News Anchor and Investigative Journalist, 3 News Boston WFYT-TV
If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.
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“That saying is pretty funny.”
“Words to live by. It’s an old journalism maxim my first producer used to say. It means familiarity and history do not excuse you from checking and double-checking your sources. Never be content with what you’re told. Always dig.”
I tilt the card in my hand. When she leaves, I will tape it to a page inside my notebook. “Even when everyone’s telling you to be content?” I ask.
“Especially when everyone’s telling you to be content.”
I look toward the sun. “I should really hit the trail. I want to get in and out before dark.”
“I imagine you would. Pardon me for saying this, and I’m sure you’ve heard it ad nauseam, but you are a remarkably brave person. Most people in your circumstances would never want to see the woods again, never mind a crime scene that could have been their own.”
Person instead of GIRL. And she called me a woman, too, before. It’s like she knows I’m not a GIRL anymore.
Paula’s face softens. “I’ve angered you. Forgive me for being so direct. It’s an occupational hazard,” she says.
“I was just thinking. I space out like that sometimes. Actually, I’m okay with directness.” I get quiet again, not sure what else to say. Paula looks at me searchingly for so long, I feel compelled to fill the silence.
“What I mean is, it’s a nice change. Pretty much everyone treats me like I’m a porcelain doll,” I explain.
“That must be unbearable,” Paula says, sympathetic but not patronizing. Which is nice.
I shrug. “I can’t blame them. What happened to me was scary. And it scares them. So they act weird.”
“You deserve to be treated like a normal person.”
I gaze at the trail, thinking about that. Mom would have me banished to the countryside. Ricker wants to shape me to fit the textbook trauma victim. But Paula thinks I should be treated like a normal person.
Wind stirs the few stubborn beech leaves clinging to branches.
“Part of it, I think, is that they’re afraid I’m going to spill lurid details of what happened to me. When mostly, I just ran and hid and ran,” I say.
Paula eases backward to sit on the entrance step, resting her forearm on one folded leg, the other extended luxuriously. Like me, she takes up a lot of space. “You must get angry,” she says.
“Technically, I no longer have an object to be mad at. Donald Jessup is dead. His mother is an old hoarder who lives in a house with petrified dog poop covering the front lawn. I can’t exactly take out my anger on her, even if she did spawn Satan. There’s really no one else.”
“No?”
I work my mouth into a corkscrew.
“Sit,” she says as she pats the stone stair next to her. “You were saying?”
I sit. “The only other person is Liv. And I can’t blame her. She’s the other girl who was with me, in the woods,” I tell her.
Paula smiles. “I know who Liv is.”
I laugh a little. “Yeah, you do. You probably know more about her than I do.”
“The girl who got away,” she says slowly, resonant.
“She ran away. Anyone would have.”
“And you’re the girl who got caught.”
I smile ruefully. “For a while.”
We stay this way for seconds, then minutes. The distant roar of Route 93 is cotton to my nerves. Paula smells like vanilla and lemon. It doesn’t feel like I’m sitting next to someone you can see on TV any given night. It feels like I’m sitting next to an aunt, if I had one. Or a girlfriend of my mother’s, if she had one.
“Can I be honest?” she finally says.
My heart trips a little.
“If I were Liv, I would have run too. I could never do what you did.”
“But you get why I did it?” I ask.
“I totally get it. I might seem old to you, but I remember what it was like, being young and having a best friend.” She moves a bit of hair behind my ear. It’s a little weird, and a lot like what Kellan did last night. Again, I don’t dislike it. “You’re probably closer than sisters. I imagine an experience like this, horrific as it was, bonds you for life.”
I stand and throw my pack over my shoulder. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I really need to get going.”