Don't Look for Me

by Wendy Walker

  Daisy Alice Hollander.

  “What?” she scolds Alice. “They are pathetic. Both of them.”

  “Daisy? Is that you?” The man with the shotgun looks as though he’s seen a ghost.

  But Daisy doesn’t answer him. She walks to Mick, dragging Alice with her. He, too, is mesmerized by the sight of her, and suddenly another piece falls into place.

  “What the hell have you done?” Daisy asks. “We need to clean this up. I never should have left. I can see that now. I’ve been watching for two weeks, hoping you’d stop this nonsense. Seriously—how did you think this was going to end?”

  She was never a captive in this house. And she’s been watching us. All of us, through those cameras. Through Dolly’s eyes.

  Daisy strokes his face, runs her hand down his arm to his fingers which release the gun without the slightest resistance. He is in a trance. And he is weak and sick from the poison.

  She steps away, five or six yards. Alice is dragged along with her like a pet on a leash.

  She points the gun at the man with the shotgun, who trembles. Her face is stone cold. It shocks me more than anything else in these woods.

  She sees Nicole, she sees her, but now really sees her. And she laughs, loud and hard. She laughs at Mick.

  “I get it now. You thought this girl was going to replace me? That she would want to live with you? My God, it is beyond pathetic.”

  Mick stumbles, drops to his knees. I can’t tell if it’s the poison or his grief. But he lets his head fall into his hands and he begins to weep.

  “You didn’t come back this time,” he cries.

  Alice tries to pull away. She wants to go to him. She loves him. I can see that now. Even though she helped try to kill him to set me free.

  Daisy sighs like she’s annoyed. “I told you if you kept getting into my bed I would leave for good. And that’s what I did.”

  “I kept waiting. We kept waiting…”

  Alice cries. I see that she is confused, and confusion is her worst enemy. Mick told her Daisy died in the woods. Now she knows that Daisy is alive, that she left on her own, and that Mick knew the whole time.

  I think about what Alice told me—how the beginning of the end was when Mick got into bed with them. Now I understand. Daisy had simply had enough.

  She continues her rant as though she and Mick are the only ones in these woods. “But then you gave up, didn’t you? You found that old woman, and then her daughter. Why didn’t you just go fuck a waitress at the diner? Why did it have to be like this?”

  Mick has a second wind, rises to his feet. “You know why—because of her!” He points to Alice. “How was I going to explain that? I had no way out. You left me with no choice.”

  Daisy takes a step closer. “Did you even consider moving away? Making up a story about the girl? You could have gone anywhere. Started over. It just pisses me off! I used to think you were so smart. That we were going to build a little fortune and get the hell out of here together. But you had no imagination. Just your little cons and scams. I told you I wanted more. You promised to give it to me if I stayed with you and had the kid. But no—that was all just a con you pulled on me, making me need you. Making me have to stay!”

  She pauses, looks to the sky, and back at Mick. She is cold with rage. I think about the photo in that book, and the way Alice loves her. She wanted something that Mick had promised her—something she believed in once. Something that made her stay and give things to this little girl.

  “It’s all so clear now. How weak you are.” She speaks with an eerie calm. “I should have gone to the train station with the chief. Gone to Boston and gotten rid of it. I could have been anything. I could have gone to college. But I believed you—and you promised me. You said we would make it out. That’s all I ever wanted. To get the hell out of Hastings! But you’re a coward and a liar.”

  The woods are dead quiet. The man with the shotgun, and my daughter—they are statues listening to this story. And Alice, how she weeps and buries her face into the side of her mother.

  Daisy gets ahold of herself. Her face changes the way Alice’s does. In an instant.

  Now come seconds that blur. Seconds that leave me stunned.

  First, the words.

  “Well, it’s done—so now we have to clean this up.”

  And the shot. One shot, fired at Mick. Hitting him dead-on.

  54

  Day seventeen

  “Daisy!” Booth yelled out to her. Nic felt her head spin. She reached for the tree.

  Reyes was on the ground. His eyes were open. His body still. He was dead.

  The little girl was screaming now. “No!”

  Daisy slapped her clear across the face.

  “Stop it! Do you hear me? Mommy has to take care of things now.”

  She turned the gun on Booth. He held the shotgun on her, though his arms were trembling.

  “Put it down,” she said to him.

  But even as his whole body began to shake, he did not let go of the shotgun.

  “Roger—think about it. Do you know what’s been going on? We’ve been here this whole time. For ten years. Right under your nose. Living in that house through the woods. Running the cons—on the roads, at the casino, it’s been so easy—and raising this girl. Your girl. Don’t tell me you’re not happy he’s dead.”

  Booth was breathing hard, but said nothing.

  “You wanted him dead when he said those things to you, right? Just now, when he told you how I never loved you? How I would never have your baby? He wasn’t lying. I was going to get rid of it. I kept it for him. I kept it because I thought he was a big man. I gave him your baby.”

  Daisy laughed.

  “You wanted to pull that trigger just now, but you couldn’t. That’s why I could never love you.”

  Nic moved farther behind the tree. The little girl pulled hard against her mother’s hold, even as her face began to swell.

