Emma in the Night Page 3

  The woman recalled two encounters with Judy Martin and the necklace. In the first, Judy, Cass and Emma stopped to browse while shopping for school clothes. The younger girl, Cass, picked up the necklace and sighed. She asked her mother to buy it for her. Judy Martin took it from her hands, told her it was “cheap garbage” and that she should learn to have better taste. The girl asked again, telling her mother how much she loved it. The angel reminded her of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan—and that had been her favorite book when she was little. Apparently, her father had read it to her every night. Peter Pan. This did not help her cause. Judy Martin admonished her even more harshly, and then started walking away. Both girls followed. The older one, Emma, bumped shoulders with her sister, making her trip. She held up her hand to her forehead in the shape of an L. Loser.

  The next day, Judy Martin returned and bought the necklace. The woman remembered smiling because she thought the mother was buying the necklace for the girl who’d asked for it—the younger one. Leo asked her, holding two pictures in his hands—“Are you certain it was this girl, Cass Tanner, and not this girl, Emma Tanner, who picked out the necklace?”

  The owner was certain. “When I saw that interview, the one with the mother, Judy, I couldn’t believe it. She was saying how she’d bought the necklace for the older daughter, Emma. And I guess she did—right? Gave the necklace to Emma and not to the other sister, who wanted it?”

  Emma had worn the necklace every day. Friends confirmed it. Her father confirmed it. The school confirmed it. There was no doubt that Judy Martin had gone back to the store and bought the necklace for Emma. Not Cass.

  The shrink weighed in. “Maybe the clerk was mistaken, Abby.”

  That’s what Leo had thought. And that’s what the department had said when they dismissed her theory about the family after the evidence came up with nothing solid—and after the family had started to push back with lawyers and tears in front of cameras.

  But Abby knew the truth. This is what they do, people like Judy Martin. They are masterful in their deception. They are relentless in their manipulation. Abby had not only studied these things; she had lived them, too.

  Verse number five.

  The shrink—“Was she ever diagnosed? Your mother?”

  No. Never. And Abby had been the only member of the family to know there was something that needed to be diagnosed. Not her father. Not her stepmother. And not even her sister, Meg, who to this day still thought of their mother as “overindulgent” and “free-spirited.”

  The shrink—“Do you think that’s why you went into this field? Why you wrote your thesis on the cycle of narcissism in families?”

  And what did that prove? It had not been a conscious decision, studying psychology. But when Abby had first read about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, the adrenaline had rushed in so hard and fast, it sent her to her knees. Right there in the library at Yale. Right there in front of her roommate, who thought she’d had a stroke. Abby had wanted to curl up on the floor and swim in it—the understanding that was seeping from the words in that textbook.

  It was an illness that everyone thought they understood, assigning the label “narcissist” to every girl who looked twice in a mirror and every guy who never called. Books and films labeled every selfish character a “narcissist,” but then there would be redemption, reconciliation, seeing the light. Few people really knew what this illness was. What it really looked like. There was never redemption. Or reconciliation. There was no light to be seen. It was the combination of these things—misperception and overuse—that made this illness so dangerous.

  Verse number six.

  The shrink—“Let’s play it out. Let’s say they did push harder—went to court to get orders for psych evals, battled the local media, which was squarely behind the grieving parents. Let’s say they found that Judy had some kind of personality disorder. And maybe Owen Tanner had depression. And maybe Jonathan Martin was an alcoholic and his son ADHD. On and on—let’s just say they found the mother lode of psychiatric conditions. That does not mean they would have found the girls.”

  And there it was—the lifeboat. Abby had climbed into it, and it had saved her. Anytime she fell out, when she thought about that necklace, the third alarm bell that had convinced her beyond doubt that the family was involved in the girls’ disappearance—she would climb back into that boat and keep herself from drowning.

  “It may not have saved them.”

  It may not have saved them.

  This verse, this lifeboat, had saved her. But it had not brought her one moment of peace.

  As she peeled out of her driveway, the sun’s light piercing her eyes, she turned to the last page of the Bible, the one verse that had been left blank. The one that called out for words. For answers. And she couldn’t stop herself from hoping that now, finally, it would be written.

  THREE

  Cass

  I lay in the bed with my mother’s arms around me. My hair was wet and I could feel water bleed into the pillowcase and turn cold against my cheek. She was crying. Sobbing.

  “Oh, Cassandra! My baby! My baby!”

  I have already said that I had imagined this moment for three years. And after all the time I had to prepare, I was, still, shockingly unprepared.

  Her body felt frail to me, and I tried to remember the last time I’d felt it. She had withdrawn much of her physical affection after the custody fight, but not all of it. There were hugs on special occasions, her birthday and Mother’s Day especially because our father gave us money to buy her gifts. I did not remember it feeling like this. Hard bones.

  “My baby! Thank you, God! Thank you!”

  What I had not been prepared for, and what I had not imagined even one time during my years of imagining the moment of my return, was the expression on her face when she first saw me again on her front porch less than an hour before.

