Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You

“Someone could have gotten in. I put that chain on for a reason.” Nath tiptoes into the doorway, but his parents — Marilyn bent over the sink, James hunched in his chair — don’t look up. On the far side of the table, Hannah squirms over her toast and milk. I’m sorry, she thinks, as hard as she can. I forgot the chain. I’m sorry I’m sorry. Her parents don’t notice. In fact, they act as if she isn’t even there.

Silence for a long moment. Then James says, “You really think a chain on the door would have changed anything?”

Marilyn clunks her teacup hard against the counter. “She would never have gone out on her own. I know she wouldn’t. Sneaking out in the middle of the night? My Lydia? Never.” She wrings the china with both hands. “Someone took her out there. Some nutcase.”

James sighs, a deep trembling sigh, as if he’s struggling to lift a very heavy weight. For the past three weeks Marilyn has been saying things like this. The morning after the funeral he woke up just after sunrise and everything came rushing back to him — the glossy casket, Louisa’s skin slick against his, the soft little moan she had made as he climbed atop her — and he suddenly felt grimy, as if he were caked with mud. He turned the shower on hot, so hot he couldn’t stand still beneath it and had to keep turning, like something on a spit, offering the steaming spray a new patch of flesh again and again. It hadn’t helped. And when he came out of the bathroom, a faint scratching noise led him to the bottom of the stairs, where Marilyn was installing the chain on the front door.

He had wanted to say what had been growing in his mind for days: what had happened to Lydia was nothing they could lock out or scare away. Then the look on Marilyn’s face stopped him: sad, and frightened, but angry too, as if he were to blame for something. For a moment she seemed like a different woman, a stranger. He had swallowed hard and touched his collar, buttoning it over his throat. “Well,” he said, “I’m going in to school. My summer class.” When he leaned in to kiss her, she flinched away as if his touch burned. On the front porch, the paperboy had deposited a newspaper. Local Family Lays Daughter to Rest.

He still has it locked in the bottom drawer of his desk. As one of only two Orientals at Middlewood High — the other being her brother, Nathan — Lee stood out in the halls. However, few seemed to have known her well. Every day since then, there have been more articles: any death is a sensation in a small town, but the death of a young girl is a journalistic gold mine. Police Still Searching for Clues in Girl’s Death. Suicide Likely Possibility, Investigators Say. Each time he sees one, he folds the newsprint over itself, as if wrapping up something rotten, before Marilyn or the children spot it. Only in the safety of his office does he unroll the paper to read it carefully. Then he adds it to the growing stack in the locked drawer.

Now he bows his head. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Marilyn bristles. “What are you suggesting?”

Before James can answer, the doorbell rings. It is the police, and as the two officers step into the kitchen, Nath and Hannah simultaneously let out their breaths. At last their parents will stop arguing.

“We just wanted to give you folks an update,” says the older one — Officer Fiske, Nath remembers. He pulls a notebook from his pocket and nudges his glasses up with a stubby finger. “Everyone at the station is truly sorry for your loss. We just want to find out what happened.”

“Of course, officer,” James murmurs.

“We’ve spoken to the people you listed.” Officer Fiske consults his notebook. “Karen Adler, Pam Saunders, Shelley Brierley — they all said they barely knew her.”

Hannah watches redness spread across her father’s face, like a rash.

“We’ve talked to a number of Lydia’s classmates and teachers as well. From what we can tell, she didn’t have many friends.” Officer Fiske looks up. “Would you say Lydia was a lonely girl?”

“Lonely?” James glances at his wife, then — for the first time that morning — at his son. As one of only two Orientals at Middlewood High — the other being her brother, Nathan — Lee stood out in the halls . He knows that feeling: all those faces, fish-pale and silent and staring. He had tried to tell himself that Lydia was different, that all those friends made her just one of the crowd. “Lonely,” he says again, slowly. “She did spend a lot of time alone.”

“She was so busy,” Marilyn interrupts. “She worked very hard in her classes. A lot of homework to do. A lot of studying.” She looks earnestly from one policeman to the other, as if afraid they won’t believe her. “She was very smart.”

“Did she seem sad at all, these past few weeks?” the younger officer asks. “Did she ever give any sign she might want to hurt herself? Or—”

Marilyn doesn’t even wait for him to finish. “Lydia was very happy. She loved school. She could have done anything. She’d never go out in that boat by herself.” Her hands start to shake, and she clutches the teacup again, trying to keep them steady — so tightly Hannah thinks she might squeeze it to pieces. “Why aren’t you looking for whoever took her out there?”

“There’s no evidence of anyone else in the boat with her,” says Officer Fiske. “Or on the dock.”

“How can you tell?” Marilyn insists. “My Lydia would never have gone out in a boat alone.” Tea sloshes onto the counter. “You just never know, these days, who’s waiting around the corner for you.”

“Marilyn,” James says.

“Read the paper. There are psychos everywhere these days, kidnapping people, shooting them. Raping them. What does it take for the police to start tracking them down?”

“Marilyn,” James says again, louder this time.

“We’re looking into all possibilities,” Officer Fiske says gently.

“We know you are,” says James. “You’re doing all you can. Thank you.” He glances at Marilyn. “We can’t ask for more than that.” Marilyn opens her mouth again, then closes it without a word.

The policemen glance at each other. Then the younger one says, “We’d like to ask Nathan a few more questions, if that’s okay. Alone.”

Five faces swivel toward Nath, and his cheeks go hot. “Me?”

“Just a couple of follow-ups,” says Officer Fiske. He puts his hand on Nath’s shoulder. “Maybe we can just step out onto the front porch.”

When Officer Fiske has shut the front door behind them, Nath props himself against the railing. Under his palms, a few shreds of paint work loose and flutter to the porch floor. He has been wrestling with the idea of calling the police himself, of telling them about Jack and how he must be responsible. In another town, or another time, they might have shared Nath’s suspicions already. Or if Lydia herself had been different: a Shelley Brierley, a Pam Saunders, a Karen Adler, a normal teenage girl, a girl they understood. The police might have looked at Jack more closely, pieced together a history of small complaints: teachers protesting graffitied desks and insolent remarks, other brothers taking umbrage at his liberties with their sisters. They might have listened to Nath’s complaints— after school all spring every day —and come to similar conclusions. A girl and a boy, so much time together, alone — it would not be so hard to understand, after all, why Nath eyed Jack so closely and bitterly. They, like Nath, might have found suspicious signs in everything Jack has ever said or done.

But they won’t. It complicates the story, and the story — as it emerges from the teachers and the kids at school — is so obvious. Lydia’s quietness, her lack of friends. Her recent sinking grades. And, in truth, the strangeness of her family. A family with no friends, a family of misfits. All this shines so brightly that, in the eyes of the police, Jack falls into shadow. A girl like that and a boy like him, who can have — does have — any girl he wants? It is impossible for them to imagine what Nath knows to be true, let alone what he himself imagines. To his men, Officer Fiske often says, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” Nath, they would have said, is only hysterical. Hearing zebras everywhere. Now, face-to-face with the police, Nath can see that there is no point in mentioning Jack at all: they have already decided who is to blame.