Christopher Bohjalian - The Double Bind

“Who were you calling?” he asked.

“ Laurel ’s home on Long Island. I got her mom’s machine.”

“You thought Laurel might already be there?”

“No. I thought she might be lying about her mother. I almost expected her mom to pick up.”

“But she didn’t.”

“That’s right.”

“So she might really be in the hospital.”

“Maybe,” Talia said, and then she beelined for Laurel ’s bedroom. He followed her.

“What are you looking for?” he asked. “Anything specific?”

“Not really.”

He wanted to do something, but he felt it would be a violation to open Laurel ’s drawers. And so he was standing uselessly in the doorway with his hands on his hips when she waved her index finger in the air and opened Laurel ’s closet. She rolled onto the floor a piece of black American Tourister luggage, the biggest size an airline might allow in the overhead bin. “This is interesting: She didn’t take her suitcase. She doesn’t expect to be gone very long.”

Then she opened the bottom drawer of the dresser in the bedroom and started pulling aside Laurel ’s sweaters. She held up her roommate’s checkbook and flipped to the last page of the register. “She didn’t take this, either,” she said.

“Then do we know for certain she’s really left?” he asked.

“No,” she said slowly, seeming to consider this possibility. “Maybe we don’t.” Then they stood there, more like helpless children than young adults, completely unsure what they should or could do next.

KATHERINE MAGUIRE’S meeting with the BEDS development committee had been long and hard and had left her on the verge of despair. The number of people-men and women and families-approaching the shelter was climbing, just as the federal government had slashed programs so severely that they were going to lose $145,000 in the coming year. They were likely to lose as well at least 740 housing subsidies, the result of the government evisceration of the HUD program that provided them. And the cost of oil in the coming winter was expected to skyrocket.

She sat back in her chair after hanging up the phone with the shelter’s city attorney and decided that she probably wouldn’t like this woman from Long Island if they ever met face-to-face. Pamela Buchanan Marshfield certainly wasn’t a guardian angel, descending upon the shelter when it was most in need. She was only making this offer now because her attempts to bully the group had failed. But the timing? Remarkable. It was as if she had known. Katherine had returned from the development committee meeting wondering how they could possibly raise enough money in the short term from the private sector to replace what they were losing in government support. And then, out of the blue, there came this offer from her lawyer.

The BEDS attorney, Chris Fricke, had assured Katherine that the municipality would sell the Crocker collection to the shelter for a dollar, which would then allow them to give it to the Long Island woman. After, of course, she had made her donation. One hundred thousand dollars.

Katherine understood that initially Laurel would be furious. The young social worker would feel personally betrayed, and she would insist that the organization was doing exactly the opposite of what one of their clients would have wanted. But Katherine thought that eventually she would come around. After all, half the time Bobbie himself hadn’t known what he wanted. And she had to believe that Bobbie would have been happy to see BEDS making so much money off his work. He would have been thrilled!

Moreover, it was certainly in Laurel ’s best interest to get her away from those photographs. Even if this wealthy dowager hadn’t offered to make this contribution to the shelter, Katherine was planning to insist that Laurel turn over the materials and give up on the project. She’d done enough. She’d done more than enough. It was time to let it go.

Of course, Katherine wasn’t sure how to tell her this. Or how even to get the photos back. It was while she had been on the phone with Chris Fricke, simultaneously going through the papers that had appeared on her desk like mushrooms in a wet summer, that she had found the note Laurel had left: Apparently, her young caseworker had gone home to care for her mother.

At least that was what she had written.

PATIENT 29873

Clearly sees far more in the photos than is there. The snapshots, too. Tomorrow I need to examine the collection-all the images-and explore this avenue further.

Patient still writing six and seven hours a day in those notebooks.

From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,

attending psychiatrist,

Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, Vermont

L AUREL KNEW they were looking for her. She knew they were all looking for her. She finally had to shut off her cell phone when she wasn’t calling the prison or the Department of Crime Victim Services, because it never ceased ringing. Eventually, they would stop trying her and they would phone her mother. That was clear. And that would be fine, because her mother was in Italy. But would they finally try to reach her sister? Talia certainly might. And if her roommate reached Carol, they would all realize that she had lied to them, and they would grow convinced beyond doubt-her family, too-that she was losing her grip. Without even meaning to assist Pamela Marshfield, they would help the old crone. They would find her and they would confiscate the photographs. Bobbie’s photographs. Her photographs. They would give them to the woman.

And so she understood how little time she had. Consequently, she checked into a motel outside of Burlington, where she showered and washed her hair for the first time in days. She bought a new blouse and new slacks. She wore perfume. She donned sunglasses so no one could see she’d been crying. Again.

Then she was back in her car, shuttling between the different bureaucracies in Burlington and Waterbury to expedite her hearing with Dan Corbett. She had been told at first that it would take days to set it up-perhaps even weeks-but she was persistent, and then she got lucky. She got a surprise. It seemed that Corbett had written her a letter of apology. He had begun the mandatory sex offender counseling program the year before, and as a part of his victim empathy group he was required to pen a note to the person he had injured that expressed his remorse. Usually, the victims never saw these letters, because they wanted nothing to do with their assailants. But here was Laurel, so desperate to see him that she wanted to come to the prison in person. And she would read whatever it was he had written.

Why not? she thought. She already knew better than anyone what had occurred up in Underhill. Perhaps his note would reveal something about his childhood. Whether he had ever had a father in his life. How he had wound up on that dirt road seven years ago. How Bobbie Crocker had.

Perhaps, she told Dan Corbett’s prison therapist on the phone, her willingness to receive this letter would help the man with his own healing. His own recovery. His own eventual return to the world.

She didn’t quite believe that, of course.

Moreover, she never wanted Dan Corbett returned to the world: She wanted him kept right where he was.

But she was going to say what she needed to expedite that hearing. Nothing else mattered with the clock ticking ever more quickly, and ever more people behind her.

MONDAY AFTERNOON, Whit heard the sounds of a small crowd gathering in the apartment across the hall. It was a little before three. He opened the door, and there was Talia talking to a pair of women older than either of them in the hallway.