Like my mom had predicted, it was good to be a strong influence in Olive’s life, and as she grew up I grew closer and closer to her. I never missed a birthday, and every year I bought her a chocolate cupcake, replacing the fondant butterfly with a Lego Star Wars figurine. Saskia asked me not to buy the ones with the little, detachable helmets—choking hazard—but seriously, our parents never worried about stuff like that and we all made it.
Olive’s eyes were a deep, inky indigo, a feline curve to the edges. She was chubby as a toddler with wrinkles at her wrists and thighs that looked like she’d wrapped her legs in hair elastics. Whenever I went to HP’s house to see her, she’d be dancing to tunes from The Little Mermaid or clapping homemade play dough between plum-thick fingers. She ran right into my arms the second I arrived.
At Christmas three years back, Saskia was threading tree decorations made out of pasta. On the floor Olive drew an oversized snowman on a wide sheet of paper, coloring his scarf outside the lines with a gold-glitter crayon.
“She has her dad’s temperament,” Saskia said. She tilted her head the way mothers do when all they can see in the world is their own beautiful creation. In the background, ABBA played on a continuous loop.
“She’s lucky to be like HP,” I said, then added, “And you.”
“We all are lucky and so, so blessed.” Saskia got up from the breakfast counter and put her arm around my shoulders. Her touch baffled me, made me feel like plastic.
“Are you like HP?” I inched along the countertop so that my rib cage separated from hers.
“Hamish and I are peas in a pod,” she said. “I feel so lucky that we see life the same way: as a journey, a series of amazing adventures. Anything’s possible once you figure that out. Don’t you think?”
I couldn’t answer. I’ve never had assurance like hers.
I babysat for HP and Saskia whenever they needed, and the more I did, the more Saskia confided in me. After a while she got real. She went into great, unrequested detail about how having a baby can really drive a wedge between a husband and a wife, and how important it was to secure a “date night” just to stay in touch. She seemed desperate for a confidante and perhaps believed that telling me all her deepest thoughts and fears was a currency with which she might buy my allegiance.
One night last August, I sat with Olive at bedtime. As she liked to remind me, she was starting preschool in the fall like a big girl, so whenever I was over at her house we had to practice reading all the time. HP and Saskia were at the movies, watching some flick about love and time travel—Saskia’s pick. For some reason, Olive had had a meltdown when they were leaving, and I’d bribed her with candy. Finally she was calm, exhausted, just in time for bed. Olive’s hands were still sticky from the candy, even after I’d washed her up.
“I feel a bit sweaty,” she said, turning pages of her storybook, a mindless tale about a ballerina mouse.
“Do we have to read this book?” I asked. “It’s super lame.”
“Superlame-o!” shouted Olive, as if it were a new cartoon character. “Mommy gave this book to me.”
“Do you like your mommy?” I asked.
“She’s pretty.”
“Who do you like more—her or me?”
Olive turned her hot little face up towards mine and planted her hand on my forearm. She sighed a breath of overripe strawberries. “Am I pretty, Angie?” she asked, her eyes suddenly, inexplicably, brimming with tears.
“You are. You are so, so pretty.” I put my arm around her and handed her another candy from my pocket.
“But I already brushed my teeth,” she whispered.
“We won’t tell anyone. It can be our little secret.”
chapter
* * *
17
“Why tell me that?” asks Novak.
“What?”
“Why tell me you manipulated the mind of a child?”
“Are you going to arrest me for giving a kid a candy and telling her she’s beautiful?”
Novak walks around the room. Under the electric light, he looks haunted. “Can we talk more about where you were two nights ago, Angela?”
“What’s your first name? You use mine all the time, in almost every sentence. What’s yours?”
There’s a second or two of wariness. “Jonah.”
“Oh, my God. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Where were you the afternoon of June fifteenth?”
“What was the fifteenth—Thursday? I was at my house, or rather my mom’s. We covered that already . . . Jonah.”
Novak sits down. “Tell me what you know, Angela. Now. So, you were at home on Thursday evening?”
“I went home after work, ate dinner in my kitchen and went to sleep on the couch.”
“I thought you were living at the Parkers’ house while you gave your mother space to adapt.”
“Like I said, I moved into HP’s for a while. And then I moved out again.”
He pauses, then reefs through his notes, bookmarking a page with a hooked thumb. “Mr. Parker says you lived with them for six weeks. When did you move out?”
“Didn’t he say? Oh, it was a couple of weeks ago, I believe. Early June.”
“Is that when you stole Saskia’s necklace?”
“I told you. I don’t know anything about that. Olive must have put it in my book. You know how kids are always hiding things.”
“I need the details of why you moved out. Full disclosure.”
“Well, pick a direction, Jonah. One minute you’re telling me to hurry the fuck up, the next minute you’re asking for more detail.”
He weighs every word when he speaks. “Just tell me what I need to know.”
“Oh, Jonah,” I say. “You need to trust that I’m steering you for a reason. I’m taking you all the way to the middle of the maze. Can’t you see how easy this is for you? All you’ve ever had to do was listen.”
When I called HP and told him that I was stuck living with my mother, he was quick to offer me his place to stay.
“I saw your mom downtown, actually. She told me all about it. What if you come our way for a bit, stay with us?” His voice was eager. “We’ll cheer you up. We’ve got the room, and nobody wants to live with their parents.”
“Yours would be okay.”
“Everyone has their . . . quirks.” He paused on the word. “When you live with them.”
“So I won’t be in the way?”
“Little J—” He faltered. “Angela. You’re family.”
He didn’t even check with Saskia first, or at least I don’t think he did. When I turned up the next day, they put me in their spare room at the top of a curving staircase, every solid step of which HP had sanded into smooth, pale wood. Most of the walls in the house were blue—the kind of aqua you see in postcards sent from the Greek islands. It was as if Saskia were trying to paint herself into the ocean she’d long ago given up.
Above the fireplace, they’d framed a huge photograph of themselves bungee jumping from a bridge in New Zealand. Their ankles were tied together, and at the moment when the camera had captured them, they were at the pinnacle of their bounce, the strain in their spines identical.