A Photographic Death (3 page)

Chapter Five

I
HAD NOT
been in Patience’s bedroom in years. A king-sized bed was positioned to face a balcony with a view of the sea. Except for a Fairfield Porter painting of geraniums in a blue jar on the wall, everything in the room was white.

Pat gestured at the coverlet, puffy as marshmallow foam, and Jane and I sat down side by side on the bed. She pulled up a boudoir chair opposite us. We were so close that I could see the faint lines starting to surround her blue eyes like crazing on china. “So?”

I sighed. “To begin with, I didn’t ‘conflate’ any memories. It was stupid to lie to about being asleep, but—it was all so horrible, everyone blaming me, I didn’t know what I was saying half the time. I was already soaking wet from jumping in the river trying to find her.” I suddenly remembered a man, shocked at my swollen stomach, trying to hold me back. Me screaming, “My baby fell in!” and wrenching away from him to plunge into the murk with no idea of how deep the water was.

The horror and devastation had faded until a few years ago when I read a short story about a young woman who went down to the English seaside for vacation, a single mother with a toddler son. She met a young man who was renting a cottage with his mother, and they were attracted to each other. One night they were down by the water with her little boy in tow, and finally fell passionately into each other’s arms. After several minutes, she remembered her son and pulled away to find him. But all she could see was the endless ocean. The story had brought everything crashing back, the sense of helplessness, the blame.

Was I really being given another chance?

“People must have seen her fall in,” Pat said.

I shook my head “Jane was the only one. And then she changed her story.”

Beside me the bed jolted. “
I
did?”

“You came running up to me and told me she was in the water. Then that night you said a ‘bad lady’ took her and kept talking about a bunny.”

“What bad lady? What bunny?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“Why can’t I remember?” Jane agonized. “Something so important? And why didn’t you ever talk about her?”

I sighed. All I wanted to do just then was lie back on that puffy bed and sleep. I pictured myself pulling part of the comforter over me like a cocoon. “You heard what Dad said. He didn’t want it hanging over us, defining your childhood. Mourning her at every holiday, the fact that she wasn’t there and we could never be complete as a family. He didn’t want us to be like those people whose little girl was kidnapped in Portugal, the McCanns, who’ve given up their lives to try and find her.”

Patience was nodding, but Jane seemed appalled. “And you agreed with him?”

“Jane, I was your age. I felt so guilty about letting it happen, I would have done anything he asked. Sometimes I wondered if
he
had been the one responsible, would I have forgiven him. I don’t know.” Did Colin’s years of refusing to treat me as an adult—his moving out last year—all go back to Caitlin?

I struggled on. “When you and Hannah stopped asking about Caitlin, it just seemed easiest not to bring it up. Dad wanted to put it behind us and move on.” It sounded heartless, but there were precedents. After Teddy Roosevelt’s young wife died of childbirth fever, he never spoke her name aloud again. Henry Adams’s beloved wife, Clover, who killed herself, was never mentioned in his memoirs, making him seem a lifelong bachelor. Men who felt they had a purpose in life, who kept their emotions private . . . “He wanted to keep it from hijacking your childhood.” I put my arm around her and hugged her against me. “Was that so bad?”

“No. I had a great childhood. Something was always there though, something melancholy that I couldn’t quite remember, but I just thought that was normal. Did you feel the way he did? About wanting to forget it?”

I knew what she was asking:
If it had been me, would you have forgotten me and moved ahead with your life?

I told her the truth. “I never got over it, not really. I was busy, we had some wonderful times, but it never went away. If I’d thought it was upsetting you, I would have talked about it.”

“I always wondered why Colin told us never to say anything,” Patience said. “I just thought it was because it was so horrible he didn’t want any reminders. My girls don’t even know. But now—that note makes it sound like she could still be alive.”

“I know. Bianca Erickson was the one who pointed out that if I was standing by the river I would have heard something.”

Patience knew Bianca socially.
I
knew her from analyzing her father’s book collection and finding out that what had happened to Nate Erikson and Bianca’s daughter had been deliberate, not a tragic accident. It had taken the murder of another family member to shine a light on the darker corners of the illustrator’s family life. My final encounter with the murderer had brought me perilously close to my own death.

