The Weight of Silence

“How dare you?” I shout. “Ben would never hurt the girls. Never! How dare you? You come in here, pointing fingers. How do we know that you two didn’t have something to do with this?”

“Us?” Fielda screeches. “Us? My God. You’re the one with the drunken husband and the daughter who never speaks. And why is that, do you think? Why doesn’t Calli talk? Seems to me that something really odd must be going on in your house if a perfectly healthy little girl doesn’t talk!”

“Get out,” I say softly now. “Just go.”

Agent Fitzgerald steps between us. “We need to work together on this. There is no reason that you should be pointing fingers at each other. No reason. Let us do our work here.”

“I’m sorry,” I turn to Fielda and say weakly after a moment’s silence. “I know you would never do anything to hurt the girls. I’m just…worried.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Fielda says. “And I know Ben would never hurt them. I’m so sorry. We’ll talk soon.” Fielda pats my arm and they leave.

I notice that she hadn’t said that she knew Griff wouldn’t have hurt the girls, either.

Griff has not always been the way he is now. Not at first, anyway. He always drank a lot, I knew that back when I was first dating him. I just thought it was his age, just being wild, having fun. It was exciting to be around him. I was thrilled that someone older than me would be interested in seventeen-year-old me. And he was sweet and wanted to be with me.

I was so lonely at that time. My mother had died, my brothers had left and my dad was moping around the house, missing my mother, missing my brothers. That winter of my senior year, Griff sauntered into the Gas & Go, the convenience store where I worked. He smiled at me, went back to the beer display, grabbed a case, a bag of Fritos and a Ding Dong, and set them all in front of me on the counter.

“Great supper, huh?” he asked.

“Very nutritious,” I observed as I rang up the items. “I’ll need to see an ID, for the beer.”

“Why? Don’t I look twenty-two?” Griff asked, grinning.

“Didn’t say that. I just have to check everyone’s, even if they look eighty.” I grinned back.

“You sayin’ I look eighty?”

“That’s what a diet of beer, Fritos and Ding Dongs will do to you,” I replied, trying not to laugh. God, I was so dumb.

“How old’re you? Twelve?” Griff shot back.

“Funny. No, I’m almost eighteen,” I said, straightening my shoulders, trying to appear taller, older.

“Huh, I would’ve thought maybe…” he peered at me closely “…thirteen. Fourteen, maybe, on a good day.”

“Ha, ha,” I deadpanned. I felt my face redden and hoped that I wasn’t sweating too much.

“I’m Griff Clark, by the way,” he said as he pulled his driver’s license from his wallet and laid it in front of me.

“I’m Antonia Stradensky,” I said, using my full name, hoping at least to sound older.

Griff was looking at my name tag. “Then who the hell is Toni?” he asked. “And where’d you put her?”

“I’m Toni,” I said, flustered. “I mean, you know that. Toni’s short for Antonia.” Mortified, I laid his change in his outstretched palm.

“See you later, Antonia!” Griff flashed a huge smile at me. “And let that Toni girl out of the cooler before you go home.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

Griff stopped by nearly every time I was working after that. When he didn’t, I worried, wondered if he wasn’t really interested in me. Then he’d walk in, his red hair a beacon, and my stomach would swoop and I would smile for the rest of the night.

One night in April, he finally asked me out, sort of. I was just closing up the store at midnight. It was a beautiful early-spring night and Griff was waiting out in the small parking lot as I locked the doors.

“Young girl like you shouldn’t be working out here all alone this late at night. It ain’t safe.”

“Well, good thing you’re here then,” I replied.

“Good thing. Hey, wanna go for a drive?”

I hesitated. “I better not. My dad will be waiting up for me.” This was not true. I don’t think my father had stayed up past nine since my mother died.

“How ’bout a short walk then?”

We walked; it wasn’t a short walk, though. We walked for two hours, winding ourselves around the streets of the town at least three times and found ourselves up at St. Gilianus College, among the old gothic-looking buildings.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I do lots of things,” Griff laughed. “I eat, I sleep, I go for walks…”

“I mean for a job, what do you do?”

“Right now I’m workin’ over in Lynndale for my uncle, farm stuff. But I’m workin’ on getting a job working for the pipeline over in Alaska.”

“Oh.” A pebble of dread dropped into my stomach. “You’re moving away.”

“Maybe. Never was much to stay around for before.”

“Before what?”

“Before this kid started hangin’ around me.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”

And I did. There behind the field house.

Afterward, Griff was quiet, the first of his silent rages I would have to endure.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Who was he?”

“What? Who?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

“Who did you date before me?” He said date as if it was a curse word.

“No one. I mean, someone, but it was nothing.”

He wrapped his fingers in my hair and held tightly, but didn’t pull. It didn’t hurt. “Stay away from him. Don’t talk to him no more.”

“I won’t. I mean, we don’t talk anymore.”

“Good.” He relaxed and smiled at me.

He walked me back to my car, kissed me good-night and sent me on my way.

We saw each other every day after that and were married that next fall.

I don’t regret my marriage. I have, after all, two amazing children. I do wonder often, however, what would have happened if I hadn’t married Griff. Would I have married someone else, Louis, maybe? Would I still live in Willow Creek or would I live by the ocean in a yellow house? But I don’t wish what I have away.

DEPUTY SHERIFF LOUIS

Mary Ellen McIntire is about the saddest woman I’ve ever seen. Deep grooves are etched into her cheeks and it’s hard to meet her puffy, weary eyes. The hurt just bores into you. I welcome her into my little domain. I wish that Fitzgerald was here, but he’s not, so I offer Mrs. McIntire a seat.

The whole Jenna McIntire affair was a complete and total tragedy. All around, every which way. Beautiful ten-year-old girl goes missing from her house in the middle of the night. No one knows why. She’d never left before. Jenna loved to play with dolls, had a whole collection of those American Girl dolls. I saw her room. Dolls everywhere, dressed in these little outfits. No sign of a break-in, no struggle. Just a little girl gone. The dad swore that he had locked the back door the night before, but it was found unlocked the next morning.

Always, always, the parents are the first suspects, it seems. Even when every indication is that it’s not so.