Janie Face to Face

CHAPTER TWELVE




Kathleen hadn’t finished her explanation for wanting to talk to her father about the three possibles, and Stephen was on his bike. He left Kathleen without a glance and without a word.

Her parents were right. The distance between Stephen and her hopes was too great. She was always putting a foot wrong, and it was always over Janie, whose history was an octopus—sticky horrid tentacles. “I was trying to help,” she said to the person who was no longer there.

“Some wounds don’t heal,” her father had said once, and Stephen Spring might never heal from the blows dealt his family.

Kathleen clung to her cell phone. Surely Stephen would call her back and tell her he was sorry and had acted thoughtlessly and would she please forgive him?

But he didn’t.

This was going to be his way out. He could extricate himself from his tiresome girlfriend and feel good about it—she would have been a traitor anyway. Nosing around in private family problems—bringing in the FBI—ruining Janie’s wedding!

Even if I do call my father, she thought, I don’t have anything to tell him. And what would Dad do next? There aren’t any next steps.

In her smartphone she had the Evernote photos of the preface and the Hannah list.

The other night, killing time, she had gone online, trying to find the same public records the researcher had used. But phone bills, water bills, electricity bills, cable TV bills—any bills she could think of—were not public.

Only property tax was public.

Kathleen easily figured out how to research the owners of buildings. Combining that with people searches, she had quickly established that the first possible Hannah did not own the building in which she lived, but she had been at that same address for twenty-two years. Before Janie had been born! Back then, Hannah would have been with the group. Even if she had resembled Hannah in any way, that woman couldn’t have been a possible.

How could the researcher have put her on a list, then?

The other two names didn’t show up on anything. Kathleen figured that if you were a renter and you moved a lot and you had a cell phone, not a landline, and you’ve never had a car loan, say, you wouldn’t show up. That fit with the marginal existence they figured Hannah would have, but it did not fit with Calvin Vinesett’s list. How did he get the names if the names weren’t anywhere?

She could think of one thing she’d like to do. But if she and Stephen were no longer a couple, who cared whether those women were Hannah? Who cared about anything?

The good person, she remembered from Mass, is a person who does not walk by. The good person gets involved and helps strangers.

But it didn’t help me! she shouted silently at God. When I tried to get involved, it wrecked everything.


Donna and Jonathan Spring’s house was only ten minutes from the bridal mall.

They all drove back to inspect the yard and discuss the reception. It was a big yard—the kind the kids would have enjoyed so much when they were little. But by the time the Springs had moved there, only Brian and Brendan were young enough to play in a yard. Brian never went outdoors if he could help it, and Brendan was so busy with organized sports at school that he rarely noticed the space behind his own house.

Huge maples and oaks towered in the neighbors’ property, giving wonderful shade and greenery to the Springs’ yard. The back-to-back neighbors had edged their property in yellow and gold daylilies. The neighbors on the left had a rose garden and the neighbors on the right had planted a row of weeping cherry trees. The Springs had grass.

“This will be lovely,” said Reeve’s mother, obviously surprised that anything in this wedding was working out to her satisfaction. “Don’t you think so, Miranda?”

“I do,” said Miranda obediently.

Jodie fixed a tray of lemonade and iced tea, cookies, chocolates, and fruit and brought it out to the deck. Miranda and Mrs. Shields sat on big comfy chairs. Mrs. Shields filled her chair. Miranda hardly made a dent in her cushion.

“Be right back!” trilled Jodie, making her getaway.


Janie was whipped. She had not expected the dress event to be so emotional. She had not expected to worry so much about Miranda. When she saw her dad, she summoned the energy to beam at him and he gave her the usual bear hug. “How’s my little girl?”

He always said that, as if he still thought of her as her missing three-year-old self.

“I’m good, Daddy. Mom is getting her bridal gown out to show me.”

He laughed. “You haven’t had enough gowns? You tried on so many! My personal fave was eight.”

“Jodie sent you photographs of each one?”

“Yup. Brian liked eight too. Stephen said he would settle for whatever you settled for, but that Kathleen liked nine.”

“Nine was gorgeous,” called Jodie, as if she and gown number nine had a long acquaintance. “Kathleen has good taste.”

“Is Stephen bringing Kathleen?” asked their father. “If he loves this girl, and she’s our next bride, we want her. Maybe Stephen can’t afford the airfare.”

