The Darkest Corners (13 page)

I tried to talk about Jos every now and then when I first moved in with Gram. When Gram gave me macaroni and cheese for dinner:
My sister used to make me mac and cheese.
When Gram and I sat down to watch a sitcom:
My sister liked
Friends. Gram would get this blank, pitying look on her face like I was making it all up—this
sister
of mine was a figment of my imagination. An imaginary friend I'd created to deal with the trauma of being taken from my mother.

I push back the resentment growing in my mind toward my grandmother, who never wanted to talk about my family. She hadn't ever met Glenn Lowell, or Joslin, and whenever my mother came up in conversation, Gram would get this tired look in her eyes. She was disappointed in how her only daughter had turned out, that much I could tell. It pained Gram to talk about how her relationship with my mother fell apart, so we just didn't talk about her at all.

Maybe if we had, I'd know enough about Annette to track her and my sister down. Maybe I wouldn't feel so goddamn lost in a town where I spent half my life.

Callie and I are quiet on the walk back to her house. I guess whatever force took over her earlier and made her want to talk about her panic attacks with me is gone. She doesn't talk again until she unlocks the front door to her house for us.

“Jesus,” she says, jumping back into me.

Maggie is sitting in Rick's armchair in the living room, slunk back into the cushion like she's been waiting for us.

“I got tired of waiting for you to clean your room.” Her voice is strange, like her words are slurring together. “So I did it myself.”

There's a handle of vodka on the coffee table in front of Maggie. It's almost empty. Callie tenses; this was obviously the bottle she was worried about leaving under her bed.

I know I shouldn't be here, and I slip upstairs like a mouse being chased by a broom.

I catch pieces of their argument before I can shut myself into the guest room.

“…not how we raised you to deal with your problems.” Maggie.

“It's been a horrible week, okay? And it's not like I can talk to you about it.” Callie.

“That's ridiculous, Callie. You can come to me about anything.”

“Anything except Lori!”

I let go of the guest room doorknob. I press myself against the wall of the hallway, waiting for Maggie's response.

Callie is the one who talks next, though. She's crying. “You never once asked me if I
wanted
to testify.”

“Of course you wanted to. You wanted to help.”

“No. You made me feel like I didn't have a choice, that if I didn't say that Tessa and I saw him in the yard, he'd go free—”

“Stop it, Callie,” Maggie yells. “You don't know what you're saying.”

“Yes, I do,” Callie cries. “I'm not eight years old anymore. I'm old enough to know that we might have been wrong and what that detective did to us was
fucked up
—”

There's a short crack. Skin on skin. I swallow.
Maggie slapped her.

“Callie, wait. I'm so sorry—”

Footsteps on the stairs. I duck into the guest room and shut the door, but it's too late. Callie's already flying past the room. She knows I heard everything.

There's the sound of Maggie stumbling up the stairs. I suck in my breath.

“I don't know why I did that,” Maggie sobs, outside Callie's door. “I just lost it. Please let me in.”

No answer. I press my ear to the door just in time to hear Maggie say, “Did she say that to you? Is she trying to convince you that you shouldn't have testified?”

She,
as in me. Maggie thinks I came back to Fayette and brought along the crazy idea that we didn't really see Stokes in the yard that night.

Maggie gives up, and moments later, the door to her room closes. I wait twenty minutes, until I'm sure she's not coming out, before I sneak downstairs and slip outside.

I hop onto Callie's bike and peel away from the Greenwoods' house. I follow the main road all the way to Deer Run; I circle around the trailer park, wondering what Phoebe, the little girl with the stroller, is doing right now. I wonder if Nicki is being more careful with the baby around the pool.

I ride in circles until the sun starts going down and I figure that maybe someone at the house might start looking for me.

When I get back, Maggie is still passed out in her room. Rick is home. Callie tells him Maggie doesn't feel well and has been sleeping this afternoon. Rick has Callie order a pizza for us.

After dinner, I excuse myself to the guest room. I shuffle through my father's drawings until my eyelids start to droop. I replay Maggie's words from earlier, as though if I kept turning them around in my mind, their sharp edges would dull.

Is she trying to convince you that you shouldn't have testified?

