by Wendy Walker
Something about this was all wrong.
She got out of the car and walked to the same door she’d been at the day before, with Kurt Kent.
She knocked, waited. She could hear the creaking of floorboards inside, someone walking. Maybe deciding whether to let her in. She was alone this time. And she’d been asking questions about the past that had made Veronica uncomfortable.
“Hello?” Nic called out. She knocked again.
“It’s Nicole Clarke. From the other day—with Kurt? I just have a few more questions.”
Finally, the turn of a lock, and the door opened.
Veronica was just as she’d been the last time. Long, tangled hair. Loose clothing hanging from her body. She was barefoot this time, and her skin glistened from the heat that was coming from the fireplace.
“It’s hot in here,” she said. But she stepped aside and let Nic enter.
“Damn fire either won’t stay burning and I freeze my ass off, or gets hot as hell.”
Nic smiled. “Thanks for letting me in.”
“At your peril.” V laughed then. “Want some tea?”
Nic wasn’t sure if she was serious. The place had to be eighty degrees. The windows were closed, and Nic wondered why she didn’t just open one, even a sliver, to let in the cool air.
“No thanks,” Nic said after V went to a kettle and poured hot water into a cup with a tea strainer. When she returned, she moved a leather jacket from the back of a chair, then pulled out the chair for Nic to sit. The table was just as cluttered as last time.
“Did you make that?” Nic asked. She motioned to the jacket which now lay on top of a pile of fabric.
V shook her head. “Just doing a repair. Ripped pocket. I’d be rolling in dough if I could make clothes like that.”
“So,” V said quickly after. “Is this about Daisy again?”
“I hope that’s all right.”
V titled her head, studying Nic closer now. “I guess we’ll find out. What more do you want to know?”
“I was hoping you had some pictures of her. I couldn’t find anything on the Internet. She doesn’t use social media, at least not under her real name. Images come up, but I have no idea which one is her.”
V nodded. “You want to know how much you look like her.”
Nic hadn’t expected that. Booth had told her she reminded him of his lost love, but Kurt had not seen it.
“Do I?” Nic asked. If anyone would know, it would be her sister.
V shrugged. “Some,” she said. “But you can judge for yourself.”
She got up and walked to the small hallway which was lined with three doors. She opened one and disappeared, then returned with a cardboard box. She needed both arms to carry it.
She placed it on the small piece of table that was clear just in front of Nic.
“We didn’t exactly do family portraits. We didn’t even have phones until we could pay for them ourselves, and believe me, they were the shittiest little phones you could buy. We weren’t snapping selfies and posting them on those sites they have. Facebook, right? I listen to the news.”
“So what’s in the box?” Nic asked.
“Daisy’s things. Junk, mostly. But it’s not my place to throw it out.”
Nic stood up so she could see over the top of the box. “Can I look?” she asked.
“I didn’t haul it out here for my health.”
V watched, sipping her tea, as Nic opened the folded cardboard flaps. A musty smell escaped in a quick burst, then dissipated. This box hadn’t been opened in many years.
V was right—there was some clothing, which Nic carefully removed and placed on the chair where she’d been sitting. A concert T-shirt, a pair of sequined jean shorts. Beat-up wedge sandals, one with a broken strap.
“See what I mean?” V asked. “Look at that stuff—crap, right?”
Nic pulled out more things from the box, costume jewelry, a makeup bag, a stuffed bear. And then something more promising.
“What’s this?” Nic asked.
V looked at the small book Nic was holding. On the cover was a photo of about fifty girls, posing in rows by a lake.
“That’s from the fancy camp she went to one summer. The chief helped her get a scholarship for it. She was happy as a pig in shit, that girl. And don’t think for one second she didn’t rub all our faces in it.” V shook her head from side to side. “She thought she was something else, getting out of Hastings, hobnobbing with rich girls from fancy schools.”
Nic read the small print at the bottom of the photo. Woodstock Summer for the Gifted. The date was from twelve years ago.
The girls were crowded together, all of them smiling ear to ear. Long hair. Straight teeth. Shorts, tank tops, flip-flops. Nic could have been one of those girls at that age. It was only a few years back for her. The memory of it grabbed hold of her for a fleeting, but brutal, moment.
“You all right?” V asked.
“Yeah.” Nic looked up, smiled sadly.
“They’re young, aren’t they? But don’t let them fool you. Those girls would eat you for breakfast.”
No kidding, Nic thought. Her school had been full of girls like that. Not one of these “friends” had stuck around after she’d fallen off the social ladder. And it had not been gradual. The day she was expelled was the day her phone stopped ringing or buzzing or pinging. It was as though she’d caught a deadly virus. A social virus that no one wanted to catch. And the strange thing was, she had welcomed it. Still, it made her wonder how Daisy had survived them. Maybe she was good at pretending to be like them—maybe she’d just taken it, knowing she was going to get out of Hastings and be just like them one day. Maybe it ignited a fire.
Nic scanned the faces in the picture but she couldn’t pick out anyone who looked particularly like her. She moved closer to V and placed the book in front of her, next to the tea.
