Janie Face to Face

CHAPTER ELEVEN




The saleslady was short and slim, her hair a distinguished gray. “Have we all arrived?” she cried. She beamed at Janie. “I hear you’re marrying the boy next door.”

“I am,” agreed Janie happily. “And here is the mother of the boy next door.”

Everybody laughed and air-kissed Mrs. Shields.

“And this is also my mother,” said Janie, moving Miranda forward a step.

“How delightful!” said the saleslady, bustling over. She offered one arm to Miranda and the other to Mrs. Shields, as if the three ladies were proceeding down an aisle. Which they were. An aisle packed with gowns, tiaras, veils, and slippers. “Blended families are such an example to us all,” said the saleslady.

Janie took her real mother’s hand. “Hi, Mom,” she whispered, tasting the wonderfulness of knowing that Donna Spring was her mom.

They entered a mirror-wrapped pavilion, with a little platform on which the bride could twirl. The three mothers and Jodie found places to sit.

“I don’t know where to start,” said Janie, suddenly nervous.

“Let’s not even look in the direction of all those gowns. You close your eyes, dear, and describe for me the dress of your dreams.”

Janie closed her eyes. She concentrated. She said, “White.”

“Excellent start,” cried the saleslady. “That lets out cream, champagne, and ecru! We’ve narrowed it down! Now! Shall we start with a traditional full long skirt that puffs out grandly?”

Janie thought again. “Um. I don’t know.”

“We’ll try on all varieties! I’ll bring the gowns. Each will be quite different. As you give me your opinion, we’ll narrow our choices! It’ll be such fun!”

She started with six gowns. They were all beautiful and perfect. Janie could hardly wait to try them on.

The first was so poufy she felt like a clothespin doll inside it. The second was so low cut Janie would have been embarrassed on the beach, never mind in church. The third, breathtaking when the saleslady held it up, was so heavily sequined that Janie was all glitter and no Janie. The fourth was short, tight, and sexy, as if weddings were nightclub acts.

As the saleslady unbuttoned her, Janie said, “Mom? What was your gown like?”

Both mothers began to answer.

Both stumbled to a stop.

Her Connecticut mother said, “She’s your mom, Janie. I’m just Miranda now.” And burst into tears.

Janie flung her arms around Miranda. How thin she was. Even her bones seemed thinner. She’s literally breakable, thought Janie. Everything I say and do can break her.

The saleslady stepped in, thinking she understood. “We have many brides with divorced parents. How lovely that you are so close to your stepmother.”

My parents didn’t divorce, thought Janie. All my parents stayed together. That’s what I want most in life. For my marriage to be as good as theirs.

At yesterday’s conference, with Reeve on Skype and Janie sitting in his office, Father John had discussed the Ten Commandments. He spent some time on “Honor thy father and mother.” It was a commandment that had ruled her life. But she had never known how to make it work. When she honored one set, she dishonored the other.

But what Father had read out loud was slightly different. It turned out that the commandments were not simply a list. They included details. Honor thy father and mother, that it may go well with you.

It will go well with me, Janie thought. It will go well with Donna and Jonathan Spring. But how can it go well with Miranda? I may be entering Happily Ever After, but Miranda will never see Happily Ever After again.

And I am abandoning her.


Kathleen caught up to Stephen and they walked their bikes.

They were approaching the Pearl Street Mall. It was a popular place, although Stephen never knew why. A lot of boutiquey stores with stuff nobody wanted or could afford. But he felt the need to rest. There was something about this book project that made him feel dense.

Kathleen walked by his side. Did he love or detest the fact that Kathleen liked to literally keep step with him? His cell rang. “Hey, Mom,” he said.

“Darling!” She sounded breathless. “I’m sending bridal mall photos.”

“Hey, great.” Stephen would never even look at anything so boring.

“Now, I’m just checking that you have your plane tickets, Stephen. I don’t want to pry into your financial situation, honey. Can you afford the tickets or shall your father and I get them for you?”