Maggie pressured Callie to say she saw Stokes in the yard that night. Callie said as much, in the hallway earlier. I'd always suspected it. Maggie had needed us to put Stokes in jail, to put away her niece's killer and stop the pain.

She needed Stokes to be found guilty. She was convinced he'd killed all those girls and that testifying was the right thing for Callie and me to do.

I used to lay awake at night sometimes, sure that all the questions I had about Lori's death and Jos's disappearance would eat at me until there was nothing left. I was terrified of the years ticking by, of eventually dying without ever knowing every detail about what really happened that night.

I always assumed that the doubt would destroy me. But now I wonder if it's the opposite of doubt that's the dangerous thing—if instead, it's the things we're so sure of that have the power to undo us.

I think of Bonnie Cawley screaming at Wyatt Stokes that he'd burn in hell for killing her baby. I think of Maggie, stone-faced, walking Callie into the courtroom, refusing to look at him.

They were always convinced that Stokes was the reason that Lori was taken from them. If he's taken away from them too, if they can't point to him as the murderer, what will they have left to hold on to?

My heartbeat falls into pace with the cuckoo clock on the wall of the guest room. I slip my earbuds in and turn up the volume on Pink Floyd's “Us and Them.” My father used to play it for me once he figured out that it helped put me to sleep.

I could use the help now. Ariel's funeral is tomorrow morning.

It's nine-thirty, and the service starts in half an hour. I'm in the black work jeans I wore on the plane ride here, plus my T-shirt. I'll probably be mistaken for someone who works for a catering company. When Callie slips out of her room and sees me in the hallway, she sighs. She's in a black pencil skirt and a blouse. Her eyes are swollen.

She disappears into her room and comes back with something crumpled and black. A cardigan that falls all the way to my thighs. It's been doused in perfume, like Callie plucked it from the top of her dirty laundry and tried to disguise the stench.

“Thanks.” I slip the cardigan on and follow her downstairs. “Are you okay?” I add, when I see that no one is in the kitchen or living room.

“Fine,” Callie says, in a way that makes it clear this isn't up for debate. She pauses by the coffeepot. “She drank more than half of that bottle. I'm surprised she's alive.”

We're all going to the funeral together. Rick comes down to the living room, wearing a gray suit with pants that come up to his ankles when he sits in his armchair. He took the day off. Maggie is the last to come downstairs, offering me a wan smile, her face heavily powdered with foundation.

I force myself to return the smile. Pretend I never heard the exchange between her and Callie last night. I ignore the nagging feeling that after the funeral, she'll be asking me about my plans for going back to Florida.

No one speaks on the ride to the church. I've been here only once before. The summer she was killed, Lori brought Callie and me to a summer fair on the church grounds. We ate blueberry pie off napkins while Lori pawed through the homemade earrings on sale at one of the stands. Jos was at work.

Rick parks on the side, by the entrance to the Sunday school. The church looks the same, except for a new message on the board outside:
SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT PRAYER MAKES ONE WEAK.

There's a line to get inside, even though we're twenty minutes early. Someone says Callie's name. I look up to see Sabrina wading through the crowd to get to us.

“You look like shit,” she says. Callie looks over her shoulder, but Maggie and Rick are busy making small talk with the couple standing behind us.

“Long night,” Callie mutters, and we inch up in the line.

We break away from Maggie and Rick once we're inside the church; we sit on the outer portion of a pew about four rows back from the front. I'm suffocating in Callie's cardigan. The fans overhead do little but blow around the hot air trapped in the building.

Up front is a blown-up version of Ari's senior portrait, her hair stubbornly flat from the September heat. The coffin next to it, covered in white carnations, is empty; I know because behind me, someone whispers that Ariel's body is evidence, shut up in a metal drawer at the medical examiner's office. Her burial will have to wait.

I stare straight ahead, tuning out the sounds of grief around me by thinking of Lori Cawley in her casket, the name necklace draped across her throat. I don't realize that my knee is jiggling until Callie shoots me a look, as if to say,
Pull your shit together.

Was Ari wearing a necklace when they found her?
I want to ask, of no one in particular. Earrings, maybe, or one of those color-changing mood stones around her thumb that she used to love so much?

