AMY cries, hugging herself as she sobs.
AMY
She’s gone. It took her away. She’s gone….
DONNIE runs along the shoreline shouting SARAH’s name as AMY drops to the sand, curling into a fetal position, shaking, sobbing as the tide crashes against her body.
In the ocean, the single flip-flop floats back and forth on the waves.
FADE OUT
. . . . .
Voices from the Town: Kathleen R., Davenport Street, April 20XX
“The whole thing seems sketchy to me. A four-year-old drowns and they never find the body? Don’t tell me it wouldn’t have washed up on the shore somewhere! That Sarah was a little sweetheart, but her mother was a real slut—sorry, I know we’re not supposed to judge people anymore—but that’s what she was. And that Marcino kid was always falling asleep, and that Amy was a drunk. Who knows what really happened to that poor little girl?”
. . . . .
The selectivity of what I’d shared with Kelly dampened any potential relief, the truth chopped up into bite-sized portions, easily swallowed. Yes, I’d fallen asleep, and when I woke up Sarah was gone. Every rational path concluded that she’d drowned. Amy hadn’t been watching, and Sarah had waded into the water just a little deeper than she should have. A wave knocked her down, or maybe she stepped on a jellyfish and slipped; something had happened, and the ocean had carried her away. It made perfect, tragic sense, but Amy, the only eyewitness, told a different story.
All these years later, I remembered her exact words: it took her away. I’d thought she meant the ocean, the waves, even a shark, but when she repeated it a few seconds later, her words garbled with sobs, I heard instead: he took her away, a pronoun switch that changed everything.
He took her away…he took her away. He took her away.
It had been hard to hear, the waves hissing and popping over the sand, the gulls singing their hungry songs as they swooped around us, a sea plane buzzing in circles with a Kenny’s Cove-$5 Drinks All Night banner flapping behind its wings, but as Amy looked at me with those sad, hypnotic eyes, I heard those four words more clearly than I’d ever heard any words spoken before or since.
He took her away.
I dropped to the sand next to Amy. “He? What are you talking about? Where’s Sarah?”
We were close enough to the shore that the tide washed over our feet, the water pooling around our ankles, Sarah’s lonely flip-flop drifting in the surf, the surge carrying it back to us as the waves broke against the sand.
I picked up the flip-flop and stared at the ocean.
“He took her away,” Amy said. “Mr. Ronan.”
. . . . .
From Asbury Park Press, May 19, 199X:
LOCAL DRAMA TEACHER QUESTIONED IN DISAPPEARANCE OF 4-YEAR-OLD
By David Daley
Staff Reporter
A local high school drama teacher has been questioned by the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office in connection to the recent disappearance of four-year-old Sarah Carpenter of Holman Beach. According to Sergeant Alan Pangborn, the lead investigator in Carpenter’s disappearance, an eyewitness has accused Michael Ronan, 32, of Aberdeen, of abducting Carpenter from the beach in the early morning hours of May 17. The witness, whose name is being withheld due to her age, has been identified only as “the babysitter” who was caring for Carpenter at the time of the alleged abduction. A second potential witness, also a minor, slept through the event and could not corroborate the first witness’s testimony.
Ronan, a popular drama teacher at Ocean County Regional High School, is a long-time member of the faculty and director of a popular summer stock theater in Spring Lake. No comment has been made by any of the parties to date. When questioned, High School Principal Bernadette Harvey said, “Mr. Ronan is respected by his colleagues and adored by his students. While these allegations must be taken seriously, he has the school community’s full support, and we hope this tragic event is resolved shortly.” Ronan’s drama class had just completed four performances of its Spring play, a comedy written by senior Donatella Marcino of Holman Beach, the first time the school had staged a play written by a member of the student body.
Sergeant Pangborn stated that the U.S. Coast Guard will continue to search the waters around Holman Beach for evidence of a drowning. Laura Carpenter, Sarah’s mother, was released from the hospital yesterday, where she’d been treated for shock. She has yet to comment.
Anyone with information regarding Sarah Carpenter’s disappearance should contact the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office at 1-800-654-9823.
. . . . .
Eventually the police believed me. What choice did they have, as three doctors confirmed my narcolepsy, and half the town had seen me, at some point, curled on the floor of the supermarket or slumped face-down behind the counter at the Jaybird. But that didn’t make it easier to accept. During the most critical twenty minutes of my life—maybe the only twenty minutes that ever mattered—I’d been fast asleep, dead to the world, and in that time Sarah Carpenter had drowned.
But Amy said differently. In twenty years, never once had she strayed from those words: He took her. And never once did she relent on the identity of the “he.” It was always Mr. Ronan, our high school drama teacher, a man I respected, admired, maybe even loved; the same man Amy accused of kidnapping and murdering a four-year-old girl, the same man whose life, in those dreadful moments after Sarah disappeared, Amy set out to destroy. Even after she recanted, telling the police that “maybe” what she’d seen had been part of a dream, she never changed her story with me. Not even an air-tight alibi could shake her belief—Mr. Ronan had been at the dentist when Sarah had disappeared, his mouth stuffed with X-ray film, a hygienist in the room the whole time.
He took her. And nothing else was ever said.
. . . .