“I’m fine.” Kathleen could not hear his mother’s voice, but Stephen felt her hovering, wanting all information. Reeve planned to have somebody lean over his shoulder for the rest of his life. What if Reeve lived to be ninety? Had Reeve considered this? Seven decades of the same woman leaning over his shoulder?

“Are you bringing Kathleen?” asked his mother. “I don’t want her to feel left out, but of course it’s your decision, since we don’t even have a guest list. Which is ridiculous. A normal wedding, the hostess at least knows who was asked. Anyway, we’d love to have Kathleen.”

“I’m still thinking,” said Stephen.

“Honey bunch,” said his mother, as if he were a very little boy, “you have to get on the plane in about a minute. Time to decide.”

“I’ll get on it,” said Stephen. He thought of Calvin Vinesett instead. What kind of twisted person spent his life dipping into crime, tasting every drop of blood and capturing every broken hope?

Every time Stephen remembered their own true crime, he felt as if he’d just run a marathon.

And he had. Janie had given the Spring family a run that lasted a decade and a half.

And now she was going to be herself. Get married as a daughter of Donna and Jonathan Spring. But what she really was, was what Kathleen liked to call her. The kidnapette.

The streets of Boulder converged on Stephen, whispering, Hannah’s here.


Jodie’s heart turned over, watching her sister comfort a wasted, pale, exhausted old woman.

Right now, if I had to pick the person I admire most, it’s my sister, thought Jodie. Janie passed through the valley of the shadow of death. She suffered, everybody around her suffered, she caused suffering. She decided that the most important thing was love, and she loved the other parents. And now she’s decided she has enough love to go around after all, and she’s loving all of us, both her families, the ones who sinned against her and the ones who didn’t.

No wonder Reeve wants to marry her. He wants to snag her now, before a hundred other guys line up.

“You start, Mom,” said Jodie, so that Miranda would have another minute to pull herself together. “Tell us about your wedding gown.” Her parents’ wedding portrait hung in the master bedroom. Dad looked like somebody else—big and tall and very young with almost gaudy red hair. Painfully awkward in his rented tuxedo. And Mom was definitely somebody else—petite and girlish, with the kind of hairstyle women had had thirty years ago, which luckily nobody had anymore.

And the dress! Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong length, wrong style, wrong neckline.

“I loved my bridal gown,” said Donna, blushing and biting her lip like a young girl. “I was so proud of it. We had so little money, but I was just desperate to have a pretty dress. I saved and saved to buy it. It’s been in a special box all these years.”

The box was the size of a crib mattress. Through its clear plastic window you could see a square of white satin and a spattering of tiny spangles.

Jodie made a diplomatic move. “Mrs. Shields, I’m dying to hear about your gown.”

And Mrs. Shields was dying to tell. She started with Alençon lace and elbow-length white gloves, moved on to the veil and the train, and spoke fondly of the little crown of lilies of the valley. “The gown,” she added proudly, “was specially designed to show off my tiny waist.”

Jodie tried to imagine Mrs. Shields with a tiny waist.

The saleslady brought six more gowns for Janie, and again Jodie took pictures and sent them to Brian and Stephen. She briefly considered being fair and sending them to Brendan, too, but it was difficult to imagine Brendan caring.

That’s Brendan’s problem, she thought. He doesn’t care about anything right now.

• • •

At Pearl Street Mall, Kathleen and Stephen were sitting together on a bench, but he was not communicating with her. He was staring at his cell phone.

Okay, fine, she’d stare at hers. She had downloaded Calvin Vinesett’s biggest seller and was trying to get interested. But for Kathleen, reading was a big deal. She didn’t choose a book easily. She needed lots of recommendations before she embarked on a project like a book. She disliked fiction. If forced to read, she chose outdoor stuff—books about people who trained sled dogs for the Iditarod or hiked across Africa and waded past crocodiles.

Stephen offered her his phone. “I’ve been holding out on you. Jodie sent me a slew of photographs from the bridal mall.”