“I think it’s more likely he can’t afford the implication,” said Jodie. “Bringing your girlfriend to your sister’s wedding is a statement.”

“Talk to him,” their father ordered her. “Tell him Mom and I will get Kathleen a ticket if he wants her to come.”

“You talk to him,” protested Jodie.

“He’d argue with me. He’d say he wants to be independent. Oh, and Janie, by the way, you have mail.”

Except for letters from Calvin Vinesett, Janie didn’t get mail. It was probably more of the book stuff.

Or maybe not! Maybe she was about to get her first wedding present!

But it was not either of these. It was a business envelope with the ESPN logo and a Charlotte return address.

It was not like Reeve to use the U.S. mail. He had gone through a greeting-card stage a few years ago, trying to convince Janie that he wasn’t so bad after all. He didn’t know what to say, so he let greeting-card poets try. Janie had not been impressed and told him so. Since then, all communication had been electronic.

Jodie and Dad were waiting for her to open the letter.

She felt a shiver of worry. No greeting cards existed for guys who wanted to back out. This very day, Mr. Shields had flown down to Charlotte. Janie knew what Reeve’s dad would be saying: that Reeve was too young. She knew what Lizzie had been saying: Janie was not stable. She had read all the posts on his wall. Marriage is for old guys. Your life is over, Reeve. She knew what his boss was saying: he still had to work sixty-hour weeks.

And his heart?

What would Reeve’s heart be telling him, now that reality was sinking in?

Was he saying, “Uh-oh. I actually asked a girl to enter my life for good. To live in my tiny apartment and share my toothpaste and credit card. Maybe I’ll just scribble a note, so I don’t have to say it out loud.”

He wouldn’t write Let’s not get married.

But he might write Let’s wait.

Please, no. I’m the one who can’t wait now.

She tore the flap on the long white envelope.


Brendan and Calvin Vinesett were in a narrow hall, behind the greenery at the back of the elegant foyer. Brendan could see the package room and the mailroom. He and the author sat on a narrow bench. In spite of its thick leather cushion, it was not soft.

Brendan’s brain was soft. For the third time Brendan said, “You’re telling me that you are not writing any such book?”

“Correct. And you’re telling me that at least three men have been interviewing your family and using my name,” said Calvin Vinesett. “I write about murders. They have to be complex and the killer has to be in prison. I deal with the drama that brought the victims and the killer together. I write about the lives of the survivors and how that played out during and after the trial. Of course I followed the Janie Johnson case. Who didn’t? But even if that kidnapper were caught, her story isn’t what my readers expect from me. I’m furious that some writer is hiding under my name. I’m even more upset that it worked. May I read the emails that this Michael/Mick gave you? Supposedly from me?”

Brendan handed them over. “I have a chapter too.”

Calvin Vinesett read the pages carefully, slipping each page under the other until he was back at the beginning. “Whoever wrote these, Brendan, is not much of a writer. Poor phrasing. Odd choice of words. A lot of repetition. This person gets a thought and sticks with it. I’m going to guess this person is a beginner who hasn’t published a thing.”

It’s Mom, thought Brendan, absolutely sick. I so don’t want Mom to be the one doing this. But why would Mom call her book The Happy Kidnap? Is it Janie she’s been mad at all these years? We’ve all been mad at Janie some of the time. But I thought we loved her too.

“And why,” Calvin Vinesett continued, “would any author tell a researcher to use a fake name and lie to the person he’s interviewing? You can’t use information obtained like that. It’s just gossip.”

If only his twin were here. Brian was so quick. Brian would figure this out; find the clues in the writing and the title.

“And finally,” said Calvin Vinesett, “this chapter? It’s practically hate mail. There’s something radically wrong here. I’m going to follow up. It is unacceptable that some third-rate writer is using my name.”

“How will you follow up?” asked Brendan.

“First, we want to find the computer where these emails originated. We need a subpoena to do that. But I’m not sure that a few pages of lousy writing will impress a judge. I have contacts with the FBI. This situation is distantly related to an unsolved kidnapping, so they might look into it. But it wouldn’t be high on their list.”

Brendan remembered suddenly that he had his own contact with the FBI.

