Oblivion (20 page)

My footsteps clap against the floorboards of the confining space, silencing only when I cease walking.

I’m staring down at army green canvas stretched over chrome rails—a cot.
Honor thy father
.

“Calliope.” John’s voice rises behind me.

But too entranced with the cot, and the fuzzy recollections that come with it, I can’t turn around to answer him. Not yet.

“You’ve been here before,” John says.

Honor thy father
.

A few times, when I was little. I remember wandering down here occasionally when my parents were busy in the confessional. I played in here while the gardeners were trimming the hedges. I think I fell asleep here once.

“You’ve been here recently.”

“How can you be s—” I turn around. Gasp.

He’s right. Handwriting roves over a slat of wood near the cot:

As the hours pass.

Gardening tools hang on a pegboard wall opposite the cot. There’s a dry sink situated under a minuscule window, which allows in almost no light. Under it are bins of soil and seed, and nested stacks of clay flowerpots, which, come summertime, will flourish with petunias and impatiens. All appears mundane, if not for my graffiti and the suggestion of a sinister memory.

The walls seem to close in on me. I’m suffocating. Shivering. I’m looking for something. Something I can’t find. What am I looking for?

I hear remnants of voices, but I’m not sure if they’re mine and John’s or someone’s in the past. Flashes of yellow cotton pass through my memory in intervals, like the beam from a lighthouse beacon. The scent of loam fills my nostrils. I feel the rain, the fatigue, the desperation.

Yellow cotton.

Wet wind.

Worn wood.

I can’t breathe, can’t move.

Strong hands grip my biceps.

“Callie!”

I open my eyes and gasp a breath. Ground myself in John Fogel’s blue eyes. “What am I looking for?” I blink away the tears accumulating on my lower lashes.

John shakes his head and releases his grip on my arms. “I don’t know.”

“We have to …” I bolt out of the garden building and travel the cobblestones around the outside of the labyrinth, toward the Gothic sanctuary.

I’m out of breath, and so is John, by the time we burst through the door.

The entire congregation is standing, singing, clapping in time with the music or raising hands to heaven in worship:

“Rock her in the arms, rock her in the arms, rock her in the arms, the arms of the Lord!” At the front of the main aisle, Drake leads the song and dance. He’s so into his role that he pays no mind to us latecomers.

I feel the music inside me, like it’s emanating from my soul. I can’t help singing; an uncontrollable force within me belts out the words. But I don’t fight it. I’ll blend into the crowd if I’m doing everything everyone else is doing.

John takes my hand, an expression somewhere between fear and wonder plastered to his face.

As we walk a side aisle, I search the crowd for familiar faces, scan over Drake’s pregnant wife, and finally settle on the portrait of Hannah, which is illuminated by candlelight.

What am I missing?

I stare into the eyes of the oversized photograph, as if its subject will somehow answer my questions.

John and I begin to draw stares, as we near the altar. I slow my pace and before long, when my feet have come to a stop, the song within me wanes.

We’re a few paces from Hannah’s shrine when it hits me: yellow cotton.

My fingers tighten around John’s; I pull him back the way we came.

Soon, we’re running again. Sprinting toward the heavy doors that open every Sunday like loving arms, providing a false sense of security. I can’t get out of there fast enough.

Although the day is gray and overcast, the daylight blinds me for a few seconds upon exit, a contrast to the dim interior of the church.

I throw my backpack to the ground. Tear open the zipper. Yank out my pen and notebook. “Yellow cotton,” I wheeze.

The moment the tip of the pen hits the paper, words begin to flow:

Row the boat. Row the boat. Row the boat.

Yellow cotton sundress in a box under the stairs.

In a box in a box in a box in a box under the stairs.

“Callie, sit down.”

“No.” I shake my head. “What was she wearing in the portrait? What color?”

“Yellow.”

The material stretches and pulls over my chest.

But it isn’t my dress, and I never wore it, if not in my mind.

I see it. In a box under the stairs
.

Don’t you touch her don’t you touch her don’t you touch her
.

“
D
r. Ewing? Calliope Knowles needs an appointment.”

John’s on my phone. “Now … it’s an emergency.”

I’m sobbing so violently that I’m hardly making a sound.

“Yes.” John’s speeding east, toward Ewing’s office, but he doesn’t know where it is exactly, and I can’t stop weeping long enough tell him. “She can’t stop writing.”

Pressed like a rose in a book from a lover from a lover from a lover from a lover from a lover.

Sift through sift sift sift sift sift through. Sift through as the hours pass pass pass passpasspass.

Claw at the case claw at the case claw at the case.

“I don’t know,” John says. “Callie, did you take your Ativan?”

I shake my head. Tears splat onto my words.

“No, she says she didn’t. We were at Holy Promise. Yeah. Hannah’s memorial … Yeah, she has it now. She’s writing … I don’t know … How much have you written? Four pages? I’d say four or five pages. In six minutes, maybe? Not more than ten. Where? Okay.”

A tiny pickax chisels away at my skull from the inside. My stomach flip-flops. My vision blurs as the world slants forty-five degrees to my left.

God, I’m going to be sick. My hand cramps, my head throbs, my teeth hurt from gritting together.

“Stop,” I manage to say.

“Huh?” John’s still on the phone, but he glances at me long enough to see what’s about to happen, and careens to the shoulder of the road.

I allow my journal to slip from my lap as I open the door and tumble onto the gravel, landing on all fours. Dry heaves jolt me, but nothing comes up. Everything spins, blurs until the scent of piney cologne wafts through my memory. Palmer’s voice echoes in my mind:
It’s because of you. You’re the reason
.

Mom’s voice now:
You think I can’t stop you? Don’t you touch her, you son of a bitch!

Blood everywhere.

Her bloody hand grazes against the walnut statue of John the Baptist.

