Cemetery Girl Read online

  I stood up in my drawstring pants and T-shirt. I parted the curtains.

  The streetlights glowed. The shadows beneath the trees were thick and black. Nothing moved. No cars.

  Then I saw the girl.

  She stepped into the bright circle created by the streetlight, looking like a stage actor. She stopped there, seemingly without destination or intent. She looked the same as in the cemetery, like Caitlin.

  I pressed my hands against the glass, almost shouted.

  She looked up and darted out of the light.

  I ran.

  I hit the stairs going full speed, trusting to the fates that I wouldn’t fall and break my neck. I knew I’d wake Abby and Caitlin, but I didn’t care.

  She looked so much like Caitlin.

  I scrambled to open the door.

  She’s gone. Too late—she’s long gone.

  I got the door open and ran in the direction I’d seen the girl go.

  I was still barefoot. I slipped on the dewy grass, almost went down. Then I ran into the street, the small bits of dirt and road grime pricking my soles.

  Except for where the streetlights glowed, everything was inky black. I ran down the center of the street, heading toward the park. My neighbors’ houses were dark, the world closed up and in bed.

  Why was the girl out there?

  I finally stopped halfway up the street. She was gone. Disappeared.

  And I was out of breath and feeling foolish.

  But she’d been at the house. She’d wanted something from us.

  From me? From Caitlin?

  Huffing and puffing, I turned and went home.

  Lights were on upstairs and downstairs. Abby and Caitlin were awake.

  I limped up the front steps, my feet aching and bruised, and was greeted by Abby, who held the door open for me.

  “What the hell’s going on?” she asked.

  I came in and sat down in the living room. I was sweating. My T-shirt clung to my body. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “The girl,” I said.

  “Caitlin?”

  I shook my head. “The girl I saw in the cemetery. She was outside tonight, in the street. She was looking at our house.”

  Abby didn’t say anything. She just stared.

  I knew what she was thinking:

  Poor man. Poor, poor man, driven crazy by stress.

  I looked past Abby. Caitlin stood at the top of the stairs. She wore the Fields University nightgown Abby had bought her, and she looked down at us, her feet on different steps like she’d been frozen in midstride.

  “You know that girl, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Tom—”

  “You know who she is and what she wants.”

  Caitlin turned to go, back up the stairs and to the bedroom.

  “That girl knows that man, doesn’t she?” I asked. “She looks just like you, Caitlin, like when you were a little girl. I’m going to get ahold of her.”

  She was gone. Abby placed her hand on my shoulder.

  “Easy, Tom. Take it easy.”

  I didn’t realize I’d been shouting. I tried to calm down, but it took a long time for me to catch my breath.

  We returned to Dr. Rosenbaum’s office a few days later. He asked to see Abby and me first, leaving Caitlin again under the watchful eye of Mary the receptionist. Rosenbaum sat without notes or pen, just the coffee mug in his right hand and the same casually expectant look on his face.

  “Anything different at home?” Rosenbaum asked.

  Abby and I looked at each other. Before she could say anything about my adventure from a few nights earlier, I said, “Nothing unusual.”

  “Things are better then?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t say better,” Abby said. “Do you think it’s a good idea for Detective Ryan to press Caitlin about what happened already?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He came over the other day, and he really pushed her hard about what happened to her. He was almost aggressive. I didn’t think it was best for her to hear that already.”

  Rosenbaum pursed his lips. He set the coffee mug down. “Right. Detective Ryan mentioned to me that he had talked to Caitlin at your house. Sometimes the police press like that because they think the case is time sensitive. Say, for instance, the man who did this is thinking of leaving the area, or even committing another, similar crime. Detective Ryan would like to get to him before that happens.”

  “So you think it’s okay for her to hear these things so soon?” Abby asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Rosenbaum said. “I’ve worked with the police a lot, and we don’t always agree on how to approach these things. We have different priorities sometimes. But Detective Ryan is a good man. Give him a chance.”

  Abby didn’t seem placated. Neither was I, but we didn’t say anything.

  Rosenbaum apparently decided to move forward. “I wanted to try to get a picture of what your home was like before Caitlin disappeared,” he said. “Just some background information for me.”

  “I guess we were normal,” Abby said.

  “Whatever that means,” I said.

  Rosenbaum smiled a little. “But you two are separated now, so something must have been going on.”

  “I think those issues arose in the wake of Caitlin’s disappearance,” I said. “I don’t think either one of us dealt with it all that well.”

  “Abby?” Rosenbaum said.

  “I guess I feel as though the problems were beginning back then,” she said. “I felt that over the years Tom and I grew apart. Our lives were kind of going in different directions. It’s not that we didn’t love each other. It’s just that we were becoming different people. He was pursuing his academic life and work, and I was developing in other ways. I wanted to work on my spiritual life. Caitlin may have been aware of all that. She was a smart kid.”

  “Is,” I said. “She is a smart kid.”

  “Tom, do you share Abby’s assessment that problems might have been brewing that far back?”

