Cemetery Girl

“I’m ready,” she said.

I’d been thinking about the setup of the event all morning, the logistical aspects of making what was supposed to be a trade. All I had to do was bring Caitlin to Colter, let them see each other, and I would be able to extract the information I wanted. The difficult part would be pulling back at the right moment, making sure Caitlin left with me and not with him.

“I want you to get in the backseat,” I said.

“Why?”

“How do I know you won’t just run when you see him?” I asked. “If you’re in the back, I can have some measure of-”

“Control?” she said.

“Certainty,” I said. “Certainty that you won’t just run.”

“I won’t run away. I promise. Do you believe me? I won’t run away. I’ll do what you want.”

And I did believe her. Her eyes were clear, her voice level.

“Okay,” I said. “But I do want you to get in the backseat. And stay down.”

She didn’t argue further, and she didn’t even bother to get out of the car. Like a little kid, she wormed her body over the front seat and into the back. She landed with a light thud.

“Okay?” she said. “Happy?”

I made sure the child locks were activated.

I knew Caitlin was behind me. I sensed her. But I felt alone in the dark. Very alone. The wind picked up again, scuffling leaves across the parking lot, and I shivered.

No turning back.

I drove to the cemetery.

Chapter Fifty-four

I thought of the first time I ever drove Caitlin, when she was a newborn and we brought her home from the hospital. I drove slower than slow, sensing disaster at every stoplight, in every other car on the road. New-parent syndrome. I outgrew it, let go of the fears and anxieties, let her grow up, fall down, and make her own mistakes.

At some point, she’d have to be let go again. But not then, not yet.

I reached the narrow road that divided the cemetery from the park and turned. The park was closing. The tennis courts and ball fields were empty and dark, and any day now the grounds crews and workers would begin preparing them for winter, rolling up the nets, covering the dirt infield. I flashed back to that day months ago, back when I walked Frosty here while the weather was still warm and Caitlin was gone, her memory preserved by the headstone in the ground. And I thought of Jasmine, the girl who’d looked so much like Caitlin at the time. The one who was Caitlin, as far as I was concerned. She seemed so much younger than the girl in the back of my car. Younger and more carefree, an innocent who could still run and laugh and move with the buoyant happiness of a spirit. Where was that girl tonight?

To my left, the cemetery sat in darkness. I could see the outlines of the heavy monuments and stones, the vigilant angels on top of markers and mausoleums who stood watch through the night, indifferent to the cold and the human drama in my car. As I moved farther down the road, my eyes adjusted to the light and I was able to make out the shape of a car sitting at the back corner of the park. It didn’t have its lights on, and in the darkness I couldn’t yet see if there was a person inside. It could have been Colter, but just as likely it could have been groping, fumbling teenagers, steaming the windows while their clueless parents ate dinner and watched the news. I pulled behind it, my headlights illuminating its rear and the license plate. It appeared to be empty.

The car looked enormous and old. It was an elderly person’s car, an Oldsmobile 88 or something like that, the kind of thing an elderly lady would keep in her garage and drive on special occasions.

“It’s him,” Caitlin whispered. “John.”

“You’re staying in the car, remember?” I said. “Just wait a little while longer. For me.”

She didn’t answer, nor did she move.

I stepped out onto the road and gently closed my door. I looked around, scanning the landscape for a figure. A late, straggling jogger went by on the track, huffing in the dark. The band of red in the sky was almost gone above the trees, and a sliver of moon rose to the east.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but in the distance, off in the direction of Caitlin’s “grave,” I saw someone. I knew it was Colter before I went over. His thick, squat body and large head made a distinctive shape in the twilight. He stood at the grave with his head bowed, an almost reverent pose, and his hands were folded in front of him. Even though it took me a full minute to walk over to him, my shoes crunching through the leaves, he didn’t look up as I approached. But he did speak.

“You were right to do this,” he said, still staring at the ground.

“You mean to come here tonight?”

“That too.” He looked up and gestured toward the stone. It was still there, tipped over and flat on the ground. “But I meant this. The stone. You were right to do this. To bury the past. This girl doesn’t exist anymore. She really is gone. She disappeared that day I picked her up.”

“You destroyed her.”

“No, no. I released her. I freed her from the chains you had put on her-we all had put on her, in this society we live in. It restricts, it binds. I gave Caitlin freedom.”

“By raping her? By locking her in a basement?”

Colter turned toward me, raising his index finger. “No, no. Never that. Never.”

“How did it happen then? How did you have sex with her?”

“What makes you think I did?”

“She’s not a virgin. The doctor checked her out when she came back. She was a virgin when she left our house that day.”

“Was she?”

My fists clenched. I wanted to strike out.

“Don’t say those things,” I said.

“But really-do you know that? Do you?”

“I know my daughter.”

“You thought you did. You thought she wouldn’t leave. You thought she wouldn’t get in the car with a strange man. You thought a lot of things. Wrong things. Why did your brother come looking for her?”

A light mist started to fall, speckling against my face. Caitlin said she thought she’d heard Buster’s voice in the house. Buster knew Brooks, who knew Colter. .

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Your brother, William. I know that was him at my mom’s house, hiding in the dark, right?”

I didn’t answer, so Colter went on.

“He came to my house once. He said he knew I liked little girls, and his niece was missing. He’d heard rumors, talk from the lowlifes I associated with. So he showed up on his white horse, Sir Galahad style. He was going to get the girl back, be a hero and save the day.”

“What happened?”

“I told him if he hassled me again, I’d call the police, tell them what I knew about him. Hell, I’d make stuff up if I had to. Or maybe I’d just tell Brooks to call in the debt.” He shrugged, casual as the falling rain. “Now why did he show up at my door and you didn’t? Why the special interest from the uncle and not from the father?”

“We looked. We looked and looked. We never gave up.”

He raised the finger again. “I’m sure you did. But I made sure Caitlin heard my chat with William. I made sure she knew only her uncle came to the house to find her. As far as she was concerned, her parents had given her up for dead. She felt rejected by you. When I told her you weren’t looking for her anymore, she felt like she didn’t have a family. I became her family. Hell, I became her everything. Rejection is a powerful motivator, as I’m sure you know.”