We Were Never Here, page 17
“Jamie. I can’t believe Greta remembered her name. It’s been over fifteen years.” She passed me a Spotted Cow Ale. “You don’t really look alike. Other than both having dark hair.”
“And she used to come up here?”
“Mm-hmm. We were best friends when we were kids.”
JR—the hacked-out initials in the carved heart. “You both went to that Presbyterian school?”
“Lutheran. Presbyterians are wild by comparison.” She took a sip of beer. “We went to school together, yeah. But we knew each other our whole lives. Our parents were friends even before I was born; they lived in the house between us and Nana and Bill.”
Aha, so Jamie grew up in the California-style house with the fat stone pineapples. But why was Kristen leaving out the biggest detail—the fact that Jamie was no longer alive? I kept pushing: “Are they still there?”
Her eyes darkened. “No, they moved away. Hey, did we remember to pick up lighter fluid?”
“We did, it’s by the door.” I gave her one more chance: “So what happened to Jamie?”
“Nothing good.” Kristen crossed to the wood-burning stove and swung its metal door open. I waited for her to go on, even out of decorum, as the awkwardness jelled. At last she sent the door squealing shut. “We’re low on firewood.”
“You know what’s weird? When I was checking out, Greta made it sound like Jamie had…died.” The word splatted into the space between us, so indelicate.
Kristen was almost to the door, and she froze. “Yeah. When we were kids. There was…an accident.” She tugged at the doorknob. “I’m gonna light the charcoal and chop up some wood for later. Watch the brats.” She snatched up a hatchet and some lighter fluid on the way out and let the screen door bang behind her.
When I carried the sausages out after her, she was swinging an ax gracefully, muscles taut, brow furrowed in concentration. There was something catlike in the way she kept dismantling the hunks of wood, slicing and rearranging and going back for more.
CHAPTER 23
The red drop hovered and then sank, dispelling into soft swirls like clouds in coffee. No, like blood in water. Like the matted clumps softening and slinking away from Sebastian’s skull in Tonle Kak River.
How did Jamie die? My mind kept returning to it, a kid’s tongue slipping into the wet hole of a lost tooth. But Kristen had made it clear she didn’t want to discuss it.
She gave the jigger another shake, then pushed the bottle of Campari aside. “People think you’re supposed to shake negronis over ice, but they’re wrong,” she said. “You just stir it.”
Kristen had taken up cocktail making in Sydney, a self-taught venture involving triple sec, homemade bitters, and not one but two kinds of vermouth. Fortunately, Nana and Bill kept a fully stocked bar in the cabin’s finished basement. We’d already sampled her old-fashioneds and manhattans and were feeling a bit loose. She dropped in the orange peel and handed me my cocktail; our glasses kissed, and I took a sip.
“You’re right—I love it.” Herbaceous and rich, like drinking rubies.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never had a negroni.” She flopped onto the sectional sofa next to me. “I thought Milwaukee’s, like, a world-class city.”
“Well, Barker Tavern is still serving the prix fixe.” A few bucks for a shot of Jameson, a can of PBR, and a loose cigarette tucked into the tab—a local staple.
“Got it. So there hasn’t been much of a reason to branch out.”
The cheery demeanor, jokes tossed off like fluff in the wind: Less than twenty-four hours after we’d read the article, Kristen seemed to be doubling down on her insistence that everything was fine, that life was normal, that we had nothing to do with all that. Denial as a coping mechanism: It wasn’t how I’d handled my post-assault life, but at least I could understand it. Until yesterday, everything was fine—in the sense that no one was after us. But now? As Paolo’s wealthy father vowed to bring his son’s killer to justice?
Kristen slid her hands around the glass, leaving fingerprints in the dew. “It’s so weird to be up here without Nana and Bill. I feel like we’re teenagers sneaking illicit drinks in the basement.”
She kept doing this, too, introducing topics of conversation so I wouldn’t have time to bring up Paolo. But I knew distressing her wouldn’t help matters, so I angled for more info on Jamie: “You got to bring friends up as a kid, right?”
