His cell phone was in his hand. On the tiny screen was a photograph he had taken of Janie’s father in the men’s room. Frank’s clothing and hair were in disarray and the half-fallen side of his face looked warped and deranged.
Janie opened her mouth to say, Delete that! Take a better one right now, while he knows us and he’s part of the conversation!
But Michael was clicking through his contacts, preparing to send the ugly photo.
Janie had always been able to memorize phone numbers. The number to which Michael was sending Frank’s picture was Calvin Vinesett’s. This demeaning picture of Frank was for a book.
A few hours ago on the train, Michael had told the truth.
He had stalked her.
He had stalked her from the beginning.
From the first powdered doughnut, Eve had known. He’s buying you.
And Calvin Vinesett was paying.
In Boston, at Sarah-Charlotte’s campus, the winter had been bleak, icy, and long.
Not until last week had there been one beautiful day. And on that day, Boston enjoyed a slice of summer. Sarah-Charlotte, a group of kids from class, and some grad student friend of somebody’s had gathered around a tiny café table on the sidewalk. Sarah-Charlotte had been feeling the peace of warm weather. How wonderful to be wearing no coat, no scarf, no hat, no mittens, and no snow boots. She slumped in her chair, as comfortable as a cat curled up in the sun.
One of the boys gestured toward the grad student and said to Sarah-Charlotte, “I was telling Mick how you’re the best friend of Janie Johnson, that kidnap girl.”
“Ancient history,” said Sarah-Charlotte. Her caramel latte slid sweetly down her throat.
“Not really,” said the man named Mick. “It’s only a few years ago that she recognized herself on the milk carton. That must have been weird. Were you there?”
Everybody wanted to cozy up to that old crime. Sarah-Charlotte would have to present a few tidbits or they’d chew at her ankles like annoying toy terriers. “We were all there,” she said. “The same crowd of kids had lunch every day at the same table in the same high school cafeteria. Janie waved a half-pint milk carton at us and said, ‘See this picture of a missing child on the side of the milk carton? It’s me.’ We laughed. Finished lunch. Went back to class. A few months later we found out that Janie hadn’t been kidding. It was her.”
She had told this much of the story a hundred times and it still spooked her. Sarah-Charlotte sat up straighter, as if to fend something off.
“I keep thinking about those kidnap parents,” said Mick. “Here we have a mother and father, a Mr. and Mrs. Javensen. They’re estranged from their daughter, Hannah, now about age thirty.”
Sarah-Charlotte put on her sunglasses to separate herself from the summary of a story this person Mick could not possibly understand.
“Daughter Hannah is living with a bunch of weirdos, basically a religious cult. The fringe kind that might attack society with poison gas or just become drug dealers and prostitutes. Hannah has chosen to have no contact with Mom and Dad and claims to despise them. But one fine day, after years of absence, she shows up at their house with a little girl, tells Mom and Dad that this three-year-old is hers and therefore their grandchild.”
Sarah-Charlotte had always loved Mr. and Mrs. Johnson; loved spending time at their house with Janie. After the milk carton, Mrs. Johnson got thinner and grayer and shakier, while Mr. Johnson moved slowly toward the stroke that would leave him half alive.
There were so many victims of Hannah Javensen.
Sarah-Charlotte had even thought of herself as a victim, because Janie had not shared her horrifying guess (the people I love and call mother and father are my kidnappers). She had often wondered if she and Janie really were best friends. They were sophomores in college now, and being left out of Janie’s search for the truth didn’t hurt any longer, but it was there. As if her friendship with Janie were a pie chart and a dark wedge had been cut away.
The others were glued to Mick’s story. He obviously loved an audience—he spoke loudly enough that people at the next two tables leaned forward so they could hear too.
