by Wendy Walker
He sees everything.
Alice returns. She lays out her work and gets started. She can see that I am upset.
“Oh, don’t be scared!” she says. “You don’t need to worry.”
I regain my composure.
“Why is that, Alice?” I ask her.
“Because Dolly can see that you’re being a very good mommy.”
I smile. And inside, the defiance grows tenfold.
I will use this. I will use the cameras. I don’t know how.
But I will find a way.
18
Day fourteen
It was an accident.
Those words had never left Nic’s mouth. She’d heard them used by everyone in her life. Her father. The grief counselor. Teachers, before she got expelled.
She’d thought of it the way she’d thought of the words died unexpectedly when someone committed suicide. Or overdosed.
No sense adding to the pain of the survivors by saying what really happened.
But now, for the very first time, she felt the words differently. It was an accident. Her mother hadn’t killed Annie. Nic hadn’t killed Annie. Annie had run into the road. Nic had called after her, tried to stop her. Her mother had been coming around a blind corner, she’d slowed down, ready to turn into the driveway. It was a confluence of circumstances, of small decisions and actions that on any other occasion would have left their minds. They were devoid of moral underpinnings, no matter how desperately anyone wanted to believe otherwise.
And when a series of actions come together to create a tragedy, that’s what it’s called—an accident.
She wondered how her mother thought of it. If she still said those words inside her head.
I killed my child.
She wondered if all those conversations with her support group had fueled the fire. No matter how hard people pretended, it would have been difficult to hide their judgment of her. Nic had felt it sprinkled over their kind words in the emails. Even her father—the way he spoke of it, of his wife behind the wheel of that car. It was so much easier to believe that it could never happen to them.
* * *
The casino was half an hour from Hastings. Back onto Route 7. Fifteen miles south. Left on Laguna Drive, then another five miles into the alternating woods and fields. Her father had not wanted her to come here when they’d done the canvas. He’d wanted her to go home.
Kurt had been right about Thursday nights. The lot was nearly full. Nic parked in the back.
Through the front doors, across worn, turquoise tile that matched some kind of island-themed decor, she made her way in the crowd past the registration desk to the casino. The bar was at the far wall, after rows of slot machines with people gathered around each one, playing, watching. Loud bursts of cheers came from a craps table through an archway to the right. The noise was oppressive. The air thick with cigarette smoke. Nic could not imagine her mother here. Not for an hour, let alone four days. Or a week. Or longer.
The security cameras were up high, as the police reports had described. Looking straight down, looking for acts of theft more than faces. It would be hard to spot one blond woman among the sea of humanity that now surrounded her. People had seemingly come from all over—skinny blondes in fancy dresses and heels, overweight blondes in jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers. Plenty of brunettes as well, and men wearing everything from tailored sports coats to muscle shirts.
Nic was looking for Chief Watkins. But her eyes were drawn to the women, each one pulling at her, wanting her to see her mother so she could take her home and have all of this be over.
Her phone rang when she reached the bar. She took a spare stool between two sets of couples and picked up the call.
“Sweetheart? Are you all right? Where are you?”
Nic heard the concern in her father’s voice. Yes, she was at a bar. But for once, she waved off the bartender who stopped to offer a drink.
“I’m fine. I’m just out. Meeting someone who might have information.”
“What information? Is it about the truck?” He was beginning to panic.
“No. Something else. Probably nothing.”
He waited, but Nic didn’t offer more. It was hard to hear with the noise in the room, but more than that, she didn’t want to say the words out loud.
Chief Watkins may have …
And then what? May have helped her mother disappear? Kurt Kent’s story felt absurd now.
She changed the subject.
“Dad—Evan told me you saw a fence behind the inn. He said you told him that you had to stop searching the woods because of it.”
“Why? Did something happen? Tell me!” His fear was a tinderbox. She chose her words carefully.
“No, Dad. Calm down,” she lied. It wouldn’t do him any good to picture her like that. Alone in the woods in the town where her mother disappeared.
“Okay, okay … yeah, I remember that. I went with one of the search parties. We walked straight back from the road through the property behind the inn and diner. The Booth property. We walked until we hit a fence.”
“With coiled barbed wire?”
“Yes. It was pretty tall. One of the locals said it was probably left there by the old chemical company. They thought the two properties might back up to each other. It was hard to tell how old it was. Why? What’s going on?”
Nic thought about this, about the property that might be on the other side.
“Did anyone search that property—the one on the other side of the fence?”
“I’m sure they did, sweetheart. They searched over thirty miles of land. What is this about?”
Nic fought for a way to tell him about the hole she’d found, but then she’d have to confess to going back there. Maybe she could say Roger Booth went with her …
Something caught her eye before she could decide. A man. Tall. Stout. Full head of hair.
Chief Watkins sitting down at a blackjack table.
“I have to go,” Nic said.
He started to protest but Nic hung up the phone. She clicked it to silent, then slid it back into her purse.
What now?
She watched and waited from the adjacent room.