In her previous life, Kathleen would have looked at each photo and screamed, “Oh! My! God!” But the Springs did not swear. Therefore, she was on a swear diet. She had read a million times that you could not make your boyfriend into something else, so fine—Kathleen would make herself into something else. “Janie is beautiful,” Kathleen pronounced. “This gown is perfect. This is the most romantic thing I have ever seen.”

“Janie is beautiful,” he agreed. “I mean, Jennie.”

It struck Kathleen forcibly that even Janie’s birth family did not know who this girl was. Even her brother couldn’t remember her real name. It was not a joke that the groom planned to have the best man hold up a sign so he could read off the name of his bride. “Jodie, Janie, Jennie,” she said. “I hope you’re giving the guests scorecards.”

“Luckily, I have no function in this wedding except to show up.”

And me? asked Kathleen silently. Do I have a function? Do I get to show up? Out loud she said, “Every dress is gorgeous!” Her throat filled. What if I never get married? thought Kathleen. What if nobody really truly ever loves me that much?

She had never suffered. It was one of the gulfs between her and Stephen: the Spring children had suffered.

She had never lacked love or safety. Never been hungry, never been scared, never fended for herself.

There was only one thing Kathleen had not gotten in life: Stephen’s affection. He half loved her. Half wanted her.

In her heart and mind, she replayed the amazing video of Reeve and Janie, who fully loved and fully wanted each other.

“I think I’m going to Mass,” said Stephen casually.

Kathleen could not have been more amazed if he had said he was going to Russia. She herself was a lapsed Catholic, and Stephen, who had rarely missed church during his childhood, had been on break since the first week of freshman year at college. “May I come?” she asked.

Clearly he was trying to think of a way to refuse permission for her to go to church. There wasn’t one. “Okay,” he said gloomily.

“We could light a candle for Janie.”

“We could,” said Stephen. “But Janie will be okay. It’s Miranda who is doomed.”


The gown Janie chose was shimmery, with small cap sleeves and a double row of ribbon roses along the neckline. A hundred tiny silk-covered buttons ran down her back. The dress fit tightly and then flared below her waist into a tulip of satin. The skirt was very long in back, making its own train.

She looked so fragile and romantic that Jodie wanted to cry. She remembered the ghastly day more than five years ago when Janie had been forced to live with them and the FBI came to the house to interrogate her. Janie had been like a cornered animal. Dad had ordered the FBI to leave. “But the girl may have crucial information!” they protested.

“She was three,” said their father roughly. “She doesn’t have information.”

“She was living with the parents of her kidnapper!”

Janie had been trying to turn into upholstery.

Their father escorted the FBI to the door. It had felt right when he did, and it had felt right all these years, because the most important thing was to prove to Janie that she was back inside her loving family.

But it had been the wrong thing to do. If the FBI had gotten any clues from Janie, if they had kept at Frank, they could have caught Hannah back then and closed the book on it all.

Jodie thought of the book to come.

Impossible to consider a silly interview when she was in Haiti, surrounded by desperate children, starving mothers, ruined tent cities, cholera and filth. And yet the church and its work had been filled with good cheer. Sometimes she even wanted to be one of the nuns, her life’s purpose so clear: help the poor; worship God.

Other times she couldn’t even look at the nuns, and would tally up all they had missed in life—love and men and children and careers and competition and travel.

She hoped she was marked by her months in Haiti as deeply as Janie was marked by the kidnapping. Jodie wanted knowledge of that little country’s suffering to stay in her soul and guide her.

The saleslady cried, “Perfect perfect perfect for you, Jennie! A little loose in the shoulders. We’ll alter it immediately, and you can pick it up day after tomorrow. And how many bridesmaids do we have, dear?”

Jodie was sick of this saleslady.

Reeve’s mother was still discussing her wedding. “I had seven bridesmaids. Two flower girls. A maid of honor and a matron of honor. Of course, I spent a long time planning.”

Jodie was sick of Mrs. Shields, too. But then it occurred to her that the poor woman would never be very important to Janie. Janie had two mothers in line ahead of a mere mother-in-law. And Reeve didn’t strike Jodie as the type to put mommy first.

