The Kindness of Strangers (12 page)

Sarah wanted to talk and share this hideous news with someone—but it kept slamming into her over and over again that the person she wanted to call was Courtney. This had to be a mistake. Courtney could not be involved. She could not have known.

Courtney was in jail.

Oh, God. What would Sarah have done if she’d discovered that Roy had been sexually abusing their children? Sarah couldn’t even begin to fathom it. She
could
fathom what hell it would be not to be able to see your own child once you discovered he’d been harmed. Her heart ached for Courtney. And for Jordan. That poor boy. All alone.

Kramble had saved Sarah the trip to Children’s Medical Center, telling her Jordan couldn’t receive visitors yet.

“Is he all right?” she’d asked. “He’s conscious, isn’t he? He’s recovered from the overdose?”

Kramble had nodded. “Check tomorrow. He’ll need friendly faces.”

Sarah wanted to see Jordan, to try to comfort him, but also dreaded it. What would she say? He’d been difficult to talk to
before
the abuse had come to light. She wanted to tell him that his mother loved him and would be there if she could.

She went upstairs and listened at Nate’s closed door. Not a sound came from inside.

She knocked. He didn’t answer. She knocked harder, but when he still didn’t respond, Sarah pushed open the door. He lay curled on his side, listening to a Walkman. Something about his fetal position dissolved her heart. She wanted to make him fit in her lap again. She wanted to rock him and kiss his sweet-smelling forehead.

He lifted the Walkman free of one ear. “What?”

“You okay, Nate? Do you want to talk?”

He sniffed. “No. I told you. I really . . . I really need to be alone right now.”

“Okay,” she said, but she thought maybe he didn’t know what he needed, like when he was little and said he didn’t need a coat to go out in the snow. Maybe she should sit down beside him and not let him turn her away. But he rolled over on his bed, presenting his back to her.

“I want to tell Danny before it’s on the news. Will you help me?”

He nodded.

“I love you,” Sarah said, but he’d replaced the Walkman on his ear.

She stared at his back until her eyes filled with tears, then shut his door.

She needed a drink. She tiptoed down to the basement. In the storage freezer, she dug under the Ziploc bags of basil leaves and red peppers, the Tupperware containers of gazpacho, salsas, and pasta sauces, and retrieved a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka. She’d kept it hidden since the night Nate had been arrested.

She opened the bottle and took a swig. Like velvet ice, it rolled down her throat and began to thaw in her chest. Nate’s rabbit watched her from its hutch, nose quivering.

Sarah took another swig, then sat atop the freezer with the bottle between her legs. Drinking straight from the bottle reminded her of drinking champagne in the bathtub with Roy when Nate was just a baby. After the tub they’d slipped out into the dark backyard, more civilized, with glasses. Sarah had cut long, curling lemon peels into the flutes along with raspberry liqueur, and they slow-danced with no music. What had they been celebrating? Oh—they’d planted Nate’s dogwood earlier that day. Sarah wished she’d savored that dance, that day, more. The ache of that lost happiness, that safer time, bruised her.

She wished she could wash off the queasy disgust that had settled like a film of grease over her since she’d seen the photos on the computer. She’d seen enough to make her sick. She’d seen the fish tanks and that white carpet in Courtney’s home, the backdrop for such obscene acts.

She’d seen Mark, this time in action. She still experienced that tingling sensation that overcame her when she’d first seen, with her own eyes, that
this was true.

Mark. Tall, thin, handsome Mark. The man who chatted with the other dads at soccer games. The man who greeted Sarah with a kiss on the cheek whenever she saw him, a kiss that left her flushed and flustered. The man she’d run into just last week at the market early on Sunday, buying things a normal person bought—half-and-half, some bagels, and some doughnuts. He’d been unshaven and his blond hair was attractively rumpled, so obviously fresh from bed. They’d chatted about whether Danny and Jordan might play spring soccer or try baseball, and both of them admitted how nice it might be to have a season free of sports schedules. That Mark. Mark, with Jordan, his own son. How could he—God, Sarah couldn’t even go there. Mark with other children whose faces Sarah was not allowed to see.

