The Telling (31 page)

“I obtained Ben's school records, which included the transcript from his middle school before he moved to Gant. Then I called that school and requested those records and so on. This is how I plotted Diane and Ben's progress across the country. They lived for no longer than ten months in each town. Short durations like that are unusual
unless a parent has a job that relocates him or her often. I can't find any record of Diane working. None of the schools had emergency contact info for family other than Diane. The last school I located, an elementary in Atlanta where he was in the second grade, had no previous records. It's where their trail ends.” She watches my reaction. “Do you know where Ben was born, Lana?”

I'm nauseated answering. “The south.”

“The south where?”

“South of the country.” I am lost and embarrassed at how little I know. “Don't police have access to past addresses? Can't you type in
Diane and Ben Wright
and let your database spit out the answers?”

“Not always. Not under certain circumstances,” Ward says, stepping out from behind Sweeny and adding, “Did Ben ever share memories with you of his early childhood?” before I can get
What circumstances?
out. “A city or state or landmark he remembered? An amusement park or zoo they spent a day at? Someone's—
anyone's—
name?”

“I don't think so.” Ben rarely shared memories. If he did, they were disjointed and brightly painted snapshots of a bizarre nomadic life. I knew they moved around; I didn't know how often or why.

“And you know none of the places Ben lived before the second grade,” Sweeny says.

I squint, trying to picture what Ben might have looked like so young. Although our walls are covered with framed pictures of our family of four, there are no photos of Ben before Gant. “Ben lived with his mom,” I say, and then, “I'm going to be sick. I need to go home, please.”

Sweeny's expression falls, and her lips flatten into a straight line. “I understand.
Maybe tomorrow I can come by. Once we've processed evidence here, I'm sure we'll have additional questions. My condolences regarding your friend. The officer”—she waves to a policeman crossing from the kitchen—“will walk you out.”

As I'm led away, I watch the shrinking double doors over my shoulder and another officer dragging the blue tarp to the ground. The swing set groans as a strong gust of wind sets Becca's boneless, rag-doll body swinging.

We were so stupid last night with our prank, bonfire, traded kisses, and peppermint schnapps. I've been so stupid to believe—
to hope
—that Ben could be here. It's sick that I was happy and grateful when I believed Ben hurt Maggie and Ford for me. I've been pathetic imagining that I can sense Ben near. Anywhere. Gant isn't an in-between place. And dead is dead.

J
osh and the others are heaps on the grass, their parents scattered around, all attempting to draw their kids in the directions of waiting cars. Carolynn and Duncan stand connected by her head resting on his shoulder. Josh is doubled over. Rusty is crouched on the grass, a clumpy mess of vomit between his sneakers.

“We need to get out of here,” Willa says, eyeing a Channel 6 news truck closing in on Becca's driveway.

Josh glances up; his face is red and misshapen from crying. All the pluck has been stomped out of him. I want to have the strength to kneel at his side, hold him up, comfort him. I've lost more people, although apparently, in this, practice does not make perfect. The others don't notice us, their eyes fixed on Becca's house, ghosts playing on their features as they try to will Becca into springing alive.

Uniformed officers with dogs on leashes crawl up the terraced hill across the street. A helicopter flies low over the thick brush; its propellers have the effect of a hair dryer, parting the boughs, exposing them to their roots.

The last fifteen minutes compress into fifteen seconds and play
on a loop in my head. Sweeny's and Ward's suspicions tangle, converge, and fork. A string of murders are threaded together like the peas on my rosary.

Willa drags me in the direction of my house and doesn't stop until we're inside, the alarm set, and the doors and windows bolted. Basel is collapsed in the middle of the living room rug. He's a purring pile of rust-colored fur, tail swatting obliviously.

Willa speaks quietly on her cell. “Call us back, Mr. McBrook.” She wanders into the kitchen and argues in hushed tones during her next call. Principal Owen's likely on the other line.

