Page 8 of Dead Man's Hollow
The three women laugh.
“Nothing like that,” Kristy assures her. “Imagine sharing one phone line with five other people, three of them girls. Even after Diana moved out, it was chaos.”
“We had one landline, two phones, for six people—and then for five when Diana went to college. One was mounted on the wall in the kitchen with this super long curly cord. That’s the one we girls used,” Amy remembers.
“If you stretched it as far as it could go, it just reached the powder room. Standing inside the door with the cord pulled taut was the only way to have a semi-private conversation,” Diana says.
“Even though anybody sitting at the kitchen table could make out most of your end of it,” Amy adds. “The second phone was on our parents’ nightstand in their bedroom. And that phone was off-limits.”
“It almost didn’t matter, though. Somebody wasalwayson the phone. For the longest time, anyone who tried to reach someone at our house got a busy signal. When we finally got a call waiting, all it did was cause more fights over the phone.”
Amy and Diana speak with a surprising amount of affection over their competition for the precious, shared resource.
“I was only eight. I wasn’t making or getting many phone calls, but I understood why Heather wanted her pager. It was cute. Pink,” Kristy remembers.
Diana furrows her brow. “Yeah, I guess. But why’d she tellyouabout it?”
The youngest Ryan sister squeezes her eyes shut, pinches the bridge of her nose, and exhales loudly before answering. “In case I needed her when I was home alone.”
The atmosphere in the room cools. Maisy notes Amy and Diana’s expressions. They both narrow their eyes and flatten their lips. She flicks a glance toward Rich, silent in the corner. His shoulders are bunched up, and he’s wincing as if bracing for a blow.
“What do you mean, when you were home alone? It was Heather’s responsibility to watch you after school until Mom got home from work.” Amy’s voice is tight. “Just like Diana watched me, and I watched Heather when she was little.”
Kristy clears her throat. “You only had to do that for a few years, both of you. The age gap between Heather and me was bigger. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t join any clubs or do extracurriculars. She never got to hang out with her friends and?—”
Diana throws up a hand. “—Don’t defend her.”
“She’s not here to defend herself,” Kristy shoots back.
It’s time to intervene.
“This is good.Great, actually,” Maisy assures them.
In unison, the sisters give her a look.
“What’s so great about it?” Amy wants to know.
“It’s new information, for starters. I mean, I haven’t read the police reports yet, but I reckon Kristy didn’t mention the pager—or the fact that Heather had after-school activities that the rest of the family didn’t know about.”
“The police didn’t interview me,” she says simply.
There’s a brief silence before Jordana slaps her hands down on the table. “Are you freaking kidding?”
“No.” Kristy shakes her head. “I was just a kid. I guess they thought I wouldn’t know anything. And I wasn’t about to volunteer information that would just get Heather in trouble when she came home.” Her voice wobbles. “Because I thought she’d come home. I must’ve paged her a thousand times, crossing my fingers and holding my breath while I waited for her to call. She never did.” She hangs her head. “I should have told someone. I’m sorry.”
Amy covers Kristy’s hand with her own. “Don’t be. You’re right, you were just a kid.”
Diana leans across Amy. “It’s not your fault, Kris.” Her voice is soft, soothing, even maternal.
Kristy sniffles.
Maisy gives her a minute, then pushes a notepad and a pen across the table. “Do you remember the pager number?”
She nods.
“Write it down for me.”
She does, then sends the notepad back to Maisy, followed by the pen.
