The Stranger Inside

by Laura Benedict

  “Hey, I’ve got the thing I wanted to show you. What you’ve been waiting for.” He sounded excited.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please just get help.”

  Instead of hurrying off, Kevin reached into his back pocket and pulled something out. After holding it up to the light for a moment, he put it close to her face.

  “Please, can’t this wait?” She couldn’t see clearly. There were two photographs, and in each one there were two men, two women, two beers, two flags, two teenage boys who might or might not have been the boy who knelt over her. Above the photographs, what was that look on his face? His eyes were wide with perverse pleasure.

  Something’s wrong with him.

  “Guess where your father was on the Fourth of July?” Without waiting for her to answer, he said, “He was with his family. His real family. With me, his son, and his real wife.”

  Michelle stared. Here was the proof. Though she’d grown used to her father being gone on the occasional holiday, now that she was older, she’d become suspicious. Who would want to be away from his family on a holiday? Certainly not her loving, teasing father. Her father, who helped them plan their Halloween costumes and took them to a Christmas tree farm every year to cut down a tree, who taught them both how to ride bikes and her how to drive.

  This was the truth. This was what Kimber was afraid of. What she was running from.

  “What do you want? Why won’t you leave us alone?”

  Kevin snorted. “My mother married him years before he met your mother. I think she knows about all of you, and it’s killing her.”

  Michelle tried to turn her head away from him, but she couldn’t move. It felt like a steel rod was poking the back of her neck. “We’ll figure it out. It doesn’t have to be like this.” She tried to focus on his face, but he was fading in and out. “What are you doing?”

  He lifted the camera to his eye. “Hold still.”

  She tried to push at him with her free arm, but he scooted out of reach. “Stop it! Why are you doing this?”

  “You’ve ruined it,” he said sharply. “Fine.” Taking the camera from around his neck, he laid it down a few feet away.

  Michelle watched him, her mouth dry with terror, as he lifted something high above them. She turned her face away and tried to scream, but just like in a nightmare in which some unseen force is crushing your throat, she managed only a strangled, pitiful cry before the rock crashed down onto the side of her head.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Her mother has made spinach lasagna for Sunday dinner, and Kimber sits across from Don in their kitchen, watching as he eats it with relish. He’s declared how delicious it is at least twice since they started, and when her mother mentioned that the kitchen had turned chilly, he quickly excused himself and returned with a sweater. Kimber wants to tell him he’s trying too hard and to relax. He’s confessed everything to her mother now, including that he gave Kimber’s father money to start over in Florida, and she hasn’t made him leave. Kimber suspects they’ll be okay.

  She’s told her mother everything too, except about her affair with Kyle and the truth about Michelle’s death. Their healing relationship is fragile, and she doesn’t want to cause her mother unnecessary pain. Don knows the truth, but to her mother, Michelle’s death will forever remain an accident.

  While they’re having coffee, she shares Troy’s discovery about the window.

  “Your father was mad for Frank Lloyd Wright when you were little,” her mother says. “He longed to go to Chicago and do a tour, but I don’t think he ever got around to it. Obviously he was way too busy.” She raises a thoughtful eyebrow. “There’s the Ebsworth Park house that they turned into a museum in Kirkwood about fifteen years ago. I think Ike would’ve made a decent architect if he’d applied himself. He had drawings, you know. I burned them.”

  It’s the kindest thing she’s said about Ike Hannon since the day he left her, and for a few moments they all sit in silence over their coffee.

  “So what will you do now, honey?” Her mother gets up to bring the coffeepot over for refills. “If those people from Florida take the house from you, or even if you can’t bear to live there, Don and I will help you buy another one. We’ve already talked about it.”

  Don nods enthusiastically. “Anything you need. You just tell us.”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But thank you. I appreciate it.” And she means it.

  That night, lying in bed, listening to Mr. Tuttle’s delicate snores, Kimber thinks about the day she and her mother moved out of the Kirkwood house, where the four of them had lived as a family.

  Nearly everything in the house, except their clothes, was being packed up by movers and put into storage. Kimber stood in the hallway, staring into Michelle’s empty bedroom. There were marks on the floor from where Michelle had pushed the furniture around, rearranging. She was always rearranging things, wanting to get the room just right. Those scrapes on the floor were among the few things Michelle and her mother ever fought about.

  Kimber fought with her mother about everything. Even that day, her mother had wanted her to have all her clothes packed up in suitcases by the time she returned from taking a second load of her own clothing to her parents’ house. (The boxes of shoes, alone, had taken a trip.) Now the movers were headed into Kimber’s room to get the dresser and bedside table, except the dresser wasn’t yet empty.

  Looking out the window above the stairs, she could see the bare peach tree at the very back of the yard. She needed to get out to that tree before her mother got home. The house had been sold, and after the two of them drove away for the last time, she wouldn’t ever be able to return.

  Flying down the front stairs, she almost ran into the two burly men who were headed for her bedroom.

  “Just dump the clothes in the drawers on the floor. Whatever,” she said.

  Unfazed, the movers continued slowly up the stairs. They were paid by the hour.

