The Final Act

by Joy Fielding

  Julia?

  Questions began racing around Cindy’s brain, like a dog chasing its tail. Was it possible Julia had told Faith about Tom’s indiscretions, even though the two women barely knew one another? Or was it more likely that Julia had confided the information to Ryan during a romantic encounter? Had Ryan then carelessly passed the juicy tidbit along to his wife?

  “I think there’s some leftover tuna in the fridge,” Faith was saying, already halfway down the hall. She stopped in front of the nursery door. “I guess I should check on Kyle,” she said with obvious reluctance, making no attempt to go inside.

  “Why don’t we just let him sleep?” Cindy led Faith down the stairs, hoping for more time alone with her. There was no telling what she might say.

  Relief washed across Faith’s face. “Did he give you a hard time?” she asked, making herself comfortable at the kitchen table while Cindy rifled through her fridge, looking for the tuna.

  “No. He was great. Although he did almost pee in my eye.”

  “I think he does that on purpose.”

  Cindy was about to laugh when it occurred to her that Faith was actually serious. There was a strange flatness to her voice that belied any attempt at humor. Disconcerted, Cindy did a final survey of the contents of the fridge, ultimately abandoning the search for tuna, and emerging with a handful of eggs she hoped were reasonably fresh. “How about I make us an omelet?”

  “With cheese?”

  “Do you have any?”

  “I love cheese,” Faith said, as if this were answer enough.

  “One cheese omelet coming up.” Cindy located a large chunk of old Cheddar at the very back of the fridge, as well as several loose sticks of butter and a container of milk that had never been opened and was one day short of its expiration date. The salt and pepper were in plain sight on the counter, but she had to search through several cupboards for a medium-sized bowl and a frypan. “I think that’s everything,” she told Faith, who said nothing. Nor did she say anything as Cindy cracked open the eggs, mixed them with the milk, and stirred them in the frypan. Only when Cindy was adding the Cheddar did Faith show any interest in what she was doing.

  “I love cheese,” she said again.

  They ate in silence, Faith cutting her omelet into neat little bits, then slowly chewing and swallowing each piece. Cindy watched her as she ate, wishing she could pick the young woman up by her heels and shake her, as if she were a branch on one of the outside maple trees. How many loose acorns would fall out? Cindy wondered, thinking, Does she know something? Something she’s not telling me?

  Something about Julia?

  “Is there anything new with the investigation?” Faith asked suddenly, as if reading Cindy’s mind. She laid her fork down, pushed her plate into the middle of the table, sat back in her chair, her knife in her right hand.

  “No,” Cindy said. “Nothing new.”

  “It must be horrible for you.”

  “It is.”

  “So many horrible things in this world.” Faith lifted the knife toward her face, checked her reflection in the narrow sliver of stainless steel. “I look like shit,” she said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Do you ever wish you could just crawl into bed and never wake up?”

  “Faith . . .” Cindy began, not sure what to say next.

  “I’m tired.” Faith pushed her chair away from the table, struggled to her feet. “I think I should lie down for a while.” Without another word, she turned and walked purposefully from the room. It was only when Cindy heard her opening the door to the nursery that she realized Faith still had the knife.

  *

  CINDY RACED UP the stairs, the omelet sitting heavy in her stomach, like a large stone, impeding the flow of oxygen to her lungs. Why hadn’t she been paying closer attention? What if she was already too late?

  Too late for what?

  “Faith!” Cindy ran down the hall, Faith’s sweater slipping from her shoulders and sliding off her back. “Faith, wait!”

  A baby’s screams filled the air, followed by the sound of Faith’s tortured cries. Together they shook the floor beneath Cindy’s feet, like a powerful earthquake.

  “No!” Cindy threw herself into the nursery, stopping dead in her tracks at the horrifying sight that greeted her eyes.

  Faith Sellick was standing over her son’s crib, one hand pulling at her hair, her face a twisted mask of grief and fury, the other hand on her baby’s chest, his tiny body convulsing with outrage.

  “Faith, no! What have you done?” Cindy pushed Faith out of the way with such force that Faith lost her footing and fell back against the rocking chair before collapsing to the floor. Cindy scooped the baby from the crib, her eyes frantically searching his white sleeper for blood. But there was no blood on the baby’s sleeper. Just as there was no blood on the sheets. No blood anywhere, Cindy realized with audible relief, seeing the knife lying innocently at the foot of the crib. “What happened in here?” she demanded over Kyle’s continuing howls. “What did you do to him? Tell me!”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Faith cried helplessly. “I was just looking at him, and he opened his eyes and started screaming.”

  “Did you poke him with the knife?”

  “What knife?” Faith asked, her confusion palpable.

  “You didn’t touch him?”

  Faith shook her head, covering her ears with her hands, trying to block out the baby’s cries. “He hates me,” she whimpered. “He hates the sight of me.”

  “He doesn’t hate you.” Cindy returned the screaming baby to his crib, lowered herself to the floor beside Faith.

  “Listen to him.”

  “Babies cry, Faith. It’s what they do.”

