“So,” Patricia says, settling back a few inches into her chair, “how are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Riley dishes out an affable smile after telling one whopper of a lie.
Patricia’s eyes dart back and forth between Riley’s as if she’s trying to measure the veracity of her statement. But it appears she quickly figures that one out. “You say you’re feeling fine. Can you give more details?”
Riley lifts a shoulder. “Well, you know . . . considering.”
“Considering . . . ?”
“That I’ve recently been released from a mental hospital.”
Patricia reaches for her glasses atop a side table, puts them on, and opens the folder. Skimming it, she says, “Have you been taking your medications regularly?”
Riley tells her she has.
“Good,” Patricia says, then goes back to her heel clicking.
Riley’s left hand jerks with irritation.
“How do you feel being back in the community?”
“Strange . . .”
Patricia grabs for a notebook, also from the side table. She flips a page, presses her pen against the paper, and gives Riley her full concentration.
Riley scoffs. “I’m not exactly the town’s favorite daughter.”
“Have you encountered difficulties because of that?”
“The press has been after me,” she answers, steering clear of her recent troubles: the nasty message on her headboard, her magical dishwasher knife, the dark sedan, and the onslaught of public hatred since she left the hospital. Lockwood reports to Glendale. Bringing up anything questionable has the potential to create additional complications.
Patricia looks over the tops of her glasses at Riley and says, “I’d like to discuss what happened to your family.”
Riley blows out a tense breath and feels the cords in her neck pull tight.
“It started with my husband’s death and ended with my daughter’s.”
“Let’s begin with your husband.”
“Jason brought my daughter and her friend on a camping trip.” Riley’s throat closes around the words—saying them is enough to plunge her back into the ache. The wrenching torment. “Clarissa lost her father, and I lost the love of my life.”
“What happened?”
“Jason went with Clarissa’s friend, Rose, to gather wood for the evening. There were signs everywhere warning people to stay away from the cliffs. But Jason could never resist a beautiful sunset. He walked toward the edge to take a picture but didn’t notice a rock in his way. He stumbled, lost his footing, and went over the edge.”
“How did you find out?”
“The evening after they left, I opened the door and . . .” Riley’s heartbeat becomes uneven. She tries to steady her trembling words. “And right away I knew my world had caved in on itself.” She looks off to one side, rolls her collar between two fingers. “A pair of police officers stood on the stoop with Clarissa, and her face was stained by dirt and tears. After that, everything seemed a blur.”
“What ended up happening to the friend?”
“When Clarissa got to the cliff, Rose was in shock and unable to speak. It took several hours before she could give authorities the details.”
“Did she ever recover from the trauma?”
Riley doesn’t want to open that door, doesn’t want Patricia to start prying. So instead, she only says, “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Because she and her father moved away after . . .” Riley looks out through the window, rubs the heel of a hand against her chest, and tries again. “After . . .”
Helping her along: “Clarissa’s murder.”
Clarissa’s murder.
New territory, and just as bad. She looks back at Patricia. “My family had been ripped away from me. It was . . . I . . .” Riley swallows hard, choking on her next words as they fight their way up. “Everyone said I did it, that I killed Clarissa, but with no memory of the incident, I couldn’t explain what had happened, couldn’t defend myself.”
“Did you eventually get the memories back?”
Riley shakes her head.
“That had to make the situation feel even more impossible.”
“She made it more impossible.”
“Who did?”
“Demetre Sloan.” She says the name as if it’s rancid on her tongue. “The detective assigned to Clarissa’s case. She was after me from the start.”
“Losing your child and then being blamed for it. I can’t even imagine.”
“No, you can’t imagine. You cannot.” Riley angrily swipes away a tear, takes a tissue from the box Patricia extends.
“I was under investigation for a while before they made the arrest. Then, as everyone knows, there was the hung jury and the mistrial.”
“But no retrial.”
“The DA decided there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue it again.”
“That must have felt like a relief.”
“For about a minute.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My life, my whole reputation, was destroyed. The hung jury didn’t mean innocent. The hung jury meant undecided, so the public made its own decision. They still believed I murdered my daughter. Try living like that for a while and you’d go crazy, too. I spent the next five years living on the streets and going in and out of County Mental Health.”
“But why the streets when you had a home?”
“Because I couldn’t quiet Clarissa down while I was there.”
“You mean the auditory hallucinations,” Patricia confirms. “She spoke to you.”
“No, she screamed out to me. It was like having to hear her being attacked over and over and over, but I couldn’t help her. Then one night, the noise got so unbearable that I ran outside, and that was the first time she talked to me, and I realized it was our house that upset her. She didn’t like us being there anymore.”
“So that was when you took to the streets.”
“It was the only way to keep Clarissa talking.”
“What would she say?”
