“I couldn’t…I didn’t…”

“You should-”

Another woman pushed her way into the bathroom just then, and Eliza escaped. She never spoke to Mrs. Tackett again, although she felt her eyes on her, the day of closing arguments. (She had not wanted to attend, but the prosecutor had said it would look bad if she wasn’t there.)

She always felt that Mrs. Tackett had been interrupted just as she was about to say the words that Eliza feared the most: You should be dead. Everyone knows that you’re the one who should be dead and Holly should be alive. You let her die so you might live.

Part VI.CRAZY FOR YOU

Released 1985

Reached no. 1 on Billboard Hot 100

Spent 25 weeks on Billboard Hot 100

37

LIKE THE LOVELORN TEENAGER she never was, Trudy kept returning to Elizabeth Lerner’s neighborhood-the scene of the crime-over and over again. She would get in her car, intent on nothing more than buying a carton of milk or dropping off Terry’s dry cleaning and, next thing she knew, she was crossing the Potomac in a trancelike state. And once a river was crossed…well, everyone knew that saying. She did this one, two, three times, and ended up stuck in horrible traffic jams one, two, three times. On her fourth trip, she surfaced from a long blank spell just in time to apply her brakes and avoid rear-ending the car in front of her.

Then she discovered that she could walk to the local Metro stop and take the train all the way up to Bethesda, changing only once, in downtown D.C. It was a long journey, but the D.C. Metro was reliably neat and orderly, and it wasn’t dangerous to zone out on the subway; all she risked was missing her stop. But she never missed her stop. In sensible walking shoes, ones purchased for a London trip taken in dutiful honor of their thirtieth anniversary, Trudy made her way to Elizabeth Lerner’s house, hoping-for what? A glimpse of her? A confrontation? Could she really walk up to the woman and ask to know why she had not called Trudy? It had been only a week, give or take. But Trudy believed that Elizabeth would have called within the first twenty-four hours if she had intended to respond at all. Why was she ignoring her?

She had not told Terry about these trips. He wouldn’t forbid her to make them, but he wouldn’t approve, and she found that she still cared about his approval, more or less. She had gone back to hiding her cigarette smoking, for example, and continued to pretend she was taking her Lipitor. When would those subterfuges catch up with her, if ever? If Terry confronted her-difficult to imagine, but it had happened a few times during their marriage-she would say she was trying to even the actuarial odds, given their genders and the age difference. She was tired of outliving people. She felt as if she were going to outlive everyone-her husband, her sons, her grandchildren.

Everyone except Walter Bowman.

The prosecutor said there was no way he could get a stay this time. There may be some pro forma filings at the last minute, an assertion that lethal injection was cruel and unusual, but those would be token protests, lawyers earning their money. Still, it had been disturbing when that one man had been given a stay just last month and the Supreme Court had agreed to hear his petition. Third time’s the charm, Terry said grimly.

Unless Elizabeth Lerner had something up her sleeve. Why else would she be talking to Walter? Perhaps she was going to make some big show of forgiveness, issue a public statement about her opposition to the death penalty, make Terry and Trudy the bad guys.

Setting a brisk pace, Trudy began her walk around the neighborhood. She drew absolutely no attention. It had been a long time since Trudy had attracted attention, and she liked to think she had been gracious about that transition. Married young, the first three pregnancies coming so swiftly, she felt she had been on a shelf since her twenties. Interestingly, around the time that Holly entered adolescence-Trudy was in her late thirties, then-she had a second flowering. And although Holly had started drawing increasingly sexualized attention about the same time, Trudy had not felt competitive with her daughter. Quite the opposite. Like a good tennis partner, Holly elevated Trudy’s game, inspired her to take more care with her appearance. Her marriage picked up a little charge, especially as Holly began to attend sleepovers and they had the house to themselves for the first time since, well, the first nine months of their marriage, before the arrival of Terry III. Although she was, reflexively, a Democrat, Trudy had felt secure in Reagan’s America, secure in Middleburg. It had been a prosperous time, and the bad news- Lebanon, famine, the Unabomber, the Mexico City earthquake, Leon Klinghoffer-seemed so very far away. Or, in the case of AIDS, based on other people’s decisions. Terry’s gaze was the only one she craved.

In the wake of Holly’s death, Trudy became almost too visible, recognized-and therefore pitied-everywhere she went. In Alexandria, she settled into anonymity and was grateful for it. Granted, she couldn’t really take anyone new into her life because that would involve telling the story, which was unbearable. Better to have a child who was, in fact, the Unabomber’s victim, because that one word was all the shorthand required. Walter Bowman and his crimes fell into some muddy nether region. He wasn’t nickname famous, as Terry once observed, not like some serial killers. People in Virginia tended to remember him, but not by name. Once, after the move to Alexandria, Trudy had tried to speak of her life with a neighbor, only to have the woman blurt out: “Oh my God, you were the mother of that beautiful little blond girl.” Terry said she should take solace in Holly being remembered that way, but that wasn’t being remembered. “Beautiful little blond girl” could be one of many. In that moment, Trudy understood the world at large had lost track of her daughter. It was the crime that people remembered, not the victim. Walter’s execution would be the last chance to remind the world of a singular life lost.

Lives, Trudy reminded herself. There was the other girl, Maude, possibly more. When she was at her lowest, Terry tried to cheer her up by saying that there were women who didn’t know what had happened to their daughters, who had endured even more than she had. Was it wrong that Trudy didn’t really give a shit?

She usually allowed herself to walk past the house four times, on a loop of her design. She felt that was credible, that someone might walk that way for exercise. She walked more quickly here than she did in Alexandria, feeling much more purposeful. But she never managed to see anyone coming and going from the house. Perhaps her note had scared them away, sent them into hiding? But, no, the house looked lived in. Over lived in.

Today, on her third pass, she decided to do something she had not yet dared. She walked right up to the door and knocked. There was a television on somewhere in the house, clearly someone was home, but it seemed an eternity before footsteps creaked toward the door. She was being inspected through the fish-eye.

“I hear you in there,” she said. “I know you’re there. Now open up and talk to me, Elizabeth Lerner.”

The door opened, but just a crack, and the eyes that met Trudy’s were considerably lower than she had expected, far beneath hers. Hazel eyes, in a tanned face. A girl’s face.

“I’m not sure you have the right house. My mom’s maiden name is Lerner, but she always goes by Eliza.”

Oh no, not always.

“Of course,” Trudy said. “But someone’s old teacher tends to be formal.”

“You were my mom’s teacher?”

“Yes, at”-amazing, the things that the mind could grab under pressure, the details about Elizabeth Lerner that were always there-“at Catonsville Middle School. She was one of my best students.”