Chapter 19 Sidney

CHAPTER 19 SIDNEY

2000

Plattsburgh to Bolton Landing

My piano teacher once asked me if I could feel the music. I was at her house—on her piano. She was sitting facing me. I loved playing. Every note corresponded to a movement. Instant feedback about whether I’d done it right. I usually had. But I didn’t know what her question meant—did I feel the music? When I said nothing, she said, “What I’m wondering is, do you have an emotional experience when you play?”

She had played with the Boston Pops. A local big-deal lady in our Vermont town. She wore only these flowy dresses and chunky necklaces that made no sense to me, so it wasn’t odd that her question didn’t, either. Sure, I could feel the emotion of the music, I just didn’t find that part interesting. For me, playing piano was the satisfaction of repetition and practice. I liked hitting a button and seeing the correct letter appear—like a typewriter. Which is what I said to her. That had clearly been the wrong answer; she slowly stopped answering my mom’s calls to schedule lessons.

Maybe this helps explain why I went to Bolton Landing, because if I didn’t have “it”—whatever “it” was—then I needed to compensate. I needed to overprepare. And also, a lawyer must have as full an understanding as possible. That night in the café, Cass seemed to purge herself of the full story—that she’d left her best friend, Amanda, broken in a pool, that her real name was Anne Marie Callahan. But the best lawyers don’t just have the same information as their clients; they have more.

I told Cass I was spending the three-day weekend with my family in Burlington. Instead, I drove to her hometown. I’d already started planning her future. And what she needed to truly escape her past was a stalwart representative (read: me) who could see every angle and block all incoming traffic before reaching her.

Which is why I needed to know.

The car ride to Bolton was ninety minutes, almost all highway, and I soon found myself pulling into a Stewart’s just outside town so that I could get my bearings. My first stop was going to be the Bolton Central School office, where I would introduce myself as a new state university hire—a recruiter made the most sense, but I’d play it by ear. A few questions was all I needed to ask. Just tiptoe into an understanding of the town, its people, how it operated, and go from there.

The office was just inside the main entrance, and I poked my head in with a casual hello. I was wearing pleated, high-waisted khaki pants and a blue button-down, because that seemed like what someone holding my position (college recruiter?) would wear. The woman behind the front desk had brown frizzy hair and I could picture the salon she went to, an unattached white building on the side of the road with those glossy photos of permed women in the window. She saw me enter and gave me the thinnest of smiles.

And then I was surprising myself by saying, “Hi, I’m Sophia…”—the lie just appeared on my tongue without forethought—“I’m with SUNY Plattsburgh, the theater department. I was recently hired as a recruiter.”

Mmhmm , was all the woman responded with, which was a-okay with me because her full attention, her committing my details to memory, was actually the opposite of what I needed. Temporary access—that’s all I was going for.

“I was hoping for a few minutes with the drama teacher, to tell her about our program,” I heard myself saying. Smart , I was thinking, just go right to the source. Cass had mentioned that she and Amanda were the leads in all the school plays; she hadn’t said much else about the experience, except their future plans to go to Hollywood.

“Him,” the woman said, looking up.

“What’s that?” I was standing now with my hands on the welcome desk, about waist height.

“It’s a him, the drama teacher—Mr. Riley.” She really was barely looking at me, multitasking, with much more focus on whatever was happening on her computer. Without looking away from the screen, she was pointing over and behind her, saying, “He’s probably in his office behind the theater, down the hall, through the double doors, and it’s on the right.”

“Thank you,” I said, backing out of the office. I’d been expecting more hoops to jump through, but this was going to make my life easier.

Mr. Riley was, in fact, in his office. The black door was halfway open—a Twelfth Night poster taped to the front. Before knocking I paused and looked at the date of the performance—it was the previous autumn, which made me smile because no doubt Cass had appeared in the play. Then the poster was starting to fall, and I lunged forward to pin it to the door, and the noise caught Mr. Riley’s attention and then he was standing, helping me and saying, “This thing just won’t stay up, maybe I should get stronger tape.” He was using tan masking tape, which was really just like using hope, but I kept quiet about it.

“Must have been a great performance,” I said, tapping my finger against the poster.

“Oh goodness.” He brought his hand over his heart in a dramatic flourish. “The story behind that play—you wouldn’t believe it even if I told you. I’m Richard Riley, by the way. How can I help you?”

What a great name , I thought. He was an unexpected figure for a small-town drama teacher. I’d imagined a middle-aged woman who’d watched a lot of movies, but Richard Riley was really playing the part in a black turtleneck and gray ascot and well-tended salt-and-pepper beard. He seemed like someone who’d actually worked on Broadway.