“Lots of things . . .” Riley looks down at her empty palms, feels her chest growing heavy. “But it always hurt the most when she said, ‘I’ll never leave you.’”
“Still, you found the streets more peaceful.”
“Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
“That’s sort of complicated.”
“Life can be complicated.”
“It’s just that . . . things kept spinning faster. I became a public nuisance and started following strangers around town.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I was crazy?”
Patricia grins. “Even crazy people have their reasons.”
“I thought they were Clarissa—I’d tap them on the shoulders, but when they turned around, it wasn’t her. Other times, I saw people I thought could lead me to her.”
“Did you ever get to see Clarissa through these hallucinations?”
Riley hesitates, then, “Not until after I arrived at Glendale.”
“How did you finally end up there?”
“I went back to my old house to kill myself. It had foreclosed and gone vacant, so I figured nobody would look for me there. But I was wrong. Erin, my sister, did. She figured it out just in time, then had me committed.”
“Do you think it was a cry for help?”
“No, I wanted my life to end. I wanted out of that torture.”
Patricia glances down at her folder, looks up at Riley. “You were there for about two years.”
“I was catatonic for a while, so they were unable to treat the psychosis. Once I came out of it, I spent my time hallucinating, getting into fights with other patients, and trying to hurt myself by banging my head against doors.”
“Do you ever feel the urge to harm yourself now?”
“No. I’ve had enough pain.”
Patricia studies her but says nothing.
Riley asks, “What is it?”
“I’m just wondering . . . does life seem better after leaving Glendale?”
“I guess I’m finding there’s not much difference between being in or out.” She pauses to think about that for a moment. “They’re just two different sides of the same hell.”
14
There’s a certain look Riley is quickly becoming accustomed to seeing.
A creased brow. A leery stare. Narrowed eyes with a gaze that lasts longer than it should. The look of recognition. Of suspicion. Contempt, even. A look that followed her into Glendale and has followed her out.
Then there’s the other part.
A gnawing, almost tactile feeling in her bones that someone is watching her.
On her morning return from the neighborhood hardware store to pick up a portable door jammer for added nighttime security, she hears someone walking on the sidewalk behind her. It makes her scalp tingle. Maybe it’s the soft, distant footfalls or that she’s extra cautious after the knife incidents. Maybe it’s because during her stay at Glendale, she developed an instinct for staying alert, sniffing out danger. Whatever the case, it doesn’t much matter how she knows, just that she does. She speeds up, and the footsteps do the same.
Someone’s following me.
In an attempt to increase the distance between them, she breaks into a fast clip and hears the footsteps gain momentum.
She makes it to her building, ducks inside, looks out onto the street, but nobody is there. Icy needles poke beneath her skin. In her apartment, she goes straight to the window and looks out for someone suspicious.
Nothing.
Still not satisfied.
She fishes an old pair of binoculars from the kitchen drawer, drags a chair to the window, then surveys the lot and beyond for anything out of the ordinary.
Just as she pulls away the binoculars, her vision lands on that red Mercedes parked in the same spot as last night. Her mind jumps tracks, jetting into thoughts of the young woman who drives it. The same woman who almost ran into her at the strip mall, who now also seems to be her neighbor. Heck, she’s probably trailing Riley, too. Why not? Seems like practically everyone else is these days.
Several minutes pass, and the parking lot remains uneventful. She’s about to go back into the kitchen and fix a cup of tea when the chirp of a car alarm sounds. She lifts her binoculars and zeros in on the young woman walking to the Mercedes. Minus her business suit, she instead sports a pair of faded blue jeans and a white T-shirt, her ebony hair pulled neatly into a ponytail. Insistent curiosity takes hold of Riley. She slides the chair closer to the window and continues watching.
The woman has the walk of someone who’s just won a million bucks, her stride bouncy, her chin held high, all of it projecting an unmistakable air of infallible confidence.
I know that walk. Clarissa used to walk like that.
She wonders where this young woman found all that confidence, then switches her scrutiny to the large portfolio bag she carries made of black, expensive-looking leather. She opens her trunk, places the bag inside. Then, a few beats later, the red Mercedes leaves the lot.
Riley checks the clock: it’s 8:45 a.m. She does the math, surmising that Ms. Confident likely has to be somewhere by nine, maybe work? She wonders where, and whether the portfolio bag might provide a clue. Is she an architect? An artist? The car certainly isn’t cheap, so she must have a well-paying job.
Either that, or she was loaded to begin with.
A flash of envy strikes when she thinks about how wonderful Ms. Confident’s life must be, the kind Riley can only dream about. A possibility taken from her. Stolen.
The kind she will never have a chance to live.
15
Riley and Erin are about to wrap up their visit to the DMV when the clerk behind the counter squints over her glasses at Riley. She looks at the name on the paperwork, looks at Riley, then looks back at the paperwork.