  I had stood there for ninety seconds before ringing the doorbell. I was counting them in my head, which is something I have done for as long as I can remember. I can count seconds perfectly, and from there, minutes and even hours. I had to ring the bell four times before I heard feet bounding down the hard wood stairs from the second floor. It is an above-average-sized house where we live, but where we live, the average house costs over a million dollars. It was built in the 1950s, a traditional white colonial, with three additions, including the porch, and multiple renovations. Mrs. Martin did more work after we were gone. I could see a sunroom and study where there had once been a small garden. We also have nearly five acres of property, a pool house, a tennis court and lots of woods to get lost in. Land is very expensive here. So while the house was small enough that I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, she was coming down stairs of a very costly estate. She would want me to make that clear.

  As I heard the lock turn, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet. I had been through the same door thousands of times, behind Emma, looking for Emma, calling for Emma. Every face my sister ever wore, changed by mood and growth and the weathering of time, came before my eyes as though they were warning me while the door slowly opened. I almost said her name. I could feel it in my mouth. Emma. I wanted to fall to my knees, bury my eyes into my hands and hide behind my sister as I had done as a child. I did not feel capable of doing what had to be done without her.

  But then I saw the first strand of my mother’s hair from behind that door, and the faces of my sister vanished and I became calm.

  Mrs. Martin was wrapped in a silk robe. Her hair was tangled from restless sleep, and a thick line of eye makeup was caked under her lower lashes.

  “Can I help you?” She asked the question with a sprinkle of politeness on top of a mountain of annoyance. It was six in the morning on a Sunday.

  She was looking at me, studying my face, my eyes, my body. I did not think I had changed much. I wore the same size clothing. The same size pants and shirts, even the same for my bra. My hair was still light brown and long pa
st my shoulders. My face was still angular, my eyebrows thick with big arches. When I looked in the mirror, I still saw me. But I guess that’s the thing—we all change so gradually, a little every day, that we don’t notice it. Like the frog that stays in the water until the water is boiling and the frog is dead.

  The moment I had not been prepared for—the one thing I had not ever imagined in all those years—was that my mother would not recognize me.

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s Cass.”

  She said nothing, but her head jolted back as though my words had just punched her in the face.

  “Cass?”

  She looked harder, her eyes now bulging and moving frantically from place to place, head to toe. Her right hand covered her mouth. Her left hand grabbed hold of the doorframe, catching her body as she stumbled toward me.

  “Cass!”

  I had to force my feet to stand still as she lunged at me, hands, arms, face, all touching me, pawing at me.

  A guttural moan left her body. “Uhhhhhh!”

  Then she started screaming for Mr. Martin.

  I had prepared for this part and I did what I thought I would do, which was to let her feel what she was feeling and just stand there and do nothing. Say nothing. You probably think she was ecstatic, elated, filled with joy. But Mrs. Martin had reinvented herself as the grieving mother with the missing daughters, so adjusting to my return would involve a painful unraveling.

  “Jon! Jon!”

  The tears started then as more footsteps sounded from the second floor.

  Mr. Martin called out. “What the hell is going on?”

  My mother didn’t answer him. Instead, she grabbed my face with her hands, pressed her nose right up against mine and said my name with that same guttural sound. “Caaaaaaass!”

  Mr. Martin was in his pajamas. He had put on weight since I saw him last and he looked even older than I remembered. I should have expected that. But when you’re young, you see people over a certain age as just old, and there does not seem a need to imagine them any older. He was very tall and very dark—hair, skin, eyes. I had never been able to read him well. He was adept at hiding his feelings. Or maybe he just didn’t have many of them. Few things made him angry. Fewer things made him laugh. On this day, though, I saw something I had not seen before on his face—utter bewilderment.

  “Cass? Cassandra? Is that you?”

  There were more hugs. Mr. Martin called the police. He called my father next, but there was no answer. I heard him leave a message, saying only that it was important and he should call back right away. I thought that was very considerate of him, not giving my father the details of this shocking news in a voice mail. It made me wonder if he had changed.

  They asked me the questions you would expect. Where had I been? What had happened to me? When I didn’t answer them, I heard them whisper to each other. They concluded that I was traumatized. Mr. Martin said they should keep asking questions until I answered. My mother agreed.

  “Cass—tell us what happened!”

  I did not answer them. “We need the police!” I cried instead. “They have to find Emma! They have to find her!”

  Time froze for what seemed like forever, but was only eight seconds. Mr. Martin shot a look at my mother. My mother calmed down and started to stroke my hair as though I were a fragile doll she didn’t want to break—and that she didn’t want to move or speak.

  “Okay, sweetheart. Just calm down.”

  She stopped asking me questions but my hands were shaking. I told her I was cold and she let me take a hot shower. I told her I was hungry and she made me some food. I told her I was tired and she let me lie down. My mother stayed by my side and I pretended to sleep while I secretly soaked in the Chanel No. 5 that lingered on her neck.

