by E. G. Scott
She doesn’t turn around, but I see her shoulders droop. I hadn’t put it all together until she said, “He was very real once.” Now I’m hoping that I can stall her even for a few minutes longer to will the energy I need into my right arm.
“Yes,” she replies quietly. “Peter was my older brother. He was supposed to watch over me, but instead he did terrible things and blamed me. First it was poisoning my dog, then it was a shed fire that almost took the main house out, then he tried to poison one of the kids in the neighborhood. My mother thought he could do no wrong and never believed me when I told her what he was doing. He convinced her and my father that I was the bad seed. And they chose him.” She hasn’t turned around yet, but I can hear the bitterness in her voice. “They sent me away to boarding school. I barely saw any of them after that. I pretended I was an orphan and never looked back. Unfortunately, I would lose everything I cared about more than once because of people putting the blame on me. I guess we each have our own shitty patterns to overcome.” She snorts.
While she’s further spiraling into her crazy, I send every possible drop of energy into my right hand and am able to lift it to my face and extract two needles before my arm gives out and falls limply to the side. Miraculously, my finger grip is strong enough that the slim objects stay firmly between my thumb and pointer finger.
“Enough about the past. Let’s be in the present! You are all about that, aren’t you, Charlotte?” She picks up the orbitoclast and hammer and moves closer. “Now, I know I don’t need to talk you through what I’m going to be doing. I have to say how pleased I am that you are as coherent as you are for this. You have quite a fight in you, Charlotte. After injecting you with seven grams of pure aconite, I would have thought you’d be pretty comatose by now. Some people’s constitutions are just better served for toxins than others. Rachel didn’t stand a chance.”
I don’t speak and barely nod in acknowledgment. I use the rage surging through my body and channel it. It is rocket fuel to my waning energy. I keep still and reserve any life force that I have left.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” She reaches into the pocket of her button-down and withdraws a contact lens case.
SILVESTRI
I wrap my jacket around my left arm and use it to club through the front door of the darkened restaurant. As shards of glass cascade around my feet, a bolt of sharp pain shoots up my arm, and I feel my eyes tear up. I slip through the door frame and sprint toward the hidden entrance to the bathroom in Charlotte’s office.
CHARLOTTE
She places the pick and hammer on the table beside her and unscrews one of the reservoirs of the case. After placing the screw top next to the surgical tools, she uses bipolar forceps and extracts a small brown object, which looks like a small olive pit. She holds it over my face and brings it close to my right eye so it becomes blurry. “Le seed de résistance!”
I blink back a wave of tears. This is happening. This moment, right now, and I’m so present and mindful of it, I can’t stand it.
I take a beat as she swaps the forceps for the orbitoclast and hammer. “I’m just gonna get in there and dig around and do some damage to your upper frontal lobe before I get to seed planting. I placed the other seeds in the ear canal, but I think to really make a splash with this and make it signature Henry, I’ll go big. I may ask your advice as I do the procedure, at least as long as you still have use of your verbal skills.” She is cracking herself up, and I am a handful of breaths away from real cardiac arrest.
“You may or may not be fully dead when I get to that point, but your brain will be! It’s not every day that I get to mess around with a brain surgeon’s gray matter. I’ve watched quite a few YouTube videos on brain surgery to brush up. It’s been a long time since I had the privilege of watching you and Dr. Thornton work.”
I’m trying to recall if I ever sensed that Annie was crazy when I knew her. I just remember her being unassuming. Friendly, kind of quiet. A little shy and reserved. She blended into the rest of the hospital. I was so caught up in the glamour of possibility that I didn’t see so much of what was happening around me. I didn’t see the people. “Annie, I’m really sorry. Please don’t do this. You are my friend. Do you really want to hurt me?” I plead. “Lucy and I bonded, didn’t we?”
She hesitates. “That was a part I was playing. Like the women in the chat room. Like Peter. It was all make-believe.”
“But there was a bond there. Is a bond there. I know you feel it. All of the conversation we had in the room, all of the texts as Peter you sent me, and when I treated you as Lucy. That may have been imaginary in parts, but you were there in all of those connections.”
Her face contorts slightly. I’m not sure if she’s holding back pain, anger, or love. Whatever it is, she’s holding strong.
“Are you kidding? I’ve been planning this for over a year now. And it has all come together better than I could have imagined.”
“Wait. But you saved my life,” I push.
“What are you talking about?”
“You sent the email about the trauma survivors group, right? To lure me in?”
“Yeah,” she says proudly. “You made it easy and totally took the bait on that right away. I thought I’d have to spam you a few dozen times before you’d take it.”
“How did you know that I was suicidal? Your email came the same night I was going to end my life. That is how despondent I was after Michelle’s death.”
She considers this. “I didn’t know. I guess it was just a happy coincidence. Huh. That’s funny.” I can tell from her tone that she is not remotely amused.
“So you did save my life. Unintentionally, but that group was what kept me from committing suicide that night, and every night after. You being the members of the group helped me heal. Why do all of that work, just to kill me now?”
