Read The One I Left Behind Online
Authors: Jennifer McMahon
Reggie nodded. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Tara bit her lip. “Do you really want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. But no more weird shit, okay? We’ve got to stick together here. Things with your mom, they’re going to get really intense in about a million different ways. If you can’t trust me, I need to know now.”
“I do trust you,” Reggie said, remembering years ago, when she’d sat next to Tara in Lorraine’s dank, fishy-smelling garage and Tara had handed her a razor blade and said,
Trust me
.
Tara nodded.
“Thank you,” Reggie said. “For agreeing to stay. I’m sorry for accusing you like that—it was fucked up.”
Reggie started to tuck the necklace back under her shirt, then pulled it back out, turned it over, thought, for just a second, of saying the words that would start one of their old games:
You have one minute . . .
Instead, she did the grown-up thing and turned and walked away.
The body of the third victim, Ann Stickney, was found at dawn on June 19. She was on the green in the center of town, underneath the descendant of the Charter Oak. She was curled on her side, looking like someone who had just fallen asleep. Like Neptune’s previous victims, Stickney was naked and freshly bathed, clean bandages applied over the stump where her right hand had been. This time, the killer left a mark—a trident carved into her abdomen, apparently acknowledging his fondness for the name the police had given him.
The girl was twenty-one years old, a film student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, forty-five minutes south of Brighton Falls. Her roommate assumed she’d gone home to New Jersey for the week and hadn’t reported her missing.
After the discovery of Stickney’s body, a frenzied pandemonium hit Brighton Falls.
Women were warned to be on guard and not walk to their cars alone. Stores began selling mace, and a women’s group passed out bright orange whistles. Citizens formed posses to patrol neighborhoods. Parson’s Hardware did a booming business in dead bolts and new lock sets. Bud’s Gun Shop out on Airport Road sold twice as many handguns in one week as they usually sold in a year.
The chief of police, Vern Samson, announced that as it was clear that they were now dealing with a serial killer, the FBI had been called in to assist. “We are hopeful that their expertise will help bring a swift resolution to the situation and aid in our capture of the killer known as Neptune.” Samson also appointed a special task force to look into how so much confidential information was being leaked to the press.
The
Hartford Examiner
began printing letters to the editor from citizens who felt the police were bungling the investigation. People were calling for Vern Samson to resign. One popular theory in town was that Neptune might even be a member of the police force. That would explain how he got the packages onto the steps of the police station without notice, how information about the case was leaked, and even, perhaps, how he entrapped his victims.
Because, after all, who didn’t trust a police officer?
June 19, 1985
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
R
EGGIE WOKE UP AT
ten, stiff and cold, curled up on her bedroom floor. She remembered Lorraine’s shadow filling her doorway as she bellowed, “I want you out of this house!” Trying to shake the memory from her head, Reggie went downstairs to the kitchen and found Lorraine with a bowl of soggy cornflakes.
She wanted to start screaming at her aunt, to say,
How could you kick her out? What gives you the right?
But she just stood there, speechless, half afraid Lorraine might decide to throw her out, too. And unlike Vera, she really didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Yesterday’s paper was laid out in front of Lorraine, and she was studying the crossword puzzle, pencil in hand. The radio was playing low in the background, a murmur of voices. Reggie heard the words:
Body. Charter Oak. Neptune.
“Did they find her?” Reggie asked as she poured herself a glass of orange juice.
“Who?” Lorraine bit down lightly on the pencil’s eraser as she contemplated the puzzle.
“Neptune’s next victim. It’s the fifth morning.”
“Yes,” Lorraine said, not looking up from the paper.
“Well, who is she? Where did they find her?”
“I don’t really know,” Lorraine said. “I haven’t been paying attention.” She filled in one of the words in the puzzle:
gratitude
.
Reggie slammed her juice glass down. “How could you not pay attention? The guy is killing women in our town! One of them was a friend of Mom’s. Did you even know that?”
“No,” Lorraine said, finally looking up from her puzzle. “I didn’t.”
