• • •
Outside the interrogation room, Judy’s whole body goes limp. It takes all of her strength not to let herself sink to the floor.
“All right there?” asks Goldman, concerned.
“I could have gotten him to say it,” says Judy. “I could have done it.”
“I know,” says Goldman, consoling her. “I do. They just—weren’t certain if what he was saying was useful anymore.”
“I could have gotten there,” says Judy.
He raises a hand as if to pat her back, and then thinks better of it. Clears his throat.
On the other side of the two-way mirror, now, Judy watches as Jacob Sluiter angles himself away from Hayes and LaRochelle. As he folds his arms, like a petulant child, over his torso, even as the investigators begin to speak.
Louise
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Four
Since Louise returned home yesterday, her brother Jesse has been nowhere to be found.
Louise’s mother doesn’t have a clue where he might be.
“How long has he been gone?” Louise asks, increasingly panicky.
“Oh,” her mother says, “no more than a day. I think I seen him in the kitchen yesterday.”
He’s eleven, Louise wants to say. But if she has to live with her mother for a time, she’s going to do everything she can to keep the peace, to keep herself calm by simply not engaging.
• • •
At noon, just as Louise is finally about to walk to the center of town to inquire there, Jesse walks through the front door, stopping short when he sees her in the kitchen.
“Where were you?” Louise asks him—willing herself to speak calmly.
“At my friend’s house.”
“What friend?”
“Neil. You don’t know him.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I did!” says Jesse, indignant. “I told Mom. I told her Neil’s mom’d pick me up and drop me off, too.”
Louise stares at him. Without shifting her gaze, she calls into the other room: “Mom, did you know Jesse was at his friend Neil’s last night?”
A pause.
“I guess I did know that,” says her mother.
Louise drops her head. Jesse grins in satisfaction.
“I’m sorry,” says Louise. “I worry about you.”
“I know you do,” says Jesse.
She opens her arms, and he walks uncertainly toward her.
When she was fourteen and he was three, she held him just like this: his face, turned sideways, on her shoulder. The weight of him draped over her. Today he is taller than she is, for the first time, but still he finds a way to relax his bones and muscles onto her bones and muscles, and for a moment—before he comes back to himself—the two of them breathe like that, unselfconsciously.
“Jesse,” she says. “Don’t get anyone pregnant.”
“Stop,” he says.
Then he stands up straight.
“You’re home?” Jesse asks her.
“For now.”
• • •
The two of them watch TV with their mother. Kojak: a show that Jesse loves.
At a certain point, both Jesse and her mother fall asleep, and Louise makes her way back into the kitchen, where she opens a cabinet. Yesterday, she noted with some satisfaction that Jesse had done what she asked him to do on the phone. He got some provisions. He’s growing up.
She’s dipping a spoon into a jar of Cheese Whiz when a knock comes at the door.
