Have You Seen Me?(27)

It’s only a doll, I told myself. I quickly kicked the leaves back into place, thinking I shouldn’t have disturbed them. And then I ran, so fast that even now, sitting in the fading light, I can still recall how much my lungs burned.

Leaning back against the cushions, I lift up my legs and tuck my feet underneath me. The room is as quiet as the woods were that day. I close my eyes, and after a moment a thought worms its way into my brain, something I’d buried deep in my memory and forgotten until just now.

I told a lie back then about finding the body. I lied to my parents, and to the police. I even lied to the therapist who wanted so much to help me.





12


SESSION WITH DR. ERLING

By the time my Monday appointment with Erling rolls around, I’m desperate to see her and unload. I’m also eager to continue the “detective work,” hoping this time it produces results.

“So,” she says as soon as I’m seated. “Tell me how you’re doing, Ally.” She laces her fingers together in her lap. There’s no wedding band on her left hand so I’ve always assumed she’s not married.

I give her a brief recap of my morning—that I managed to do a smidgen of work on my next column and even ventured outside for a while, having coffee and reading the newspaper at the neighborhood Le Pain Quotidien. But then I quickly take her back to my meeting with Roger.

“I know you said I should give my brain a rest,” I say, “but I had a drink with my brother yesterday and ended up asking him to clear up some of the mystery about that case years ago. It was a bit upsetting—I mean, you obviously knew that it would be—but it was also good to understand more about what happened.”

“How was it upsetting, Ally?”

“Roger said the police told my parents they thought I was being evasive. I suppose in hindsight I should have realized that something was off, because after the police talked to me at the house, they did a couple more interviews at this other location. Roger said they might have actually considered me a suspect.”

There’s a few seconds’ pause before she speaks.

“That you’d been involved in the little girl’s death?” she says.

“Yes. . . . The idea of it makes me sick—that they thought I could have hurt her. There was a story in the news once about two kids luring a toddler away from his mother in a shopping mall and then killing him, and I suppose it was natural for the cops to wonder.”

“Can you think of any reason you might have seemed evasive to them?”

I take a deep breath, steeling myself to say this out loud for the first time.

“Because I was. Oh god, I can’t believe what I’m about to tell you. I misled everyone back then.”

“What was it you weren’t truthful about?”

“The timing of everything. The day I came across the body. When I told my parents about finding Jaycee, I said it happened that afternoon, on a Friday. But I really discovered her two days before, on Wednesday. . . . And I only remembered that I’d lied when I came home from seeing Roger yesterday. Something was eating at me on the walk back, and finally, I found myself staring at this piece of truth that I’d stuffed away all these years.”

It’s a relief to finally spit it out, but it hasn’t stopped the awful churning in my stomach.

“Why do you think you waited to tell anyone what you’d found?” Erling asks.

I take a minute to consider before answering. It’s been a question I’ve been asking myself over and over since last night.

“I was worried my mom would be upset with me for taking the shortcut. I sometimes walked in those woods with her, but I was never supposed to go in there alone. Plus, I kept trying to convince myself I hadn’t found anything bad, that maybe I had only seen an abandoned doll. But I couldn’t get the image of her out of my mind, and I finally snuck back on Friday and looked from a distance. The mound was still there so I went home and told my mom.”

“About Jaycee, but not about the time lapse.”

“Right. I let her believe I’d just taken the shortcut and found the body. I must have decided not to make things worse for myself by saying I’d been sitting on the truth for two days. . . . And I allowed myself to forget the real story.”

“How does it feel to bring it to the surface after all this time?”

I throw up my hands and at the same time feel my eyes prick with tears.

“I’m glad I remembered. I am. It seems important. But at the same time, I feel—ashamed. That lie was unfair not only to my parents but to the police, too.”

“It makes sense that as a child you didn’t want to disappoint your parents and told a lie to protect yourself. Lots of children do that, and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

Her tone is filled with assurance, and I nod in appreciation.

“By the way, I’ve already taken steps to update the police,” I say. “I called Roger last night after I remembered, and he’s going to talk to the police chief, whom he knows. I doubt that it will make any difference all these years later, but still, I want to get it off my chest.”

“That seems like a very reasonable next step.”

“Do you think it’s possible that discussing the murder in the sessions with you finally made the memory surface? And that the guilt and shame I’ve felt about lying were the reason I . . . I lost myself?”