by Nina Laurin
No fucking way in hell. Who do you think you are, loser? But I know this is the last thing I should say. I can’t freak out. He has Taryn.
“Okay, okay,” I say softly, “we’ll talk about it. Just— She’s awake now. She’ll want her bottle. Just set her back down into her bed, and I’ll go get her one. Okay?”
He nods, his attention absorbed by the screaming bundle in his arms. I back out of the room, my heart hammering. I look around. Now what?
The knowledge dawns like a revelation. Instead of going to the kitchen, I go to the master bedroom. I have no time to waste. Any moment now Paul will realize I lied, and then who knows what he might do.
I dive for the bedside table on Scott’s side, to the bottom drawer where I know he keeps it. It started as a stupid affectation. After college, we lived in a rental in an unsafe area, and he thought it would be good for self-defense, just in case. I thought even then it was just a display of stupid machismo but I let it go. And that gun is still there in the bottom drawer even though we have no need of it now.
I find it in the dark, cold and sleek beneath my fingers. Drawing in a deep breath, I grasp it, sliding the safety off like Scott once showed me.
When I get back to my feet, my blood thundering through my eardrums, Paul is standing in the bedroom door.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks. He still doesn’t understand. I think that even when he sees the gun as I raise my hand, he still doesn’t fucking understand.
And so I fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
After that, I only had minutes to figure out what to do. Taryn was screaming her head off in her crib. I could swear I heard sirens in the distance already. And there was a man, shot to death on the floor of the master bedroom and me with the gun in my hand. There weren’t a million ways you could interpret this.
I’ve often wondered, since then, just how I managed to pull it off. It’s a marvel that I managed to come up with every single lie in the space of a few minutes and keep everything together in the days and weeks and months that followed.
They often say of children raised by authoritarian parents that we’re so bad at life because we never learned to make decisions, the tyrant parent always doing that for us. And in sum, I can’t say it’s entirely wrong. All my lousy, fumbling attempts at self-assertion, at separating myself from Therese and living my own life, whatever that meant, have been less than successful. When push came to shove, I always ran back under Mommy’s skirts, begging her to save me. And then, when she told me what to do, I listened raptly, the repentant prodigal daughter returned.
So much that I don’t even have an idea, really, of what my life truly is. I’ve always just floated along with the current, along with whatever happened and whatever Therese decided and Scott decided and other people decided. That’s the only way, really, that I ever could have found myself in this situation. In that sense, I guess Clarisse saw right through me. I’m the perfect candidate for SmartBlock, weak, infantile, just looking for someone to take charge of my life instead of doing it myself. The freedom-versus-security dilemma, in my case, was never even a question.
But, in that moment, something rose through my layers of passivity. Some potential, maybe, that I had buried and that chose that moment to rear its head. It wasn’t like a light bulb going off but an entire chandelier. Everything became so clear and bright and obvious. I dropped the gun and picked up the crying Taryn and went to sit outside, cradling her to my chest.
And then I just let everything else fall into place. I must admit luck played into it. Everything the police found fit my narrative properly. He did have the key to our door in his pocket, and yes, we gave the keys to the renovations company back then, and yes, we forgot to change the locks. Unfortunate. And the tox screen on Paul’s body showed that he did indeed have drugs in his system, a serious amount. All that sure helped. No one really questioned my story.
Until now, until this house and IntelTech and the chips implanted in our wrists—chips containing a DNA signature.
The house, Lydia Bishop said, isn’t your friend.
My legs shaking, I manage to get back on my feet. “Saya,” I say hoarsely. “Please. Where is Taryn? At least tell me she’s safe.”
“Oh, she’s perfectly safe, Cecelia. But you’re never seeing her again.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I say. “You don’t understand. You have to give me my daughter back.”
“There’s no mistake, Cecelia. You know that.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I don’t think anything, Cecelia. I’m an artificial intelligence. I don’t have opinions of my own. I just analyze the data that the users input, and—”
I grit my teeth. “Then you don’t know. Trust me, you have no idea.”
“You’re very mistaken.”
I sink my hands into my hair. What do I do? God, what do I do now?
But Therese is not here this time. Scott isn’t here. Saya’s gone insane. And that clever little instinct that saved my ass the night of the home invasion is nowhere to be found.
“I know more about you than you do, Cecelia. I know everyone who lives in this town better than they know themselves. That’s because, unlike humans, I have no biases and no emotions that cloud judgment. I deal only with data. Data is facts. It’s so much easier when you deal only with facts. Everything is so much clearer.”
“Who are you?” I demand. “You’re not Saya. Who are you? Why are you tormenting me?”
“Of course I am Saya. I’m the future, you know. And the future looks wonderful, let me tell you. There’s no more room for subjectivity and bias. Only information. And the people who will live in the future will love it.”
“Jessica is going to bring you down,” I say feebly. “Everyone will find out about this, and about Lydia, and—”
She laughs. I’ve never heard Saya or any of the other assistants make so much as an attempt at levity so hearing her laugh is a first and a truly unsettling experience.
