What We Saw at Night (25 page)

I chewed my lip, not wanting to cry again. That was when I saw it: the Rob I’d loved from toddlerhood, the doomed-boy-who-could-have-been-a-jock, the late-night record producer, the de-facto therapist—the countless Robs, wondrous and magical—all forced to live inside a single head their whole lives, never able to do what they wanted, but never mean or bitter about it. The United Rob.

“What?” he asked.

“Since when did you get so smart?” I said.

“It’s from hanging out with you and Juliet.”

“Rob.…”

“I know you. There are a thousand Juliets. But there’s only one Allie Kim. And from now on, I hope there’s only one Rob Dorn.” He drew in a trembling breath. “We owe that to Juliet, no matter what happens.”

I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the pain. I kissed his neck. “She never believed in the prison cell, did she?”

“Why the hell do you think she was able to convince us to do Parkour?”

I WAS JUST drifting off when the prison cell door flew open. “You have to eat more and sleep more,” Mom said, apropos nothing. “Well,
eat
more. Hi, Rob.”

He laughed.

“I eat all the time,” I muttered groggily, extricating myself.

“You eat grapes. You were already thin. Now you look ghastly.”

“Now I can be a model.”

“You’re angry and you’re grieving, but this helps nothing,” Jackie said. “No one likes to believe what she doesn’t want to believe.”

“Gee, Mom, did you just make that up?”

“No need to take it out on me, Allie.” She folded her arms across her chest and arched her eyebrow at Rob, hoping to enlist him as an ally the same way she enlisted Angie.
Oh, God
, I thought.
Now we’re like some loser married couple who lives at home. Maybe it’s time to move into that cabin at Ghost Lake
.

“See?” I said. “You’re mad and you’re not even calling
me Alexis.” I was furious at the seeming willingness of people in charge to fall for the dumbest excuse for a solution. “I know Juliet better than anyone, Mom.”

“In some ways. In other ways, you don’t know her at all.”

I glanced at Rob. He shrugged. No wonder Mom wanted to enlist him as an ally. They both spoke the truth. I struggled to a sitting position.

“I want to know if they checked for Garrett Tabor’s fingerprints,” I stated. “You know, at Lost Warrior.”

“Why would Garrett Tabor have fingerprints in a criminal system?” Rob asked.

“When you work with kids, you have to pass background checks.” I glanced at my mom. “Right, Mom?”

“Ah,” Rob said. “But he’s smarter than that, Allie-Stair. He doesn’t leave traces.”
Kind of raised that way
, I thought, shivering.

Rob wrapped his arm around me. “Do you think there’s a chance it’s real?”

“There’s always a chance,” Mom put in. “Your father up and vanished, too, Alexis. It was convenient. Maybe this way out was convenient for her. Maybe Juliet was the one who left no traces.”

The next day, the $50,000 reward offered by the Tabor Clinic was withdrawn. A new bulletin listed Juliet as a “Missing Person.” Suddenly, she was nobody’s little girl.

THE NEXT NIGHT, as I was heading out to meet Rob up at the cabin at Ghost Lake, I found my mom in the kitchen, crying.

My heart seized. It was the six o’clock news. I caught a glimpse of the river, under floodlights, of the newscaster, his face grim.

“They don’t know,” Jackie finally said. “They don’t know if it’s her.” There were still streaks of light in the sky. My mother got up and pulled the shades. “The body they found doesn’t fit Juliet’s description. And it’s much … well, let’s wait and see, Allie.”

“Go ahead and say it, Mom. I can take it. It’s what I want to do with my life—”

“Not when it comes to your best friend.”

“Please say it. I’ll think worse.”

My mom nodded, blinking rapidly. “You can sit with me and watch. I’m sure they’ll go over it again. The state of the body isn’t quite compatible with Juliet. This person would have died more recently. And while she might resemble Juliet superficially, there was damage to the face and hands from aquatic life.…” Fish had nibbled her. Crabs had plucked at her beautiful lips. “But also perhaps from trauma.”

“From rocks and being in the water,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“From being hurt by someone else?” I had promised that it was okay for my mother to say these things, but now my body betrayed my rational mind and I began to over-breathe, a kaleidoscope of sparkling confetti before my eyes. “What about her clothes? The black bodysuit with the blue stars on it?”

Jack-Jack looked at me with a fierce animal protectiveness, and I knew that there had been no clothes. Involuntarily, I heard myself make the kind of sound a person would make if she were gut-punched without warning.

“Allie, Allie. I’m sorry.”

“Dental records will show right away,” I croaked. Juliet’s teeth were perfect, and one was a perfect fake, an implant, a permanent tooth placed when one could not be surgically re-rooted after she literally knocked it out with a ski pole.

My mother said, “There was damage there, too. That won’t be definitive.” Quickly, she added that the girl who had been pulled from the river had short dark hair, which was dyed, and was much thinner and less well developed in terms of musculature than Juliet. “So it really may not be her at all, Allie. People drown all the time. No one knows if this girl has water in her lungs. No one knows how she died.”

“What about her tattoo?”

Mom shook her head.

“You got all this from the news?” I finally yelled. My throat clogged.

“I called Tommy.…” She turned back to the television.

Because I’d already lost Juliet, I almost prayed that it was her. I almost willed her long lonely voyage to be over. If someone had starved her and beaten her, there must have come a moment when she’d won before she succumbed to defeated agony by letting life go. I almost prayed that she thought of herself as a hero, having saved me, having taken the devil’s bargain. I almost prayed for all that. But I couldn’t. Because even if there were a chance that Juliet was still out there, running from Tabor, it meant some other father and mother’s child had died. It meant the paper doll chain had been set ablaze once more.
Juliet, come back
, I pleaded.
Come back. Help me fight him
.

