Chapter 13
Vera's uncle was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen while she sat watching TV in the living room with her aunt. After she had stopped crying, exhaustion had settled in once again, making her feel heavy and lethargic.
She hadn't meant to make such a scene at dinner, but Aunt Belinda reassured her it was to be expected after what she went through. If she wasn't feeling so down, Vera might have laughed, as the woman had seemingly done a one-eighty and switched from strict and authoritative to comforting and sympathetic, leading Vera to wonder what would have happened if she had just gone into the conversation crying.
She did feel a little better now, though, having let some of her emotions out. With her head resting against a couple of the sofa's pillows, she could just feel her eyes beginning to droop when the doorbell rang followed by three curt knocks on the door.
Frowning at what someone could want so late in the evening, Vera sent her aunt a look to which the older woman replied with a shrug of her shoulders and removed herself from her rocking chair, pacing out of the room and in the direction of the front door.
Vera heard the door unlock after a moment and strained to hear over the sounds of the TV without turning the volume down. She wasn't lazy; she just didn't want to seem too nosy if anyone should come in without her hearing them. She caught a few words from her aunt and heard a couple other voices – one of them she recognized as Officer Burnoe but the other she was unfamiliar with – but couldn't discern what any of them were talking about.
A minute passed and then Aunt Belinda emerged at the edge of the room. She cleared her throat and then seemed to pause, as if unsure of what to say next while Vera waited, looking at her expectantly.
"Vera, Officer Burnoe is here – from the other night," she added as if Vera wouldn't remember. "There's someone here with her, too. They just want to check up, ask a couple more things. Do you think you could speak to them for a moment? I can send them away if you're not up to it."
Vera bit her lower lip but nodded, and her aunt ushered her to come to the door. She was tired, and a part of her wanted to tell her aunt to send everyone away, just so she could have quiet the rest of her evening. But deep down Vera knew she such a thing was impossible. If the police had wanted to merely check up on her, they would have visited earlier in the day.
Which meant they had found something.
It was the only logical explanation, Vera told herself. From within her chest her heart began beating faster as she got up off the sofa and made her way to the front door, where Officer Burnoe stood quietly awaiting her with another woman.
Unlike Burnoe, the young woman beside her was thin and wore no uniform, dressed in a dark green collared blouse with a brown skirt that reached the tops of her knees. Her straight brown hair came to rest just below her shoulders and she held a burgundy purse tightly with both hands at her front. She was no officer – that much was obvious – but when Vera looked at her face she saw in her features the same expression she had seen in Thomas' mother the previous week.
This is the little girl's mother.
Vera didn't even need to ask for confirmation. The thought went through her mind as fast as the chill that ran down her spine. She hadn't expected this. What could she even say to the woman? The word 'sorry' sounded like nothing but an excuse, half-hearted and awkward.
"Um, Officer Burnoe, it's good to see you again," she nearly stumbled over her first words and already found herself subconsciously beginning to wring her hands together nervously.
"Miss Vera, you seem to be doing alright; you look better than you did the other day," the officer returned, seemingly oblivious to Vera's display of anxiety. "Thank you for agreeing to talk with us for a couple minutes; I know it's rather late to be visiting. This is Mrs. Connors," she gestured to the young woman beside her who greeted Vera with wide eyes and an uneven voice that matched her current temperament.
Vera managed to sound out a meek 'hello' in return and waited as Officer Burnoe went on.
"I apologize again for coming here so late, but we'll try not to take up too much of your time. Just a few questions to ask is all." When Vera gave her no indication of protest, she looked Mrs. Connors in the eye and gave her a supportive nod.
In silent understanding, the brunette turned her attention to her purse and began digging around for something within it as the officer continued to speak.
"I know the incident the other evening was… difficult, and you've probably had a great deal running through your head. I know you've probably got questions or at least want to know how things are going, which is one of the reasons we're here tonight. What officers we called to the scene couldn't find anything, neither in the immediate area nor farther downstream. After I dropped you off, we had some officers down at the station begin to go through some records of children who might have matched your description." She paused and gave a quick look to the brunette beside her. "Mrs. Connors came to us not long after that; she said her daughter was out playing earlier and hadn't come home –"
"We asked the neighbors and called some friends to ask if anyone had seen her," Mrs. Connors suddenly spoke up as if to ensure her side of the story was heard. "It was later in the day and my husband was working inside at the time while I was making dinner. We can't always keep an eye on her, but knows not to go out of sight of the house. She's a smart little girl, and knows to come inside when the weather gets bad like it did." Mrs. Connors spoke with a wavering voice, the words leaving her mouth in a rush as though she was trying to explain her thoughts out loud as she reasoned with them, not only for Vera's benefit, but for her own as well. "I thought she had come back in earlier, but perhaps it was only the storm outside that I heard. When I called her for dinner, she was nowhere to be found. I went to the police when neither we nor the neighbors found anything, and they told me what had happened with you earlier. It wasn't far from our house or neighborhood."
At last she seemed to find what she was looking for in her purse and with slightly trembling fingers held out several prints. "This – this is Jane."
Vera swallowed dryly, her ears nearly ringing with the sound of her own heart pumping as she outstretched her hand to take the photos.
"Is this the little girl that you saw?" The question nearly came out as a whisper from Mrs. Connor's lips.
Carefully Vera examined each of the prints, the backs of her eyes prickling as the face of the little girl from the previous evening smiled up at her, her skin a healthy rosy color and her brown hair tamed in the sunshine.
Vera felt her throat closing up the longer she looked at the pictures. Little Jane was the girl she had seen, but admitting it felt like the hardest thing in the world at that moment. Her thoughts flashed back to earlier in the evening when she had expressed her beliefs by indirectly stating that the child was dead. Not only did the present situation and words spoken now seem to rub salt on the still-raw wound, but they did everything but deny it as fact now.
