“I should have put all that aside that day. She was reaching out, and I shut it down,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “Like it was more important to be right. I never imagined that would be the last time I’d see her, but it was. Complete silent treatment. They call it ‘ghosting’ someone now, to go cold like that. Can you believe there’s a term for it? It shouldn’t exist at all!” Clara handed her a napkin, and Rebecca dabbed at her eyes. It came away black with mascara.
“A couple years go by, and next thing I know, the Yellow Springs police are at my door. And the local media is having some field day about her dodging a divorce settlement, uprooting her kids. And none of it sounds like Kristin. Then I heard about this.” She tapped her finger on The Color-Blind Gazette she’d laid on the counter. “This is the first thing I’ve read that makes any sense, and that terrifies me. I’ve been pleading with the police to look more closely at Paul, and I can’t tell whether they think I’m a quack, or what. They keep coming back at me with questions that have nothing to do with him. Did she ever discuss having tried to find our real father? No, but I sure wish she had. Did I know anything about her visiting our mother, unannounced, the day before she disappeared? No, but I sure wish I did. I feel like a dolt.”
Clara wasn’t sure she agreed that the questions had nothing to do with Paul, nor did she like this fleeting glimpse into the investigation’s direction—or lack thereof. “I just wanted to talk to someone who really knows my sister,” Rebecca continued. “I just wanted to talk to someone who would make me feel like I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” Clara said. Her coffee had gone lukewarm, though she hadn’t really wanted it anyway. “But there’s not much else I can tell you. Kristin and I were friends—we talked a lot, our kids played, we swapped books and recipes—but in hindsight, I’m not sure I really knew her.” Clara had had plenty of time to reconsider the terms of their friendship. “She was like a master of friendliness through nondisclosure—always asking about your holiday plans, or what you thought about the new school policy, or how you were feeling after that flu took out the whole block. She was funny, she was warm, she was great to be around, she was a devoted mom, and ninety-five percent of the conversations we ever had were completely superficial. She was just so good at it that they didn’t feel that way.”
“What about the divorce?”
“It seemed to roll off her back. Although that part … I’m not sure that part was an act.”
“She was happy to be escaping.”
“I never thought of it as ‘escaping’ until—” Clara caught herself. “Until recently. But yes, I suppose so.”
“It’s classic behavior, in a violent or controlling relationship, to isolate someone from her friends and family.”
“I know.” Clara did know. But had Paul isolated Kristin from Rebecca, or had a wedge simply come between them in those difficult years? Either seemed possible.
“He couldn’t isolate her from you—you were right next door. Maybe that’s why they seem to think you knew her best. But now I’m here, and you tell me you didn’t know her at all.” Rebecca looked as if she might cry again. Clara wished she could comfort her. But she also couldn’t help but feel that Rebecca should have had this out with Kristin long ago. And that now, yes, maybe it was too late. She wondered uneasily how Kristin would feel about the women sitting here having this conversation.
“I want to help you make peace with this,” Clara said carefully. “But I’m not sure I can.”
“I took the paper down to Xenia, to the hospital,” she blurted out. Clara froze. “One of the nurses took pity on me, agreed to talk on her lunch break.”
“And?”
“She didn’t know anything about Kristin, never met her. But she said Paul is a favorite among the patients. Women get distraught if he isn’t on call when they go into labor.”
Clara frowned. It figured.
“She said something about his relationships with them struck her as oddly narcissistic, though. Almost as if he gets off on bringing babies into the world, acting out some kind of God complex. She said he was noticeably colder when their husbands were around.”
“Did she tell the police so?”
She shook her head. “She emphasized that hers was a minority opinion. And she values her job too much. But I told them what she told me, though I’m not sure that means anything.”
“Have you tried to talk to him?”
She shook her head. “I came to try to see Kristin last year. Paul turned me away. I asked him to promise to at least tell her I’d been there, and he only laughed. I have zero reason to think he’d be forthcoming with me now. And frankly I don’t want to see him.”
Clara hesitated, an idea suddenly occurring to her. Maybe some good could come of this visit after all.
“Don’t ask me why—I don’t actually know why—but Paul invited me to look around, to see if anything was amiss.”
“And?”
“There was this book. The cover of an old one, actually. I Can Do It! With a red fox on it?” Rebecca looked at her blankly. “It was something Abby used to take with her everywhere. It seemed odd that it had been left behind.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“You have to understand that I have children of my own and I live right next to that man,” Clara said, forcing conviction into her voice. I’m trying to pass the baton here, she wanted to scream. Kristin was Rebecca’s responsibility by blood. Surely blood trumped proximity.
“But it might help Kristin if—”
“Mom! She’s trying to knock down the walls!” Maddie let out a cry and came running, her little bare feet pounding the tile. Clara bent to scoop her up and hugged her daughter to her, shooting a warning look toward Thomas before turning back to Rebecca.
“If you can find a way to tell them without involving me, please do. That’s why I’m telling you.” She smoothed Maddie’s hair. “I’m just as concerned as you are. But I don’t know if anything we do or don’t do can actually help Kristin now.”
Rebecca stared at her, looking despondent. “Please don’t say, ‘We just have to hope she helped herself.’”
“Okay.” It was exactly what she’d been about to say.
Maddie placed her tiny hands on Clara’s cheeks and pulled her face up close. “Poop,” she said, blue eyed and earnest.
Rebecca laughed dryly. “My thoughts exactly.”
21
If I told you I felt trapped, you’d probably doubt me. Trapped by your own decisions, maybe, you might tell me. Take steps to change things. Ask for help if you need it. Speak up. Be a grown-up. “Use your God-given brain” was always a favorite admonition of my mother’s.
I’m not self-possessed enough to say you’d be wrong. I can take constructive criticism. I get a lot of it from myself, in fact.
There are all kinds of traps, for all sorts of purposes. Animals, people, even whole societies walk right in. In our defense, by the very nature of most traps you can’t tell you’re in one until it’s too late. So you really shouldn’t point fingers from the outside the way you do. It could be you, you know. And sometimes there really is no way out. At least, not by breaking through its ironclad engineering.
You have to outsmart the thing.
Most people who try, fail. At worst, they pay the consequences. At best, they’re simply out of options.
Either way, they’re out of luck.
22
While we do sympathize with buyer’s remorse, items showing any sign of wear and tear are not returnable, with or without tags and receipt.