“And what Hannah mentioned happening to her at Cornell,” I went on. “It’s not the first time.”

When Hannah was twelve, a friend of mine had called, excited. “I didn’t know you were skiing in Colorado too.”

I had been in Denver once, but never on skis.

“We could have gotten together for dinner!”

“Diane, we weren’t in Colorado.”

“You must have been. We saw Hannah on the slopes. On the chairlift actually.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I
know
it was Hannah. She always ducks her head in that cute way when she laughs. I looked for her when we got to the bottom, but I never saw her again. I never saw any of you either.”

“Because we weren’t there.”

“Huh.”

Yet her insistence had lit a tiny flame.
What if . . .
What if Caitlin had somehow miraculously survived. If the Stratford-upon-Avon police could speculate that she must have gotten caught on a branch and been held underwater so that her body never surfaced, I could imagine her somehow staying afloat, being carried downstream and rescued by someone in a boat. My fantasy had broken down at that point but it didn’t matter. Since then I had never lost the sense that she might somehow still be alive.

I had questioned Diane extensively, trying to get her to remember any other details, any passing impressions. “You said she looked like Hannah when she laughed. What made her laugh?”

“Oh. The man on the bench with her, I guess. I was surprised that it wasn’t Colin, but I thought you must be there with friends. He was about Colin’s age, but that’s all I remember.”

About Colin’s age  . . .

It was probably nothing at all.

“I guess I should have told Colin first. But I was afraid he’d react, well, like he did.”

“I don’t get him at all,” Patience said.

“He doesn’t like to have his life upset. Especially when there’s no guarantee of anything.”

“Mom and Daddy warned you about Colin.”

What was she talking about? “Only that they thought I was too young.” I was transported back to the parsonage where my gentle parents begged me to stay in school.

“If he loves you, he’ll wait.”

But I knew he wouldn’t.

“They didn’t like that he didn’t believe in God.”

“They didn’t like that anybody didn’t believe in God.”

Outside the French balcony doors, dark clouds were moving in. “I’m really surprised at Hannah,” I said. “I thought she’d be excited to find out she had a twin. Remember it, I mean. I know
I
would have been.”

But it occurred to me as I said it that growing up I would have traded being Pat’s twin for any decent offer—a cheeseburger, say, or a new headband. She must have been thinking the same because our eyes met and we smiled. How could we share the same genes and been so different? We had been like puppies trapped together in a burlap sack, fighting to get out.

“Why don’t I have a twin?” Jane said plaintively. “Now everyone has one but me.”

It was so absurd that Pat and I started to laugh. “We’ll find you one,” I promised.

But our laughter died as if we had remembered at the same time the reality of the situation. What if, miracle of miracles, Caitlin were really still alive—my bright, inquisitive baby, the child Colin called “the city that never sleeps.” Caitlin who would slow down long enough only to crawl into my lap and be cuddled, lifting her head so I could kiss her downy hair. A wave of nausea, a threatened upheaval of everything provided by the Golden String Bean.

“We have to look for her, Mom.”

“I know—but how?” There were seven billion people in the world, millions and millions in the United States alone. And if she didn’t even know she needed to be found  . . .

“You’ll find a way.”

I’ll
find a way? “Wait. Just wait. It can’t be just me. If I could do this myself, I already would have.”

“I don’t mean just you.” Jane straightened up and leaned over to press my hand. “I’m in.”

Patience moved over and put her hands on top of ours. “Me too.”

Chapter Six

A
S SOON AS
we were back in the car driving home, Hannah leaned forward and demanded, “Why aren’t there any pictures of me with this ‘twin’?”

I turned in the passenger seat so I could see her. Hannah’s face had filled out since the summer; I thought she looked prettier now. “There are. We put them away.”

I couldn’t remember all these years later if Colin had ordered me to store the albums, tiny dresses, and Caitlin’s special toys in cartons, or if I had been unable to bear coming across them.

“I want to see them.” I couldn’t tell if she was eager or still skeptical.

