Debbie Roth > Recent Status Updates

Tomorrow I’ll…ask him what happened that night. I’ll tell him what Ms. Dahl saw, how she identified him digging that hole in the cemetery…even if they exhume Kylie’s body, any forensic evidence will be gone by now.

How she said she watched Daniel dig that hole in the cemetery with an energy and determination she’s never seen before or since from him. I looked up at the time, reading the expression on her face and trying to decide if there was some hidden meaning in there, but there wasn’t, which made it all the more ironic. Because it wasn’t Daniel she saw.

Ms. Dahl or whatever. She was laying flowers on an unmarked grave. Maybe that’s where their daughter is. Maybe she’s who’s buried there.

Reese: He pulls me through some field by the hand. I’m crying. Tears flood my eyes, spill over and down my face...Now It’s uncomfortable in the crawl space. It’s maybe two feet tall, which is not enough room to ever sit up.

Is it possible Elliott was here that same summer Kylie disappeared? Is it possible he did something to hurt her, if not on purpose then by accident? I’m so lost in thought that I never hear the shower water turn off…“What are you looking at?” My throat tightens…“I was just mindlessly scrolling.” “It didn’t look mindless. It looked pretty intent”…“No, not intent. Just out of it. I didn’t sleep at all last night..”

I start to search for people who kill, needing—desperate—to see some sort of studies or theories on why people kill and the types of people who do to reassure myself that no one in this room would do such a thing, but as I start to type, p-e, a list of previous search results come up, including Pearl Lake depth, which gives me pause...Why would Elliott ever need to know its depth?

We need to talk about this. I asked, Talk about what? He said, About why you don’t trust me. I do trust you, I said, but it’s not true. He’s keeping something from me. I think about the blood on his shoes, about the picture of Reese on his iPad, and how Emily said she wanted to talk to him that night before we left.

Reese: There is blood on the floor. I don’t see it until morning, when the sun comes up…I didn’t sleep on the porch. I didn’t sleep at all. Once Daniel was gone, I closed and locked the front door, and then I lay on the sofa with my eyes wide, staring at the front door, knowing that just because it was locked didn’t mean Daniel didn’t have a key. He does. He has a master key to all the cottages.

I don’t see at first that the door has popped open all on its own. I don’t see anything through the thick water vapor, not until I reach for a towel on the toilet seat with nothing on to find Wyatt standing on the other side of the door, looking in at me through the crack.

On the way out, I walk again past the picture of the three of them, Sam, Joanna and Kylie, on the fireplace mantel. My eyes run over it, that vaguely familiar, elusive thing still sitting on the tip of my tongue, though, no matter how hard I try, my mind can’t retrieve it.

Reese: Because when I get mad enough, I feel hot, like I actually glow, a redness creeping into the periphery of my vision until everything I see is bloodred. When I’m mad, I actually explode...Thinking everyone would be better off if I was gone. If I was dead.

I bend down, lowering myself to retrieve my keys from the deck, where they landed beside Elliott’s shoes. He took them off yesterday, leaving them outside because they were wet from fishing. Now the light from the wall sconce shines down on them, and in the pale yellow glow of the exterior light, I see something I hadn’t seen before: pinpricks of red dotting the toe and the side of the rubber sole. Blood.

He leans down, bringing his face closer to mine, and as he kisses me, it feels like getting caught in a rip current, like it’s pulling me in, pulling me under, and all I can think about is don’t fuck this up. Don’t do something stupid. Because girls like me don’t get second chances.

I don’t have the nerve to tell him he’s beautiful too, though he is, he’s fucking hot. Like Timothée Chalamet hot. Guys as hot as him don’t ever talk to me unless I’m in their way and they need me to move…“Don’t be afraid. It’s just you and me, Reese like the candy. No one will know. It will be our little secret.” He cocks his head, asks with that same voice from before, “You have smoked weed before, haven’t you?”

But before I can go, a dark shape steps in front of me and I gasp. It’s too late for me now. There’s no time to run before he smashes a damp, sweaty hand down over my mouth, and my heart goes wild…“There’s no point fighting”…the moonlight shines down on him and lights up his face so that, for the first time, I see who it is. I go still. Stiff. My breaths become shallow, my whole body overcome with panic and fear.