When each of their children first got a cell phone, Mom and Dad had already filled the contact list: relatives, neighbors, and the three officials who had dealt with the kidnapping—the local police, the state trooper, and the FBI agent.

The Spring kids detested those entries, living inside their precious phones as if they might need the police again. Brendan knew that Stephen had deleted them all the minute he moved to Colorado.

But even though Brendan was on his fourth cell phone, having updated whenever he had the money, he always kept the numbers. Not because he cared, but because he and Brian were the youngest, and Mom, who paid their bills, kept tabs on their cell phone use, and that included knowing the contact list.

Brendan was reeling. If it really is my mother writing it, or Brian, I don’t want a judge or the FBI talking to her about her bad writing, or anything else. “Mr. Vinesett, wait a week, okay? Janie’s wedding is Saturday. In fact, I have to get home for all this stuff that my mother wants me to get done. I don’t want anything to hurt Janie’s wedding.”

“I couldn’t get anything done that fast anyway,” said Calvin Vinesett. He was grinning. “That is so great. After all that poor child suffered, she’s grown up and getting married? I wouldn’t have said she was old enough. I’ve lost track of the story, I guess.”

“She’s twenty. My parents don’t think she’s old enough either,” confided Brendan.

• • •

From the ESPN envelope, Janie Johnson drew out a single sheet of plain white paper, folded crisply in thirds. She unfolded it.

Out fell a single green maple leaf.

Reeve’s bad handwriting spread messily over the page. Remember the year we raked that huge pile of leaves? Remember how you fell down into the leaves and I fell down on top of you? Remember our first kiss?

Remember!

That year, the sugar maples lining their street in Connecticut had been a symphony of color. Yellow and red leaves had covered every blade of grass. She and Reeve had tumbled into the pile they had raked and, in the shelter of crispy color, had their first kiss.

She kissed the handwriting.

Jodie said, “Oh, blecch. You are so far gone, Janie!”

Their father was laughing. “Reeve is pretty far gone too,” said Jonathan Spring. “It’s summer, so no leaves are falling. He had to rip that leaf off some innocent tree. In a million years, I would never have thought of doing that.”

“Come in here!” yelled their mother. “I got the box out of the attic!”

“You better come too, Daddy,” said Jodie. “This is your bride we’re talking about.”

His face went all soft. “She was so beautiful,” he said.

“Don’t say it as if her beauty is in the past,” Jodie warned.

“Be right with you,” Janie told them, going into her bedroom.

The bedroom was stuffed with boxes from college and boxes from the Connecticut house from when Janie finished moving her parents to the Harbor and herself down here. It looked like the room of an organized hoarder. She was glad she’d never unpacked. Now they could just ship the stuff on to Charlotte. She hadn’t even labeled the boxes, thinking she would open them immediately. She had no idea what was in anything or whether she wanted it.

Most of the Johnsons’ books had been sold at the yard sale. There had been a huge old Webster’s dictionary that Frank had loved. For some craft project, Janie had once dried flowers between the pages of that dictionary. She mainly used an e-reader now.

She spotted a paperback, set the leaf carefully in the middle of the book, and balanced a heavy cardboard box on top of it. Pressure was supposed to draw the moisture out of the leaf and into the pages.

Maybe the leaf would dry out and she could frame it.

“Janie!” her sister yelled. “We’re ready!”


Jonathan Spring watched his girls. Such a treat to have all three of them together.

He had gotten used to missing Janie, but Jodie’s absence had been hard. He had not had a moment to talk to Jodie and find out about Haiti. Jodie was his scrappy one, quick to anger. There was a difference in her now. She seemed easier, somehow.

And Janie—he was at a loss to understand how Janie could have gone in literally two or three hours from that Michael guy to Reeve. Women were amazing. Michael turned out to be a sleaze, so Janie hopped a plane and took the old boyfriend back.

Sealed the deal too. No more dating.

Nope.

Marriage.

Jonathan Spring had studied that video. Reeve was the one who proposed. So there was no understanding men, either.

Basically, love was insane.

His eyes turned to his wife.

How tenderly, how carefully Donna lifted the long pink cardboard box that held her wedding gown, as if her life would break if she dropped it.

How anxiously and eagerly she peeled back the seal. Holding her breath, she eased the thirty-year-old gown out of its box.