After she finishes, she sits cross-legged beside the coffee table. “I left a message for your dad.” She hugs herself. “Out of sensitivity to your obviously overloaded emotions and rapidly firing synapses, I should give you time,” Willa says. She dabs a finger at the gathering wetness in the corner of her eye. “But this whole situation is too
unimaginable
. Becca is dead. Murdered. Gruesomely. What did we just see, and why did you say it was
yours
?”

Unimaginable
is the word Willa throws out. It buzzes around my head. I'm angry, sad for Becca, though what happened to her isn't
unimaginable
for me. For an awful split second I even let myself think it was what Becca deserved. Staring at my palms, I tell Willa the story of “The Lovely Scarecrow.” It's difficult to look into her face and see the judgment there. Willa's always known who she is. I think that's rare, even for adults. Ben and I were two kids grappling with right and wrong; with who we wanted to grow into; with love and hate; with how to be brave in the face of our problems. We didn't watch the news back then, where coverage shows villages bombed, girls kidnapped, and people killed for what they say or for the color of their
skin or for their beliefs. But we might have sensed that the world was as scary as all that. Our island was far away from the violent world, and yet there existed shades of violence around us. Perhaps we were using our stories to prepare ourselves for dealing with it?

After a long silence, Willa says, “Ben's stories were really gruesome. That didn't disturb you?” There's reproach in her tone.

My arms shield my chest. “Video games and HBO are way worse,” I say defensively. “They were make-believe like that. They weren't real. We weren't being hateful. They made me feel braver than what I was: a little girl her dad called
Bumblebee
, who needed her unicorn night-light, who got bossed around by Mariella or the nanny of the week, and who missed her dead mom.” Willa's lines go runny as I near tears. “And I'm not stupid. I know there must have been scary stuff when Ben was a kid and that he was trying to feel braver than all of it too.”

Willa's eyes move over me and she adds more gently, “But they don't sound like the imaginary cops-and-robbers stuff kids dream up with their Nerf guns.” Her eyebrows hitch up.

I shrug. “We were always the heroes. In the end, good triumphed over evil. Classic cops-and-robbers stuff, just with a surreal Ben-spin. Harmless make-believe.”

“They aren't make-believe any longer, though. Someone's acting them out, and since Ben is
gone
, and you aren't doing it, there are two alternatives.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “It's either someone Ben told the stories to or the originator of the stories. I'm betting it's the originator, since I don't believe the stories were made up by a kid, but rather an adult from Ben's childhood. And I think the police would at least agree that there was someone very scary chasing Ben and Diane.
That person is the reason they spent only months in any one given place. Detective Sweeny's come to that conclusion without knowing about the link between the stories and the murders.”

“Why would Ben retell stories like that? Why would he make us the heroes of them?” I ask.

“Kids get traumatized, and maybe Ben internalized them in some deep, dark place, and telling them was his therapy.” I give her an inscrutable look. She throws her hands up. “So my mom reads a lot of self-help books, and once in a while I pick one up. All the head-shrinking aside, maybe they were versions of stories told to him as a kid. He tweaked them—consciously or unconsciously—to retell them to you. He may have given them their happy endings. The question is, who told Ben the stories?” Her wise gray eyes had been glazing over with the riddle of it all. They focus now with sharpened curiosity. “Where is Ben's father?”

I shift uneasily. “Ben and Diane never talked about him. I didn't push because I understood not wanting to share about a parent.” Willa's expression goes soft and sympathetic. “I think Diane was a teenager when she had Ben. She's pretty young to have a kid as old as he was. You think his father stalked them across the country and then what, he caught up with them here, convinced Maggie to draw Ben out of the house that night so he'd have the opportunity to hurt him and then pick off kids who Ben had grudges against, all to echo stories he told his son?”

Willa's head sways from right to left. “Not sure. I don't talk about my dad, and it doesn't mean he's a psycho killer, just a wife-and-child-deserting jerk.” Her nose is scrunched up, doing the rabbit twitch it does when she's thinking hard. “It could have been Diane's brother, or
uncle, or a cousin. It's likely a man, because of the physical strength probably required to force Ford to eat poison. Would your dad know anything about Ben and Diane's family?”

