Theo’s got his laptop balanced on his knees, but I don’t think he’s really getting any work done. He nods to the arrangement with a bobbing balloon. “Liz sent flowers.”
“That’s nice.” She’d volunteered to drive my car home from the alley behind Double and arrange for a ride back. My mom had invited Liz in when she arrived bearing pastry, and the two of them had visited briefly while Oliver and Henry played with Percy. We were careful, my mother assured me. We didn’t talk about Arden and Rory in front of the boys. I haven’t explained what’s going on to Oliver and Henry. I’ve relied on saying vague things like Arden’s sleeping and She bumped her head, and thankfully the boys haven’t asked the hard questions.
Other people have sent flowers, too: the Bishop School teachers and staff, the PTA president, my father, Theo’s parents, who sent twin arrangements of blush-pink roses. My parents-in-law have always been careful to treat the girls exactly the same, and so if Rory gets a cashmere sweater on her birthday in May, Arden knows to expect the same sweater when her birthday comes around in September, although maybe in a different color. They don’t do this with Oliver and Henry, who actually are twins. If Oliver gets a set of paints, Henry will get a football. It’s important to treat them as individuals, Sugar, my mother-in-law, has very seriously informed me. That’s her name, really? I’d asked Theo when he’d told me that first time, thinking I could never marry a man whose mother’s given name was a food additive. It’s a southern thing, he’d tried to explain, which made me retort that D.C. was not a southern city, which made him retort, Ha! Because the girls aren’t individuals, too? I’ve groused to Theo in private. I don’t know why this irks me. Maybe it’s because Sugar has never embraced me as an extension of her family. It’s not personal, I don’t think. I’ve noticed that she treats Gabrielle with the same polite distance, but this doesn’t seem to bother Gabrielle. In fact, I think Gabrielle prefers it.
Sugar and George are in Italy for a long-anticipated trip and will head to the hospital the moment they return in six days. I have steeled myself for this. Sugar will not be dissuaded, even if we tell her the doctors have warned us the girls can’t have the stimulation of a lot of visitors. She and George are upset with Theo and Vince for fighting and have made their views strongly known. They don’t understand that this is the way it’s always been between their sons—Theo always having to rescue Vince and Vince always resenting him when he does. The last time Sugar phoned, Theo listened for a few minutes, then silently handed me the phone and strode away, leaving me to interrupt Sugar’s tirade about how her sons were acting like children, how life was too short, and the importance of family. All you boys have are each other, Sugar was saying when I put the phone to my ear. That’s not true, Sugar, I said. Theo has me. I’d caught her watching me on my wedding day as I danced first with Theo, then Vince.
“Your brothers made you a card,” I tell Arden. Theo brought it back with him, an exuberantly crayoned piece of paper with their names inexpertly printed on it. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s ants playing soccer.” I can see my twin boys, identical heads bent and elbows bumping as they lean close, squabbling over the green crayon that is both boys’ favorite color. The card will make Arden smile and I’ve propped it against the plastic water pitcher on her nightstand so it’s the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.
“I was thinking we could call the boys and let them talk to her,” Theo says.
Hearing her brothers’ voices might be a good thing for Arden. Why am I so resistant to this, though? “Maybe with my mom on the line,” I hedge. Her cheerful chatter would distract the twins from noticing that Arden wasn’t saying anything back. “Maybe after school.”
“It’s Sunday, Nat.”
Right. I search back through my memory for the boys’ schedule and it slowly assembles itself before me. Cub Scouts. Their den leader’s big on hiking through Rock Creek, running along a trail, searching the woods for fossils. Today they’re headed for the quarry. My mom will be finding chunks of quartz in their pockets for days to come. I blink back tears. “How about tomorrow, then?”
“Nat.”
“You know they’ll be bouncing off the walls when they get home after Scouts. Mom will have her hands full getting them to calm down enough just to eat dinner.”
“We’re talking about a phone call. Not running the Marine Corps Marathon.”
Instead of answering, I scrape my chair over to Arden’s bed and place my hand on her covers. Touching, but not.