Jonathan remembered how in love he had been then. Not the soft old love of thirty years. But the pulsing, breath-stealing love when every glimpse of your bride was treasure.

He had been praying that Janie would have the love he and Donna had.

Now he changed his mind.

He wanted the love Janie and Reeve had.


To Janie’s eye, the gown was a little tacky. It had too much tulle and too much sash. Too much ruffle around the neckline. But her mother was misty, soothing its lines with her fingers and caressing its satin with her palm.

Carefully they unfolded the gown, shaking it gently. It didn’t even need to be pressed.

We’re the same size, thought Janie. Because she really is my mother. I really did get my bones and my shoulders and my complexion and my hair from her. “May I try it on?” she asked.

“For sure I can’t wear it anymore,” said her mother. “I’m back in shape, but I’m not that back in shape!”

Janie slid into the gown.

Her father gasped. “Oh, Donna! I’m gonna break down. She’s you.”

Her mother did break down. “I was so happy that day. When I walked into the church and I saw your father wearing a tuxedo for the first time in his life, so nervous and standing so straight and swallowing so hard—oh, Janie! I wanted to fly down the aisle and hold him tight. It was all I could do to walk the way we did then. Hesitation step, it was called. I’ve always wondered about that. If you hesitate to walk down the church aisle, you better not go.”

“My name is Jennie,” she said, “and I don’t hesitate.”


Jodie wanted to laugh. The wedding gown was so dated. It was a dress an unsophisticated teenage girl would pick if she wanted to look like Cinderella. It fit Janie perfectly, and of course Janie would be cute in anything, but the dress was hopeless.

Next, their mother lifted from the box a circlet of gold leaves and beaded flowers from which a vast puff of tulle sprang out. It looked like a halo imploding.

Lovingly, she tucked Janie’s hair back, and adjusted the tulle around Janie’s head and shoulders. Donna Spring was weeping.

Jonathan Spring was wiping his eyes.

Jodie rolled her own eyes.

“I’m going to wear this instead,” said Janie.

“When?” said Donna. “Instead of what?”

“For my wedding. I’m going to wear your gown.”

Jodie was appalled. “But you chose such a lovely gown! Number seven was perfect. We pick it up tomorrow!”

“I can cancel that. I want my marriage to last. Mom and Dad’s marriage lasted. I’m going to wear the dress that started the good marriage.”


Stephen was dumbfounded by Jodie’s most recent message and photograph. Janie was going to wear their mother’s old gown?

Even to him—and his knowledge of fashion hovered around zero—that gown was from some other century.

But then, everything about a wedding was from some other century. Stephen tried to think only of weddings and flight plans. He might have just taken the biggest flight of his life, riding away from Kathleen.

He felt sick and shaky.

He thought of going to the Mug, because it was nearby and because coffee always settled him down. But he and Kathleen usually went together. The waitress would bring Kathleen’s mug to the table along with his, expecting them to meet.

He headed to Starbucks, feeling like a traitor.

Two times in an hour: traitor to Kathleen, traitor to the Mug.


Kathleen wandered in various boutiques. Considered various kinds of food. She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t face the photos of Stephen and the silly sweet souvenirs of dating.

After a while, she returned to the home of the second Hannah, the one thin enough to seem right, with the New York accent that seemed wrong. Stephen had not shown this woman the photographs. He had just asked if she knew Tiffany Spratt.

This time, the woman was standing in her doorway. She was very tall. She could not be Hannah, who was five foot five.

I am so stupid, thought Kathleen. The list of possibles really was just bait. There’s no link anywhere to anything.

She felt sick and embarrassed. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“You back?” said the woman. “What kind of scam you trying to pull?”

“Somebody is trying to pull off a scam,” said Kathleen. “I just don’t know who or why. I need your help.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

“But somehow, I think you are connected. May I show you a few photographs? Could you tell me if you’ve ever seen these people?”

The woman lit a cigarette. She barely glanced at the two photos.

Kathleen said timidly, “Could you really study them? In case maybe you worked with one of these women once, or lived nearby, or—I don’t know—were in a club with her or something?”

“A club?” repeated the woman contemptuously. “I never been in any club.” But she did take the photographs and she did study them.

Time passed.

The woman stood staring at Hannah young and Hannah old. Her cigarette burned by itself and the ash fell. Slowly she raised her eyes and stared at Kathleen.

