Hayley got up and held the paper toward the window. “It wasn’t mailed,” she concluded, indicating a rectangular smudge of glue. “It was taped to something.”
“Her door?”
Hayley didn’t think so. “No, then anybody could have found it.”
“Like her mom and dad,” Taylor said.
Hayley handed over the paper. “Yeah, them. Maybe it was taped to her locker at school?”
“Feel anything just now?” Taylor asked.
“No, did you?”
Taylor shook her head, carefully folding the paper along its original creases. “Should I sleep on it?”
For most, that particular phrase was a call to mull over a problem. For the Ryan girls, it was more literal. “Sleeping on it” meant just that. One or the other twin would put the paper under her pillow and try to sync her dreams to the document, its writer, and the recipient. Taylor was better at that than Hayley, having discovered it when a note was left by the tooth fairy under her pillow when she was seven.
She didn’t dream about the tooth fairy, of course. Instead, she got the feeling that her parents were behind the dollar traded for the tooth and the note left behind, in teeny, tiny script. She saw her mother squint her brown eyes while writing one minuscule word after another. It was amazing to Taylor that what she’d thought at first was a little note from a faraway land turned out to be a note her mother had written in the kitchen downstairs.
Thank you for your beautiful tooth. It will be the centerpiece of a necklace that I will wear proudly, now and forever.
The Tooth Fairy
Taylor had believed for the longest time that what’d she’d seen and felt was only a funny dream. That changed one morning when she was nine and her mother, dressing for a book launch party, asked her to get her earrings from her jewelry box; Taylor found a little metal pill case. Inside, a cluster of small white teeth occupied most of the space.
Although it confirmed there was absolutely no tooth fairy, it gave crystal-clear proof of two things: there was magic in their mother’s love and, as far as her girls could tell, Valerie Ryan had unlocked a pathway to information that was not of this earth.
IF THERE WAS ANY “SPECIALNESS” IN THE FAMILY, an understanding of it was only courted once. Just after their first birthday, Taylor and Hayley were studied by University of Washington linguistics researchers documenting early talkers. The twins had started talking in full sentences at ten months, and Kevin, never missing a chance to make a connection with someone who might be an asset later, answered an ad and submitted a video clip of the girls. Unlike some of his other endeavors, it worked. Sort of. A research assistant named Savannah Osteen was assigned to the Ryans, and she came to Port Gamble to tape them for a four-hour period a few weeks later.
Naturally, Kevin had been particularly proud of the girls’ unusual verbal skills. Whereas most kids, months older, only pointed and called out one word for whatever it was they desired, Hayley and Taylor actually strung words together in a completely coherent fashion. No “Kitty!” for them; rather, it was, “I want to play with Kitty!”
Other times they called out phrases that made no sense to anyone but them.
That was at ten months.
And while it wouldn’t surprise anyone who has studied twins, the Ryan girls did indeed develop a language that was unique to them. Savannah called it the girls’
Through the course of the observation period, Savannah captured the action on a videotape recorder mounted on a tripod discreetly stationed in the corner of the living room by a Christmas cactus, which once served as a focal point in Valerie’s father’s office at the prison.
The resulting report submitted by Savannah Osteen to the UW language department focused on the girls’ unique language skills, of course, but it also touched on the intricacies of their relationship:
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Savannah Osteen
TO: UW Language Department Twin A seems slightly more dominant than her sister, Twin B. On at least two occasions Twin A cut off Twin B when she was speaking in the language that they’d developed. In addition, Twin A was somewhat aggressive with the evaluator. A second session will take that into consideration and will mitigate any potential conflict by separating the sisters during the evaluation. Keeping them apart is an optimal protocol for this particular case.
Valerie and Kevin never really got a sense for how the girls performed in relation to other early talkers in the study. A third session was scheduled for about three weeks after the second. Since this one called for the evaluator to join the family for a dinner-time observation, Valerie made her famous planked salmon with balsamic vinegar and shallots. She even sprang for a better bottle of wine—a California Chardonnay—than she would have if she and Kevin were dining alone.
Evaluator Savannah Osteen, however, never showed. She didn’t even call to say she wasn’t able to make it to the taping session. Port Gamble often felt like the ends of the earth for those who lived there or those who had to come and visit, but honestly, everyone knew phone service worked just fine there.
Kevin called the university the following day to see if anything had happened to Savannah, and her advisor indicated in a somewhat curt manner that she was no longer working there.
“She abruptly quit the program,” he said. “Didn’t give us one bit of notice. Maybe we can reschedule?”
Kevin, the crime writer, was suspicious. He was good at that. It came with the territory. “Hope she’s all right. Safe?”
The advisor sighed. “She’s fine. Just undependable.”
“Really? She seemed to enjoy what she was doing,” Kevin said. “She said it was very rewarding, and she thought our daughters could be quite helpful in the study.”
“Changed her mind, I guess. Young people today don’t stick with anything.”
Kevin thanked the man and hung up the phone, a white kitchen wall mount that would stay put for five years before the standards committee of Port Gamble would rule it was not historic and could be removed after the Ryans switched to cell phones. Kevin thought the situation with the UW researcher was a little bizarre and certainly annoying, but ultimately he didn’t mind too much. He’d had second helpings of the salmon the night the observer didn’t show up. He normally hated leftovers. The sole exception was his wife’s planked salmon. Hot or cold, it didn’t matter; it was the best thing he ever ate.
Kevin was still relishing the meal when he took out the trash, which was heavier than usual. As the black Hefty dropped to the bottom of the metal garbage can, he heard the sound of glass-on-glass rattling, echoing in the night.
Curious, he tugged at the drawstring and peered into the bag. It was full of baby food jars—all of the same kind.
ABC pasta in organic tomato sauce.
chapter 24
TEAGAN LARSEN SAT IN FRONT of the computer. Next to his keyboard was a bowl of fluorescent-orange microwave macaroni and cheese—the only thing that his mother let him cook for fear that anything else would burn down the house. The computer was set up on a small table adjacent to the sofa in the living room. Mindee Larsen had worried about teens being victims of online predators, and while she was sure Starla was cautious, Teagan wasn’t. Since his father had left, he seemed more vulnerable than ever.
Although he’d brought a fork to jab at the sad bowl of pasta, he used his fingers to pick out one slimy, cheesy tube at a time. Each time he did so, he licked his digits with noisy and aggravating abandon.
“Teagan, you’re making me sick,” Starla said. She sat on the couch. “Your face makes me sick,” he said.
Starla didn’t even glance in his direction. “How original, Teagan,” she said. She continued flipping through the