She’s quiet and I can’t tell if this is helping me or enraging her further, but any additional time that I can keep her from digging into my brain is more chance that the cops will realize something is wrong.
“Hmm. Well, I didn’t have all of the information at the time. It certainly wasn’t my intention to make your life better. I was gathering information and having a fun time catfishing you as Peter. I thought breaking your heart, while framing you for murder, before ultimately killing you and framing Henry for it, had a nice story arc. Funny how much of what we plan doesn’t quite end up like we thought it would.”
“Annie. You’ve ruined my life. You killed my best friends, Rachel and Brooke. You broke my heart. I will never be the same again. Isn’t that enough?” The clarity of everything now is profound. My heart rate is too slow to sustain me much longer.
“You make a good point, but this is too exciting to not see through.” She’s resolved. “You don’t mind if I film this, do you?” She nods in the direction of her phone, positioned on my bookshelf, camera side facing out. She shimmies her shoulders a little bit and squeals, and I shiver at the complete absence of soul in her eyes as she leans toward me.
“I’ll need something back from you now.” She points to the necklace and reaches to unclasp it. In a flash, I swing my arm, and the two needles make contact with her right iris. I use all of my hand coordination and remaining strength to gouge the points as deep as possible into her eye socket. She screams animalistically.
“You fucking bitch.” She’s wailing and dazed. There is blood streaming down her face as she wails in pain.
She removes her hand from her eye and I see the ends of the needles barely sticking out, and I’m surprised by how deep I was able to plunge them.
“Don’t think that this is going to make me kill you any faster!” she bellows before grabbing the orbitoclast from the table and pouncing on me, pinning down my arm and shoulder with the weight of her body, her breath hot on my neck. As I see the sharp end getting closer and closer to my eye, I close them and pray that it won�
�t be too painful or long. And like an alarm at the worst point of a nightmare ripping me from sleep, I hear the peal of wood splintering and Dennis’s voice.
“Drop it!” he shouts. Her weight lifts and, startled and wild, she lunges for him.
The chime of metal hitting the floor and the sound of his voice cradle me. I hear sirens approaching in the distance. Before I can say a word, I feel my heart arrest, my breath becomes inert, and all of it deliciously falls away into a wonderful stillness of warmth, light, and silence. And I see Rachel’s face.
SEVENTY
SILVESTRI
“Here you go,” says Wolcott, tossing the folder onto the passenger seat through the open window. As he leans in, he spots the cage in the back. “And who do we have here?”
“Just had to swing by the SPCA and grab them. I’ll see you in the morning, pal.”
“I worry about you, Silvestri. You building an ark in the backyard?”
“Ah, jokes,” I say. He leans away from the car and waves as I pull out of the parking lot and slip into traffic.
* * *
“Oh, hello, Detective Silvestri. And who are these beauties?”
I’m standing on Charlotte’s porch, holding the cage as I speak to her mother through the half-open door.
“Ms. Knopfler.” I nod. “Nice to see you.”
“Oh you rascal! Call me Margaret.”
“Mom, who is it?” I hear Charlotte’s voice approaching from inside the house. She reaches the door, and her smile brightens as she sees the Siamese cats I’m holding. “Thelma! Louise!”
“Charlotte, aren’t you going to—”
“Give us a moment, Mom.” She waves off Margaret, who disappears inside. “What a wonderful surprise,” she says, turning her attention back to the cats. “Thank you, Dennis.” I open the cage, and the cats hop down onto the porch and weave between her legs. She crouches down to pet them, then looks up at me. “Trying to give me a jump on the whole spinster-cat-lady thing?” She laughs.
“I thought they could use a loving home,” I say.
“You thought right,” she says, and watches the cats slither inside before letting the door close. “It’s nice today. Shall we sit out front?”
“Sure.” We cross to the corner of the porch and take seats facing each other. “So,” I ask. “How you feeling?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s all a little surreal. Glad to be home, even with the world’s most persistent houseguest.”
I laugh. “You gonna make it?”
“You know what? I’m not going to put any more energy into that situation than I absolutely have to. And who knows? My mother craves an audience. If I ignore her, maybe she’ll find one elsewhere.”
“Sounds like a remarkably healthy attitude.”
“Yeah, well, near-death experiences have a way of reminding you of the important things, I guess.” She holds my gaze for a long moment. “I really need to thank you, Dennis.”
“No, you don’t. It’s what I—”
“I do. I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few days about everything that happened, and I keep landing back on the positive stuff. Yes, I experienced a chain reaction of insane events, all for the gratification of this incredibly sick woman. But in the end, she actually gave Brooke and me something very valuable.”
“How so?”
“Brooke and I were brought back into each other’s orbits through the chat room. We were able to comfort each other through our shared trauma, even without realizing how connected we were all along. And we were both able to find some peace. The support we experienced, even if it was staged, allowed Brooke to forgive us and let go of that anger and negative energy that were weighing her down, and her forgiveness absolved me of a lot of the guilt that had been eating away at me. Not to diminish the tragedy of the situation, but I refuse to let it all be ugly and dark. Rachel wouldn’t have let me wallow that way.”
