A photograph on floor, half-hidden under the bed.
I know the place it was taken. And I know the people in it. There are four of them, and the first one I recognize is Claire. She’s younger, sicker. She’s standing next to a man who is holding a small child against him. Mattie. To the right of the photo, at its very edges, is Sadie.
She’s about eleven years old.
WEST McCRAY [TO JOE]:
Hey, Joe, is this Darren?
JOE PERKINS:
What’s that?… Well, I’ll be damned. That’s him. And that’s—
That’s not the girl you’re looking for, is it?
WEST McCRAY:
Yeah, it is.
JOE PERKINS:
What the hell is going on here?
WEST McCRAY:
Excuse me a minute, Joe … I’ll be right back.
WEST McCRAY:
I step outside and send the photograph to May Beth over text. She calls me back immediately.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
Oh my Lord, that’s the picture. Where did you find it?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
What?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
That’s the photo that was missing from my album … when I was showing you those pictures of the girls, remember, I got to the page with nothing on it? A photo was missing. That was the photo that was on it. The girls, and their mother and—
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Darren.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
What?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
That’s Darren.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
No, it’s not. It’s Keith.
sadie
When I was seven, and Mattie was one, she whispered my name.
I was her first word.
When Mattie was seven days old, and I was six, I stood over her crib and listened to her breathing, watching the rise and fall of her tiny chest. I pressed my palm against it and I felt myself through her. She was breathing, alive.
And I was too.
Langford is miles behind me, a place called Farfield in my sights. Keith is there, Ellis told me. Last I heard from him, he was there. I don’t know if he’s called the police or warned Keith since I left, but any head start I had for myself is gone by now. I lost it when I realized I’d left my photo in Keith’s room. My stomach turned and then it turned again and next thing I knew, I was jerking the car onto the shoulder and then I was out of the car and on my knees, on the ground, throwing up bile into the dirt.
I can’t seem to get back inside the car.
I crouch back on my heels and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. I dig into my bag and find the IDs, the tags, and sit there with them, spread them out on the side of the road. It feels wrong to have them together. I separate his faces from their names.
I don’t want to take them with me.
They’re too heavy to carry.
When I was eleven, and Mattie was five, I didn’t sleep for a year. Keith and Mom would come home so late from the bar—him sober, her wasted—neither of them trying to be quiet, but her especially. I’d listen to her shuffling steps to the bedroom, to the clatter of Keith tidying up the kitchen, and when all that sound was gone, I knew what would happen next and I knew what would happen if I refused. If it wasn’t me, he’d go to Mattie unless I said, W—wait …
Wait.
Until one night, I couldn’t.
And I’d had the knife that night, had it tucked under my pillow, my fingers clutched around it and instead of doing what I should have, I sent him to her. The next morning, Keith was gone, and the dirty shame of my weakness was all over me and I think Mattie sensed it somehow, that there was some part of me that had given her up, that I couldn’t protect her.
I held on tighter to prove myself wrong.
I felt her breathing, alive.
And I was too.
When Mattie was ten, and I was sixteen, Mom left and took Mattie’s heart with her. Mattie spent every night crying herself awake and was it really so bad, Mattie, just the two of us together?
And then that postcard—
Mattie came back to me with her heart in her hands, there, breathing, alive …
And I was too.
When I was nineteen and Mattie was thirteen, Keith came back.
Guess who I saw, she’d announced, still angry, always angry for the lengths I wouldn’t go for Mom, and never seeing the ones I went to for her. I told him about Mom. He said he’d take me to L.A., to find her. And I asked her who she thought raised her, because in that moment, it couldn’t have been me.
When Mattie was thirteen, and I was nineteen, she crept away into the night, to the truck parked under the streetlight on a corner in Cold Creek, and climbed into the passenger’s side. I don’t know what happened next. If, when the apple orchard appeared on the horizon to mark the growing space between us, she finally felt the distance and changed her mind. If Keith wouldn’t let her change her mind, and dragged her, kicking and screaming out of the truck and between the trees, where he had her, breathing and alive, until she wasn’t.
And I wasn’t.
I am going to kill a man.
“I am,” I whisper into the ground, over and over again.
I am, I am, I am.
I have to.
I’m going to kill the man who killed my sister.
And I’m not leaving the side of the road until I can make myself believe it.
I sit on the ground, feel the gravel press into my jeans. It’s windy, air pushing my hair from my face. I listen to the way it moves the world around me; the trees off the road, leaves rustling their soft song into the night. I stare up at the sky, its stars. Small miracles.
I get to my feet.
Looking at the stars is looking into the past. I read that once. I can’t remember where and I don’t know much about it, but it’s strange to think of the stars above as from a time that is so far removed from Mattie and me, from Mattie being dead.