When Detective Gallagher raps lightly on the door, I startle awake. I’d fallen into an uncomfortable sleep, and somebody—Theo?—had draped a hospital blanket over my shoulders. I open my eyes to see the policeman inside the curtain and Theo beckoning to me.
“We’re holding a news conference this evening,” Detective Gallagher tells us as we sit in the family lounge down the hall. The door’s closed and we’ve pushed our chairs close to him. We’re going to hear secrets. We’re finally going to hear the truth. I feel relief and apprehension, both. For some reason, Detective Gallagher wants to talk to us alone, without Vince and Gabrielle. “Reporters will start calling. They won’t be able to get to you while you’re here. The hospital staff will keep them away, but they might get hold of your cell numbers.”
His glasses make him look so serious. His hands are loosely clasped in front of him. It inspires friendliness. It makes me want to lean forward, too, but I sit back. I think, Why does the media want to talk to us?
“It doesn’t look like this was an outside job. There’s no sign of forced entry and no one’s seen a stranger hanging around. We don’t have gang activity in this area, and there’s no indication drugs were the motivation. The tox report hasn’t come back yet, but we do know alcohol wasn’t a factor.”
I’m relieved to know this, to have my daughter’s innocence confirmed.
“So you’re thinking it’s personal?” Theo asks the detective.
“Exactly.”
Arden couldn’t have inspired this kind of hatred. Neither could Rory. Is it terrible for me to wonder about Hunter? Theo’s right. I don’t know him or anything about him, other than my daughter had had a crush on him.
Detective Gallagher flips open his notebook and reaches for a pen. “When was the last time you talked to Arden, Mrs. Falcone?”
I’ve already told him this, haven’t I? I’ve been over that last conversation a million times, played and replayed the way Arden had paused. It couldn’t have been anything serious. Surely I would have picked up on it. I would have sat down instantly, turned my laptop toward me, and told her, No, go ahead. Is there anything up? I would have done that. I would have known. “We Skyped Wednesday afternoon. She wanted me to send her a sweater she’d left behind. Then she talked to one of her brothers.”
“And how did she sound?”
“Fine. She sounded just fine, maybe a little preoccupied. I had to get to the restaurant and she had a meeting with one of her professors, so we didn’t talk long.”
“Preoccupied,” he repeats. “That’s it?”
He doesn’t freight his words or throw me a questioning look but he makes it sound as though he wonders whether Arden and I ever really talked. Or maybe I’m just being defensive. “It wasn’t unusual for us to have quick chats. She often called between classes or on her way to the library.” Arden’s always the one to initiate; she’s managed this very adroitly, refusing to answer if I call or text.
“Mr. Falcone?”
Theo shifts in his seat, touches his forehead. “I guess the last time I spoke to Arden was sometime the week before. Monday, Tuesday? I came home from work. She was on the phone with Natalie.”
Monday, mid-afternoon. Arden and I had talked while I cleaned out the refrigerator. We’re doing self-portraits in drawing class, right, Mom? So get this—one girl crumpled up a blank piece of paper and then spread it out. Seriously. That’s what she did. A crumpled sheet of paper. The teacher loved it. Arden had described the critique process, all the s
tudents working from one piece to another and freely volunteering their opinions, good and bad. It sounds like culinary school, I’d joked, and Arden had laughed, pleased. Theo had come in and I’d passed my phone to him. By then I’d been on my way out the door and impatient about getting my phone back. I’d stood there as he tried to have a conversation with his daughter.
“She called me Friday afternoon,” Theo says, and I glance at him in surprise. He’s never said a word about this. “But I was in a parent conference and didn’t pick up. She didn’t leave a message.”
“Did Arden call you often?”
“Not often enough,” Theo says, and I squeeze his hand.
“What time was this?” Detective Gallagher asks.
“Three-thirty, three-forty-five.”
Hours before the fire. “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I tell Theo, but he won’t look at me.
“How does she get along with the other kids in her dorm?”
“You think it was one of them?” They’re children, I want to protest, but an eighteen-year-old is capable of splashing accelerant and lighting a match. “But you said they were all at the pep rally.”