Is she missing something that the Monster took from her?

“This is horrible,” Sabrina whispers, on the other side of Callie. Both of them have their eyes on the Kouchinsky family, who are huddled by the pulpit, greeting mourners. Ari's siblings are lined up, as if on display—Kyle, her older brother, who is sweating through his short-sleeved shirt; David, the youngest, who stands to the side, running a toy micro skateboard over his knuckles. He was in diapers the last time I saw him, and he's now taller than the second youngest, Kerry Ann, who must be almost fourteen by now. Katie, now the oldest sister, stands next to Kerry Ann, in a plain black dress that hangs baggily past her knees. It probably belonged to Ari.

Kyle clutches Mrs. Kouchinsky's hand, as if he were trying to hold her upright. I can't look at them.

“Should we go talk to her?” Callie whispers. I turn my head and realize she's talking to Sabrina, not me.

“Can we wait until…” Sabrina doesn't finish her sentence. She doesn't have to.

Mr. Kouchinsky is standing on the other side of his wife. His hand is planted on his daughter Katie's shoulder. Even from where we're sitting, it's obvious the gesture isn't protective.

Katie is a statue beneath her father's grip. I have to blink and remind myself I'm not looking at Ariel. Katie's the only one of the kids who looks like Ari did. Lanky, tanned, brunette. The other kids are round-faced, with fair skin and dirty blond hair, like their mother.

Katie and Ari have their father's coloring. Mr. Kouchinsky is tall, with angular limbs like a praying mantis. His hair is combed to the side the same way it is in photos from twenty years ago. His thick mustache does little to help the fact that it looks as though he were constantly snarling.

He has always scared the ever-living crap out of us.

“I heard he went apeshit on her,” Sabrina whispers.

“Who? Ari?” Callie says.

“Katie,” Sabrina says. “She covered for Ari when she snuck out. It's why they didn't report her missing until the next day.”

It's about a thousand degrees in this church, yet Katie is wearing a long-sleeved dress. I picture bruises up and down her arms beneath the fabric.

The pastor taps the microphone on top of his pulpit. Feedback reverberates throughout the church, and he asks people to find their seats.

But all I can hear is Mr. Kouchinsky slaughtering that dog and the sound of Ariel's screams.

There are refreshments in the Sunday school room after the service. As we're following Sabrina down the church hall, Callie's phone buzzes.

“My mom,” she mutters. “She says she'll meet us at the car.”

Maggie and Rick must have snuck out at the tail end of the service. Unease works its way into my stomach. What if Maggie is going to bring down the hammer on Callie for the vodka by sending me home tonight?

Callie shields her eyes against the late-morning sun as we step outside the church. I shrug myself out of the cardigan, praying that my shirt is dark enough to obscure the sweat stains on my back and beneath my armpits.

“Hey.” A guy's voice sounds behind us. Ryan meets us at the bottom of the church steps. He shaved and put on a tie for the occasion. He's almost unrecognizable.

“Didn't see you guys in there,” he mutters, slipping his hands into his pockets. “You see Nick?”

Callie glances at me; I shrug. It was so crowded in the church that I wouldn't have spotted Nick even if I'd been paying attention.

Callie hesitates. “I don't think he came.”

Ryan cracks his knuckles. Glances at the throng of people pouring out of the church. “I hope you're wrong.”

“It's not a big deal,” Callie says. “Plenty of people didn't show up.”

“Yeah, but he's the one the cops want to see.” Ryan lowers his voice. “This looks
really
bad for him, Cal.”

“God, you sound like your uncle,” she snaps.

“Some might consider that a compliment.”

Jay Elwood is standing behind us, his partner in tow. They're both in suit jackets, guns at their hips.

“Nick Snyder been in touch with either of you today?” Detective Elwood's gaze sweeps over me as if I weren't even here. Callie and Ryan both shake their heads.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes,”
Ryan says. “Why? What's going on?”

The partner makes a guttural
hmm
sound and yanks up his pants. Jay massages the cleft in his chin, his eyes on his nephew.

“We stopped by his stepdad's house this morning,” Jay says. “Looks like Nick Snyder took off last night.”