My mother ran away. She left us.
Why should we care about her, now?
Aunt Vicky held my shoulders, and gazed searchingly into my eyes. “Tell me anything you know about your mother, Franky, please? The last time you were with her? That Sunday, when I came up? And you and Samantha were gone? And—oh, anything! Tell me anything.”
It’s awful when an adult begs you. And you feel so bad you can’t give them what they want, and you hate them for doing this to you.
Dad had warned me that my aunt would ask “prying”—“hostile”—questions. Like the police. Dad had warned me that I should be very careful what I told Aunt Vicky, because she was “on your mother’s side”—“our enemy.” Dad believed that my aunt had never approved of her younger sister’s marriage to him, and that everything she said of Reid Pierson was tainted with her prejudice. She hated sports, Dad said, so she hated him.
Aunt Vicky was asking me about that Sunday. When Dad drove to Skagit Harbor to take Samantha and me home. If, while he and Mom were together in the cabin, I’d happened to overhear—anything?
Quickly I shook my head no.
But Aunt Vicky didn’t believe me. “Franky, look at me. Look me in the eye. I know what you’ve been telling the police, but—please, will you tell me?”
I shut my eyes, shook my head. I felt my ponytail slap against my back.
Aunt Vicky said, suddenly emotional, “Oh, Franky, I’m afraid—your father has been—has—” She broke off, her eyes brimming with tears. Whatever it was, Aunt Vicky couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Striking her. Abusing her. Threatening her.
I backed off, suddenly emotional myself. A panicked rage came over me like flame. “Aunt Vicky, I don’t know where Mom is.”
“Franky, wait—”
“Leave me alone!”
I ran out of the room. Pressed my hands hard over my ears so I couldn’t hear Aunt Vicky calling after me.
In eighth grade, when I made the swim team at school, Dad was so proud of me, he allowed me to go with Aunt Vicky on one of her trips to the Southwest. Just five days, but we had a spectacular time hiking and sightseeing. One of the places I remember was a tropical garden attached to a natural history museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I loved it: giant trees and vines, gorgeous jungle flowers; so many butterflies, some as large as my outstretched hand, brightly colored as if they’d been painted, behaving like they were tame. And chattering birds everywhere. It was a rain-forest atmosphere, the air so humid you could feel moisture congealing on your skin. My favorite birds were the big white cockatoos and the Amazon parrots, with their beautiful bright-green feathers trimmed in crimson and their amazing, aware eyes. There was Daisy, who squawked, “H’lo! Pretty girl! Pret-ty girl!” when Aunt Vicky and I peered at her, and I was going to pet her head except Aunt Vicky caught my hand in time. On Daisy’s perch was a comical little warning: I bite. I hate myself afterward but I bite. Be warned!
The weirdest things in the garden were the giant Atlas moths.
They were big, beautiful moths you’d have thought were butterflies, almost the size of bats, clustered on tree trunks and vines. Some of them you could hardly see, they blended so with the trees. They were the color of brownish mist, with dappled spots on their wings. Aunt Vicky said she’d timed our visit because this was their mating season, which occurred only every five years. And you could see the moths mating, sort of: one big dappled moth lying on another, slightly smaller moth, unmoving. At least they were unmoving while we looked.
What’s remarkable about this moth species, Aunt Vicky said, is that the moths spend five years in their cocoons and only three to five days “alive” as moths. They’re born with reproductive systems but not digestive systems! Once out of their cocoons, they have only a few days to mate before they shrivel up and die. “But a new generation emerges to continue the cycle.” Aunt Vicky spoke as if this was good news.
I laughed and shuddered. “I’m glad I’m not a giant Atlas moth.”
“Yes, Franky, but to the moths, three to five days is their lifetime. It probably feels just long enough.”
“Oh, Aunt Vicky! That’s just like you.”
“Nature has mysterious ways, Franky. But somehow it all makes sense.”
I knew Aunt Vicky had been trained as a biologist and ecologist. Still, I was stubborn and had to say, “Maybe nature doesn’t make sense at all, Aunt Vicky. Maybe people like you want to think it does.”
