The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (12 page)

H e kissed me, not a fatherly kiss.

The first entry in Lily’s diary ended after four short, matter-of-fact sentences. Albert turned the page, in spite of himself, in spite of preferring to slam the little journal shut and put it back in the closet, buried under the floorboards.

The next entry was dated three days later:

I thought before was a one-time thing, he was a little drunk and so maybe it was just a little too much. But he came back tonight. I got in late and he stayed up for me. Mom and Liv were asleep. He followed me to my room. He said I was growing up, that I was beautiful, that he was confused. That kind of total bullshit. I didn’t know what to say, so I just told him I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Like: hint, dude—leave. He had this weird look on his face, he was kind of puffy and breathless. He wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave him a hug. It was a long one and that’s all I can write for now without puking.

Talk to Liv about it, maybe? Hard to describe how creepy and bad a hug can be. Have to think about it.

Albert made himself keep reading. It became clear to him very soon that this journal had just one theme. The tone changed from a kind of on-purpose detached irritation, to mushrooming anger, and then sharp fear. Feeling like a coward for being frightened by words written on a page, Albert waded through Lily’s account of the relationship with her stepfather as it turned toxic. The kisses and hugs he forced on her grew more frequent and less shy, as Lily told it, and she wrote about how she was searching for ways to stay out of the house while her stepfather was finding more excuses to be alone with her. Several pages in, she wrote about a morning when her mom and sister left early to go to an eye appointment for Liv. Her stepfather walked in on her in the bathroom, right after she’d gotten out of the shower.

He just laughed like it was some hilarious mistake and wouldn’t leave. I guess now he was testing and deciding.

Later in the journal, Lily described her parents’ discussion of whether she should work at Perry’s dental office—filing, setting appointments and stuff—after school and maybe weekends.

They think I need to “buckle down.” But if she makes me work with him, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t stand to be around him at all, and I’m afraid when we’re alone. I hate the way he looks at me.

I don’t think he’s bothering Liv, though—that’s something. I just don’t know what to do to keep him from stepping further over the line. He says rude things to me all the time. When I see him, I want to punch him in his stupid smug face.

After maybe a couple dozen entries, most of them short, Albert came to the last one, just a couple months after the journal had begun. It ended on the day before Lily’s accident. The cheap paper was stained with dark drops that wrinkled the pages of dark, hasty script.

I hate myself. I hate my mother. I HATE HIM.

He thinks he can get away with it, just does whatever, that it’s my word against his. Slutty little crazy teenage liar versus him. Said I’d get to like it. It’s not like you’re a virgin, he said. He said he could tell.

But you’re not really good at it yet, he said. I’m going to teach you about screwing.

He was drunk—barely drunk—as he always is when he’s bothering me. I don’t blame the alcohol, though. I think he drinks for courage, for something to blame it on. So he can forget why he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing while he’s doing it. Maybe so he can look us all in the face the next day, I don’t know. I don’t know how he could this time, though.

It’s driving me crazy to think it might not have happened if we hadn’t been alone in the house. I want to die. But I won’t give him the satisfaction.

Guess what, you fucking asshole: you shouldn’t have been so hot to have the lights on. I can remember everything from the size and shape of your tiny little dick to the birthmark on your ass. I was looking, because I knew I had to remember every bit. Now I’m going to crucify you with it.

Mom, if you find this and read it: Hope you had fun at your girls’ weekend.

I have to make this quick because I have to get the hell out of here before I lose it. He thinks I’m in here sleeping, not sitting on the floor of my closet writing it all down. He’s probably passed out by now and if I’m lucky he won’t hear me shut the window when I leave.

So:

At seven-thirty this evening I was getting ready to go out. My stepfather, Perry Kogen, came into my room without knocking. He was wearing …

Albert was spared the more graphic details, maybe because there were things about that night Lily couldn’t bring herself to write. But there was enough he could hardly stand to read, though he read it anyway because he knew, from the way the letters wavered, that it had to have been almost more than she could bear to put on the page.

Albert was caught in Lily’s words and it was like being tangled in a nightmare. The Bad Thing That Happened wasn’t the accident at Dr. Perry Kogen’s dental practice, but the revolting thing that happened right here in her bedroom. His skin was clammy, and his breath short. He thought he might vomit. He thought he might cry. He wondered what a panic attack was like, and if he was about to have one.

Lily, Lily, Lily
, he thought, as if repeating her name enough times could take back what happened.

Albert was so unaware of anything outside of Lily’s journal that he actually jumped when he heard a voice above him.

“What the hell are you doing in my sister’s room?”

Every muscle in his body seemed to be vibrating. He looked up to see Olivia Odilon standing in the closet doorway. He knew that this must look bad, and perhaps he was infected by Lily’s acid writings. As he watched Olivia’s eyes flit from his face to the journal and back up again, demanding an explanation, he felt dirty and awkward and guilty.

He asked, “Are you going to call the cops?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “It depends on if you have a really
spectacular
reason for sitting on the floor of my missing sister’s closet and reading what looks like a diary. You have about ten seconds before I start screaming and dial 911.”

A flood of words rushed, panicked, from Albert’s mouth. “I think I know where Lily is.”

From the look on Olivia’s face, of all the things she expected him to say, it wasn’t this. But her expression of surprise gave way to suspicion almost immediately. “How do you know? Did you do something?” She backed away a couple of feet, tripping over the mess on the floor.

