“Didn’t ask you what you want.”
I take the picture out and hold it right in front of his fucking face because it’s already pretty clear that I have to do this differently than I did it with Ruby. What’s that saying: better to ask forgiveness than permission?
But I’ve never been good at saying sorry either.
“D-do you know this m-man? I n-need to know where t-to f-find him.”
Caddy laughs and shoves past me, his bony shoulder slamming into mine, forcing me into a graceless backward shuffle. There’s something confident about the way he moves his body for a guy who can’t be a buck twenty soaking wet. I try to memorize it, the way his shoulders lead.
“I’m not goddamned Missed Connections.”
“I can p—I can pay.”
He stops and turns to me, running his tongue over his teeth as he contemplates it. In one quick clean stride, he closes the space between us and rips the photo from my hands. If I’d clutched it any tighter, I’d still be holding half of it. My first instinct is to make for a grab back, but I catch myself in time. Sudden movements don’t seem like they’d work in my favor.
“What do you want with Darren Marshall?”
I try not to wear the shock of this name on my face. Darren Marshall. So that’s what Keith’s calling himself now. Or maybe Keith was the name he gave himself when he lived with us and Darren is his real name—part of me wants that to be true. There’s something about peeling back a layer this fast that feels good. I haven’t felt good in a long time.
Darren Marshall.
“I’m his d-daughter.”
“He never mentioned no daughter.”
“W-why w-would he?”
He squints and holds the picture up in what little light there is and the long, loose sleeves of his shirt creep down enough for me to see a constellation of track marks on his left arm. May Beth used to tell me it’s a sickness and made me tell Mattie the same thing, but I don’t believe it because people don’t choose to be sick, do they? Show a little compassion for your sister’s sake. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Like my junkie mother’s addiction was my personal failing because I couldn’t put my compassion ahead of all the ways she made me starve.
“Got somethin’ to say?”
He knows exactly where I’m looking.
“No.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” He smiles faintly and gets close to me again. “Is it a money thing? You didn’t give a fuck after he left but now you’re hungry, that it? Why you think a man owes you more’n the life he gave you, huh?” He quiets for a moment, studying me. “Gotta say, kid, I don’t see much of a resemblance.” I raise my chin and he chuffs softly, slightly incredulous as his gaze returns to the photo. “You ever heard of a fool’s errand?”
Fool’s errand. Noun. I think. Like chasing after nothing, but sometimes nothing is all you have and sometimes nothing can turn into something. And I’ve got more than nothing. I know the guy in the picture is alive. If he’s alive, he can be found.
I grab the picture from Caddy. “Then I’m a f-fool.”
“I knew Darren but he hasn’t been around in a long damn time. Might know something about that too,” he says, and my throat gets tight because like I said, I can hear a lie a mile away.
Caddy isn’t lying.
“It’ll cost you,” he adds.
“Already s-said I’d p-pay. How m-much?”
“Who said anything about money?”
I grab the picture back and he grabs me by the arm and the surprising grip of his spider-leg fingers makes me want to separate from my skin just so I don’t have to feel it. The heat of him. A door slams somewhere beyond us. I turn my head to it.
There’s a truck, a big black dog of a thing idling in the dark. A girl runs toward it. She’s small in a way that reminds me of Mattie, and I stare at her tiny body, made of tiny bones, watching as she comes to a halt at the passenger’s side. She stares at it for a long, painful moment and there’s nothing I can do to stop what happens next. I watch as this girl, who isn’t Mattie, pulls the door open. The cab of the truck lights up briefly as she climbs inside. She closes the door. The truck’s interior lights dim, swallowing her whole.
Caddy digs his fingers into me, his nails sharp.
“L-let m-me go.”
He lets me go, coughing into his elbow.
“It’ll cost you,” he says again.
He tilts his head to the side, his eyes drifting over me and then—a little more tentatively than he did the last time—puts his hand on my arm and walks me farther into the darkness. He brings himself closer to me, fumbling for his belt buckle, whispering the kind of nothings in my ear that can’t even pretend to be sweet. His breath is sour. I look into his eyes and his eyes are red.
THE GIRLS
S1E1
WEST McCRAY:
The first half of the photos in May Beth’s album are only of Sadie. She was a small, happy baby, with brown hair, gray eyes and healthy pink skin. She didn’t look anything like her mother.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Sadie was the spitting image of Irene and Claire couldn’t stand it, and if you saw Claire with Sadie, you’d wonder why she’d even have a baby in the first place. She hated holding her, nursing her, soothing her. I’m not being dramatic. She. Hated. It. I loved on Sadie best I could, but it was never enough to make up for what she wasn’t getting from her mother.
WEST McCRAY:
Who was Sadie’s father?
MAY BETH FOSTER:
I don’t know. I don’t think even Claire knew. She said his last name was Hunter so that’s what she put on the birth certificate.
WEST McCRAY:
According to May Beth, Sadie had a lonely childhood those first six years without Mattie. Claire’s addiction superseded all affection, and left her daughter attention-starved.
Sadie was also painfully shy, due to the stutter she developed when she was two. There was no clear cause. It might have been genetics. Hereditary. No other members in Sadie’s known family stuttered but her paternal side is unaccounted for. May Beth unearthed a recording she made when Sadie was three; we had to hunt down a cassette player to listen to it.
MAY BETH FOSTER [RECORDING]: You wanna talk into the recorder, honey? [PAUSE] No? I can play it back for you and you can hear what you sound like.
SADIE HUNTER [AGE 3] [RECORDING]: Th-th-that’s m-magic!
MAY BETH FOSTER [RECORDING]: Yeah, baby, it’s magic. Okay, talk into right here, just say hi!
SADIE HUNTER [RECORDING]: B-but I w—I want t-to, I w—I— MAY BETH FOSTER [RECORDING]: We just have to record it first.
SADIE HUNTER [RECORDING]: B-but I w-w-want t-to hear!
WEST McCRAY:
Sadie never outgrew her stutter. Early intervention likely could have helped, but May Beth never managed to convince Claire to take action. School turned out to be a special sort of hell for Sadie. Children aren’t kind about things they don’t understand and, in May Beth’s opinion, Sadie’s teachers also lacked a certain understanding.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Sadie turned out good in spite of them, not because of them. They thought that stutter meant she was stupid. That’s all I’ll say about that.
WEST McCRAY:
Forty-four-year-old Edward Colburn has never forgotten Sadie. He’d just started his career as a teacher at Parkdale Elementary when she came into his class. Parkdale, as I mentioned, is forty minutes away from Cold Creek, and buses in students from outside towns so they can go to school. This is how Edward remembers his former first grade student: EDWARD COLBURN:
She was teased by her classmates because of the stutter and that caused her to withdraw.… We did our best to meet her needs, but you have to understand Parkdale has always been two things: underfunded and overcrowded. Add to that a mother who was largely unreceptive to any of our concerns and, well. It’s not a recipe for a child’s personal success. And it happens more often than you’d want to think, not only in economically depressed areas. Sadie was a very adrift, remote child. She didn’t seem to have many, if any, interests of her own. She was reserved, but it was more than that … I’d almost say she was vacant.