Three years later, I thought of that conversation. Aunt Vicky insisting that things make sense and turn out basically all right, the way she was saying that, thirteen days after Krista Connor and Mero Okawa were reported missing, things might turn out all right for them, too.
TWENTY-ONE
the investigation: august 27–september 9
“I miss Rabbit. I want Rabbit back.”
Samantha spoke sadly but listlessly. Knowing it meant nothing, what she wanted.
After so many days of searching in Skagit County by police, rescue workers, volunteers, Krista Connor and Mero Okawa were still missing. And so was Krista Connor’s dog, Rabbit.
In the news items, the missing dog was rarely mentioned. Nobody cared about Rabbit. Except Samantha and me. I wanted Rabbit to be alive, so badly. Sometimes I’d shut my eyes so I could hear better his toenails clicking on the floorboards, and his breathless little high-pitched bark. Hey! Hi! Here I am!
I didn’t tell Samantha something I’d learned from clicking onto one of the case’s websites: that the bloodstains found on Krista Connor’s quilt had been identified as “nonhuman.”
It hadn’t been Krista Connor’s blood, or Mero Okawa’s blood; it had been Rabbit’s blood. I knew.
He’d been barking, trying to bite, protecting his mistress. A brave, feisty little dog any sizable boy or man could kill by kicking hard, and repeatedly.
We never discussed the police investigation in our family.
By “our family” I mean our reduced family: Dad, Todd, Samantha, me.
We never spoke of Krista Connor directly. Mostly, she was she, her. A missing person like a missing object. Mero Okawa was rarely alluded to—it was easy to forget Mero Okawa, but when he was spoken of, the name was simply “Okawa.”
Only Dad and Mr. Sheehan uttered that name—“Okawa.” With a look of disdain, disgust. As if they had a bad taste in their mouths.
If you read the papers or watched TV, it seemed clear that the missing individuals had been a “couple.” Because they were missing together, and Mero Okawa’s SUV had been parked at Krista Connor’s cabin through the night, it was assumed that they were lovers, or somehow involved. Friends and neighbors in Skagit Harbor vehemently denied this, but no one took them seriously. There was a collective wish to believe that the missing woman, separated from her celebrity husband, had been having an affair with a local art gallery owner, and that their affair, an adulterous affair on the woman’s part, was the probable reason for their disappearance. The general belief was that the celebrity husband had had something to do with this disappearance, but a counterbelief was that the couple had run off together. In the Seattle Star, a tabloid paper, an unidentified “intimate” of Mero Okawa testified that Okawa was a “quick-tempered man with a history of domestic violence.” On Seattle After Hours, a late-night talk show on cable, the possibility of Krista Connor having been “abducted” by Mero Okawa was earnestly discussed.
The missing couple had been sighted in Las Vegas, in Palm Springs, in Kailua Bay, Hawaii.
Mr. Sheehan conceded to the press that his client and Krista Connor had been discussing an “amicable separation” but not divorce.
Neither Reid Pierson nor his wife, Krista Connor, believed in divorce, Mr. Sheehan insisted. There may have been another man in the picture (“about whom my client knows nothing”), but in fact the Piersons had been on the verge of reconciling when Krista Connor disappeared.
When I read this, on the website, I felt a stab of hope. Mom is coming
home? Is this so?
Wanting so Freaky-bad to believe.
“What did your aunt Vicky want, Franky?”
Dad’s voice was friendly, easy. But I saw the tension in his jaw. He wasn’t doing TV lately—he was still on the network payroll, but his sportscasting duties had been “temporarily suspended” (according to The Seattle Times), so he was restless and kept a sharp eye on his daughters. I said, “Oh, just to talk, Daddy. Nothing.”
“Sowing seeds of discontent, eh? Like all that family.”
I bit my lip. Didn’t know what to say. My Freaky-sullen heart beat hard.
“I suppose Aunt Vicky was asking about me, eh? Casting suspicion on me. Like I’m not sick with this, crushed with grief, as much as she is, in fact more. I’m the husband, for Christ’s sake!” Dad was wiping angrily at his eyes. He had a sinus headache all the time now, he said. Medication didn’t help. “Did you tell her that? The nosy Big Sister?”