But this new Reese, this defiant seventeen-year-old Reese, is almost a stranger to me. That girl that we knew as a child isn’t her. It’s someone else. “She was just mad. She said things she didn’t mean. We’ve all done that.” “No, you’re right,” he says. “Of course she didn’t. Like you said, she was just mad.” The change of heart is too quick; I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t believe it.

“I have to go, Elliott. She’s my niece. Emily would do this for me.” He nods, pensive, and I can tell he wants to say more. “What?” I ask,…“I keep thinking about what she said to Emily the other night. She was just so angry. I’ve never seen her like that before.” I hate you. I wish you’d die. I take a breath. “What are you saying? That she killed them and ran off?”

It’s as Mae and I run after Cass, our little cottage a safe haven in the distance if only we can get there in time, that I glance back through the trees once more, letting my eyes run from the open front door to the upstairs windows, and this time, I imagine a pale, out-of-focus face looking out through a crack in the curtains on the other side.

I shouldn’t look. I know in my mind that I shouldn’t because there is something horrible behind me. I should push the girls in the opposite direction and run far away from whatever has Cass so scared. But instead I turn back by instinct and see it for myself, pressing my hands to my mouth to hold in a scream.

Before I can get myself to go, there’s the sudden, very cerebral sensation of not being alone anymore. A movement in my peripheral vision maybe, or the soft, slow creak of a floorboard.

It’s quiet at first, but then, from upstairs, I just barely make out the sound of something faint and indistinct, like the sagging of a mattress from someone rolling over in bed. I stop, feeling uncomfortable all of a sudden, imagining my brother Nolan getting out of bed, coming downstairs half asleep in his boxer shorts and finding me standing in the great room.

‘I’m standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, when I hear her scream. My knees lock and I go suddenly upright, drawing in a sharp breath. I glance swiftly up from the hot, soapy water in the sink, losing my grip on a plate that slips from my wet hands and into the basin.“

The opening lines. I’m on page 7 now and already want to rate this book 5 stars.

I hope because I was open about what happened to me, my children will insist on intimacy, on knowing their partner deeply, on being known deeply. I hope they will talk to their partners about money, about what will happen if the partnership ends. I hope that as they build trust in their relationships, they never lose sight of their own authority, their own voice, their own intuition.

I could see that some people, both online and in person, were uncomfortable with me coming out of my lane, a place where women stayed quiet, where men are allowed to do what serves them, no matter what the wreckage. I could see they were defending something bigger, a way of life, the safety it gave them.

I did the race again. I went by myself, sitting on the bus alone, standing in the crowd at the starting line…But as I ran, as I encountered each hill, as I plodded slowly up the gradual slopes, I felt steady, solid. My breath was even. I didn’t worry about all the people passing me. I told myself any finish time was fine, as long as I didn’t stop. To my amazement, I beat all my previous times.

Slowly, over many months, as my head came out of the sand, a form of joy set in—joy born of replacing the not knowing with knowing, the nub of worry with clarity, the lack of control with control. All made easier, of course, by the fact that I had enough to feel secure, to make my children secure. I thought, This is better than everything I lost. This is better than the life I thought I wanted.

It helped to take responsibility for it. To see the moments, over twenty years, when I hadn’t protected myself, when…I had put myself here, one decision at a time. I agreed to change the prenup, dismissing legal advice. I put both our names on the deeds. I chose not to be involved in our financial life. I failed to make sure our prenup was extinguished. I failed to think about what would happen if our marriage ended.

Some people say the end of a marriage is always fifty-fifty, that each partner bears equal responsibility. “It takes two to tango.” I’d heard this about other divorces, often about the wife who was left, even when the husband had engaged in years of betrayals and lies: She wasn’t fun enough. She was too focused on the kids. She didn’t pay enough attention to him. I’m sure similar things were said about me.

A deep loneliness set in, reminiscent of how I felt in my childhood home. I told myself a story about being alone: the rest of the world, including James, was coupled; James had proven that I was unlovable by leaving me; I would always be alone. This story wrapped around me, through me, like a snake.

“James leaving Belle could be a good thing. My father left my mother for another woman, and she was the love of his life. They were so happy together.” I stopped walking, stunned by her words. This was a good thing? This was a love story? What about MY love story with James? In this man’s telling, I was the casualty of someone else’s destiny. My despair was their happy ending.