Page 18 of Dead Man's Hollow
MAISY: There were four of you? Four girls?
DIANA: Right. Dad was completely outnumbered (laughs). I’m the oldest. Amy is two years younger than me. Heather was two years?—
MAISY: Was?
DIANA: Oh. Yeah. I guess accepted, well, I’ve accepted that no matter what we learn now, there’s no chance Heather’s coming back.
MAISY: No chance? Do you really believe that?
DIANA: It’s exceedingly unlikely.
MAISY: You were telling me about the birth order.
DIANA: Heather’s two years younger than Amy. So the three of us are all spaced two years apart. Good, Catholic spacing Mom used to call it. And then there’s eight years between Heather and Kristy, the youngest. Kristy was what they used to call a change-of-life baby. I mean, I was twelve when she was born.
MAISY: Were you girls close?
DIANA: Amy and I were. Still are. And Heather and Amy were. Amy was close in age to both of us, you know? It was easy for her to relate to me and to Heather.
MAISY: But you and Heather weren’t as close?
DIANA: When we were little, sure. But we kind of grew apart as we got older. Four years isn’t that big of a gap, but when you reach the teenage years, it feels like it is. You know?
MAISY: Sure.
DIANA: And then Kristy was sort of separate. She was so much younger. We all viewed her almost like an only child, not the baby.
MAISY: Does that mean you considered Heather the baby?
DIANA: Yeah, I did. For a long time, shewasthe baby. And she had that youngest child personality.
MAISY: What personality is that? Spoiled?
DIANA: I wouldn’t say that. But she was indulged, and she tested the boundaries. She pushed back against our parents in ways that Amy and I never did.
MAISY: Pushed back how? Can you give an example?
DIANA: Just typical teenage stuff. That night in the woods, for instance. Underage drinking, trespassing.
MAISY: Okay, but Amy was there, too. So she was also testing the limits, right?
DIANA (sighing): Amy didn’t even want to go. My semester had ended, and I was already home for the summer. Amy and I were planning to go seeFour Weddings and a Funeral.She thought Hugh Grant was so cute. But Heather begged her to go to Dead Man’s Hollow instead. She wanted Amy to drive so she could drink, and she knew if Amy drove, she’d stay sober. That’s the sort of thing Heather did. She was on the wild side, but she wasn’t reckless. I mean, she lined up a designated driver for crying out loud.
MAISY: What happened when Amy came home without Heather?
DIANA: I’d gone out with some friends, so I wasn’t there.
But I guess Amy went to bed. She didn’t tell our parents right away.
MAISY: Why not?
DIANA: For one thing, our parents and Kristy were asleep. For another, at that point, she assumed Heather had taken off when the police showed up. She figured Heather ran and would get a ride home from a friend or something. So why wake up our mom and dad and get Heather in trouble over nothing?
Only it wasn’t nothing. The next morning, Amy woke up and checked Heather’s room. It was empty, and the bed hadn’t been slept in. She woke her older sister and told her Heather never came home.
DIANA: Amy and I shared a bedroom when I was home from school. She came back in, shook me awake, and told me what happened. But, that morning, I remember thinking she’d turn up.
MAISY: So you weren’t worried?