I said uneasily, “Aunt Vicky’s okay, Daddy. She’s worried about . . . her sister.”
“Well, she should be. Disappearing like that. With her ‘native’ lover. They’re saying this Okawa is a nutcase, too. Involved with young boys. Sadomasochistic sick stuff. Like on the Internet. Your deluded mother was taken in.” Dad shook his head sadly.
I had never heard this before! A Freaky-defiant urge rose in me to resist.
“The Connors are a dysfunctional family par excellence. They’re suspicious, paranoid. They’ve ‘broken off all relations’ with me, their lawyer has informed the public. Nice, eh?”
I wasn’t sure what Dad meant, but knew better than to ask.
“Next time your aunt Vicky comes to this house, I want to be present. I want Mike Sheehan present. I don’t want that sick, man-hating female poisoning my daughter’s mind, the way she poisoned her sister’s mind. All the Connors have been bearing false witness about me to the police. I’ll never forgive them. And neither will you.”
Daddy was looking so sick, so sad, I wanted to hug him. But I was afraid to touch him.
“Okay, Daddy.”
“Todd’s on my side. Todd’s my boy from way back. Todd knows the score. She broke that boy’s heart, pretending to be a true mother to him when she wasn’t even fit to be a stepmother. And you, sweetie, and Sam-Sam. You’re all on your daddy’s side, eh? When she shows up alive and well, the police are going to arrest her. And know what I’m going to do? Sue her! For dragging her family through this dirt, for trying to destroy us. Trying to ruin Reid Pierson’s career. And you kids will testify on my behalf, won’t you.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a command.
“Franky? My big girl? You’re on your daddy’s team, eh?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“It could get nasty. Nastier. When she comes back.”
Dad spoke with such conviction, grimacing as you’d never see him on TV, I believed he must speak the truth.
When she comes back.
TWENTY-TWO
the don spence show: september 10
The voice was impassioned, sincere.
“Know what I think, I think it’s like the thrill in a crowd when a man, a star athlete, is injured and carried off the field. They love you, but boy! they sure want to bring you down, down, down to their own level.”
It wasn’t Reid Pierson saying these impassioned words but his interviewer, moppy-haired Don Spence of the local, popular Don Spence Show.
“Well, Don, I guess . . . I wouldn’t disagree with you exactly,” Dad was saying, with a faint, frowning smile, like a man who’s trying to be meticulous in his judgments, “but I think it’s an entirely unconscious thing, you know? It isn’t conscious.”
“It isn’t conscious. But it’s real.”
“Oh, wow. Man, I can testify to that: It’s real.” Dad laughed, shaking his head gravely.
Don Spence was interviewing Reid Pierson, a friendly colleague-rival of many years. Sometimes he was unpredictable, even cruel to the hapless guests on his show; but generally he was warm, friendly, funny, fair-minded. They were rivals, on competing networks, but, well—“There’s no better sportscaster on the air right now than Reid Pierson,” Don Spence said, after he’d welcomed his guest on the show and shaken his hand vigorously. “I’m not saying this to flatter, y’know Don Spence does not flatter. I’m saying it because it’s true.”
“Don, thanks. I appreciate that.”
Daddy spoke humbly, for a moment looking as if he was blinking away tears.
How handsome Daddy was! He looked almost like a young man. His posture was perfect, his head held high. The bruiselike rings around his eyes seemed to have vanished. The pinched, pained expression in his face we’d been seeing for weeks seemed to have vanished. His manner was somber, for he was on The Don Spence Show to discuss his wife’s disappearance under very suspicious circumstances, but he was able to smile, too, at appropriate times.
Todd, Samantha, and I were watching the interview in our house in Yarrow Heights. (We’d moved back, now that the media vultures, as Dad called them, were less intrusive.) Todd was taping the program, as he’d been taping news programs and local talk shows since August 27, with the intention of establishing an “archive” for Dad. His fall term at Western Washington didn’t begin for another two weeks. By then, Todd believed, the missing persons case would be solved. By then, we could get on with our normal lives.