  “Abby would know about her unhappiness better than I would. Maybe there were issues brewing back then that came to the forefront when Caitlin disappeared. Sometimes it did feel like we were traveling on parallel tracks.”

  “What about Caitlin at that time?” he asked. “Had she shown an interest in boys yet?”

  “Not really,” Abby said. “I’m sure she liked some boys at school. Some names came up from time to time.”

  “She didn’t have a large number of friends,” I said. “She’s kind of a loner. It’s no surprise really that she’s being so tightlipped now. She could be like that sometimes.”

  “But she had friends,” Abby said. “She was a well-liked girl.”

  “Had she reached puberty yet?”

  Abby nodded. “About six months before,” she said.

  Abby had taken Caitlin out to dinner about a year and a half before she disappeared, just the two of them. Abby explained the changes that were going to be coming over her body and the ways women coped with them.

  “Were there emotional changes associated with puberty?” he asked. “Mood swings? Anger?”

  “She was turning into a teenager,” Abby said. “There was more eye rolling, more snippy answers. Caitlin always played things close to the vest.”

  “Did it bother you that she played things ‘close to the vest’?”

  “It’s just the way she was.” I caught myself. “Is.”

  “Did it force you to be more strict with her?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “We didn’t have a lot of rules.”

  “Who was the disciplinarian?”

  “Abby probably was more than me.”

  “Were you around a lot, Tom?”

  “I worked.” I look down and picked a piece of lint off my pants. “But my job at the university allowed for a flexible schedule. I was home more than a lot of dads.”

  “Were you a factor in Caitlin’s life?”

  “A
factor?” I asked. “I’m her dad.”

  “He was very involved with her life those first twelve years,” Abby said.

  “Why do you ask that?” I said.

  “Sometimes young women who are in restrictive homes or who aren’t getting significant attention from their male parent seek that attention through other avenues. They engage in reckless drinking or sexual behavior. Drugs even. Or they seek that attention they think they’re being deprived of in other people. Substitute male authority figures.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m speaking in generalities, of course,” Rosenbaum said. “Caitlin hasn’t offered us much, so I’m working through some possibilities that might explain what happened.”

  “I don’t think she ran away, if that’s what you’re saying,” I said.

  “I’m not suggesting that,” Rosenbaum said. “In fact, I’m glad to hear your certainty about the issue. Abby, do you share that certainty?”

  “No, she didn’t run away,” Abby said. “I know my daughter. She wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Do you still know her?” Rosenbaum asked.

  Abby tapped her chest three times. “In here, I do. In here, always.”

  I admired her in that moment, her certainty, her bedrock belief that things made sense. I didn’t have it, and I wasn’t sure Rosenbaum did either.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “If you’ll step outside now, I’m going to chat with Caitlin.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sunday morning, a few days later, and Abby came into my bedroom. I didn’t hear her knock. She was just there, wearing her robe, her hair still disheveled and her eyes puffy from sleep.

  She sat down on the side of the bed.

  “Is something happening?” I asked.

  “Shh. It’s fine.”

  “What?”

  “Caitlin’s fine.”

  I sat up, rubbed my eyes. The clock read 8:45, later than I would have thought.

  Abby looked distracted. I couldn’t read her mood.

  “It’s weird, sleeping in the same room with her,” she said. “It makes me think of when she was little and she’d crawl into bed with us. Or if she was sick and she’d come to our room and watch TV. It’s hard to believe sometimes . . .”

  “What?”

  “She’s the same girl. She’s so different in so many ways.”

  “I understand. I think about the fingerprints and the scar on her knee. Those seem to ground me a little, remind me it’s really her.”

  And deep down, I knew. She possessed the same qualities. The stubbornness. The willfulness. The obstinacy that could burn like hate.

  The secrecy.

  “Will we get her back, Tom? All the way?”

  It hurt for me to say it, but I began to formulate an answer to that question. “She’ll never be the same as if she’d spent those four years here. With us.”

  Abby nodded. “We won’t be the same either, will we? I think about everything that might have been different. If I’d continued to work. If you’d worked less. If we’d had another baby . . .”

  I reached out, placed my hand on her upper arm. I felt her beneath the fluffy robe, our first real contact since the hand-holding in church. “We still could,” I said.

  “Tom . . .”

  I applied some gentle pressure, drawing her toward me. She gave in, leaned her head down close to mine. I brushed my lips against her cheek, then moved to her mouth.

  She pulled back. “No, Tom,” she said, her voice gentle but firm.

  “Why?”

  She stood up and pulled her robe tighter around her. “We can’t.”

  “We’re married,” I said. “We’re here. Our child is here.”

  “Our energy needs to be on helping her,” she said. She fussed with her hair. “That’s why I came in here. I want to go to church today. It’s been a while.”

  “So go then,” I said, leaning back.

  “I want Caitlin to go with me.”

  “No.”

  She ran her tongue over her teeth. “I could take her with me. It would be good for her to get out of here, to see some other people again.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not there.”

  “You can say no to this now, as I figured you would. But at some point, she has to leave the house. She’s going to have to go to school and have friends and have a life. We can’t keep her here at home forever.”

