The Girl I Used to Be Page 2

  My dad’s dark blond hair is a little too long. Shirtless, he sits on the blanket next to my mom, with one arm slung around her waist. The fingers of his other hand curl around my small shoulder.

  When I first found this photo online, it made me shudder. My father’s hands looked possessive, like he could dictate anything, including whether we lived or died.

  The photo hasn’t changed, but I have. My chest hurts.

  Now I see nothing but love, or an attempt at love, in the way he touches us. He was trying to do the right things: act like a family, pose for a vacation photo, search for a Christmas tree in a forest. I don’t know if he did it for me, my mom, or himself, but still, he tried. I do know he was raised by his dad after his mom died, just like my mom was raised by her mom after her parents divorced. Neither of them really knowing how to make a whole family.

  I look at their faces and wonder: Did one of them have to watch the other die? My head fills with water.

  I click to resume the clip. Walsh says, “Family members say it’s totally out of character for Weeks and Benson to just disappear. So please, if you know anything, call 1-800-CRIMETV.”

  A day after the show aired, the foster mom took me to a doctor for a scratch on my face that had become infected. The nurse thought I looked familiar. The police asked my grandmother to drive up, and she identified me.

  Which is about the point where the second America’s Most Wanted picks up.

  Walsh says, “When we showed you the photo of Terry Weeks, Naomi Benson, and their daughter, Ariel, you helped us locate the missing little girl. She was found at a Walmart three hours north of where authorities were looking for her family. Little Ariel was hungry and dirty, and her face was scratched. And her parents were nowhere to be found.” He raises his eyebrows. “For now, Ariel is living with her grandmother.”

  The camera cuts away to a face I do remember: Grandma. Wearing a purple sweatshirt, she says to the camera, “When I walked into the room, Ariel held her arms out and said ‘Grandma’ and ran to me. I’ve had her ever since.”

  “Ever since” turned out to be four years. Then Grandma had a heart attack and died. And I went back into foster care, more or less for good.

  “Ariel used to be such a lively little thing, but now she doesn’t seem happy.” Grandma’s fingers twist together. “We’ve tried asking her where Naomi and Terry are, but all she’s ever said is, ‘Mommy’s dancing.’”

  On the screen, a three-year-old me holds out a stuffed purple frog to a framed photo of my mom. Grandma tells Walsh that I like to share things with my mom.

  Although I don’t remember being filmed, sometimes I think maybe I do have some memories of my parents. I don’t know if they’re real. They’ve been handled and stretched and frayed until now; they’re memories of memories of memories. A man peeling me an apple. And my mother brushing my hair while we watched SpongeBob SquarePants. At least I think it was her. Just the sensation of it. So soothing. Feeling loved and safe and cared for.

  I haven’t felt like that since Grandma died.

  On my computer, Grandma sighs. “I think Ariel knows something. She’s withdrawn. Her personality definitely isn’t the same.”

  The final episode was filmed after my mom’s body was found, three weeks after my parents disappeared. There are quick shots of snowy woods, sniffing bloodhounds, a man waving a metal detector over the snow. Walsh speaks as the screen cuts to men carrying a long, black-wrapped bundle to an ambulance waiting with its lights off.

  “This week, some of the questions surrounding the little girl mysteriously abandoned at a Walmart were tragically answered when grouse hunters found the body of her mother, Naomi Benson, in the Oregon forest. She had been stabbed to death. Terry Weeks and his truck have not been located. While there are rumors the two had a rocky relationship, for now Naomi’s death and Terry’s disappearance remain a mystery, a secret held close by the wilderness. Once again, America, we need your help.”

  It would be several more weeks before my dad’s truck was found hundreds of miles away, in the Portland airport’s long-term parking lot.

  Walsh’s voice is a mix of optimism and determination. “There’s not much to go on, but together we can solve this case. The crucial time is December sixth. If you were in the southern Oregon Cascades that day, or at the Salem Walmart, or if you saw any of these people or this truck, the police need to know. Naomi Benson deserves justice. You could be the one to bring it to her.”

