If the Witness Lied (2 page)

Jack takes another shortcut through a neighbor’s deep property. The neighbor hates this, but the neighbor is at work. There
is no fence between Jack’s backyard on Chesmore and this one on Kensington. Instead, the backyards are divided by a seasonal brook, whose banks are thick with trees and brush. Jack follows the path he and his father created in another life. He passes the tiny dam he and Tris built, and the tiny pond where he takes Tris “fishing.”

Bit by bit, Aunt Cheryl has been removing every trace of Jack’s mother and father from the house. Jack stores his rescues in the garage attic, a space reached by unfolding a heavy wooden staircase. Aunt Cheryl might not even know that there
is
an attic. For a woman consumed by how a house looks, she is amazingly unaware of how a house works. Jack removed the cord used to pull the stairs down and replaced it with an almost invisible knob. In the poor lighting of the garage, now that the telltale cord is gone, it’s unlikely she will ever realize there’s storage up there.

Jack decides to transfer the boots to the garage attic. Once they’re safely hidden, he can tackle Aunt Cheryl about leaving his bedroom alone.

Emerging from the little woods, Jack can make out a car in his driveway. It isn’t Aunt Cheryl’s. She keeps hers in the garage. She hates weather. Hot or cold, sunny or snowing, she doesn’t want to be out in it. Jack has never known her to exercise. Her only walk is from the kitchen through the breezeway and into the garage. Once in her car, she uses the automatic garage door opener. She has no use for fresh air. It’s an ongoing problem, because Tris, if trapped inside on a nice day, spends his
time drumming on locked doors, or maybe kicking them, trying to break out.

Jack approaches his house at an angle so that the garage blocks anybody indoors from seeing him. Leaning his bike against the back of the garage, he lets himself into the breezeway, a funny little glass room with closets and recycling bins at one end and the kitchen door at the other. When his mother was alive, this space was thick with geraniums, and you walked through a moist jungle of green and red.

The visitor’s car, an indigo-blue BMW convertible, is parked right on the other side of the glass. Nice car if the sun shines. Not what Jack pictures for a housepainter. Do decorators make that much money? Or does Aunt Cheryl have guests? Jack would have said that Cheryl Rand had no friends, but for all he knows, she’s president of the Newcomers Club and drivers of spiffy new BMWs drop in all the time.

The good news is she’ll be busy with the guest. And they will be near the TV, because Aunt Cheryl is always near the TV. She doesn’t turn it off for anybody.

Quietly, he opens the door to the kitchen and eases inside.

He can hear the television, which is good. She’s occupied. He walks carefully to the carpeted center hall. No signs of decorating. No drop cloths, ladders, or shifted furniture. No smell of paint. He’s a little vulnerable here because a wide archway opens into the living room, but the sofa and chairs are at the far end, facing the TV, which is wall-mounted above the fireplace. Aunt Cheryl lives on that side of the room.
Jack goes up the stairs in a flash, tiptoeing past his sisters’ rooms.

When their father died, Jack was left with two priorities: take care of Tris; do well in school. All else fell away. Whenever he lets himself think about the day when everything went dark, pain takes over. It has overtaken his sister Smithy. It has overtaken his sister Madison. Jack cannot let it happen to him. He is Tris’s only hope.

He steps into his own bedroom. Untouched. The relief is huge.

In his closet, Jack silently moves sneakers, sandals and miscellaneous junk until he reaches Dad’s work boots. He thrusts a hand inside each one and feels around. Sunglasses and wallet still in the left boot, cell phone and watch safe in the right boot.

It dawns on him that since Aunt Cheryl is home, her car is parked beneath the folding stair. He has no access to the garage attic. He’ll have to take the boots to Diana’s. Mrs. Murray is always home, sitting at her computer. She books moving vans, sending full and partial loads all over the country. Whenever Jack comes over, she hops up and fixes him a hot snack. Mrs. Murray disapproves of cold food. It isn’t filling, she says, frowning. Her specialty is a ham and cheese sandwich where she butters the bread on the outside and then squashes the sandwich in a special waffle iron. It comes out crusted and toasty, drippy with cheese.

