If the Witness Lied

  Is this true? Jack will always wonder. Does Tris, on some level, share the pain of his older brother and sisters? Very little children have no vocabulary, so they can’t exactly have thoughts, can they? But they can have knowledge, even without words. What knowledge does Tris have? Does he too know despair and loss?

  His little brother searches for crackers. Tris can’t count yet, but he loves to throw out random numbers. “Nine!” he shouts when he finds a Goldfish. “Twenty-five!”

  There’s nothing more to say about an accident Jack and Madison didn’t see and about which they can only guess. To call it murder is going too far.

  Jack returns to the problem of the TV docudrama. It’s almost quarter of two. Cheryl could be signing a contract this minute, giving the producer the right to be in their house, and in Tris’s day care, and in Jack’s face.

  He feels like a runner who should have stayed on base. He’s trapped with nowhere to run. He’ll be tagged. He’ll be out. In a normal game, he’d shrug. There are more innings and more at-bats, and for that matter, more games.

  But for Tris, this is the only game. They have to win.

  * * *

  “Seven!” shouts Tris, cramming Goldfish into his mouth.

  What would his life be like, Madison wonders, if we had agreed to go back to Missouri with Nonny and Poppy?

  Madison and Smithy had been horrified when Nonny and Poppy wanted them all to move. They had lost their parents; now they were supposed to lose their house and friends and neighbors and graduating class? Jack refused for all of them. We’ll be fine, he told Nonny and Poppy. Don’t worry about us.

  So the grandparents flew away and in minutes, Madison, Jack and Smithy separated, little tops whirling in their own corners of the room. They didn’t talk at meals. They didn’t talk in the morning as they headed for the bus. They didn’t talk. Maybe Nonny and Poppy had held everybody’s hands, and without them, hands never even extended, never mind got held.

  The day after Nonny and Poppy left, Cheryl took Tris back to day care. But the school he always attended didn’t want a child who put others at risk. Cheryl found more day cares. When she gave the child’s name—Tristan Fountain—suddenly they didn’t have an opening after all. In Madison’s mental checklist against her baby brother, she added, Day care won’t take him.

  Suddenly it seems odd to Madison that the old day care—the one Mom picked—refused to take Tris back. Who knows better than a day care that two-year-olds pull knobs and shove sticks? That two-year-olds belong in car seats, not playing in the front? That adults have a job—not to let the two-year-old play with dangerous stuff? That if something should go wrong, it’s not the fault of the two-year-old?

  Madison has a thought as awful as the thought of murder. Her hair stands on end. It’s such a ghastly sensation she has to pat it down, fasten it to her skull.

  “Two!” says Tris happily, showing off his Goldfish.

  Madison calls 411 to get the number for Tris’s old day care.

  * * *

  Smithy fingers her cell phone. Her skills are not what they were. At boarding school, she saw everybody all the time and there was less need to thumb information.

  Since Madison has a car, she could come get Smithy, but Madison will still be in school at this hour. Jack does not have a car. Diana does, but she too is in school, and Connecticut has an annoying law: no new teenage driver may have any passenger except family. The theory is that teenagers, desperate to impress one another, drive fast and carelessly while they talk, yell, joke and sing with their friends. Smithy definitely would. In fact, she can’t think of anything she’d rather do, after she’s back inside her family, than talk, yell, joke and sing with Diana.

  But there’s no friendship left. Even when Diana wrote, Got my driver’s license!!!!!! Smithy didn’t answer. She was angry at Diana, who still had a nice life. Nice parents, nice home, nice family, nice dogs, nice future. There was no way to reconcile all the bad stuff that had happened to her with all the good stuff still going on for Diana.

  At least, in the trail of destruction Smithy left behind, one person isn’t mad: Kate. And how about Madison and Jack? Are they mad?

  She sends the same text to each of them.

  Leaving home was wrong so I ran away fr bdng sch

  2day. Creepy TV dude met me. What is story? What

  team r u on? Lv Smithy

  She turns around. Angus has pulled into a slanted parking space that faces the schoolyard. Two slots away is that TV van, recognizable by the antennae on its roof.

