody is going to hurt your parents,” said Mr.
Mollison. “They aren’t guilty of any crime. They really thought you were their granddaughter. In fact, we’re grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, because they kept you safe and happy.”

“Then why are you here?”

“After a crime has been committed,” said Mr. Mollison, “and the police have been brought in, it stops being in your hands. The crime is still there, whether you consider it a crime or not. The person who committed the crime—in this case, Hannah Javensen—must be brought to trial. It doesn’t matter that you and the Johnsons and the Springs agreed to forget it. The law does not forget. We will find Hannah and bring her to New Jersey to stand trial for kidnapping.”