Cassie found herself over the months of February and March increasingly immersed in the lives of the Burnes family of Bangor. She spent many afternoons in the school library, which would have surprised people if they’d noticed; but the one person who did notice was Lee Ann Barrocca, the school librarian, unobtrusive and old-fashioned, who didn’t want to invade Cassie’s privacy or dissuade a growing academic interest by approaching her uninvited. So Miss Barrocca just observed Cassie over her half-moon glasses from the remove of the checkout desk, and smiled privately, imagining that her beloved library was saving another student’s future, a fantasy she used to console herself whenever she discovered defaced books or obscene graffiti in the carrels.
Cassie, meanwhile, started a notebook, stashed always in her school locker to keep it from prying eyes at home, in which she recorded the facts as she understood them: she learned the kids’ names from 2012 holiday snaps on Flickr, a series taken at the Bangor City Hall’s Christmas drive, where the two elder Burnes kids—Jason and Marisol—had helped to hand out gaudily wrapped presents from beneath the enormous glittering tree, to celebrate the season’s Toys for Tots campaign. In a later family photo from the same series—inconveniently minus Arthur Burnes—she could see all four kids: Jason, Marisol, Jennifer, and baby Brianna, a curly haired wisp in red-and-green tulle, along with their mother. Jason looked thoughtful and a bit shy, the beginnings of dark down on his lip: smart in school, a math guy most likely. Marisol was the opposite, all tooth when she smiled, and crinkly cheeks, the kind of girl who put bubbles on her i’s and exclamation points, and who actually clapped her hands when she was excited. Jennifer was hard to read—Cassie liked that, felt she was probably closest in spirit to Jennifer. Her expression was melancholy and she had dark smudges under her eyes. Anna Maria, their mother, dark-haired, plump, and small, wore her hair in a ponytail like a young girl, and a red sparkly Christmas sweater. She looked kind, but tired. Cassie imagined that when she got angry, she didn’t yell at her kids; she spoke quietly to them in a tight voice—an acceptable kind of anger.
Cassie, she told Peter, dreamed about this woman, about these kids—her stepfamily—and from these two photographs, she fantasized entire afternoons in their company. I imagine she tried to find, in the kids’ dark-eyed faces, traces of her own features—the ears, at least? The bones? She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t find any other photos of Arthur himself; it was true that her father had supposedly been slim rather than heavy, but people changed, and a whole lifetime—her whole lifetime—had intervened. Had Clarke Burnes played football in college, or even high school? Cassie didn’t know, couldn’t ask her mother. She never discussed her father with her mother; if there’d been glimmers when she was younger, they were long over now. The familial darkness was complete.
Whether Cassie’s expanding family fantasy of life with the Burneses of Bangor made the situation at home worse, or whether her home life was simply doomed to deteriorate, it’s hard to say. But in those late-winter months, Cassie and her mother and Anders Shute lived on high alert, awaiting eruptions or trembling in their aftermath. We didn’t understand at the time what it was like, but Cassie told Peter, in his room that day. Cassie lost her phone privileges; Cassie was grounded; Cassie had to move her computer into the dining room and do her homework there, so that the grown-ups could see what was on her screen at any time. Cassie’s tone was disrespectful; Cassie didn’t do her chores properly; Cassie’s allowance was indefinitely suspended; the lock on Cassie’s bedroom door was removed.
With so many problems at home, Cassie devoted more and more energy to her Bangor fantasy. This is what she told Peter, who told me. She figured out how you could get there, without a car—Greyhound to Boston from the Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 29 at 6:10 a.m., and then the express bus to Maine (first stop Portland, then on to Bangor and eventually Mount Desert). There was a youth hostel in Bangor, $29 a night for a bunk in a dorm (bring your own bedroll). The Burneses’ house looked to be only two miles from the bus station, so she figured she could walk there. Whether or not there were sidewalks, she could just walk there and climb the driveway and ring the front doorbell. You wouldn’t want to do that during the day—who’d be home besides maybe the husky, who might be no friendlier than the Aucoins’ Lottie? You’d come at dusk, the early evening, when the first stars were out and football practice had liberated Captain Clarke, aka Cap’n Crunch, to his own kids, and you’d ask—what would you ask?
For a while, Cassie was stymied. “Are you my dad?” was too bald. “Do you know who I am?” a little aggressive. “Does the name Bev Burnes mean anything to you?” was another possibility, but who knew how that might turn out. If, indeed, Clarke Burnes was alive and not dead as Bev had always insisted, then either he’d faked his death to get away, or else they’d broken up badly. The timing wasn’t implausible—a breakup and a move to Maine; starting his math-teacher job at the high school around the time he was supposed to have quit the planet. A math teacher, so close to biology; the right age; the name; so close by, relatively speaking . . . surely this couldn’t be coincidence? How about “Have you ever gone by the name Clarke Burnes?” Or even: “Do you know a Clarke Burnes?” Maybe, she decided, she’d just have to play it by ear.
This is what she told Peter, who told me, or mostly. I know Cassie so well it’s like they’re my own thoughts, or my own thoughts about her thoughts. Now, so much later, it almost feels like I went through it with her, even though I didn’t know until afterward.