“Yeah, in the summer. My room had a trundle bed, which we thought was the coolest thing.”
“And you brought Jamie?” When she nodded: “It must have been nice having a friend here. I say that as a fellow only child.”
“It was so fun! We’d make up elaborate water ballets in the lake. Like, standing on inner tubes and flopping off in unison. Then we’d get mad when the other messed up the choreography.” A peal of laughter. “Or we’d take the canoe out. Me in the back, steering, of course. I’d get so bossy.”
I smiled. “That tracks.”
“We were like sisters.” Kristen sighed. “I miss her.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned her before.”
“Oh, I definitely have.”
“To me? Nuh-uh—I’d remember.”
“I for sure have. I remember telling you about my bestie and neighbor, like, multiple times over the years.”
“No way.” Had she? Had this mysterious Jamie simply slipped past my notice on earlier mentions? I’d always thought Kristen had had a lonely childhood, like me. It’d be one thing if they’d simply drifted apart, but…Lord, a dead best friend felt like something I’d know. “I saw some letters carved into a pine tree. Were those her initials, all hacked out?”
Kristen’s voice frosted over: “Yeah, I did that a long time ago.”
“How come?”
She peered down at her drink, at the red moon trapped in her tumbler. “Let’s talk about something else. Like how glad I am to be out of Nana and Bill’s house, oh my God. I can’t wait to move in to my own apartment. The past is so in my face in Brookfield.”
There was something there, something beyond grief about her friend, but I didn’t want to poke too hard. “Yeah, everyone regresses when they go home,” I said.
“Nana asked if I’d be back in time to go to church with them on Sunday. Like they’re still trying to save my soul.” She took another crimson gulp. “I think the only time they really liked me was when I was, like, ten years old and Christianity was my entire identity.”
“You called yourself a Jesus freak, right?” I teased. We’d had those what-were-you-like-as-a-kid conversations, wondering in hushed awe what would’ve happened if we’d met just a few years earlier. I myself had embodied the nerd trifecta: marching band, chess club, debate team.
Something flickered in her eyes. “Oh yes. Proud Jesus freak right here.”
“Speaking of, didn’t you say all your childhood stuff is here in the cabin?”
“Yeah, good memory. They stuffed it in the unfinished part so they can turn my bedroom into a gym.” She gestured toward a door breaking up the green-plaid wallpaper, then grinned. “What, you want to see pictures of me in cross necklaces at church fundraisers and everything?”
“Kind of!”
She chuckled, but I felt it, a shift in the air pressure. “Oh, I don’t feel like digging back there.”
“C’mon, I want photographic proof that you were on the poms team.”
“No. I don’t want to see that stuff.” Her words were sharp and the moment froze up, all awkward.
“So, you were saying,” I murmured. “Your grandparents still want you to go to church?”
“Totally. Praying the Holy Spirit will enter me yet. I’m kinda shocked they’re still holding out hope—hell, I’m almost thirty—but I guess if you believe what that conservative synod teaches, the logic holds up.” She shook her head, amazed anew. “When I went to school at King of Kings, in religion class I would pray—out loud, every single day, from kindergarten on—for my mom to become a Christian so she wouldn’t go to hell. I was terrified, and I suppose that’s how Nana and Bill feel about me now.”
“God, you poor thing. Why would they send you to that school with only one Christian parent?”
“Right? I didn’t realize how messed up it was until they were long dead.”
Oof. I rubbed her shoulder and she sipped her Negroni self-consciously.
“And then when they died, I could see my devotion for what it was. For all the talk of Jesus being my shepherd—it was the first time I realized I was a sheep.” She swallowed. “And it felt horrible. Like I’d been lied to every single day. But I guess it was ultimately freeing. Like: Now you have no power over me.”
She always talked about her parents at the cabin; being Up North made her sentimental, Lake Novak’s clear water a sluice for childhood memories. I knew her parents’ deaths had brought her fanatical youth-group days to an abrupt end. But this conversation felt…different. “I’m—I’m sorry you had to go through that, Kristen. I really am.”