He scrambled to his feet, an awkward thing given his size and the cramped space. “No! I can explain. Like this—I found it in the back of the closet.”

She snatched the journal from his outstretched hand, keeping her distance. “I thought there’d be nothing left here at all, between the cops and my parents. To say they’ve been through this room thoroughly is an understatement. They took her cell phone, her computer … and a bunch of stuff I don’t even get why they need.”

“I guess they didn’t find the space under the floorboards in her closet.” Albert was shocked at his own pale joke and he felt like he might just lose it.

Still not understanding, Olivia was surprised into a grudging bray of a laugh. “I’m not going to say I’m not creeped out—and a little concerned for my safety—but I guess I’m sort of impressed.”

He hesitated, trying to figure out how to tell her. “You should probably read it.”

She snorted. “It’s that good, huh?”

He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, then immediately regretted it. She reached up and slapped his hand away. He said, “You really don’t know anything about what happened with Lily and your stepfather … ?”

“I guess you’re going to tell me.” She sighed heavily and covered her face with her free hand.

“He raped her,” Albert said. The words were evil and poisonous in his mouth. It was too raw a topic to be discussed by two people who barely knew each other, but he couldn’t help that. He was acutely aware of the grim absurdity of this moment: the location, the players, the reason these things had all come together. It wasn’t a scene he could have imagined just a few days ago, and the thought made him even sadder.

“What?” Olivia said, holding the book up like a prop. “It says that?”

He nodded. “She wrote it right before her accident. Read it yourself—it’s on the last page.”

She read it quickly, her eyes darting across the page. When she was done, she closed the journal, her head still hanging. She mumbled into her chest, “I can’t take this. I really can’t.”

“I know.” His eyes welled and he brushed them roughly with the back of his hand. Lily had never given him the slightest indication of what had happened to her, so it made her words—angry and raw—even more of a punch in the gut.

“Why didn’t she ever say anything?” Olivia asked, not really asking Albert.

But this was a question he thought he maybe had an answer for. Or at least a working theory, which had popped into his head as a fully formed idea. “She didn’t say anything because she didn’t know,” he said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. I think … it … happened, and she wrote about it, obviously planning to turn him in to the cops or whoever. Then I think she put the journal back in the closet, and that same night there was the accident, and everything that happened with that. She lost all those months, including the memory of—that,” he said, pointing to the book. He couldn’t bring himself to say it again.

“There’s no way she could have stayed here, otherwise,” Olivia said, thinking out loud. Pretty soon Albert saw her thin shoulders shake. She was so much smaller that Lily. Whenever Albert saw her at school—if he ever noticed her—she looked like a dark, scowling twelve-year-old. These thoughts crossed his mind and he felt low and mean for thinking them while she was right in front of him, crying for her sister.

“Look, this is all really overwhelming—” Albert began.

“It’s a nightmare, is what it is,” Olivia interrupted fiercely.

“Maybe I should go. I can put the journal back for now—I’ll show you the hiding place—and when you think you’re ready, we can—”

“God, stop treating me like a—I don’t even know what.” She rubbed her eyes, and the tears were gone and the scowl was back. “I don’t like it. While you’re handing out answers, maybe you can tell me why she’s gone, then, if she doesn’t remember anything.”

To him it was obvious, but then he remembered that Olivia didn’t know about Lily’s letter. “Because she was starting to remember. And your stepfather knew it. Somehow. The police have witnesses who say the night she left she was fighting with someone. They think—everyone thinks—it was with me. I think the fight was with him.”

“How did you get all that?”

“She sent me a letter.”

Olivia held out her hand. “Why didn’t you say so? Let me see it.”

“It’s at my house, hidden.” But he was able to recite it pretty much word for word from his memory. He felt self-conscious as he did so. When he was done, he was amazed at how successfully Lily’s sister fought another storm of tears. He said, “I’ll show it to you later, but you can’t tell
anyone
about it. Not until I figure it out—”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop being an idiot? Who the fuck am I going to tell?” Olivia sat on the edge of her sister’s bed. “We can’t leave this journal here, either. It’s evidence. You have to get out of here, and you have to take it with you and hide it. I’ll sneak out later to meet you and you can show me Lily’s letter. Then we’ll take both to the cops.” She was almost smiling, now that she had a strategy. “To keep things simple, I’ll tell them it was me who found the journal in her closet.”

Albert didn’t have the same confidence in the police that Olivia seemed to have. “Do you think they’ll believe it, though? Lily didn’t think so.”

“Shouldn’t this be enough to make them open an investigation of Perry, at least?” She barked out another humorless laugh, holding up the book. “And since Lily obviously doesn’t even remember what’s written here, we have to keep it safe. It’s the only proof left from that night.” She stopped abruptly, biting off the word.

“What?” Albert asked.

“This stuff about … Perry.” She spat out the name as if it tasted bad. “If she really did forget, I’m glad that for her it doesn’t exist.”

Except she hadn’t forgotten, not completely. Albert shivered, the thought of these things that hadn’t stayed buried making him feel ill, and with that feeling was something darker. Then another thought occurred to him, and it was so strange that he spoke it out loud without even meaning to. “It’s funny—you and I are the only two people she has who really want to help her, and we hardly know each other.”