I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn’t yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn’t believe it, would not believe it. Holiday stayed with Lindsey at night, stood by my father each time he answered the door to a new unknown. Gladly partook of any clandestine eating on the part of my mother. Let Buckley pull his tail and ears inside the house of locked doors.
There was too much blood in the earth.
On December fifteenth, among the knocks on the door that signaled to my family that they must numb themselves further before opening their house to strangers – the kind but awkward neighbors, the bumbling but cruel reporters – came the one that made my father finally believe.
It was Len Fenerman, who had been so kind to him, and a uniform.
They came inside, by now familiar enough with the house to know that my mother preferred them to come in and say what they had to say in the living room so that my sister and brother would not overhear.
“We’ve found a personal item that we believe to be Susie’s,” Len said. Len was careful. I could see him calculating his words. He made sure to specify so that my parents would be relieved of their first thought – that the police had found my body, that I was, for certain, dead.
“What?” my mother said impatiently. She crossed her arms and braced for another inconsequential detail in which others invested meaning. She was a wall. Notebooks and novels were nothing to her. Her daughter might survive without an arm. A lot of blood was a lot of blood. It was not a body. Jack had said it and she believed: Nothing is ever certain.
But when they held up the evidence bag with my hat inside, something broke in her. The fine wall of leaden crystal that had protected her heart – somehow numbed her into disbelief – shattered.
“The pompom,” Lindsey said. She had crept into the living room from the kitchen. No one had seen her come in but me.
My mother made a sound and reached out her hand. The sound was a metallic squeak, a human-as-machine breaking down, uttering last sounds before the whole engine locks.
“We’ve tested the fibers,” Len said. “It appears whoever accosted Susie used this during the crime.”
“What?” my father asked. He was powerless. He was being told something he could not comprehend.