She tilted her cocktail and the ice jingled. “Power is a funny thing. You know how they say that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference? Like, we’re looking at the scale all wrong.” She tapped her nail against the glass. “I think it’s the same thing with fear. The opposite of fear isn’t safety. It’s power.”
I peered at her. I wasn’t sure I agreed—I’d give anything right now for the assurance of safety when it came to our crimes. The promise that no one would arrest us, besmirch our good names, extradite us, or try us in the court of public opinion.
Well, and. Even if I could secure that kind of bubble wrap, it wouldn’t protect me from a lifetime of fear. Fear of verbal abuse, of emotional blackmail, of careless misogyny designed to make me feel small. All the acts of casual violence I attracted, expected, thanks to my designated gender.
“Can I have a hug?” I asked, suddenly sad for us both. She set down her glass and pulled me into her. She stroked my hair, the way she had in Chile, when asthma attacked me like a rabid dog.
* * *
—
We built a campfire before bed, both of us lost in thought as the wood snapped and sputtered. I held my marshmallow over the glowing coals, rotating the stick until I’d achieved a uniform ochre. But Kristen plunged hers into the flame, turning it into a torch and then gazing at the tiny inferno so it was reflected in her eyes.
Years ago, we’d been right there, sitting around the campfire on Novak’s verdant edge, when she first told me what had happened to her parents. It was the summer before junior year, a moment seared into my brain.
“My mom wasn’t even supposed to be home,” she’d said, her tears reflecting orange, like lava. “The night of the fire? It’s so messed-up. She was supposed to be up in Door County with her girlfriends, and I was gonna go to a sleepover because I hated being alone with my dad.” The injustice had brought tears to my eyes too. “But Dad wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed home. Ugh, it makes me so angry.”
I’d shuffled my camping chair closer to hers, then grabbed her hand. We’d been so young, still—twenty years old and newly close. “So you were home? That must’ve been so scary.”
“It was terrifying. The smoke alarm woke me up and I tried to run into the hallway, but the doorknob burned my hand.” She clutched her palm to her chest, as if she could still feel the white-hot pain. “I opened my bedroom window and climbed onto the huge maple tree there—I’d done it a million times before. And then I ran over to Nana and Bill’s.”
As she described the rest, it played in my mind like a scene from a horror film: Young Kristen screaming and jabbing at the doorbell until her grandparents finally woke and let her inside. Nana and Bill physically restraining her as the fire trucks arrived. She’d thrashed and hollered, begging to be let back into the blaze so she could find her parents in the choking blackness. But the fire had trapped them in their suite. They were burned alive, unsalvageable like the house that collapsed around them.
Now, seventeen years after the tragedy and almost a decade after Kristen shared the memory with me, she poured water on the campfire so it bubbled and hissed, and we bid each other good night.
Hours later, I stared at my bedroom’s slanted pine ceiling, unable to sleep. Crickets scratched and rattled outside the window; a fat insect or possibly a bat thumped into the screen. I counted, then counted again. Like if I added it up enough times, I’d get a different answer.
Kristen’s parents. Jamie, whose brief life Kristen had kept from me. Sebastian, then Paolo.
Five deaths in fewer than twenty years.
I’d thought we attracted violence when we got together, somehow pulling in the energy of chaos, of poor decisions and awful dudes. And I trusted Kristen, I knew her soul, knew she was loving and good. But it was the kind of thought you can have only in the woolly shame of the middle of the night: God, that’s a lot of death for someone so young.
I thought back to Nana’s email yesterday: Kristen has been acting a bit strange lately.
And Kristen’s words in Chile: We see things they miss.
I yanked my phone from its charger and turned on its flashlight. I tiptoed past Kristen’s room and eased myself down one creaking set of steps, then paused at the top of the basement stairs. Why are basements so creepy, even when they’re refurbished? I flicked on the light, pulling the door closed behind me before the beam could scatter. Awake, alert, I stalked through the den and reached for the door to the unfinished section.
