The Kindness of Strangers (43 page)

“No, don’t—” Danny tried to hush him.

“You guys need to come see this.”

“Nate, no—”

“Danny, we
have
to, and you know it, or you wouldn’t have showed it to me.”

Danny ducked his head as Mom and Kramble came into the room. Nate knew that this was the easy part.

The hard part would be telling Jordan.

Chapter Twenty-three
Sarah

S
arah approached Jordan’s bedroom door. It had been less than forty-eight hours since Danny had shown them the disk, but it felt like a year that she’d carried the stone of dread and sorrow for Jordan in her chest. This new wound on top of all the other wreckage made it hard to breathe when she looked at him.

Sarah knocked on his door. She didn’t expect an answer. He hadn’t spoken to any of them since that night they told him they’d found the disk. He’d climbed the stairs to his room and crawled into bed with all his clothes on, even his shoes. Except for occasional trips to the bathroom, he hadn’t moved.

Nate had spent Saturday night sleeping on Jordan’s floor. Sarah had spent that Saturday and Sunday in the hall. Reece and Ali and Bryn and Kramble had told them the same thing: Give him time. Give him space.
Was
there enough time and space in this boy’s life to heal him?

“Jordan? I’m coming in. I have some breakfast for you.” She opened the door. He lay on his side, his back to her. She carried the plate of strawberry and banana slices and a blueberry muffin to his nightstand, which she’d moved so that he had to at least sit up to reach his food. She traded the plate for the one she’d left there last night. He’d finally eaten something—a few apples slices and what looked like three bites of the peanut butter sandwich. He’d also removed his shoes. One shoe lay at the foot of the bed, still laced. The other was across the room, a slight scuff on the wall above it suggesting that it had been hurled or kicked.

Danny had finally revealed everything in a rush of relief, babbling nonstop to Kramble—how he’d found the disk, why he lied, how Jordan had made him promise. When Courtney had snuck into the house, Danny’d refused to tell her where Jordan was, even though she kept saying, “I know he lives here. Where is he? When is he coming back?” Danny said Courtney had been nice and friendly, as always, like nothing bad had happened and she hadn’t just been in jail. When Danny wouldn’t tell her when Jordan would be back, Courtney had sweetly suggested that Danny might want to help her since she had pictures of
him
and he might have to go live in a foster home, too. Danny had blurted—in that thoughtless Danny way—“No you don’t!
I
have that disk!” just as Sarah had honked in the driveway. Courtney had begged and pleaded, “Please, please, please give it to me, Danny, please.” Danny said Courtney had promised never to tell he’d posed for pictures if he just gave her the disk.

Sarah took a deep breath. Although Courtney hadn’t hurt Danny physically, it made her want to break things when she thought of the damage Mark and Courtney
had
done. Danny had cried and asked her, “Why did they pick me, Mom? Out of all the kids that were over there, why did they want it to be
me
? Is there something wrong with me? Could they tell?” Sarah didn’t tell Danny she’d feared the same thing: What was it about Sarah that made the Kendricks think her child was easy prey? She’d thought she was a good mother. God knew she
tried
. The Kendricks made her question everything about herself. Bringing her entire family face-to-face with this twisted, repulsive perversion. Making Sarah look at everyone she knew and wonder what secrets they had. The Kendricks had changed them all.

Sarah looked at the defeated little form curled there on the bed. “Hey, Jordan? I’m going outside to work in the garden. You wanna help me?”

No answer.

“It’s really beautiful outside today.”

Nothing.

“Okay. I’ll be in the backyard.” She left his room. She couldn’t keep watch forever. When Roy had died, she’d longed to cave in the way Jordan had, but she couldn’t because of the boys. Having two people dependent on her had forced her to impersonate a functional human being most of the time—buying groceries, having the shingles fixed on the roof, nodding as Nate’s teachers reported he’d had some “bad days” but was doing as well as could be expected. She could be that real person for them but not for herself. How many mornings had the sun risen on her still in her clothes, curled on top of the covers just like this boy, convinced she could not get up and walk through the day?

