“Let’s go,” Jenny said eventually, when someone began chanting, “Slut, slut.” She tugged at my arm until she was practically dragging me out of the theater and onto the street.

Once we were on the bus home, we realized that we’d left the drugstore bag with Mom’s medications on the floor by our seats. Jenny had to buy them all over again the next day.

Jenny went straight into the bathroom when we got home. When she emerged, her beautiful long golden hair had been chopped unevenly to her shoulders. Later, I found clumps of Jenny’s hair in the bathroom trash, all stuck together with pink gum. A boy sitting behind her at the movies had put gum in her hair.

After that trip to the movies, Jenny retreated into herself. Mom noticed. She asked if I knew what was worrying Jenny. I said that she was probably bored like me and wanted to get back to school.

I suppose I could have told Mom about how we’d fled the theater as kids pelted us, and about the terrible names they used. I couldn’t bear to do it. Jenny and I didn’t talk about that afternoon at all. It was almost as if we’d made a silent pact never to discuss it.

Jenny returned to her routine of working and coming home in the evening to make dinner, wash her uniform, and leave it to dry on the porch overnight. She would go to sleep while it was light, with the excuse that she had to wake early for work. I returned to riding my bicycle on the gravel road in front of our house. Backward and forward. The distant haze of the sea beckoned.

The woman with the blow-dried hair and church dress came to our house again. This time, she came with another woman who was plump and carried a nurse’s bag.

Mom was expecting them. She told me that visitors would be stopping by after lunch and when they arrived I should play outside. When I heard a knock on the screen door, I let them into the living room, where Mom was waiting in an armchair, wearing a colorful sundress. She’d even done her nails. Despite all her efforts to look well, the brightly patterned dress accentuated her skeletal arms and sunken chest and made her look sicker than ever.

I looked through a window into the living room as the nurse took Mom’s blood pressure and listened to her chest with a stethoscope before taking blood samples with a syringe. When she was done, the other woman passed Mom documents. Mom leaned over and signed them with wet eyes.

* * *

After they’d gone, Mom was so exhausted that she fell asleep on top of her bed. I put a tartan blanket over her and went to wait for Jenny’s bus on the main road at the other side of the hill from our house.

I was always excited to see what Jenny had brought home from work. The store manager often gave her leftover deli meat close to expiration and fruit and vegetables that were about to spoil. He knew how sick Mom was and I guess felt an obligation to help us out.

To keep myself amused while I waited for Jenny’s bus to pull in, I walked along the white line on the shoulder of the road, pretending I was a gymnast on a balance beam. Down the hill, I saw the bus thundering toward me from a distance. It pulled to a stop near the bus stop sign. The hydraulic doors opened with a hiss. Jenny stepped out in her tan supermarket uniform, carrying two large grocery bags.

We walked in silence to the sound of rustling grass and the occasional whine of a car engine passing by. Me in front, Jenny, a few yards behind. We didn’t talk. In the space of a few short weeks, Jenny had become introverted and brooding.

I picked up a long stick and scraped it on the dirt path behind me as I walked. When the path veered away from the road around a clump of trees, I followed it. My feet kicked up dust and my eyes were downcast as I focused on drawing an unbroken line with the stick. The trees blocked the road from view and acted as a buffer from the noise of passing cars.

The path eventually curved back to the road after the trees. Eventually, I realized that I hadn’t heard Jenny’s footsteps or the rustle of shopping bags for a while. I assumed I was walking too fast and Jenny had fallen behind. I stopped and waited. When Jenny still didn’t appear, I called to her.

“Jenny?”

No response.

“Jenny? Where are you?” I called out. She didn’t emerge from the path.

“Hurry up, Jenny!” I was annoyed she was taking so long.

“Jenny?”

I huffed in frustration at the silence that followed. I ran back along the path. When I found no trace of my sister, I walked into the road to look for her. There was no sign of her walking along the road on either side. All I saw was a red apple that had rolled onto the asphalt.

I picked up the apple. That’s when I saw Jenny’s shopping bags lying in the long grass by the side of the road. One bag had tipped over. Loose fruit had spilled onto the ground. The other bag was upright. There was no sign of Jenny. She was gone. I ran uphill, pushing long strands of grass out of my way until I reached the top.

Puffing loudly from running, my lungs burning, I stopped at the pinnacle and scanned the landscape below. I didn’t see Jenny. But I did see a familiar pickup truck driving slowly down an unpaved road leading to the mouth of the forest. I ran down the other side of the hill in the direction of the truck. I crossed the road and followed it into the forest.

I moved off the dirt road, walking among the trees into the darkness as the foliage became denser. I darted around tree trunks and bent under unruly branches that scratched my arms. Deep in the forest, I saw the pickup. It had been parked hastily on the side of the road. A canvas cover lay in a heap on the back of the truck alongside a half-empty box of beer. I heard voices and laughter coming from a clearing. Cruel laughter. As I moved closer, I saw a boy lying on top of Jenny while two others stood by and watched. Jeering.

I was filled with rage. I instinctively picked up a rock to charge at the boy who was hurting Jenny. I raced toward him, the rock raised in my right hand. Before I reached the clearing, a hand slapped onto my face like a suction cup. I couldn’t scream or say a word as I was lifted off the ground. My feet hung in the air as I was carried through the forest, restrained by powerful arms. My sandals slipped off. I tried to kick and struggle free. It was impossible. His grip was crushing.

43

Rachel

Rachel ran against a lava-lamp sky of navy cut with orange. Dawn had broken by the time she’d reached the Morrison’s Point jetty. Her breathing was labored as she leaned over the rails and looked into the dark, impenetrable water.

Long gone were the wildflowers that Hannah had scattered in the waves a few days earlier to commemorate her sister’s death. That had been the last message that Rachel had received from her. Pete was checking the podcast inbox several times a day in case Hannah reached out again. There had been plenty of mail from fans and detractors alike. Nothing from Hannah. Rachel had repeatedly called the phone number for Hannah that Kitty had given her, but it went to an automated voice mail each time. She’d left several voice messages for Hannah, but she hadn’t received any response.

It may take time for me to get you the last letter. I keep starting it and stopping, Hannah had written at the end of the email. It will take all my strength to put into words what happened to Jenny that night. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe I should leave the past alone. Let it die with me.

Hannah’s last words left Rachel deeply worried. Hannah had intimated a few times in her correspondence to Rachel that she’d contemplated death. Rachel wished there was a way for her to reach out to Hannah. To reassure her. To get her help if she needed it. But Rachel couldn’t help someone who was so determined to stay out of reach. It was almost as if Hannah wanted to keep Rachel at arm’s length. It was, Rachel thought as she watched the pink dawn drain from the sky, as if she was a pawn in a game, the rules of which only Hannah knew.

Pete had called Rachel late the previous night to share the results of the background check he’d run on Vince Knox. “Four years ago, a man by the name of Vince Knox died of a heart attack in prison,” Pete told her. Rachel had been drifting to sleep when he called, his voice filled with enough urgency to immediately wake her. “The character witness who testified about Scott Blair saving that drowning boy can’t possibly be Vince Knox, Rach. For one thing, all records of his existence date back to exactly a week to the day after the Vince Knox I mentioned died in prison. I believe the character witness took the name Vince Knox after the real Vince Knox died, but he wasn’t born with that name. He’s actually someone else. The question is who?”

“Maybe I should ask him,” said Rachel. “Do you have an address for him?”

“No fixed address. He’s a vagrant. Apparently, he sometimes sleeps on the beaches south of town in the summer.”

“That’s a big area,” said Rachel, yawning. “There are a lot of beaches south of town.”