Janie said, “The maid of honor is my sister, Jodie.” She waved Jodie forward. “Whatever Jodie picks, we’ll get for the bridesmaids, too. So it has to be a style we can take away. We’ll have to phone everybody for dress sizes. Sarah-Charlotte. Eve. Reeve’s sister Megan can’t come. Lizzie will be here, but I don’t know whether Lindsay can come or not.”

Jodie had never heard of a girl named Lindsay.

“Reeve’s brother Todd’s wife,” explained Janie.

“Of course Todd and Lindsay are coming,” said Mrs. Shields. “After all, Todd is the best man. He’s so pleased that Reeve asked him, since Reeve has about two hundred best friends he could have chosen from. Todd is very emotional about being best man. I don’t know Lindsay’s dress size. She’s gained weight. She’s self-conscious. We’ll have to be delicate when we ask. As for Lizzie,” she went on, “she’s an eight. But she would never wear the kind of thing hanging on these racks. She has a very individual style.”

Whoo, boy, thought Jodie. Reeve, honey, stay in Charlotte. “Lizzie always looks smashing,” agreed Jodie, who had met the woman exactly once. “But in weddings, only the bride is an individual. The rest of us have to look alike. Janie, there are some just-above-the-knee sky blue dresses over there. See them? Simple, sophisticated lines. They’d look good on any figure.”

“Okay,” said Janie.

“And the gentlemen?” asked the saleslady. “Sky blue cummerbunds and so forth?”

“Gentlemen!” said Jodie, snorting. “They’re my brothers. They’re not gentlemen.”

“Ah, but they will be gentlemen during the wedding,” said the saleslady. “That’s what the clothing is for.”


Brendan followed Michael Hastings to his apartment. It was a fifth-floor walk-up and very tiny. That was the New York conundrum: pay a fortune and get practically nothing in return but the privilege of living in the city.

Brendan would do it in a heartbeat.

In the miniature living room was a futon bed that was supposed to double as a sofa, but Michael had not folded it up. The little dining table was also his desk. From the look of the kitchen—not a room, but a niche in the wall—Michael did not dine in.

That was another of New York’s virtues.

Restaurants.

Brendan was suddenly at peace with his failure in sports. There were other things in life. There was New York.

Michael was using a laptop computer in desktop fashion. He went to his emails and began printing. Brendan read each brief message as it printed out.

Calvin Vinesett’s messages were the introductory one; the one congratulating Michael on meeting Janie; the one promising to send five hundred dollars; and the one fascinated by the trust fund story. Calvin Vinesett sounded like a creep. He and Michael had been a good match.

As for Michael’s messages, Michael had been a failure as a researcher or Janie had been brilliant as a protector. The only faintly interesting information he had passed on was the name of the grandmother who set up Janie’s college funds. Other than that, the best Michael could do was the layout of Frank’s rest home.

Like a reader of a true crime book cared about slow elevators.

“Calvin Vinesett wrote you a check for five hundred dollars for this?” said Brendan. It looked like fifty cents’ worth of information to him.

“He paid cash.”

“So you got together with him?”

“No, I told you. We’ve never met. He sent cash in the mail. It was weird. But writers are eccentric.”

“Did he tell you to interview Mr. and Mrs. Johnson?”

“No. My job was Jane.”

Brendan walked down the stairs after Michael Hastings. He was thinking of that shivery chapter where somebody had followed Miranda Johnson around. Those pages had included Miranda’s thoughts. To know a person’s thoughts, you’d have to interview that person, and she’d have to tell you. Otherwise, you’d have to make it up.

Were Calvin Vinesett’s books made up?

Brendan thought about his mother’s creative writing class. Would Mom ask Calvin Vinesett to write a book? Or help her write one? If it was Mom, she was filled to the brim with wrath, and Brendan had never noticed.

But how much have I noticed in my family? he asked himself. I always figured it was their job to notice me. I wasn’t supposed to notice them.

He so didn’t want his mother to be the employer of a man who said, “My job was Jane.”

First, rule out Brian, he told himself.