“So far as we know.”
Meaning someone could be lying? Theo and I should have overridden Arden. We should have come for Parents’ Weekend and checked things out. But how could we have known there was anything to check? “Arden gets along fine with everyone. She’s pretty easygoing.”
Which isn’t to say she’s a pushover. Arden could be stubborn. I remember a red-faced toddler lying flat on her back in the grocery store aisle, kicking her heels because I wouldn’t buy her Oreos.
“Would you call your daughter an introvert?”
He’s been talking to people and this is what they’ve told him. It saddens me to think that they hadn’t gotten to know Arden, but I understand this takes time. Arden had been at EMU for only six weeks. “She’s reserved,” I correct. No more hugging, she’d sternly told me when she was four and I’d bent down to sweep her into my arms. My daughter’s her own person. I’ve had to accept that. Arden hates attracting attention. She’ll do anything to avoid the spotlight. Try out for the newspaper, I’ll urge. You could do layout. Or, That’s a beautiful design. Why don’t you enter it in that logo contest? She always just sighs. Maybe.
“A loner?”
“No,” I say, stung. “Not at all.” This man doesn’t know Arden. All he knows is the unconscious girl in the hospital bed. But he needs to understand her. He needs to fight for her. “She’s just quiet. She thinks before she speaks.”
“Our daughter’s an artist,” Theo says. “She feels things very deeply. She mulls over her feelings, examines them from all angles. She expresses herself through her painting.”
Theo’s never said anything like this before. I didn’t know this was how he thought of our child.
“I see,” Detective Gallagher says, but I’m not sure he does. “How would you say she’s been adjusting to being away from home?”
“Quite well,” Theo insists. “Not a trace of homesickness. Damn it.” He’s trying for a joke, to leaven the emotion of what he’d just said. I sigh. The two of them are so alike.
That first week or so away from home had been hard for Arden. She’d been anxious about her schedule and whether she’d find an on-campus job. We’d talked every night and I could tell she felt stressed. But once classes started and she began to make friends, things seemed better. I’m okay, Arden would say when I asked. Stop worrying. I wasn’t worrying, not exactly. It’s more that I longed for her, wanting to know those little details about her daily life that I’d taken for granted. Was she skipping breakfast, watching TV with her arms wrapped around her bent legs, falling asleep to her music playing, the way she did at home? Was she metamorphosing into someone else, a grown-up version of the girl I loved?
“Mrs. Falcone?”
“It’s true. Arden seemed happier than she had in high school.” I realize how this makes things sound and I hastily add, “It’s not as though she’d been depressed or anything.”
“Maybe she was, a little.”
I stare at Theo. “Why would you say that?”
He shrugs. “Sometimes I think her quietness is more than just temperament. Sometimes I think she really struggles.”
“You do? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It’s just normal teenage stuff, Nat. She’ll work through it on her own.”
Detective Gallagher’s listening, his pen poised over his notebook. “Has she ever been treated for depression?”
“Of course not.” I’m annoyed that we’re talking about Arden in this way. Detective Gallagher looks at me with a non-expression. I don’t like him, I realize. I know he’s just doing his job, but it feels combative, the way he’s firing questions at us. I want to push back my chair and leave, but I can’t. I need to fight Arden’s battle for her here, in this room. I need to steer this conversation back onto the right track. “Being away from home has been good for her. She’s growing up, coming out of her shell. She’s mentioned her art history professor on more than one occasion. I think she volunteered for a special project?” I look to Theo, who looks blank. I look back to Detective Gallagher. “She seems happy, challenged. She’s made friends.” No, Mom, Arden had said, when I’d asked if she was getting to know some of the other kids. I’m living under a rock. I’d been reassured by her flippancy. I’d laughed.
“Like who?” Detective Gallagher asks. “What friends?”
I feel my cheeks warm. I know how this will sound. “I don’t really know their names, just that Arden had gotten to know some of the kids in her classes.” What mother doesn’t know the names of her child’s friends? “D.D.,” I say, remembering the pink-haired girl who’d come to see Arden and Rory, the girl Gabrielle didn’t trust. “I don’t know her last name. Her room was next to Arden’s. You can talk to her.”
