Good as Gone: A dark and gripping thriller with a shocking twist. Amy Gentry

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СКАЧАТЬ questions, then fades as soon as the needle is in. The curtain that separates us from the hall flutters as people rush by and does nothing to block out the cacophony of squeaking wheels, indecipherable PA announcements, and hallway conferences punctuated with loud sighs and occasional laughter.

      When the doctor finally comes, she sends everyone out of the room over Tom’s and my objections.

      “I just need her for two seconds,” she says. “You — Mom, Dad — don’t go anywhere.”

      Needless to say, we don’t, but Jane takes the opportunity to find a restroom. The doctor emerges from the curtained room after a hushed conversation I strain unsuccessfully to hear, and I glimpse Julie in the background, awake but flushed and disoriented, before she pulls the curtain shut behind her. Julie is dehydrated, the doctor tells us, suffering from exhaustion and exposure, and hasn’t eaten for a few days, but there don’t seem to be any injuries or illnesses, no substances in her bloodstream. “After the fluids take effect, most likely she’ll be right as rain,” she finishes, her use of the expression right as rain proving she cannot possibly have read the chart, or she has never watched the news, or she is so calloused by her job that she lacks the power to think past a stock phrase indelibly associated in her mind with the word fluids. “Just get her to the clinic for a follow-up after a few weeks. They’ll schedule her when she’s discharged.”

      As we file back into Julie’s room, there’s a knock on the wall, and a police detective steps in after us. Fortyish, with dark hair, looking not unlike a police detective from a TV show but far less attractive, he leaves the curtain open a foot and stares at Julie from the improvised doorway.

      “Julie Whitaker,” he says. “Unbelievable.”

      Julie doesn’t take any notice of him, but on seeing Tom and me again, she collapses back onto the pillow, crying tearlessly. Tom rushes to enfold her in his arms. Noting my expression, the doctor says they’ll move Julie to a room with a door as soon as one opens up, and then she hustles out. The cop introduces himself as Detective Overbey and starts asking me questions about the circumstances of Julie’s arrival, which I answer as best I can considering that, for all I know, she could have come straight out of the glowing orange sunset or a god’s forehead or the side of a man opened up while he was sleeping. The question of how she was delivered to us seems that unimportant.

      In the background, I hear Tom repeating the words “You’re safe now. It’s okay. The doctor says you’re going to be okay.” He is talking to himself as much as to her, and though the words aren’t meant for me, they’re so comforting that I let my attention drift toward them and away from Detective Overbey’s questions.

      He notices. “I’d like to talk to Julie alone for just a few minutes.”

      “No,” Julie says, clutching Tom’s arm but looking at me. “Don’t go.”

      “This won’t take long.”

      Tom stands directly in front of Julie’s bed. He’s a tall, broad man, imposing even with a gut. “Absolutely not. We left her alone once tonight, for the doctor. We’re not leaving her again.”

      Tom and the detective begin to argue back and forth, and the tiny curtained room shrinks. The same words keep coming up, and at first I think Detective Overbey is questioning our mental health or Julie’s; he is talking about the sane, the safe. Finally, he addresses Julie directly, speaking right through Tom. “I know you’re not feeling well, ma’am, and I hate to bother you right now,” he says. “But I need to ask: Were you sexually assaulted?”

      Julie just looks at the detective and nods. Tom sets his jaw, and I find a moment to be glad Jane is still not back from the restroom.

      Detective Overbey explains about the forensic exam, and I realize SANE and SAFE are acronyms. “The sexual assault nurse examiner has already been dispatched,” he says. “She should be here soon to set up the exam room. The minute you’re off the IV, she can get started.”

      Julie shakes her head no, and Tom steps forward, looking ready for a fistfight.

      Detective Overbey, equally imposing, stands his ground. “If there’s any evidence of sexual assault, it’s best to collect it —”

      “Listen,” Tom says, pointing his finger at the detective for emphasis. “We’ve done everything the police told us to since day one and never asked a single question we weren’t supposed to. Eight years later, after we’ve —” He chokes. “Years since we’ve heard any news, and our missing daughter shows up on our doorstep, no thanks to you. And now you want to keep her up all night asking her questions, treating her like a crime scene?” He snorts. “We’ll come in tomorrow.”

      Detective Overbey starts to answer but a faint noise from Julie’s bed stops him.

      “The last time was — a long time ago,” she says quietly. “At least six months.”

      Detective Overbey sighs as if the news that our daughter hasn’t been raped in six months is disappointing but acceptable. “Okay, then. We still recommend you come back for the exam, but from a forensic perspective there’s no rush. Rest up, and we’ll get a full statement from you folks at the station tomorrow.”

      Julie nods weakly. Tom slumps forward, hands on knees.

      Jane comes in, a juice box in her hand. She must have gotten it from the nurses’ station. When she sees Julie awake, she smiles shyly and says, “Welcome back.”

      Six hours later, in the middle of the night, Julie is discharged, fully hydrated and wearing hospital scrubs to replace the scruffy T-shirt and jeans the police took for evidence. She leans on Tom’s arm while I sweep everything into my purse: prophylactic antibiotics for chlamydia and gonorrhea, a prescription for Valium in case she has trouble sleeping, and a folder stuffed to bursting with pamphlets on sexual assault and Xeroxed phone lists for HPD Victim Services and various women’s shelters. It also holds Detective Overbey’s card, tucked into four slits in the front of the folder so it won’t get lost. I remove it and slip it into the back pocket of my jeans.

      Tom drives us home, Julie sleeping in the back seat of the SUV on the disposable pillow they let her keep. Jane, who slept quite a bit in the hospital, now stares at Julie silently. Nobody talks — in part because we don’t want to wake Julie, but also because we ourselves do not want to wake up. Or maybe that’s just me.

      It’s 3:00 a.m. when we open the back door and walk into the kitchen through the laundry room. It looks like some other family’s house preserved on a perfectly normal day, a museum of ordinariness: over the washing machine, a blouse drips dry; on the cutting board, a heap of glistening red chopped tomatoes lies next to a knife in a puddle of red juice. Through the doorway to the dining room, Jane’s elaborate homecoming meal sits forgotten on the dining-room table, the salad wilted, the breading on the fried shrimp gone soggy, the sauce jelled on the cold, gummy pasta. As the others pass through the kitchen into the living room, I head into the dining room and start picking up the dishes full of pasta. It takes only a moment for me to stack the evidence that we were surviving in the kitchen sink.

      When I join them in the living room, Jane and Tom are standing awkwardly by the sofa with Julie, like people putting up a distant relative for the night. Tom is shaking his head, red-faced, and when I realize what they are discussing, my efforts in the dining room seem futile.

      Tom moved his office into Julie’s room seven years ago. He did not discuss it with me first; nor did he let me know he was quitting his accounting job, the job we moved to the Energy Corridor for СКАЧАТЬ