“H-how’d he end up here in W-Wagner? How long ago was th-that?”
She shrugs. “It was a couple years. He was just passing through. He knew I lived here because he and my brother keep in touch. Anyway, he stopped by and he seemed different, little more put together, nothing like he was when he was…” She looks at the floor. “He was only supposed to be here for dinner and he ended up staying a lot longer.”
“Mama,” Breckin says plaintively, and Marlee moves to him, resting her hand on his head. She turns to me. “Once he knew he was staying, he told me he was going by Darren Marshall now and if I could play along, that’d be swell.”
“H-he say why?”
Breckin giggles. She shakes her head.
“And you st-still l-let him stay?”
I guess I don’t do so well keeping the disgust out of my voice, because she tenses, raising her hand from her son’s head. She waits a minute, like she expects me to push it, and part of me feels young enough to want to. I used to be an age where I believed I could talk my mother out of her worst decisions, the drinking, drugs, certain men she’d bring home to bed. Keith. Sometimes, I think about that Sadie, begging her mother to save her from … her mother.
I hate that version of myself.
“I don’t gotta answer to you. But yeah, I did.” She shakes her head a little, her brow furrowing. “You know, all the time I was with him, Darren never said he had a kid. My brother never mentioned it either. He would’ve known.”
“I’m n-not lying t-to you,” I lie. She just looks at me and I’m afraid if she does that for too long, she’ll see the truth somehow. “So w-what h-happened?”
“We were together a few months. He’d sit right where you’re sitting, every morning, and he’d have his coffee looking out that window.”
I follow her gaze to the schoolyard. There are a couple of women at the playground now, pushing their kids, or their charges, on the swings. I imagine that place during the school year, the grounds teeming with children, running, playing, laughing, under the watchful eye of the man at the kitchen table.
“I was doing the laundry,” Marlee says. “Cleaning out his jeans pockets before I threw ’em in the wash and I found this picture … this old, worn picture—an old Polaroid. It was…” She closes her eyes briefly and her forehead creases, like she can see it there, behind her eyes, and she wishes she could see anything else. “I don’t want to get into it, but it was the kind of thing you can’t explain or defend.” She takes a shuddering breath out and opens her eyes. “People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are. I turned him out the same day. I wanted nothing to do with it then and I want nothing to do with it now.”
She lifts Breckin from his high chair, pressing her face into his baby neck. I scratch at my chest and immediately regret the abuse of my own gentle touch. My skin is on fire.
“You h-hear of him since? Where he m-might be?”
“No.”
“W-what about your b-brother?”
“I don’t talk to my brother anymore,” she says tightly. “He’s of the opinion that how I treated Darren was wrong and we haven’t spoken since.”
“P-please—”
“Look, I’m sorry for whatever it is brought you here,” Marlee says, “and I feel bad enough for you that I was willing to tell you that much. But I got a kid and I can’t afford to get mixed up in whatever…” She waves her hands. “Whatever this is.”
“—”
She watches me struggle.
“P-please,” is all I finally manage.
She closes her eyes and Breckin sits between us, oblivious.
“Jack Hersh. That’s his real name. Do something with that.”
“H-he d-doesn’t go by it! That’s n-not gonna get me anywhere!”
“Maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world,” she snaps. “You shouldn’t be chasing after someone that fucking sick in the soul, father or not.” She eyes go wide. “Did he hurt you?”
“Yes,” I say, flat and clean. “And m-my sister.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” She pauses. “But I can’t help you.”
It should earn me something but it doesn’t. You can’t buy people with your pain. They’ll just want away from it. I pick up one of her past-due envelopes and turn it slowly in my hands.
“Hey—put that down,” she says. “I told you. I don’t know where he is now.”
I slip the bill out, take a look at the number and she can’t stop me because her arms are too full of baby. Not that one. Too high. I reach for another bill, this one outside of its envelope and take a look at the number. That—that’s a number I can do.
Just because you can’t buy people with your pain—well. It doesn’t mean you can’t still buy them.
I hold it up and try again:
“W-what about y-your b-brother?”
THE GIRLS
S1E2
WEST McCRAY:
The ID tag on Sadie’s green backpack lists May Beth Foster as her emergency contact. She collected it, and Sadie’s belongings, from the Farfield Police Department in July.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
And let me tell you something about Farfield police: they don’t give a good God damn.
WEST McCRAY:
Detective Sheila Gutierrez is a petite fifty-year-old mother of three who has worked at the Farfield Police Department for the last fifteen years. She is sympathetic to May Beth, but she’d argue her claim.
DETECTIVE SHEILA GUTIERREZ:
We’ve done everything within our power to find Ms. Hunter. We did a search, we talked to locals, we put out bulletins and alerted the press, as well as law enforcement in surrounding areas. There was no evidence of foul play at the scene, and given the fact that Ms. Hunter left Cold Creek of her own volition as a response to a personal tragedy, we believe this could be an extension of that. The car sustained no damage. It’s a very real possibility she left it there by choice. Regardless, there’s no trace of her. That doesn’t mean we’ll be any less vigilant moving forward and if anyone has any information we encourage them to please call us at 555-3592.
WEST McCRAY:
May Beth keeps the car parked next to her place. The Chevy is old, but it still runs. She found a bill of sale in its trunk—not between Sadie and the Chevy’s former owner, but the Chevy’s former owner and the person who owned it before them. I got hold of the one who sold the car to Sadie, and she agreed to meet with me at a coffee shop in Milhaven, thirty miles outside of Cold Creek, to tell me about its buyer.
BECKI LANGDON:
She was real strange, you know. [BABY CRIES] Oh hush, now. You hush … come on now, your mama’s talking.
WEST McCRAY:
Becki Langdon—that’s “‘Becki with an i,” as she makes sure to point out in our email exchanges, despite the fact that it’s written out for me to see—is a bubbly brunette and proud mother to a baby boy. Becki’s time with Sadie was brief but she remembers her well.
BECKI LANGDON:
We—my ex-husband and I, that is—we were wanting to sell the car. It was mine, I’d had it for … God, since I was a teenager? But he had his own and we figured we could use the money for the baby, so that’s why we had it for sale. I really wish I’d kept it now because his sorry ass walked out right after Jamie was born and now my mom’s driving me everywhere.
WEST McCRAY:
Can you tell me what Sadie was like? Or did she say or give any indication what she wanted the car for?
BECKI LANGDON:
I mean, it was a pretty standard exchange. No reason for it to get personal. Except she called herself Lera. I thought she was older too. She sounded older in her emails.
WEST McCRAY:
Do you have those emails? I’d love to see them.
BECKI LANGDON:
No, sorry. Cops asked me the same but I deleted ’em. Anyway, I met her and she was awfully twitchy, had a problem talking. I was worried because I didn’t know if something wasn’t right in her head. I must not’ve been very good at hiding it because she got bitchy with me.
WEST McCRAY:
What do you mean “‘bitchy”?
BECKI LANGDON:
Like she was gonna back out. I showed her the car, she gave me cash and we went our separate ways. You think I was the last person to ever see her?
WEST McCRAY:
I hope not.