The woman didn’t blink, didn’t even seem to breathe.

The glittering eyes looked crazy.

“I’ll keep these,” said the woman.

Kathleen was suddenly aware that it was late, and dark, and she was in a bad neighborhood. “Thanks for your help,” she said, and leapt onto her bicycle and fled.


Reeve was at home, sprawled in front of his television. He had muted the game and dozed through the wedding gown discussion, barely managing to match each photo on his cell with Janie’s verdict.

“Jennie,” she reminded him. “This is the third time tonight you forgot.”

Reeve clicked the TV off. Even mute, it was sucking up too much attention. “Listen, Janie,” he said. “I’ve loved you a long time, and the girl I love is Janie. I was with Janie when she went to New Jersey for the first time and saw her real family. I drove Janie there. I knew the same minute Janie did that her true name was Jennie. And I was there when she fled being Jennie, and turned away from the fact and the family of Jennie. She came home Janie still. It tore her heart in half.” He paused for breath. “As for my heart, maybe someday in my heart you’ll be Jennie, but if I could engrave a name on my wedding rings, it would be Janie, cut deep into the gold so I could trace it with my finger. So if I get the name wrong, and sometimes I still say Janie instead of Jennie, it’s because I love Janie. I love everything about her. Including the fact that her name isn’t Janie.”

When she and Reeve were finally off the phone, Janie repeated her names to herself: Janie Johnson. Jennie Spring.

In that old horror of finding that she was a kidnap victim—She! Janie! Child of Frank and Miranda Johnson!—she had clung to her Janie name as if to a life raft.

Slippage into the Spring family began the very first weekend she was there, and from the first she stomped it out, as if it were a spreading fire.

The Springs had surrendered on the name front, and they too called her Janie. When she left them, they wrote to her and telephoned her as Janie Johnson. How glad they would be when Janie Johnson no longer existed.

Perhaps there are actually two Janie Johnsons, she thought. There’s the creation of Hannah, a fiction born of crime. I never want to be that Janie again. But there’s another Janie Johnson. The happy girl who really was the daughter of Frank and Miranda. The good daughter. A person I’m proud of.

And now, for a few days, I am Jennie Spring. A name like ice on a hot day. A name that will melt and be gone. I will have been my real self for less than two weeks when I become a third person.

Jennie Shields.

A stranger. We haven’t met yet, because she won’t exist until I’m married. Jennie Shields. Even if my husband calls me Janie.

Janie found herself laughing and dancing.

Husband, she thought. Such a beautiful word.


Miranda Johnson and Mrs. Shields had left for Connecticut. Jodie and her mother were cleaning up the kitchen. “I’m afraid,” said Donna Spring.

Although their lives had been ruled by fear, Jodie had never heard her mother say such a thing out loud. “Afraid the flowers won’t come?” she said flippantly. “Afraid the weather will be bad?”

“Afraid for Janie. The theory is that a true crime book will shake loose information about the Javensen woman, but what if it actually shakes Janie loose?”

“She’s not hanging on by a thread, Mom. And Reeve is one of those protective types. Janie will be fine.”

“You know what amazes me?” said her mother. “Janie, with her tragic history, is not considering for one moment that tragedy could lie ahead. She sees nothing but joy ahead. It’s as if she didn’t learn anything from the past.”

“She learned everything from the past,” said Jodie. “She learned to put it behind her. She’s rejoicing in the moment. It’s what I learned in Haiti, Mom. The children and the nuns were so wise. They could rejoice in any tiny thing—the joy of seeing a friend approaching eclipsed the tragedy around them.”

Her mother was staring at her.

“What’s wrong?” said Jodie.

“Nothing’s wrong. You grew up, didn’t you? Haiti matured you.”

“I wasn’t immature before,” said Jodie irritably.

“Let’s not bicker.”

“I love to bicker,” said Jodie. “It’s why marriage is going to be a problem for me. Janie will agree with everything Reeve says and go along with everything Reeve wants, but I’d be bickering the whole time.” She giggled. “Still, I’m hoping to meet Mr. Right at the wedding. I’m looking for a guy who is adorable, strong, smart, launching an interesting career, and never bickers, because bickering will be my job.”


On his way home, Brendan drank in the city.