I believed this, too. I’d gone back to school after my first, difficult day and intended to keep going. It was Freaky-logic to think One day, one hour at a time. You can do it!
Don Spence was firing questions at Reid Pierson in his frank, candid way, and Reid Pierson was answering in a frank, candid voice:
“Do you know the whereabouts of your wife, Reid?”
“No, Don. I do not.”
“Did you have anything to do with her disappearance, Reid?”
“No, Don. Absolutely not.”
“You aren’t in contact with her, are you?”
“I wish I was. But no.”
“Are you acquainted with Mero Okawa?”
“I am not.”
“Never met the man?”
“Never laid eyes on him.”
“Is there any truth, Reid, to rumors that your wife, Krista, has been seeking a divorce?”
“Absolutely not, Don. Absolutely not.”
Dad became almost emotional answering this last question.
After an advertising break The Don Spence Show returned with a pretaped segment. This took us by surprise: close-up video shots of our parents! Dad and Mom were younger, happily smiling, very attractive. I felt a choking sensation in my throat. I wasn’t prepared for this. There were photos of Mr. and Mrs. Reid Pierson with their family: tall, good-looking Todd (“twenty-year-old son of Reid Pierson from his first marriage”) and the Piersons’ daughters (“Francesca, now fifteen, and Samantha, ten”).
Samantha, on the sofa beside me, made a faint whimpering noise like a frightened kitten. “Oh. Mommy.”
I blinked away tears. I decided to be mortified, embarrassed by seeing myself on TV. Magnified on the giant screen on the wall of our family room.
Samantha was whimpering, “I want Mommy back. Why doesn’t Mommy come back, Daddy said she’s hiding.”
Todd said sharply, “Shut up, Samantha. I’m trying to hear this.”
Next were “highlights of the popular football player’s career.” Then brief interviews with well-known personalities who wanted to vouch for Reid Pierson: the Seahawks’ manager, sportswriters, former Seattle mayor Brock Hawley, who’d been Dad’s friend for years, the Seattle businessman-philanthropist Bud Blount. Mr. Blount was saying earnestly, “What’s happening here, this trial by media, makes me damned angry. ‘Innocent till proven guilty’ is the American way of life. Anyone who knows Reid Pierson will vouch for him as a good, loving husband and father, and a straight-up, decent guy. What I think, frankly, I think this is some marital spat, a lovers’ quarrel, something personal and private that g
ot out of hand. . . .”
Next there came onto the screen video clips and photos of Reid Pierson in his mid twenties, with a very blond and very beautiful young woman—“Bonnie Lynn Byers of Los Angeles, Reid Pierson’s first wife.” There were stills of Bonnie Lynn Byers as a fashion model and video clips of the young couple dancing at their wedding; there were photos of the Piersons at the 1983 Governor’s New Year’s Eve ball, and in dazzling white sports clothes on the deck of a friend’s yacht in 1984. Don Spence’s voice-over continued with dramatic urgency, imposed upon shots of gliding sailboats: “The first Mrs. Pierson died abruptly in June 1985 in what were considered mysterious circumstances—a sailing accident on Puget Sound to which Reid Pierson was the sole witness.” A collage of more photos, close-ups of Reid Pierson looking distraught, shielding his face from photographers, as Don Spence’s voice continued, “The county medical examiner ruled accidental death, but there was pressure on the Seattle district attorney to conduct a more thorough investigation; eventually the controversial case was resolved with a confirmation of the original verdict of accidental death. Within two years, Reid Pierson was to remarry.”
As soon as Bonnie Lynn Byers came onto the TV screen, Todd reacted as if in pain. He murmured what sounded like “Oh, God.” A can of beer he’d been holding in his right hand fell from his fingers onto the carpet unnoticed by him. Samantha and I looked fearfully at our big brother, hoping he wouldn’t lash out at us, but his expression was blank, rigid. His eyes were glassy, narrowed almost shut.
As The Don Spence Show broke for another, jangling sequence of noisy ads, Todd heaved himself to his feet and staggered out of the room.
Samantha whispered, “She was Todd’s mommy? She’s pretty.”