The Darkest Corners (19 page)

“Did she say anything else about that guy?” Callie asks.

“No. Now I
really
have to go.” Katie pulls the handle of her plastic bag tight over her wrist. “I'm not supposed to talk about Ari to strangers.”

Katie pushes past us, and we watch her disappear through the automatic doors. The look on Callie's face is determined, as if Katie calling her a stranger had rolled right off her.

“You think that guy could be the Monster?” Callie asks me.

“None of the girls were raped,” I say. “Think about it.”

Callie is quiet as we step through the doors—just in time to see Katie getting into a pickup truck idling at the parking lot curb. The passenger window is down, giving us a full view of Daryl Kouchinsky behind the wheel.

He looks at Katie, then back at us. His jaw sets. Before he pulls away from the curb, he says something to his daughter that makes all the color drain from her face.

One look from Daryl Kouchinsky has done something to Callie. Unscrewed an already loosened bolt.

“Maybe you were right about him. Katie said she's not allowed to talk about Ari,” Callie says, her voice shaking. “Maybe Katie knows something about her dad—she could have been acting when she pretended she didn't know who did it.”

“I don't know.” I buckle my seat belt, even though Callie shows no intention of leaving the CVS parking lot. “Could be Daryl doesn't want the other kids saying stuff that might wind up in the papers. Nothing in the news said anything about Ari being an escort.”

“You know he would have hurt her if he'd found out what she was doing.” Callie's expression sets as she starts the car. “He can't control himself. Remember the dog?”

I nod as Callie exits the parking lot and heads home. As a kid, I often wondered if Daryl Kouchinsky had ever killed a person. Some people wear their violence like weights around their neck. It was in the slump of his shoulders, the downward curve of his back.

There are people who like to hurt, and then there are people who just need a reason to. People who will kill their own daughters are the type that I would prefer to believe don't exist.

“Katie knew something more that she wasn't saying,” Callie continues. “She's trying to protect her dad.”

“Or she's trying to protect herself from him.”

We don't say anything more for the rest of the ride. Callie pulls into the driveway and parks. The curtains in the window rustle. Maggie knows we're home. And she doesn't look happy.

“Did you ask if we could go out?” I say.

Callie hesitates. “I thought it would be better to apologize than ask permission.”

“If she thinks I'm getting you into trouble, she's gonna send me away.”

“Oh please.” Callie shuts the car off. “You can do no wrong in her eyes. I need to know your secret.”

There's a twinge of resentment in her voice. She doesn't know that it's not true. We all have a capacity for forgiveness, and maybe Maggie's is greater than the average person's.

But the secrets I've kept from her are unforgivable.

Callie and Maggie are having a heated discussion in the family room, so I can't get on the computer to search for Danny Densing. I figure I should comb through the rest of my dad's crap from the prison, see if he's left me any sort of clue I can use to track down my mother or Jos. I head up to the guest room and fish around the bag of his drawings until I find the one I'm looking for.

Bear Creek, 1986.

I could barely fill a shoebox with the things I know about my family's history. My father was one of five kids; all but one were half siblings. I met his brother once, when I was a toddler. He stayed with us for two days, then disappeared with a box of my mother's jewelry and the mason jar of quarters that Joslin had kept on her dresser.

They found his body in a Philadelphia crack house a year later. Pneumonia or something.

My father's father is dead. My father's mother, an obese woman in a floral housecoat, died when I was still an infant. One of our only surviving photos is of me on her knee, in her home in New Castle. Shortly after the photo was taken, she and my mother got into an argument, and my mother stopped letting my father bring us up there. Grandma Lowell died a couple years later.

And that's all I know about my father's family.
My
family.

Still, it's enough that I'm convinced the Lowells weren't the type of people who owned property; and if they did, my father definitely wasn't the type of person to keep a piece of information like that to himself. He was the type of man who'd brag to the garbage guy about the size of the dump he took that morning. He bragged about me too, to the scary men who came around the house.

That's my Tessy, right there. She's the smart one.

But it's possible my dad's family
did
own a place in Bear Creek, a really long time ago. They could have sold it before he even met my mother.

There's a tightening in my chest, like a rubber band being stretched from both ends. There's so much I'll never know about him—things I might have learned eventually, if I'd gotten the chance. If he'd stayed. If my mother hadn't done everything she could to erase him from our memories once he was gone.

Now it seems like the only way to get to her is through him.

The computer room is still occupied, so I call information on my cell, even though the service is, like, three dollars and Gram will shit herself when she sees the bill. I ask to be connected to Bear Creek's town clerk office.

The operator transfers me, and I sit through two piano versions of Beatles songs before someone picks up.

“Um, hi.” I've forgotten how to speak, as I often do when I have to use the phone. “I was wondering if you had public records of a house in Bear Creek. A cabin.”

“What's the owner's name?”

“Glenn Lowell.”

The sound of typing. A sigh. I've bored her already. “Nothing with that name.”

“What about anyone else with the last name Lowell?”

A pause. A sigh.

“Look, I'm gonna tell you something,” the woman says. “There isn't much up the mountain. And the people who live there…You won't find an address, because there isn't one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Squatters,” she says. “Lots of abandoned cabins from when Bear Creek was a ski resort. People living in 'em, building more of 'em.”

“That's allowed?” I ask.

