by Lisa Gardner
Keith doesn’t say anything as we approach our ride, still tucked in the bushes. Right before he pulls on his helmet, I stop him with a hand on his shoulder. I lean forward. This time, I find his lips all by myself. We kiss long and slow. Gentle.
It reminds me of the woods of Maine. Of being a girl again, with the sun on my cheeks and a winding deer path unspooling before me. It is promise and hope and a whisper of a future I once thought impossible.
When I finally pull back, his hand is covering my own.
“We’ll do this together,” he says, and I know exactly what he means.
Keith drives us onto Walt’s property. Most likely I should call D.D. and tell her what we have discovered and where we are going. But I feel fragile, the moment too dreamlike to survive being put into words.
I’m not alone. I have Keith. And besides, whatever we learn about Walt, about Jacob, it may still not hold any relevance for the taskforce. Maybe it’s simply another chapter in my story, which is for me to hear first.
Walt has his shotgun. It’s strapped onto the back of his ATV. It doesn’t strike me as ominous anymore. Simply a tool a paranoid microgreens grower never leaves home without.
Walt unchains the main gate, opens it long enough for us to pull out on the dirt road. He locks up behind, then mounts his four-wheeler and roars around us to take the lead. We follow him for several miles, having to weave our way around deep ruts. Then a smaller trail appears on the right, heading farther into the woods. Walt guns it and Keith does the same.
Up we climb. I think we must be somewhere in the vicinity of the two grave sites, but having cut through Walt’s property, I feel disoriented. I can’t be sure.
The wooded trail suddenly spits us out onto a newer dirt road. I recognize the pattern from the map we’d studied yesterday—the whole ATV trail system acts as a series of shortcuts, slicing straight lines through the mountains to connect road here to road there—hence the locals’ preference for moving around.
Then, in front of us: a hulking, misshapen form just now appearing in a clearing ahead.
The cabin that broke me.
The cabin that made me.
I can’t help myself; I feel as if I’ve finally come home again.
* * *
—
“WHY DIDN’T JACOB HAVE YOUR last name?” I ask Walt as we climb off our four-wheelers.
We are parked on the edge of the woods. The dilapidated structure is several hundred yards ahead in a clearing. I already know Walt will recon the area before we advance. His paranoia, I can tell, is a lifestyle.
The old man shrugs. “He was called Davies when he was a kid. But his mom and I, we never married. Just two people who shacked up for a bit. I never thought to ask what might be on the birth certificate. Or maybe he changed it later. I didn’t ask.”
“How old was he when he and his mother split?” Keith asks, removing his helmet, shaking out his hair.
“Four or five. Little guy. Could shoot, though. I taught him that.”
“After they left, you never saw them again until . . . he came back?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Never went looking?”
“Nope.”
“He just . . . showed up. What, forty years later?” I’m not sure I believe this.
Walt looks at me. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“How did you know he was really your son?” Keith asks.
“A man always knows his own blood.”
“He’s your son,” I state without hesitation. “Having seen you both.” Then, because Walt is now unhooking the shotgun from his ATV: “Do you know how he died?”
“FBI killed him. It was on the TV.”
“The FBI didn’t kill him.”
Walt stops. He studies me for a long while. “Did you love him?” he asks, which isn’t what I was expecting at all. “Seems to me, that’s what drives most women to kill.”
“I didn’t love him. I thought he was a monster. I thought he needed to be wiped off this earth. But toward the end . . . He might have loved me a little. If monsters are capable of such a thing.”
Keith blinks his eyes at this revelation.
“Monsters can love,” Walt declares. “But that don’t change what we are.”
Keith and I fall in step behind Jacob Ness’s gun-toting father, and follow him toward the cabin.
* * *
—
MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE MIXED. The structure isn’t a house as I’d always assumed, but more like a collapsing shack. There’s a tiny wooden porch with a sagging roof and rotted floorboards. The first step up isn’t even attached anymore, but lies a few feet away, nearly lost in the tall grass.
“Who owns this?” Keith asks, eyeing the building dubiously.
Walt shrugs.
“Jacob said he had to leave because the owner wanted it back,” I speak up.
“Nah. This place has been abandoned for decades. Mountains are dotted with shacks just like it. Old family homes, long since deserted. Custom is to let ’em be. Such things can come in handy for lost hikers, hunters, whatnot.”
“But I remember lights in the basement. Running water.”
“There’s a well,” Walt says and points a hundred yards off. “Jacob fixed the pump. Not that hard to do.”
“And the electricity?”
“Tapped into a line, or was using battery-operated devices. I didn’t pay much attention myself, but again, not hard.”
Says the guy with an entire growing operation in his ramshackle barn.
“Why didn’t anyone notice?” Keith again. “I mean, if this is an abandoned property, shouldn’t someone have realized lights were suddenly going on at night?”
“Where are the neighbors to realize?”
Keith and I look around. We see trees and more trees, then a wide, heavily rutted dirt road leading away from the house.
“’Sides,” Walt says, “at least when Jacob brought me here, he didn’t turn on lights upstairs, only in the cellar.”
