Whatever Happened to Janie? (2 page)

“We’ll all have to work hard,” Mom warned every night. “Jennie’s grown up with another family. Different values, I suppose. This won’t be easy.” Mom burst into laughter, not believing a word of it. This was her baby girl. It would be easy and joyful. “We may have a hard time adjusting,” she added.

This was for Stephen’s benefit. Stephen was not a great adjuster.

Jodie planned to be the buffer between Jennie and Stephen. Jodie knew that she would not have
problems. This was the sister with the matching J name. They would be like twins.

Brian and Brendan never noticed much of anything except each other and their own lives. Jodie thought it was such a neat way to live, wrapped up and enclosed with this secret best friend who went with you everywhere and was part of you.

That was how she would be with Jennie.

At night, when they were each in their own beds, with only a thin little table and a narrow white telephone to separate them, they would tell each other sister things. Jennie would tell Jodie details about the kidnapping that she had never told anybody. And Jodie would share the secrets of her life: aches and hurts and loves and delights she had never managed to confess to Nicole or Caitlin.

Jodie was cleaning her bedroom as it had never been cleaned before. Nicole and Caitlin said it was impossible to share a room this small. Two beds had been squeezed in, one tall bureau and one medium desk. Another person could never fit in her share of sweaters, earrings, cassettes, and shoes. Jodie was seized with a frenzy of energy, folding and refolding her clothing until it took up only half the space it used to; discarding left and right; putting paper grocery bags stuffed with little-used items in the attic.

She had spent her allowance on scented drawer-liner paper from Laura Ashley. It was a lovely, delicate English-looking pattern. Its soft perfume filled the room like a stranger. Jennie would be pleased.

Mom loved matching names. Jodie and Jennie
went together. Of course the twins, Brian and Brendan, went together. Stephen was the oldest, and Mom and Dad had always meant to have a sixth child, who would be named Stacey whether it was a boy or a girl. So there’d have been Jodie and Jennie, Stephen and Stacey, Brian and Brendan.

Of course, after Jennie went missing, nobody could consider another baby. How could any of them ever have left the room again? Nobody could have focused their eyes anywhere else again. They’d all have had heart attacks and died from fear that somebody would take that baby, too.

Jennie was only twenty months younger than Jodie. As toddlers they had fought, Jodie pairing up with Stephen. Over the years, Jodie had thought of this a lot. If she, Jodie, had been holding Jennie’s hand at the shopping mall the way she was supposed to, nobody could have kidnapped Jennie.

When she got to know this new sister, should she say she was sorry? Admit that it was her fault? If the new sister said, don’t worry, everything’s fine now, I’m home and happy, Jodie would be safe telling about her guilt. But if the new sister said, I hate you for it, and I’ve always hated you for it—what then?

Jodie put the hand mirror that said JENNIE down on the piece of lace she had chosen to decorate the top of the bureau.

Jodie’s mother loved things with names on them. The four kids had mugs, sweatshirts, bracelets, book bags, writing paper—everything—with their names printed or embroidered or engraved. Mom wanted to have a house full of
JENNIE
items
for the homecoming. It was a popular name. They had had no trouble at the mall finding tons of stuff that said
Jennie.
They bought so much they were embarrassed. “We’ll have to bring it out one piece at a time,” said Jodie, giggling.

“She’ll know we love her,” said Jodie’s mother.

But behind the hyperventilating and the laughter lay the years of worry.

Mom was trembling. She had been trembling for days. She was actually losing weight from shivering. You could see her hands shake. Nobody had commented on it because everybody else had shivers, too. Everybody was worried about everything. What to serve for dinner on the first night? What to say to the neighbors? How to take Jennie to school. How to hug.

Would she be afraid? Would she be funny? Would she be shy?
What would she be like—this sister who had grown up somewhere else?

Jodie opened her bureau drawers and looked at the empty halves. She was so proud of herself, opening up her life, just like a drawer, to take Jennie in.

I have a sister again, thought Jodie Spring. She isn’t buried. She isn’t gone. She wasn’t hurt. Her guardian angel did take care of her. And now he’s bringing her back to us.

Tomorrow.

T
he bedroom in Connecticut was a beautiful, sunny room, from which Janie Johnson had led a beautiful and sunny life. The leftovers of her childhood enthusiasms filled every shelf: the horseback-riding ribbons from fourth grade; the silver flute and the wooden music stand from sixth; the pompons and trophy from seventh-grade cheerleading.

Janie’s mother stared at the room as if she were touring a castle in Europe; as if impossibly distant people had once lived bizarre and unimaginable lives in this room.

But it was their own world that had turned out to be bizarre and unimaginable.

Janie tried to hug her mother, but Mrs. Johnson, the huggingest of people, stepped back. She actually brushed Janie away. “I can’t go through any more,” whispered her mother. Mrs. Johnson did not look at her daughter, but at the room. The room was all she would have left.

“Don’t be mad at me, Mommy,” pleaded Janie. How could she go on living if her mother hated her?
Janie felt like a very little girl who needed to sit on her mother’s lap.

“I’m not your mother,” said Mrs. Johnson in a suspended voice, as if she were being hanged.

Since the truth had come out, Miranda Johnson’s elegance had frayed away; she was literally coming apart at the seams. She picked at the pockets and hems of her clothing, unraveling herself.

For Miranda Johnson, motherhood was twice destroyed. Hannah, lost in the remote past, had ruined the present as well.

“You are so my mother!” Janie felt as if her body were going to turn inside out, the way their lives had been turned inside out. Why on earth had she agreed to live with the Springs? Why had she not fought and screamed and refused?

