Page 38 of Good Half Gone

“Was anyone else present other than you when they had that discussion?”

“No… We were leaving school, walking out of the building. He was tailing us home trying to get Piper to meet up with a guy.”

Audrain cleared his throat. Still sitting, he said, “Dupont claims that he never arranged to meet Piper at the mall, though he remembers seeing you both there. He said you weren’t with anyone that he could tell.”

“And you just believe him? That’s it? What about Colby Crimball?”

“He has a solid alibi, and his parents have hired an attorney…”

“Why would they hire an attorney if his alibi is so solid?” I shot back.

Audrain’s hands clenched. “Why don’t you leave that up to us?” I could hear the implication ofchildin his voice.

Gran was released from the hospital two days after my sister officially became a missing person. She wasn’t well—you could see it in her eyes, though she was making a show of trying to be. Betty Walsh was effortless in the way that she never had to think about being herself, she just always was: student, stripper, librarian, and grandmother—in that order—but she would have done it out of order too and laughed about it. She liked the color pink, could never find her glasses, and had a sharp sense of humor. She’d been my and Piper’s advocate for years, barking at old dogs in a broken system. People respected her.

Once she was discharged, the hospital made a big to-do about wheeling her to the door. An orderly waited with us in the pickup area, holding on to the handles of Gran’s wheelchair as if we were going to steal it. No one was there to pick us up, which depressed me. Not even for myself, but for Gran who had no one but a crappy teenager to take care of her. Piper would have done a better job of it; she did granddaughterly things with Gran: walks,shows, and Christmas crafts even when we outgrew them. I was the sour, angry one. It should have been me who was gone. Regardless, I’d done my best to get everything ready for her, like they told me.

We climbed into a taxi, neither of us speaking. The cab driver was nice, even helping me walk Gran up the stairs to our apartment.

Gran clutched a plastic bag of pill bottles to her chest as I unlocked the front door, that’s all I would let her carry. She hesitated before going inside; right away I knew what she was feeling. It wasn’t home without Piper…it wasn’t anything without Piper. I waited with her while she grappled with it; eventually she shuffled inside. We were lost.

The first month I refused to go to school. Gran needed me at home. I couldn’t look at those people and pretend I cared about things like grades and homecoming—or what they were saying about me and Piper. And theyweresaying things. I didn’t tell Gran about the rumor Dupont started, because she was already obsessed with him. Besides, the rumor was boring—sluts, we were both sluts. How original. According to Dupont, we turned tricks on the weekend for oxy. It was a smear campaign that left a trail of lies for police to follow. A social worker came to our apartment to do a welfare check and referred to my sister and me as foster children. Gran called her a useless fuckingdumple—her word for idiot—and made her leave.

Gran recovered from her ordeal in her recliner, a glass of water and the house phone always in arm’s reach. There were no ransom notes or calls. Though she did a lot of work to find my sister from that chair: making calls, making threats, and making threatening calls. Dupont was the source of her anger. Without the other two, he was the only three-dimensional person for her to hate. I had nightmares about him crawling in my window to kill me, a filthy beanie on his head. And then there was that prick,Colby Crimball, who claimed he wasn’t even at the movies the day Piper was taken. His brother, Matt, was his alibi. Ironic, since Matt was the one who was supposed to meet us. The Crimballs threw their attorney at the cops over and over. Dupont’s mother wouldn’t talk to them or let them near her son.

The other two guys—RJ and Angel—according to police, they just didn’t exist. Like Gran predicted, by the time detectives questioned employees of the theater, not only had the security footage been taped over, but the guy working the ticket counter only remembered there being two men—the ones who’d later stood in line at the concession stand. They’d used cash to buy the soda and popcorn, and no, he couldn’t give a good description of either of them because he was high that day. The cups with their fingerprints were inevitably thrown away. There were no cameras in the alley where the dark sedan idled, though police did confirm the broken exit door they used to leave. The footage of the Ford Taurus driving past the trash can where Piper’s bag was found was not conclusive evidence. I was all they had.

They asked me to come to the station to have composite sketches made of the men, RJ and Angel. I knew realistically their names were not RJ and Angel, but that didn’t stop me from repeating them to myself over and over. The air in the hulking glass building felt charged by all the bad things that were happening. Everyone was still looking for the kid who’d gone missing. I tried not to feel resentful of the attention her case was getting, or that her case was making everyone too tired to focus on my sister’s.