  This is a town where nothing happens. There’s no activity, no crime, no excitement, no nothing. It’s too small for its own TV station. These people came from a distance. Is it a coincidence that they are parked close to Angus Nicolson? And how about the camera she half noticed at the train station? Is this the same one?

  Circling to avoid being seen by the TV van, she comes up on Angus from behind. He is sipping coffee and fooling with his BlackBerry. Getting into this car with him is risky. But Smithy has to get home.

  Angus sees her and chortles into his phone. His cheeks pouch out, squirrel-fashion, as if he’s protecting a mouth full of chuckles. “Gotta go,” he says cheerfully. He sips his coffee affectionately, handing Smithy a paper bag that smells deliciously of burgers and fries. He himself has no food. Proof that he has no interest in McDonald’s—his interest is Smithy.

  In fact, she bets he’s the kind who never eats food loaded with unnecessary calories and probably considers fast food beneath his gourmet standards. Smithy loves unnecessary calories, especially French fries. Especially with ketchup. It’s been ages since that blueberry muffin at South Station and she is starving.But she doesn’t take the bag. “Oh, no, Angus, you wanted that, not me. Go ahead and eat, I don’t mind. Turn right when you come out of the parking lot and I’ll tell you how to reach I-95.”

  Angus drops the bag on the car floor and changes tactics. “Smithy, you are a lovely girl. Such good bones. You are undoubtedly very photogenic.”

  Being photogenic counts. One reason the media fixated on the Fountains was that Jack is this tall dark sapling with heavy dark eyebrows and shaggy hair, so handsome. And his sisters look strikingly like him, yet without the heavy dark look; they are slim and golden like their mother.

  “Yesterday I was looking at footage of the funeral,” says Angus, making a sad face, a sharing face, a face that says he too mourns.

  He doesn’t say which funeral. Perhaps he’s hoping she’ll ask.

  The funerals are very different.

  When Mom got sick, she presented her children with the facts, the probable outcome and the time line. Then she laughed. “Doctors don’t know any more than weather forecasters. Forget them. I’ll have your little brother, take the chemo, whip the cancer, and we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  But when the baby was a few weeks old, their mother crumpled. She had given all the instructions there were to give. All the encouragement there was to give. She had given Tris life. She was ready to go.

  They were with her. It wasn’t frightening. Behind her closed eyes, their mother slowly went somewhere else, while they stayed behind.

  A few days after Mom’s funeral, Smithy, Madison and Jack were back at school, busy as ever. They all studied an instrument (Smithy violin, Madison flute, Jack sax), and there were practices and concerts. They all played a sport or two and had a favorite subject—math for Smithy. They all got good grades.

  And then it was Christmas.

  How Laura Fountain loved Christmas. She used to start decorating the Friday after Thanksgiving. She’d haul out her CDs of carols and choirs, organs and bells, bring evergreen boughs into the house and unpack her angel collection.

  Her last Christmas—before they knew about the cancer—Mom was in charge of Sunday-school crafts. She designed angels using large double-angled silvery paper clips. Each angle became a wing. A silver ball threaded on a slender ribbon was the angel’s head and also the hanger fo
r the tree. Most kids made a dozen, to hand out and slip in stockings.

  Dad insisted that they could produce a Christmas worthy of Mom, who would be the angel looking down. It was almost fun making sure they omitted nothing. Not a CD was left unplayed, not a windowsill was without its battery-lit candle. They cried, and yet Christmas worked. Maybe because Christmas is about a baby. Jesus’s life begins in beauty, full of shepherds and kings, angels and stars.

  “What are you thinking about?” asks Angus.

  “Jesus,” says Smithy. She feels pretty sure Angus will not pursue this, and she’s right. He sips his coffee and obeys her instructions to merge with turnpike traffic. Even at seventy miles an hour, he occupies the driver’s seat as if it’s a lounge chair. The warmth in his voice almost removes meaning from his question. “Tell me,” says Angus. “What was it like to realize your mother would rather die than bring you up?”

  In the cup holder sits a tiny black recorder. It’s on.