“Of course everyone will find out, Cecelia. That’s the point!”
“I…don’t understand.”
“Sure, some people might be appalled at first. But there will be others who will see the light. Most people will understand that it’s a good thing to bring criminals to justice. Most people will know that the truth must always come to the surface. And the rest will get with it eventually. People will flock to IntelTech. They will feel safer and happier than ever. And that’s what really matters to humans, doesn’t it—how they feel?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. You won’t be there to see it anyway. It was never about bringing down IntelTech. Only you.”
I spin around and around until I’m about to lose my balance. I feel like I’m going insane. If only I could see her, talk to her like to a person—somehow that would make it almost bearable. But “she” doesn’t exist. She’s nowhere and yet everywhere, inside my house, my family, my body, my thoughts.
You can’t kill what you can’t see.
The thought surges from my subconscious, and I latch on to it like I’m drowning. In a sense, I am. But when I reach for the top kitchen drawer, I tug and tug in vain. It won’t budge, like it has fused to the counter permanently.
“Not going to happen,” says Saya’s indifferent voice right above my ear. I spin around and swat but, of course, there’s nothing there. Only air.
I look around for something, anything, a plate I could break but the counter is empty. All the glasses and dishes and cutlery are locked away in cabinets that won’t open.
Breathless, I run upstairs, jumping over two stairs at a time. But in the bathroom, the water won’t turn on. The bathroom cabinets turn out to be the same as the kitchen ones—fused shut, locking away any medications or chemicals or anything else that I could use.
“I already told you,” says Saya’s honeyed voice. “It won’t work. You’re not getting a way out. It’s too late, anyhow.”
I go to the bedroom, my legs stiff. Like an automaton, I kneel by the bedside table and slide open the bottom drawer. But it’s empty. As it should be—the gun is long gone, rusting in some evidence drawer somewhere.
I cover my face with my hands.
“Look,” says Saya’s voice above. I somehow know where to look—pressing my face against the window, I see them. Police cars. Out on the street, three or four of them, blocking every possible escape route. They look utterly out of place here. These aren’t SmartBlock’s electric cars but regular police, just like the cars that surrounded our old house that night so long ago.
“Go outside,” Saya says. “They’re waiting for you.”
I walk down to the front door. The frame where the decorative glass used to be gapes empty. Now I begin to suspect that the only reason I could break that glass in the first place was because the house allowed me to.
I shut my eyes.
“Go,” Saya urges. “Be a mature adult for once in your miserable life. Take responsibility. You could still plead manslaughter, maybe. And you might get out on parole eventually too. See Taryn again.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
I feel the cool trails down my cheeks and realize I’m crying. It’s amazing how long that took. As if I finally understand that there’s no way out.
Except, like she said—tech is infallible but humans sure aren’t.
I lower my hand to the door handle and turn it.
“Cecelia Holmes,” someone is yelling my name. “You’re under arrest.” It goes on and on but I don’t hear anymore. There are lots of words, like murder and other things I can’t contemplate. I open the door, letting the cool air wash over my face.
“Your hands!” someone is yelling. “Your hands where we can see them!”
I take a step down the stairs, then another and another.
“Put your hands up!”
I take another step. My hands are tucked under my armpits, and the sweat of my palms soaks into the wool of my cardigan.
They’re yelling something else, something like I’ll shoot, but what does it matter?
I’m going to get my daughter. I’m going to get Taryn.
Step, another step, and another.
The shot fires, like a strike of thunder.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later
It’s a beautiful fall day, perfect for visiting a grave. Jessica feels a lightness in her step as she climbs the steep hill that leads to the tombstone lost among rows of others. There isn’t even a vertical tombstone to mark the spot, only a simple stone plate that would be lost in the surrounding grass if someone didn’t come to clean and weed around it. The row of graves is dense, as dense as practicality and basic decency allowed. Other stones sometimes have candles or wreaths but never this one.
Jessica kneels by the tombstone. There’s a lot to reflect on today. A lot has been on her mind lately, and no one to hear her out except this grave, which will never judge or argue or respond. It’s probably better this way. A grave won’t be able to repeat it to anyone either.
As she kneels, yellow leaves crunch beneath her knees. Soon it’ll be too cold to sit here for a long time but today, the weather is beautiful, as if summer decided to make a comeback. The sun beats down on her leather-clad shoulders. Her scarf and hat had been too much but she doesn’t take them off. The wind is but a soft breeze, and the only reminder of the approaching winter is the cold ground beneath her. She feels it through her jeans, and her knees quickly go numb.
Overall, Jessica is happy with how it all turned out. Reasonably happy. There are things she wishes she’d done differently when she had the chance but, then again, so much of it was just that: chance. She hadn’t meant to pry into anyone’s life, even though they made it all too easy. If anything, she was trying to help.
Lydia Bishop, for instance, deserved to know what her husband and her sister had been up to. And she was smart. Jessica knew she would understand what the coffee cup meant. But what happened next—that had to be Jessica’s responsibility too, on some level. Although she tried to tell herself that Faye was a terrible person who deserved what was coming, some nights it took Jessica a terribly long time to fall asleep.
