First Edition
The Fading Place © 2013 by Mary SanGiovanni
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To Adelyn Kathleen—I always want to keep you safe, baby girl.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Adam, Mike & Suzanne, and Christy SanGiovanni, Michele & Mike Serra for their love and support, and of course Dave Thomas and the folks at DarkFuse. I’d also like to thank those faithful readers who continue to buy and support my work. You all give me a reason to keep going, and to keep trying to get better.
Charlene Van Houten had just strapped the baby into the car seat and turned to get into the car herself when the lady with the gun shoved its muzzle into the soft part of her gut and said, “Get in or so help me, I’ll shoot you right where you stand.”
Startled, Charlie opened her mouth to speak, saw gunmetal gray pressed against her tank top just above the waistband of her jeans, and muttered, “Oh.” There was no immediate burst of tears or crippling flair of panic, no dizzying whiteness sweeping across her vision, and for that, she was relieved. Survival instinct kept her standing. But while she was glad to find she was no shrinking violet, she knew she was no heroine either, so the briefest flickering thoughts of struggling for the gun were stamped out as well. Instead, what pervaded her, body and soul, was simple, solid surprise like a block of ice in her gut, its sharp edges digging into her insides. It would likely melt into fear, and quickly, too, but for the time being, its chill stripped her of the ability to cry or beg or even ask questions.
Charlie met glassy hazel eyes, which, for all their kaleidoscopic effects, were frighteningly devoid of human emotion. There was, however, purpose, and it stood out like twin pinpoints of cold light in those fathomless null-spaces. The paleness of the woman’s skin and her slight frame, as well as those empty eyes, gave the overall impression of a living doll, animated for one single and unwavering mission. Most of the woman’s blonde hair had been gathered into an untidy knot at the base of her neck. The tangled strands that framed her face and those abysmal eyes she tucked behind her ears with the fingers of her free hand, which poked from beneath the sleeve of a thin, light blue sweater. The faded floral sundress beneath the sweater reminded Charlie of the kind of curtains old ladies had in their homes. The woman chewed on a pale, dry bottom lip.
The way the woman’s hand shook suggested even compliance would be no guarantee of safety.
“Get in the fucking car,” the woman muttered, jabbing at her with the gun.
Charlie glanced over the woman’s shoulder to the baby, dozing in her car seat, the pacifier bobbing softly over her tiny lips. If this woman shot Charlie where she stood, little Haley Nicole, pink and perfect and powdery-smelling, would be alone and defenseless. That thought started the first crack and sweat of the icy block in her gut.
“Okay,” Charlie said to her. Light-headed, her voice sounded muffled in her own ears, a plaintive, placating thing she did not recognize. She took a step or two back and slid into the driver’s seat, pulling the door closed behind her.
The woman was in the backseat next to the baby before Charlie even had her door fully closed. One thin, sweatered arm encircled the top of the baby seat protectively. Without the benefit of open-air breezes, the woman’s smell filled the car, an overpowering floral scent edged with a sickening, unwholesome sweetness, like the flowers at a funeral parlor. Lilies, Charlie thought. The woman smells like lilies. Smells like it? Hell, she’s beating people over the head with it. Choking people. She’s soaked in lily-smell. Saturated in—
“Drive,” the woman said, and nudged the back of Charlie’s shoulder with the gun. The empty panic-thoughts settled like silt to the bottom of her mind.
Charlie turned the key in the ignition, glancing in the rearview at Haley, her little miracle baby, her reason to be, surrounded by that strange, dangerous arm. The baby, thankfully, was still sleeping. “Where do you want me to drive?”
A sharp whack to the side of her head brought a misting of tears and a sharp pang of terror. The woman lowered the gun to the space between the headrest and the seat. A cold ring of metal pressed uncomfortably into the back of her neck. “Just drive. I’ll tell you where to go. Now move!”
Charlie stepped on the gas and shot out of the Walmart parking lot space.
“Turn left,” the woman said, indicating the main road leading toward Route 80.
“Would you like me to take the highway?” Charlie asked in even, measured tones. She didn’t want to upset the woman in the backseat and run the risk that she might fire off a bullet or even a word harsh and loud enough to wake the baby. If Haley’s crying made her tense, confused, unable to think… She couldn’t finish the thought without feeling a burn rise in her throat.
“Just keep driving,” the woman said, looking out the window.
Charlie tried to think. If they weren’t going to take the highway, it might mean this woman had intentions of going someplace local. That might be a good sign. Wexton was a far cry from urban, but it was just suburban enough, with its local restaurants, stores, and overpopulation characteristic of New Jersey in general, for opportunities to run into people. Opportunities, Charlie thought, to get help.
Still, the farther northeast one went, the more rural the state became, with small farms, old houses, and stretches of road flanked by densely packed trees. If she were shot and left somewhere farther out, in the woods or one of the old abandoned houses, it could be days before anyone found her, especially in some of those denser areas out by Serling Lake. She shuddered involuntarily. Those woods got dark too fast, and that lake… She couldn’t swim too well, and the thought of being shot and weighted down to sink alone into the cold dark, bitten by little fish that would carry tiny pieces of her away until there was no Charlie to find anymore…
Stop, she told herself. Focus. Think this through. What are the options?