Jack’s mother loved to bake. Mainly cookies, but sometimes she surprised them with a chocolate cream pie or a jelly roll.

Aunt Cheryl watches cooking shows and has favorite chefs, but she does not cook. She heats. Jack and Tris are fed like pets left behind while the owners go on vacation—enough kibble to graze on and a bowl of water.

It’s one of a thousand ways in which Jack envies his sisters. Real food.

Madison and Smithy communicate now and then, usually by e-mail: stuff they could write to anybody. Jack feels like an army private in a war zone, desperate to be told that his sacrifice matters—but the only mail he gets is from kindly strangers addressed to Dear Soldier.

They don’t phone each other. If they hear each other’s voices, they are out of things to say before they start.

If only Mrs. Murray had agreed to take Smithy in! His younger sister would be two houses away. They could have worked things out. They—

But Jack has a rule. Never consider what could have, would have, should have happened. Because it didn’t.

Jack grabs an old backpack, slides the boots in, buckles it closed, but cannot get it on. He’s much wider in the shoulders since he last wore it. Opening the straps as far as possible, he wriggles his arms into them and heads for the stairs.

The TV seems louder than usual. A rich rolling voice fills the lower floor. A public voice, proud of itself.

Jack pauses on the fourth step from the bottom. It isn’t the TV. It’s live. It’s the visitor.

“You are absolutely right, Cheryl,” booms the voice, deep and
masculine. “We’re so glad you called us. The situation in this house is riveting. Perfect for television.”

Has Aunt Cheryl’s dream come true? A room in this house will be featured on some TV decorating show? Aunt Cheryl would definitely babble hysterically to Diana if that was about to happen.

“So much tragedy and emotion!” cries the man, as if he lives for tragedy and emotion.

Jack sits on the stair. He doesn’t mean to. His knees stop holding him. There is no tragedy and no emotion in wall color. This is not about painting bedrooms. This is about Tris.

Now, when Jack needs stealthy breathing, his lungs wheeze. The sparkly headache evolves, as if he’s going to have seizures.

The speaker is pumped. “I love it, Cheryl! We’ll line up the neighbors. We’ll film little Tristan in day care. We’ll interview his little classmates and their parents.”

Jack has dealt with television. It’s not a friend. It has a job: to provide entertainment. It has chosen Tris before. He’s photogenic. Last year when they filmed Tris, they found him so adorable. Such a little angel, they cried, and look what he did.

“And of course we’ll want to film the older brother for several days. I love the way he’s standing firm and being loyal. We’ll follow him in school.”

Jack is “the older brother.”

Followed? For several days? In school? Where he can still find safety in science and math? Where people have almost forgotten what happened?

Can they do this without Jack’s permission?

The voice is really into it now. “The sisters are the real drama. I love how they refuse to be under the same roof. Wonderful theater.”

Theater. Where you pay money to stare.

“We’ll get a huge audience. Advertisers will sign up in a heartbeat. I see it as a three- or four-part docudrama.”

There’s a new sound. Jack hasn’t heard it often, but he recognizes it. Aunt Cheryl is giggling with delight.

She has sold Tris to television.

M
ADISON
F
OUNTAIN HAS SKIPPED SCHOOL AND IS FAKING ILLNESS
so she can spend Friday on the Emmers’ sofa, watching television. She’s alone, of course, because Mr. and Mrs. Emmer are at work and Henry and Kimmy are at school. Madison rotates through every channel the Emmers get, which is a lot. She wants something to take her mind off yesterday. She tries weather, sports, a soap opera, cartoons and music videos, but she can’t stay on anything. She finds herself clicking madly at the remote, as if an Up or a Down will blot out her thoughts.