  “I can’t stand it when he cries.”

  “I know.” Cindy took Faith in her arms, rocked her back and forth, as earlier she had rocked the woman’s infant son. “I know.”

  “Sometimes when he cries, it feels like my head is going to explode.”

  “I know,” Cindy said again. What else could she say? It was the truth. She did know. There was nothing worse, nothing more heartbreaking, than the sound of your child’s unhappiness. “You need to see a doctor,” she told Faith gently. “I’ll talk to my friends. Find out the name of a good psychiatrist.”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “No. I just think you need more help than I can give you.”

  Faith shook her head. “You think I’m crazy,” she said.

  *

  RYAN WALKED IN the house at just after four o’clock, his arms full of blood-orange roses. “For you,” he told Cindy, laying them across her arms. “Along with my heartfelt apologies for being so late.”

  “Your meeting went on longer than you thought,” Cindy stated rather than asked. This was familiar territory after all. Tom had long ago given her a tour of its terrain.

  “I’m really so sorry. When I phoned you, I honestly thought we had everything all worked out.”

  Cindy did her best at a sympathetic smile.

  “We resolved everything eventually,” he said, as if seeking to reassure her.

  “You got the commission?”

  “Just in time for the start of rush hour traffic. It was brutal.”

  “You must be exhausted.”

  “I’m more than a little drained, to tell you the truth. I could use a drink. How about you?”

  Cindy thought she already detected a faint odour of booze on Ryan’s breath. “I really should be getting home, get these flowers in water.”

  “One little drink. To celebrate my success.” Ryan disappeared into the dining room, returned minutes later with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. “Red okay with you?”

  “Fine.”

  He uncorked the bottle as Cindy lowered the roses to the coffee table. “To you,” he said, clicking his glass against hers. “With my undying gratitude.”

  “To Julia’s safe return.” Cindy lifted the glass to her mout
h, took a long sip, the taste of blackberries lingering on her tongue.

  Ryan winced. “How are you holding up?”

  “Just barely.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Me too.”

  “Honestly, Cindy, I told the police everything I know.” Ryan took another sip of his wine, glanced toward the ceiling. “It’s so quiet.”

  “Everyone’s asleep.”

  “Amazing. You obviously have the magic touch.”

  “Your wife thinks you’re having an affair,” Cindy said matter-of-factly.

  “What?”

  “Your wife . . .”

  “My wife’s imagination is working overtime these days,” Ryan said testily, cutting Cindy off before she could say it again.

  “Women are usually right about this sort of thing.” Cindy watched the color drain from Ryan’s face as effortlessly as he drained the wine from his glass.

  “My wife is depressed . . .”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s delusional.”

  “You know as well as I do how strange she’s been acting lately.”

  Cindy had to admit he was right. “What does her doctor say?”

  Ryan shook his head. “I’ve been meaning to call him. It’s just that I’ve been so damn busy.”

  “Your wife needs help, Ryan.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan said briskly, finishing the wine in his glass, looking sorry he’d ever suggested she stay for a drink. “I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”

  As if on cue, the telephone rang.

  Cindy carried her glass to the kitchen and left it in the sink, wondering how long it would be before someone got around to washing it. “I should get going,” she said, waving good-bye as Ryan picked up the phone.

  “Don’t forget your flowers,” he whispered, hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Oh, right.” Cindy returned to the living room, scooped the two dozen roses off the coffee table, pricking her finger on an unseen thorn. She brought her injured finger to her mouth, sucked at the blood, thought it sweeter than the wine.

  “Just a minute,” she heard Ryan say. Then, walking toward her, extending the portable phone in his hand, “It’s for you.”

  “For me?” Cindy suddenly remembered she’d left the Sellicks’ phone number with the police in case they needed to reach her. Had something happened? Had her earlier premonition been correct? Had they found Julia? Cindy lifted the phone to her ear as Ryan moved a discreet distance away. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Carver, it’s Detective Bartolli.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Of course. Have you found Julia?”

  “No.” A pause. Then, “Is Ryan Sellick in the room with you?”

  Cindy felt her pulse quicken. She stole a glance at Ryan, who was standing at the window, pretending to be engrossed in the late afternoon sky. “Yes.”

  “Okay, I want you to listen to me, and not do anything stupid. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “No buts. I want you to make whatever excuses are necessary and get out of that house as quickly as possible. We’re on our way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just do what I tell you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We did a check on those crank calls you’ve been receiving. Several of them came from the Sellick house.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “We don’t know what it means, but we intend to find out. Now get the hell out of that house, and let us handle it.”

  Cindy clicked off the phone as Ryan turned around.

  “Problems?” he asked.

  “I have to go.”

  “Was that the police?”

  Don’t say anything, Cindy cautioned herself. Don’t do anything stupid. Just listen to Detective Bartolli, and get the hell out. Let the police handle things.

  “Cindy?”