“He knows less than I do. ‘Don't upset Diane.' He acted like she was a wild animal we would spook.” But again, I wasn't dying to know.

Only magical things appear out of nowhere, and to me, Ben was the most magical. I chose not to pry. If Ben were past-less, it meant that there was nothing else to know about him. It also meant that everything significant included me. Thirteen-year-old me thought about us as a Venn diagram, our circles overlapping. In class I doodled one circle after another, right on top of each other. The idea of us as those shapes, and all our contours touching, made me hot-faced.

“All of Ben's stuff is in his room?” she asks. I nod to her. “He may have a scrapbook or a keepsake box or a—”

“Ben had one photo album from when he was a baby,” I say. I'm shaky and anxious heading upstairs. Willa rustles behind me as I bend over Ben's desk. The handprint there looks dusted with snow. My fingers tingle closing around the handle of the drawer where Ben kept his only album. There's a jumble of sketch pads, charcoals, pencils, and crinkled-up sheets of paper inside. Lying on top, undisturbed by the chaos beneath it, is a white envelope with my name written on it.

“What the . . .” I hold it up for Willa to see. “This isn't Ben's handwriting.” It's Maggie's graffiti-like scrawl. The same style of letters that were in Sharpie on the pink sneaker we found in Swisher Spring. Maggie marked her territory like Twinkie lifting his leg to piddle.

Willa rests against the doorjamb. “Open it.”

These are Maggie's last words to me. Maggie would have been
able to guess that it would be me left with the job of sorting through Ben's things. If she had left the note somewhere obvious, I would have found it right away and known she'd been in my house. I would have called the police. I suspect that Maggie planned to be long gone by the time I found this.

Mentally, I tick through the accusations she might have wanted to leave me with. If Ben and I had been blood siblings, I would have escaped her endless suspicion. Maggie accused Ben of cheating on her with anything in a C cup, but she only accused him of feeling for me.
You never interrupt her. You laugh harder at her jokes than mine.
A million tiny clues added up to one unmistakable truth for Maggie. Ben didn't love either of us like he was supposed to. With a set jaw and hooded scowl, he would tell Maggie she was paranoid.

Air hisses between Willa's teeth as she waits. I slide the envelope's contents out and unfold the paper.

L—

Ben knew HE was coming. HE'd been hunting him for years. HE said HE'd kill me if I told the police what HE looked like. And HE wouldn't let me leave until now. I need to give him Ben's picture album and then I'm free. I'm sorry to be taking this from you—sorry for taking Ben.

—M

The room turns black at the edges. Why did Ben keep so many things—writing Maggie while he was in Guatemala, his childhood
spent running, the origins of his stories—from me? Did he spend three months in Central America because he knew he was in danger? And if that's the case, why did he come home? Why didn't Ben or Diane tell my dad or the police that they were being hunted? My Ben was hunted. Ben knew
HE
was coming and he said nothing. Out of the confusion of questions, one is more relentless than the rest.

How did Lana the brave not see that there was a real-life villain in our story?

B
en's mattress sags as Willa comes to share the foot of the bed with me and takes the note wavering between my fingers. I motion at the handprint in dust on the desk. “If I'd investigated after seeing that the other day, I might have found the note then. Becca and Ford might be alive.”

The note drops to her thighs after she's finished. “Not necessarily. The killer's motivations are a mystery; you can't say what would or wouldn't have stopped him. And I think it's a safe assumption that we're dealing with one mentally unwell killer here. Ford and Maggie were poisoned by rosary peas. Becca was hung with bird beaks at her feet. These murders were modeled off your stories. Ben's death is the inciting incident, linked to the others because the stories were told—at least to you—by him.”

“And now the photo album's gone, along with any clues inside it,” I say.

“Could Ben have kept the album somewhere else?”