  Then, suddenly, Booth cocked the gun and held it higher. Aimed right at Daisy’s head.

  “Why did he do all of this—kidnap Molly Clarke, then lure her daughter here?” Booth asked.

  “Well, I’d tell you to ask him yourself but that ship just sailed.” Then, “It’s like I said—because I left him for good. I’ve left him before, plenty of times, when I needed a break from him, from this.” She looked quickly at her daughter. “But this time I didn’t come back. I couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. He made my skin crawl. Every night, breaking into my room, getting into my bed. I even tried sleeping with Alice, right? Alice—you remember that, don’t you? How he came into bed with us?”

  The little girl nodded, her entire face now red, trembling.

  “That was the last straw. It was like living with a puppy dog who follows you everywhere you go. It had been ten years. I did my part, and still—no fortune. No better life, still in this place where my father beat me and my mother starved me! I wasn’t going to stay for one more second.”

  Booth took a step closer.

  “So why did you come back now?”

  Daisy took a step closer as well, Reyes’s gun pointed at Booth.

  “Because he got himself into all this.” She waved the gun quickly at Nic, then back again, aimed at Booth. “We have cameras in the house to keep an eye on the girl. I still see everything going on—do you know what’s been happening? That woman got into your daughter’s head. I’ve been watching it for days. They tried to kill him today. And then what? I’ve started a nice life, now that I’m free of him and everyone thinks I’m somewhere else. I don’t need this—I don’t need people looking for me again.”

  Nic listened carefully to every word, thinking through what they meant. Her mother tried to kill Reyes—today! She was alive.

  “So what now, Daisy?” Booth asked. He seemed to be calming, the clarity settling his nerves. He wanted to keep her talking. She had his daughter. And she held a gun.

  Daisy studied the situation. Reyes, dead on the ground.
Nic behind the tree. Booth with his gun aimed at her head.

  “Well, let’s see. How does this sound to you? Reyes held me captive for ten years until I could escape. Then he kidnapped Molly Clarke. Then he lured her daughter here so he could kidnap her as well. Chief Watkins came to investigate and he shot him dead. They poisoned him with apple seeds just as I came back to save my daughter, and I chased him through the woods, got his gun away and shot him. Unfortunately, not before he killed the other captives.”

  Booth looked scared but determined. Nic realized it was now all about the little girl. Booth’s little girl. He had something to fight for.

  He called to Nic. “Run!”

  Nic hesitated, but then bolted into the woods. Daisy took a shot, but there were too many trees to get off a clean one.

  Nic heard Daisy scream as she ran through the trees.

  “I will kill you!”

  55

  Day seventeen

  “I will kill you!” Daisy screams. The man with the shotgun is not more than five yards away now.

  I watch my child escape. I watch her until she disappears and I want to laugh out loud with relief and joy.

  I hear the sirens. They’ve found us.

  Daisy’s face changes. “Okay, see—now I have to leave. Do this shit all over again. Do you know how hard it is to disappear?”

  The man shakes his head. “Like hell you are. Don’t move,” he says.

  Daisy looks surprised.

  But there’s little time now.

  She pulls Alice in front of her. A human shield. Her own daughter.

  She turns the gun to point at her daughter’s head. She presses it hard into the soft flesh of her temple.

  Alice whimpers. “Mommy?”

  The man is in awe as he watches the mother of this child, his child, move toward him.

  “Drop the gun and take us through the woods the way you came. Back to the inn. Then give us a car. Or I swear to you, I will put a bullet in her head.”

  The man is wide-eyed as he lets these words reach into his soul, the way they do mine. They do not have anyplace else to go.

  His hands tremble but he holds the gun steady. I watch Daisy’s finger pull back the safety lever. I hear the click. She knows—I can feel it—she knows he won’t fire that shotgun. He will stand there in a perpetual state of human conflict, wanting her dead, but afraid of hitting his daughter. Afraid she will pull the trigger first. He will do exactly what she tells him now. And then she will be free.

  I am there again, five years ago, turning the corner on my street. The corner just before our driveway. I am worried that something is wrong. I can feel the anger that will come when I find out nothing is—that it was just Nicole being a teenager. Both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road. Thoughts on what I might find inside my house.

  I feel my feet move. I feel a heavy rock in my hands. I feel eyes turn.

  But I am there five years ago. Turning the corner, seeing the flash of something. What is it? What could have suddenly come into the road, into the path of my car?

  I hear a crack. And a scream. My hands ache.

  I am back there. My foot on the brakes, my hands turning the wheel. Hard enough. All of it is hard enough. I turn to see Annie safe on the other side.

  I feel arms grabbing my legs. Little arms squeezing tight.

  I look down and see Alice crying with relief. Not Annie. Alice.

  I look down and see Daisy unconscious at my feet. The rock still in my hands.

  The man runs toward us now.

  We hear the sirens stop and voices call from the driveway.

  “Here!” the man yells back. “We’re down here!”

  Alice cries harder. I let the rock fall and I lean down to pick her up in my arms. She wraps her entire being around my body and I hold her tight.

  “It’s all right,” I say.