Back on the sidewalk, Michael Hastings flagged a cab. Thoughtfully, Brendan watched him disappear. Then he called his twin. They were not the kind of twins who were on the same wavelength. In fact, Brian sounded astonished to hear from him. “Hey, Bren! What’s up? I’m getting wedding gown photographs from Jodie on my cell phone, in case I want to vote. You into that puffy one?”

“She isn’t sending me photos,” said Brendan, and realized that he was hurt.

His twin said, “Wait a sec. I’ll forward them.”

“No, this isn’t about dresses. Bri, you talking to this researcher?”

“No. Are you?”

Brendan skipped over that. “What’s that writer want, do you think?”

“A bestseller, I guess. Money. Fame. TV interviews.”

“It’s you, isn’t it?” said Brendan.

“Me what?”

“I’m your twin, Bri. You can’t fool me. You’re behind this. You’ve always wanted to be a writer. You’re exactly like Reeve at that radio station in Boston. You’ve got a story you can tell forever. And you’ve hired guys to get material for you.”

“Brendan, if I wanted to write our story, I’ve got all the material I could possibly need. The exact same material you’ve got. But why would I want to? Nobody in our family needs more of this nightmare. We need less of it. Anyway, Calvin Vinesett is writing it.”

“You’re supposedly going to summer classes, Brian. But I bet instead you’re writing your novel.”

“Calvin Vinesett doesn’t write novels, Brendan. He does true crime. It’s fact.”

“It’s fiction. It’s stuff. It’s people’s thoughts. Nobody can know what anybody else is actually thinking. So it’s made up, and you made it up, Brian.”

His twin sighed. “Bren, let’s not fight.”

“Let’s not sell out, either,” snapped Brendan, fully aware that he had sold out more than anybody during his three interviews.

“I’m not the writer,” said Brian. “I’m the fellow sufferer. But I’m in favor of a book. Might turn up Hannah. I just wish the timing weren’t so tricky. I want Janie and Reeve to have a safe wedding.”

People never wish a bride and groom a safe wedding, Brendan thought. Except in my family. “Safe” is our big word. He said, “We’re groomsmen.”

“Yup. Gotta wear tuxedos. I’m kind of excited. I didn’t ever go to a prom. So I’ve never worn one.”

“What’s our job? Seating the guests?”

“Yes. Plus lining up at the altar behind Reeve. We catch him if he faints.”

“I’d sure faint if I found myself at the altar,” said Brendan. Then he added, hoping his twin would talk about it, “Mom seems really happy.”

“She is. Which is a relief,” said Brian Spring. “You know, Bren, I kept having this weird feeling that Mom was somehow behind the book.”

Brendan remembered that they were twins. That they did sometimes think alike.

“I read some of Calvin Vinesett’s stuff,” said his twin. “He does gruesome mass murders and analyzes the victims and how they happened to be there and how they contributed to their own death, and he analyzes the killer and how the killer turned out to be what he is, and then he starts in on the police and where they failed and how they succeeded, and the personalities of the attorneys. Our story is so gentle in comparison. Nobody shed blood. And shedding tears isn’t exciting. Calvin Vinesett is mainly fascinated by the bad guy, but our bad guy is offstage. This book will be a real departure for him.”

“You think the book will hurt Janie?”

“Nah,” said Brian. “Janie’s too busy with the wedding. I think if Hannah got caught this afternoon, Janie would say ‘Oh, good’ and keep juggling her two sets of parents, which in a few days will be three sets, and going to the mall to choose china.”

Brendan thought, Let Janie have her wedding. Let Mom be the mother of the bride. Let all of us be together and let Reeve keep Janie safe.

He realized that he was praying.


Stephen and Kathleen walked to St. Thomas Aquinas. He did not explain why he suddenly wanted God.

Kathleen’s parents had a list of reasons for her not to stay with Stephen, and his failure to communicate was high on the list. “You need somebody you can discuss everything with,” her father said.

“I love Stephen, though.”

“I’m not sure he loves you,” her mother said.