“And guess what?” said Mick. “The Javensen mom and dad believe Hannah! Next day, daughter Hannah drives away, never to be seen again. And what do Mom and Dad decide? They’ll vanish too! So they change their names from Javensen to Johnson, a name so common that, even online, they’ll share an identity with a million others. Then they bring up this unknown little girl as their own. Hah! If you ask me, those Javensen people are coconspirators in the kidnapping. They wanted another child, so they assigned their grown-up daughter to pick one at a shopping mall. They got off, you know. Those Javensens never even spent a night in jail. Miscarriage of justice, if you ask me.”
Sarah-Charlotte’s fury was so intense she wanted to kick Mick to the ground and then kick him some more. How dare he be entertained by Janie’s nightmare? How dare he, without a speck of actual knowledge, pass judgment on anybody?
“There was no trial,” she snapped. “And nobody ‘got off.’ It was clear all along that Mr. and Mrs. Javensen never knew what their daughter, Hannah, had done. If the Javensens had known that this toddler had been snatched from a shopping mall and that there was a real family out there, crazed with worry, they would have called the police in a minute. All they knew was that Hannah would make an unfit mother. The only good thing Hannah ever did was to bring her baby girl to the household where Janie could grow up properly loved and cared for. The Javensens didn’t change their names to hide from the law or from a kidnapping they didn’t even know about. They changed their names to hide from Hannah. Hannah was a rotten person who lived with rotten people and did rotten things. Rotten like a fish lying dead on a riverbank, crawling with maggots. Because that’s what kidnappers are. Maggots!”
She was screaming.
People were staring at her.
The word “maggot” reverberated in the little group.
Nobody met her eyes.
Sarah-Charlotte stood up. On an icy day, she’d have a thick coat to wrap around herself, and keep her safe from invading worms like Mick.
She strode away.
Mick followed. “Sarah-Charlotte?”
She said nothing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk. I want to be friends. Can I at least walk along and make up for saying stupid stuff? I didn’t know it was stupid, but maybe you can explain it to me.”
He was taller than she was. Bending down, shoving his face near hers. She could smell his coffee breath. She had a fleeting sense of fear.
Ridiculous. She was on a busy street in a busy city with a man her classmates knew. “I’m in a hurry.” She ran to catch a bus without caring where it went, and when he did not get on with her, she was weak with relief, and also embarrassed.
A sidewalk meltdown would be another episode in the long list Sarah-Charlotte did not share with Janie. Like that letter from the true crime writer. The author had found everybody. At least three of Janie’s other high school girlfriends had gotten letters from Calvin Vinesett.
But here in Boston, the group Sarah-Charlotte had left on the sidewalk were acquaintances, not friends. She never saw them except in a lecture hall, and after the final exam, she might not see them again. Boston was too big. Her freshman year, Reeve Shields had been a senior on a different campus and Sarah-Charlotte never once crossed his path.
She still could not believe that Janie was ignoring Reeve.
Reeve was 110 percent the boy every girl wanted. If Janie really did walk away from Reeve, what a wonderful guy would be available. Sarah-Charlotte generally blocked daydreams in which that wonderful guy sought her. But the daydreams were there.
As she did on and off all day, Sarah-Charlotte went to Facebook. Reeve had more friends than anybody in the entire world, except maybe Adair, another high school girlfriend. Reeve stayed in touch with everybody from high school and everybody from college. Anybody who wanted to
know anything just went to Reeve’s Facebook page.
In honor of Janie’s desire for a low profile, and in spite of the fact that she was the most important friend in his life, Reeve had no photograph of Janie on his wall.
Get over it, Janie, thought Sarah-Charlotte. What could happen now, after all these years? Reeve loves you! Stay in his picture, for heaven’s sake!
Sarah-Charlotte got off a bus she hadn’t needed to take, barely able to remember why she had leapt onto it. The man Mick vanished from her mind.
At the Harbor, Janie quietly took Michael’s cell phone out of his hand before he could click Send. She walked over to her own chair, sat down, and deleted the photograph of her father. She checked for other photographs of herself and her family and deleted them. She dropped the phone into her own purse. She did not glance at Michael. She would cry.
She had loved him.
And he was a tool for Calvin Vinesett.