  The day was overcast but warm for early December. The peach tree had long ago lost its summer leaves, and now its bare branches twisted toward the sky.

  All the gardening tools that had lived on the potting bench behind the garage had been packed away, and the potting bench was empty and ready for the new owners. Scouting around, Kimber discovered that the garage hadn’t been completely emptied, and she grabbed a spade leaning against the back wall.

  Beneath the peach tree, the soil was packed tightly and gray-brown with cold. The summer had been a wet one, and the leathery remains of a few rotted peaches that the birds hadn’t bothered with lay melted into the ground. If the movers saw she was digging beneath the tree, would they tell her mother? She had only about ten dollars in cash with which to bribe them. Or she could explain to her mother that she had wanted to say goodbye to Captain Jack, but she knew that sounded crazy.

  To break the dirt, Kimber pressed her foot down on the top edge of the spade, the way her father had shown her years ago, but neither the spade nor the dirt would budge. It took ten minutes of stabbing the spade’s sharp corners into the ground to chip the first inch or two of dirt away. Her hands ached, but the colorful top of the box finally revealed itself.

  As she knelt down and tugged the box free, she heard a car door close in the driveway. Her heart began to pound.

  Come on, come on.

  Finally she wrested off the clay-choked lid.

  When she picked up the yellow cotton sweater she’d wrapped the diary in, it was clammy and limp in her cold, stiff hands. Underneath it was the folded bit of stained terrycloth containing the bones of the parakeet, Captain Jack. The diary was gone.

  Kimber realizes that Kevin was almost right. The money had been there the whole time, but not inside the house.

  For years she thought perhaps it was her mother who had discovered the buried diary. Now she understands her father must have seen her burying it and dug it up before he left. From it, he’d learned that she and Michelle had found out about his other lif
e. And although Kimber had hidden the diary even before Michelle knew Kevin’s name, he must have figured out that it was Kevin who led them to the truth. Maybe Don was right about her father taking Kevin and his mother away to Florida in order to protect her.

  Early fall storms have left the ground moist, and the shovel slides easily into the dirt. Kimber digs beneath the middle crape myrtle, the one framed right in the center of the window on the landing. Because the moon is high, she hasn’t bothered with a lantern or flashlight. After digging down two feet in the first hole—Mr. Tuttle watching the shovel closely—and finding nothing, she laughs quietly to herself. Here she is, digging in the dark, with a dog, a shovel, and a stupid idea. Leaving the shovel where it lies, she and Mr. Tuttle go inside to get drinks of water. She sits in the kitchen for a few minutes, thinking. Had her father guessed Kevin might come looking for the money? Maybe he didn’t mean for anyone to find it after all. He certainly hadn’t left her any hints that it even existed.

  Rested, and still feeling a bit foolish, she tries again. This time she digs beneath the smallest of the three trees, the one that didn’t have as many blooms on it as the others over the summer.

  Maybe there’s a good reason for that.

  Eighteen inches down, there’s no box, but there is plastic, and from its texture she thinks it might be a cheap shower curtain. Hardly something to keep a small fortune safe from the elements. After brushing away the lingering dirt, she pulls the bundle from the hole and lifts it onto the ground beside her. The bundle is tied at its corners like an old-fashioned hobo’s backpack, and the plastic complains as she works to undo the knots. When the knots prove too stubborn, she carefully cuts them off with a pocketknife.

  Kimber imagines her father kneeling out here in the dark, covering the lumpy plastic with dirt. He surely would’ve known that Jenny would be watching during the day and possibly even at night. It was probably a good thing that her eyesight had been as bad as it was and that she didn’t spend enough time with Kevin to gossip about the landscaping.

  The moon isn’t quite bright enough to see the details of the things lying clumped together on the shower curtain, so she takes her phone from her back pocket and turns on the flashlight app. Mr. Tuttle sniffs the pile cautiously, sneezes several times, and goes to sit a few feet away.

  The money is in rotting stacks, some squeezed nearly in half by flaccid rubber bands. How many bundles are there? Thirty? Forty? Freed from the constraints of the curtain, the moldy pile spreads slowly like a restless, slouching animal, and Kimber has to remind herself that there’s nothing alive here. The memory of Helena dying a few yards from where she’s kneeling sends a tingle up her spine. As she watches, the gray, shifting bundles reveal a single splotch of red.

  Kimber lifts the diary from the moldy pile, and something breaks inside her. She sees Michelle lying on her bed in her sunny bedroom, her hair falling forward over the page as she writes, one arm shielding the diary from view. The tip of her tongue is between her lips, a sign of concentration she’s had since she was a little girl. She’s stopped doing it in school, but there, in her own room, she feels safe. Alone. She doesn’t know Kimber’s watching from their shared bathroom, her face pressed against the narrow opening of the door.

  How jealous Kimber is, watching her. Watching her hand move across the page, telling the paper things that she would never share with Kimber.

