Page 86 of I'll Be Waiting

I want to dig deep, and I’m not going to feel comfortable doing thatif I’m worried about cyber traces showing that Nicola Laughton was researching someone named Janica Laughton, witness to a horrific murder. Nor will I be comfortable typing Anton’s name in association with that case.

Am I ashamed of doubting my husband? Yes.

I am further shamed by the little voice that whispers I’d only truly known Anton for the past three years, and even then, how well does anyone know anyone? That voice feels like a cop-out and a betrayal. But the only voice I need to ignore is the more shameful one that whines that all this does no good because even if I found out Anton played some role, he’s dead and can’t be prosecuted, so I should just let it lie. Keep my good memories intact. Except I can’t, can I? Those memories are tainted until I have answers.

“I’m sorry, Anton,” I whisper… and then I start typing.

I don’t know what became of Patrice. Oh, I know she was remanded to a psychiatric institution. I know that my parents promised to keep an eye on her case and warn me if she was ever released, so we could be prepared.

Prepared for what?

I don’t think any of us knew. Would she blame me for testifying? Or would she be the old Patrice, her mind clear, horrified by what she’d done? I couldn’t have handled that any better than I’d have handled angry Patrice. I have spent too many sleepless nights putting myself in Patrice’s place.

What if I had a psychotic break and murdered a friend?

What if I were possessed by a killer and murdered a friend?

Am I a coward for not wanting to see her again? Maybe. But sometimes, as much as we want to help others, we need to protect our own mental health.

I may have outwardly buried sixteen-year-old Janica, but I spent years in therapy dealing with what happened, the trauma of what Iwent through and the survivor’s guilt of needing therapy when I was the one who escaped.

After my parents died, maybe I should have kept tabs on Patrice myself, but honestly, I never thought of it. It’s been over twenty years, and I’m long past the old nightmares where she shows up in my bedroom with a knife. Or where she shows up sobbing that I’d betrayed her.

After Anton confessed to the pranking, we didn’t really talk about the rest. He was sorry he’d never gotten in touch afterward, at least to tell me he was thinking of me and what I’d gone through. But sixteen-year-old boys don’t do that. Hell,no onereached out to me after Heather died. I disappeared into my bedroom, and not a single classmate tried to see how I was doing.

Anton and I never discussed that second séance. I certainly didn’t ask him what happened to Patrice after I left Edmonton.

Now I need to know, even if it has nothing to do with my questions about Anton. I need to know what happened to a girl who’d been my friend.

I find an article from when she turned eighteen and was transferred to an adult facility. There’s another from ten years ago, when her parents tried to appeal her sentence and ask for her to be transferred to a private hospital.

According to those articles, Patrice never recovered. In the early days, she’d vacillated between catatonia and psychotic outbursts. Eventually, the catatonia took over, which is why her family had lobbied for a transfer, since she posed no threat in that state. Their request was denied and the trail ends there, leaving her in that secured facility.

As I stare at that decade-old article, I realize it wasn’t just one friend who died that day in the forest. It was two. The Patrice I knew never came back, and now, in a secure psychiatric ward somewhere, there is a middle-aged woman living out her days, the girl she’d been long gone.

I will mourn for Patrice later. I might even commit to getting in touch with her parents and saying… I don’t know. Giving whatever solace I can offer with twenty years of maturity and distance.

Now I need to dive into the case itself and see what I missed. It happened at the end of the nineties, the era of AOL, when I certainly could have found news on the case, but it wasn’t in my face, all the time, as a sensational case would be these days.

I spend the next half hour reading articles from that time and growing increasingly frustrated. They all rehash the same facts and, sometimes, the same rumors and theories that I’d thought were only local gossip. Rumors about Heather bringing back “voodoo” from Cuba. Rumors about Patrice practicing witchcraft. And one rumor I’d never heard, thanks to my parents—that a source claimed I missed a lot of time at my old school because I’d been the victim of a satanic cult. Not that I have CF, which is easily discovered information. Why blame a chronic illness when you can blame the devil?

I can see now why my parents didn’t hesitate to let me change my name. According to this so-called source, I’m a satanic-cult survivor who mysteriously—suspiciously?—also survived the bloodbath that erupted when my new friends mysteriously—suspiciously?—got into witchcraft less than a year after meeting me.

Respectable papers leave my name out of it. I was a minor, after all. But of course everyone in the region knew who I was, and it takes little effort to find “Janica Laughton” named as the survivor.

As for what happened to Janica? To my relief, no one seems to have cared. There are no “what ever happened to” blog posts from later years. None on Patrice either. We were huge news at the time, but our story had a definitive and tidy ending. A teen girl experienced a psychotic break and murdered one friend. Her other friend escaped. The killer was immediately apprehended, tried, and convicted. End of story.

I’d hoped to discover that there was more to the case, that the police had evidence I didn’t know about. Or that Patrice “woke” and confessed. That didn’t happen. The evidence that convicted Patrice was exactly what I remembered. She was found with the knife that killed Heather. It had her prints on it. Heather’s blood was on Patrice. Then there was my story.

Reading those articles, I see how much weight my story was given. According to some reports, I definitively identified Patrice as Heather’s killer. One even had me finding Patrice stabbing Heather. That’s all embellishment. When I read the trial transcripts, I can see that I said exactly what I remember.

What matters here is that I don’t find evidence that proves—beyond any doubt—that Patrice murdered Heather. All the killer had to do was knock Patrice out, wipe Heather’s blood onto Patrice’s clothing, and put the knife beside her hand.

Those transcripts confirm that Patrice was never able to speak in her own defense. She didn’t regain that ability for even a taped interview.

Had it been up to me to defend her? To say I couldn’t imagine my friend doing something so horrific?

At the time, I’d been so certain Patrice did it. She’d been in the grip of madness and maybe, just maybe, it was our fault. Our fault for holding a séance that left her convinced we’d released some evil entity. Or our fault for releasing some evil entity, whatever had once possessed Roddy Silva to murder his girlfriend in the same way.

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