I thought the sketches were pretty good. We left it at that. They showed a picture of Piper on the six o’clock news. I’d given Audrain and Poley her school photo, and now that I was staring at it on a TV screen, I knew she’d be furious with my choice. The depth of hatred for myself was so strong I began to cry—and then sob.Not knowing what else to do, Gran sat with me on the couch, rubbing circles on my back. I’d failed her again. I couldn’t get anything right. The tip line blew up—mostly it was people spotting me one place or another. I dyed my hair black, wore my glasses instead of contacts so I wouldn’t mess with the investigation. I was living some shitty noir film with no plot. My grandmother couldn’t even look at me; it was like she was mad at me for not looking like Piper. I was mad at her for wanting me to. Another month passed before police found the footage. Although it wasn’t the footage we were expecting.

It was a dark blue Ford Taurus driving away from the ferry terminal and stopping at a trash can a few blocks away. The man who got out and deposited something in the trash can matched my description of Angel. The trash can was where the homeless woman said she found Piper’s bag. The plates on the car—stolen. I watched the footage at the station, my fingernails digging into palms, hungry to see a glimpse of my sister, but it was Angel’s grainy image I saw next. I recognized him. “That’s him! That’s Angel,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen.

“We think they traded her off to someone else at the ferry. We’re running the plates of every car that drove on or off that day. That could take a while. In the meantime, this is who we need to find.” Audrain tapped the screen where Angel was running back to the driver’s side door. The car drove out of frame four seconds later.

“How arewegoing to do that?” Gran, who had been quiet until now, stood up to face the detectives. Her body had been growing stronger every day. She no longer used a walking stick, and she’d put on some weight. In the evenings, she drove to random neighborhoods all over Queen County, putting up missing posters of Piper. She walked into a homeless encampment, perched on the side of the freeway with bags of takeout and soda, and handed her poster out there too.

“This is an open investigation,” Poley assured her. “We’re looking…”

Regardless of their promises, my sister’s case went cold. After months of searching, every lead having gone dry, tips having dried up, we heard from Poley and Audrain less and less. Those were the hardest months—of not knowing. The roller coaster rumbling up and down: she’s fine/she’s not fine/she’s fine/she’s not fine. Gran and I drifted apart during those months. We crossed paths politely with “good-mornings” and “good-nights.” I went back to school as an only child. She got a raise and a promotion. We lived, though barely.

We didn’t hear from Piper for another year.

Chapter13Present

September Brings Thelast days of cloudless blue sky. The seagulls and tourists are relentless in their pursuit of food and pecking. The last push of summer means the ferries are always packed. During my first week at Shoal Island, I rely on adrenaline and positive thinking, which is the new trend on Instagram. I’m certain the influencers are going to positive us all to death, but it’s through their tutelage that I convince myself I’m tough enough to power through. What I am is underslept and overcaffeinated. To compensate I wear concealer under my eyes and drink more water. The Wi-Fi on the island is spotty depending on the weather, and calls are near impossible. The anxiety of not being able to take calls takes its toll on me at night. I dream of Piper when I sleep in the dorms; when I’m at home I dream of the island. No matter where I sleep I always wake up in a cold sweat.

“I had a dream you never came home like Aunt Piper and Gran and me had to go to the island to find you…”

I turn to my son, frowning. That would be terrible, my little boy around criminally dangerous humans.I try not to let the horror reach my face.

I’m only sixteen years older than he is. I don’t have the whole parenting thing down yet. Older, wiser women tell me I never will. My fear at eight years old had been finding my mother dead; my only comfort during that period of time was the solid body of my sister: hugging it, hitting it, or just visually seeing it—I wasn’t picky. “Come here…” I hold my arms open. He takes the hug somewhat hesitantly at first and then my boy melts in. He needed that.

“I’m only a ferry away. Four nights home, three nights on Shoal.”

When I’m home for my four nights off, Cal never leaves my side. I wake up in the early hours of the morning to find him curled against me. It reminds me of the days Piper and I shared a bed in yellow-yellow. I sleep better when he’s there, but guilt wraps itself around every second of every day.

On the ferry I check emails and pay bills while I still have Wi-Fi. Once I walk through the doors of Shoal, my time belongs to the hospital.Understaffedis a word I hear no less than three times a day as I am passed around. My job, Crede informs me, is to help wherever I can. Rush-rush-rush becomes my new language.

---