  * * *

  Madison lies to the director of Tris’s old day care. “We’re thinking we might bring Tris back to you,” she begins.

  Immediately it isn’t a lie. It’s possible. Can Madison return things to what they were? She’s off to a good start: she’s home again. Maybe she can put Mom’s cookbooks back on the kitchen counter, Dad’s sofa back against the wall.

  “We would love that!” cries the director. “We were heartbroken when Mrs. Rand said she wouldn’t be bringing Tris back. We were his family and we loved him so.”

  Madison’s tongue dries out. It’s a stale crust of bread. Words leave her mouth like dry crumbs. Even though she guessed this, she isn’t prepared for it. “What reason did Mrs. Rand give for not bringing Tris back?”

  “She said she’d be taking care of him at home. Months later we found out she put him in another day care. I almost called her up, but if Mrs. Rand felt more comfortable with Tris somewhere else, it was her call.”

  Madison is trembling. Why go to the trouble of finding a different day care when the old one wanted him back? After such a catastrophe—the loss of his daddy—anybody, even Cheryl, would want a little boy to have familiar loving adults around him.

  “Tell me how Tris is doing,” says the director. “There’s so much love in your family. Your mother was a courageous example. I’m sure it’s been terribly hard. We’ve prayed for you.”

  Madison’s chest feels constricted, as if she’s running out of space for her heart and soul; as if the viciousness of Cheryl Rand is subtracting something vital. “Thank you. We’ll talk later, okay?” She hangs up.

  “Jack?” says Tris sadly. “Are we ever ever going to have lunch?”

  Immediately Madison is starving. She’s ready to throw the whole thing over for a hamburger. There’s a Bible story about a guy who shrugs off his inheritance to get dinner. Madison giggles.

  “And the funny part would be?” asks Jack.

  She shakes her head. Hopeless to describe how Jacob and Esau could be funny. She says, “I’ve got my car. We can—”

  “Drive to McDonald’s!” cries Tris. He and Jack are big Chicken McNugget people.

  Madison has a reality check. “I don’t have a car seat.”

  “We can steal Cheryl’s,” says Jack.

  Tris’s little mouth opens in amazement and excitement.

  “Just kidding,” says Jack, who isn’t.

  At Madison’s side, a tiny red light goes off. It is replaced by a tiny green light. They have almost forgotten their father’s cell phone. It has recharged.

  * * *

  Smithy reaches into her wallet where she keeps the paperclip angel her mother designed for Sunday school. She holds it tightly in the palm of her hand.

  Angus skips from topic to topic, hoping to get her started. She imagines him watching footage of the funerals. It’s disgusting. He’s disgusting.

  At Dad’s funeral, Smithy kept her eyes closed. She could not look at that casket, nor accept who lay there.

  “It must have been so hard when your little brother was born,” says Angus, all warm and compassionate.

  Smithy gives him the party line. “Babies are wonderful.”

  “I love babies too. I have a kid myself. Lives with his mother.”

  Smithy stares at her silent phone, willing Madison and Jack to call back.

  “Will you visit your parents’ graves, do you think?” asks Angus. “I was just there. It’s a beautiful site.”

  This creep trespassed on her mother’s and father’s graves?

  “Your aunt keeps flowers on the graves, you know.”

  This is so unlikely that Smithy gets her balance back. If there are flowers on the graves, they won’t be from the children, either. Mom’s knitting circle probably, or her book group, or the church dinner club.

  Smithy claps her hands, because it seems a better move than wrapping them around Angus’s throat. “Let’s hurry. Maddy and Jacky get out of school at three, so they’ll be home by three-thirty.”

  Her sister hates being called Maddy and Jack has never once been called Jacky.

  But Angus follows Smithy’s lead. “Maddy and Jacky have a half day at school. He’s at a soccer game with Tris, and Maddy has a dentist appointment.”

  Angus sounds like a member of the family. Maybe he’s been filming for days. It sounds as if Madison is living at home now too, and going to their old school again. Nobody’s told Smithy. But why would they? How stupid to text what team r u on to the very people whose team she quit. She’s the one not on the team.

