“She could have braked,” the officer says.
She could have braked. She could have not worn such a short skirt. She could have not gone up to his room. She could have not laughed at him and made him feel small. There is a blitheness to the statement, a maleness to it that sets me straight. My voice is different when I speak again. It is resolved. “She was terrified. You don’t think or act rationally when you’re in fear for your life. I think she thought he was trying to kill her.” Did she think that? Does it matter? “I think she was trying to turn the wheel away from us, to spare us.” There is such a gap between how much I want this to be true and how untrue it is that my voice catches. A memory of Layla surfaces then. Three or four. We were waiting to be seen by a Genius at the Apple store. I had booked an appointment but they were running behind, and we were going to be late for a checkup at the doctor’s and then a playdate after that. I was grumbling and huffing, griping with the other customers whose reservations hadn’t been honored either, my stress palpable. I had given my purse to Layla to occupy her—one of her favorite pastimes was sorting through its contents—and from her perch on the floor, my wallet and keys and loose change and lip gloss and sunglasses and dry-cleaning tickets scattered around her, she said something so quietly I had to ask her to repeat it.
“Layla, speak up,” I’d snapped.
“I’m happy,” she said, only a little bit louder. The girl next to me, older than me but still young, gasped and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand.
“It’s the little things in life,” he laughed.
Would the little things in life ever bring Layla joy again had Stephanie not turned the wheel?
The door opens and another officer asks for a word. My guy stands, his chair rolling back. “Can I get you anything? More water?”
“Please,” I manage, remembering how small Layla’s voice was that day. I’m happy. “And you’re going to ask if anyone’s heard from my sister?”
“Hang tight,” he says, closing the door.
While I wait, I check to see if Brett has responded to my anthology of abusive texts. Nothing in writing, Jesse had said, but when phone call after phone call went unanswered I resorted to a verbal thrashing. Even if they do subpoena my phone, there is nothing implicative in a sisterly spat. You are a stubborn fucking brat, I have texted. I know you are mad at me but SOMETHING MAJOR HAPPENED and you need to swallow your pride and call me the fuck back. To continue to punish me with silence, because I merely hinted at the real reason she shouldn’t marry Arch? Grow the fuck up. I text her that now. Grow the fuck up. Until you do, I don’t want Layla anywhere near you. My anger is only displaced fear. I’m restless to speak to Brett, to tell her what really happened, to ask her if it is a dangerous and stupid idea to lie about it. To ask her if she is even willing to lie about it. What if I say that it was Brett and Stephanie on that tape, but she tells the truth? Can they arrest me for that? I think they can. Could I lose custody of Layla if I am arrested?
I drop my head into my hands with a low groan. How do I explain what happened to a twelve-year-old? Layla is on her way up here now (Out here, comes Brett’s voice). Our local police department in New Jersey is giving her a ride, and the officers have confiscated her phone to be sure she hears what happened from me, and not from Facebook.
The door opens. The officer is back with Jesse, of all people, and a bottle of water. The plastic is foggy from the refrigerator, still sporting a price tag, which tells me the bottle did not come from a bulk pack. An officer bought this bottle, for himself (Because only men can be police officers, comes Brett’s voice again), and he put it in the fridge to drink later, and now it’s being given to me. I need it more than he does. To have a train of thought like this, I must suspect what is going on.
“How are you?” Jesse crouches down on her heels and twists the cap off for me.
“Oh, let me . . .” The officer starts out of the room again, presumably searching for a chair for Jesse.
“He’s going to tell you they can’t say for sure who is responsible, but it’s obviously Vince.” Jesse is speaking at a fast, whispered clip. I don’t understand what she is saying, and I don’t really care. I’m only hoping for an answer to one question.
“Have you gotten ahold of Brett?”
“Babe,” Jesse says, resting her hand on my forearm, “we have really bad news about Brett.” Tears prick her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“What about Brett?” I’m saying as the officer returns with a chair for Jesse.
“She’s asking about Brett,” Jesse says, in a sort of tattling way. She’s asking, not me.
The officer sighs, putting his weight on the back of the new chair, leaning on it like it’s a walker in a nursing home. “We wanted you to know before your daughter arrived that we’ve located your sister.”
“Well . . . where is she?” I look from him to Jesse. “Is she here? Have you seen her?”
Jesse is looking at me with big this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you eyes, stroking the back of my head. This is the most we’ve ever touched.
“Ma’am,” the officer says, and I feel this word far sooner than what he says next, because I am still in shock, “there is no easy way to tell you this, but your sister is deceased.”
My immediate thought is that it was a car accident. That Brett implored her driver to go faster, to get her out of here, and he blew a red light, flipped taking a turn too fast on one of the back country roads. I don’t think to connect what happened to Stephanie and Vince with what happened to Brett.
I am surprised that I am able to ask, “What happened?” quite normally. Jesse has taken my hand now. She’s still crouched next to me on the floor.
“I need you to understand,” the officer says, “that we don’t have that answer ourselves, just yet. But as her next of kin, I want to provide you with all the information we have at this point in the investigation. But know that is subject to change as we gain a better understanding of what happened today.”
I don’t really hear him, but I nod. My head feels heavy on my neck. How did I never notice how heavy my head was before?
“Your sister was in the car that Stephanie was driving. When they went over the edge, her body was expelled onto the roof.”
Lauren’s wail. Marc’s moan. They saw my sister. I wish I could be sick. I wish I could purge this feeling, flush it down the toilet, but already I know, this is not a feeling. This is a growth. Inoperable, benign but painfully pressing on a vital organ. It will be with me, hurting me and not killing me, all my life.
Still, I am trying to understand how my sister got into the car. Did she sneak into the car while we were filming at the picnic table? How did we not see her? I must look very confused, because the officer asks me if I understand.
I shake my head: No, I don’t. “How did she get into the car without any of us noticing?”
Jesse and the officer exchange a worried look. They haven’t told me the worst of it yet, I realize.
“I’m sorry,” the officer says, “I should have phrased that more clearly. Your sister wasn’t in the car. She was in the trunk.”
“The trunk?” I’m at a loss. “When did she get in the trunk?”
“Sometime between when she came home from Talkhouse with Stephanie and when you woke up in the morning.”
“Why didn’t we hear her? Wouldn’t she have been kicking and screaming?” As I ask the question, I work it out for myself. “Oh,” I say, my voice low, the sharp threat of vomit high in my throat. “Oh. She was . . . she was not alive? In the trunk?”
The officer shakes his head, wincing on my behalf. “We believe she was deceased before she was placed in the trunk, yes, but that is one of the things we have yet to conclusively determine.”