Page 44 of Home Is Where the Bodies Are

I help Nicole, and she sobs as we walk out of the motel room, back into the light of the world. Opening the passenger door, I help guide her into her seat.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I reassure her.

“I’m not strong enough,” she sobs.

“Yes, you are.”

Nicole lifts her head. “Thank you...” Her eyes say more than that, and I know exactly what she is thanking me for.

“Please don’t tell Beth about this,” she adds.

“I won’t.”

I close her door, hop in the driver’s seat, and put the car in Reverse. As I begin to accelerate out of the parking lot, I turn to look at the man sitting in the dark SUV. He smiles and lifts his chin. This time, I know it’s friendly.

TWENTY-FOUR

BETH

Michael and Nicole have been gone a while, which gave me all afternoon to get most everything in the living room and kitchen cleaned up and put away. Many of the fragile items were destroyed, so I tossed them. Some things you can’t fix.

I push a VHS tape labeledNovember 1999into the VCR. It clicks into place and the machine makes a winding noise. This tape is the next one in chronological order after June 15, 1999. There was a gap, months without a tape, and that made sense. Mom clearly didn’t want to capture any of the memories following Emma’s disappearance. It also explains why she forgot to record over the clip from that evening—she couldn’t face what happened. The screen is gray static and then it flicks to blue before an image appears. The date on the bottom right corner reads November 13, 1999. Michael is seated at the kitchen table. A birthday cake decorated with an edible image of a computer monitor rests in front of him. Across the top of the cake,Happy 13th Birthday, Michaelis styled in green icing like computer code, and there are thirteen lit candles surrounding the message. The flames flicker and dance.

We haven’t celebrated Michael’s birthday since he moved to California. And I haven’t wished him a happy birthday in years, so it’s not something I usually remember, but he’ll be thirty-six next month.

Onscreen, Dad sits next to Michael at the kitchen table, smiling and singing “Happy Birthday.” There’s little evidence on his face of the horrible thing he’d done, but he does appear to have aged a few years in the five months since the previous tape. Gray hair peppers his burly beard and new wrinkles crowd the corners of his eyes. Nicole and I stand on either side of our brother, belting out the same lyrics. Mom isn’t in view, so I know she’s the one holding the camcorder. She was almost always the one holding the camcorder, which is why hardly any photos or videos of her exist. Strangely, although the microphone is right next to her, it barely picks up the sound of her singing. It’s like she’s whispering the words, not fully committed to them.

When the song finishes, Michael squeezes his eyes shut, conjuring up a wish, and then he extinguishes all the flames with one gust of air. Wax drips down the candles, seeping into the cake. My siblings and I don’t waste even a second before we pull the candles and suck the frosting off the ends.

“What’d you wish for?” Dad asks.

“I can’t tell you,” Michael says.

“Oh, come on. You can trust me.” Dad forces a laugh and nudges him.

The camcorder makes a whirring sound, and the lens zooms in on Dad, closer and closer, until the center of his face fills the whole screen. Although the video is blurry, the intensity in his green eyes is clear as day. The camcorder stays zoomed in on him for a few seconds before the lens retracts, bringing me and my siblings back into frame.

“If you tell him, it won’t come true,” Mom says. Her tone isn’t playful. It’s serious. But no one seems to notice.

Michael juts out his chin. “Yeah, I can’t tell you.”

“You can tell me anything,” Dad says with another forced laugh, playfully ruffling Michael’s hair. My brother pulls away, flicking his locks back into place, while Dad flashes a smile in Mom’s direction. I don’t think she returns it, because he quickly averts his attention back to us three, asking, “Who wants cake?”

“I do,” we all say in unison.

Dad cuts it into slices and divvies them up. Mom declines. No one notices. She keeps the camera focused, so all of us are in the shot. It seems like a birthday celebration that any other family would have, and I don’t remember noticing anything out of the ordinary that day. But that’s because I was seeing it through my eyes, not Mom’s.

The camcorder whirs as the lens zooms in again. First, it’s on me. My face fills the screen as I shove a forkful of white birthday cake into my mouth. My skin is youthful and glowing, slightly tan from the sun. Then it’s Nicole’s turn. She fills the frame. Her skin is oily with a smattering of teen acne. You wouldn’t notice it though unless you were standing an inch away from her because it’s those big green eyes that grab your attention and never let go. The camcorder moves to Michael. Frosting clings to his top lip, and he smiles wide, swiveling his head to flick the shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. Then it’s on Dad again, and it lingers on him far longer than the rest of us. All I see is Dad onscreen, nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s clear Mom sees something different, perhaps the facade he’s putting on. There’s nothing typical about this home video tape or how it was filmed. Mom wasn’t capturing the moment. She was studying us.

“Can I open my presents now?” Michael asks. His tone is high-pitched because puberty hasn’t set in yet.

“Laura, is it present time?” Dad says to Mom, giving her a strained look. He doesn’t realize the camcorder is only on him. The lens zooms out slowly, and we’re all back onscreen again.

“Sure,” Mom says. Her voice lacks enthusiasm. No one notices.

Michael claps his hands and pushes his plate to the side, freeing up the space in front of him.

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