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The Girl Next Door

Alison Ogilvie-Holme

    “Mom, who’s Talia Chamberlain?” my daughter asks, in passing.
    The question shakes me, unnerves me. I pause to remind myself that Quinn has no frame of reference for this name. 1989 is ancient history to a seven¼th grader, especially one with no immediate ties to the tragedy. Instead of answering straight away, I continue slicing carrots and launch a fishing expedition.
    “Why do you ask, hon?”
    “I don’t know. Gram mentioned her the other day while we were out shopping and Aunt Sarah shushed her up in front of me, like she’d said a bad word or something.”
    Talia Chamberlain. It had sounded mysterious in the age of Crystals and Karens. Forget about “Tally” – the teenage girl who lived next door to my Nana’s house. At eighteen, Tally became known to the world as “Talia” – the beautiful young woman abducted from Willow Falls.
    Suddenly, our little town had been thrust into a virtual soap opera, except that this storyline could not be finessed by the return of a long lost twin or awakening from a bad dream. In real life, there is no coming back from the dead. That much I knew for certain, even as a naïve twelve-year-old.
    “Hmmm...what did Gram actually have to say about Talia?” I venture.
    “Not much, she just called her ‘poor little dear’ and then crossed herself, right before Aunt Sarah butted in.”
    In spite of the grim context, I stifle a giggle. Sarah has always been the take charge type with ‘natural leadership abilities’, at least according to all of our grade school teachers. Somehow, Quinn inherited my sister’s bold confidence, forever earning her the family nickname of Little Miss Bossy Pants.
    “Well, let’s see...I knew her as Tally. That’s what everyone called her. She was a girl from my hometown, a little bit older than me...”
    My hesitation appears to go unnoticed by Quinn, who is content to peel potatoes and listen, buoyed by the familiar sense of order and calm. There is a meditative quality to our evening ritual that usually sets both of us at ease. But tonight is different. I am now flush with visceral memory as the ground shifts beneath my feet once again.
    The news of Tally’s initial disappearance had delivered a swift punch to the gut. I can still remember that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like butterflies on acid. Five days later, her body was recovered in a shallow swamp, just miles outside of town, reporters feeding upon her remains. Somewhere deep down, I had already intuited this ending.
    Of course, I had only known her on a surface level. Tally often greeted us from over the fence in Nana’s backyard or waved hello from her rundown station wagon, the kind with peeling vinyl in faux wood exterior. Sometimes she and her mother dropped off homemade brownies. She was, for lack of a better phrase, a close acquaintance.
    And yet, I felt a kinship with Tally that belied the parameters of our relationship. Thoughts of Tally, and now Talia, riddled my brain with doubt until I could no longer separate reality from illusion. There remained a sort of fractured recall – that blurry photograph which distorts perspective.
    Salvation ultimately came in the form of expression. Dusty from misuse, I had pulled out my pink diary from underneath the bed to discover crisp, lined pages within. I began creating a list to sort out my feelings.

Tally	Talia
Nana’s neighbour	Stranger
Person	Body
Shy	Everyone’s best friend
Kind	Saint
Smart	Brilliant
Looked like mother	Looked like Justine Bateman
Loved baking and brownies	???

    The list grew over time until it eventually tapered off. At that point, the press had long since abandoned Willow Falls in pursuit of the next dead girl with white skin and flawless bone structure.
    “Tally was...she was smart and shy, and even though I didn’t know her very well, I always felt comfortable around her. Back then, I was pretty shy around most people, but Tally seemed to have a gentle spirit. Sadly, she died young, before really getting the chance to spread her wings.”
    I mentally brace myself for the onslaught of questions about the manner of Tally’s death. How do you explain senseless murder to an adolescent, without breeding fear and mistrust? Why do we live in a world where such explanation is necessary at all?
    “That’s too bad,’ says Quinn ‘Aunt Sarah always makes such a big deal out of everything. Why didn’t she just say so?”
    And with characteristic aplomb, Quinn ends one discussion and starts another, suddenly talking about her favourite new show on Netflix. I feel my whole body exhale with relief. For the moment, I am grateful to have a daughter who is steady and pragmatic, like Sarah. Not sensitive and emotional, like me. A lone tear grazes my cheek while I offer up a silent goodbye to Tally and slowly regain my footing in the here and now.

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