Pearl-handled knife protruding from his inner thigh, just inches from his privates.

Palmer’s limping from the confessional, trailing blood
behind him:
No, no charges. She needs help. I’m a man of God. I’ll help her
.

“Callie.”

I flinch when I hear John’s voice. His hand is warm against my back.

When I look up at him, stars like silver glitter wink around his face.

The hum of the motor, the heat of the engine, and the stink of roadside exhaust register, pushing away the memory of Palmer’s cologne, and the images of screams and blood.

Under the influence of John’s hand, I rise, pick up my journal from the gravel, and resume my seat in the SUV. I lean back, close my eyes, concentrate on breathing.

A few minutes later, when my nausea begins to subside, I take in my surroundings. “This isn’t the way. We need to head back toward the lake.”

“He wants to meet at the county police station.”

“Why?”

“Do you know a Detective Guidry? He said we should ask for Guidry, if he’s not there yet.”

Guidry’s the one who found me in the apartment above the Vagabond. He’s the one who combs through all my journals.

My mouth dries instantly, and something akin to panic settles in my nerves. I wonder if this will be the day they ask questions I can actually answer. I wonder if this is the
time they find enough evidence to send me away.

I allow John to hold my numb hand as we drive, then walk up to the door at the Lake County PD. He gives it a squeeze when I pass through the door.

My gaze locks on the table, where one of my journals sits. It’s the one I left with my shrink after my last session. I then trail my glance to Ewing, who occupies one of four beat-up, uncomfortable-looking chairs with cushions the color of bruised apple flesh. He’s sitting with his forearms resting on his knees, typing a text. He’s wearing jeans and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt—the pullover type with a hood and a front pocket. I’ve never seen him looking so casual. It occurs to me that I’ve pulled him away from a Sunday at home with his family.

When he greets me, glancing over his Buddy Hollys, with a smile and a “hey, kiddo,” tears well anew in my eyes.

The moment he stands, I plow into his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

“It’s all right, Callie. It’s all right.”

He’s still comforting me when Guidry walks in, slurping on a coffee. I wipe away my tears and take a few steps back.

John, who has slung my backpack over his shoulder, extends a hand first to the detective—“John Fogel”—and then to my shrink. “Want me to …” He thumbs toward the lobby.

“Actually, can he stay?” I rub at a black smear of mascara on my index finger.

“Have a seat,” the detective says. “So … how you doing, kid? What happened at Holy Promise?”

As Ewing records my testimony on his tiny digital recorder, and as Guidry jots notes on a yellow legal pad, I fill them in on everything I can remember. John interjects a few things I forget, and draws a few lines between Hannah’s case and that of his missing cousin. When my purging comes to a close, I slide my journal across the table for Guidry’s perusal.

“Here. Even trade.” He slides a stack of three back toward me—three he’s already skimmed and copied for Hannah’s file—and deposits the one I just gave him atop the one Ewing brought. His chair creaks when he leans back in it. His arms stretch over his head and come to settle, pretzel-like, as a sort of headrest. “Okay, first of all, this business with yellow cotton. Can you describe in better detail what you remember about it?”

I feel it again, see it again, in my mind. “It’s too small. Wet. Thin material. Three buttons … fake pearls … down the front. Ruffled sleeves … like a pinafore.”

“And you think it’s Hannah’s?”

“I don’t know, but it isn’t mine.”

“Sometimes,” Ewing interjects, “when witness to great trauma, the survivors mentally switch places with the victims. There are cases of posttraumatic stress disorder in survivors of battle, who swear they know what a bullet feels like when it enters bone, yet they’ve never been shot.”

“Huh.” Guidry chews on his bottom lip for a moment. “Here’s what doesn’t add up about that. Hannah was wearing blue leggings and a pink cardigan sweater when she disappeared.”

“And yellow floral underwear,” I add.

The detective darts me a glance. “Her parents don’t know what pair she was wearing that day.”

I shrug. “That’s what I remember seeing on the floor. And I might be wrong, I might be remembering some other instance, or some other damn millennium in another lifetime, for all the sense this makes to me, but that’s what I remember.”

“And it’s good that you’re remembering. But the trouble is, Callie, that too many leads, too many theories come out of these notebooks of yours. I can write it down, maybe we can have discussion about it in a meeting, but without more tangible evidence, I can’t do anything about it. So don’t be discouraged when you have these breakthroughs, and it seems like nothing’s happening on my end.”

“So I go through all this”—today’s been brutal—“and it isn’t going to make a difference.”

“It’ll make a difference,” Guidry says. “In time. And hey.”

I look up, meet his gaze.

“With the one-year anniversary, there’s going to be a lot of media coverage the next few days. There’s bound to be more speculation on whether Prescott’s capable of doing this, whether he ought to be my chief suspect.” He gives
his head a minute shake. “Don’t listen to the doubt, the bullshit about him being a man of God. I remember your mother’s testimony at the Meadows, things she said he did to her.”

I nod. He’s referencing the confessional.

“And I remember the proof you gave me, kid.”

Tears—of embarrassment, of frustration—rise again. He’s talking about the slashes on my back, the scar on my shoulder. He photographed me the night he found me at the Vagabond, just before he ordered, much to my resistance, a rape kit. I don’t blame him for ordering it, in hindsight. He couldn’t locate my jeans; I couldn’t remember the past thirty-six hours. We were both relieved when the kit turned up no evidence of trauma.

“A lot of perpetrators return to the scene on anniversaries of the crimes. They go to vigils, to funerals. They go for the same reason you went to Holy Promise today—to remember. Do you realize that if you’d gone alone, you might’ve put yourself at risk, had Palmer shown up?”

I think of the feeling I get … the feeling that someone is watching me, following me. A chill races up my spine.