Jordan, with other adults Sarah didn’t recognize.

But she hadn’t seen Courtney. “Courtney,” Sarah whispered. Where was Courtney in those photos?
What if she wasn’t there? What if she didn’t know? What if Mark was solely responsible?
Courtney had no part in this. How
could
she? She couldn’t, because . . . because Sarah didn’t want to believe she could be so wrong about a person.

She’d been unbelievably wrong about a person in Mark. Abys-mally, incredibly wrong. But not Courtney. Courtney could
not
do those things.

And yet . . . and yet . . . how could she not
know
? But Sarah couldn’t go there either.

She wished there were some way for Nate to unsee those horrors. He’d seen far more images than she had. She’d do anything to erase them from his memory. He’d stopped seeing a counselor only a few months ago, but she wondered if she should schedule a few more sessions now. Sarah wanted some sessions herself.

Sarah had asked Kramble again if he was certain Danny wasn’t in any of the images. Her first instinct had been to beg to search the photos for him—to go to school and find him
right then
and ask, “Did they ever touch you? Did they ever hurt you?” But Kramble had urged her not to be so frightened that she interrogated him.

“Just listen,” he said. “Listen to what he says when he hears this news—and
then
ask.”

She’d discovered, as the police had temporarily set up office at her computer, that Robert Kramble was something of a sex-abuse expert. The other officers asked him questions, followed his directions, looked to him for guidance. Although Courtney was nowhere in the images, Kramble seemed intent on implicating her. “Someone had to film it,” he said simply, no judgment, no zeal revealing itself in his voice. But it was in his eyes, this
need
to find her guilty, balanced only by the fierce commitment—the love, even—that he seemed to have for the children.

Sarah pressed the cold vodka bottle against her cheek. “Who would do that to a child?” she asked the rabbit.

Klezmer studied her, his face solemn.

Sarah knew that people did such things to children. But there was knowing and there was seeing
exactly who
did that. She rolled the bottle to her other cheek. That poor child. That poor, strange little boy.

This community had always seemed the haven it was named. Half scorned, half envied by the surrounding suburbs and the city for its Mayberry-ish sense of security. Its own residents jokingly referred to it as living “under the dome,” as if protected by a magical barrier. Streets were plowed within an hour of snowfall, the average police response time was
two minutes
. . . . How could this have happened here?

She took a final swallow of the vodka, capped the bottle, and buried it in the freezer. She watched the rabbit a moment—missing their dog Potter, missing Roy, wanting him here to help her deal with this—before going upstairs to the kitchen.

When Sarah walked into the kitchen, one of the first things she saw was the homemade calendar Courtney had given her as a gift. Each month was a different photo of the boys, or of Sarah. Goose bumps rose on her neck and shoulders—her mother had always called them “truth bumps.” Why did Courtney have to be so good with pictures and film? Every year she did a beautifully edited film of the elementary-school play and burned copies for every single cast member. The photos in this calendar were gorgeous. When Sarah had first opened it, at her and Courtney’s New Year’s Day “brunch”—where they drank Bloody Marys in their pajamas—she had been stunned. How had Courtney taken some of these photos? Some Sarah had never seen before. She walked close to the calendar, on the side of the family’s fridge. The current month, April, was of Nate at a hockey game. God, he was growing into a beautiful man. He sat, helmet off, hair dark and rumpled with sweat, turned in profile, looking over his shoulder at the crowd behind him. He didn’t look at the camera but had a searching expression, as if scanning for someone. With the white ice framing him, his air hopeful and wary at the same time. . . . Courtney had really captured something. Sarah loved the photo.

She took the calendar off its magnetic hook and flipped back to March, of Danny in mid-dive at swimming lessons.

