Defending Jacob(126)

I want to say—it is important you know—we liked Hope, not least because she made our son happy. Jacob brightened whenever she was around. She had a warm way about her. She was courteous and polite, with blond hair and a wonderful soft Virginia accent that seemed lovely to us Bostonians. She was a little pudgy but comfortable in her body, comfortable enough to wear bikinis every day, and we liked her for that too, for the easy way she carried herself, free of the usual morbid teenage insecurities. Even her unlikely name added to the fairy-tale symmetry of her sudden appearance on stage. “Finally we have Hope,” I would say to Laurie.

The truth is, we were not entirely focused on Jacob and Hope. Laurie and I had our own relationship to work on. We had to relearn each other, reestablish the old patterns. We even resumed our sex life, not frantically but slowly, tentatively. Probably we were as clumsy as Jacob and Hope, who no doubt were fumbling over each other at the same time, in secret corners and thrust up against palm trees. Laurie got very brown very quickly, as she always has. To my middle-aged eyes she looked insanely sexy, and I began to wonder if the website did not have it right, after all: she looked more and more like the hot soccer mom in the ad. She was still the best-looking woman I ever saw. It was a miracle that I got her in the first place and a miracle that she stayed with me as long as she did.

I think that, sometime in that first week, Laurie began to forgive herself for the primal sin—as she saw it—of losing faith in her own son, of doubting his innocence during the trial. You could see it in the way she began to loosen up around him. This was an internal struggle for her; she had nothing to reconcile with Jacob, since he never knew about her doubts, let alone that she had actually been afraid of him. Only Laurie could forgive herself. Personally, I did not see it as such a big deal. As betrayals go, this was a small one, and understandable in the circumstances. Maybe you have to be a mother to know why she took it so hard. All I can say is that, as Laurie began to feel better, our whole family began to return to its normal rhythm. Our family orbited around Laurie. Always had.

We quickly settled into a few routines, as people must, even in dreamworlds like Waves. My favorite ritual was to watch the sunset from the beach as a family. Every evening, we brought beers down with us and dragged three beach chairs to the water’s edge so we could sit with our feet in the water. Hope joined us to watch the sunset once, seating herself tactfully beside Laurie like a lady-in-waiting attending her queen. But generally it was just us three Barbers. Around us in the dimming light, little children would play in the sand and the shallow water, toddlers, even a few babies and their young parents. Gradually the beach would get quieter as the other guests left to get ready for dinner. The lifeguards would drag the empty beach chairs across the sand and stack them for the night, making a clatter, and finally the lifeguards themselves would leave, and only a few sunset gazers would linger on the beach. We would look out into the distance, where two arms of land reached out to encircle the little bay, and the horizon would burn yellow then red then indigo.

Looking back on it now, I picture my happy family of three sitting on that beach at sunset and I want to freeze the story there. We must have looked so normal, Laurie and Jacob and me, so much like all the other partyers and suburbanites at that resort. We must have seemed just like everyone else, which, when you get down to it, is all I ever really wanted.

Mr. Logiudice: And then?

Witness: And then—

Mr. Logiudice: Then what happened, Mr. Barber?

Witness: The girl disappeared.





40 | No Way Out


Evening was coming on now. Outside, daylight was withdrawing, the sky going dull, the familiar sunless gray sky of a cold spring in New England. The grand-jury room, no longer flooded with clear sunlight, went yellow under the fluorescent lights.

The jurors’ attention had come and gone the last few hours, but now they sat up attentively. They knew what was coming.

I had been in the chair testifying all day. I must have looked a little haggard. Logiudice circled me excitedly, like a boxer sizing up a woozy opponent.

Mr. Logiudice: Do you have any information about what happened to Hope Connors?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: When did you learn she had vanished?

Witness: I don’t recall exactly. I remember how it began. We got a call in our room at the resort around dinnertime. It was Hope’s mother, asking if she was with Jacob. They had not heard from her all afternoon.

Mr. Logiudice: What did you tell her?

Witness: That we hadn’t seen her.

Mr. Logiudice: And Jacob? What did he say about it?

Witness: Jake was with us. I asked him if he knew where Hope was. He said no.

Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything unusual about Jacob’s reaction when you asked him that question?

Witness: No. He just shrugged. There was no reason to worry. We all figured she’d probably just gone off to explore. Probably she lost track of time. There was no cell phone reception there, so the kids were constantly disappearing. But the resort was very safe. It was completely fenced in. No one could get in to harm her. Hope’s mom wasn’t panicked either. I told her not to worry, Hope would probably be back any minute.

Mr. Logiudice: But Hope Connors never did come back.

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: In fact, her body was not found for several weeks, isn’t that right?

Witness: Seven weeks.

Mr. Logiudice: And when it was found?