The Last Good Day of the Year Read Online Free PDF

turn it off, Dick remained, his silhouette literally burned into the screen. The rest of the mess would remain, too, until Mrs. Mitchell decided to clean it up almost a week later; by then the smell of stale beer and vomit was impossible toget rid of. Eventually we replaced the carpet and slapped a new coat of paint on the walls. It was the best compromise my parents could come up with. My dad didn’t want to change a thing about our house after that night; if he’d had his way, we might still be living in the same filth. On her worst days, my mom begged him to let her burn the whole place to the ground. I don’t think any of us would have been surprised if she’d gone through with it.
    I’m not sure why the police barely spoke with Remy and me until so much later. They at first seemed far more concerned with their search for Turtle than finding out exactly how she’d gone missing, which seems like a real no-brainer in hindsight. Maybe it was because we were so young. It was well after midnight, and we were two children struggling to manage our terror and exhaustion, along with all the unspoken fears that were displayed so clearly on our parents’ faces as they waited, not knowing where Turtle was—if she was warm or cold, fast asleep or awake and panicking, alive or dead.
    Each of us—especially as a child—wants to feel secure and protected. All my life I’d looked to my parents for reassurance that things were under control amid all the chaos and uncertainty of life. When I was afraid, they soothed me. When I was sick, they healed me. Because this was my reality, I felt certain at first that they would quickly find my sister and bring her home safely. It seemed impossible that they could fail. In the same way, I believed the police would arrest her abductor and throw him in jail, easy as that. It was the only outcome I could imagine: my parents would protect Turtle, and the police would protect everybody else by capturing the man who’d taken her. Good things happen to goodpeople, and bad people get punished. We tell ourselves these things because we have to, and there’s nothing more frightening than when this curtain of comfort is yanked away to reveal the truth: life often doesn’t make sense; it isn’t fair, and sometimes it is far more cruel than kind. We are never fully protected. To a child, these facts are incomprehensible. To an adult, they are reason to fear the worst—the fact that tragedy can swallow a person in one gulp without so much as a moment’s warning.
    Because nobody asked, it simply did not occur to me to mention whether I’d recognized the man inside the ill-fitting Santa suit. I’d seen enough of his features as he stood beneath the floodlight in our yard; they were mostly hidden by the white beard strapped to his face, but I’d still recognized him.
    The previous summer, my parents had hired a landscaping company to build a retaining wall on the hillside in our backyard. The soil on the hill was too unstable for grass or plants to put down roots, and my mother couldn’t stand the constant accumulation of pebbles from the steady erosion. Ed Tickle had promised to help my dad with the project months ago, but then he’d gotten too busy. He ran the local hardware store and did small construction jobs on the side; my dad knew Ed could have done a good job on the wall, but he didn’t want to be pushy. He’d already built a playhouse for Remy and me at the edge of the Mitchells’ backyard that summer. He’d done it for almost nothing, too, because he said it was good for the neighborhood.
    Since Ed wasn’t available, my mom hired a guy named LennyLaMana, because his bid was the only one my family could afford. His company was called Landscaping by Lenny. My father had seen him around town and thought he was a sleaze. “His name might as well be Lenny Leisure Suit,” he’d complained.