Page 35 of The Wrong Family

Icy, Juno thought. That wasnotthe obituary of a well-loved girl. Juno had seen parents over the years who were distraught over the behavior of their children. They brought their children to her like an ingredient for a recipe they didn’t know what to do with. One parent usually looked anxious and put out, the other hopeful. It was like good cop/bad cop in the family department: What is this? How do we make it work in our family? And there were too many times when the therapy wasn’t working that Juno saw parents harden their hearts against their own children—a lost cause, the problem child, the child who just couldn’t be reached. Emotional detachment was a survival skill. The person subconsciously muted their emotions in order to protect themselves. Josalyn, Juno thought, had been a problem child. She could see it in the wording:Died unexpectedly.

Drugs, she thought. That’s what always got them young. “Died unexpectedly of an overdose” would have been too honest for an obit.

The Russels’ number was listed. She wrote it on her hand, the pen making sharp, black lines on her skin. Then, sitting at the dinette in the kitchen, staring at the checkerboard floor, Juno dialed and waited. A stately woman’s voice said “Hello,” and Juno detected both class and vinegar in that voice. Here was a woman who had lost a child, who’d been forced to alter her reality to accept that she’d outlived the child she’d grown in her own body.

“Hello, Mrs. Russel. My name is Juno Holland. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m calling to talk to you about Josalyn.”

There was a long silence, so long Juno thought that Terry Russel had hung up, and then she heard a release of breath that she supposed was a sigh. Juno pushed on. “I’m a retired clinical psychologist, Mrs. Russel, and I was wondering how—”

“She’s dead. She was twenty years old when she died. What else would you like to know? I don’t know why you people are calling again.”

Momentarily stunned, Juno blinked at the wall in front of her. Juno could hear Terry Russel breathing heavily into the phone, like she was restraining herself from crying. For some reason, though, she didn’t hang up. Juno took the opportunity to say, “People? I’m not sure what you mean. I had no idea Josalyn had passed and for that I am very sorry, Mrs. Russel.”

There was a shocked silence on the other end of the line. Juno’s mind was spinning. You people…had Winnie called Josalyn’s mother, as well? It made sense for Winnie to call if she wanted to confirm Josalyn’s death.

“Listen,” she said, dropping her voice an octave; it was her sympathetic but in-control voice. Whenever she used that voice, her clients would look up at her like she was going to deliver God’s good word. “I lost my own sons, so I know how you feel. I was very fond of your daughter. I had hopes that Josalyn would…” She let her voice drop off, and Terry Russel picked up where she left off.

“We all had that hope. Unfortunately, Josalyn was too sick to even seek change.”

Juno, who still had her eyes closed, frowned. Shehadsought change, though, hadn’t she? In the form of Illuminations for Mental Health, where she’d been assigned a counselor named Winnie Crouch.

“What was your name again?”

“My name is Juno Holland, Mrs. Russel. I met your daughter in Seattle, Washington…before she passed,” Juno lied.

“Yes?” Terry said, a little impatiently.

“I worked with her briefly at Illuminations. I’m sure you know of it?” Juno didn’t wait for Terry to respond and she didn’t need her to. “She was a very good writer. That’s how I came to know of you. She would write stories and poems about you for group session.”

Juno didn’t have the slightest clue as to whether Josalyn even knew the alphabet, or if Terry would call bullshit. She held her breath and was rewarded with Terry’s voice a moment later. “She won a short story competition once…at school…” She sounded wistful. As a therapist, Juno hated to leave that wistfulness untouched, but she wasn’t on the phone to give Terry Russel therapy.

She pushed on.

“I’m sorry to bring up such a painful subject, Mrs. Russel, but something has been nagging at me for some time. Did Josalyn ever mention anything to you about being pregnant?”

There was a long pause on the Russel end, during which time Juno acknowledged a beast of a headache groping along the back of her skull.

“Yes…” Terry said uncertainly. “But she was on drugs. She said a lot of things. She claimed to be pregnant once when she was fourteen, too. We took her to the doctor and he said her hymen was still intact…”

Juno made a slight harrumph in the back of her throat. That was a topic she didn’t care to get into today. It wouldn’t make a lick of difference to Mrs. Terry Russel, who had already decided that her dead daughter was a lying drug addict.

“She mentioned it to her counselor at the time… Winnie Crouch.” Juno imagined the name traveling across the space between them. She found the spot behind her ear and pressed her cool fingertips to it.

“No, Winnie wasn’t her counselor, I know that name. Winnie was her friend. She said so. Winnie was helping her. She distinctly said that name the second to last time I spoke to her. I said well, who names their kid Winnie anyway, and how equipped is she to help you? And then she laughed at me.”

Juno didn’t just get chills, her body started to tremble. So, Winnie had secured Josalyn’s trust enough for the girl to consider her a friend; so much so that she affirmed it to her mother. Her mouth was so dry she had to pry her tongue from her teeth before she could speak again.

“Did she tell you she was pregnant when she called that time?”

“No. I asked why she was calling us if she had this Winnie to help her. She didn’t like that at all. She said terrible things I won’t repeat and hung up on me. The next time I heard from her she was so high she couldn’t string two words together.”

“Do you remember the year she claimed to be pregnant? Not when she was fourteen, but the second time.”

“I don’t understand why you need to know this.”

Juno was losing her; she’d have to act fast.

“Because I think she really was pregnant.”

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