And who was it who convinced her that she could? Who had held her hand and led her along the road back?

But that woman had sexually abused her own son and had apparently planned to abuse Sarah’s.

Sarah carried all her tomato plants out into the yard, taking trip after trip up and down the basement steps as if it were a timed event, making herself breathe hard, making her hamstrings ache. She snatched up the plants with a satisfying ferocity.

As she brought the last tray of plants into the yard, frantic birdcalls grabbed her attention and a flash of yellow caught her eye. A big yellow cat was halfway up the apple tree, headed for the nest. “Hey!” Sarah dropped the flat of tomatoes and ran at the cat. The cat froze, clinging to the trunk, and hissed at her.

“Get out of here!” The cat fixed its golden, unblinking eyes on her. Sarah stepped into the garden and snatched up a large, round rock, one of the row markers for the corn. The cat began to scramble down the tree. “Get
out
!” Sarah screamed. She hurled the rock at the cat, only barely missing it. The tree shuddered as the rock hit the trunk with a solid thump, leaving a dent in the bark. The cat bolted away.

Sarah stood, panting, fists clenched. The taste of blood made her aware that she’d bitten her lip. She looked at the rock now lying at the foot of the tree. It was bigger than the cat’s head. She might have killed it.

She sucked on her cut lower lip and knew that she’d
wanted
to kill it.

The robins still flew panicked circles around the yard, darting and fluttering at Sarah’s head. Sarah ignored them and climbed onto the stone bench to peer into the nest. Empty. Were these the babies or adults flying? Sarah couldn’t tell anymore. When she stepped down, the robins returned to the tree.

Sarah closed her eyes and inhaled and exhaled with slow deliberation until her pulse returned to normal. Then she knelt in the garden and used a trowel to dig holes for the tomato plants she was finally putting into the earth. The aroma of soil and basil baking in the heat perfumed the garden and soothed her. Her skin drank in the sun.

The clack of the back door made Sarah lift her head. Jordan stood on the porch. Warmth moved through her chest, as if her heart soaked up the sun’s rays as well. “Hey.”

He didn’t answer. That was okay. It was enough that he’d come outside, that he could stand to be in the same yard with her. To her surprise he let himself in the garden gate and wandered barefoot among the rows he’d helped her plant. Already corn was visible, along with radishes, mint, all kinds of lettuce and greens. The peas were nearly ready to produce.

He stopped at a tall structure of wooden stakes and chicken wire. He frowned.

“That’s my bean tepee,” Sarah explained. “Eventually beans will grow up those poles, all over that wire, and cover the tepee completely. I keep one little door clear, and it makes a great hideout.”

Jordan touched one of the poles with his toe, then wandered up and down the garden rows. Sarah continued planting tomatoes, sneaking glances at him now and then.

He knelt beside the gargoyle her mother had sent. He touched the stone figure’s wing. “Do you believe in God?” he asked her, not taking his eyes from the gargoyle.

Sarah stopped digging, her heart racing as it had when she’d seen the cat. After three days of silence, conversation felt fragile. She felt an obligation to say yes, but somehow it was impossible to lie to this boy. “I used to,” she said. “I’m not sure I do anymore.”

Jordan visibly relaxed, as if he’d been holding his breath. “My grandma did. She said everything happens for a reason.” He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “If that’s true, I think I might hate God.” He said it calmly, but Sarah felt her throat tighten.

She knew that some people might argue it was God’s plan for this boy to find her family, but she wanted to know why it was God’s plan that he needed to.

Jordan walked to her, stepping between the rows.

He crouched low and sniffed the shiny green basil plants. He kept looking at the basil as he asked, “What will you say about her? At her trial?”

Sarah’s hands froze on the trowel. She found herself holding still, as if he were a bird that had landed here beside her. She whispered, “I’ll tell the truth.”

His forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

She shifted to sit cross-legged. Jordan stayed crouched, his arms hugging his knees. She traced designs in the earth with her trowel and wondered how he’d react if she said the wrong thing. “The truth is, I never suspected that anything bad was happening to you. That’s what I’ll say. If I had, I would have tried to help you sooner.”

He squinted at her, and she wasn’t sure if it was just from the sun.

She sensed that he wasn’t going to fly off. “Why did your mom use a caterer for . . . those other parties? Was it just to explain the people who came over? The cars in the drive?”

Jordan opened his mouth, the answer readily available and about to be shared. But then he shut it and dug his finger in the dirt. He seemed to
want
to talk. Should she keep going? Or let him initiate it? She had no idea what she was doing.

“I have a feeling that I was just a person used to keep up their façade.”

Jordan looked up sharply, the movement frightening her. “Their what?”

“Façade? It means . . . um, like a front, a fake appearance.”

He tilted his head. “How do you spell it?”

She smiled at this odd request. “F-a-c-a-d-e.”

He looked suspicious. “
C?
Really?”

She nodded. “It has a little accent on it, like this”—she drew it in the dirt—“only I don’t remember what it’s called. That’s how you know it’s pronounced like an
s
.”

“F-a-c-a-d-e,” he repeated. He spelled it in the dirt. “So that’s what it’s called.”

Sarah nodded. He’d been good at the façade. Far too good at it.

He buried one hand, packing the dirt around it with his other. “So that’s all you’ll say about her?” She marveled at his casual tone, the playfulness of his actions, but all the while he was assessing and gathering information.

“I’ll just answer the questions.” She watched the breeze lift his hair, now dull and greasy from three days without washing. The sudden constriction in her throat surprised her.

Jordan pulled his hand out of the earth and studied his dirt-caked fingernails. “You met my uncle, didn’t you?”

Sarah blinked. “Yes.”

“Was he mad that I wouldn’t talk to him?”

“No. No, not at all. Don’t worry. He understands.”

“His name is Jordan, too?” Sarah couldn’t read the expression on his face.

She nodded. “But he goes by J.M. That’s what all his friends call him in Seattle.”

He squinted at her. “What did you talk about?”

Again Sarah knew there was no lying. “We talked about you . . . and your mom.”

Sarah had agreed to meet Jordan Mayhew the first time he asked, in Bryn’s office. She’d been afraid at first. She worried that if he were anything like Courtney, she’d fall for his manipulations. But since the invitation came through Bryn, and Bryn and Reece and Kramble had all already met with him, she made herself go.

When she’d first faced J.M., her breath caught. Looking into this man’s face was like looking into a mirror of Jordan’s future. The resemblance was so strong it caused Sarah a fleeting moment of horrified wonder—but then she remembered the unmistakable signs of Mark Kendrick in Jordan’s face as well.

She’d found J.M. funny and gentle, although she initially tried to resist feeling anything positive about him; she was wary of her own perceptions of people. She’d been so wrong before, after all.

Bryn helped them get started talking but then mostly just listened, twisting one of her fabulous curls around her finger.

“Look,” he’d said, “there’s no gracious way to small-talk into this. We might as well jump in. I’m still here because I want to help Jordan if I can. I’ve already been open about the past, so don’t worry about being subtle or making me uncomfortable. He’s probably nowhere near ready to talk to me yet, but I wanted to lay the groundwork, you know, suggest the possibility. One of the greatest things that helped
me
was meeting someone who’d lived through the same stuff I had and seeing that they were okay, that they had this good life and people who loved them and all that. Before I met any other survivors, I just thought of myself as damaged goods and assumed that everyone I met could probably tell.”

He was completely comfortable when Sarah asked questions about their childhood. He told her how they were never allowed to see any other doctor except their father. Even Courtney’s gynecological exams were done by her father, and at a much earlier age than had been needed.