The Kindness of Strangers (16 page)

“Was he . . . injured?”

Ali nodded. “Some fissures, some trauma. Three stitches. Nothing major.” She shuddered. “Listen to me: ‘nothing major.’ You know what I mean. He had no serious physical injury to his colon, but he was
raped,
and not for the first time either. Kramble says this has been going on for years.”

Oh, God. Sarah saw Jordan again, huddled in her front seat, clutching a tablecloth for warmth. “Years?”

“Yup. About four years that are documented on videos and images. They found some old Polaroids, much tamer stuff—inappropriate nudity and touching. Probably gradual grooming for the films. Kramble already had school records this morning, and there’s teacher descriptions in Jordan’s end-of-the-year report cards that should have set off warning bells for someone. A bunch of comments say that he played alone most of the time and that he was too passive—his third-grade teacher said if some other kid wanted a toy he was playing with, he gave it up immediately every time. Third grade was the same year that he refused to let a nurse take off his sweatshirt when he fell off a slide and hurt his arm. We have similar reports in every grade, this passive, loner of a kid who refuses to let anyone touch him.” Ali’s voice grew louder, with a hard, angry edge. “Just last fall at the start of fifth grade, he refused to take part in the scoliosis exam—you know, where the kids have to strip to the waist, wear those little paper shirts, and bend over so someone can examine their spines? Well, he would
not
do it. He actually kicked the gym teacher and ran from her. This shy, passive kid threw a
fit,
was suddenly not so passive, and no one put it together. I mean, there was a parent-teacher conference about that one, but that was the end of it. I think because Mark and Courtney are charming, well-respected, seemingly
nice
people, no one ever looked at the overall behavior of this kid and said, ‘Now, wait a minute.’ ”

Sarah’s eyes stung again, picturing how hideous the scoliosis exam must have seemed to Jordan. She remembered Courtney’s exasperation about that teacher conference. Courtney had told Sarah, “Sometimes he’s so strange. I don’t know what gets into him.”

Sarah suddenly remembered, “Courtney told me she worried Jordan had Asperger’s syndrome.”

Ali laughed a bitter, one-note laugh. “Bullshit. This kid does
not
have Asperger’s.”

“But she said—”

“Sarah, don’t you get it? These people were very good at what they did. Putting out the suggestion of Asperger’s just gave a blanket excuse for the perfectly legitimate reasons this boy may have been demonstrating antisocial behavior!”

Sarah blinked. Could Courtney have been
that
manipulative? She remembered the tears in Courtney’s eyes as she’d told Sarah her concern.

The two children ran into the gazebo, the girl chasing the boy. They stopped, panting and laughing, staring at Sarah and Ali. “Hey!” called their mother. “Stay over here, okay?” And with a shriek, the boy took off running again, the girl in pursuit.

Sarah smiled at their silliness, then asked, “What will happen to him?”

Ali lifted her shoulders and shook her head. “I don’t know. He hasn’t even asked about his parents, which is pretty telling. That whole first day, he never asked anyone where his mom or dad was, didn’t ask to talk to them or anything. The police haven’t found any family on Mark’s side, and Courtney’s brother doesn’t want to be involved. He didn’t even know she had a child, apparently, and the kid is . . . what? Ten or eleven?”

The floor fell out from under Sarah’s feet. “Whoa,
what
? Courtney doesn’t have a brother.”

Ali nodded. “In Seattle. Kramble interviewed him on the phone last night.”

Sarah felt the gazebo shift. “She told me she didn’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Yeah, I know, she never mentioned any to me either.”

“No,” Sarah said too loudly for the enclosed space, the denial echoing back to her. “I
asked
her outright, and she said no.”

Ali looked at Sarah and shrugged. “She lied about a lot of things, apparently.”

“Why would you lie about having a brother?”

“Kramble said the brother—whose name is Jordan, too, by the way; how creepy is that?—said that he and Courtney were both sexually abused by their father. Kramble could tell you more, but I guess they haven’t seen or spoken to each other in almost twenty years.”

