Chapter Eight
Amma. All this time I’d had little real interest in her. Now I did. What I saw at the farm kept my throat clenched. My mother said she was the most popular girl in school, and I believed it. Jackie said she was the meanest, and I believed that, too. Living in the swirl of Adora’s bitterness had to make one a bit crooked. And what did Amma make of Marian, I wondered? How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow. But Amma was a smart girl—she did her acting out away from home. Near Adora she was compliant, sweet, needy—just what she had to be, to get my mother’s love.
But that violent streak—the tantrum, the smacking of her friend, and now this ugliness. A penchant for doing and seeing nasty things. It suddenly reminded me of the stories about Ann and Natalie. Amma wasn’t like Marian, but maybe she was a little bit like them.
It was late afternoon, just before suppertime, and I decided to make a second pass at the Keenes. I needed a quote for my feature piece and if I couldn’t get it, Curry was going to pull me out. Leaving Wind Gap would cause me no pain personally, but I needed to prove I could handle myself, especially with my credibility faltering. A girl who slices herself open isn’t the first on the list for tough assignments.
I drove past the spot where Natalie’s body was discovered. What Amma deemed unworthy of stealing sat in a sad clump: three stumpy candles, long since blown out, along with cheap flowers still in their supermarket wrappers. A limp helium balloon in the shape of a heart bobbing listlessly.
In the driveway outside the Keene home, Natalie’s brother sat in the passenger seat of a red convertible talking with a blonde girl who almost matched his beauty. I parked behind them, saw them sneak quick looks, then pretend not to notice me. The girl began laughing animatedly, weaving her red-lacquered nails through the back of the boy’s dark hair. I gave them a quick, awkward nod, which I’m sure they didn’t see, and slipped past them to the front door.
Natalie’s mother answered. Behind her the house was dark and quiet. Her face stayed open; she didn’t recognize me.
“Mrs. Keene, I am so sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I really need to talk with you.”
“About Natalie?”
“Yes, may I come in?” It was a nasty trick to sneak my way into her home without identifying myself. Reporters are like vampires, Curry likes to say. They can’t come into your home without your invitation, but once they’re there, you won’t get them out till they’ve sucked you dry. She opened the door.
“Oh, it feels nice and cool in here, thanks,” I said. “It was supposed to peak at ninety today, but I think we passed that.”
“I heard ninety-five.”
“I believe it. Could I trouble you for a glass of water?” Another time-honored ploy: A woman is less likely to throw you out if she’s offered her hospitality. If you have allergies or a cold, asking for a tissue is even better. Women love vulnerability. Most women.
“Of course.” She paused, looking at me, as if she felt she should know who I was and was too embarrassed to ask. Morticians, priests, police, medics, mourners—she’d probably met more people in the past few days than she had the previous year.
While Mrs. Keene disappeared into the kitchen, I peered around. The room looked completely different today, with furniture moved back into the proper places. On a table not far away sat a photo of the two Keene children. They were each leaning on a side of a big oak tree, dressed in jeans and red sweaters. He was smiling uncomfortably, like he was doing something best left undocumented. She was maybe half his height, and looked determinedly serious, like the subject of an old daguerreotype.
“What’s your son’s name?”
“That’s John. He’s a very kind, gentle boy. I’ve always been proudest of that. He just graduated from high school.”
“They bumped it up a little—when I went to school here, they made us wait till June.”
“Mmmm. Nice to have the longer summers.”
I smiled. She smiled. I sat down and sipped my water. I couldn’t remember what Curry advised once you tricked your way into someone’s living room.
“We actually haven’t properly met. I’m Camille Preaker. From the Chicago Daily Post? We spoke briefly on the phone the other night.”
She stopped smiling. Her jaw started working.
“You should have said that before.”
“I know what a horrible time this is for you, and if I could just ask you a few questions…”
“You may not.”
“Mrs. Keene, we want to be fair to your family, that’s why I’m here. The more information we can give people…”
“The more papers you can sell. I’m sick and tired of all this. Now I will tell you one last time: Do not come back here. Do not try to contact us. I have absolutely nothing to say to you.” She stood over me, leaned down. She wore, as she had at the funeral, a beaded necklace made of wood, with a big red heart at its center. It bobbed back and forth off her bosom like a hypnotist’s watch. “I think you are a parasite,” she spat at me. “I think you are disgusting. I hope someday you look back and see how ugly you are. Now please leave.”
She trailed me to the door, as if she wouldn’t believe I was truly gone until she saw me step outside her home. She closed the door behind me with enough force to make her doorbell chime lightly.
I stood on the stoop blushing, thinking to myself what a nice detail that heart necklace would make in my story, and saw the girl in the red convertible staring at me. The boy was gone.
“You’re Camille Preaker, right?” she called out.
“Yes.”
“I remember you,” the girl said. “I was just a little thing when you lived here, but we all knew you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Meredith Wheeler. You wouldn’t remember me, I was just a little goofball when you were in high school.”
John Keene’s girlfriend. Her name was familiar, thanks to my mother’s friends, but I wouldn’t have remembered her personally. Hell, she’d have been all of six or seven last time I lived here. Still, I wasn’t surprised she knew me. Girls growing up in Wind Gap studied the older girls obsessively: who dated the football stars, who was homecoming queen, who mattered. You traded favorites like baseball cards. I still remember CeeCee Wyatt, Calhoon High prom queen from when I was a girl. I once bought eleven drugstore lipsticks trying to find the exact shade of pink she wore when she said hello to me one morning.
“I remember you,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re driving.”
She laughed, seemed pleased by my lie.
“You’re a reporter now, right?”
“Yes, in Chicago.”
“I’ll get John to talk to you. We’ll be in touch.”
Meredith zipped away. I’m sure she felt quite pleased with herself—We’ll be in touch—reapplying her lip gloss and thinking not at all of the dead ten-year-old that was to be the subject of conversation.