Cemetery Girl

“And have you been seeing someone else? A professional therapist?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You need to know up front that I’m not a licensed therapist or a professional counselor. If you need that, I can’t help you.” She laughed a little, a self-deprecating sound. “I volunteer through the police department, but I don’t work strictly for them. I’m not any kind of police officer, and I don’t investigate crimes. In fact, I don’t just work with the victims of crime. I might work with someone who has a loved one who has committed suicide. Or families that have lost someone in an accident. That sort of thing.” She made it sound as casual as helping someone choose wallpaper.

“So you’re just a person who helps people?” I asked. “Couldn’t I just go out in the street and start talking to someone?”

“I’ve been trained,” she said. “They don’t just throw us out into the community and turn us loose on people in their most vulnerable moments. That wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”

“Do you hold a license or degree in something?” I asked.

“Everyone in Volunteer Victim Services goes through an eight-week training session. At least once a year we go back for a continuing ed course, and we all have criminal background checks. Hell, once a month I pee in a cup so the state of Ohio knows I’m not doing any illicit drugs. It’s all to give us a grounding in the basics of helping people in need.”

“And what do you do for them?” I asked. “What can you. .?”

“What can I do for you?” she asked. “I’m really just a support system, Mr. Stuart. Someone to listen to your problems. You know, the police officers are so busy with other aspects of the cases they work on. The investigating, the testifying, the prosecuting. That’s not what I do. Mostly I listen. I try not to judge or offer heavy opinions, but if you ask me for one, I’ll share it. That’s up to you. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?”

I didn’t feel like I could say no, even if I wanted to. She was so there, so in the moment for me. She was so ready to help. And the fact that she wasn’t a police officer or a minister or even a crusader on behalf of victims’ rights made me feel better. She did seem like someone who wanted to help me.

“Okay,” I said. “Yes. Do you want to make an appointment-a meeting time-for next week?”

“Let’s get together tomorrow at four,” she said. “Do you know the Courthouse Coffee Shop downtown?”

“I do.”

“Let’s meet there,” she said. “If you don’t like me, at least the coffee will be good.”

A year or so after Caitlin had disappeared, around the time Abby would have been having her miscarriage, she and I discussed what to do with Caitlin’s room. We had been keeping it just as it was the day Caitlin disappeared-the clothes in the closet, the personal items on the shelves. But Abby started to make a case for change. She went out of her way to tell me we wouldn’t throw away anything, but she wanted to pack up some things and move them to the attic, and then paint the walls and rearrange the furniture.

“The room is an obstacle, Tom,” she said, no doubt using language she’d heard from Pastor Chris in one of his “counseling” sessions. “We can’t move on with it there.”

I categorically told her no. I left no space for argument.

And the room stayed intact.

Just before I left the house to go meet Susan Goff for the first time, I stopped by Caitlin’s bedroom. I went in there several times a month. I liked to sit on the bed or run my hand over the desk and the bedclothes, picking up the stuffed animals and putting them back down exactly where Caitlin had left them. In the first hours after Caitlin’s disappearance, I combed through the room, digging into the drawers, opening school notebooks, looking for anything that might give us a clue. Then the police took over that job, and they discovered the Seattle and Amtrak information that conjured the possibility of Caitlin being a runaway.

When I went in there before seeing Susan, something felt different. The space seemed foreign to me, almost forbidden, as though I were about to enter a room belonging to a stranger, one who wouldn’t want me intruding upon her world.

And while I stood there, my mind ran through the what-ifs: What if Abby and I had had another child; what if she’d carried that baby to full term? Would it have taken over this space? Would Caitlin’s memory have been effaced from our lives?

I pushed open the door.