  When the cars started to appear, Mr. Martin went downstairs. He did not come back up. I could see each car as it entered the property because the window from my mother’s room has a view of the top part of the driveway. First came the state police in three marked SUVs. Next were the paramedics in an ambulance. It took another forty minutes for the specialists to arrive in all sorts of cars. The FBI agents would be among them. And some kind of evidence evaluator. And, of course, a psychologist.

  Some people took samples from my nails and skin. They combed through my hair. They drew some blood. They checked my heart and pulse and they asked me questions to make sure I wasn’t insane. Then we waited again, for the people who would ask me the questions about where I’d been, and where Emma was.

  I had not been in my mother’s bed since I was a little girl, since well before the divorce. We were not forbidden. It was just not a place either of us, Emma or I, wanted to be after we learned about sex. Our parents’ bed was the place they “did it,” and we found that disgusting. We used to talk about it when we played with our Barbie dolls.

  They get naked and Daddy puts his dick inside her.

  Emma would say things like that with complete nonchalance, as if it didn’t faze her at all. But I could sense her anger from the words she chose and because I knew her so well.

  She took off Ken’s clothes and Barbie’s clothes and mashed their androgynous crotches together. Ken was on top. Emma made oohs and aahs.

  That’s what they do in their bed. I’m never going in there again.

  Emma had learned the truth about sex from our half brother, Witt Tanner. Emma was eleven. I was nine. Witt was sixteen. Emma had come home from school upset. We usually took the bus because our mother didn’t like to interrupt her nap. Sometimes we walked. We attended a private school, so we were on the same campus no matter what grades we were in, and Emma always let me walk with her even though I was annoying. It was on these walks she would tell me things she had come to know, usually about boys. On this day, though, she had been quiet the whole way, telling me to “shut the hell up” every time I tried to talk to her. When we got to the house, she ran to her room and slammed the door.

  Witt lived with us every other weekend before the divorce of our father and mother. He spent the rest of his time at his mother’s house. That added up to 96 hours out of 672 hours each month. It was not a lot. It was not enough.

  But the day Emma learned about sex was a Friday that Witt was at our house. He was playing a video game in our family room when we came inside.

  What’s wrong with her?

  I went into the family room and sat down as close to Witt as possible without being in his lap. He leaned into me, bumping shoulders. He didn’t say anything except to ask about Emma and why she’d run upstairs. Usually on every other Friday, we both would find Witt and cling to him like plastic wrap until he went back to his mother Sunday night. He was soft-spoken and easy to be around. But he was also strong and he always knew what to say and how to say it.

  I used to think that Witt was a gift our father had given us to make up for the mother he had given us. I know that’s stupid, because we wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t our mother and because Witt was born before we were, before our father had even met our mother. And anyone looking at Emma could see Mrs. Martin—in her eyes, her jaw, the way she spoke. Still, that’s what I used to think.

  Witt finished the round of his game. He cursed at having been killed or out of lives or coins or whatever. He looked me in the eye and asked me how my week had been. He kissed my forehead and messed up my hair, and I smiled so hard, I could feel water in my eyes. Then he said he was going to check on Emma, which he did. She let him in her room and he came out soon after, shaking his head and laughing. No one told me anything then. But when we were playing with our Barbies a few days later, Emma couldn’t resist shattering my ignorance. She was over the shock of it, and this thing that men did to women was now part of the fabric of her.

  That day I was upset, do you remember it? And Witt came in to talk to me, do you remember? Well … I was upset because some jerk told me that sex is when a boy pees on a girl and then she has a baby.

  I remember wanting to cry myself when
she said this. I remember thinking that life could not possibly be that humiliating. And I remember thinking that I would never, ever let a boy pee on me even if it meant I could not have babies. The moment didn’t last long, but still—I remember the reaction I had and that I understood why it had made my sister run to her room and slam the door shut.

  Witt told me what really happens. Boys don’t pee on you.

  Emma explained about penises and vaginas and sperm. Then she took off the clothes of our Barbie dolls.

  I suppose it’s strange that our brother was the one to tell us about sex. But that wasn’t the only parental duty he took on.

  Our mother didn’t like being our mother. She said she wanted to be our friend. She said she was waiting for us to grow up so we could all do fun things together like shopping and going to get our nails done. She used to tell us about her plans to take us on vacations where we would get spa treatments and sit on the beach reading magazines and sipping drinks that tasted like coconut and had little umbrellas. She made them for us sometimes during the summer. She said when we were older, we could have ones that tasted even better and made you feel relaxed and happy. I would fall asleep dreaming that dream our mother put in our heads, the dream where we were all three like sisters.

  There were lots of dreams back then, before our mother started her affair with Mr. Martin. Witt talked of college and wanting to be a lawyer like his mother. He sometimes had girlfriends and they would kiss in the basement. He learned to drive and got his own car. It was like he was paving the path for us to become grown-ups, and he did it with such glee that he made it seem like something worth doing.

  This place feels big now, like it’s the whole world, like what happens here matters. But it’s not. And it doesn’t.