One, two, three, four, five. Five lifeless bodies, families grieving, psyches stopped too soon. I knew all about the last two—I knew they were self-defense, a case of wrong place (okay, wrong head-injury placement), wrong time. If I just knew more about numbers one through three, I could quiet this trickle of treason, of suspicion. Kristen and I were 100 percent counting on each other to keep our secrets safe. I needed to know what I was dealing with. Whom I was dealing with.
I pulled the knob and blinked into the darkness. Okay, this part is legit scary. I groped around for a light switch but caught nothing but shelving units to the right and left, cobwebs detaching to coat my fingers. I swept my phone’s light across: work bench, rowing machine, table saw. And more utility shelves topped with bins and boxes. There—a bare bulb hung from a beam in the ceiling, ten feet away.
The cement floor was cold on my socked feet, and when I pulled the light’s cord I saw movement, a scattering. I spotted a massive millipede disappearing beneath an old wooden chest and pressed my hand to my thrashing heart. Just bugs.
Where to begin? I rifled through the nearest shelves, tilting boxes to read their labels, tipping dust into my lungs. The furnace clanged on and a scream caught in my throat. After a few minutes I found the right boxes, newer than the others, in an alcove behind the boiler: Kristen Bedroom.
I dragged the first box into the rec room and plopped onto the floor, then cringed at the loud hiss the tape made coming loose from cardboard. High school and college stuff, English papers and random playbills and concert stubs, a certificate awarded to the pom team’s MVP. Too recent—by the time Kristen was in high school, her parents and best friend were already dead.
With the second box, I hit the jackpot—here was Kristen in her tween years, skinny-limbed and red-faced with a mouthful of braces. I pulled out a stack of thin King of Kings yearbooks. There were two sections for every grade, perhaps forty students per graduating class.
I flipped toward Kristen’s grade, eager for answers. I was finally going to lay eyes on my double, the mysterious Jamie R.
But in the edition from the year Kristen’s parents died, someone had scribbled out Jamie’s face, angrily, infuriated black ink that ripped through the paper. Like someone full of rage had gone at it with a ballpoint pen. I turned to the group photos—choir, math club, the Christian Discipleship Award—and everywhere Jamie’s face had been was now a snarl of black. What the hell?
I rummaged around in the box and pulled out a stack of photos, and the trend continued: smiles and pink cheeks and bright eyes and then the black gashes, scrawls wherever Jamie’s head should be. What had this…Jamie Rusch done to piss young Kristen off? I grabbed my phone, knee-jerk, then remembered there was no service here without the hotspot on.
I couldn’t find anything about Jamie’s death, the mysterious “accident” Kristen had referenced. Nothing about Kristen’s parents either. I sat back on my heels. It could still be a fluke. Maybe Kristen really did attract accidental death the way a brown banana draws fruit flies.
I took a few pictures of the photos and the yearbook—I’d google Jamie later and didn’t want to forget her last name. As I was packing everything back into the boxes, I heard a groan above me, somewhere north of the drop ceiling. My pulse ticked up—time to go.
In the basement’s ugly back, I slipped the boxes onto a rack and hurried over to the utility light. I gave the space a final glance, then went rigid: Something in the corner had moved, something alive in the darkness. I fumbled with my phone and beamed the light that way, and two shiny eyes stared back.
A tiny mouse, rigid with fright. I didn’t notice my surge of frosty fear until I was already laughing.
* * *
—
In the morning, I asked Kristen to turn the hotspot on, but she waved me away. “It’s Saturday,” she pointed out. “We can be off the grid.”
“Don’t you think we should check if there are…any developments? In Chile?”
She carried her coffee mug to the sink. “I’m not worried. Hey, I’m gonna go for a run.”
After she left, I ransacked the closet where the hotspot had been the first night, but it wasn’t there. I dug through drawers and cabinets, peeked at the floor near all the power outlets. I groaned in frustration. Why was she cutting me off?