  “We should start small and get her to speak again.”

  “She speaks to me.”

  “About what?”

  “Little things, Tom. Little things. Is the bed comfortable, or do her clothes fit? It’s a start.”

  Abby left the room on that note, so I got out of bed and looked in on Caitlin. The blinds were drawn, making the room gloomy, so it took me a moment to see that Caitlin’s eyes were open. She was lying on her back, the covers pulled up to her chin. She was looking at me but not saying anything. “Mom’s going to church,” I said. “Looks like it’s just you and me, kiddo.”

  She rolled over, turning her back to me.

  Once Abby was gone, I made toast and coffee in the kitchen, then ate a bowl of cereal. I went outside and brought in the Sunday paper and found a story on Caitlin’s return in the local news section. The reporter had called for a week straight, and we’d stuck to the script of no comments and making requests for privacy, but someone with the police must have spilled the beans, because the story mentioned all the sightings of Caitlin with the man in the sketch. Ryan was quoted—at the end of the article—and simply said the investigation was continuing and that they still considered it a case of abduction and kidnapping.

  I heard stirrings upstairs. Footsteps in the hall, the toilet flushing. Caitlin didn’t seem eager to shower on a regular basis. Most parents of teenagers saw their water bills shoot up. Abby reminded Caitlin to shower every few days. But I heard the water running upstairs, which I took as a good sign.

  I resisted the urge to go check. I poured another cup of coffee and started the crossword puzzle, listening with one ear for the water to stop. I waited as long as I could and was about to throw my pencil down and check when it did stop. I breathed a sigh of relief. I heard more footsteps above me and managed to drink my coffee in a little bit of peace. That lasted a few minutes, until the cup was empty; then I couldn’t wait and decided to go upstairs and check in on her.

  She wasn’t in the bathroom—the door was wide open, the mirror still steamed over from her shower. And then, with some alarm, I saw she wasn’t in the master bedroom. The windows were all still closed.

  “Caitlin?” Calling out for someone who wasn’t speaking to me anymore seemed odd, but at least she’d know I was looking. I checked Caitlin’s bedroom. Nothing. “Caitlin?” I stuck my head in the guest room door. She was there, sitting on the bed. At first, I didn’t know what she was doing. Then I saw the phone—my cell phone—in her hand. She was entering a number. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She slammed it shut and tossed it onto the bed.

  “Who are you calling?”

  I grabbed the phone and opened it, but whatever number she’d been entering was gone. I checked the called numbers. The last one was a call I’d made, so she hadn’t actually placed it, meaning there was no record of the number.

  If only I’d waited . . .

  “Were you calling that man?” I asked.

  She started to stand up. I held my hand out, a silent request that she stay seated and listen to me. She didn’t like it. She stared at me through slitted eyes.

  “You don’t get to make calls or do anything else until you talk to us. And I mean for real. Not just bullshit.” I jabbed at the air with my index finger, but my hand shook. “Who was it?”

  Her glare slowly turned into a smile. A smirk, really. I saw some of Buster in her. It made me even angrier.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Someday I hope you do find out where I was and everything that happen
ed to me,” she said. Her voice sounded deeper, huskier. She sounded more like a woman, more like Abby. “I can tell the truth will hurt you more than not knowing.”

  I slapped her across the cheek.

  She looked shocked more than hurt. She raised her hand to her cheek, her mouth wide open.

  “Fuck you, asshole.”

  She was up and past me, storming out of the room. I thought about reaching out for her again, or following her, but I couldn’t find the will to do it. I let her go.

  Caitlin closed herself in the master bedroom. I didn’t bother knocking on the door or apologizing. I went back downstairs but didn’t eat or drink. I tried to look at the paper, but my eyes couldn’t focus. No way I could do the crossword puzzle. Rather than helping my daughter, I’d failed her once again. I didn’t seem able to understand what she needed from me as a father.

  I replayed the scene with Caitlin. I wished I couldn’t remember it. I wished it were gone. Erased. But it played in my head on a loop. Every word. Every gesture.

  The slap.

  About the tenth time through, something stuck out. A phrase. It caught in my brain like a fishhook. Something Caitlin had said:

  Everything that happened to me, she’d said.

  Not everything I did or everything we did.

  Everything that happened to me.

  Abby’s car turned into the driveway.

  Then I heard two voices coming in the door. Abby’s and a man’s.

  Pastor Chris.

  He was there, the smile plastered across his face. He held out his hand. “Tom, I haven’t seen you since Caitlin’s return to us.” Us? “I want you to know I’m here in a strictly pastoral capacity,” he said. “I want to help Caitlin.”

  “How is she?” Abby asked.

  “She took a shower. I took that to be a good sign.”

  Abby smiled. She looked pretty.

  I tilted my head toward the dining room. “Can I . . . ?”

  She hesitated and looked at Chris, then back at me. “I think if you have something to say, you can say it in front of Chris.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Is this something about Caitlin? You said she was okay.”

  “I can go—” Chris said.