“It was the waitress. Mom introduced us once. She was a really nice person.”
Lorraine pursed her lips and nodded. “I’m sure she was.”
Reggie stared at her, anger bubbling inside her.
“It wasn’t right, what you did,” Reggie said. “Kicking Mom out in the middle of the night like that.”
Lorraine stood and dumped her ruined cereal down the sink, turning on the garbage disposal. She kept her back to Reggie, making it clear that she had nothing to say on the subject.
Reggie saw the little wooden swan in the center of the table, where it had been all night.
“Was there someone else here last night?” Reggie said. “When you and Mom were fighting, I thought I heard another voice.”
Lorraine narrowed her eyes, shook her head. “No. Of course not.”
Reggie grabbed the carved swan, stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts, then marched out of the kitchen.
“Regina,” Lorraine called after her, “if you go into town today, just make sure you’re not alone. Have Charlie go with you.”
Reggie didn’t acknowledge her, she just kept right on walking.
T
HE FLAT HAPPENED BEFORE
Airport Road turned from two lanes to four. Out in the tobacco fields. The workers had gone home for the day and there was no one around but passing cars. Reggie didn’t have any tools with her. No repair kit with patches and glue. George had taught her how to repair a bicycle tire and had bought her all the tools she needed. But she always forgot to bring them with her when she rode.
The headlight they’d put on last night after dinner was there, front and center on the handlebars. George had chastised Reggie for using the wrong size Allen wrench—it was a little too small.
“You’ll strip the inside of the bolt,” he’d told her. “Take the time to find the right tool.” She looked through the little set of wrenches until she found one that was the perfect fit, then tightened the clamp that held the headlight on.
Reggie wished George and his toolbox were here now.
“Shit,” she mumbled, inspecting the ruined tire. She hid her bike with the torn rear tire in the bushes beside a drainage ditch and set out walking.
One car after another passed her by.
And what if a guy in a tan car slows down and offers me a ride
? she wondered. She’d find some excuse not to hop in. But it was a moot point anyway, because no one was slowing down, much less stopping.
She checked her watch. She had fifteen minutes to get there. She started running.
Then, as she was just getting into her rhythm, imagining she was half running, half flying, the second disaster of the night happened.
She was running at top speed, going along on autopilot, when she saw, glued to the side of a faded red tobacco-drying barn, a huge billboard-size blowup of Candy Jacques’s face, earrings like whale hooks, pouting red lips.
have you seen me? printed in letters two feet high.
Reggie lost track of her own feet somehow, and suddenly she was off balance, landing hard on her right arch. Her ankle folded and she went down in a comic-book-style roll, limbs flailing. KA-PLUNK!
She landed in such a way that when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Candy’s immense face staring down at her.
“Shii-t!” Reggie moaned, rolling away from her.
Her ankle was screaming in pain. It began to swell immediately, and by the time she’d dragged herself up from the ground and hobbled the half mile to where the road changed from two lanes to four, she was beginning to wonder if perhaps she’d broken it. She found she could move forward only by doing a hopping sort of shuffle, her face a grimace of pain and the words
shit, double-shit, god-DAMN
spitting out each time she put any weight at all on her right ankle. Then it started to rain. Not little happy “I’m Singing in the Rain” kinds of drops, but water by the bucketful fell from the sky.
A
T LONG LAST—SOAKED TO
the marrow, her stomach sick and head swimming with pain—the red, white, and blue sign of Airport Lanes came into view. It was half past seven. Reggie hop-shuffled toward the giant glowing pin, mouthing
shit, shit, shit
in steady rhythm each time her right foot hit the ground. Cars roared past her, slowing, but none stopped, no one even rolled down the window to ask if she needed any help.
As she got to the edge of the parking lot, she saw her mother.
Vera stood smoking under the red-and-white-striped awning, well protected from the rain. Her blond hair was perfectly sculpted, her green dress undulating in the breeze. Reggie raised her arms to flag her down, but her mother was looking away from her, out past the giant bowling pin, down toward the airport, where a plane had just taken off.
