Chapter Twelve

Again today the girls are not going to school. Not after last night. But you’re not worried, they’re smart. They’ll catch up. Instead Emily has taken them shopping in Hanover and West Lebanon for the day. Anything to get them out of the house. She didn’t want them here when the state troopers from the Major Crime Unit appeared, and she didn’t want them present when this new psychiatrist makes her house call.

The Major Crime Unit came first, soon after the girls left, and you found that you rather enjoyed giving the four investigators in their crisp uniforms a tour. The men were roughly your age, and you took pleasure in showing them the door in the basement you destroyed and that strange back stairway between the kitchen and the second floor. You shared with them your work spackling and sanding and painting, and you showed them the new wallpaper you have started to drape upon the walls. You moved carefully because of your stomach, but it was only when you twisted your torso in that back stairway that you felt a real spike of pain—and even that was rather minor compared to the agonies you experience when Ethan or Ashley or Sandra is present. For a time you sat on the basement steps and watched as they dug and sifted through the dirt in the chamber. You were there when they exhumed more of the skeleton and when they found the small brown medicine bottle—uncorked, empty, and perhaps three inches long. It’s just like the one with the homemade pain reliever John gave you. They took that old bottle with them, as well as the bones they unearthed and what they presumed were remnants of clothing. They placed in Ziploc bags the skull and the jawbone that Garnet dug up last night. They labeled and brought to their van the crowbar and the ax that Tansy Dunmore left for you. But they did not leave with either the bones you found or Tansy’s knife. They did not know to ask about those other bones, and you did not volunteer the information that they existed and were stored at that moment in your bedroom armoire. And the knife? It must have gotten lost when you were brought to the emergency room. At least that’s what you told them. The last time you saw the knife was here in the kitchen, you explained. You worked with the troopers to search the kitchen and your car and the basement. You suggested that, perhaps, it had wound up in Emily’s station wagon, because that was the car your wife had driven when she followed the ambulance to the emergency room. You told the troopers you would be sure to look there when she and the twins returned later that day. And then they left, the van rumbling down your driveway, and they were out of your life—at least for the moment. You waved to them casually from the porch, the wind seeming to slice through the gray sweatshirt with your airline’s logo on the chest.

Now, before going back inside, you stroll to the greenhouse, where you gather up three of Hallie and Garnet’s American Girl dolls. Your own children won’t be back for hours, and Ashley might enjoy them. The dolls have been out there since the night Molly Francoeur was over for a playdate. Sadly, Molly won’t be back. That is painfully clear. A lost opportunity. Despite the pain that comes with grasping the dolls like bags of groceries—you can feel the pressure against your stitches—you carry them in precisely this fashion back into the house. No sooner have you pulled open the screen door than your skull starts to throb and you feel that daggerlike pain in your lower back, and you know from experience that, at the very least, Ethan and Ashley have returned. Perhaps Sandra, too.

And, sure enough, there is Ashley in the den, her face melancholy, sitting before the woodstove. Already a small puddle is forming beneath her on the brick hearth. She looks up at you when you walk into the room, and instantly she notices the dolls in your arms.

“Here,” you tell her, and you place them on the floor before her, watching as the white bonnet on one of the dolls soaks up the lake water like a sponge. “I thought it might be fun for you to have some more dolls. My girls wouldn’t mind.”

She smiles, and it dawns on you that you have never before seen her smile.

“Your breathers,” she says.

You move her Dora the Explorer backpack so you can sit beside her. “Yes. My breathers.” And then, just the way you did with Hallie and Garnet before Flight 1611 crashed into Lake Champlain, you suggest a story line for the dolls, the barest outline of a tale about three sisters—triplets—who all fall in love with the same prince. Then you step back from your role as creator and allow Ashley to add the details that will bring the story to life.