  But it wasn’t just my mother who needed justice. My dad did, too. Someone murdered both of them and left their families to wonder and worry. In my dad’s case, for years.

  I uncurl my fists. My fingernails have left red half-moons in my palms.

  On the Medford Mail Tribune website, I skim the main story, headlined “Formerly Thought Killer, Man Now Considered Victim.”

  … Medford Chief of Police Stephen Spaulding said, “I remember that case well. I was a search-and-rescue volunteer, and after Naomi was found, we searched those woods for evidence, but we didn’t find anything useful.” He added that he hoped the discovery of Terry Weeks’s remains will help jump-start the case, although the passage of time and the lack of evidence might make it difficult to solve.

  What about evidence in people’s memories, the way Walsh talked about? Someone has to know—or have guessed—what happened that day.

  “For the past fourteen years, a cloud has hung over my brother,” said Terry Weeks’s sister, Carly Weeks-Tailor. “I know everyone thought that Terry was a killer, that he was living in another country, that he just abandoned his daughter. I wish our dad were alive to know the truth.”

  Weeks’s sister said a service is planned for 2 PM on Saturday at the Perl Funeral Home, and she urges anyone with memories or photos of Weeks to bring them to share. “At least now we can finally grieve,” she said.

  I don’t have to work on Saturday. I could drive down.

  But it would be stupid to go. It’s not like my dad will be there. Chances are, even his jawbone won’t be. It’s probably still police property.

  CHAPTER 5

  JUST TRYING TO GET HOME

  “Regular fill, please,” I tell the gas station guy. How much is it going to cost to drive there and back, plus get a hotel? Maybe I’ll just come home after the funeral. If I get too tired, I can lock my doors and sleep in a rest area.

  In the backseat is a duffel bag with my laptop, a book, and a few clothes. Not much, but it nearly cleaned out my closet. What do you wear to a funeral? In the movies, it’s a black dress, stockings, pumps. Sometimes a hat with a veil. I don’t have a black dress or a fancy hat. I brought a pair of black work pants and a plain black T-shirt, and they’ll have to do.

  I can’t remember if I went to my mom’s funeral or what I wore to my grandmother’s. I was seven when Grandma died, old enough to know she was in the long wooden box. Too old to hide underneath a pew, crying, but that’s what I did. People stood in the back, arguing. About me. I put my hands over my ears, but I still saw lips curl back, heard the hiss of words, saw fingers point in my direction.

  Huddled miserably underneath that pew, I knew what the arguing was about. No one wanted me. Me with my nightmares and my bad parents, one dead and one on the run.

  The gas guy interrupts my thoughts with a total that makes me flinch. After I leave, I try not to hear the squeal that happens when I make a sharp right turn. My Mazda 323 is three years older than I am. The color is “champagne beige,” but it’s really just tan. I got the car off Craigslist. Since I can’t afford to fix anything, I keep the stereo turned up and pretend I don’t hear bad noises. I get on the freeway and start heading south.

  After Grandma died, I was in foster care, first with one family and then another. They’ve all blurred together. Was the first family the one with three dogs? The one with four sets of bunk beds? The one where the parents got a divorce?

  Then when I was eight, I was told I was getting a forever family.

  Only
it wasn’t really a family. Just a woman, Tamsin Reinhart, who had visited a few times. She was an orthopedic surgeon in Portland. She was in her forties and had never been married. Maybe at some point she could have had a baby of her own, but Tamsin was all about efficiency. Adopting an older kid meant she could skip diapers and toilet training and the terrible twos. An eight-year-old, she must have figured, already knew how to dress herself and entertain herself and do pretty much what she was told. Tamsin—she wanted me to call her Mom, but I never did—bought us matching mother-daughter dresses to wear to church the first Sunday after the adoption. Pale green with little yellow flowers, the dresses swirled around our ankles when we walked. She held my hand, even though I tried to pull away, and afterward everyone came up to compliment us.

