Still, she didn’t leave. She looked across the beach. There was nobody heading toward the jetty. The beach was deserted now that the man and his dog had disappeared. The old couple who’d given her directions earlier were right. Nobody came there except for fishermen.
A gull squawked. Rachel swiveled around to watch it swoop down toward a school of silver perch. The fish darted under the jetty to take cover. Other gulls swept in and hovered over the water, but the perch remained stubbornly under the jetty.
This is ridiculous, Rachel thought. She’d wasted a good part of the afternoon and she wasn’t going to waste another second. She was done waiting.
As she walked back down the jetty, she noticed a gleam of metal. It was a pocketknife, stuck into the post of a timber rail. Rachel squatted down to take a closer look. The pocketknife was skewering an envelope into the timber. The knife’s blade was pushed into the wood so deeply that Rachel had to use all her strength to tug it free, grabbing the paper before it fell between the slats of jetty. It was an envelope. Her name was written on it in what was becoming familiar handwriting.
Rachel closed the knife and put it in her pocket. She took a closer look at the timber post. Someone had carved a heart into the timber exactly where the envelope had been pinned. An inscription had been painstakingly pried into the wood with the sharp tip of a knife: In loving memory of Jenny Stills, who was viciously murdered here when she was just 16. Justice will be done.
Rachel remembered seeing a fisherman slouched on a red cooler box in the same spot earlier. The fisherman was gone.
She sat down on the timber decking. Her legs hung over the side of the jetty as she opened the envelope. It had a big hole through it from being pierced by the knife.
Rachel heard the faint ring of her phone. She retrieved it from her bag. It was Pete, but he had already hung up by the time she answered it. He’d left her a voice mail message. She pressed her phone hard against her ear to listen to his message above the wind.
“Rach, I called Tina, the student who interned for us in the spring. She remembers getting emails asking you to investigate the death of a girl called Jenny. She sent back the usual form letter. The writer wasn’t happy. She wrote back. Begged us to help her. Tina sent another ‘rejection’ note. Then the writer stopped emailing us—”
The last part of Pete’s message was drowned out by a sudden peal of laughter. Teenagers were running onto the jetty, making it sway as they climbed over the handrail and jumped into the waves with loud whoops. One splash followed another until they were all in the water except for a girl with long blond hair, who stood uncertainly on the narrow ledge, her back to the rails. The others treaded water, waiting for her to jump.
“Come on,” someone shouted.
The girl hesitated.
“Jump already!”
The girl took a deep breath and jumped into the water, splashing Rachel and the note. The paper was damp and the ink was bleeding as Rachel began to read.
6
Hannah
Rachel, I wrote to you about my sister Jenny five months ago. I received a response from your office. It was signed by you, but I got the impression that you didn’t write it. In the letter, you said that you were deeply sorry to hear about my tragedy but that you weren’t able to help. You wished me the best of luck and said that you hoped that I’d get justice for my sister.
I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. At the same time, and I hope you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t see how that could possibly happen. Not without your help. The cops gave up a long time ago. You’re the only person who can help me now. If I didn’t believe that then I wouldn’t have left you that letter at the rest stop. You looked flustered when you found it. I wasn’t sure whether you’d read it. But you did. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come to the jetty and you wouldn’t be reading this note.
I know that Jenny is just a name to you, so I want you to understand what she meant to me. Perhaps then you’ll reconsider.
Jenny had long blond hair the color of corn and the same pale blue eyes as our mother. Light freckles flecked her nose and cheekbones. She had a wide smile with a slight gap between her front teeth that she hated. I always thought it was her most beautiful feature.
Jenny was more than my big sister. She took care of me when our mother was at work, which was often, since Mom worked two jobs until her health waned. Jenny picked me up from school and took me to the supermarket, where we’d do homework in the staff room until Mom’s shift was over. Sometimes if Mom worked late, we’d take the bus home and Jenny would fix dinner. My sister’s loss left a gaping hole in my heart that has never healed.
After Jenny’s funeral, Mom’s decline was quick. Her complexion faded into the lifeless gray of a dying tree. Her eyes were flat. She moved slowly with the listlessness of an old woman. Most troubling of all, for the first time since she’d been diagnosed she made no effort to hide her suffering.
Before Jenny died, Mom would pick lemons from our tree and juice them by hand to make a pitcher of lemonade. All the while, she’d talk enthusiastically about plans for the summer and a promised road trip the following year. Though maybe even then she knew that it would never happen.
After Jenny died, there was nothing. No hope. No plans. No thoughts about the future. Mom stopped fighting. She capitulated. Without a will to live, those relentless invaders surged through her body, leaving devastation in their cancerous wake.
Day and night, she lay in bed facing the wall, staring at photos of Jenny. It was almost as if she turned her back on life. And me. Within weeks of Jenny’s death, my mother’s casket was lowered into the ground alongside Jenny’s grave. I wasn’t there for the funeral. I was in the hospital.
When I was feeling better, the psychologist, a pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and short dark hair whose name I have long forgotten, offered to take me to the cemetery so I could lay flowers at their graves. She said it was important to say goodbye. I ignored her offer as I sat in my usual spot on the floor by the hospital windows, hugging my knees to my body as I looked through the glass panes at hedges clipped to rectangular perfection.
I haven’t told this to a living soul, but if I’d gone to the cemetery and stood by my mother’s and sister’s graves then I would have found a way to join them. For they were the only family that I had ever known and the pain at their loss sears my soul to this day.
I never returned home, though I remember every nook and cranny of our simple house. We lived south of town, inland from the beach. Mom called it no-man’s-land, because there was nothing much there except for us.
It was an old two-bedroom house with a rusty flat roof that leaked when it rained hard. We had an overgrown garden of fruit trees in the back. Hanging from an apple tree was a rope tied to an old tire that I’d swing on while Mom hung clothes on the washing line. That house and her beaten-up station wagon were about all we had in the world.
I don’t remember much about my time at the hospital. I sat by the bay window most days, thinking about home. It was from my usual perch that I saw a man and woman arrive one afternoon. He walked with a pronounced limp. She was soft and ached with a maternal need that I could sense as I watched them through the glass window.
They shuffled across the sloping lawn to the hospital entrance. Their pace was excruciatingly slow. I silently urged them on. She held his arm to support him as they climbed the stairs to the main doors, and then disappeared out of my line of sight.