You look up from Ashley and the dolls when the doorbell rings. Apparently, you had been so engrossed in the game that you hadn’t heard the vehicle as it bumped along the gravel driveway. When you turn back to the child, planning to tell her that you’ll be gone just a moment, she has vanished. And so you nod to yourself and climb to your feet. You pass through the kitchen, peering once down the stairs to the basement as you cross the room to the entry hallway, and then open the front door. The woman there introduces herself as Valerian Wainscott, the psychiatrist John Hardin wants you to meet.

You tell her you are sorry for the muddy footprints that you and the troopers from the Major Crime Unit have left in the hallway and the kitchen, but she waves off any apology. The woman is roughly Emily’s age, slight, with short blond hair in natural ringlets and dark eyes that seem to be laughing. She smiles easily as she pulls off her Windbreaker and motions toward the kitchen table.

“Shall we talk here?” she asks.

You consider the other possibilities, including the living room with the wet American Girl dolls. You would love to show her those. But she would presume they are damp for any one of a variety of reasons, none of which begin and end with the water from Lake Champlain and a dead girl named Ashley.

“Here is good,” you agree, and you offer her coffee. Which she declines. She tells you she is tea drinker, though she doesn’t want a cup right now, thank you very much, and you find yourself smiling. Of course she drinks tea. Her name is Valerian. And valerian is a plant or a flower or an herb of some kind. Valerian root. A sedative, maybe. A muscle relaxant. You wonder how much you should trust her, whether your misgivings are grounded in anything tangible. But then you ask yourself whether tangibility really matters. Is Ashley Stearns tangible? Or Ethan? No, not at all. But their pain is as real as yours. Ethan’s anger (and grief) is as profound as any father’s.

Valerian slides onto the deacon’s bench, and you sit in one of the ladder-back chairs.

Despite the reality that Valerian has come to see you for the businesslike purpose of trying to assess your mental health—to offer your wife a second opinion—she has brought with her four chocolate cupcakes. She unveiled them from inside the large shoulder bag that seems to double as both her pocketbook and her attaché case. Your regular psychiatrist here in New Hampshire, Michael Richmond, only offers you coffee and water when you see him. Same with the therapist you saw back in Pennsylvania.

“I was baking for my daughter’s class,” Valerian is saying. “Today’s her seventh birthday, and so I brought the class cupcakes. Still, I think I went a little cupcake crazy. I had extras. But how is it possible to make cupcakes from a box and wind up with extras? I actually needed to find an extra cupcake tin. That’s what I mean by cupcake crazy.”

Given the reason why the two of you are meeting, you have the sense that she wanted to wink when she said cupcake crazy. But she restrained herself. Instead she sighs. “Please, have one. You must. I’m starving, and there is nothing more pathetic than eating cupcakes alone. Now that is sad.”

“Okay. I never had lunch.”

“God, me, too,” she says. “What’s that bumper sticker? ‘Life is short. Eat dessert first.’ ” And then she takes one of the cupcakes and peels off the paper and takes a very healthy bite for a woman who otherwise seems so petite. She licks a bit of chocolate icing off the tip of her index finger. Her nail polish is the red of a maple leaf in early October.

You reach for the one nearest you and take a bite, too. It’s delicious, much tastier than most of Anise’s confections.

“Really, thank you for letting me dive into one,” she says. “I didn’t plan on attacking the cupcakes like this, but I realized when I got here that I was completely, totally famished. And let’s face it: Buttercream frosting is irresistible—if I say so myself.”

Cupcake crazy. Attacking the cupcakes like this. There is something almost taunting about her terminology. As if she knows what you have been asked to do by the dead. But then again, perhaps you are reading more into her remarks than really is there. Maybe she is merely linguistically clumsy. Isn’t it possible you are hearing things in this conversation that she honestly hadn’t meant as gibes? You recall Reseda’s offhand remark about the geese when you were in her office last week. The truth is, Valerian really did attack that cupcake just now. She certainly seemed ravenous.

“I wish I had brought some of the ones I decorated for the kids. Sprinkles and jimmies and faces made out of M&M’s. Trust me: Those bad boys were seriously tricked out.”

