The Girl I Used to Be

Detective Campbell and Chaplain Farben arrive at Olivia’s apartment, calling her by her old name of Ariel Benson. They tell her that the police have finally found her father, Terry, who has been missing for 14 years and suspected of killing Olivia’s mother, Naomi, abandoning his child at a Walmart, and then leaving the country. Olivia has always believed her father to have been guilty of the murder. She thinks that they have finally hunted him down as a fugitive and is confused when they say that his jawbone was found in the woods a mile from where her mother’s body was discovered. The police now believe that her father was murdered at the same time as her mother. This new information causes a radical shift in the way Olivia sees her life and her understanding of her parents. Campbell says that while it’s too bad Olivia—the only witness—doesn’t remember anything about the murders, it probably saved her life because the police believe that it was the killer who took her to the Walmart.

Olivia struggles to understand why the killer would have let her live. Campbell explains that the killer likely thought she was too young to remember or provide useful testimony. He explains the common motivations for murders by strangers: theft or compulsion to kill. He notes that Olivia’s mother was stabbed 19 times, something the police call “overkill”; this reflects a certain amount of passion, “either extreme anger or someone who loved to kill or who felt some kind of twisted love for your mom” (10). He explains that he, too, would have looked at a boyfriend, husband, or lover first in this crime due to the emotions reflected in the method. 

The visitors leave, and Olivia opens her laptop and searches YouTube for old America’s Most Wanted coverage of her family. The clips trace the early days of the investigation through the conclusion the police and community drew: First, they are described as a young family gone missing on their way to find a Christmas tree to cut down; next, the show reports that Ariel has been found in a Walmart three hours from their hometown of Medford; the final segment talks about the finding of Naomi’s body and includes a plea for witnesses to come forward.

As she watches the clips, Olivia sees interviews with relatives of whom her memories vary in intensity. In particular, she dwells on memories of her maternal grandmother with whom she’d lived after her mother’s murder. Next, Olivia looks up the Medford newspaper and reads the main story: an article that details the change in the police theory of the murders and begins to allow Terry’s relatives to rehabilitate his image. It announces that a memorial will be held Saturday; Olivia tells herself that it would be stupid to go to it.

Olivia stops for gas on her way to Medford. She reflects on how many of her belongings are packed into the duffel bag in her car and how being a child in foster care meant not having many things of her own. She reflects, too, on the previous funerals she’s attended: her mother’s, which she’s too young to remember, and her grandmother’s, at which she hid under a pew and cried while relatives argued over where she’d live. She remembers none of them wanting her.

When Olivia was eight, she was told she was being placed with “a forever family” (19). Her adoptive mother was Tamsin Reinhart, who promptly changed Ariel Benson’s name to Olivia Reinhart. Tamsin was not prepared to deal with Olivia’s trauma response: her grief, her loneliness, the nightmares that woke her screaming every night. Olivia admits that she “tested” Tamsin and “pushed [her] away” (20-21). Within three months, Tamsin relinquished her to the foster system, though Olivia found that she could not return to the comfort of any part of her old life. The foster system even maintained her new name for convenience of school records.

Olivia stops at the Salem Walmart where she was found as a toddler and walks through it, trying to unearth any memories from that day. Nothing comes back, and she leaves to drive the rest of the way to Medford. When she arrives, she goes straight to her grandmother’s house, which Olivia technically owns and will inherit when she turns 18. She notes that the rental income generated from the house is deposited into her bank account each month but that there have been no tenants and no rent for the past three months. At the door, she’s startled by a person saying they know who she is.