Laura Lippman: What The Dead Know

Just thirty years , Sunny wanted to say. Thirty years and an oil slick on a highway.

Instead she chose something simpler, something she knew her mother could understand, a need that her mother, any mother, could meet. Like Max in Where the Wild Things Are , she had tired of the wild rumpus, sailed home, and taken off her wolf suit. She wanted to be where someone loved her best, even if she believed she had long ago forfeited her right to that unconditional devotion.

“I am hungry,” she said. “Planes don’t serve real meals anymore, not in coach, but then, I haven’t been on a plane since I went to Ottawa with you, when I was a little girl.” A flash of Heather and her in their matching dresses, Sunny smeared from their shared package of M & M’s, Heather impeccable and fastidious, the two of them forever the female versions of Goofus and Gallant. Hell, Heather had even known Tony was a creep, the first time she ever saw him. At eleven going on twelve, she was far wiser than her fifteen-year-old sister. “Can we go somewhere to eat?”

The two women linked arms and walked out into the bright, chaotic street, where Javier had to shout to be heard above a passing bus. Sunny couldn’t begin to make sense of the words, but based on his elaborate gestures, Javier seemed to be insisting that they looked so much alike, that they were so beautiful, the mother and daughter, together at last. He locked his own fingers, pantomiming their connectedness, and Sunny was reminded of those straw tubes one found at carnivals, the way your fingers got caught if you fought the tube too hard.

She met his gaze, no longer scared of his face now that she knew where the hole was, what was missing there. If only she could so readily show the world what was missing in her. Who would avert their eyes from her face, who would be unable to look at her straight on?

“ Gracias ,” she said, then remembered the most important word that anyone can hear, what had meant so much to her, even when it was false and unearned, wholly wrong. In pretending to be Heather, Sunny had managed to bring Heather back to life, complete with all her maddening confidence, and that was one thing she could never regret. Of all the people she had ever been, or ever would be, Heather Bethany was her favorite. “ Gracias , Javier.”

On Opening Day 2005, I was with a group of friends headed to the Washington Nationals game, forty-somethings who had all grown up in the Baltimore and Washington area. As we passed Wheaton Plaza, the boisterous conversation stopped abruptly and we turned to look at one another.

“Do you remember-” someone began. We all did. We had been teenagers when two sisters, Shelia and Katherine Lyon, disappeared from the area around Wheaton Plaza on March 25, 1975. The mystery of their disappearance has never been solved. They left behind their parents and two brothers, a family that bears no resemblance to the Bethany family. So why did I choose a date four days later for this wholly fictional story about two missing sisters?

It wasn’t my initial intent. Although I needed to set the action of this story on an Easter weekend, I thought I could use any year in the mid-1970s as the backdrop. But after reading newspapers from that era, it turned out that 1975 best suited the story I wanted to tell. I would be remiss if I did not make it clear that this novel has nothing to do with the Lyon family’s tragedy. But I would be disingenuous if I didn’t acknowledge the similarity in the dates.

It should be implicit that a writer’s publishing house is always key to these enterprises, but my editor, Carrie Feron, and her assistant, Tessa Woodward, really went above and beyond on this book, with the full support of everyone at Morrow and Avon-including Lisa Gallagher, Lynn Grady, Liate Stehlik, and Sharyn Rosenblum. A special shout-out to the men and women at the HarperCollins distribution center in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for the cake and the company, both exquisite.

Technical advice/hand-holding was provided by Vicky Bijur, David Simon, Jan Burke, Theo Lippman Jr., Madeline Lippman, Susan Seegar, Alison Gaylin, Donald Worden, Joan Jacobson, Linda Perlstein, Marcie Lovell, Bill Toohey, Duane Swierczynski, Sarah Weinman, Joe Wallace, James R. Winter, and many of the contributors to the Memory Project, who were generous with their recollections of 1975. I’m also grateful to the Enoch Pratt Free Library for its very accessible microfiche files of local newspapers-and to Kristine Zornig of the Maryland Room. A word to the nitpickers out there: Please remember that movies were often rereleased into theaters, especially after winning Academy Awards, so, yes, Chinatown was at Security Square Cinema in 1975 and the The Sound of Music was playing at a downtown theater when the blizzard of 1966 hit. As for Southern readers, another plea: I have nothing but affection for Brunswick, Georgia. It is, after all, my father’s birthplace. The less-than-complimentary descriptions of Brunswick come from Kevin Infante, a Yankee detective having a very bad day. Myself, I’m quite partial to the area, which I visit every spring.

The book is dedicated to two women who have provided support and friendship from my earliest days as a novelist. Fittingly, Fellows is a teacher and Norris is a librarian. But they are, first and foremost, passionate readers. In singling them out, I am really dedicating this book to all readers.

Laura Lippman is a reporter and lives in Baltimore.