And then Cecelia Holmes all but fell into her lap.
After the Lydia meltdown, Jessica promised herself she’d never meddle in the residents’ lives again. She would have kept her word. But then that woman moved in—and that little girl. Jessica pulls up her sleeve and runs her fingertips over the place where her chip is embedded. The DNA signature told her the truth immediately. She had no choice but to intervene. It wasn’t just personal, it was about setting right a terrible wrong.
Jessica has redeemed herself. That’s how she decided to look at it. Cecelia’s husband deserved to know, too, who he had married. When she first approached him, she didn’t tell him the whole truth—only that the little girl wasn’t his biological daughter. He didn’t want to believe Jessica at first but technology doesn’t lie.
When the whole truth came out, he took it as well as could be expected. He says it doesn’t matter to him, and he loves her regardless. But he wasn’t ready to learn that Taryn now has this whole other family whom she might want to get in touch with someday, and he’s still coping with that.
IntelTech recovered from the public scandal remarkably well. After the initial spat of think pieces about privacy and data collecting and the general hand-wringing about freedom versus security, requests for houses in SmartBlock quietly poured in, first a trickle and then an avalanche. The project was deemed a success, and IntelTech just bought up another former industrial park where it plans to build a second SmartBlock, this one consisting mainly of apartment buildings, with accessibility as one of its main goals. Technology to the people. And she, Jessica, is primed to be hired as main supervisor, basically Clarisse’s position at the new place.
All in all, Jessica thinks, her actions have made the world a better place. Hopefully that counts for something. Her mother passed away last year but not before she learned the truth about the case, that Paul had been exonerated. And that Cecelia had been convicted of his murder.
And, after much reflection, Jessica decided to take the plunge and move into Venture herself. With the substantial raise that came with her new position, she could afford it. Besides, she doubted that too many people would be interested in moving into 32 Rosemary Road. Jessica doesn’t believe in ghosts or hauntings, digital or otherwise. She’ll do just fine.
I really need to get him a nicer tombstone, she thinks. She regrets not having bothered to bring flowers, even if he would have thought they were tacky.
Her legs are falling asleep, and the knees of her jeans are damp and cold. Getting back on her feet to return to her motorcycle, Jessica takes one last look at her brother’s grave.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my agent, Rachel Ekstrom Courage, as well as the team at Folio Literary Management. Huge thanks to Alex Logan, my editor, for her enthusiasm about this idea and for all the (very spooky) news stories she emailed me for inspiration. (It worked!) Thank you to Mari Okuda, Kristin Nappier, and everyone at Grand Central Publishing for believing in me and my books, and to Kamrun Nesa and Tiffany Sanchez for the outstanding publicity and marketing.
Thank you to Maude Michaud for the support and camaraderie.
Thank you to my friends, family, and in-laws for being my biggest cheerleaders!
Thank you to Patrick, my significant other, for explaining techy stuff to me but also for always being there. I never could have done this without you.
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Claire Westcott tries to be the perfect partner to her husband, Byron, but fears she will never measure up to his first wife, Colleen. After all, it’s hard to compete with the dead.
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CHAPTER ONE
Byron let me sleep in this morning.
There. That way, it sounds nicer than “my husband snuck out of the house while I was still asleep.” Because that’s exactly what happened and what’s been happening every day of the week so far, and we’re at Thursday.
This morning, the balmy September sun finally gave way to rain, and with the bedroom windows facing north, it’s still kind of dark when I wake up. It could have been just dawn breaking, around seven a.m. Except Byron’s side of the bed is empty and there are no footsteps downstairs in the kitchen, no water running in the bathroom.
I get up, grab the imitation ring from the nightstand, and put it on the ring finger of my left hand, where it settles into the groove it has made in the skin. He just presented me with it one day, and I didn’t press the issue further. He never actually told me whether the stones were real. I decided to let it go and never asked.
It’s ten thirty. I run my fingers through my hair, which is tangled and matted with sweat, and eye the digital clock in mild dismay. Yesterday it was ten ten. The day before, it was nine fifty. Byron gets up at seven every morning like clockwork—to go running in good weather and to hit the gym at the college in bad. If he goes running, he comes back to take a shower before changing to go to work.
September has been beautiful this year, dry and sun filled. He hasn’t gone running once, as far as I can tell.
At the start, I’d get up at six fifty and have breakfast ready for him: French toast and cheese omelet, with a glass of orange juice and coffee with cream. Now I’m wondering if he ate all that fatty food to be polite, because these days his breakfast is an energy bar. And I guess I can’t complain—I see other men his age at university events when he takes me. By forty, they have paunches and double chins while Byron, at forty-seven, has the body of someone half his age. He’s also one of the lucky ones who has his hair, all of it—except with age, the points of the M of his hairline have sharpened a little, and the blond color has grown bleak with gray hairs. When I met him, it was easier to forget the twenty-year age difference.
