by Wendy Walker
Coy Face answered, and my only plan for escape disappeared before my eyes.
“I put it down the drain.”
* * *
Alice has killed my chance to escape. She has done it over her frivolous hatred of lime-flavored things and she has done it in a way that demonstrates the extent of her hatred.
It does not matter that in any other set of circumstances I would not care about her actions. It does not matter that she did it without knowing what her actions would cost me.
I find this all ironic. How her hatred of lime-flavored things has caused me to feel hatred for her. Truly feel it for the first time, in depths that are beyond the reach of my ability to pull them back. The hatred is deep inside my bones. Inside my mind. Inside my heart.
I am too tired to reach for it. Too tired to fight it. I hate a child.
It is hard to think straight. I had a plan which is now gone. New plans swim and swirl, but there are too many unknowns.
I do not know where we are, and what is beyond that fence. I do not know how far away he is, and whether he could get to me while I run there, back to the hole and the tools I left beneath the dead leaves.
I don’t even know if the tools are still there. And yet, I could get another knife from the kitchen. Maybe there are more scissors as well.
I think through the steps. I would have to convince Alice to open the grate. I would have to find the boots, maybe a coat. The air is still cold at night. I could run through the woods this time, in the direction of the fence to the right side of the driveway, not down the driveway. But then—what if I overshoot the place where I cut the fence and hid the tools? I could just make a new hole.
No, no, no.
This plan will not work unless I can be sure he’s far enough away. He will see me leave. He will know.
I can’t go back to that dark room. I can’t go wherever Daisy Alice Hollander has gone.
I have to stay and be a good second mommy to one child to protect another—my daughter. To protect Nicole.
I fight to keep my face calm, though the tears fall down my cheeks and into the pillow around my ear.
Stillness brings chaos inside my mind.
Nicole.
You used to be a glorious warrior. That was how I saw you, though I never said it. I didn’t want you to become something simply because I put the image in your head. My mother did that to me.
You’re a smart girl, Molly. Not the prettiest girl, but smart. You need to use that to get ahead of the other girls who have their looks.
Maybe it served me well to hear those words. I studied hard and made a career for myself. And John always told me that’s what he loved most.
I remember now how my husband once loved me. I don’t know how, but it just happened and it was glorious. And now that glory is agony.
It would be easy to tell myself that he stopped loving me because the scale tipped too far to his side. That I got older and less attractive. That I stopped working, stopped being interesting. Up, up, up, my side of the scale drifted, losing the weight of these things.
But that would be a lie. There is no scale that can bear what I have done.
I feel my lips part, taking in air as the tears fall. I taste the salt on my tongue.
I hear the argument for the first time in years. The argument I lost then and will always lose.
No—I was not speeding around that corner. I had slowed down, of course I had, because the driveway was just around the curve.
No—there was nothing more I could have done. My eyes were on the road. My hands on the wheel. I wasn’t adjusting the radio, or using my phone, or reaching for my coffee.
No—I could not have slammed on those brakes any harder than I did! The forensic report confirmed all of this. The skid marks. The air bag. The turn of the wheel away from the object in the road. From the child. My child. My Annie.
Six more inches and I would have been clear. I would have slammed into the mailbox and the boxwoods and the flower bed. But the wheel turned only so far.
Six more inches.
People say things. Things beyond put one foot in front of the other. They pose questions and force you to answer. Would it be your fault if you gave up your seat on a plane and the plane went down? If you ducked from a gunshot and it hit someone else?
There is no logic to the guilt.
But you gave her life.
Yes, but then I killed her.
I killed her.
I killed her.
It never goes away. God, help me. It never leaves.
I’m sorry, John, for falling off the scale. For being unworthy of you.
I’m sorry Evan, for infusing you with anger. It seeps from my pores. I should have known it would reach you.
And Nicole—my fierce warrior. You had everything! You were beautiful and strong and brilliant. You were that glorious firstborn child who saw the world as a thing to behold, and a thing to be conquered. And now you live behind a sword and shield but the enemy still comes for you. To vanquish you. To kill you as well.
My chest rises and falls quickly now as I gasp for air. I cannot hide it any longer. The tears are now sobs as I lie here in my prison, unable to see a way out. I am forced to surrender. And it comes. It all comes, storming the unarmed gates.
Nicole.
I see your face as you stand in the driveway. I see your face staring at your sister as she lies in the road. I see your face when you realize what has happened.
I prayed that the warrior in you would conquer. I did not have the strength to carry you through the storm of our grief. And our guilt.
I will not sleep tonight. And without sleep, I will not have the strength to fight him. I will not have the mental agility to make a new plan.
The tears have stopped though I cannot stop the panic.
There is no evidence of an imminent fight. No need for an immediate plan.
And yet it is here. This panic.