  But I missed Medford. I missed my friends. I missed my school. I still missed my grandmother, with her soft body and unrestrained laugh. Every Halloween she dressed like a witch, ratted up her hair, and took out her top teeth. Tamsin was stiff and careful and never less than perfectly dressed. I had nightmares nearly every night—I still have them—and Tamsin didn’t know how to deal with my screaming as I fought off invisible monsters.

  And I missed my name. My real name. Ariel Benson. When she adopted me, Tamsin had it changed to Olivia Reinhart. Reinhart so we would have the same last name, like a real mother and daughter. And Olivia because she thought Ariel sounded tacky, like the mermaid in the Disney movie.

  It’s true. I remember Grandma talking about it. My mom named me after a cartoon movie character.

  At Tamsin’s, I was lonely and scared, but determined not to show it. And I was angry, too, at all the changes everyone said were for my benefit. Looking back, I don’t think anyone prepared Tamsin for how I would test her. That first week, she gave me a book she’d loved when she was a girl, Black Beauty, and I “accidentally” spilled water on it. I spit out the tasteless pale yellow macaroni and cheese she made. I’d never had homemade before. And every day, I told her I wanted to go back to my old foster family, where there weren’t any rules about bedtime or watching TV or not eating before dinner.

  I didn’t trust that it was real. So I pushed Tamsin away.

  And it worked.

  Within three months, I was back in the foster system. Tamsin cried when the grim-faced social worker drove up to the house, but still, she let me go. When I was younger, I told myself that it was proof she hadn’t really loved me. Maybe the truth was it could have worked out if both of us hadn’t been so hurt or if we had given it more time.

  I thought if Tamsin gave me back, I could return to my old life. But I didn’t get anything back, not even my old name. The social worker said it would be too confusing to change, since they had decided I should stay in the same Portland school Tamsin had enrolled me in.

  The freeway sign reads SALEM NEXT 3 EXITS. An hour has slipped by. It’s only nine, and the funeral’s not until two. I haven’t been back to the Salem Walmart since I was found there nearly fourteen years ago. Maybe going in will help me remember what happened.

  Inside, it’s crammed with people and TVs, shoes and ketchup, toilet paper and tubs of blue cotton candy. I was found curled up underneath a fake Christmas tree, but since it’s August, the seasonal display’s theme is back-to-school. The crayons and pink erasers feel full of promise. Every time I started at a new school, I told myself things would be different. This time I would have tons of friends. This time I would raise my hand. This time math would make sense.

  This Walmart just seems exactly like the Portland Walmart I’ve been to a half dozen times. I get down on one knee, like I’m going to tie one of my black Vans, but really it’s so I’m about the same height as a little kid. I squint. Does any of it feel familiar? The shelves looming overhead, the bright lights?

  And there’s a worker in this row now, a middle-aged guy in a red vest, filling a display with packages of yellow pencils but looking at me. Does he think I’m a shoplifter?

  I guess my missing memories won’t be restored like a puzzle piece snapping into place. I walk out empty-handed and get back in the car.

  The farther south I go, the bluer the sky gets. The clouds thin and disappear. The day heats up, so I roll down my window. I drive through long miles of evergreens, forests that stretch to the horizon.

  I find a radio station playing old music from the nineties. In a couple of years, I’ll be as old as my parents were when they died. It’s as if they’re stuck in amber, like the scorpion in a necklace I once saw at Goodwill. They’ll forever be wearing out-of-date clothes and smiling with slightly crooked teeth they couldn’t afford to get fixed.

  I’ve got those same teeth. Foster care doesn’t pay for braces.

  At the rest area outside Roseburg, a dark-haired girl sits cross-legged in front of the cinder-block restroom, her head tipped back against the wall, her eyes closed. Her sign reads JUST TRYING TO GET HOME. As I leave, I put a dollar bill in her white paper cup, but she doesn’t stir.

  Finally, I’m through the mountains and driving down into the Rogue River valley. It’s more a feeling than a memory, but these tawny, folded hills, like a golden blanket pushed down to the foot of a giant’s bed, are so familiar.

  It’s only four miles to Medford, and I’ve still got nearly two hours before the funeral. There’s one other place I want to go.