Sarah fought the urge to crawl under the bench. Yesterday she’d felt so sure of what she knew; she’d expected the truth to fall down like rain, washing everything clear and clean, but this truth was hurtling down like hailstones.

Sarah remembered Courtney’s mom dying. It had happened before she knew Courtney well, before Roy’s cancer. She was aware that Courtney had been deeply affected by her mother’s death, and Sarah had always figured that was the reason Courtney had such insight into Sarah’s own grief. Now she wondered if Courtney’s mother had known what her husband had done to her children. What did she think of her children not speaking to each other for twenty years? Sarah’s throat closed.

“So . . . this child. Where is he going to
go
?”

Ali shook her head, her earrings jingling like faint wind chimes. “Children’s Services is trying for temporary custody. If they get it—which should be no problem with the evidence we have—they’ll have to look for a foster placement.”

“I’m so glad you’re his doctor, Ali.”

Ali grinned, but it was rueful. “He’s got a kick-ass team assigned to him, and it’s a good thing. He’s not exactly a cooperative patient. Those early exams, once he was here, were nightmares. It took four of us to hold him down. We felt like monsters. He kicked me right in the jaw.” She turned to face Sarah on the bench, twisting her neck so Sarah could see Ali’s other cheek. Ali gingerly touched the greenish gray bruise along her jawbone. “These cases break our hearts.”

“You don’t see abuse like
this
that often, do you?”

Ali tilted her head at Sarah. “Yes. Unfortunately, we do.” A beep sounded in Ali’s pocket, and she said, “I’ve got to go. Take care, Sarah. It’s great to see you; I just wish it wasn’t under such grim circumstances. It’s been way too long.”

It had been. And rather than just meeting for a quick lunch, Sarah felt a yearning to have Ali and her girlfriend coming over for dinner at the Laden house again, talking around the table late into the night the way they had when Roy was alive.

Sarah stood alone a moment, after Ali left. She watched the children playing. The boy pretended to be a monster and ambushed the girl, leaping from under the slide. The girl ran, laughing and screaming, but tripped and skidded into the playground mulch. Sarah cringed at how hard she landed. The girl sat up, crying, and the mother and brother ran to her. Sarah watched the mother set her on the bridge and kiss the heels of her hands and her knees. “All better?” she heard the mom ask.

The girl nodded, still sniffling, and the mom pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.

Sarah’s chest ached, and her nose stung with tears.

W
hen she reached home and found herself standing in her kitchen, she had no real recollection of getting there. She’d been thinking about what she knew about Courtney. She’d found herself
listing
the things she knew for certain about this woman. Sarah knew that Courtney loved to get pedicures and that her favorite flowers were gerbera daisies and that she let the obscenities fly when she was cut off in traffic. Sarah knew that Courtney had met Mark in a college class—Courtney always said “college sweethearts” and rolled her eyes. She loved scary movies and Leonardo DiCaprio. Sarah knew that Courtney had become a doctor because her father was one, too, and Sarah had been to Courtney’s office, where her walls were decorated with Georgia O’Keeffe prints and those Anne Geddes photos of the babies in flowers. Sarah had heard Courtney describe her father as “not an easy man.” When Sarah had pressed her, Courtney said, “It was hard to live up to him. I felt I lived a lot of my life trying to win his approval. How clichéd is that?” Once Sarah had asked Courtney why she’d chosen her medical specialty. And Courtney said, “I want women to know their own bodies. To have power over their own bodies. I was afraid and ashamed seeing a doctor when I was a young teenager. I hated the doctor I had. I wanted to be better than that. Make the young women feel comfortable and safe.”

Courtney had seemed raw and uncomfortable talking about it. Sarah had wanted to ask more, but Courtney immediately changed the subject, saying, “As for obstetrics, I love delivering babies. It’s
happy.
I’m dealing with healthy people who have a short-term ‘condition’ and are going to get well. I love the whole flowering process, the way the body takes control of
us
. Isn’t it a trip to think of that? This . . . this
person
came from us? Is a part of us.
Is
us. You know?”