From the thing I am about to do.
THE GIRLS
EPISODE 6
[THE GIRLS THEME]
ANNOUNCER:
The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.
WEST McCRAY:
Keith is Darren. I share the photograph with Ruby and she tells me it’s the exact same one Sadie showed her when she came to Ray’s Diner, asking after the man she said was her dad.
RUBY LOCKWOOD [PHONE]:
That’s it. That was the one.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
And you still doubted her?
RUBY LOCKWOOD [PHONE]:
Was I wrong?
WEST McCRAY [ON PHONE WITH MAY BETH]:
There’s no possibility whatsoever that Keith is Sadie’s father?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]:
I can ask Claire when she gets back in, but I doubt it.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
Tell me what you got.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Sadie was looking for a man from her childhood—her mom used to date him. She knew him as Keith, but everyone else I’ve talked to has called him Darren, which is why I never made the connection. Sadie was telling people he’s her father, but that’s not likely.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
Okay, so who is he?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Can’t find anything on either name. I got my team on it. Get this, though—in Langford, that motel, the Bluebird. Keith’s room was trashed … just hold on, I’m gonna send you the photos …
[KEYBOARD SOUNDS, MOUSE-CLICKS]
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
[WHISTLES] Wow.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
Yeah. The photograph Sadie’s been carrying around was in that room. It was from May Beth’s album of the girls—she took it with her. So I’m going to guess she was in that room too. I don’t know if it was like that before she got there or after she got there or while she was there. Acc
ording to Joe, Keith wasn’t there when she was, so I don’t believe they met.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
She broke into his room.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
That’s what I’m thinking but … wait a second …
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
What?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
I forgot—I got so distracted by the photo. There was a matchbook in the room. Cooper’s. That’s a bar outside Montgomery.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
Montgomery … the town Sadie passed through on her way to Langford.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
[PAUSE] Wait.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
What?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
It’s owned by Silas Baker.
WEST McCRAY:
Silas Baker, the man charged with sex crimes against the children he coached on his T-ball team. At first, it feels coincidental, but when I dig deeper into his case, I find a news clipping where Baker’s family was pressed for comment. I discovered Marlee Singer is his younger sister.
She refuses to answer my calls.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
I should’ve done Montgomery first. Goddammit.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
So you go back.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:
This isn’t—I have a bad feeling about this, Danny.
DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]:
You have to follow those too.
WEST McCRAY:
Silas Baker’s crimes were uncovered when a local boy, eighteen-year-old Javi Cruz, called 911 and reported a dead body in an abandoned house fifteen miles outside of town. When the Montgomery Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene, they didn’t find a body. Instead, they found a collection of pornographic photographs of children. One of the officers recognized the kids in them and after that, all hell broke loose.
I head back to Montgomery to talk to Javi. He’s an interesting guy. He’s six foot three, lean, with light brown skin. He’s lived in Montgomery his whole life. This is his last year of high school and college is on the horizon. This was supposed to be the year he lived it up, but things have taken a hard turn for him, at least socially, in the wake of his role in Silas Baker’s arrest. Javi happened to be best friends with Silas Baker’s teenage twins, Noah and Kendall, and was even on one of Silas’s T-ball teams when he was a child himself. He says he was never abused.
JAVI CRUZ:
Everyone hates me now.
WEST McCRAY:
That’s rough.
JAVI CRUZ:
Well, not everyone. And, I mean, I don’t have it bad, compared to those kids, but I lost a lot of friends. There’s still a lot of Baker loyalists. You see the comments sections on stories about him?
WEST McCRAY:
They’re divided, to say the least.
JAVI CRUZ:
This city is never going to be the same.
WEST McCRAY:
And you didn’t know about Silas? You never experienced any untoward or sexually aggressive behavior from him when you …
JAVI CRUZ:
No! God, no. It was T-ball. We just … played T-ball. I didn’t know he was a freak. I didn’t know about the house until—I told you, it was the girl.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]:
Sadie.
Javi met Sadie during her brief time in Montgomery.
JAVI CRUZ:
She told me her name was Lera.
WEST McCRAY:
Tell me how you two met.
JAVI CRUZ:
I was hanging at Cooper’s bar with Noah and Kendall, and another one of our friends—but she doesn’t want me to mention her name and she’s still talkin’ to me, so I’d just as soon not name her, if that’s okay with you.
WEST McCRAY:
Sure.
JAVI CRUZ:
We were drinking. We never had a problem being served at Cooper’s because Mr. Baker owns the place and I know that’s not right but you can’t tell me you never drank before you were legal. That’s how we killed time in Montgomery in the summer. It was no different than any other night, and then—she came.
She was like … You’re gonna think it’s stupid.