I nod slowly. I hadn’t thought about it, but for our entire stay in the house, we were in the basement, even Jacob. It hadn’t occurred to me that might be because he didn’t want to give away that he was squatting in a deserted house.
I also understand now why the FBI was never able to find traces of this place’s location. It hadn’t turned over ownership or gone into foreclosure, or even had a real estate identity. It was just an abandoned shack in the woods.
Again, clever and crazy.
Now Walt steps cautiously onto the front porch, skirting the massive hole in the middle. He leads with his right foot, testing each board before adding his whole weight.
I follow behind him, well aware that this is the height of stupidity. That I got out of this goddamn prison once, and now will probably plunge through some rotted piece of wood to my doom. But I can’t stop myself. Already this is everything and nothing like I imagined.
The smell hits me. Mold and mildew. And just like that I’m in the basement again. I reel slightly, put out a hand. Keith catches me, while ahead Walt pauses.
“You’re sure?” he asks. He’s carrying the shotgun loosely at his side. Whether to protect against any nesting varmints or extract revenge for his son’s death, I have no idea. I feel punch-drunk, a woman on a tightrope, peering at the certain death looming below and admiring the view.
I should call D.D., I think again. And not out of investigative duty, but because she’d kick my ass for doing this, and right now her brand of tough love is probably exactly what I need.
Instead, I follow Walt over the threshold.
* * *
—
THE MAIN LIVING AREA IS smaller than small, with a crude attempt at a galley kitchen to the left and a giant hole in the wall straight ahead where a woodstove once li
ved. Standing beside me, Keith sneezes, then sneezes again. Dust whirs up in disturbed clouds. If Jacob had been a squatter, apparently no one has reclaimed the space since.
“When did Jacob bring you here?” I ask Walt now.
He shrugs. “Years ago—”
“What month?” I interrupt.
He has to think about it. “August.”
“You’re sure? That’s the first time you came to this place?”
“Pretty sure.” He scratches his beard. “I mean, I don’t pay much mind to the calendar.”
“I would’ve been here, five, six months by then. You didn’t know before?”
“I had no idea my son had returned to the area, let alone was living in this here cabin with some girl locked in the cellar. Like I said, he found me. Walked right up and introduced himself in the bar.”
“Why?” Keith asks.
“Said he wanted to finally meet his old man.”
“What was his mood like?” Keith again.
“Dunno. He shook my hand, offered to buy me dinner. I didn’t say no to dinner.”
“And just like that,” I speak up, “he reappears, buys you a meal, then introduces you to his sex slave?”
Walt frowns at me. “I saw him around a few more times. Even brought him to the old homestead. I was growing dope back then. Jacob appreciated it. I could tell the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Guy that hard-looking, he was his old man all over again. Nothing he wouldn’t drink or snort. I tried to warn him, but he just laughed, told me not to worry.” Walt shrugs again. “Not my place to judge another man.”
“Did he tell you what he did?” Keith asks.
“Long-haul trucker.”
“And his mom?” My turn. “Did he mention her?”
“Nah. And I didn’t ask.”
“He had a daughter. Did he mention her?”
Walt looks more uncomfortable. “He showed up. Bought me dinner. We did a little talking. A little visiting. I wasn’t sure why he’d returned. What he wanted. I was still figuring it out, when he brought me here one night. Told me he wanted to show me something. Told me I’d be proud of him.”
Walt stares at me. “You don’t remember?”
I’m honestly not sure. Multiple voices in the basement? It rings a bell, but I can’t bring it into focus. I suffer an impression of incredible thirst and hunger. Of hearing footsteps and thinking desperately: Finally, I’ll be let out. There’d be burgers or wings or whatever Jacob’s most recent craving was. And water. I desperately wanted water.
Except then there’d been talking. On the other side of the box. So much talking. Me whimpering, clawing my shredded fingertips against the closed lid like a wounded animal. Why wasn’t he undoing the lock? Why wasn’t he feeding me? Then, the creak of the stairs. Footsteps retreating. Voices drifting farther and farther away, until I was once again alone and starving in the dark.
“He was proud of what he’d accomplished,” Walt says now. “Rigging up the place, building the box, snatching himself a friend. Told me all about you, how everyone was looking for you with your picture being all over the news. And still, no one suspected him, knew what had happened, where to look. Like he’d stolen some treasure from right beneath everyone’s noses. Guess he thought I’d be proud of him, too. Cuz that’s what he remembered from being a little boy. That’s what his mom had told him. That I was that kind of man.”
Walt doesn’t look at me anymore. “I felt shame that night. The trees screamed and raged at me. Wouldn’t let me sleep. That’s when I knew what I had to do. But I was too late.”
“Maybe that’s why he brought you over,” Keith offers. “He already planned on taking off. He just wanted one last moment to brag.”
“Maybe,” Walt says. He turns toward the basement stairs.
“Wait.” I hold out a hand. “Did Jacob mention being in the area before, say, fifteen years ago?”
I glance at Keith. The time frame of the other graves, and Lilah Abenito’s murder.