Watkins played blackjack. Then craps. Then roulette. Laughing. Drinking. He wore a button-down shirt and loose-fitting jeans. His hair looked groomed with gel or spray. He had a more youthful look about him, like he was trying not to be the man in charge of a dying town, but a man who could be any man, from any place. Maybe he came here to pretend he was that man.
As he moved from table to table, he was greeted by other patrons, waitstaff, dealers. He was known here. And it filled him up. Nic watched from the far corner of the bar, sipping water. Wanting vodka. Desperately wanting vodka. Thinking about her father and Evan—God, Evan and his guilt and tears. Then her mother’s email—the one about her marriage and how she couldn’t accept love.
I’d rather he punch me in the face.
And the one about her fear—I can’t lose another child.
Anger stirred, then attached itself to the man who was now indulging himself without a care in the world.
* * *
Finally, Watkins got up. He was on the move. A young woman in a tight minidress and thick platform boots had sidled up next to him half an hour before, and now she was convincing him to leave. She wasn’t attractive but she’d been wearing him down. Touching his arm. His back. Laughing boisterously when he spoke. He had already bought her two martinis and a pack of cigarettes.
They walked to another table where she’d left her coat. He helped her put it on. She led him to a back door.
Shit!
Nic ran out the front entrance, then turned right to where she thought they might have exited. She saw no one as she walked around the side of the building. Then she heard it—the laughter of a woman. Drunk laughter. Then the deep voice of her companion. The voice of Chief Watkins.
Staying close to the building but out of the lights, she listened until she
saw them move from the side of the building into the parking lot. She let them get ahead, then followed them, weaving through the rows of cars so she was out of sight. The laughter stopped. She heard the click of a car unlocking, then she saw headlights. Then a door opening, closing. She hurried now to see the row where the lights were coming from. She walked there slowly, quietly. The lights went off. The car was not leaving.
She got to the row and began to move along the back of each car, looking inside, listening for sound.
She walked until she heard them. The unmistakable sound of a man moaning. It was soft, coming through a small crack in the window. She slid to the far side of the adjacent car and looked through the windows. It was too dark to see, until a car rolled past on the other side, briefly shining a light through the windshields of each car in her row. It was quick, but unmistakable—Chief Watkins sitting in the driver’s seat. Eyes closed. Face contorted with anticipation, the melding together of pleasure and frustration as the woman leaned over him from the passenger side, her head moving up and down. The light was gone, but not the sound.
Nic walked around the car that was shielding her view. She could see that Watkins’s car was gray, but it was not until she had a clear view that she saw the make. A charcoal-gray pickup truck. Chief Watkins. The woman.
She squatted down behind the truck, heart pounding now.
Think.
The glass was intact on both taillights, but she couldn’t tell if the bulbs were out. She would have to wait until he turned the ignition.
Another laugh. The smell of a cigarette from the window. Something about fifty bucks and that’s pretty steep and then, you should have asked before, asshole.
A door opening, closing. The woman stumbling away.
Then Watkins in a cruel, mocking voice. Cheap whore.
And then the ignition. The lights. Both of them working. Still, it had been two weeks.
She hurried back to the other side of the adjacent car, and managed to snap a photo with her phone as Chief Watkins drove away.
19
Day fourteen
Mick does not come home. This is the first time he has not been home all day and now, apparently, all evening.
He must be comfortable with me, with the way I am with Alice. And, of course, he is always watching.
But then I think that he does not want to be here. That he is still hunting for whatever he lost when the woman who lived here before me died.
“I’m hungry,” Alice says. She reaches her arm through the bars and I take her hand and press it to my lips.
“I know, sweetheart. Do you want to tell me what there is in the kitchen and I can teach you how to make something?”
She hangs her head, chin to chest, but then raises her narrowed eyes so I can still see them. Her lips disappear under her teeth and her nose scrunches. I call this expression of hers Angry Face. I don’t say this out loud, but I make a note of it, and also what makes it come, and what makes it leave.
“I don’t have any better ideas, but if you do I will try to help you with them,” I say.
Now she crosses her arms and huffs. I try not to laugh, but it is amusing. I haven’t been amused for a very long time. Maybe even for years. There is a new power stirring inside me that has given this impulse of being amused some latitude. Some room to breathe.
“Did he tell you what to do in case of an emergency?” I ask now. “For example, if you got sick, or if there was a fire? Is there a way to reach him? I can help you study and play with you from inside my room, but that’s about it,” I say.
She uncrosses her arms. Angry Face softens, becomes whimsical, mischievous. She tilts her head and pushes one shoulder, always the right one, a little ahead of her chest. This is Coy Face. She knows a secret and she wants me to get it out of her.
Nicole had this face by the time she was four. Annie didn’t have it until she was six or seven, and even then it was more playful than precocious. Evan never had it. My only boy, but I could read him like a book.
I have had time to think these past fourteen days, and not just about the man and Alice and my plan. I think about why I am here, and that perhaps I have finally been sentenced for my crime. I am finally being punished. This has done something to me, shifted my insides.