“Any other names you can think of?”
Arden seemed reluctant to talk about her friends. Other than Hunter. I have to go, she’d say. I’m meeting Hunter. Once, I’d heard someone talking in the background when Arden and I were on the phone, and when I asked Arden who it was, wondering if it was the mysterious Hunter, she’d merely said, Nobody. “You can check Facebook,” I say, and he nods. I realize he’s already done this, and I feel a skewer of worry. He’s talking to us, but there are things he’s not saying. “Why would the media want to contact us?” I ask, but he turns a page in his notebook, frowns at what he’s scribbled there.
“How have classes been going for Arden?” he asks, without looking up.
“She’s always been a strong student. She’s a hard worker, focused.” This is a point of pride for Theo. He had been painfully careful never to show the least bit of favoritism toward her at Bishop and she had still graduated sixth in her class. “She got straight A’s in high school. She could have gone anywhere to college.”
She had wanted to go to USC. Even now, all these months later, I feel the scalding rush of anger.
“She went to the Bishop School, is that right?” Detective Gallagher asks.
I wonder why this matters. “Yes. Theo’s the headmaster there.” The Bishop School, educators of D.C.’s spoiled elite—piranhas, always circling, always searching for a tender bite of flesh. If it hadn’t been for Rory, Arden would never have survived. Rory kept an eye on her. She included her. It pains me to admit that Rory’s the leader and my daughter is the follower.
“Rory went there, too,” Detective Gallagher remarks. “They were in the same class.”
“Yes.” Vince had made some smart investments and Gabrielle worked as a stylist for the Washington political elite. Combined, they were able to afford Bishop, where tuition was more than forty thousand dollars a year. The only way we had been able to send Arden to Bishop was because it had been free.
“And now they room together.”
I’d had misgivings about that, but it seemed to have gone okay. Despite everything, Ard
en seemed to have been coming out of her shell, really coming into her own. Majoring in art and taking all those classes was why. Art was the one area where Arden could truly shine, where Rory couldn’t go. “They’re close. They’ve always been close. They’re more like sisters than cousins.”
“Sometimes sisters don’t get along.” His pen’s poised over his notebook and he’s looking at me. “Was that true for Arden and Rory? Did they argue?”
“Of course they did, but it was never anything serious.” Rory can be so selfish, Arden would grumble. Or, It was the Rory Show at school today. “I can’t even recall the last time there was a problem.”
“We called them the Dynamic Duo at Bishop,” Theo says. “They were inseparable.” Just like Vince and I had been, once upon a time.
“Ever since they were babies.” I would pick Arden up from Gabrielle’s after working a double shift and find the two infants peacefully sleeping forehead to forehead, legs and arms entangled. And now they’re lying in hospital beds, separated by one thin wall. I am not going to let this impassive stranger see me cry. I am not going to let him in, not one inch.
“What about boys?” Detective Gallagher asks.
“Boys have never been an issue,” Theo says, firmly.
I almost wish they had been. In eighth grade, Arden had liked a boy and been ecstatic when he invited her to a dance and just as crushed when he told her at the last minute he couldn’t go. No explanation—at least not one that Arden shared. Thirteen is too young to have your heart broken, but that’s what had happened. After that, Arden got very tentative about boys.
“Would you say Arden had a happy childhood?”
“Yes.” Why is he asking this? I need to get back to Arden. “Yes. Very happy.” Scuffling toward me in my chef’s clogs, her little legs like matchsticks and her hands reaching out for balance. Licking the meringue mushroom and looking up at me with awe. Juggling the twins, one in each arm, as they writhed and screamed, her expression saying This was not the deal.
“She ever act out?”
Now I’m getting alarmed. Arden got moody as a teenager, of course; she snapped, sometimes slammed a door. But that was it. She never stayed out late. I never got a call from another parent. Everyone told me how lucky I was, and until now, I’d smugly accepted it. “No. Never.”