  Ten minutes until she gets home. Ten minutes in which she cannot cry, cannot give this man a syllable. She begs Angus to tell her about his work. He goes into detail about a show where the children have dreadful, disfiguring birth defects. The surgical repairs leave hideous scars. He describes the special lighting they use so that these scars can be seen clearly by the viewers.

  Angus—the man who will scar Tris for life—takes the exit for Smithy’s house.

  * * *

  “You have any money?” Jack asks his sister.

  Madison gives him a twenty.

  “Wow. Do the Emmers give you an allowance?”

  “No. Wade does. Don’t you get an allowance?”

  Aunt Cheryl gives him lunch money. But he doesn’t have an allowance. There’s no time to consider this. “Tris, we’re going to get something to eat,” says Jack. “Find your fire truck and drive it back here.”

  “Okay.” Tris sets off. When he comes upon the fire truck, he forgets about driving it back to Jack. He’s on his hands and knees, taking the corners hard, and yelling, “Fire! Get out of the way!”

  Jack takes advantage of this gift of time to open his father’s cell phone. He pulls up the first picture, which will actually be the last one Dad ever took.

  At family events, like this night at the restaurant, they used to take turns with the camera, so nobody ended up left out of every photograph. There should be at least one of Dad himself. It’s an unsettling thought. Will Dad look alive, waving like a living portrait in a Harry Potter movie?

  But what comes up is not from the Japanese restaurant. It’s a clear but meaningless picture of pale ridges, wrinkles, curves and a red spot.

  “Fingers,” says Madison finally, “making a fist.”

  “Cheryl’s fingers,” says Jack. “The red is her thumbnail.”

  “She didn’t go with us to the Japanese restaurant,” objects Madison.

  Jack is puzzled. When did Dad take a picture of Cheryl’s fist? And why? What came later than their final dinner out?

  The next photo is also confusing. Blurry darkness with pale blobs around the edges.

  Madison is laughing. “Tris’s fingertips,” she says. “Aren’t they sweet? So it’s Tris taking the pictures.”

  Jack’s mouth tastes funny. He’s losing the ability to breathe again.

  The third picture is Cheryl’s face, very close. Little clots of mascara clog her eyelashes.

  He clicks. The four
th photograph is the dashboard of the Jeep. There can be no confusion about where the photographer is—the angle is from the passenger side, and slightly above.

  So these photographs have to have been taken after that dinner out. Taken by Tris. In the Jeep. There is only one time in his life when Tristan Fountain was standing up in the front seat of the Jeep holding Daddy’s cell phone in two hands.

  A cell phone not only stores pictures, it dates them. This one presents not just the day, month and year, but also the hour and the minute.

  Jack is weak with shock. Tris was taking these pictures as their father died.

  The fifth picture shows Cheryl through the Jeep window. No head—just her trunk. She’s wearing the olive wool suit he suddenly remembers from that terrible day. Her arm and hand rest on the window, her ring catching the light.

  The sixth photograph is at the Japanese restaurant, taken by Dad, because all four children are in it and Dad isn’t. Not one child is looking at the camera. They are all distracted and unaware.

  Nothing changes, thinks Jack grimly.

  Now he clicks in the other direction through the five photographs taken by Tris. Timewise, he’s following the action as it happened.

  First, Cheryl is outside the Jeep, facing away from the house, toward the rear of the Jeep. Second is the dashboard photo, which places Tris inside the Jeep, standing up on the passenger seat. Third is Cheryl’s face, inches from Tris. At this moment, she is unquestionably inside the Jeep. Fourth, Tris’s fingers, proving who is taking the pictures.

  And the final photograph, the one of Cheryl’s fist—

  Tris is back, face crumpled in despair. “My truck doesn’t work.”

  Jack hands Madison the phone, forcing himself to examine the fire truck. It’s not the batteries, because the lights and sirens are still going. He finds a pebble wedged under the axle that is preventing the wheels from turning. They probably brought the pebble into the library themselves, caught in the soles of a sneaker. He shows Tris the problem. “You be the mechanic.”

  Tris’s little fingers work to extricate the pebble.