That shrug again. “Forty years of past is too much to cover. We stuck to the present. That was hard enough.” He hits the stairs, rat-a-tat-tat, down to the cellar.
I follow much more slowly, testing each tread, my head pressed against the cool wall for support.
Walt is correct about the cellar. What I’d considered a basement was really little more than a single, dark moldy room. Walt finds a lantern, lights it, and the infamous shit brown carpet once more comes into view. I realize now it’s just a remnant tossed upon an earthen floor. The sofa I hated so much is shoved against a wall, stuffing coming out in giant chunks. I remember a coffee table, cheap, compressed wood, but it’s nowhere in sight. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe some lost hiker broke it down for firewood. I don’t know.
The bathroom in the corner is barely as big as a closet and every bit as disgusting as I remember. I can just make out a moldy bar of soap. Same as the one Jacob let me use to wash my hair? It looks like a separate life-form; I can’t even bring myself to touch it.
In my mind, this place is every bit as foul and smelly and awful as my memories. Yet, I recall it somehow being bigger, even nicer. Or maybe that’s just how it seemed after being released from a pine box. Hell, Jacob probably could’ve stuck me in an outhouse after that damn prison, and it would’ve seemed like a luxurious master bath.
I’m shaking. I don’t even realize it until Keith puts his arm around my shoulders. I’m covered in goose bumps and shivering uncontrollably.
Walt, shotgun still in hand, eyes me worriedly. Does he think I’ll scream hysterically, break down?
Am I going to scream hysterically and break down?
I can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m here at last. Ground zero. And it’s the same, but it’s different. It’s just as horrible and horrifying . . . and yet it also seems smaller, less significant, less scary.
I’m no longer the girl in the box.
I am Flora Dane.
I left this place.
I survived Jacob Ness.
And right now, if his father turns on me with that shotgun, I will have him facedown on this floor with his own shotgun pressed against the back of his head so fast, even Keith won’t see it coming. And if he twitches, I’ll pull the trigger without thinking twice.
Something must show in my face, because Walt takes a nervous step back.
Fuck this entire damn shack. And thank God Jacob Ness is already burning in hell.
“I’m done here,” I state. Then without waiting for either Walt or Keith to respond, I head straight up the rickety stairs, out of the collapsing cabin, and right to the middle of the clearing till I can feel the wind on my face.
I am free, I tell myself.
And for the first time in years, I almost believe it.
CHAPTER 27
BONITA, THE BLOND WOMAN HAS named me. I try it on in my head. I wait to hear my mother’s voice whisper it to me. I do not feel beautiful with my scarred head and sagging face and dragging foot. Can a Stupid Girl really be Bonita?
I am humbled the blond woman gave me such a gift. As well as scared.
I am Stupid Girl. I can’t work my lips or tongue to tell the detective what she needs to know. I’m too weak to stand up to Cook, who will make Hélène and me pay for talking to the police.
I am nothing. Bonita, Girl—they are both the same. Broken. Though in my differentness, I do know some things others don’t. That the house has memory, feels pain. That colors are not just crayons, but moods and powerful expressions of their own.
That my mother is standing beside me, right now. I feel her presence as strongly as the scent of biscuits wafting from the oven. My mother is here, a sliver of silver gliding in and out of the light. She appears when I need her the most. When the worst is about to happen.
I hold my breath, rolling out more biscuit dough, then cutting
it into rounds for the waiting cookie sheet. Like Cook, I pretend I don’t hear the argument raging on the other side of the kitchen door.
* * *
—
“DO YOU HAVE DOCUMENTATION FOR either of your maids?” the blond detective is demanding.
“What do you mean?” Mayor Howard. His voice is hollow with guilt. If I drew him, I would use reds and golds, with a core of darkest night. He loved his wife, but it couldn’t save them from the corrupt ambition at the center of their marriage.
The Bad Man is pure black. Mayor Howard . . . he has more color, though the end result is not so different.
“Birth certificate for Bonita—”
“Who is Bonita?”
“Sorry, your niece.”
“Her name is Bonita?” The mayor, genuinely confused.
“I don’t know,” the detective replies crisply. “But I’m pretty sure her birth certificate doesn’t list it as Girl.”
Silence. The stove timer chimes. Cook is stirring sausage gravy on the gas range while also eavesdropping shamelessly. She’s clearly distracted. I put on oven mitts, check the biscuits.
They are fluffy and golden on top. I pull the tray out of the oven, place it on the top to cool. I can’t speak. I can’t read. The entire world outside this house is terrifying to me. But maybe if I ever did leave, I could be like my own mother, making people sigh happily over plates of food. Cook has taught me enough, and maybe I have some of my mother in me after all.
I feel her again, brushing my shoulder. Does she like the name Bonita? Maybe I could use it instead.
My eyes burn, though I am much too old to cry.
From the other side of the doorway: “Of course we have the paperwork. My wife . . .” The mayor, choked up and angry. “My wife just died! For God’s sake, I don’t have time for this right now. Have you no compassion?”