Had this happened as they were dating? Or had he introduced himself to her at that icy stone wall because Calvin Vinesett wanted him to?
Or maybe he was Calvin Vinesett!
No. The writer had published half a dozen bestsellers. Michael wasn’t old enough to have done that.
Her mother did not observe these cell phone moments. Miranda Johnson was more comfortable with a landline and found the constant cell phone use by Janie’s generation annoying and rude.
Her own phone signaled a text from Sarah-Charlotte, to whom she had just sent Michael’s photograph. The caption no longer fit. Michael was definitely not the man she loved.
She was going to need Sarah-Charlotte to get over this. How wonderful to have a best friend in reserve. She felt a flicker of shame. You didn’t keep a best friend in reserve for bad times.
She read Sarah-Charlotte’s text: Janie—something’s wrong with this picture. I’ve met this guy. He called himself Mick. He’s very nosy. Be careful.
Dessert arrived. She couldn’t touch hers. She couldn’t even touch her fork. She couldn’t breathe, for that matter.
“I love this,” Michael was saying. “Chocolate cream pie? I could live here.”
Miranda was laughing. “You could not live here, Michael. You’d die of boredom. I’m practically dead of boredom. Chocolate pudding, even with real whipped cream, does not compensate.”
Somehow lunch ended.
An aide took her father back to his room. Janie and Michael and her mother went to the car. “You take the front,” Janie told Michael, and he got in front with Miranda. The two of them chatted happily during the long drive back to the train station.
Janie stared at the back of Michael’s head.
How could Sarah-Charlotte have met him?
Was Michael stalking more than one girl?
This was the man who had meant life after Reeve. Before Michael, “After Reeve” had seemed like the edge of a cliff.
And it was. Michael would have shoved her over. She had caught herself in time.
Janie’s mother dropped them off at Stamford station. Their side of the tracks was almost empty because on a Friday afternoon, people were coming out of New York, not heading in.
“May I have my phone?” asked Michael politely.
She handed it over.
“Jane, what are you mad about? I had a great time. I love your parents.”
“You are doing research for Calvin Vinesett. You took that hideous photograph of my father for that book.”
He took a step away from her. Wisely, it wasn’t a step closer to the tracks. She wanted to kick him down and watch the next train flatten him like a penny.
“What are you talking about?” he said. His voice was belligerent.
“You think I don’t know Calvin Vinesett’s cell phone number when he’s included it in every single message to me? You took that horrible photograph solely for Calvin Vinesett’s book.”
Michael looked around, as if there might be a cue card somewhere, and a script. “Listen,” he said.
“I deleted myself from your contact list. Don’t add me back. You’ve always known that I’m Janie Johnson, the face on the milk carton. Calvin Vinesett told you to find me.”
His poise was gone. He didn’t know what to say. Even when she had taken his phone, he had not realized that she knew about Calvin Vinesett. He just thought she didn’t like the photo. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “Okay, that’s partly true. But what’s really true is that I’m in love with you. Anyway, maybe I didn’t tell you the truth, but you didn’t tell me anything! I was closemouthed, but you were sealed shut. I brought you little presents and we went on walks and—”
“You were paid to do it, weren’t you?”
He glared at her. “You know I want to be a writer. It hasn’t been going well. I answered an ad. The guy’s doing a book about the kidnapping and not everybody in the family is cooperating. He needs a little help. It’s good money.”
I gave up Reeve? she thought. Who has apologized and asked for forgiveness a hundred times? In order to have a guy who dated me for money? For future fame? For a paragraph? A guy who’s not even going to admit that was wrong? “Add it up,” she said. “I’ll pay you back. There’s your train. Get on it.”
“But Jane—”
“Get on that train, Mick.”
He flinched.
“And don’t stalk Sarah-Charlotte again either!”
“Listen, Jane.”
Janie did not listen. She stepped onto the escalator to the upper level of the station. She did not look back. I loved you, she thought. How will I ever survive in this world, now that I know I am a lousy judge of character? I couldn’t judge character when I was three years old, and I can’t judge now that I’m twenty.