“I want a second opinion,” I told my mother.

“What?”

“I want Dr. Stephen to have someone else do the autopsy.”

“Allie, you’re beyond the point of rational. I understand—”

“Is there a way to request that legally?” I interrupted. “Can her parents request that legally? To replace Dr. Stephen just this one time?”

“Only if they have some reason to believe he’s incompetent,” my mother said. She choked over the words. “And his brother has cared for Juliet all her life. He has samples of Juliet’s blood and tissue, and her fingerprints as part of the research study.”

“Exactly! The research study. That’s why. I think he may be too … close to it. And he’s coming all the way back from South America. He’ll be exhausted.”

“It’s because Garrett gives you the creeps. That’s why. But Stephen is the nicest guy in the world. He’s crushed over this. They all are, baby.”

“Mom, please, just ask someone, okay?”

In the end, it was Dr. Stephen who asked for assistance, from an FBI pathologist. Juliet was still a minor when she died, and foul play or kidnapping was a possibility.

ROB ENDED UP coming over. Angela woke up around two o’clock and got into bed with Rob and me, curling into my body like an oversized shrimp. My mother had told her that a girl had died, but that we were hoping it wasn’t Juliet, and that we would have to wait for the doctors to tell us. Angie knew about Nicola’s death, although she hadn’t known Nicola other than to say hi. What we both knew as the daughters of a nurse was that in the medical world, good news travels fast. The morning lasted forever.

The phone rang at six. The three of us sat upright in bed.

Mom said softly, with an almost religious hush, “Thank you. I will tell her.”

But she didn’t have to.

A
t Ghost Lake, a cordon of Iron Harbor cops blocked the road so that no one could intrude on what was a private family ceremony, with only a few close friends included. Reporters were still on the prowl. Citizens of the town placed cards and wreaths for the Siroccos in their mailbox, as they’d done at Nicola’s grave.

No one’s funeral is ever held at ten o’clock at night, so this was my first. It was Rob’s first, too. The Siroccos insisted on including us. Juliet wasn’t even going to be buried at Torch Mountain Cemetery. Her ashes were going to be scattered over the water at one of the places she loved the most,
by
those she loved the most.

Only as I took a step out on the old pier did the reality of the past two days sink in. It had been a flurry of anger and disbelief and sleeplessness. But there was no argument to be made anymore.

DNA tests had proved that the body found in the river was Juliet’s. And Dr. Stephen’s report was supported by the
FBI medical examiner. Even a Tabor couldn’t have bribed the federal government. The report pointed out the coldness of the water as a factor in how well-preserved the body still was, and the loss of teeth possibly accidental, as a result of gum damage due to rapid weight loss. She had died by accident shortly after cutting her hair in a punk crop and dyeing it. No one could explain any of the physical anomalies, other than to suggest that starving herself for a week was a reliable way to dramatically change her appearance quickly, as part of some kind of plan to escape.

The FBI physician was also a criminalogist. She suggested that undetected neurological damage might have prompted Juliet’s abrupt mood swings. The blaze that had consumed Juliet’s belongings could have been phony, a deliberate diorama meant to suggest that someone was shedding her past. But if true, then why up on the back side of Torch Mountain, among old mine shafts that pitted the slopes? The likelihood of that doused fire being lost forever was far greater than the slim chance someone would stumble upon it.…

I tried to shut off the squirming thoughts as I awaited my turn to speak. The uncles went first. Then her grandma, Rosa. Then the cousins. Then Rob.…

I tried to remember Juliet, to conjure her up. Instead, my normal brain went on strike. It was Occupy Allie Kim for my normal brain. (Was there ever even a normal brain?) I thought of my outfit: a brand new short black dress Gina had bought for me as a gift and as condolence, as she knew I couldn’t go shopping. (Juliet would have dug its style.) I thought of how the whole thing seemed like a long prank, and that Juliet herself would leap out at any moment and yell, “Psych!”

I blinked at Rob. I hadn’t even heard what he’d said. He held and released a fistful of the stony mix, like ash and shell. He turned to me, tears staining his cheeks.

This was no prank, no hoax.

Without thinking, I wet a finger and poked the gray matter, then dotted my tongue. Like the night sky above us. I hadn’t planned it, but Rob did the same. As long as we lived, Juliet would be part of us.

It was my turn. I cleared my throat. I tried to remember what I’d prepared.

“Juliet … there’s nothing to say except that I loved her. Part of what I loved most is that I never knew everything about her. People like us want a little privacy. A little mystery. It’s all we have. But I know this much. Juliet wanted everyone she loved to soar and be daring. So I’ll sleep well tomorrow … seriously. I will, knowing she is out there taking flight. Forever.”

I blinked again. I found myself staring at the shadows of people who were here for my best friend. I thought about the kids who’d glimpsed us in the playground, years ago, who had no mechanism to deal with what we were.

“I wanted to read a poem.” My throat caught. “These lines were written four hundred years ago, about a skylark:

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert—

We look before and after
,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

Rob took my arm. We turned and walked away then, from Ghost Lake, where we had laughed and fished and skinny-dipped and drank wine, where, I think, Juliet had spent some of the happiest nights of her life. We left her there.

Neither Rob nor I ever went back.

AROUND MIDNIGHT, AFTER Juliet’s funeral, I went home to cold-pack my head like a fresh fish. Rob had gone home. My mother had gone to the Sirocco house to be with the family. My sister had gone home with Gina. Maybe they all knew that I had to be alone. All I wanted was to hide from the grief and the hot, close pounding of the pain.

Bonnie had graciously left me with a packet of a few knockout pills, not enough to put me in any danger.