She glanced at her purse. Her cell phone was in there.
“Give me your purse,” the woman said, and Charlie started in surprise. Her purse? Had the woman seen the glance, and known what she had been thinking? Or had suspicion driven her to cover all bases, whatever they might be? Regardless, handing over that purse meant she could kiss calling for help good-bye. She considered tossing it out the window, hoping someone would find it and notify the police. Of course, in Jersey—hell, maybe all across America—you couldn’t really count on Good Samaritans. Someone could just as likely pocket the cash and cards from her wallet and leave the rest to rot in the elements along the side of the road. And all it would accomplish, in that case, would be to piss off the deranged woman in the backseat of her car.
“My purse?” she asked dumbly, stalling, trying to think around the panic.
“Yes. Do it, or I’ll suffocate the baby.”
Charlie flinched in horror. The odd, cold way in which the woman had made the threat melted that block of fear in her gut. She reached for the purse and handed it back to the woman, who snatched it and began rifling through it.
“I wouldn’t have hurt the baby, you know,” the woman said after a moment. Charlie glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw that she wore a slightly amused smile as she extracted Charlie’s wallet to place on her lap, then continued rummaging, tossing lipstick, tissues, and breath mints onto the floor beneath the car seat.
Taking Charlie’s silence for disbelief, she added, “No, really. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I want you to know that. I just said that because I needed this.” She produced Charlie’s cell phone, buzzed the electric control to lower the window, and tossed the phone out onto the road behind them. She buzzed the window back up again.
“If it’s money you need, or credit cards—”
The woman made an exaggerated sighing sound, as if Charlie was simply too stupid to deal with. “That’s not it”—she opened the wallet, studying Charlie’s driver’s license—“Charlene Van Houten. It’s not about money. I don’t need your fucking charity. I work hard to provide for…” She sniffed, turning her head away. “That’s not it at all, Charlene.”
“Charlie.” The answer was reflex, automatic and out of her mouth before she recognized the token of intimacy she had offered this nut-job. She clamped her lips together and checked the rearview for the woman’s response.
Strangely, the woman was grinning. With her expression softened like that, the woman was almost pretty. “Charlie. I like that. I’m Simone.”
In the same careful tone as before, Charlie asked, “Well, Simone, will you please tell me what is going on? Is there something you need from me?” She braced herself for the woman’s reaction.
“I thought that was clear.” Simone frowned. “I want the baby.”
* * *
When Charlie had been about fifteen, she’d fallen out of a tree. It had been a stupid move, really—the kind of thing she figured could only happen around fifteen, when you’re still young enough to do silly, spontaneous kid-things but old enough to do them as a way of impressing the cute guy on the ground below. She’d told him how she had been an expert tree climber as a kid, had moved through trees like she’d been born and raised between their branches. She’d loved the feeling—not flying, but gliding, her own limbs an extension of the branch shapes as she moved among them, her palms feeling the rough texture of the bark, her grace and her strength a thing she could own and enjoy. The world below her could fade away, for all she cared.
Sometimes she hoped for that, especially when her stepfather came stalking through the backyard, growling for her, clenching those meaty, heavy hands into fists. She climbed, then—higher and higher, out of reach of those filthy hands, so high up he couldn’t see her, let alone catch her.
The boy she’d wanted to impress—Eddie, his name was—had been different than her stepfather. He was gentle, soft-spoken, even a little shy, but incredibly witty from under his breath and his fringe of dark hair. From the look in his eyes (a sidelong kind of glance when he thought she wasn’t looking), she’d noticed him checking out her body: her profile when they were sitting together, her ass on the way up the tree, the way her muscles in her arms and legs tensed as she grabbed hold of branches above her. She thought he might have also been looking up her flimsy T-shirt, too, and she was glad she’d worn the pretty lacy bra she had bought with Tammie from Victoria’s Secret. The thought that he wanted her—those gorgeous eyes on her body, that wonderful shy smile—made her flush with excitement. It was a new experience, and she relished it. She smiled back down at him as she reached for another branch.
She grasped air as she leaned forward, the intended limb just inches from the tips of her fingers. She compensated too late, and as she grabbed the next nearest branch her foot slipped and her entire weight swung away from the tree. A sharp pain tore through her shoulder; the shock loosened her grip. Suddenly that elusive branch was falling upward and away from her. Before she could register more than the fleeting idea that the world was upside down, a thud of pain jarred her bones beneath her skin. Below her waist, she felt a hot wetness spreading from beneath her, and when she tried to move her foot to get up, her leg rebelled in shudders, dragging her toes impossibly along the dirt.
She was afraid to look, partially because some instinct, coupled with the dull, far-awayness of the pain in her legs and waist and arm, told her it was bad. Instead, she watched the boy run for help.
It had been bad, but not as bad as it could have been. She’d broken her left leg in three places and her right ankle, but there had been no harm to her spine. She’d been lucky in that respect. But she had landed on a sharp rock and ruptured an ovarian cyst she didn’t know she’d had. It had caused serious bleeding, and required removal of the damaged ovary. Future pregnancy would be difficult, if possible at all.
