Sadie(5)




WEST McCRAY:

The girls lived in Sparkling River Estates. It’s a small park, no more than ten trailers to it, some better kept than others. Cute little lawn ornaments and flower beds adorn one, while a rotting couch surrounded by garbage accents another. There’s no sparkling river nearby, but if you follow the highway out of town, you might come across one.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s managed by May Beth Foster, the girls’ surrogate grandmother. She shows me the girls’ trailer, a double-wide, exactly as Sadie left it. May Beth has found herself in a suspended state of grief where she can’t bring herself to clean it out, even though she also can’t afford not to rent it.

I don’t know what I’m expecting when I step inside, but the place is spare and clean. For the last four years of their lives, Sadie raised Mattie here on her own, but still—she was a teenager and when I think of teenagers, I think of some sort of natural disaster; a tornado moving from room to room, leaving carnage in its wake.

It was nothing like that in the place they called home. There are still cups in the kitchen sink and on the coffee table in front of the old television in the living room. A calendar on the fridge that hasn’t been flipped since June, when Sadie disappeared.

Things get downright eerie in their bedrooms. Mattie’s room looks like it’s waiting for her to come back. There are clothes on the floor, the bed is unmade. There’s an empty glass with water stains coating its inside on the nightstand.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Sadie wouldn’t let anyone touch it.


WEST McCRAY:

It’s a direct contrast to Sadie’s room, which looks like it knows she’s never coming back. In her room, the bed has been neatly made, but aside from that, every available surface is bare. It appears to have been stripped clean.


WEST McCRAY [TO MAY BETH]: There’s nothing here.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

I found all her things in the Dumpster back of the lot, the day I realized she was gone.


WEST McCRAY:

What kinds of things?


MAY BETH FOSTER:

She got rid of her books, movies, clothes … just everything.

It makes me sick to think about her throwing her life in the garbage like that because that’s what it amounts to. Every little bit that made her, everything, was all in the trash and when I found it, I just started to cry because she’d … it wasn’t worth anything to her anymore.


WEST McCRAY:

Did you see this coming at all? Did she give you any kind of indication she was planning on leaving?


MAY BETH FOSTER:

That week before she left, Sadie got really quiet, like she was thinking about doing something stupid and I told her whatever she was thinking … don’t. I said to her, “Don’t you do it.” But by that point, I couldn’t reach her about much of anything.

Still, I never imagined this …

I have to tell you, it’s killing me to be in here. I just, I’d really like not to be.


WEST McCRAY:

We continue talking in her trailer, a cozy double-wide at the front of the lot. She has me sit on her plastic-covered couch which squeaks very loudly every time I move. When I tell her that’s not so great for an interview, we end up in her small kitchen, at the kitchen table, where she serves me a glass of iced tea and shows me the photo album she’s kept of the girls over the years.


WEST McCRAY:

You did this?


MAY BETH FOSTER:

I did.


WEST McCRAY:

Seems like something a mother would do.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Yeah, well. A mother should.


WEST McCRAY:

Claire Southern, Mattie and Sadie’s mother, is not a welcome topic of conversation, but she’s an unavoidable one because without Claire, there would be no girls.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Less said about her, the better.


WEST McCRAY:

I’d still really like to hear it, May Beth. It could help. At the very least, it’ll give me a better understanding of Sadie and Mattie.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Well, Claire was trouble and there was no reason for it. Some kids are just born … bad. She started drinking when she was twelve. At fifteen, she was into pot, cocaine. By eighteen, heroin. She’d been arrested for petty theft a few times, misdemeanors. Just a mess. I was best friends with her mama, Irene, since Irene started renting from me. That’s how I come into their lives. You never knew a soul as gentle as Irene. She could’ve had a firmer hand with Claire, but there’s no use in dwelling on that now.


WEST McCRAY:

Irene died of breast cancer when Claire was nineteen.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Before Irene died, Claire got pregnant. Irene was trying so hard to hold on for her grandchild but it wasn’t … it wasn’t meant to be. Three months after we put Irene in the ground, Sadie was born. I’d promised Irene on her deathbed I’d look out for that little girl, and that’s what I did. That’s what I’ve always done because, well—you have any kids of your own?


WEST McCRAY:

Yeah, I do. A daughter.


MAY BETH FOSTER:

Then you know.





sadie

Three days later, I dye my hair.

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