Vera wanted to run away, hide, tell Mrs. Connors that she had never seen the child in the photographs; say that it was someone else – anything other than the truth that would most certainly destroy what ounce of hope the woman still held on to.
But she couldn't do that. Such a thing would be even crueler than admitting the honest truth – no matter how terrible.
Vera looked up to meet Mrs. Connors eyes before briefly flickering to the officer's and then back again. With hurt in her expression, she watched the woman's face crumble before her as she spoke. "I'm so sorry Mrs. Connors."
Tears poured down the young mother's face as her mouth opened to produce a cry. "Oh God, my little girl…" she broke down in a sob as Officer Burnoe quickly came to her aid with a supportive arm around her shoulder.
Vera felt the tears pooling in her own eyes as she perceived the painful display before her, torn between what she should do. She wanted to move Mrs. Connors side and embrace her, give her all the comfort she could to combat her grief, but at the same time, she felt it best she keep her distance, not being a good source of comfort as the bearer of the bad news. It would be like slapping someone without reason and then immediately acting friendly like the assault had never happened; the victim would find such behavior unacceptable and absurd.
Nevertheless, sniffling as she willed her tears to keep from falling, Vera threw aside her hesitation and came closer to place a hand lightly against Mrs. Connors shoulder in a gesture of sympathy, holding out the pictures of Jane with the other which the weeping woman took and clutched to her chest like a lifeline.
"I'm so sorry. For you and your husband…for everything," Vera spoke again, unable to think of anything else she could say, her words sounding more strained this time from withheld emotions.
Her words were met with the red, tear-stained face of Mrs. Connors. "My Jane is gone, and no one knows where. Why? Why do you not know?" The photos dropped to the floor with her purse as her hands suddenly shot up to grab desperately at Vera's shirt, some of the sadness in her voice replaced by anger as her brow furrowed. "You were with her, so how do you not know where she is?"
Vera's eyes widened at the unexpected action, and she reached up to take hold of the woman's wrists in an effort to get her to loosen her grip.
"Grace." Officer Burnoe uttered her name in a firm tone that suggested the woman maintain some sort of self-control over her actions.
"How can you be here, but not her?!" Mrs. Connors tugged firmly on Vera's shirt as she stood mute in place, as though dumb-struck by the woman's words. They were horrible in their accusations, but were they what she deserved? She wasn't sure.
The thoughts in her mind had been screaming at her for the past hour that everything was her fault in some way, that there had been something more she could have done, but there had still been a small voice among them that insisted she carried no blame because she had done everything she could to her utmost ability. Her head felt like a jumbled mess of guilt, grief, and anxiety. Did she still carry some responsibility for what happened? Is that how everyone else perceived things? And whether she did or did not, what now?
By this point she should have known better, Vera chided herself mentally. Things were always more complex than one desired and initially perceived. Whenever she thought she had something sorted, it would grow roots and branch out like a tree, firmly planting itself into her life and creating more aspects to figure out, more problems to drop down on her like inadequate fruit. This whole ordeal was certainly proving to be no exception, and Vera felt her anxieties piling up by the second – even without a specific thought or worry to fixate on. Life's a bitch, her head mocked.
"What did you with her? Tell me!" Mrs. Connors voice snapped Vera out of her thoughts, and she found the grieving mother's wide eyes looking somewhere below her eye line.
Glancing down, Vera saw the woman's actions had loosened her shirt collar to expose some of her skin, and she suddenly remembered the bruising on her neck Mrs. Peterson had pointed out earlier. As if on reflex, her hand shot up as though to hide the marks from Mrs. Connors' prying eyes. It was bad enough she was already being blamed by her for not saving Jane; Vera didn't need some thinly-veiled insinuation on top of that that she was the reason behind the child's disappearance as well.
"I don't know how I got them. It was at some point during the other night," she tried to placate the woman's steadily growing frantic demeanor, and shot Officer Burnoe a look that said she required assistance.
Rising to the occasion, Burnoe reached out to pull at Mrs. Connors' fingers, managing to loosen them. "Grace, please," she spoke again, pleading as she finally wrested the mother's hands from Vera's person, "you're in shock. I need you to let go of her. Take some deep breaths for me."
"But she was with my daughter," Mrs. Connors' voice grew weary with anguish. "You told me she had said she had Jane with her. Look at her neck – why would she have bruises there if she was saving my daughter? How do I know she didn't do something to her?!"
The poor woman now seemed to be bordering on hysteria, but Vera didn't miss the way Officer Burnoe briefly scanned the area of her neck as though there was now a slight inkling of doubt cast towards her. How could they think such a thing?
"Alright, Grace, alright," Officer Burnoe spoke again. "We'll get through this. You'll get through this," she added with emphasis. The arm that she had previously wrapped around the young woman now rubbed her back comfortingly, as Mrs. Connors now stood with arms crossed over her chest to clutch at her shoulders as though cold.
Still keeping an eye on the woman in case she decided to lash out again, Vera cautiously reached down and collected the photos scattered on the floor, quietly placing them within the dropped purse and handing them to the officer with a slight nod. "I'm so sorry," she repeated the words again quietly, shaking ever so slightly, feeling like a broken record that could say nothing else.
But Officer Burnoe simply shook her head. "I'm the one who should be apologizing." She threw a glance to the woman beside her who had resumed her crying. "I wasn't quite expecting… Please forgive her, she didn't mean all that. I'm sure you can imagine this is all very difficult for her."
"No; it's fine, it's fine. I understand her feelings," Vera said sadly, though she couldn't bring herself to look at Mrs. Connors. She wasn't sure if she spoke the words more for her own reassurance or Burnoe's.