“I’m Sally Carver,” I was now saying—the lie spontaneous. In the split second before I was speaking, I realized I could get better information, and faster, if I pivoted away from being a college recruiter. “I work for a research firm down in the city and we’ve been hired to… put together a database, kind of like a census, of high school drama programs—for state budget purposes.”

I was obviously constructing this reality as I went, each stepping-stone appearing as I was speaking, but the idea of being from a “research firm” felt vague enough and “budget purposes” serious enough that Mr. Riley would comply, and on the off chance he tried, it would make it difficult to track me down after the fact.

“And you’re doing all that in person?”

“Oh, no, no, of course not—my sister, she, she lives in the town over,” I said. Gosh, I was good at this. “So coming here, it’s an excuse to expense a little trip home.” I brought my finger to my lips and raised my eyebrows. He chuckled and brought his thumb and pointer to his mouth and pulled across, indicating my secret was safe with him. Now I had his trust.

He pulled out a folding chair he kept tucked away, then I asked him every bureaucratic question I could think of—participation numbers, attendance, budgets, promotion, process, all of it. Mr. Riley took the questions seriously, pulling out a binder at one point to confirm some numbers. I had a notebook in my bag, and I jotted down everything he told me. At one point, I forgot that the whole thing was an act because I really wanted to know the answers to what I was asking. If someone hadn’t put this database together, they absolutely should. Then I closed my notebook, signaling the work part was over, and glanced back at the Twelfth Night poster taped to the door. His eyes followed mine.

“Okay, so, now can I hear the story behind that play?”

Transparently: I was fucking impressed with myself. Sitting there, just a few feet from him, my question felt perfectly natural. Not nosy. Or too prying. Who could resist following up on some local drama, especially when the idea of that drama had been introduced by someone else—in this case, Richard Riley himself! Maybe Cass didn’t want the truth, but I wanted every drop of it.

He leaned back and interlaced his hands behind his head, shaking it in disbelief. “It’s heartbreaking,” he began, then paused. Before continuing, he pointed to the poster. “That was the final play starring, probably, the two best kids I ever worked with here. They’d been the leads every year, and they were best friends, basically inseparable. We’d even talk about it in the teachers’ lounge, always just the two of them and no one else. Sally, I even chose plays based on what would best fit them; never did that before in my teaching career. I was absolutely convinced they were going to make it big.”

“Wow,” I said—a quick verbal cue that I hoped would keep him talking.

“I know,” he said, then he suddenly got up and walked to the door, peeking his head one way then the other before pulling the door closed. “Town is still torn up about the whole thing,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “Anyway, so the two of them, they both had that ‘it’ factor, as they say, but one was a verifiable star and the other was riding the coattails just a tiny little bit.” Here he pressed his fingers together and squinted to illustrate the slight, but not insignificant, difference in talent between the two girls. (Which was Cass, which was Amanda?—a question I wanted to ask but couldn’t.)

“But that’s beside the point,” he said. “And I don’t want to keep you. No doubt you want to get back to your sister.”

My sister, my sister, my sis—I’d almost forgotten about her! But I recovered and said, “Oh, no, I have a few minutes. What happened?” Injecting those two words with just the right amount of curiosity was the game, and I nailed it.

“It’s just the craziest thing,” he said. “Just a month or so ago, one of the girls rushes into the Big 8—this beaten-up motel down the road—and calls 911, right? Tells them to get to Hideaway Island immediately, tells them her friend is hurt, tells them where, the whole bit. Of course, they rush help out there, find the girl exactly where they were told she would be, get her to the hospital.”

Like a true performer, he stopped there—end of Act I, quick intermission, everyone catches their breath.

“Okay,” I said, and I drew out the word like it was an invitation to continue.

“Okay, so,” he reset. “One girl is in the hospital, but the other—the one who made the call?— POOF! ” He brought his hands together and mushroomed them out. “Gone. Nowhere to be found, just disappeared.”

Cass.

“Just… gone?” I said, feigning shock, because it felt like what someone hearing this for the first time would say and do.

“Nobody, not even her mom—though, to be fair, she was never winning any Mom of the Year awards—has heard from her since. Vanished.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Mr. Riley tossed his hands in bewilderment, said, “Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve heard every possible theory whispered around town; they’re saying she tried to kill her friend, then fled when it didn’t work, which I don’t believe for a second. They loved each other. And also, then why would she call 911? I’ve even heard some people say that the island is haunted, and she probably drowned trying to get back. Honestly, it’s a mystery.”

Loved each other? I thought.

“What do the police think?”

“No clue. They’d very much like to talk to her, of course, but because her friend didn’t die, it’s just an unfortunate accident in their mind.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “So, the other girl, she’s alive?”

“Yes, Amanda. But paralyzed from the waist down. Absolutely tragic.” He looked again at the Twelfth Night poster and said, “Shakespearean, the whole thing.”