  How sorry Kimber feels for both of those girls now. For the girl she was. The girl who felt so alone. It wasn’t that her father secretly loved Michelle better. It was that he had too many people to love.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers to Michelle, feeling the weight of the diary in her hands. “Forgive me. I promise I’ll do better.” The words inside are unreadable, Kevin’s notes fused together with the diary’s pages. This is the last of her father’s gifts to her: her secret. He had meant it to rot along with the money, protecting her in his own way to the very last. But it’s also a gift from Michelle. The diary, like her secret, no longer has any hold over her life. Or Michelle’s. Now they’re free.

  Author’s Note

  The Stranger Inside is a work of fiction set in a fictional Missouri that has many things in common with the real Missouri. Especially St. Louis, a city I love. It’s a city of neighborhoods surrounded by a county of small cities. Over many years I’ve lived in a number of places in both city and county. I celebrate their distinct differences and hope I’ve faithfully represented their characters without resorting to stereotypes. Now I visit St. Louis often and spent a lot of time there researching settings for the novel. It’s a sign of wonderful St. Louis hospitality that no one called the actual police on me as I drove slowly around town taking photos and making notes. This novel is not a police procedural, but several different law-enforcement groups figure prominently in the story. My apologies to the City of Richmond Heights Police Department and the St. Louis County Police if I’ve taken too many liberties with administrative details.

  Acknowledgments

  Proper acknowledgments would take up nearly as many pages as are in this novel. Everyone I come in contact with while I’m working on a book has an effect on it: from the associate at the bookstore (Rachelle) who puts a smile on my face by telling me I’m her favorite author to the amazing folks behind the desk at my local post office (Kathy, Dave, Beth, and Donna) who tell me stories and listen to mine, all the while providing faultless service. I get an awful lot of love and light from the people I engage with, and that has a huge impact on my ability to sit down in front of the blank page every day.

  Susan Raihofer (aka Agent Susan) of the David Black Literary Agency is always at the top of my thank-you list. There is no other agent on the planet as energetic, patient, funny, and long-suffering as she. Plus, she said Why not? to detective cats and no ghosts.

  I feel so honored that The Stranger Inside found a home at Mulholland Books (an imprint of Little, Brown and Company), which I’ve admired since its inception. Emily Giglierano, my editor, not only inspires me with her enthusiasm but also challenges me to be a better writer with her dead-on, insightful edits. What a thrill it is to have the encouragement and expertise of Little, Brown itself behind this book as well. Many thanks and so much gratitude, especially to Reagan Arthur, Craig Young, Pamela Brown, Sabrina Callahan, Katharine Myers, Karen Landry, Ira Boudah, Lauren Passell, and Jayne Yaffe Kemp. Special thanks to Dianna Stirpe.

  I’m so grateful for the design magic of Lucy Kim. I can’t imagine a more perfect cover for this novel.

  Ruth Tross, of Hodder & Stoughton Limited and Mulholland Books UK, not only was an early supporter and editor of the book but is also its UK publisher. I loved talking all things thriller and mystery with her in Toronto and am so happy to know her. Cicely Aspinall, another terrific editor, and the rest of the Mulholland UK team have carried it forward in style.

  So many of my law and law-enforcement questions were patiently answered by an incredibly knowledgeable former Missouri law-enforcement official who, at this time, shall remain anonymous. Along with answering questions, he truly helped expand the criminal aspects of the story, and I’m eternally grateful. (It goes without saying that any errors in those areas are strictly down to me.)

  Are there two more perfect names for a pair of cats belonging to the Rat Pack generation than Martini and Olive? I don’t think so. Kudos and thanks to the terribly creative Jackie Scharringhausen for coming up with them so I could use them in the book.

  (Thanks to Elyse Dinh for being awesome and grammatically correct!)

  J. T. Ellison and Ariel Lawhon, two always extraordinary friends and writers, spent many hours with me crystallizing a morass of ideas into a single, clear vision. Y’all are magic, I swear. And that goes for Paige Crutcher, Helen Ellis, Anne Bogel, and Lisa Patton too. Love and love.

  More love to Tandy Thompson, my favorite hostess and St. Louisan, and to Maggie Daniel Caldwell, my favorite former St. Louisan and forever partner in crime.

  This yea
r, my first daughter/first reader, Nora, married David Catalano. In the Catalanos, we gained a whole new wonderful family. (My apologies in advance. No one plans to be related to a writer!)

  My son, Cleveland, goes to college this year. He was five years old when I sold my first novel, and he’s been there for every word I’ve written since then. Our house will be a much quieter place, and I’m missing him already.

  P.B., I couldn’t ask for a better partner in life. Your love makes all things possible.

  Dearest reader, in a world where there are millions of other images and stories and amusements you could have chosen, you chose to read this book. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  About the Author

  Laura Benedict is the Edgar– and ITW Thriller Award–nominated author of seven novels of dark suspense and numerous published short stories. With her husband, Pinckney Benedict, she founded and edited the groundbreaking Surreal South: An Anthology of Short Fiction series. Her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, in PANK, on NPR, and in numerous anthologies, most recently St. Louis Noir.

  laurabenedict.com

  twitter.com/laurabenedict

  facebook.com/AuthorLauraBenedict

  Books by Laura Benedict

  The Bliss House Series

  Bliss House

  Charlotte’s Story

  The Abandoned Heart

  Cold Alone (a novella)