Chapter 34
Tress
Seventh Grade
It’s Lenore Usher who finally picks me up.
“Tress?” My aunt calls, rolling down the passenger-side window.
I climb in, dripping all over. “Sorry,” I say, pulling my wet clothes away from my skin.
“Sorry,” I say again when I notice a huge clod of mud I dragged into the car. Lenore has that effect on people; you just start apologizing to her, even if you don’t know what you did wrong. Because she makes you feel like you definitely did something.
I glance at her, but she’s not looking at me, or the mess I’m making in her car. She’s focused on the road, staring over the wheel as we climb into the hills.
“I missed the bus,” I say, even though she didn’t ask.
“Cecil didn’t notice?”
I shake my head. She doesn’t call him Dad or your grandpa. He’s just Cecil. Feels about right. “No, ma’am, Cecil didn’t notice.”
I don’t call anybody ma’am. Not Mrs. Anho, not my science teacher, not Cindy the pity librarian. But it pops out around Lenore Usher, probably because that’s what Ribbit calls her. Not Mom. Which, if I really think about it, kind of makes sense. He’s been following her around since he could walk, going to council meetings and committee gatherings, where everybody else made damn sure to call her ma’am.
It was probably Ribbit’s first word.
Mine was mama. I know that. It’s written in my baby book, the one I hide under my mattress because I don’t want Cecil to know that I kept it. He calls sentimental things senti-shit-all.
We drive past the Usher house, looming out of the storm, a fresh wound in the side where a rock fell away. Lenore pulls into our driveway, some gravel spinning out from under her tires. She puts the car in park, lets the engine idle. Zee brays his welcome, his upper half sticking out from his barn door. Goldie-Dog runs up to the car, despite the rain, jumping onto the passenger side and leaving a muddy paw smear across the window when she slides off.
“Sorry,” I say to Lenore, but she only nods, and suddenly I’m tired of apologizing to her. I’m tired of pity smiles and being told to try harder. I’m tired of not knowing what the hell happened.
“What happened to my parents?” I ask Lenore.
Goldie jumps again, not understanding why I haven’t gotten out yet, leaving a second smear. I don’t apologize for that one. I sit in my aunt’s car, rain streaming off me.
“What happened to them?” I ask again.
She flexes her jaw, small muscles jumping as she turns to me. Her eyes are bright, little pinpricks of light dancing off the tears that rest there, refusing to fall.
“I’m sorry, Tress,” she says, another apology filling the air. “I’m sorry, but nobody knows.”
I don’t thank her, for the ride, or the condolences. I slam the door when I get out, Goldie on my heels as I tromp to the trailer, shutting the door in her face because Cecil won’t let her in, even though he lets raccoons and possums and once a muskrat, wander on in. I kick off my boots at the door and mud flies, sticking to the wall above the couch, where Cecil lies, unconscious.
Turns out my effort of trying harder has revealed that nobody knows any more than I do. Which is approximately nothing. I flop onto my bed, the stale smell of the bare mattress rising around me as I stare at my palm, where I etched the hotline from the Amontillado Alerter to call if I have information about the disappearance of Lee and Annabelle Montor.
I don’t have information. I don’t know shit. But it’s the only thing my afternoon of research dug up, so I dial it, broken-off fingernails tapping against my cell screen. There’s a series of clicks, and then an automated voice informs me that the number I have dialed is no longer in service. I’m instructed to hang up, confirm the number I’m attempting to reach, and try again.
Try harder.
I can’t. I’m thirteen years old, and I don’t have parents, and I don’t know what to ask or who to talk to and maybe they left me or maybe they died but either way I’m alone and listening to a dial tone, when suddenly there’s a voice.
“Amontillado Police Department, Officer Riley.”
That’s it. A succession of two facts—something that was so hard to come by before that I don’t know what to do. My throat closes, and all the words reverse, back down into my belly, like a hard little ball.
“Officer Riley,” he says again, and I’ve lived with a drunk long enough to recognize the slight slur on officer, the intense concentration that has gone into pronouncing it correctly. Almost correctly. For some reason, it’s comforting. I don’t know what I would have done if a crisp, clean, succinct voice had answered. Probably hung up in the face of someone who has their shit together. Officer Riley doesn’t.
And I get that.
“I was calling the hotline about the Montor disappearance,” I say.
“Yeah that gets forwarded here now,” he says. I imagine here as a tiny office, badly lit, Officer Riley riding out the last few years before retirement behind a desk with a drawer that has a bottle in it.
Riley . . . I do what everyone in Amontillado does—run his last name through a checklist. I’ve heard it before, and there are plenty of tombstones with that name on it in the cemetery. But they aren’t big stones, and they aren’t capped off with weeping angels or other signs of wealth or power following the deceased Riley into the afterlife.
The Montors don’t have stones at all—we’ve got a big-ass mausoleum that one of our ancestors built by hand, dragging the stones in from the fields. There is some comfort in knowing that when I die, my body will go to a better place than the one I live in now.
I draw myself up, straightening my shoulders, and inject some pride into my voice.
“I’m calling about the disappearance,” I say.
“Yeah, you know something?”
“No,” I say. “But I’m Tress Montor, and I want to know what happened to my parents.”
There’s a moment of silence, followed by a guttural laugh. I imagine Officer Riley’s belly giggling behind his desk, and picture the bottle coming out of the drawer. Sure enough, I hear a soft gurgle in the background, Riley pouring himself some confidence.
“Yeah, you’re a Montor all right,” he says. “Got some stones, calling in. You’re what . . . eleven, twelve?”
“Thirteen,” I say tightly.
“Oh, thirteen,” he says. “Pardon me. Well, listen, kid—”
“Tress,” I say, and I hear him take a drink, the swallow wet in my ear.
“Tress,” he repeats, this time without the edge. “All right, Tress Montor. Listen—and I mean it—you listen to me, now. Your mom and dad fell off the grid. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Like nobody has heard from them?”
“Heard from them or seen them, sure. But it’s more than that, kid—sorry, Tress. They made no calls, made no purchases, after that night. The last cell signal from either of their phones came from near that bridge—you know which one I mean?”
Of course I do. It’s the one around the corner from our old house, at the bottom of the hill. The one Felicity and I sang about going over the river and through the woods to our best friend’s house. It’s where the police—maybe even Officer Riley—found Felicity. It’s at the edge of town . . . right where something starts turning into nothing.