The rush of people, the cacophony of voices and horns and engines and construction and music, was strengthening.

He loved New York.

He strode down the sidewalks the way everybody else did: going fast, with a plan. His only plan was to get the express bus to New Jersey while everybody else was probably planning to conquer the world, but still. However minor it might be, he too had a plan.

It made him grin, and suddenly he was happy.

Once he was back in New Jersey, he dutifully looked at Janie in some puffy dress and said hi to Nicole and ate leftover pizza. He retreated to his room when the girls began a lengthy gown recap, and watched a game on his iPad on MLB.com.

I guess I’m going to be a spectator, not a pro, he thought. I think I can still be happy.

The word “happy” buzzed in his brain. The Happy Kidnap.

Brendan’s hair prickled.

His mouth dried out.

His heart raced.

From the very first reading, the writing had seemed female.

There were a lot of women to consider. His mother. Janie. Jodie. Miranda. Sarah-Charlotte. Lizzie. Kathleen.

None of them felt right.

But there was one other woman.

Hannah.





THE THIRTEENTH PIECE OF THE KIDNAPPER’S PUZZLE




All conditions were right. Witnesses, darkness, weakness—these tilted in Hannah’s favor. An older man, definitely not one of Boulder’s athletes, trudged up to the ATM Hannah was watching. He inserted his card, entered his numbers as if it took the last of his strength, took his card back, and counted the stack of bills.

He was afraid of Hannah’s knife. She was disappointed when he just gave her the wallet. He left the way he had come and she went the other way, peeling off her outer layer of clothing and her enveloping scarf. In a moment she was slim and beautiful and young again. Nobody could ever recognize her as the person at the ATM.

She was invincible.

Why had it taken so long to assert herself? Once she jettisoned that silly thing called caution, it was easy. She just had to act casual, as if she belonged, and of course, now that she was slim and beautiful and young again, she did belong.

When she got home, she counted the money.

She was beside herself. All that risk! All that planning! And the bills were just twenties. They hardly added up to anything!

She would have to do this over and over.

Which had a certain appeal.

She was not a person who wasted time. When she had a brilliant idea, she ran with it. By noon the next day, she had pulled off three more ATM events. People saw her knife and they gave her everything.

Safely back home, she counted her twenties again and again.

There were so many possibilities for this money. Yes, the original plan. But she was getting tired of the original plan. It was actually very hard to write all those pages. Each page seemed to say the same things she had said on the previous page. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t had the advantages other writers had. It was so unfair. But now she had new plans. She tried to sort out her plans, but they meshed and separated and wriggled around in her brain.

Somebody knocked.

Hannah froze. She had never had a visitor.

She picked up her knife. She picked up her shard of china.

“Jill?”

Somebody from one of her jobs was standing at her door?

Impossible. They didn’t have this address. She always gave a false address. She didn’t rent this place as Jill Williams, either.

Who could it be?

The FBI?

The police?

Hannah stood motionless, listening hard.

Eventually she heard the person leave. She crept out to see who it was. Some woman. Unidentifiable from the back.

Hannah Javensen followed.


When Hannah got home, she was so excited she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t reread her pages and polish them. She twirled in giddy circles, admiring her knife.

Several hours passed before she checked in with Adair. Everybody was going to the wedding. It was going to be super fun. They would meet at Adair’s and, in rented vans, drive to New Jersey in groups.

Wait!

It wasn’t in July anymore!

Those people had changed the date!

That Jennie/Janie was probably laughing at Hannah! Ha-ha! I got you! You thought you had until July.

Adair thoughtfully provided a map to the church.

Hannah read everything.

One post was particularly interesting.

—They’re not sure Janie’s dad can go, wrote somebody. He might not be well enough and have to stay in the nursing home and miss the wedding.

It wasn’t a nursing home. They didn’t have nurses at the Harbor. They had aides. Stupid Michael had told her everything about the Harbor. She even knew which elevator to take.

The word “harbor” was meant to imply that the institution created a safe harbor for its residents.

No, Frank, she said across the years and miles. It doesn’t.

She giggled, caressing a new plan. She was experienced now, because of that woman who tried to blackmail her. Using a knife was easy and fun.

And she had money. Where to drive? The wedding? Or the Harbor?

Choices, choices.