She checked the schedule board for the next train.
She didn’t want to get on a train. She wanted to throw herself on the floor and sob. She wanted to beat Michael/Mick up. Even more, she wanted him to explain how he really did love her, and he had not stalked her, and he had not been paid to get information from her.
Her cell phone rang. One of the lovely things about cell phone technology was that you always knew who it was.
It was Reeve’s ringtone.
She almost wished it could have been Michael, pleading. But if he wanted to plead, he would have taken the escalator after her.
Back at the Harbor, only an hour ago, she had asked herself if she still loved Reeve. Her answer had been yes—but not enough. She stared at his face on the screen. Reeve loves me enough, though. This man to whom I have been rude and unforgiving—he loves me enough.
A wave of knowledge passed through Janie. Reeve’s voice on the radio was nothing. Reeve in her life was everything.
It was a true gift. Not a powdered doughnut. A gift in her soul. She trusted Reeve again. It was like taking off a winter coat. She was light again. “Reeve?”
“Sarah-Charlotte called me,” shouted Reeve. “What’s going on? Who is this guy? Are you all right? Do I have to kill somebody?”
Oh, Reeve, she thought. I’ve leaned on you for so long. And here you are again.
“Keep talking,” she said. “I need your voice.” The sobs she had been holding inside defeated her. She held the phone at an angle so Reeve couldn’t hear her cry. She curved her elbow over her face so strangers couldn’t see her break down.
“Some creep dated you in order to pass information to that true crime writer?” yelled Reeve. “He’s using two names? Michael for you, Mick for Sarah-Charlotte?”
“You knew about the book?” she whispered.
“We all know. We all got letters. We knew you wouldn’t want it. Nobody’s talked.”
A sentence of Michael’s came back to Janie: Not everybody in the family is cooperating. Which meant that somebody was.
“Where are you right now?” asked Reeve.
“Train station. I don’t know what to do next, Reeve. First you betrayed me and then I fell in love again and now he betrayed me.”
“Ah, Janie. I grew
up. That was the worst mistake I ever made, and I thought you had sort of taken me back. Listen. Get on a plane. Come down here for the weekend.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. I’m on my computer right now getting you a plane ticket. You’re about two blocks from the airport limo pickup. Take a taxi to that hotel or walk over. I’ll make your limousine reservation too. Okay, there’s a seven-forty flight from JFK to Charlotte. And an aisle seat. Bingo. Got it.”
“I don’t even have a toothbrush with me.”
“It’s Charlotte, North Carolina, not Antarctica. There are stores. The only thing you need to get on the plane is an ID. Are you headed for the airport limo, Janie? Pick up the pace.”
“Why do you want me there?”
“Because I love you. I’ve always loved you. I always will.”
Janie Johnson walked over to the taxi stand. “Don’t hang up.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m not taking the limo, Reeve.”
“Janie! Please! I don’t want you crying up there without me.”
“I’m coming for the weekend, Reeve. But the limo is too slow with all those stops. It’s too annoying. I’m taking a taxi all the way to the airport. I have lots of money. Even if I did inherit it from a grandmother who thought I was somebody else. With you I don’t have to be somebody else.”
Why hadn’t she noticed that when she was with Michael, she was in a constant struggle to be somebody else? Somebody without a history? Somebody whose soul was unmarked by tragedy?
She slid into the backseat of a cab. “JFK, please,” she told the driver, holding up a sheaf of bills to prove she could pay.
“Janie, I can’t wait to see you,” said Reeve.
“You don’t have to wait.” She loosened the red hair from its tight tension in that silly fat bun. She took off the drugstore glasses. She had hidden the real Janie Johnson for two years. She shook her head hard. For a moment the hair stayed tight, and then it relaxed, taking up its portion of the backseat. Janie focused her cell phone camera on herself, took her picture, and wrote,
xoxoxoxo, Janie