“I’ll bet they were. I’ve seen my share of cupcakes at elementary school birthday parties.”

“With twins? I’ll bet you have.”

The two of you then finish your cupcakes in a strangely companionable silence. You recall that this woman works a few days a week at the state psychiatric hospital. She probably has lots of experience with patients who don’t say very much. “So,” she says finally, “shall we get down to business?”

“Why not?”

“Indeed, why not? Do you understand why I’m here, Chip?”

“I do.”

“Good. That’s a start.” She wipes her hands on a paper napkin and daubs at her lips. Her demeanor visibly changes as she pulls a pad and a clipboard and a fountain pen from that bag.

“I don’t see a lot of people using fountain pens these days.”

“That’s because you’ve spent so much of your time in the air. You want to see a mess? Bring one of these on a plane. You have not seen a mess until you’ve seen a fountain pen explode at ten thousand feet.”

“Probably not,” you tell her, marveling at the way she can make everything sound vaguely disturbing. Explode. Mess. Ten thousand feet. Some people are capable of making innocuous sentences sound sexual—they can twist everything into a double entendre. Valerian seems to have a similar, perhaps inadvertent, talent when it comes to breathing life into your own particular subconscious fiends.

She motions with both hands at the room in which you are sitting and out the window at the carriage barn and the greenhouse and the sloping meadows beyond it, and continues, “Okay, then. How are you doing here? How are your neighbors? They treating you well? Tell me honestly.”

“They are. Honestly.” You wonder: Did your repeating the word honestly sound like you were being flip? And if it did, should you care? You wonder why this woman’s opinion should matter more than Dr. Richmond’s. Again, you experience a wave of misgiving. What do these women whose names belong in a garden want from you? Do they want anything, anything at all? But Valerian simply nods. She doesn’t seem to find your response in any way impolite. She simply asks whom you have met and where, and what sorts of plans you have for the house. She asks, parent to parent, what you think of the school system here in this secluded corner of the White Mountains, since of course she has a girl only three grades behind Hallie and Garnet. Finally she gets around to the issue that matters most to Emily—the reason Valerian is here. She glances ever so slightly at your stomach, barely moving her head. It’s all done with her eyes.

“Tell me about the other night,” she asks.

“Well, without wanting to be glib, there are at least two ‘other nights’ that didn’t end well. There was the night when the girls had a friend over for dinner and a playdate and I wound up in the hospital. And then there was last night, when Garnet found a human skull and jawbone in the basement. Which?”

“Let’s start with the night of the playdate. What do you recall of your accident?”

You think about this. She said accident without a trace of sarcasm. Good for her. And so you tell her, as you have told others, about having Molly over for dinner. How you and Emily asked Molly a lot of questions about what she liked about the school and what she didn’t. She seemed like a good kid. A nice kid. Then you pause, recalling where everyone sat around the table in the dining room. There once again is Molly’s face, her elbow on the table and a fork balanced on the ends of her fingers. Behind her, on the wall, is one of those menacing sunflowers.

“I’m sure she is a good kid,” Valerian agrees, and the sound of her voice brings you back. “Go on.”

And so you do. “I felt we were running out of hot water after we ate,” you hear yourself saying, “which didn’t make any sense. One extra set of dishes? Oh, please. Besides, we were just putting the plates in the dishwasher.”

“What did you have for dinner?”

“It was all very easy. Mexican food. Rice. Beans.”

“Where were the girls?”

“By then they were out in the greenhouse. Hallie and Garnet view it as their playhouse.”

“A waste,” she says, and you can’t decide if she is kidding.

“They’ve had their dolls out there ever since we arrived.”

“Well, they’ll outgrow that soon enough,” she adds, as if she is trying to reassure you. “So, you and your wife were washing the dishes in the kitchen.”

“Yes. And the water felt lukewarm to me,” you explain, and then you tell her about the pilot light and going downstairs with the knife in your hands, and how you must have fallen down the wooden steps. You add that everything after that is now a bit of a fog. You shrug, hoping the motion does not appear theatrical.

