The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry
She returns the cart to the corral, then leans against the metal railing, rummages in her purse, and comes up with a red-and-white pack of cigarettes. Unfiltered Marlboros. She taps one out, lights it, and draws the smoke in so hard her thin face becomes just plain gaunt.
This is my chance to talk with her, to see if I can shake loose the truth. With my apron tucked under my arm, I walk over to her before I can change my mind. “Mind if I bum a cigarette before I have to go to work?”
Her laugh has a lot of gravel in it. “You’re too young to be smoking.”
“I’m eighteen,” I lie.
“Uh-huh.” She looks me up and down. “Eighteen’s still too young. If everyone waited until they were twenty-one before they picked up a cigarette, no one would ever be a smoker. They hook you while you’re young and stupid and you think you’ll live forever. Trust me, I know.”
Despite her words, Sam hands me a cigarette and her lighter. It’s heavy and silver. I manage to light up without too much fumbling. I used to smoke a little back in middle school, back when I wanted to fit in with a certain crowd, even if it was the kind of crowd most kids didn’t want to join. The yeah-I-smoke, yeah-I-pierced-my-own-ears/nose/lip, yeah-my-friend-made-this-tattoo crowd.
Eventually I realized it was all a little stupid, and I stopped. I still have what’s supposed to be a ghost-bat on my biceps, although it actually doesn’t look much like either.
She sucks down another lungful and then sticks out her hand. “I’m Sam.”
“Olivia.” We shake hands lightly. I’m mostly pretending to smoke, not wanting to start coughing.
“You were at Terry’s funeral.” She looks at me more closely, and I try to maintain a neutral expression. Do those cool blue eyes belong to a killer? “So do I know your parents or something?”
I shake my head. “I just moved into Naomi Benson’s old house. The neighbor, Nora Murdoch, wasn’t feeling well that day. She asked me to drive her.”
“Naomi wasn’t much older than you when she was murdered. She had these high cheekbones.” Sam touches her own face as she keeps looking at me. “Kind of like yours.”
Just as I’m starting to panic, the answer comes to me like a gift. “Was she part Native American? Because I am.” I have no idea if that’s true. I change the subject both to distract Sam and to ask what I really want to know. “So who do you think killed them? I’ve heard all kinds of theories since I moved in. I’ve started reading up on the case, trying to figure out what happened.”
She blows a stream of smoke sideways. This close, I can see how carefully her face is made up, every square centimeter covered with a thin layer of foundation or eye shadow or blush.
“I wasn’t that close to them, at least not Naomi. Terry and I used to hang around together when we were younger, but I hadn’t talked to him in the months before it happened.”
Is she lying, or was the person I overheard at the funeral? Or is it all just a matter of how you see things, what you choose to remember?
“Didn’t you say something at the service about spending time with him at the river?”
“Yeah. In high school. But then I went to community college and got a job selling real estate, and Terry started working at the mill. Things change when you get older. You grow up. You grow apart.”
“Still, you must have some guesses about what happened to them.” I keep my eyes on the glowing ash of my cigarette, not wanting to look too eager.
Sam pauses for a moment, then says, “I kind of wonder if they should be looking at Jason.”
A thrill goes through me, but I squint as though I’m trying to remember. “Wasn’t that the guy who was Terry’s best friend?”
“Yeah. He was also more than a little in love with Naomi. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I don’t know what everyone saw in her.” Sam’s mouth twists. I saw her picture in the annual. Sam was just as striking back then, and far less brittle than she is now. Sure, my mom was pretty, but she also looked young and unfinished. Even when Sam was seventeen, she already looked like an adult, cool and self-contained. Her voice interrupts my thoughts. “Jason used to carry a knife everywhere.”
And he’s a trucker. Still, Duncan had a point when he argued against this idea. “But why would Jason do it? Kill his best friend?”
“Maybe they had some kind of fight over her. Maybe he killed Terry, and then he had to kill Naomi.”