Lawyers had carefully explained that since Janie was not quite fifteen years old—the Johnsons had guessed the baby’s age wrong; she was a whole year younger than everybody had thought—she was a minor, and must obey her parents. And her parents were not Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. Spring, who wanted her home. In their house. In their state.

How romantic it had seemed that first week. Real family emerges from shadowy past! Girl discovers bizarre kidnapping, unknown even to the kidnappers!

But it was not romantic. It was the brutal collapse of the woman and man she called Mommy and Daddy.

Janie’s friends had long ago stopped calling their parents by baby names. Mother and Dad, or
Mom and Pop, were what other people said. For Janie, her parents were still Mommy and Daddy.

And what had happened to Mommy and Daddy?

Her mother stumbled through their lovely home as if the floor, like life, had come out from under her. Her handsome silver-haired father, who coached school sports during slow seasons in his accounting practice, had become silent and stunned.

It was Janie’s fault. She had had choices. She could have said nothing. She could have done nothing. Could have let it go. Let it stay a mystery. She could have chosen to forget the hundred strange things that did not add up.

Janie’s head rang with “if only’s.” If only she had not taken Sarah-Charlotte’s milk carton at lunch. She had been given a milk allergy for an important reason: so she would never lay eyes on the photograph of the missing child featured on the milk carton. But one fine autumn day, in the school cafeteria, Janie snitched Sarah-Charlotte’s milk.

If only she had tossed that milk carton into the garbage.

If only she had not researched newspaper clippings!

If only she had not told Reeve.

If only Reeve had not told his lawyer sister Lizzie.

And yet … the Springs were right. Morally. Weren’t they? Wasn’t she their child? Didn’t she belong with them?

It was too terrifying to think about. Tomorrow
she would get in a car and drive across two state lines and belong to another family. Another family that included three brothers and a sister she had never met. In the midst of overwhelming media attention, she would start classes at a new high school. She could not believe she had to handle so much at once.

How would Mommy and Daddy manage without her?

Downstairs Janie’s friends were gathered. It was supposed to be a party. It was a disaster. Sarah-Charlotte had insisted there had to be a good-bye party. It’s a big event, Sarah-Charlotte pointed out, which was certainly true. But an event to celebrate? Not at this end, it wasn’t.

Janie had no idea, absolutely none at all, how they felt at the other end. The New Jersey end.

She saw New Jersey through a tunnel of fear. She felt as if she were being poured down some evil tube, and she could land in almost anything, and there would be no way out, because she no longer had parents.

Remaining calm was the most important thing. People kept saying to each other,
Now stay calm.
For a while, the Johnsons were all so calm that Reeve wanted to know if they were making night trips to a mortuary and getting embalmed.

Janie’s heart softened, thinking of Reeve, who was still funny. But I’ve lost him, too, she thought. My first boyfriend. My only boyfriend. I can’t talk to him either. That’s part of the deal. Not talking.

Sunshine filled Janie’s bedroom. It was January,
and very cold. Ice clung to streets and the branches of trees, but the room was warm and gold.

Janie extended her fingertips. Fearfully, as if choosing to be burned by a hot iron, she touched her mother’s shoulder. She broke through. For a moment, touch erased truth.

Mother and daughter hugged, and rocked, and felt each other.

Love, pain, rage, hope, fear—every emotion lost during these last few weeks filled both of them. We weren’t calm! Janie thought. We flattened ourselves, so we could fit through this. “Mommy,” she whispered, “please don’t be mad.”

Her mother covered Janie’s face with kisses, slowly, as if her lips were memorizing Janie. “I’m not mad at you, honey,” said her mother. “How can I be mad at
you?
I love you. You are my life. I’m mad at Hannah! She did this to us.
Twice
she’s ruined us.”

Hannah. The part of the equation nobody knew, nobody understood, nobody would ever find.

“And most of all, I’m mad at the—” Her mother broke off.

I’m mad at the Springs.
That was the sentence. Neither of her parents had said it out loud. Neither had broken down and screamed,
How dare they want you back? You are ours. You are Janie Johnson, not Jennie Spring.

I’m maddest, Janie realized. I am so mad at the Springs. They kept looking. They put that photograph of their missing daughter on the milk carton. I saw it. And now they’re taking me back.

There had not really been any threats. Nobody
had said,
Jennie comes to live with us or you go to prison!
It was simply clear, once the facts were known, that this girl was not a Johnson. She was a Spring. She belonged with her birth family.

If Jennie comes back to us, said the Springs through their lawyer, it will not be necessary for us to find Hannah. We will not prosecute her.

For Hannah it must have been a single silly afternoon, probably long forgotten, in which she stole a car and then a kid. But the aftereffects of Hannah’s deed rippled on through all their lives. Frank and Miranda Johnson would not survive the criminal trial of their real daughter. They were barely surviving this.

Whoever and whatever Hannah was now, it was imperative that nobody find her.

So Janie had to leave when her parents needed her most, and go to live with strangers. Will they feel like strangers? thought Janie. Will I walk in the door and know that I am home? Will I remember them once we sit down together?

Downstairs the failed party continued.

This was not going away to college, or heading to Europe for the summer. This was not your parents getting terrific promotions and moving to worthy places like California or Texas, so everybody would want to visit you and get letters from you and be envious because you weren’t stuck in plain old small-town New England anymore.

This was a party for the end of a person. The name Janie Johnson would vanish into the history of her life. Janie Johnson would drive away, but when she opened that car door in New Jersey, she’d
be a girl named Jennie Spring. A girl who had not existed for twelve years.

It was so ironic. In elementary and middle school Janie had detested her name—dull as a phone-book entry. The younger Janie had constantly revised it. Changed Johnson to Jonstone. Changed Janie to Jayyne. Jayyne Jonstone. A name with possibilities, as opposed to the real name, which was lumpy and forgettable.