“Which one is Daisy?”
V opened the book past the first page. “They each have a page, I think. Like a yearbook. I remember when she came back late that summer and made us all look at it.”
She turned a page to a dark-haired girl from Boston. “Look at this one—Cindy Coughlin. She attends The Milton Academy and rides horses.” V said the last part in a mocking tone. She turned more pages, stopping at others, reading their profiles with that same tone, only with increasing anger.
Finally, she stopped—at the page for Daisy Alice Hollander.
“There she is!” V said. “Look what she wrote—attends Hastings High School and studies ballet. What a joke! She never took a ballet class her whole life.”
Nic leaned in closer, taking in the face of the girl who’d disappeared ten years ago. Long blond hair. Big white smile. Skinny arms sticking out of her shirt.
“Well? What do you think? Are you looking in a mirror or not?” V asked.
“I don’t know,” Nic said. “Am I?”
“It’s all in the eye of the beholder,” V answered. Then she handed the book to Nic and got up from her chair. “Here—sit down, look through the rest of it. There’s other pictures in there—small groups of them out on the lake, by the fire. Camp shit. I think Daisy is in some of them.”
V took her teacup to the sink and started washing dishes. Nic turned the pages, one after the other, scanning faces of girls. Daisy was in several of them, front and center, posing, smiling. She was beautiful and that was the last word Nic would use to describe herself. Though there was a time when she might have felt that way. When she might have felt the way Daisy seemed to in these pictures—talented and beautiful, with the world at her feet.
At the very front of the book were headshots of the teachers and counselors. At the very back, pictures of staff. Nic started to skim them quickly, but then found herself slowing down. The photos were small and faded. The features of the people were hard to distinguish. In the kitchen. By the boathouse. In the rec room. They caught her attention at first because they had faces of men and women. The campers were all gi
rls. But the staff—especially in the kitchen—included men, and of all ages.
She was about to turn a page when she stopped. Cold.
She leaned in closer, not believing her eyes. But then she could not deny them. The cheekbones. The chin. The hairline. Even the smile on his face.
She looked up at V, still at the sink, keeping busy with her dishes.
“Veronica?” she said. The woman turned. Nic started to ask the question that was dying to come out. But then she pulled it back, acutely aware now of where she was. Alone with this stranger in the middle of a forest. One way in and one way out. And no one knew she was here.
V turned around. “What? You find something?” she asked.
Nic got up and managed a warm smile.
“No. I just realized I’m late to meet someone.”
V stepped away from the sink, a look of doubt on her face.
“What did you find in there?” She took a step closer. Nic put the book back in the box.
“Nothing. I should go.”
Nic walked quickly to the door. V didn’t follow.
“Thanks,” Nic said, pulling it open, stepping outside.
She didn’t look back as she closed the door behind her. Then she walked to the car, quickly, sucking in the cool air, turning around, then driving through the woods, back to the main roads.
And thinking about the face she’d just seen in that book.
The face of Jared Reyes.
43
Day seventeen
It took most of the night to grind the seeds. The amygdalin is beneath the hard shell. Alice made soup for dinner. I slid the spoon under my leg when she went to the kitchen to get more crackers. When she returned, I drank the soup from the bowl, slurping it loudly. That’s bad manners! she scolded me, but it made her forget about the spoon when she cleared our dishes.
I still had the knife from when we made the sandwiches. Now I had one spoon, which I bent at the top. One spoon and over two hundred seeds. I lay them in the sink, ten or so at a time. I pressed both thumbs into the head of the spoon, twisting and pressing at once, into the seeds. Grinding them between the metal and the porcelain. I collected the mash in a cup, sifting out as many of the hard shells which broke into larger pieces but would not grind.
Thumbs aching, cramping. Arms begging for rest. I did not stop grinding those seeds, making the mash, until I had a small cupful.
I pray now, in the morning light, that it will be enough to make him sick. The amount of amygdalin, and then cyanide, depends on the type of apple and how much evaporates before it can be ingested. It depends on his weight and how quickly he consumes it. There are so many factors. It is not likely he will die. Not at all. But I don’t need him to die.
I hear the car on the gravel outside. I look at Alice and she looks at me. Maybe I am misreading her. We are soldiers about to enter a field of combat.
Alice and I have been very busy this morning. First, we cleaned up the pillow beds where we slept on the floor together, the bars between us.
Then, Alice brought the flour and sugar, the baking soda, butter, milk, and eggs. She brought, too, a metal bowl, measuring cup, and mixing spoon. She brought all of it, and with Dolly watching us, I was the best mommy—showing her how to make muffins.
The apples were tricky. There was not much of them that wasn’t rotten. I salvaged what I could and left it in the bath tub. I flushed the rest down the toilet—a little at a time.
I knew the recipe by heart. Muffins are muffins when it comes down to it. Alice measured and mixed. We laughed and pretended to be having fun. She spilled the flour. I went to the bathroom to get a towel. And in the towel were the bits of apple I was able to save. I slid them into the bowl with my back to the camera, to Dolly and her watching eyes. Then I wiped the flour from the floor.
