Cemetery Girl

“After we’d driven around looking for a while, he said I should go back to his house with him and clean my face off. He told me I didn’t want to see my parents that way, that if I cleaned up and looked grown up, it wouldn’t seem as bad as I thought it would be. I really think if I asked him, he would have just pulled into the driveway here and dropped me off. I don’t think he was intending to force me to do anything I didn’t want to do. I was in control of which way things went, and I liked that feeling. So I said to myself, ‘What the hell. Let’s see what else happens.’ And I told him I’d go back to his house with him.”

“You know you weren’t in control, right? You never were.”

But she had stopped. There was a finality to the way she broke off. She stood up and went to the sink for more water. She drank it down, then refilled and drank some more. She kept her back to me, acting as though I weren’t in the room.

“But you had seen him before? Colter? Right?”

She turned around. “Why do you say that?”

“In your coat, the coat you wore the day before you disappeared, there was a flower in the pocket. A red flower. It was right before Valentine’s Day, and you kept that flower in your pocket like someone gave it to you.”

She swallowed but didn’t answer.

“You know, it’s not going to matter now,” I said. “It’s not going to change anything. I just want to know-did he give you the flower?”

“Yeah, he did.” She drank from the glass. I didn’t say anything because I could tell there was more to say. “I saw him at the park. I talked to him a few times.”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many?” I said, tapping the table with my index finger.

She gave an exaggerated, exasperated shrug. “Five or six?”

“A strange man, a grown man, spoke to you in the park five or six times and you didn’t tell us?”

“Why should I have?”

“Because we are your parents. We are supposed to protect you from those things.”

“Well, you didn’t, did you? You didn’t.”

“Did he give you that necklace then? Before he took you?”

“No,” she said. She fingered the necklace. “He gave this to me one year later. It’s a token of what we mean to each other. As long as I wear it-”

“No, no,” I said. “If you’d told us when you saw him in the park-” I stopped. My anger and my voice rose. If, if, if. . If I’d seen them drive by the house. If I hadn’t let her walk the dog. If I hadn’t allowed us to live with such an undisciplined pet. If, if, if. . “What made you stay?” I asked. “Why, after all that, did you stay? People saw you with him in public places. You could have screamed and cried. You could have run away. Why did you stay with him? Why did you do that. .?” I resisted for a long moment. I tried to swallow it back, but finally I couldn’t hold it in. “Why did you do that to me, Caitlin? Why?”

She shook her head. “To you?”

“Yes. Why?”

She looked at the glass and set it aside. “No,” she said.

“No? What do you mean?”

“No, I’m not telling you anything else until you take me to see John.” She pursed her lips and set her jaw. “I just gave you a down payment. I gave you something.”

“You just started. That’s only the beginning.”

“What else do you want to know?” she asked. “Do you want to know everything? Every detail?”

“Tell me that he made you stay,” I said.

“Take me to him. Or just stand aside and I’ll go there myself.”

“But he did make you stay, right?” I asked. “He held you there. He forced you.”

“I can’t tell you something that isn’t true.”

I pounded my fist against the table, rattling my mug.

“He made you stay. I know it. You wouldn’t have imagined our voices if you didn’t want to leave. Right, Caitlin? You wouldn’t have imagined you heard us, would you?”

“What makes you think I imagined them?”

“Because I didn’t know where you were. None of us did.”

“I don’t know that. I don’t.”

I stood up, almost knocking the chair over. I shoved it out of the way and moved toward her. “No, honey, that would never happen. Never, ever. Never.”

She cringed. Her body locked when I approached, and she took two steps back. She held her hands out in front of me as though she wanted to shove me away. “Just take me to him,” she said. “We made a deal. Take me to John if you want to know anything else from me.”

She left the room before I could say anything.

Chapter Fifty-one

I pulled the phone book out and looked up the number. It took two tries for me to find the right one. An older woman answered, and I asked for John. A long pause followed, a staticky stretch of dead air. “Why can’t you all leave him alone?” his mother asked.

“I’m not a reporter,” I said. Another long pause. “I’m the man who was at your house last night talking to John.”

“Oh, I see.” She sniffed. “Are you really that girl’s father?”

“I am.”

“Well. . Johnny. . he’s always loved children. I mean. . he wouldn’t really hurt anybody. He wouldn’t. Not intentionally. Now did you ever think these girls-they ask for it, don’t they? They wear certain clothes. Even the young ones. .”

“Just put him on.”