Madison is tightly wrapped in a blanket. Back Before, Madison’s mother knit all the time, churning out socks and sweaters, blankets and afghans. Laura Fountain loved to knit. She’d have knit furniture if she could’ve figured out how. But when Madison moved in with the Emmers, she did not bring a single thing knit by her mother. She holds her mother responsible. It isn’t fair, but she can’t dislodge the belief.

Deep inside the blanket, Madison lets herself think about
yesterday. Not just any Thursday, although only three people know this, and Madison chose not to contact the other two.

Mrs. Emmer always takes Thursday afternoons off, because she works on Saturdays. Yesterday, she picked the three children up after school and headed to the mall. Kimmy needed dance shoes and Henry needed a long-sleeved white shirt with a collar and cuffs for the chorus concert.

Madison sat there like baggage. The Emmers are sick of her. At first it was You poor baby, crushed by fate. Why don’t you stay with us until things settle down?

And now it’s like—She’s still here? She hasn’t left yet?

Of course they don’t say it out loud. They’re nice people. That’s why they’re her godparents.

Back Before, Madison’s mother liked to watch films of her children. There’s a nice one of Madison at eight weeks, beautiful in a lacy white gown with pink satin ribbons, sleeping through her christening. Off to the side stand the Emmers, watching a ceremony that means nothing to them, because they don’t go to church. But they love the concept of being godparents. They’re all dressed up and promising before God and the congregation to rear baby Madison in the Christian faith.

In fact, the Emmers are relieved that Madison hasn’t done anything difficult like mention church. They’re off the hook, godparent-wise. They can give her supper and a bedroom and they’re done.

Madison knows she’s being mean.

Mr. and Mrs. Emmer are wonderful. Henry and Kimmy are fun and cheerful. Madison fits right into her new school, and if
anybody in this town has heard of the Fountain family, they don’t say so. Madison escapes notice. Hers is a popular name, and among so many other Madisons, she blends into the crowd.

When she moved to the Emmer house, Madison didn’t even bring photographs. If she needs to see what her real family looks like—
looked
like—she can go online to the site where her parents stored their photographs. She never does. Month after month, Madison Fountain holds herself still, not remembering her parents and not thinking about her sister and brothers.

But on Thursday there was no blocking out memory. November fifth was her father’s birthday. On the way to the mall, Madison slid into last year, when her father turned forty. She could almost taste the birthday cake. It was chocolate, of course; Dad loved chocolate. They had ordered the largest sheet cake and specified white icing, because writing shows up best against white. They took turns printing with little gel tubes. Last year it had been Smithy’s turn to write first. First was a bad position, because everybody wrote on top of you. But Smithy got to choose the best color. She went with red, and wrote I LV U DAD.

Madison thought about that a lot. Smithy abbreviated “love.”

Mrs. Emmer pulled into the vast mall parking lot. Madison just wanted to be alone with the rare treat of memories and light a mental candle for Dad. “I’ll stay in the car and do homework,” she said.

The sun was shining, and with the temperature in the fifties, the interior of the car would get toasty. Madison couldn’t wait for
the Emmers to go, and they must have felt the same, because they vaulted out. “Give me an hour!” cried Madison, turning her head so she wouldn’t see how glad they were to be a real family, without the interloper. Her eyes swung over a horizon of parked cars.

Her father’s Jeep was one of them.

*   *   *

Every Friday morning at Smith Fountain’s boarding school, there is an eight-thirty assembly before classes begin.

On this Friday morning, Dr. Dresser, the headmistress, is less dull than usual. She is explaining the mechanics of getting four hundred kids home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Almost everyone loves boarding school. It’s so much fun—always busy and demanding and special. But it isn’t home, and now home looks like a treat—a present with ribbons—and everybody gets one.

Everybody except Smithy.

Last winter, Smithy applied on her own to a boarding school she located online, and this initiative worked in her favor; the school was impressed. Not many fourteen-year-old girls pull off applications without parents. Smithy was accepted for the second semester of freshman year—the only student among four hundred who is truly without parents. In fact, many kids have multiple parents, from remarriages and ex-stepparents who stay in touch. There is a boy in Smithy’s biology class who has seven active parents.