“If he was in love with Naomi, why would he stab her so many times?”
“All it takes is once.” She exhales twin streams of smoke.
“What?” I’m not following, at least not consciously, but the back of my neck prickles.
“If you stabbed somebody once, it would already be too late. You couldn’t stop. You would just have to keep stabbing until it was done. Even if it took nineteen times.” Sam turns her icy blue eyes to me as she stubs out her cigarette on the metal rail. “Love, hate—are they really that different?”
CHAPTER 31
WICKED-LOOKING THORNS
When I answer the knock on my door the next day, Nora’s standing on the front porch. The doubling thing happens again as I remember opening the door to find the old Nora, wanting to visit with my grandmother.
“Want to go for a walk in the cemetery?” she asks.
“Sure. I don’t have to be at work for nearly two hours.” Anything that will get me outside my own head sounds good. My dreams last night were an endless loop of my mom trying to escape her killer. Quinn said I would have new revelations, but I seem stuck on the old.
Despite her long legs, Nora takes tiny steps as we go down the hill and then turn onto the flat dirt road that leads to the cemetery. I make a conscious effort to slow my steps.
“I love this old cemetery.” She has to pause for breath after each word or two. “It’s my favorite place in the world.”
I hold the gate for her. To the left, a carefully tended bed of flowers catches my eye. I walk over to admire it. When I turn back, Nora is still well behind me.
“Are you all right?”
“I might just…”—a pause while she gathers another breath—“need to sit down.” She collapses more than sits on a low stone wall. I reach out to grab her in case she keeps toppling sideways. She lists but doesn’t fall.
Her breathing is too fast and too shallow. Her skin looks so white. Should I run back and get my car so I can drive her home? But what if something happens in the meantime? “Are you okay?”
“I just need to…”—another long pause—“rest.”
I pretend not to be watching her. The wall we’re sitting on surrounds a small family plot that holds three gravestones and has an empty space where a fourth grave could go. The most recent date on any of the tombstones is 1938.
“If I pass out, you have to promise,” she says between breaths, “to let me go. Make sure it’s a good long time before you call anyone.”
Shocked, I lean away from her. “You don’t mean that!”
“I’m ready. I’ve had two heart attacks. My hearing is totally shot. My cataracts are getting worse.” She pauses between sentences. “It’s like having a car that’s starting to nickel-and-dime you. At some point, it’s not worth keeping anymore. Besides, I want to see what happens next.”
“So you believe in heaven and harps and all that?”
“I don’t know if God exists. None of us can really know. But I believe he does.”
I nod. I’m not so sure about God, but I do believe in evil. But maybe if you believe in evil, you have to believe in its opposite.
Nora echoes my thoughts. “About the only thing I know is that it all comes down to love. Love is the only thing that matters. It’s all there is. But that’s plenty.” Her voice has strengthened, even if she’s still as blue-white as skim milk.
I’m not certain what I believe in. Except maybe Nora.
A woman walking a small dog crests the hill and comes toward us. She’s wearing a navy-blue business suit and tennis shoes.
I smile awkwardly.
The woman stops, but the dog makes a beeline toward Nora. It looks like a collie, black and brown and white, only smaller. It crouches until its belly touches the ground, and then it begins crawling toward Nora, wiggling and squirming to stay flat.
The woman’s eyes go wide. “I’ve never seen her do that before.”
Meanwhile, the dog has reached Nora. Now it rolls over on its back, presenting its belly.
“Who’s a good dog?” Nora reaches out to scratch the pink skin that shows through the fine white hairs. The dog lets out a cross between a groan and a whine.
“Wow, I would have said she would never let anyone do that.” The dog’s owner watches as Nora ruffles her fingers back and forth. “Not even me. She would take my hand off for sure.”
Nora doesn’t answer. She’s got eyes and ears only for the dog.