I sit up then. Not caring about the camera, about Dolly. Not caring if I wake Alice. I sit up because I have to shift the blood that has pooled in my head and caused this chaos.
I let it all settle, recalibrate. I can’t make any sense of it. But it does not leave.
I allow my gut to weigh in, the feelings I have had these past fifteen days.
Mick was cheerful when he picked me up that night. He was almost giddy. His plan had worked. His stalking and scheduling. Using Alice to lure me into this house.
And then he was hopeful as I was kind to Alice and then returned to the house after going into the woods.
And then I tried to take that phone and he wrestled me to the floor, dragged me to that room. There was excitement in his eyes, from the physical violence. From the dominion he then had over my body, but also my emotions. He provoked terror and relief each time he walked down the hall to that dark room.
But Nicole had arrived and he had seen her in the town. She reminded him of his dead wife and the thought got in his head. Under his skin.
Still, he gave us some time. Me and Alice. But also me and him. He watched me changing. He watched me standing before him, and sitting with Alice. He slept in the bed with us. I know he tried to want me. But hope turned to frustration. I was not enough. I have not been enough.
And now, he is planning something. With his avoidance of me, but his leniency with the food. He makes accommodations to appease me and Alice.
I must accept the truth now. The kind of truth that is known from inside, without the need for objective evidence.
I see Alice squirm on the other side of the bars. Her little arms reach through them for my body. A little octopus. I lie back down and let her wrap them around me.
I feel it.
The truth.
The fight is coming.
30
Day fifteen
The day turned to night in a heartbeat, it seemed.
She and Reyes arrived at Laguna just after noon.
She texted with her father to avoid
having to hear his voice. She didn’t want him to know what she’d found out, about the affair and the credit card charge in West Cornwall that day. She texted him what she knew about Kurt Kent and Edith Moore. He texted back that his PI was looking into the connection. Reyes called Mrs. Urbansky at the station, asking her to find out about the utility bills at the property on Abel Hill Lane. He asked where Chief Watkins was, said he needed to speak with him.
Then came talk of Nic going home, but she refused.
Then stay here.
Reyes insisted. He didn’t want her near Booth after the incident in his apartment, or across the street from the bar and Kurt Kent who could very well have read her expression when she saw that picture on her phone of him with Edith Moore.
It’s safer here.
He checked her into a room, then went back to Hastings to gather her things from the inn. She gave him her key—the one with the giant wooden ring. He returned a few hours later and they went to the bar.
Watkins is nowhere, Reyes reported. Not at the station or at home.
Mrs. Urbansky said he was taking a personal day. He hadn’t answered his cell, and Reyes didn’t want to alarm him by having Mrs. Urbansky track him down on the police radio. Confronting the chief would have to wait until tomorrow.
But he did have news—and a document. A title copied from the land records at town hall for a property on Abel Hill Lane.
It is a corporation—a group of investors like Booth said, he explained. A holding company. They would have to search the records with the secretary of state to get the names of the investors. Reyes said he hadn’t lived here back then, but remembered there was talk of turning the buildings into a mental facility for criminals. Again—just like Booth had said. It never happened—but that explained the fence with the barbed wire. He said the same corporation also owned the Gas n’ Go.
There was nothing online. The corporation was no longer active. But that made sense—Booth had told her the investors probably only held on to the property for tax reasons.
Reyes and the state trooper had searched the redbrick buildings, but not the house where the foreman once lived. They didn’t know it was part of the same parcel. It had a separate driveway but no registered street address. It was as though it didn’t exist at all.
Except it did.
And then …
Vodka.
Reyes talked about his childhood and what had happened to him after he killed that boy. Nic had confided in him about Annie. The afternoon became evening.
I guess we’re the same that way.
And then …
I can’t believe my father …
Don’t go there. Let’s see what more we find.
And then …
I can’t believe Kurt did this …
Don’t take it personally. It’s just money.
And then …
Easy for you to say. There was a night—when I was here the first time.
The night at the bar?
Yeah.
You were pretty lit.
Something happened.
I remember.
What do you mean?
In the back. You and Kurt.
How did you know that? Did he tell you?
Then silence.
Then recognition.
You were there? You saw us?
Reyes motioned to the waitress.
“Another round,” he said. Then to Nic, “I think we’re going to need it now.”
Nic protested. “No, no—I can’t. Not after what you just told me. I can’t believe you saw me with Kurt, with anyone, like that.”
Reyes drained what was left in his glass. Then his face got serious, mirroring hers. He reached out and took her hand. “It’s no big deal. So you made out with a complete stranger in a completely strange town. It happens.”
This got a slight smile out of her. Thank God for vodka. Her father was receding from her mind as the conversation turned to flirtatious banter.
“It shouldn’t, though. It shouldn’t happen. That’s not who I am.” Then she reconsidered. “It’s not who I used to be, anyway.”