“Did you hear Emily calling for you?”

“Not for a long while. Emily thinks that maybe I knocked my head and was unconscious for a few minutes. Do you think that’s possible?”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, when I did hear her, I started back up the stairs, and the next thing I know, I’m in the kitchen and I’m covered in blood.”

“With the knife inside you.”

“Yes.”

“You never reached the pilot light.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“But you didn’t relight it.”

“I don’t think I did.”

“So it probably wasn’t out,” she says. She seems to be thinking about this, but in reality you understand she is watching you. She is trying to decide if you’re lying. You realize at some point that your shoulders have sagged and you are hunched over with your hands in your lap. Once, a long time ago it seems, you had exceptional posture. You take a breath and sit up straight in your chair, inadvertently pulling at the stitches.

“What shoes were you wearing?” she asks.

“Slippers. Suede moccasins.”

“You’re certain?”

“I am. I always wear those slippers when I’m in for the night in the winter.”

“I like slippers,” she says, writing. You look down at her boots. Leather, small, solid heels. Her skirt is made of denim and falls just about to her knees. Her panty hose—no, these are tights—are black. “I’m just curious, did you ever wear slippers in the cockpit?”

“It’s a flight deck. We call it a flight deck.”

“Not a cockpit?”

“No.”

“Okay. I won’t ask why.”

“You can.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Why would you think we wore slippers while on the flight deck?”

“Well, not when you were actually flying the airplane. But once when I was flying from Philadelphia to Rome, the seat beside me was empty and the captain or the copilot came out and put on a pair of those eyeshades and slippers they give you when you fly and took a nap.”

“You were flying first class.”

“Business. Anyway, I can see you doing that.”

“No, you can’t. I never flew overseas. I flew regional jets.”

“The small ones?”

“Yes. The small ones.” Somehow, even this exchange has left you unsettled. It’s as if you were a failure because you never flew a jet bigger than a CRJ. Did she do this on purpose, too? Again, your mind recalls Reseda and her remark about geese; again, it circles back to the idea that you are being oversensitive.

“Can we talk about 1611?”

“Yes.” And you patiently answer the sorts of questions you have answered for other therapists (in two states), as well as investigators and lawyers and the FAA and the pilots’ union. Finally Valerian asks you if you blame yourself for the deaths of the thirty-nine people on the plane.

“I blame the geese,” you answer simply. “I blame the ferryboat captain who turned his boat too hard too quickly and created that wave. And, yes, I do blame myself.”

“But no one else does …”

“Blames me.”

“Right. The crash wasn’t pilot error. What Sully Sullenberger did was a miracle. You know there isn’t a soul in this world who thinks it’s your fault. You know that, don’t you?”

In this world. You try to decide what that means, because certainly Ethan Stearns views the crash as your fault. So did the families of some of the passengers who died who came to the hearings. You saw it in their faces. Why couldn’t you do what Sully Sullenberger did? they seemed to be asking. And you can feel Ethan’s presence right now, right here in the kitchen, in the way the top of your head is starting to throb. And although you try to restrain yourself, you can’t help but turn around in your seat—and there he is. He is in the doorway to the dining room, framed by those ghoulish sunflowers, and he is glaring at you. Shaking his head in disgust. And this only makes the pain in your skull worsen, and you fear that while this doctor is sitting across from you it might become the searing, white-light agony you have experienced around Ethan in the past.

She deserves friends. Do what it takes.

“Chip?”

You rub your eyes. You turn around. “I’m sorry,” you tell Valerian, wondering how it is that only you know Ethan is here with you. Valerian seems to be staring right at him.

“You looked a little peaked there,” she says. “A midafternoon sugar low?”

“I guess. My head hurts.”

She sighs. “Feverfew and cayenne,” she tells you. “I have just the tincture. Sadly, I have just the tincture at home. In the meantime, have another cupcake. You’ll feel so much better. I promise.” And she hands you another of those remarkable confections.