Kathleen wasn’t sure either. On the other hand, he didn’t date anybody else and he always seemed glad to see her.

They entered the church. At home, weekday Mass was very early. It was thoughtful of St. Thomas to have theirs at five p.m. Kathleen imagined being a bride here. Being a bride anywhere.

She and Stephen slid into a pew. He put down the kneeler, got to his knees, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

Wow. He’s serious. Are my parents right? Is there too much space between what I believe and want and what Stephen believes and wants?

The Mass began and she could feel the intensity of Stephen’s participation.

The reading was the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. A man walking down the road was attacked by thieves who left him for dead by the side of the road. Two respectable well-to-do people walked on past, not wanting to get involved. The third person, a person nobody respected, stopped, and when he realized the victim was still alive, he got the man to an inn and paid for his care. So no matter how respectable you were, you weren’t the good guy unless you stopped to help.

Jesus did not address the problem of the robbers, who would shortly run out of money and want another victim. The next person who got attacked might be too old or too young to survive. The next one might die. Your truly good guy, in Kathleen’s opinion, would also have done something about the robbers.

“The Mass is over,” said the priest. “Go in peace.”

Kathleen was full of questions for Stephen, but she saw that he was going in peace. He had come here for something and he had found it.

Kathleen had silenced her cell phone when she entered, and now, with relief, turned it back on, as did everybody else coming out of the church.

Your truly good guy, she thought, would stop our criminal. Hannah. “Stephen, why don’t I call my father? I don’t think the three possible Hannahs mean anything, but they might, and my father—”

“What?” Stephen swung around hard and glared. “Your father? Meaning the FBI? Is that what you mean? You’re so greedy for details you’d go that far? Throw the FBI back into this when Janie’s wedding is almost here?”


When the surprise call from his twin ended, Brian Spring called Jodie. “So we’re closing in on gown number seven?”

“Yes.”

“And the reception is definitely in our backyard? That’s no fun,” said Brian. “When I get married, we are so not serving hot dogs in the backyard. We are reserving the country club, we are getting a great band, we will have a theme, there will be ice sculptures, we will dance till dawn, and people will get fabulous favors they cherish forever.”

“You have a candidate?” asked Jodie.

“No. Do you?”

“No, but Reeve is inviting every single boy he ever went to school with, was on a team with, or sat in the bleachers next to. I figure a great guy like Reeve has great friends, and my plan is that one of them will fall in love with me across the room and follow me around the nation.”

“You’re moving away already?” asked Brian. “You just got home. I haven’t even seen you yet.”

“I’m being romantic. Have you ever heard of romance?”

“It’s all I’m thinking about,” said Brian. “Reeve set the bar awfully high for the rest of us.”

“Mainly it’s insane,” said Jodie. “She’s twenty, they have no money, she’s dropping out of college, Reeve can take only three days off, there’s no honeymoon, and he can’t afford a ring, so he wants to tattoo one on her finger.”

Brian was laughing. “Mom around? Lemme say hello.”

Jodie handed their mother the phone.

Brian let his mother talk wedding talk. He had his own tuxedo from when he sang tenor in the high school concert choir, so he would not have to get there early to rent one.

“I can’t talk long,” said his mother. “We’re working on bridesmaid dress sizes. We’re going to have emergency alterations. Heard from Brendan lately?”

“We’re doing better,” said Brian cheerfully. “By the time we’re thirty, we might behave like twins again. Or bond at the wedding. Listen,” he said. “I don’t have any money to contribute, but I just want you and Dad to know that hot dogs on the grill won’t cut it. Janie needs more of a party.”

“I totally agree. Janie doesn’t know, and I’m not sure she cares, but we’ve found the only caterer in New Jersey willing to take on a wedding where nobody knows how many people will show up. The food will be fabulous.”


Conversation swirled around Miranda Johnson. Reeve’s mother, who for years had been Miranda’s dearest friend, babbled on and on. “Reeve is practicing using the name Jennie,” she said. “He hasn’t quite mastered it.”

Miranda hadn’t quite mastered it either.