She knew that Courtney liked her lattes with soy milk, that she always bought Junior Mints at the movies, and that she preferred her gin martinis with a cocktail onion instead of an olive. She knew that when Courtney was premenstrual, she craved Sarah’s Thai peanut dressing and would eat it with a spoon out of the jar. She knew Courtney’s shoe size and that she wore petite smalls in most clothing.

She knew that Courtney was obsessive about her workouts and that she loved to run. Courtney was a great running partner. Their pace was the same. They’d run every Saturday morning. Sometimes Courtney met her straight from a delivery; she’d only had to cancel three times in the nearly four years they’d held the tradition. Sarah knew that Courtney didn’t like to talk when she ran, which Sarah loved. Sarah had tried going to an aerobics class with Gwinn once, but Gwinn had blabbed through the whole thing, and that had annoyed the hell out of Sarah. Sarah liked the time to be in her head. She didn’t even like headphones. She liked the private time to fill her head with Roy, a luxury she could allow herself because she was doing something else, something productive.

Sarah picked the homemade photo calendar off its magnetic hook again and flipped forward to December, a photo of Sarah and Courtney together. Mark had taken the photo on a night that the Kendricks had invited Sarah’s family over for supper. Sarah had felt awkwardly aware of being without Roy, and Nate had been sullen, but it was in the days that Jordan and Danny were friends, and their silliness and laughter had made the dinner fun. The photo was of Sarah and Courtney at the end of the table, empty dessert plates and coffee cups in front of them, in the foreground the pie plate with the one remaining piece of the peach-and-blueberry pie Sarah had brought. Sarah and Courtney had their arms around each other’s shoulders, leaning their heads together, Sarah’s dark curls mingling with Courtney’s wispy blond hair. They looked like college roomies. Best friends.

And now Sarah could add the following to the list of things she knew about Courtney:

Courtney’s father had abused her. Courtney had a brother she had lied about. Courtney had stolen drugs from the hospital. Courtney had been treating her son for a sexually transmitted disease. Courtney’s son had been sexually abused for at least four years.

And then Sarah thought of things she
didn’t
know. It struck her that she had no idea what Courtney filled
her
head with as they ran on Saturday mornings. What was it a luxury for her to dwell on?

Chapter Nine
Jordan

J
ordan swallowed a fourth bite of his hospital-breakfast oatmeal. It crawled down his throat, thick and dry as art-class clay. He shoved his tray to the side and flung himself back on the bed. The tiny room was bright with sunshine. Cartoon penguins bordered the ceiling. They were supposed to make him feel better, he guessed. But he was in such deep trouble. He’d messed up so bad it made him feel sick. And he had no idea how he was going to fix it.

He’d been here for five whole days, and every night he dreamed about his backpack. In his dreams he always raced to get to the backpack before anyone else opened it. He couldn’t even remember what was in it that was so important.

His brain felt full of fog. The days all blurred together here, and he kept making stupid mistakes and saying the wrong things. He pictured his teacher telling the class, “Now, focus. Really concentrate.” Oh, man. If only he could be back in class. If only nobody knew, if he could just turn back time like in a movie. But turning back time meant he still had to . . .
concentrate
. C-o-n-c-e-n-t-r-a-t-e. Jordan sat up. If he was going to focus, it meant he had to
stay here
and stop spelling. But trying to remember in his aching head just made everything even foggier. He reached for the sketch pad that Sarah had brought. He selected the green colored pencil, flipped past some pages he’d drawn on, and began to make a list. He would test himself. He would write down what he did remember.

He wrote, “
Day #1. The Plan,
” then paused. The morning that he’d come to the hospital was lost. He didn’t know how to get it back. He remembered his plan, but he honestly didn’t remember doing it. Dr. Ali had told him this amnesia was a usual thing in an overdose. She said he’d given himself the mental equivalent of a mild stroke. He could see himself in his house—sitting on the staircase—cold and tired. He could see the moment like a flash that made him know this was the day to quit. There was an epiphany—that was a vocabulary word, and he even remembered thinking that he was actually using a vocabulary word at the exact moment of the epiphany—but the hours before and after it were lost to him.