“We’ll look at them as soon as we get home.” I could picture exactly where the boxes were, hidden in the barn behind the farmhouse where I stored the six thousand books I had listed for sale on the Internet. I spent most of my time there at my worktable, describing a book’s physical condition, its printing information and content, and pricing it for sale, then uploading it to the bookselling sites, AbeBooks or via Libri. The barn was my comfort zone, heated in winter and sweltering in summer, furnished with a worn couch and Oriental rugs from my parents’ home. When I’d claimed, it I’d put art posters on the rough walls of artists I liked: Magritte, van Gogh, Fairfield Porter.

“Delhi,”
Colin warned. It was a voice meant to bring me to my senses.

“What? What? It’s not a secret now. It’s her twin, for God’s sake!”

Colin paused, turning onto Montauk Highway. “I agree that she should see the photos, but as a tragic event from the past. Where it’s going to stay buried.”

“I thought you were an archeologist.” A silly thing to say.

“I uncover artifacts to learn about past civilizations, not to destroy innocent lives.”

Jane broke in immediately. “That’s crazy! Whose life are you talking about?”

He turned and gave her a stern look. “A young woman just like you who probably isn’t even alive. But if she were, this would devastate her world. Not to mention that it’s perfect fodder for the tabloids. Talk about destroying people’s lives.”

“Is that all you can think about?” I broke in. “How it would inconvenience
you?
”

“At least I’m doing some thinking.”

“
I’m
thinking. It could have a happy ending.”

“Trust me. It won’t.”

He sounded so certain that I pressed my arms against my ribs, chilled. What did he know that I didn’t? “Colin?”

In the darkness I saw him focus on driving. “The subject is closed from now on. Show the girls the photos if you have to. But we’re dropping it after that.”

“No. We’re not. Unless you know something you’re not telling me.”

“We’re dropping it because Hannah doesn’t want to pursue it. Do you, Hani?”

I turned and stared at my younger daughter pressed sullenly into the corner of the backseat. I tried to read what was behind her slow head shake.

I didn’t know. But I would have to find out.

A
F
T
E
R
C
O
L
I
N
L
E
F
T
us at the farmhouse and went on to his rented condo, Hannah wanted only to sleep.

“Don’t you want to look at the photos?” I asked.

“Tomorrow.”

“I have to be at the bookstore during the day. It’d have to be at night.”

“I want to see them
now
,” Jane protested.

“We’ll do it as a family. Tomorrow night.” Suddenly that suited me. I needed more time to prepare myself to see Caitlin’s tiny dresses, her silver baby cup, and God-knew-what-else was stored with the pictures that I had forgotten about. It would be a painful, tearing-the-scab-off experience.

“I can’t tomorrow night. I have plans in the city.”

I gave Jane a look.

“Oh, okay. I’ll stick around. Do I have a choice?”

Hannah had already scooped up Raj, our ten-year-old Siamese cat, and was cuddling him. “Who’s my baby?” she crooned, bringing her face down to his. Raj swooned.

Miss T, our larger, younger tabby, looked up from the doorway. She jumped into my lap once in a while but would never allow the liberties Hannah took.

After Hannah and Raj had escaped to bed, Jane and I sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Not one thing in the room had changed since Jane’s childhood, not the scarred oak table we were sitting at, the white enamel sink on legs, or the harvest gold appliances that only worked when they felt like it. Patience had insisted that we take home pumpkin pie and half the cheesecake, and we filled our plates, ravenous now.

“Hani doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Jane said, cutting another sliver of cheesecake.

“She can have some for breakfast.”

“If there’s any left.”

“Why do you think she doesn’t want to look for Caitlin?”

Jane considered, fork halfway to her mouth. “I don’t know. But you and she have never been on the same wavelength.”

I set my cup back down. How could she say that? It sounded tragic, a lifetime of missed signals. Was it true? I remembered all the times I had been impatient with Hannah’s declarations, her overdramatization of the ways she was mistreated, her exaggeration of her own shortcomings or the plight of animals. When she was growing up everything had been either magic or tragic. There had never been any neutral ground between, any time when she just shrugged and said, “Oh, well.” It was hard to remember times when she and I had felt bonded in shared feeling.

I took a sip of coffee and considered something else. Had I held her at arm’s length
because
of Caitlin? Had that loss, instead of making us closer, made me afraid of losing her too? Or had I compared her diffidence to Caitlin’s early charm? Had I ever felt, God help me, that the wrong twin had drowned?

I caged that thought immediately and tossed it down a ravine. Not true.