February was of Danny and Jordan on the trampoline at Courtney’s house. Danny grinned for the camera, hanging in the air, arms and legs spread out in a crazy fling. But Jordan stood on the edge of the trampoline, arms at his sides, looking not at Danny but straight at the photographer. Sarah tried to read his expression. His eyes seemed to glint with something. Anger? Or was she just imposing that now that she knew what had been happening to him?

She flipped to January. One of her favorites. Sledding on a snow day. Nate had actually taken this photo with Courtney’s camera before he’d gone off snowboarding with Mackenzie. It was a great shot, of Courtney and Jordan and Sarah and Danny coming to a stop at the bottom of “Suicide Hill” at the golf course. Sarah and Danny, on an inner tube, were still in action, white spray flying up all around them. Both of them had their mouths wide open with laughter. Courtney and Jordan looked right at each other, sprawled how they’d landed, limbs intertwined, separated from their tube, covered in snow dust, pink-cheeked, and laughing. Jordan appeared so genuinely
happy
, so like any kid in the world. How could Courtney be guilty? Look at how he smiled at her.

Sarah moaned.
It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be true.
She wanted her hands busy. She needed to cook. Nothing else helped her process and sort. She’d been that way even as a child. Her parents had instilled an appreciation and patience in her for truly good food. Her father kept bees and raised heirloom tomatoes. Her mother rolled homemade pasta and canned. In her childhood home, family meals were the core of their connection to one another. Family crises were always dealt with at the dinner table. So were family joys. All the big events of her life, good and bad, had a menu in her mind. Thanksgivings were Ma’s knishes and sweet-potato pie, followed by turkey salad with red grapes and walnuts for the rest of the weekend. Announcing her engagement was pan-seared salmon. Telling Ma and Pop she was expecting Nate was egg salad on toast, then pickled herring for months after. Finding out about Roy’s cancer was lamb with pine-nut stuffing on good china. Losing Roy was Lila’s baked macaroni on paper plates.

Sarah opened the fridge. A whole chicken sat waiting, like a blank canvas. She could make curried chicken on rice noodles, but that’s what she would have been making for Courtney right now if . . . if what? What would be happening to that boy tonight if Sarah hadn’t happened to drive by at just the right time? Courtney had always been there when Sarah had catered those parties.
It couldn’t be true.
She shut the fridge so hard that condiment jars clinked together and two magnetized photos fell to the floor. She left them there.

She opened a cupboard and looked at the remaining jar of her mother’s raspberry preserves. Raspberry-glazed chicken was the last meal she’d made for a party at the Kendricks’. She slammed the cupboard.

Mediterranean chicken salad. Spicy chicken quesadillas with cranberry-mango salsa. Grilled chicken pieces in pesto sauce. Every damn meal she’d ever made for those parties had chicken in it! She picked up the salt shaker and hurled it into the wall. The sound of it breaking so satisfied her that she hurled the pepper shaker, too, and then the sugar bowl.

She sat at the table with her head in her hands and willed herself to think of a meal, to think of anything besides that horrible image of Jordan and Mark seared onto her brain. Come on. What would she make on a Friday night?

Friday night. Of course. Friday nights had a memory menu as well.

She hadn’t observed it since Roy died, and hours remained before sundown, but she craved the comfort of the ritual. She covered the table with a white cloth, then set two candles in the middle. Rummaging in a drawer for matches, she jumped to find Nate standing at the table when she turned around.

She looked down, hiding the matches in her hand.

“Sabbath candles?” he asked.

She lifted her gaze, expecting The Look, or at least disdain, but his face was open, understanding. She nodded.

“Say the blessing,” he asked her, like a child asking for a bedtime story.

She started to protest that it wasn’t even dark yet, but his face stopped her. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d accepted something from her, much less asked something of her outright.

She lit the candles, cleared her throat, then covered her eyes and said the Hebrew words. Her voice sounded high and girlish, like she was giving a speech back in grade school.