I must’ve made myself say it a hundred times a day—Joseph is dead—until one day maybe I’d start believing those words, too.
There were cupcakes for my birthday, chocolate ones with chocolate icing, just like Momma used to make. In the days leading up to my birthday, Paul and Lily Zeeger drove from their home in Fort Collins with Rose and Calla in tow. I wasn’t allowed to see Calla anymore, wasn’t allowed to touch her, and so she and Paul, they stood outside, on the front lawn of that group home, waiting for Big Lily and Little Lily, waiting for Rose. But I could see her through the window, how Calla had grown so big. How she was walking. From time to time Paul tried to scoop her up into his arms, but she pushed him away because by then, Calla was over a year old and didn’t want to be held. I watched as she wobbled around the lawn and once or twice or three times, fell to her hands and knees on the dirt and then popped right on up again like an old game of Whac-A-Mole. But there Paul was every time, ready to wipe the dirt off her knees and see if she was okay. I could see it now, though I couldn’t see it before: Paul was a good daddy.
Big Lily gazed at me from across the living room and said, “If only I’d have known...” and just like that, her voice drifted off and tears settled in her pretty eyes. “Your letters...” she said, and then, “I thought you were happy.”
Mrs. Wood longed for babies. She deserved her more than me. And she’d care for her, for Calla, for Ruby, better than I ever could. I knew that for sure. I knew that my being there, in that home with them, was problematic for Mr. and Mrs. Wood. I heard them talking about it all the time, Mr. Wood talking about police and jail and getting arrested. And I didn’t want to cause any trouble, not for them, for Mrs. Wood, who had been so kind.
But I never stole any ring.
Those detectives, they found fingerprints on the knife, on the bedroom doorknob there in that Omaha home, fingerprints that were not mine. Didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say; they knew the truth.
I wondered if Matthew knew about fingerprints. I wondered if he left them there on purpose so I couldn’t take the blame.
And the Zeegers, well, they refused to press charges about the kidnapping, though I wanted them to. I wanted someone to take the blame for what had happened. But they didn’t. They decided, what with Momma dying, and me getting stuck with Joseph for all those years, I’d been through enough. But they said I wasn’t allowed to see Calla, not then, not ever again, only through that living room window when they brought Lily to see me. I got to see Lily twice a year, just two out of every 365 days, and only ever supervised visits, which was why Big Lily was always there, in the room with Lily and me, and sometimes Ms. Adler and sometimes Nan and Joe—in case I tried to grab Lily and run. Seeing that lady, Kathy, that was supposed to be my penance, too, but as it was, I liked talking to Kathy a lot. It wasn’t punishment at all.
One day, out of the clear blue, Ms. Flores had shown up in that jail and told me I was free to go. But not free to go anywhere I chose. No, she said, I was still a minor. And being a minor meant I was still a ward of the state. And she smiled with those big horse-like teeth of hers, a smug look like the very fact that I was still a prisoner made her as happy as pie.
It was then that Ms. Amber Adler picked me up in her junker car with the too-big Nike bag and drove me to the group home, and there, helped me settle into a big blue bedroom that I would share with three girls. She said, “If only you would have told me, Claire,” and just like Big Lily, her voice drifted off and her eyes got sad. But then she told me she was sorry for what happened, like it was her fault or something, what Joseph was doing to me. She said she should’ve made unannounced visits, or talked to my school teachers herself. Then she would’ve known, she told me, she would’ve known I wasn’t going to school. “But Joseph...” she said, letting her sad voice wander off for a minute or two. “I thought...” and she didn’t have to finish that sentence ’cause I knew what she was gonna say anyway. Joseph, she thought, was kind.
“A perfect fit,” she’d said that day I went to live with Joseph and Miriam. Blessed and fortuitous.
Cursed and damned.
But they never found Matthew. They had the fingerprints from the knife, the door handle, but nothing to compare them with. They asked me questions, lots of questions. About Matthew. About Matthew and me.