The Never List (35 page)
Authors: Koethi Zan
Tracy walked down the hill desperately trying to find cell reception and eventually reached Jim. He arrived with blazes, lights flashing, sirens blaring. It was an echo of that time, ten years ago, when he’d come here to save Tracy and Christine.
I knew they would take Jennifer away to a hospital, and eventually,
I figured, she would end up in a mental institution. When she was fully restrained by the police, I walked over to her.
It was really her. Older, her face bore the signs of a hard life filled with nothing but tragedy—it was prematurely lined, her skin colorless—but it was still her. After all these years thinking that the cold body in the barn had been my precious Jennifer, it was almost eerie to see her flesh move, alive and real. Like seeing that corpse from my dreams come to life. I wondered fleetingly who could have been in the box with me back then but pushed the thought out of my mind. The important thing now was that I had Jennifer here with me.
She was strapped down on a gurney, but the restraints hardly seemed necessary, for she didn’t move at all. She didn’t look around. Her eyes were fixed on some remote point in the distance.
Was she thinking of Jack Derber?
I didn’t want to ask, and yet I wanted to know how—how could she have gotten to this point? I turned to her.
“Jennifer.” I could barely speak. “Jennifer, what happened to you?”
She didn’t look at me for a long time, and then finally she shifted her eyes to me without moving her head. Did her look soften? I wanted to believe I saw a trace of the Jennifer I’d known, somewhere in there, her eyes pleading with me, like in the old days.
Her voice was clear when she finally spoke. “I’m not afraid anymore,” she said. “Now nothing scares me.”
That was all. Then she looked away. The horror of it pierced through me like a knife. She wasn’t the same person anymore.
I tried to console myself with the thought that, whoever she was now, she would be safe going forward. She’d be safe where they would put her. Where nothing could ever hurt her again.
I wondered if there was any chance they could restore her to that
girl in my attic bedroom. I made a pact with myself then and there that I would be there for her from now on. I’d try to save her for real this time, if there was even the remotest possibility that she could be saved.
She had been taken away by the time Jim walked over to me, in a corner of Jack’s yard, as far as possible from the barn. The paramedics were wrapping Ray’s foot, and Christine was being interviewed by one officer, Tracy by another. Adele sat alone in stunned silence, watching as the police unspooled yellow tape around the perimeter.
Jim sat down beside me, plucking at a piece of grass he turned between his fingers. He kept his distance.
“That was pretty tough in there. Are you okay?”
“Okay? No, not really.”
“I understand.” He looked at me intently. “Sarah … Box one eighty-two? One of our guys took a photo of Jack Derber. Showed it to the postal agent who worked in River Bend all those years ago.”
“And?”
“She called him Tommy Philben. That’s the name he’d used on the form.” He paused, letting me take that in.
“So they’ve always been in it together, haven’t they? One way or another. Noah and Jack.”
“Seems like it.” We sank back into silence.
“Sarah, I spoke to Dr. Simmons. She wants to help.”
“No, thanks.” I turned toward him. “There isn’t going to be any ‘getting over it’ this time. I realized something in there.”
“What?”
“That no matter what I’ve been telling myself, at some level I was only looking out for myself all those years ago. I was selfish, weak. And that’s how I’d gotten so close to becoming like Jennifer. Now that I see that, I have to change something.”
“Change what?”
“The other fifty-four.”
“What?”
“I need the list.”
“Sarah, I can’t give that to you.”
“Jim.”
I didn’t look at him. I just waited.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Then without another word, he got up and went over to his car.
A moment later he walked back over to me holding a manila envelope. He sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and handed it to me.
“You didn’t get this from me,” he said.
I took out the sheet of paper and looked at the names. The typeface blurred in front of my eyes for a moment. I took a deep breath.
“Got a pen?” I asked. He reached into his pocket and handed me one.
I clicked it open and wrote at the top of the list, in the familiar big block letters of those long-ago journals, S
YLVIA
D
UNHAM
.
I handed him the pen and the empty envelope, folded the paper into a small square, and put it in my pocket.
I wondered where Sylvia Dunham could be, that girl in the photograph. Junior year. The girl who was lost somewhere without a name. But I would find her. Find her somehow and help her parents understand that she hadn’t chosen evil over them. I wanted to erase that pain at least, if I could do nothing else.
And I felt that sense of purpose burning inside me. Burning away the hollowness, the emptiness. Taking away my own sorrow, swallowing it up in this need. This need to fix things. To save them all.
I looked at Jim. He was smiling. We both stood up. I wondered if the change in me was visible.
I reached out my hand to him. He looked surprised but took it in his own, and we shook. His hand was warm, and his skin smooth. His grasp felt safe and comfortable. I looked into his eyes. I’d never noticed they were green before. Then we were both smiling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my brilliant agent, Alexandra Machinist, who expertly shepherded this book from the initial draft; Dorothy Vincent, for her excellent international representation; Tina Bennett, for opening the first door; Pam Dorman and Beena Kamlani, for their skillful and insightful editing, and the entire team at Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, for their hard work and commitment to this book; my husband, Stephen Metcalf, who helped me enormously, both emotionally and editorially, in bringing it to fruition; Stella and Kate, who are not allowed to read one word of it until college; my fabulous sister, Lindsy Farina; my best friend and inspiration, Lisa Gifford; the other dear friends who supported this book in a myriad of ways: George Cheeks, Emily Kirven, Michael Kirven, Corey Powell, Paige Orloff, David Grann, Jeff Roda, Jennifer Warner, Virginia Lazalde-McPherson, Mike Minden, and Marshall Eisen; and, for helping me make sense of it all, Melissa Wacks.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448129744
Published by Harvill Secker 2013
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Copyright © Koethi Zan 2013
Koethi Zan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
HARVILL SECKER
Random House
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London SW1V 2SA
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846556555 (hardback)
ISBN 9781846556562 (trade paperback)