  My grandmother’s house. My house, really, or it will be when I turn eighteen. Until then, I get the rental income. At least I used to, until three months ago, when the last tenant left.

  I take the exit and follow the directions. And there’s the house, familiar and not. Tiny and square, gray, with peeling white shutters that were probably last painted long before Grandma died.

  I park next to a huge yucca bush with sword-shaped leaves. A sign stuck in the tall grass reads FOR RENT BY LEE REALTY.

  I’m looking through the front window at a worn gold couch next to a battered coffee table, when I hear a voice behind me.

  “I know who you must be.”

  CHAPTER 6

  SEEING DOUBLE

  I whirl around, my heart a bird in a too-small cage.

  An old lady stands smiling with crowded teeth traced with gold. A rivulet of sweat is tracing its way down my spine, but she wears black corduroy pants, a crisp blue shirt with white stripes, and a black cardigan. Buttoned.

  “So who am I?” I say lightly, as if the answer doesn’t matter.

  “You’re the new renter, right? I’m glad they finally got someone in the house.” Her high cheekbones are as red as apples, but the rest of her face is pale.

  Suddenly, I feel as if I’m seeing double. It’s like that drawing of a vase, the one where if you look at it right, it changes to two people facing each other. I see an old lady dressed in black, but my memory superimposes another image.

  I see: silver hair cut to her chin.

  I remember: dark, silver-streaked hair worn in a braid that fell past her shoulders.

  I see: red-framed glasses.

  I remember: gold wire frames.

  I see: eyes caught in a net of wrinkles.

  I remember: those same golden-brown eyes, but in a fuller face.

  Seeing the new and the old, the real and the memory, makes me dizzy. I steady myself against the peeling gray siding.

  Her face creased with concern, she touches my wrist lightly. My memory offers me her arms, pulling me close into the soft smell of baby powder.

  “Honey, are you all right?” Her voice is a little too loud, like she’s slightly deaf.

  I manage to nod. “It’s probably just the heat.”

  “I wish I could get warm.” Her fingers twist against each other. “My heart doesn’t work too well.”

  My own heart is still racing. “So you’re the neighbor?”

  “That’s right. Nora Murdoch.” She offers me her hand, cool skin over bones as delicate as a bird’s wing.

  Nora Murdoch was our neighbor and Grandma’s best friend. They would sit in the living room
and drink cup after cup of coffee. Every Christmas, Nora would bake gingerbread men and let me help decorate them. She didn’t mind if the frosting came out in big globs or if I used too many sprinkles.

  Nora is the one I ran to that terrible day when I came home from school and found my grandmother on the kitchen floor. Grandma was lying in a puddle of cold coffee, surrounded by the blue-and-white shards of what had been her favorite cup. Her skin was cold, her open eyes dull.

  “I’m Olivia Reinhart.”

  But there’s no answering spark in her eyes. I’m sure she remembers—maybe even still loves—seven-year-old blond Ariel Benson. But I’m not her. Now I’m seventeen-year-old brown-haired Olivia Reinhart. If I tell her who I am, she’ll have all kinds of questions. And then she’ll tell someone else, and pretty soon every eye will be on me. It’s better to keep my distance. I don’t want to be the center of attention, of whispers and questions. My plan is to slip in and out without being noticed.

  Ten years ago, I was just a kid, but I can tell that Nora is basically the same person she was then. Just older.

  Underscoring that idea, she says. “I have lived in this neighborhood forever, so if there’s anything you want to know, just ask.”

  “Um, I’m not actually sure I’m going to rent this house. I’m still thinking about it.”

  “The murders didn’t happen here, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nora says.

  “Murders?”

  She stamps one of her black knockoff Keds, mouth twisting with annoyance. “Oh, now you’ve gone and done it, Nora Murdoch. You and your big mouth! If there’s one thing a potential renter doesn’t want to hear, it’s the word ‘murder.’” Her eyes flash up to mine. “You need to know that nothing bad happened in this house, Olivia. Ever. This house has nothing but good memories.”