“Is there anything else you need?” Erin asks.
In her sixties, the woman has a wolfish face. Her flat, elongated nose hangs beneath a pair of pointy, wide-set eyes. In an accusatory tone, she says, “Aren’t you the lady who killed her girl?”
Erin jumps in. “Aren’t you the lady who’s supposed to be doing her damned job?”
“Excuse me, madam. I was just asking a question.”
“And I was just responding to it.” Erin leans forward to check out the woman’s signature on the form, then in a whippish tone adds, “Maggie.”
Maggie glowers.
Erin says, “And nobody says madam anymore. Not unless they’re an early-century model that fell off the production line.”
Maggie doesn’t seem to enjoy that remark, either. She raises Riley’s paperwork high in the air like stinking roadkill, then lets it drop into a wire basket.
“Be still, my heart,” Erin mutters as they walk away. “Another angel just got her wings.”
Riley chuckles. Her sister joins in, and before either knows it, they’re holding their sides from laughing so hard.
But as they travel home, the emotional climate shifts when Erin notices Riley’s empty wrist.
“I forgot to put it on today,” she says before Erin can ask about the bracelet. Telling her it was destroyed will only upset her.
Erin makes no outward response, and it gets quiet, too quiet.
“Looks like the press is finally starting to die off,” Riley throws out purely as a conversation starter.
“They may rebound,” Erin says, nodding in agreement with herself. “They often do, so be on the lookout.”
More quiet for a good five minutes.
Then Riley asks, “You doing okay?”
Erin doesn’t answer.
Riley says, “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Erin breathes in through her nose. “Ever since you got out of Glendale, you’ve been distancing yourself from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Like at your apartment the other day. When I said you were family? I was trying to offer comfort, but you completely skirted away from it. Why did you do that?”
“Jeez, Erin. Where’s this coming from? We were laughing a few minutes ago.”
“It’s been bothering me. Is that okay?”
“Of course, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“There’s no need to apologize. Just tell me what’s happening.”
“I’m having—” Riley turns her gaze out the window. She closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose. “Adjusting to life outside of Glendale . . . It’s like I . . . It’s making me really edgy.”
“What’s making you edgy?”
Riley hesitates. She can’t tell Erin the truth. She seldom can, so instead: “You know . . . the everyday stress.”
“See?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to help here, and all you can give me is some vague, catchall answer?”
“It’s not a vague, catchall.”
“Riley, for once, can you be straight with me? I don’t know where to go with this any longer. It’s like the more I give, the more you push back.”
“I’m not doing that at all.”
“Really? Have you forgotten I cross-examine people for a living? Do you think you can just omit information—lie, even—and I won’t notice?”
“But I’m telling you the truth!”
“Decided to refinish your headboard a day after moving in? For heaven’s sake, you weren’t even unpacked yet. And that new lock? Since when do the press conduct home-invasion interviews?” She scoffs. “Honestly, Riley, you’re not even a good liar.”
Riley’s got nothing. She stares out the front windshield and shakes her head.
“There’s something else,” Erin insists. “Tell me what it is.”
Riley doesn’t know how to disentangle herself from this gnarled mess. After all, what can she say? That her butcher knife appears to have gone on tour inside the apartment? That some
one is stalking her but she has no proof of it? Erin would have her thrown right back into Glendale. Riley can’t let that happen, but her sister also has her BS detector cranked up high. Riley’s cornered. Busted.
Erin is still waiting for an answer.
Riley decides to tell the lesser truth—at least some of it. She draws a breath, holds it for a moment. She releases it. “Okay, you’re right. I withheld information, but only because I was afraid it might upset you.”
Erin spares her a glance, deep, parallel worry lines surfacing between her brows.
She lets the information out fast. “Someone broke into my apartment.”
“What? Holy . . . Riley! You should have told—”
“Those sanded-off places you saw on my headboard? They were there because I’d removed a message. A very angry one.”
They stop at an intersection. Erin searches Riley’s face—Riley redirects by pointing through the windshield at the traffic light, which has changed to green.
Erin hits the gas pedal. Pushing well past the speed limit, she says, “Tell me the message.”
“Please don’t make me repeat it, but that’s why I changed the lock. It seemed like my only option.”
“What about calling the police? Was that ever an option?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Are we really doing this again? The thing with the cops? Listen to me. Someone broke into your apartment. You have to report this.”
“No.” Riley is adamantly shaking her head. “No, I don’t.”
“You can’t let this go!”
“I can, and I will. The cops will just get in the way.”
“In the way of what?”
She fumbles to speak. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Look at what they did to my life, what Demetre Sloan did. I spent all that time behind bars before and during the trial, all because of her. Time I’ll never get back. Now I’m supposed to ask the cops to help me? Nope. I can handle it myself. You’ll have to trust me on this.”
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 4