I nod silently and pull out my phone. “I wanted to show you this,” I say, pulling up the unsent text from Rachel and handing it to her. “I can give you a moment alone.” I begin to stand, but she holds out a palm.
“Sit with me,” she says, and begins reading.
“You are absolutely right. I went too far, and crossed lines that I never should have. I accept responsibility, and I hope you can accept my apology. I hope you’ll also accept that you are the person I love and value most in this world. I know I’m not a perfect person by any stretch, and will never be able to master moderation in anything I do, especially in my friendships, but I will keep trying to be better. Because you are the most important person to me, I will never stop watching out for you. I will never stop being protective. I will never stop making sure you get home safely.
“Thank you for being my friend, and the sister I always wanted, and for showing up for me when so many people in my life haven’t been able to. Friendships like ours are rare, and I cherish it so much. Charlotte, you are my family and as long as you are safe and happy, I will be too. I love you so much.”
She blots the corners of her eyes and smiles. She looks up, her face heavy with emotion. “Thank you so much for showing that to me.”
“Of course.” I return her smile. “Also, I wanted to let you know about Dr. Lyons.”
“Okay,” she says with a look of curiosity.
“It was through Rachel that he ended up in your office. They knew each other from NA.”
“But why would he . . .” She trails off.
“I don’t know. It sounds like he took a shine to you, and felt conflicted about coming to see you. That’s all I know.”
“Thank you,” she says distractedly.
“Charlotte, there’s something else I need to tell you.”
“Okay,” she says, re-engaged by my change in expression. Her brow creases. “What is it?”
A hollow feeling seeps into my gut. “I wasn’t completely honest with you.”
She regards me skeptically. “How so?”
“That story I told you, about the shooting in Baltimore? That wasn’t entirely on the level.”
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“I did shoot a perp during a raid, but I didn’t kill him.” I feel like this is spilling out of me all wrong. “I . . . I needed you to open up to me, and I embellished in order to get you to do that.”
She turns her head in the direction of the street and exhales slowly. “I, um . . .” Her eyes shift to the side, but she can’t bring herself to look at me. “I see.”
“Charlotte, I’m very sorry. I was doing my job, but I hate that I treated you like a perp.”
She brings her eyes to mine tentatively. “You really have a way with words, Detective Silvestri.”
“Yeah, that’s my reputation around town.” I muster a chuckle.
“Well,” she says, “I guess I wasn’t exactly honest with you either, about Peter and all that.”
“It was kind of a weird foot to get off on,” I say.
“It sure was.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Fresh start?” She holds out her hand hopefully.
“Fair.” I shake it, smirking at the formality.
She looks at my left arm with a concerned expression. “How are you healing up, anyway?”
“Fine. Some soreness and bruising. But I’m getting there.”
“Well,” she says. “When you’re feeling a little less delicate, I’d be happy to get you on my table. I think it could really help with your recovery.”
“I’d like that,” I say, letting my eyes sit with hers.
She smiles. “Me too.”
EPILOGUE
The heat and music are blasting from the vent above our booth. With the temperature drop and a report of an incoming storm, the diner has leaned hard into keeping its patrons warm and entertained. People are r
emoving sweaters and coats left and right. I am debating losing my cardigan, which will leave me in a tank top, which seems a little too revealing for our first date. If this is a date, which I’m not entirely sure about. I can’t see his face behind the giant menu, so I resume trying to focus on the laminated atlas in my hand.
He puts his menu aside and I do the same. I started salivating before even walking in, knowing that I’d one hundred percent be getting a cheeseburger and onion rings. My appetite has started to return to normal, along with many other things in my life, even though I still think about Rachel many times throughout the day every day and ask myself, What would Rachel do?
“Know what you want?” he asks.
“Yep. Salt and fat and more salt,” I say proudly.
He winks. “I appreciate a decisive woman.”
I groan. “Don’t wink. And the innuendos, John . . . seriously.” I shake my head from side to side vigorously. “Not a good look, and completely tone-deaf.”
He turns an impressive shade of red. “I’m so sorry.” He coughs into his hand. “I swear I’m trying to be better. I realized way late in life how my nervous habit of trying to act smooth in the presence of women has just been coming off as smarmy.”
“Now you are realizing this? Better late than never, I guess,” I say critically.
“Brilliant women make me very insecure,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows and frown.
“That isn’t a line! I’m being honest!” he says, seemingly genuine.
I am kind of flattered in spite of myself, but I won’t let him know right now. I am still on the fence about John Lyons, formerly Jack Doyle. There are a lot of red flags to clear before I can know for sure if he’s someone to whom I want to give any of my time. But when he reached out and said he wanted to share some things about Rachel, I couldn’t say no.
“Honesty is good. Let’s stick with that,” I say.