With this shift has come a reversal of how I had come to see my own daughters. Annie the good girl. Nicole the bad girl. We are not supposed to do that. Parents. Good parents. But I have stopped pretending that I am one. I hate the person Nicole has become these past few years. If I met her on the street, I would thank God she was not my child. I would judge her parents with contempt. Who would allow such behavior? Who would permit their grown child to behave this way?
But now I can see that it was Annie who was also precocious, strong-willed. She could be defiant to her sister when I left her in charge. And she resented her brother. She resented them both, how they pulled her, kicking and screaming, from her pedestal as the baby, wanting her to grow up and be less of a bother. She had managed to become our sole focus. Our squeaky wheel. Babies always need more attention.
The memories keep crossing the line, and the pain they carry lessens each time. Even now, as I speak to Alice about helping her cook, I see Nicole standing on a stool, staring into a bowl of flour and sugar, mixing them together with a big wooden spoon that can barely fit in her hand.
She liked blueberry muffins and we would make them together. I still know the recipe by heart. It never leaves me. Two cups of flour. One cup of sugar …
And John, the memories of John … they reach back and unearth feelings that live more in my body than my mind. His hand on the small of my back. The rush that would follow. I thought they were gone forever.
It doesn’t change what I did. I do not feel it should commute my sentence. To the contrary. I see now that this sentence, being forced to live here with this man and his child, has scratched an itch. The guilt recedes a little every day. The rock I carry gets lighter.
I suffer now to keep Nicole safe. And possibly Evan. This man could know about him. Maybe he covets him as well. In the suffering, I make amends. And the amends bring a kind of healing.
“Alice,” I say with a smile. “I know that face! What are you thinking?”
Alice looks up at the monitor in the corner at the end of the hallway. She positions herself so her back faces it. She lowers her voice as well, for good measure, I imagine.
“I know where the key is,” she says.
Her words reach out and choke me with surprise. But I manage a little smile, the smile of only a tepid curiosity.
“You do?” I ask.
She nods slowly, Coy Face firmly lodged.
“In case I really, really need you,” she says.
I sit back a little and uncross my legs. They have started to tingle.
It’s not easy to sit on the floor all day at my age.
I consider my options now. I could start to cry. Say how hungry I am and how much I need her to help me. But she does not seem to be wanting that. She already saved me once with a glass of lemonade. Her daily fix has been had.
She craves other things, though, as I have come to learn.
Hannah gave it away one day when she was talking to Suzannah.
What do you want to be when you’re older? Suzannah is always asking questions.
I want to see a doctor who can help me go outside without my mask. And then I will go everywhere in the world.
Can I come? Suzannah asked.
No, silly. Only my mommy can come.
Only her mommy. She wants to be out of this house, free of these walls. And she knows Mick won’t be the one to save her.
Only her mommy can save her.
Her first mommy is dead. The one with the real blond hair and the lean body.
She’s stuck with me. And I can only help her if she gives me power over Mick.
“What kind of situation would that be—when you really, really need me?” I ask.
Coy Face r
ecedes, and now comes Sad Face.
“I don’t know,” she says. I can tell that she means this. Confusion makes her sad. Uncertainty makes her sad. She needs to know the rules so she can keep her house in order. So she can keep another mommy from leaving.
I reach through the bars—something I rarely do—and touch her folded knee.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Let’s figure it out together.”
I continue.
“Do you think he just meant if you were hurt or sick?”
She shrugs.
Then comes Happy Face.
“I think if I did something in the kitchen that was dangerous. Like maybe if I burned something.”
I go with this idea.
“Like if you burned something and didn’t know how to stop the smoke? Like if you tried to boil some soup but maybe there was some butter on the coils of the burner? That kind of smoke?”
She thinks about this. “Yes,” she says.
“I’ve done that so many times back home!” I say. “Butter smokes a lot, but it doesn’t catch fire like oil. Still, it’s scary.”
Alice looks at me carefully. Then she turns her back around so she is facing the monitor.
“I can make us soup!” she says. “Since he’s not home and it’s so late. We need to have dinner. I’ve seen him make the soup. I know how!”
She says this loudly. She gets up and walks to the kitchen.
Ten minutes later I hear her feet running down the hall. I return to the edge of the grate and strain to see through the metal bars.
She runs toward me and she can hardly hold back a smile.
“I think I started a fire!” she says. “Cooking the soup!”
I stand now, look alarmed. We both speak loudly.
“Oh no!” I say. “Do you know how to put it out? Did he ever teach you?”
“No! I really, really need you!”
She reaches the grate. Happy Face belies the urgency in her voice.
In her hand is a metal key.
A million things run through me as she puts it into the lock, turns. As I hear the metal click and the bolt release. Thoughts. Emotions. Instincts. There are too many to sort out. I feel dizzy with excitement. The possibilities seem endless, and yet I know there is only one choice that is right. I know there is only one chance.