Finally, the woman says, “Bella, we have to go, or I’ll be late for work. Come on, Bella.” She tugs the leash, and the dog, with one last reluctant whine, gets to its feet. As the lady is walking away, she calls, “You and your granddaughter have a great day.”
“We will,” Nora says. I manage a nod. Tears prick my eyes. I only wish she were my grandmother. Suddenly, I miss my real grandmother fiercely.
“Do you want to keep going?” Nora gets to her feet. She seems energized by the conversation with the woman and, more important, the woman’s dog.
“Sure.”
We start off again, Nora’s steps still more shuffle than stride. I keep one hand out, ready to grab her elbow. As we start up the low hill, I see a red splotch on my mother’s grave. A jolt of excitement races from my head to my heels. I jog toward it for a closer look. It’s a single red rose, the color of old blood. It looks fresh. Its stem sports wicked-looking thorns at least a half inch long. I don’t think it was bought at a florist’s or filched from an arrangement. The end is ragged, not snipped. The rose must have come from a garden.
I bring it back to Nora. “Frank told me he keeps finding red roses on Naomi’s grave. This must be one of them.”
“Maybe it’s from one of your mother’s old admirers,” Nora says.
I go still inside. “What did you say?”
Nora looks at me for a long time. Finally, I’m the one who has to look away.
She touches my shoulder. “Oh, honey, I’ve known for a while now.”
“Did you see me take that Halloween photo of me and my parents?” I still can’t look at her.
Her tone is colored with warmth. “I saw you.” I turn to look into her kind face. “Really saw you. Anyone with eyes in their head would see you were Terry and Naomi’s daughter. I should have spotted it the first day, no matter what you said your name was.”
“My name really is Olivia now.” Even though I’ve lied to everyone, it stings a little that she thinks I lied to her. “The lady who adopted me changed my name.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
I’m not sure Tamsin even knows I’m alive. “The adoption didn’t last. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. But I want to find out the truth about who killed my parents. I’m starting to figure things out, but people will stop talking if they know who I am.” I take a deep breath. “What was she like? Naomi, I mean?”
“She was a smart girl. Kind. A good mother. She read to you, and she loved to make you laugh. Your parents always loved you, even if they didn’t always love each other. And I think they did love each other. They were just young.”
“I never even got to know her. To know them. Talk to them.” My throat closes with tears. “Why didn’t the killer take me, too? They might as well have.” The shell I’ve built up in layers around myself over the years has developed too many cracks.
“But you’re still standing.” She takes my warm hand in her cold one.
We start down the hill. Two men are at the bottom. One is riding a kid’s bike that’s way too small for him. The other blows his nose into the dirt, which is beyond disgusting, then wipes it on the sleeve of his heavy coat. They both look homeless.
My shoulders hunch. Nora, tottering along in her knockoff Keds, looks like the perfect victim. Neither of us is carrying a purse, but that probably won’t stop them. I’m sure they’ll ask for money. Or demand it.
We haven’t seen anyone else since the woman with her dog. I scan the rest of the cemetery, but it’s empty. Even if I were to shout for help, the houses are too far away. I have to be ready to protect Nora. To put myself between them and her.
Nora’s been watching her feet, but now she lifts her head, just as the two men notice us.
This is it. I exhale and tense my muscles.
“Benjy!” Nora shouts, waving.
“Flora Nora!” The guy in the heavy coat lopes up to us and gives her a hug. He’s got a ruddy face and red hair. I recognize him from the funeral.
“Who’s your friend?” she asks him, but the other guy is already riding away from us. And Benjy doesn’t answer.
“Benjy, this is Olivia,” Nora says, undeterred. “She just moved in next door. Olivia, this is my friend Benjy.” The two of them—the age-spotted old woman and the man whose slack mouth has more holes than teeth—don’t belong together. At least not in my head. But in hers, it’s clear they do.