She sat on her little tufted velvet bench and watched her daughter step out of gown number seven. Not my daughter, she reminded herself. Donna’s daughter.

Way back, in a misty past Miranda rarely allowed to surface, there had been another daughter. How thrilled she and Frank had been with their pretty little Hannah.

Their beloved daughter. Difficult from the day she was born. Nothing came easily to Hannah. Not sleep, not eating, not potty training. Not school, not friends, not piano, not softball.

The pediatricians had been comforting. “Every child goes at her own pace” was a favorite remark.

But Hannah did not have a pace. She just stood there while life flowed around her.

What hadn’t they tried? From horseback riding to tennis, slumber parties to Girl Scouts, public school to private school.

“She’ll come into her own” was another pediatrician’s piece of nonsense.

There were all these new syndromes today, like Asperger’s, that you never heard about decades ago when Hannah was growing up. Miranda had read extensively about these and their symptoms did not match hers. But if Hannah were a teenager today, Miranda thought some psychiatrist somewhere would be able to name her condition.

“It’s fine for a child to daydream,” the pediatricians would say.

Indeed, Hannah had loved to sit in a daze and tell her mother she was planning to be a yacht captain or a filmmaker or a spy or a poet. But she never did anything about a goal. She just sat.

If only they had known enough to bypass the pediatricians and go straight to a psychiatrist. But when a child is pretty and smiling and cooperative, what does a parent say? “There’s something wrong” was all she and Frank could come up with, and every doctor dismissed it, laughing.

Janie stroked the fabric of the seventh wedding gown, smiling as if she and the gown were friends.

Miranda had known that a wedding was not a likely outcome for Hannah. But she never dreamed that Hannah would drop out of college—a huge choice; a choice that seemed way beyond Hannah’s capacity to make—to join some quasi-spiritual group that hid her away for a few years and then sold her body on the streets for a few more. Miranda and Frank had fought in court for the right just to visit Hannah, who didn’t want to see them. They won. Hannah hated them for it. Her return home lasted less than a week.

Hate was not an emotion Miranda had ever felt, and to see it possess her daughter like the devil in some terrifying story could still reduce her to trembling.

When Hannah showed up all those empty years later with that lovely, sweet, chatty toddler, asking her parents to bring up her baby for her, Miranda had known that it was the one good act of Hannah’s adult life: saving her child from the life Hannah was leading.

Miranda also knew that when Hannah was back in her group, the group would want that baby again. So she and Frank changed their names and hid themselves and Hannah’s lovely child.

When the truth came out, Miranda was stunned.

Hannah had never had a good moment after all.

She had had only evil moments.

My daughter, Miranda would think, unable to fathom how this could be.

In the last few months, sitting in the parlor downstairs at the Harbor, often the only available activity, Miranda sometimes wondered if she and Hannah led the same life—just sitting, dreaming of things that could not be, pretending the past had a different shape.

When Miranda looked into the future now, there were only shadows. Frank was no longer a companion but a responsibility. She still loved him. But the man who had been her rock and her joy had mostly departed.

And now Janie had turned into Jennie and was moving a thousand miles away, and Miranda might see her once a year for a few days. And Donna would be kind, and the Spring family would be courteous, and life was over, really.

“Reeve keeps repeating his vows,” Janie was saying. “ ‘I, Reeve, take thee, Jennie’—as if some other bride might leap into my dress and take over.”

An inexplicable sense of horror paralyzed Miranda.


Brendan took the subway to the Upper East Side and the address he had found online. It was a big white-glove building whose large tasteful awning extended from the front door to the curb, so that residents getting in and out of limos or taxis would not have to deal with the weather. The two uniformed doormen, very spiffy-looking, were never going to let him in.

Nevertheless, Brendan walked right up.

“May I help you, sir?” asked one doorman.

“Sure. I’m here to be interviewed by Calvin Vinesett.”

They held the door for him.

Brendan grinned.

And the moment they opened the real door, Brendan knew that the next door would open too. After all, the man was writing a book about Brendan’s family. Calvin Vinesett had the notes from Brendan’s three interviews. Calvin Vinesett would explain everything and Brendan would feel at ease and the author would agree to let it drift until Janie was safely married.