  Nicole comes now, out from the woods. She sees me and I see her. And I am floating in an ocean of love.

  Just devastating, blissful love.

  “It’s all right,” I say again.

  And I think to myself, that maybe it is.

  56

  Seven months later

  It was not easy to make the turn down Hastings Pass.

  Nic had insisted on driving. She knew the way, she said. But that wasn’t the reason. That turn, this road, everything about this town had become a monster under her bed. The flashes came in nightmares. They came in daydreams as she ran, stopping her in her tracks. Stealing her breath. A flash of the inn, or the fence, or the woods.

  She needed to face it. To look under the bed and see that there was nothing there. That it was just a town, and the people who had terrorized them were now dead or in prison.

  Her mother held on to her shoulder as they drove past the Gas n’ Go.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, though her eyes were on the gas station—the place where all of this started.

  Jared Reyes had followed Daisy Hollander to Hastings after that summer in Woodstock. He’d been working in the kitchen—one of a string of odd jobs he’d taken after leaving the force in Worcester.

  Then he’d found work in Hastings providing security for the company that owned the property behind the inn—the investors who had wanted to build a mental-health facility but were shut down by town protests. They owned the Gas n’ Go as well. Reyes monitored the security cameras at the station and looked after the property and buildings that had once been part of Ross Pharma. He used these positions to find his marks and run his cons, even after Watkins took him under his wing.

  Nic smiled, nodded. “I’m okay,” she said to her mother. Though she had a knot in her stomach as they drove over the wave of hills, past the neglected cornfields on both sides. But it was different this time. The air was warm. The sun was shining. Green leaves covered the trees as they entered the town.

  Mrs. Urbansky met them at the door of the station. She pulled Nic into her arms, then did the same with her mother.

  “Oh!” she said. “What a sight for sore eyes!”

  Chief Watkins appeared from the back office. He looked at them, her mother mostly, with gratitude. Molly Clarke had saved his life that day.

  “Don’t they look wonderful!” Mrs. Urbansky commented.

  Nic managed a new smile. She hadn’t thought about how they looked. Not one way or another. Her mother had let her hair go back to its natural chestnut brown. She’d cut it short as well, and changed her wardrobe. She wore skirts and loose tops and pretty much whatever she felt comfortable in. It was the way she’d dressed before Annie died. It was as though she was reclaiming herself, one small piece at a time.

  And Nic, she thought she looked just the same. She was still running. Hadn’t changed her hair or her clothing. Those things hadn’t felt important to her. Her father had told her that her face had light. He stopped from saying the word that should have followed—again, your face has light again. But Nic knew what he meant.

  Watkins led them to his office where they sat down across from his desk. Nic had a new flash now—back to that first day she’d returned to Hastings. His uniform with the short sleeves. The patches on his chest. The blue tie.

  But today was not about finding her mother. Today was about resolution.

  “You were very kind to come,” he said.

  This was not their only stop. Her mother had a second meeting less than hour from now.

  “It’s good,” her mother said. “Necessary, I think.”

  Watkins tilted his head as though he wasn’t quite sure of any of that. But now that they were here, he seemed willing to do what he could to fill them in on the progress with the case.

  “Have you read her statement?” Watkins asked.

  Daisy Hollander had pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the murder of Jared Reyes. But that was all. She had a hearing later that month and had submitted a statement to the court as part of her campaign for a lighter sentence.

  “Does anyone believe her lies?” Ni
c asked. “What she said about it being self-defense?”

  Daisy’s story had been carefully crafted. Reyes had followed her to Hastings after that summer camp. He’d been obsessed with her, even though she didn’t even remember him.

  That’s what she said in her statement—though other girls from the camp, women now, had started to come forward with statements of their own, statements about Daisy and Reyes being together the entire summer. About Daisy sneaking out of their cabin at night to meet him.

  Daisy denied all of this.

  According to her, Reyes followed her to Hastings and stalked her. She said she told no one because she was scared. She swore she was in love with Roger Booth and that she planned to stay with him and marry him, but Reyes wouldn’t have it. He kidnapped her and kept her a prisoner in that house for ten years. She was finally able to escape and had been in hiding, terrified because Reyes was a cop. She came back that day to try to save Alice.

  She killed Reyes in a moment of terror—rage and terror that was produced from years of abuse and captivity. They were comparing it to battered spouse syndrome. It may not have been self-defense in that moment, but justified by the culmination of years as a captive.

  Watkins thought carefully before giving an answer to the question. Did anyone believe her story?

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Of all the people who have been coming forward now, saying what Reyes did to them with his cons—not one of them identified Daisy. She was very careful to stay behind the scenes. They found his beat-up truck behind the house—no prints belonging to Daisy. And the things all of you saw in the woods that day—the things you heard her confess about being Reyes’s partner in crime, not his prisoner—she has experts willing to testify that she was saying those things to take back control, or manipulate him. Years of captivity had messed with her mind.”

  Nic knew all about the experts and their case studies—women who had been abused and battered and held captive who didn’t do or say the things that would be expected under the circumstances. Daisy had suffered abuse in her home as a child. And then Reyes had imprisoned her. They had come close to pleading diminished capacity—insanity—as a result.