During her short stay at the hospital, her mother had come to see her once, but hadn’t stayed long. Her stepfather never came at all. She had expected him to yell at her when she got home, something about how stupid she was and how much money she had cost them, but he didn’t. He and her mother didn’t bring it up at all. In fact, for a few blessed days, they gave her a lot of space. She supposed that was the nicest thing either had ever done for her.
When she was eighteen, she found a new option for getting out of her stepfather’s way, far beyond his reach. She’d moved to New Jersey because it was marginally cheaper than living in New York City. When the city job she had lined up didn’t pan out, she moved again—but not back to PA. She couldn’t bear the dull ache of old ghosts that seemed to haunt those familiar old farm towns. To her, so many of the towns along that long stretch of Routes 222 or 78 were all like her hometown, all imprinted with the same kind of memories, or with the sense of the same kind of memories waiting to be made, or made by someone else. It depressed her, the shades of fumbling in the backseats of cars with boys, of drinking until she threw up in some cornfield or behind some old barn, of daddies whose union-job stress caused heart attacks that made them fade, then falter, then fail altogether. Those neighborhoods, stretched just a little too thin to be suburban, looked like they were going through the same thing. Any shine of newness had dulled beneath the dirt of worked land. Paint faded, porches sagged, pickup trucks rusted around the wheel wells, and the people—well, their frames sagged beneath the weight of status quo, of maintaining rather than gaining, of complacency. To them, Charlie felt, nothing significant lay beyond the endless expanses of farmland, and those winding country roads led nowhere special.
No…she might be forced to move away from the city to someplace less expensive, someplace considered “rural” by New Jersey standards, but she’d be damned if she’d go back home, ever.
It was in New Jersey that she met John. She’d heard stories about how falling in love with “the one” changed a woman’s whole life, but John changed certain fundamental aspects of who she was. She loved him, and that love made her want to be a better person. His disappointing her changed her again. She still wasn’t sure whether the newfound strength it had taken to heal from that was worth the accompanying thin, underlying crust of mistrust and emotional coldness that characterized her perception of men. She had found them important to hold on to in the healing process, and had not quite managed to let them go yet.
John had been the kind of father to his kids that every woman dreamed of—devoted, loving, nurturing, and tireless. Charlie wished her own father had been half as good. In a way, she envied the John his kids knew—a man who loved his boys unconditionally, a man who would fight to hell and back to protect them, would give up every good thing the universe had seen fit to bestow on him just to be there for them, to be a true father to them in every sense. She had never known anyone like that, especially a man who would treat her and her own like that.
But they were in their twenties now and John was pushing fifty. He smoked too much and drank more than his heart doctor cared for. His arthritis ached, his back gave out on him, and he’d pulled something in his shoulder that had never quite healed. He couldn’t “raise a baby from scratch,” as he put it, again. He told her he had nothing left to give. Charlie believed him.
She knew John had a number of reasons that made him none too thrilled about the idea of being a father again. He thought he was too old to give good DNA, too tired to chase after a toddler. He didn’t want to be the father at high school graduation that e
veryone mistook for a grandfather. But all that was okay. Any desire on her part for a baby was usually eclipsed by painful recollections of her own family and how ill-prepared she believed it had left her to be a mother to anything so precious and wonderful as a brand-new little life. Plus, there had been the scarring from the fall. Already in her early thirties, she just assumed the path of her life was not meant to detour into motherhood. She probably couldn’t conceive, and the great love of her life didn’t want to anyway. Charlie accepted that and was content.
So when she had gotten pregnant, she’d handled the initial panic, the early symptoms like morning sickness, and the doctor visits all on her own. John didn’t ask and she didn’t have to answer. She’d waited until she first began to show and then she’d written him a long, agonizing letter before taking off toward Wexton. She told him how much she loved him and how amazing a father he was—how amazing a man he was in so many ways. She wrote about how being with him had been the happiest three years of her life and that no one before and no one to come would ever make her feel like he did. She told him how she was giving him an out, how no one would ever have to know the baby was his and he’d be free now and for all time of any present or future personal or financial responsibilities, if that’s what he wanted. But she also told him how much she admired and loved the way he was a father, and how their baby could only benefit by having him as a daddy. She wrote that if he changed his mind about his feelings on being a dad again and wanted to be in his child’s life and hers, to call her on her cell and tell her to come home. She’d even texted her new address once she’d settled in.
That had been six months of pregnancy and seven months of baby ago, and there had never been so much as an acknowledgment of any of it. He’d chosen to take the out. Her little girl would never know the real John, the one his kids knew or even the one she had known, and she was both saddened and hardened by that. But Charlie had determined to live with it. She’d left the father’s name blank on the birth certificate and moved on with her life. Hers and Haley’s. She hadn’t figured out what to tell her daughter about him, but guessed by the time Haley was ready to ask, she’d be ready with a good story. Something that made John sound decent to the little girl he had chosen to live his life without.
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