“Mom!” Reggie yelled, imagining her mother would turn, see the shape she was in and come running. She was, after all, Reggie’s rescuer in times of great need. She didn’t need the heroics of Vera twirling a dog in her underclothes this time, only a shoulder to lean on and a promise to take her home, picking up the bike with its flat tire on the way.
Vera’s head was still turned, and now Reggie saw what it was she was looking at: a car had just pulled into the parking lot and was making its way to the front of the building, headlights on, windshield wipers slapping. The driver slowed. Vera waved, put out her cigarette.
“Mom!” Reggie screamed, hobbling as fast as she could across the parking lot.
Maybe it was the pouring rain, the jet overhead, the engine of the car in the lot, or the combination—but her mother didn’t hear her.
The car pulled up right next to the awning and Reggie noticed the left taillight was broken. The driver leaned across the seat and the passenger door popped open. The only detail Reggie could pick out was that he was wearing a baseball cap. Vera slid in. She never glanced in Reggie’s direction.
“Mom!” Reggie cried out once more, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Don’t!”
Too late.
The tan sedan pulled away.
October 17, 2010
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
A
FTER HER TRUCE WITH
Tara, Reggie headed back down to the smoke-scented kitchen. Lorraine was sitting at the table, sniffling. George was beside her, holding her hand and rubbing her back. He glanced up when Reggie walked in. He looked nearly the same as Reggie remembered, with his pointy, Uncle Mouse features, but there were tiny creases around his eyes, his hair was flecked with gray, and his hairline had receded farther. He wore round glasses with silver metal rims. He was dressed in khaki pants and a neatly ironed blue button-down shirt.
“Reggie,” George said, rising for what Reggie assumed would be a hug. He was shorter than Reggie remembered, or maybe he’d developed a stooped posture, shoulders hunched forward like a man who’d suffered countless defeats.
Instead of embracing Reggie, George stepped past her and said, “Let’s go out for some air,” and headed down the hall. Lorraine stayed in place at the table, head down, dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue.
“What did you say to Lorraine?” George asked once they were in the yard, the shadow of the house surrounding them, darkening everything. They stood facing Reggie’s old tree house. The roof was still in good shape, but the windows had never been finished. The rope ladder swayed, wooden steps rotted through in places, but still, she half expected to see Charlie’s face appear in the doorway, beckoning her up, asking where she’d been.
“Do you think she deserved it, is that it?” George asked. His voice was quiet, controlled, but he was obviously furious. “Do you think there’s a day that goes by that she doesn’t think about what might have happened if she had done things differently that night?”
“Look,” Reggie began, “George, I—”
“It isn’t right to blame her for what happened to your mother.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do. You always have. Isn’t that why you left home and never so much as called? You couldn’t stand even looking at her. I remember how it was those last four years of high school. You just stopped speaking to her. You broke her heart, Reggie.”
Reggie shook her head. This was insane. Lorraine had shut Reggie out of her heart the day she was born, just because she was Vera’s daughter.
George ambled across the driveway and into the old wooden garage, Reggie following. Lorraine’s fly-tying bench was still there, covered with an assortment of pliers, hooks, thread, and feathers. Tucked underneath was the dusty box of taxidermy supplies: little eyes on wire, sawdust, knives, and chemicals. Beside the bench stood the oak fishing cabinet George had made Lorraine. George caressed the front door, then opened it, revealing four fishing rods, a net, and Lorraine’s worn fishing vest on a hanger. It reminded Reggie of a box a magician might put a woman in, then saw her in half. Or maybe he’d wave his wand, close the door, and make her disappear completely.
“Losing Vera, that was hard enough,” George said, closing the cabinet. “That tore us all to pieces. But then we lost you, too.”
This was too goddamn much.
“I’m sorry,” Reggie said, standing up straight. “But I refuse to be made to feel guilty. I was only a kid, and I did the best I could. Lorraine treated me like crap my whole life, because I was my mother’s daughter. She hated Vera, George! Don’t you remember?”