  Cindy dropped the roses to the floor. “What have you done with my daughter?” she demanded, hurling the portable phone at Ryan’s head. “What have you done with Julia?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE phone whizzed by Ryan’s head like a bullet, missing the side of his skull by mere centimeters, and slamming into the piano, taking a crescent-shaped nick out of its ebony side. It crashed to the floor, then lay on its back, its underside exposed and vulnerable, like a dead turtle.

  “Cindy—Jesus!—what the hell are you doing?” Ryan swayed from one foot to the other, as if not sure whether to bolt for the door or wrestle her to the ground.

  Cindy made the decision for him, throwing herself at his chest and grabbing hold of his dark blue tie, weaving it between her fingers, and pulling it up and out, like a noose. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  Ryan tried wriggling out of her grasp, but Cindy’s grip on his tie was unyielding. His complexion went from soft pink to angry red, as his right hand reached for his throat, and his left tried in vain to ward off the blows of her open palm.

  A sudden jolt of pain shot through Cindy’s arm, like an electric shock, as Ryan succeeded in grabbing her wrist and twisting it back. Cindy responded with a sharp kick to his shin.

  “Cindy, what the hell . . .?”

  “Where’s Julia? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cindy hauled back and slapped Ryan hard, across the face.

  “Shit!” he yelled, his cheek whitening with the imprint of her hand. The slap seemed to knock him into action, for suddenly he was all masculine strength and rage, his arms extending and corralling and subduing. In seconds, he overpowered Cindy’s intemperate flailings, reducing them to an ineffectual montage of arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers and toes.

  Cindy cried out as she felt the point of his shoe crack against the back of her knees, then watched helplessly as her body was propelled into the air, before falling—ass over teakettle, as her mother might say—to the floor. Her elbow smacked against the top of the piano stool, and she swore, the word fuck flying from her mouth in a sudden rush of air, as Ryan fell on top of her, pinning her arms to the floor above her head. Roses scattered in all directions as Cindy tried to sit up, to push him away, to roll out from under him, but she couldn’t move. “Shit! Fuck!” she sputtered, sounding increasingly weak, her words having lost their power to shield and protect. After several more minutes of aimless showboating, she gave up, stopped struggling, lay still.

  “Okay, now,” Ryan began, his voice that of the conqueror, despite his shortness of breath.

  Cindy stared up at the man lying on top of her, gravity pulling on his handsome face, distorting his delicate features, like a silk sweater that’s been left too long on a hanger. Ryan was bruised and sweaty, and his dark hair fell across his forehead like loosely shredded bits of carbon paper. Anger intensified the black of his eyes; confusion softened it. But something else was present in those eyes, Cindy recognized. Mingled with the anger and confusion was an unmistakable glint of excitement. Ryan Sellick was enjoying himself.

  “Tell me what the hell is going on,” he said.

  In response, Cindy expelled a wad of saliva from her mouth, aiming it directly at Ryan’s face. Unfortunately, the gesture proved more symbolic than successful, with only a tiny fraction of the spittle reaching its intended target, and the rest raining back across her lips.

  “Are you crazy?” Ryan was shouting now. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “Let go of me.”

  Ryan tightened his grip on her wrists. “Not until you promise to calm down.”

  “You’re only making things worse for yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The police will be here any minute.”

  Ryan suddenly let go of her arms, sank back on his hips. “The police?”

  “They kno
w all about your affair with Julia,” Cindy improvised.

  Ryan fell away from her then, leaning back against the stubby front leg of the piano, the color draining from his face in uneven bursts, leaving jagged splotches of red on his cheeks, like too much makeup haphazardly applied. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, but his words lacked the moral outrage necessary to sustain them, and they burst upon contact with the air, like soap bubbles.

  Cindy scooted along the floor on her rear end until she felt the sofa at her back. She was too tired to stand up, too spent to launch another attack. “Just tell me where Julia is,” she said softly, when what she really wanted to say was, just tell me Julia’s alive.

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “The police think you do.”

  “The police are wrong.”

  “Just like they’re wrong about the crank calls I’ve been getting?”

  “What crank calls?”

  “The ones telling me my daughter is a tramp, that she got what she deserved.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The calls coming from this house.”

  “What!”

  “Are the police wrong about that too, Ryan?”

  A shadow fell across Ryan’s face. Like in the movies, Cindy thought, when the screen slowly fades to black. His eyes registered disbelief, acceptance, and alarm almost simultaneously, and he shook his head, muttering, “No, it’s impossible. It can’t be.”

  “What can’t be?” Cindy asked, distracted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She turned, saw Faith standing in the doorway. She was wearing the same red tartan pajamas she’d been wearing all day, and the smell of sour milk emanated from her body like an unpleasant perfume.

  “What’s going on in here?” Faith asked, her eyes flitting between Cindy and her husband.

  Cindy remained on the floor as Ryan struggled to his feet, limped toward his wife.

  “What happened to your face?” Faith touched her husband’s cheek. “What’s going on?” she asked again, her voice flat and faraway, as if she were talking in her sleep.

  “Faith,” Ryan began, then stopped, smoothed the hair away from his wife’s forehead with a solicitous hand.

  “The police are on their way over,” Cindy informed her.

  “The police? Why?”