The foyer was small and elegant. Mirrors and black marble, leather benches and immense green ferns. Smiling people at the desk also wanted to help him.

“I have an interview with Calvin Vinesett,” said Brendan. “Could you let him know Brendan Spring is here?”

“Of course.” The concierge picked up her house phone, called the apartment, and then frowned slightly. “He doesn’t remember scheduling anything,” she said.

“Tell him I’m Janie Johnson’s brother Brendan.”

“It’s Janie Johnson’s brother Brendan,” repeated the concierge. Then she handed the phone to Brendan.

“I’m sorry,” said a deep voice. “I don’t know the name.”

The author of the book did not know the name of his subject? “The kidnap book you’re writing?” said Brendan. “Janie Johnson? The face on the milk carton?”

There was a long silence.

The deep voice said, “I’ll be right down.”





THE TWELFTH PIECE OF THE KIDNAPPER’S PUZZLE




Every day, sometimes ten times a day, Hannah checked Facebook. Everybody else out there had a life. Success. Friends.

Every day, sometimes ten times a day, Hannah counted her money. Every day it dwindled. The day came when there was none left.

She lay down in the nest of old coats she kept on the floor, when it seemed easier to be a cat or a dog instead of a person. She did not awaken until morning, when her alarm rang. She had to work at the Mug.

The Jennie/Janie would never have to bus tables.

Hannah struggled to her feet. She wanted to curl back up in the nest. But without money, she could not keep even this miserable excuse for a home.

She could take no comfort in her brilliant plan. Without money, it could not proceed.

She took a quick peek at Facebook before she left for the Mug. Adair really did have 476 friends and they all had posted. They all had something to say about the wedding.

What wedding?

Hannah scanned the material.

That parent thief was getting married in July!

She remembered her very first plan, when she had been sitting on a stool at an ice cream counter. When she decided to show a stupid smiling three-year-old that not everybody was a friend.

The plan had not worked.

Everybody was the Jennie/Janie’s friend.

Except me, thought Hannah Javensen.

She thought of a white gown spattered with red blood.

The alarm rang a second time, the way she had programmed it to do. She had to run all the way to the Mug, and when she got there, the owner was very rude, lying that Hannah was not clean and she smelled. They wouldn’t let her bus tables because they pretended she would upset the customers. But they would let her do the dishes, because they had nobody else.

She hated that word, “let.”

Customers came in and out of the Mug at warp speed, throwing coffee down their throats. The owner kept snapping at Hannah to work harder. Nobody cared how difficult her life was. In the tiny kitchen, next to the huge sink, Hannah opened the dishwasher to load it with juice glasses and mugs and oatmeal bowls. Each glass was slippery. Each plate was heavy.

The owner was yelling now.

Hannah was already going as fast as she could.

Mug after mug had to be turned upside down, and the silly handles jiggered so they fit against each other. She repositioned a dark red mug with navy blue writing.


Stephen Spring


One of those red rabbits had been here? In her space? In her life?

She flung the Stephen Spring mug against the tiles of the floor. It shattered into sharp nasty triangles, long and thin, that you could cut a person with.

Yes! She would! She would show them!

She took a second mug and threw it harder, and then a glass. Shards flew around the floor and sparkled on the tiles. She emptied the dishwasher, throwing, throwing, throwing. It was wonderful. Sound and glitter and smash!

The owner and the prep cook walked her out the back door, their shoes crunching on the glass and china. They deposited her in the alley among the trash cans. “Don’t come back, Jill,” said the owner. From her voluminous apron pocket, the owner pulled out cash, paying Hannah what she was owed and not one dime more. That woman didn’t even care that Hannah had to face next week and the week after that!

The cook usually left the back door open to get fresh air into the tiny kitchen. But they closed it this time, and she heard it lock, and she was alone with the garbage.

She opened her hand.

The longest, thinnest, sharpest piece of Stephen Spring’s mug lay in her palm.