He leaned back and nodded. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”
“Not possible,” Nic said. “These past five years have been such a mess. I’ve been such a mess.”
The drinks came. Reyes took his, but then waved off the vodka tonic for Nic.
“No—wait.” She reached for the drink, grabbing it from the tray before the waitress could leave.
“It wasn’t right away,” Nic explained. “After my sister died, I felt like I had to make up for her being gone, you know? I actually tried harder. Got better grades. Stopped going out with my friends, doing things teenagers do. Shopping, movies, texting all day about stupid shit on the Internet. But it didn’t last.”
“Is that when you started drinking?”
“Yeah. It’s so strange how all of it, the drinking, the men, it gives you this relief, you know? In the moment. But then it just makes it worse.”
Reyes leaned forward and took both of her hands in his.
“Listen, I was a disaster before the chief brought me here. After killing that boy, leaving the job—it was like I wanted to die, only I didn’t have the courage to do it, and more than that … there was this annoying part of me that wanted to live, that kept whispering that it wasn’t my fault and that I deserved to live, and I hated that part.”
Every word he said resonated inside her.
“I know—you’re not really trying to kill yourself, you want to kill that annoying voice that keeps telling you to let go of the guilt and start living again. That’s the thing I’ve been trying to kill—with the drinking and the … the men.”
“If you keep degrading yourself, maybe that annoying voice will finally shut the hell up and let you drown in the guilt.”
“Yes,” Nic said. “The first time I ever had a drink, I was so desperate to stop feeling. I actually had thoughts of wanting to die. Of jumping off this bridge that runs through our downtown.”
“Jesus, Nic. That’s horrible. Did you ever tell anyone? How you wanted to kill yourself? Jump off a bridge?”
“I told the counselor they made me see. I don’t think she really got it. I don’t think anyone gets it unless they’ve lived it. They were just words to her, when I tried to describe it, the hollow spaces wanting to be filled, but never could, because that day can’t be unlived. I can’t get my sister back. And now my mother…”
Reyes pulled her close. Stroked her hair.
Then he repeated what he’d said earlier.
“We are the same, Nicole. And I understand everything you’re saying.”
Nic closed her eyes and let herself go. She let the alcohol settle in, warm her blood and blur her thoughts. There were too many of them, and none she liked.
Except this one. This one thought he had put in her head.
We are the same.
She liked that thought very much, even though she knew, before they even left the table, where it was going to lead.
31
Day sixteen
The morning begins with chaos. The sound of a drill. Then silence. Then the front door banging as it swings so wide it hits the wall.
Alice sits up, startled, arms pulling away from my body on the other side of the bars.
She lets out a holler of surprise, but says nothing.
I sit up now and see Mick reaching for her, scooping her in his arms and carrying her away from me.
She is quiet as she looks at me from over his shoulder, as they move down the hall.
It is a new face I see. I do not give it a name because I don’t ever want to see it again.
It is a face of terror, as though she knows she is about to lose me.
I take a breath now because the chaos seems to be over. At least for the moment. I get up and walk to the far side of the bed. Something has drawn me there. I hear no more sounds. It is quiet.
The light is different
somehow, brighter and sharper.
I can see now, I can see why the light has changed.
Mick has drilled a hole in the wood.
I slide the glass panel down and touch the little hole with my finger. It’s been drilled from the outside. It is no wider than my pinky.
But it is wide enough to let in the light.
And it is wide enough for me to see outside.
I look through the hole, I can see one side of the driveway circle and realize the room must face the front of the house.
I feel relief at first that he has given me this gift of light.
But then another thought enters. A thought that fits better with the chaos that has just occurred.
Mick has drilled this hole so that I can see outside.
I don’t know what it is he wants me to see.
But I suddenly long for darkness.
32
Day sixteen
Nic awoke, startled by her surroundings. She sat upright, her eyes slowly taking in the things that were visible in the dim morning light.
Stiff white sheets. A fluffy duvet. Blackout shades behind thick beige curtains.
She heard a quiet hum from the heating unit above the door to the bathroom.
It crept into her brain, this fog carrying information about where she was and how she’d come to be here. Hungover. Naked. Alone.
“No,” she said out loud. “This isn’t happening. I didn’t do this. Not again.”
She pulled the sheet tightly around her. There was no one to kick out of her bed. No one to hold on to.
Hand shaking now, she reached for her phone. It was nearly ten. She needed something, someone.
Her mother was gone. Her father was lying. And this new man who had made her feel so good last night—the man and the vodka, both gone now.
“Evan?” she said, her voice trembling into the phone. He was all she had left.
“Nic? What is it? What’s happened?”
His name was the only word she could get out.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At a hotel. At that casino. The one where Mom used her credit card.”