She still has her arm around his waist, but he’s not looking at me. Instead, he’s staring at the rose in my hand. This close, his sunburned face is familiar. I flash back on the red-haired guy in the yearbook photo of my parents and their friends. Now I see the resemblance between this dirty, homeless man and that boy.
“You’re Ben Gault, aren’t you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, but his eyes go wide. Pulling free from Nora, he turns and begins to run away.
CHAPTER 32
A BROKEN STAGGER
“Ben!” I shout. “Hey, wait a minute! Benjy! Can I please just talk to you?”
He keeps running. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Nora, and then sprint after him. In his heavy coat and falling-apart shoes, he’s not very fast.
Finally, he stops and turns toward me with his hands up. He’s trembling. “I’m not hurting anything.”
“It’s okay. Don’t be frightened. It’s just that I saw you at Terry Weeks’s funeral, and I want to ask you a couple of questions. You’re Ben Gault, right?”
He shakes his head. “The guy whose name’s on my birth certificate is dead.”
I blink. “But you are Ben Gault, right? You were friends with Terry Weeks and Naomi Benson?”
“Ben Gault, that’s just a noise.” His hands fall loose by his sides. “A sound. It doesn’t mean anything. Of course, the government comes looking for Ben every now and then, but that’s okay. I no longer have anything to hide. I don’t steal. I don’t even beg. I feel the eyes on me, though.” He makes a V with two fingers, points it at me, and then turns to tap it on his forehead. “I hear people talking about me.” The whites of his eyes are the only clean-looking part of his face. “That’s why I have the earplugs. So I can sleep at night. But the voices sneak in anyway.”
He’s clearly off. Mentally ill? Asperger’s? On drugs? But he doesn’t seem dangerous, and Nora considers him a friend. And he might know something about my mom. “Can I just ask you something? About Naomi?”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t look at me with those please-help-me eyes. Out here, you can’t be all nicey-nicey.”
I hold out the rose. “Did you leave this at Naomi’s grave?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“I believe you. But why did you leave it?”
“She listens to me.”
The present tense makes me shiver. I repeat what Frank told me. “I heard that you talk to her gravestone.”
“I don’t talk to her gravestone.” His laugh is gently mocking. “I talk to Naomi. You think the dead don’t hear? You think they don’t
A sudden odd hope fills me. What if he’s right? When I leaned down to pick up the rose, if I had listened hard enough, would I have heard my mom’s voice? What would she have said?
“What does she tell you?” I ask, but Benjy just looks at me blankly. “What does Naomi say to you?”
The light is gone from his eyes now. “The dead leave you alone, unknown, bones, no phones, rolling stones. Only there is moss.”
His words make a kind of strange sense, even down to the moss. Many of the words chiseled on the old headstones have been filled in by lichen. “So Naomi doesn’t say anything to you?”
“She knows I’ll be there soon.”
I flinch. “Don’t say that. You’re still young.” He doesn’t look young, though. The dirt ground into his face emphasizes the lines on his forehead, around his eyes, bracketing his mouth. Maybe street years are like dog years.
A puzzled look comes over his face, and he takes a step closer. Involuntarily, I step back, but then he takes two, until he’s nearly close enough to kiss me. He smells like sweat and pee and mothballs, like something forgotten, rotting in a greenhouse.
“Naomi?” He tilts his head so far to the side it looks like it will come off his neck.
He’s not asking a question about her. He’s asking a question of me.
He thinks I’m my mom.
“No, my name’s Olivia. Naomi’s dead.”
“Naomi!” He grabs my hand so hard the bones grind together. It’s all I can do not to pull away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
I force out the words. “What are you sorry for, Benjy?”
“You know.” He looks away, breaking eye contact. His mouth curls down at the corners as if he’s going to cry.
“I don’t. Tell me. Tell me what happened to Naomi. Tell me.” I have to swallow before I can go on. “Tell me what happened to me.”
“After, I looked for you.”