“Course not, but we don't have the resources to police thousands of square miles of uncharted woods. As long as they don't cause no trouble, we don't send officers up there much.”

Tax evasion. Illegal homes. Sounds right up the Lowells' alley. Now we're getting somewhere.

Dinner tonight is tacos. While the smell of the meat cooking wafts up the stairs, Callie pokes her head into my room.

“Is she mad?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Nah, I think we're good for a while. She agrees that getting out is good for coping with what happened to Ari.”

Callie steps into the room. “I couldn't find anything on Denny Densing online. But I remembered I had this.” Callie sets a Fayette High yearbook on the bed. It's open to a page of senior portraits.
Class of '03
is across the top.

“Why do you have this?” I ask.

“I did photography for the yearbook committee,” Callie says. “The advisor gave me a box of old editions that go back to the eighties.”

Adrenaline zips to my toes.
She could be in one of the candids.
My sister, hanging around the soccer field with friends, before she dropped out of school. Callie seems to sense my thoughts.

“Anyway, look.” She points to a picture of a brunette with a big smile. Big, as in,
Look at my big teeth and big gums in all their glory.

Anne Marie Jones. The quote she selected for beneath her picture is from
Sex and the City.

“Remember her?” Callie asks.

I didn't really know Anne Marie Jones, other than that she was as boring as her name. Joslin didn't bring her around to the house, because we never brought friends over. And Anne Marie wasn't exactly a friend. She and Joslin worked at the bakery together.

Jos loved that job, even though it got her up at four-thirty in the morning. She worked the counter, weighing out butter cookies and tying up cake boxes in twine. She hoped her boss would eventually let her help with the baking and decorating. My sister always had steady hands, like a sculptor's. In the backyard she'd make fairies for me out of twigs and leaves, tying flower petal wings to their backs with grass as easily as if it had been thread.

“She went to the movies with Lori and Joslin a couple of times,” Callie says.

Yes, she did, I realize. And Joslin complained about it because Anne Marie invited herself. Jos talked about Anne Marie as if being in a room with her had been a hostage situation, but Lori never turned down the opportunity to make new friends.

“Is she still around?” I ask.

Callie nods. “Apparently, she's Anne Marie Hahn now. As in, the Boathouse Hahns. Married their son or something.”

I know better than to get my hopes up; Joslin didn't tell anyone why she was leaving or where she was going, least of all some clinger she worked with at a summer job. But if Anne Marie married into money—well, Fayette's version of money—she probably considers herself important. And important people tend to know things. Or at least they think they do.

Anne Marie Hahn lives in a two-story house that's not quite the McMansion she was hoping her husband would spring for. I can tell because as soon as Callie said she was Lori Cawley's cousin, Anne Marie welcomed us inside, beaming, shamelessly pointing out that she's “done okay” for herself when we complimented her home.

Two children are screaming their brains out in the living room off the foyer.

“Ugh, be right back,” Anne Marie says. “Preschool ran only until June, so I have no help for the summer.”

Callie makes a sympathetic clucking sound, while I wonder what the fuck kind of help a woman who doesn't work could possibly need. I stare at the wall to keep a straight face. It's painted sky blue, adorned in black decals proclaiming
Live. Laugh. Love.
Picture frames embossed with
Family.
Almost as if Anne Marie were trying to convince herself of something.

I must snort, because Callie glares at me. “I think it's kind of nice,” she says.

In the living room, Anne Marie is setting up a Wiggles DVD for the boys. A DVD. Typical Fayette. No one even uses Netflix here.

Both kids are blond. Both under five. One stares at Callie and me, his upper lip curling at the sight of a stranger. The other whines for gummy sharks, and Anne Marie snaps that he can have them after lunch.

“Yeesh.” She meets us back in the hall, her smile so wide and fake, I have to look away. “Gosh, you two are so grown up. Insanity.”

Anne Marie suggests we sit “out back.” She drops us at a patio table and hustles inside, then comes out minutes later with a carton of Minute Maid, cups, and two water bottles.

Anne Marie sets both elbows on the table. Rests her chin on her folded hands. I can't tell if she's staring at me or at Callie. Her bulging Pomeranian eyes are unfocused.

She clearly knows who I am, since she said
You two are so grown up,
but she hasn't acknowledged me directly.

“So how are you?” She beams again, like we're old friends shooting the shit. I look at the lemonade and the cups, and I feel bad for Anne Marie.

Callie looks at me.

“My father died,” I say.
Pathos.

Anne Marie's face softens. “I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

People who are grieving hate that question, I've heard. It's nothing more than a dumb platitude. But leave it to me to be that person who follows it up with,
Well, there's one thing…

I clear my throat a little. “I'm trying to find my sister.”

Anne Marie frowns. “I haven't heard from Joslin since she ran away.”

“No one has,” Callie cuts in. “That's why we're looking for Danny.”

“Danny Densing?” Anne Marie's brow furrows in confusion, and she takes a sip of her lemonade. “But he and Joslin weren't seeing each other anymore when she left.”

I knew this, of course; not that my sister would ever have told us that she and Danny had broken up, but I saw it in her face. In the months before she left, Danny would come by looking for Jos, but it seemed that every time, she'd still be at the bakery. Some nights she'd come home well past ten, claiming to be bone-tired and unwilling to talk about where she'd been.

Was she avoiding him because she was afraid? Did she know he'd been involved in the Arnold explosion, or worse?