WEST McCRAY:
Try me.
JAVI CRUZ:
It’s hard to explain. The band was taking a break, and they put on some canned music, and Lera—Sadie—was … dancing, right in the middle of the bar by herself and I thought she was so beautiful, you know? I just wanted to know her. You ever met someone like that, and all you can think about is being near them? Just like … in their orbit?
WEST McCRAY:
Yeah. I married him.
JAVI CRUZ:
Right? That’s what I’m saying. I mean, I should say—she wasn’t a great dancer. [LAUGHS] She just didn’t care and that’s what made it beautiful to me. I’m not …
Noah calls—called me a benchwarmer.
WEST McCRAY:
What’s that mean?
JAVI CRUZ:
It’s the—it was the big joke in our crew. Like … I watch the action, but I don’t get in on it. But I got up, and I asked her to dance.
I danced with her.
WEST McCRAY:
What happened?
JAVI CRUZ:
I brought her back to our booth.
The friend—the one who doesn’t wanna be named—she thought Sadie was part of a family who had just moved into town and Sadie just went along with it. She and Kendall kind of … I don’t know.
Kendall didn’t like her.
WEST McCRAY:
Why?
JAVI CRUZ:
Because being that crazy chick that dances alone, the one everyone’s lookin’ at? That’s Kendall’s thing. She thought Sadie was creepy, because Sadie stalked Kendall’s Instagram. Like she looked Kendall up, and came to Cooper’s because she knew we’d be there.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]:
More and more, it seems I had reason to doubt Marlee Singer’s insistence that she never spoke to Sadie. I believe Sadie talked to Marlee, who knew Keith. She sought out Marlee’s brother, Silas Baker, and his family in Montgomery. It stands to reason Silas knew Keith too.
JAVI CRUZ:
She told us her family’d moved to town because her sister died.
WEST McCRAY:
Did she elaborate on that?
JAVI CRUZ:
No, but I could tell it really hurt her. I wasn’t surprised when you told me that part was true. Anyway … I gave her my number and she promised to call me in the morning—we were going to go over to the Bakers’ together. Then she calls me and tells me to meet her here.
WEST McCRAY:
Here is Lili’s Café. It’s a small coffee shop on the corner of Montgomery’s main street, with a sweet, homey feel to it. Javi tells me it’s insane in the mornings, wall-to-wall with people lining up for Lili’s famous cold brew and sugar-glazed doughnuts. It’s quiet now.
JAVI CRUZ:
I bought her breakfast and we ate and right away, I could tell something was really wrong. It’s hard to describe, but she was quiet and looked … sick. I asked her what it was. She didn’t tell me, though.
She showed me.
WEST McCRAY:
Sadie took Javi to the house fifteen miles outside of Montgomery and showed him the photos. Javi is visibly shaking when he tells me this part.
JAVI CRUZ:
I remember I came out of that house screaming. Because I knew those—I knew those kids. And those pictures were … I … I dream about them and it makes me wanna tear my brain out and—I can’t.
I’m sorry … I’m sorry—
WEST McCRAY:
It’s okay. Take your time.
JAVI CRUZ:
[EXHALES] I asked her how she knew. How she knew that stuff was there and she told me she’d been parked outside the Bakers’ house all night and she saw Silas leave his place really early in the morning, and s
he thought it was weird so she followed him all the way to that house … she said she hid ’til he left and went looking and that’s what she found. I don’t know if that’s true, but she wanted me to call the cops.
I want to say I did the right thing right away, I wanna tell you that I did that but …
WEST McCRAY:
Javi was too overwhelmed, too distraught, to understand the scope of what was happening. Sadie demanded immediate action.
WEST McCRAY [TO JAVI]:
Was Sadie willing to call the cops?
JAVI CRUZ:
That’s the thing! She wouldn’t do it herself. She said she was scared.
WEST McCRAY:
You didn’t think it was odd that she was parked outside the Bakers’ house all night? You didn’t ask her to explain that? It sounds like she might have had an inkling something was going on from the outset.
JAVI CRUZ:
Once I saw those pictures, I wasn’t thinking about anything but that. This fucking broke me. I’m in therapy about it. And that’s why I couldn’t call the cops at first … Kendall and Noah were my best friends, and Mr. Baker—I’d known Mr. Baker since I was a kid and it didn’t—none of it made sense. We drove back into town, and she just kept telling me I had to do this because if I didn’t …
WEST McCRAY:
If you didn’t, what?
JAVI CRUZ:
I don’t know. We got back into town. She pulled up to the Rose Mart—a convenience store down the road. It’s got a pay phone …
She said if I couldn’t do it outright, to call the cops and tell ’em I wanted to report a dead body, hang up without ID’ing myself and let the police find it all.