I sent her to the kitchen to get a wet sponge. And when she was gone, I filled the muffin tins.
* * *
When they were baked, we put frosting we made from powdered sugar just on one special muffin—the one in the middle on the edge of the tin with a brown stain. I told her it would make Mick feel special. Like we cared about him.
And then we sat and did Alice’s homework. We sat and played with the dolls. We sat and waited.
When the front door finally opened, it closed again with a loud bang. His footsteps were heavy, pounding the floor. He walked past us without saying a word. Not to Alice. Not to me. He went to his room in the back of the house and slammed that door as well.
We said nothing, Alice and I. We pretended not to notice him, though my heart was heavy and light all at once.
Heavy because he needed to be happy and calm and eat his muffin like a good boy.
Light because he was angry. And that meant something had gone wrong with Nicole.
Good Lord, is it terrible? Is it twisted that I feel a laugh rise inside my chest as I picture my strong-willed, tortured daughter sending him away after an unfortunate night? I am filled with joy where there had once been despair that my daughter uses men to fill the hollow spaces she spoke of in therapy.
I thought it would kill her, this behavior. But now I think it might just have saved her.
The door opens again and Mick emerges. How different he seems to me, now that I see his pathetic, broken heart.
Alice rises slowly and walks beside him to the kitchen. I told her not to mention the apples. He could grow angry that she went outside to get them. I told her to say that we made special muffins, with special ingredients.
I hear him getting a mug—the cupboard opening, the ceramic clanking as he pulls one out. I close my eyes and picture him pouring his coffee. The coffee in the coffeemaker. The one with the white filter, which we filled with coffee and turned on for him so he would not have to wait.
I told Alice how to do this as well. I have been a very, very good mommy today.
Moments later, Alice walks quickly back to my room. Sad Face is here and she holds back tears.
“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“He won’t eat the muffin. He said he’s not hungry. He said he had a very bad night and he just wants to drink his coffee and be left alone to make his phone calls.”
I sit on the floor and Alice sits as well. She is curious now that my face does not grow sad. Or disappointed.
We worked hard on those muffins.
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
Now she is confused. “It is?” she asks.
Then I ask her a question. “Is he drinking the coffee? The coffee that we made?”
She nods. “Yes. In the big cup.”
And I can’t hold back my smile.
44
Day seventeen
Reyes had been at the casino, parked in the back.
Jared Reyes. The boy from the kitchen. The boy who knew Daisy Hollander before he’d even stepped foot in Hastings.
Jared Reyes. The man who’d lied to her—about everything, it seemed.
The house on Abel Hill Lane—he’d known where the lock was, and then chained the gate closed. Edith Moore—he’d given her the answer to the question about Nic’s phone number, then failed to ask her about the small black letters on her mother’s purse and how she’d been able to see them. And he’d claimed not to know Daisy Hollander well, said he didn’t see a resemblance between her and Nic.
It all made sense now, why he’d lured Nic into bed. It was just as he’d said—how people try to replace the ones they loved with replicas.
* * *
His messages had not stopped all day and all night and she’d had a bad feeling—one she was now glad she’d heeded. It had made her stop before she’d pulled into the casino. It had made her look for his car.
She’d backed up, turned the car around, and started to drive. It had been late, but she’d needed to call her father.
“Daddy,” she’d said, her voice trembling. She hadn’t called him that for years. Not since she was a little girl.
“Nicole? My
God! What’s wrong?”
“Are you having an affair? Just tell me. I have to know the truth. Why did you lie to me about Mom’s note?”
There’d been a long pause, and then, “Pull over, Nic—I can hear the car. Pull over before you get in an accident.”
Nic had pulled to the curb. Put the car in park. Then she’d let go, sobbing into the phone. Screaming. “Tell me the truth!”
“I will, I promise. Just calm down. Take a breath. Where are you?”
Nic had looked up. She’d been on Route 7, heading north, back toward Hastings.
“I’m still here,” she’d said.
“You said you were coming home! Jesus, Nic—you promised. I’m coming to get you. I can get the next flight out…”
“I don’t need you to come get me. I need you to tell me the truth!”
“No, okay. The answer is no. I’m not having an affair.”
“But the late nights, the way you stopped looking at her … I was so sure. I told her! I told her the morning she left!”
“Oh, Nicole—no, no—this is not about you. It doesn’t matter what you told your mother that morning. She already knew the truth.”
“What truth, Daddy? What did she know?”
Another pause. A breath.
“That I couldn’t find my love for her.”
“But there were charges—at hotels…”
“Please, Nicole. This is so hard for me to say. Sometimes I just couldn’t come home. But there were no hotels. I never made any charges.”
It had sounded crazy, but yet Nic understood completely. She had stayed out all night when she could.
But then—
“Why were you in West Cornwall the day she disappeared. I know about that charge as well.”
His voice had changed suddenly. “What are you talking about? I was at work that night and then I went home. Went right to bed. You can ask anyone at the office … what is this about? What charge did you find?”
Reyes. Another lie? But why? How could she not have seen it? Or felt it? The thought had disgusted her.
