Two Girls Down(101)

They were in the right side of the frame. In the left, slightly backgrounded, was an upright piano, and the piano player in a three-quarter profile. A fair-haired woman with a strong jawline, delicate long fingers over the keys, concentrating on the sheet music, as if the girls weren’t even there.

Vega brought the picture closer to her eyes. It was printed on paper, a thick stock but matte and a little pixelated. Maybe if she had the file on her laptop or her phone she’d be able to see it more clearly, to make out every high-resolution detail of the piano player’s face, but she didn’t need to. Because she knew who it was, even with the dulled color of whatever secondhand laser printer had produced it; she knew exactly who it was.

—

Cap felt his phone buzz, over and over on his hip in his pants pocket. He reached for the power button and pushed it with his thumb. His teeth chattered from the sugar, the sweat a cold glaze on his forehead. He didn’t feel nervous. But Erica McKenna was about to tell them something, and his body was preparing for it, like pulling the rip cord on a toy race car.

“This is the truth,” Erica said.

She removed her glasses and set them in her lap, tapped the bridge of her nose.

“That year, the year after Sydney—”

She paused, stretched her neck and closed her eyes, like she was working out a crick. Then she continued quickly, as if she’d thought about it many times, “Was the worst year any person could have. If you told us we’d have to go through it again, we’d say we want death instead. And we’d pick the worst kind of death too—whatever they do in the Middle East where they bury you and throw rocks at your head? We’d take that over living through that first year again. Do you understand?” she said to Cap.

He nodded.

“So a year ago, a hundred fifty thousand dollars shows up in our checking account. Toby says it must be a bank mistake; we should go down to our branch and tell them. But I said, let’s wait a couple of days. You know why I said that?”



She was pleased about asking them, like a teacher who can’t wait to tell the kids the answer to a question that seems difficult but is really very obvious. She knows they’ll all slap their foreheads and make googly eyes. How could we have missed that?

“Because the night before I had a talk with God. And I was real angry about things. I told Him I was done with Him and done with Toby and the kids and done with this whole…”

She sneered as she searched for the words.

“Stupid little life, and He could fucking have it back.”

She took a breath, her mouth relaxing.

“And next morning, I wake up, Toby tells me about the money. And I think, maybe that’s all He could do right now to make it up to us, but it’s a decent start.”

She rested a second, folded the glasses in her lap. She was crying, that is, tears were leaking from her eyes, but she was making no sounds. She didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“I’m not dumb,” she said firmly. “I know God didn’t send the wire from heaven. He just pulled some strings is all.”

“No one thinks you’re dumb,” said Cap. “But I have to ask—did you consider that whoever sent this money could have something to do with Sydney?”

“Yeah. Sure we considered it. Then we un-considered it. Who gives a reverse ransom?” she said, aggravated.

“Who knows,” said Cap. “We have to ask these questions, even if they don’t make sense.”

“So you didn’t feel any responsibility at all to report the money to anyone?” said Junior, a little too harshly.

“Hey—” Erica said, pointing at him, ready for a fight.

Toby reached over and took his wife’s hand, held it.

“Listen,” he said, quieter than anyone had been so far. “We have two other kids. Our boy just now stopped having night terrors. He has regular nightmares, but at least he doesn’t get out of his bed and scream. Our daughter still draws Sydney in family pictures.”



Now he removed his glasses, pulled out a tail of his shirt and wiped the lenses.

“When we got the money, we said, Okay, a little justice after nothing. We’re still looking for Syd,” he said. “We still take the tips; once a week we talk to the police and the FBI agent who ran the case. But we have other kids. We have to keep living. It’s like you can still survive without an arm, right, or a lung? And that’s what we’re doing; it’ll never be as good as it was, but we have to keep going because we don’t want to lose anything else.”

He was crying now, tears rushing to the tip of his nose and dripping off the edge until he pinched it.

“Are we in trouble?”

“We didn’t steal that money, Toby,” Erica snapped. Then to herself, “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Toby brought the heels of his hands to his eyes and sobbed into them. Erica stared at Cap and Junior disgustedly. Like a teacher again, except the one who keeps you after school, pissed and disappointed.

Just look at what you did.

—

Vega was five miles from Denville. She gave up trying to get Cap on the phone, figured she was going to see him soon enough. At every stoplight, she sent emails to the Bastard, opened up tab after tab on the Internet, reading. Professional biographies, a wedding announcement. LinkedIn, Facebook, the Patriot-News, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Houses bought and sold.