The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  “Of course,” he said. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “The guy who abducted and murdered three boys over a five-year period in Massachusetts.”

  “And walked free.”

  Greg’s fork hovered between plate and mouth. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he watched her, remembering. “And then was found murdered in his home about a year later. Just like Markham. Just like—”

  He let the sentence trail. Neither one of them liked to say his name, as if it was a spell, a conjuring. Greg frowned instead, and she watched his gears spin, making all the connections, seeing the possibilities, the size and scope of the story. A newsman through and through. His shoulders straightened a bit.

  He took a bite of kale. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “I think the Feds think there’s a connection.”

  He had big brown eyes, with girlishly long lashes. His gaze could be sweet, loving. It could also pin you to the wall with its intensity.

  “So, Markham’s not the story.”

  “He’s a piece of a much bigger one. Like you said. That story’s over.”

  “So, what are you telling me?” he said, chewing slowly. “That you want to go back to work?”

  She peered down into her wineglass. Did she? Was that what she wanted?

  She was about to answer and ask for his help. But then Lily issued a wail through the monitor that startled them both. She moved toward the stairs, grateful to break away from the conversation, started to climb.

  “Hey, Rain,” he said, coming to stand at the bottom of the stairs. “Just one question. Is this about the story? Or is this about—what happened?”

  The question sent a jolt through her body, caused heat to come to her cheeks. She froze on the stairs.

  “You don’t have to answer,” he said, bowing his head and resting a hand on the banister. His tone was gentle. “Just think about it.”

  She kept moving up to the nursery.

  SEVEN

  In the dim of the nursery, Rain rocked Lily, who was sound asleep again in her arms. She could have exited a while ago, but she hadn’t. She needed that warm body next to her heart. She wanted to stay in the pretty quiet of the baby’s room, just for a while.

  She rubbed at the deep scar on her right calf, which had been aching since her run. But maybe it wasn’t the exercise that caused it to throb.

  What happened.

  It was buried so deep that she never even thought about it anymore. Almost. Sometimes it surfaced in dreams when she was especially stressed or overtired. Sometimes it came back to her at odd moments—maybe it was a song from that time, or the smell of wet leaves, that certain pitch of a child shrieking in that way that could be delight or terror. Then it came back. Just this clutch in her throat, a hollow that opened in her middle. It was a hundred years ago, a million. But it wasn’t. It was yesterday.

  Back then they played. Out on the streets riding bikes with her friends, they had the run of the neighborhood. She walked through the acres of woods between developments, thick green above, ground sun-dappled and littered with leaves, and waded in the cool water of clean creeks. With her best friends, Tess and Hank, she rode to the corner store in the summer heat for ice cream, cicadas singing, heat rising off the blacktop in waves. Quiet afternoons leaked into evenings, the light turning that certain kind of golden orange reserved for summer. She’d arrive home dirty and hungry, with bruises and scrapes, tired just because they’d been in motion all day, running and falling, wrestling, riding, climbing. Her body used to ache, tingle with fatigue when she crashed into bed. And wasn’t there a kind of bliss in physical fatigue?

  She’d eat at the table with her mother, sometimes her father on the rare night when he stopped work at a decent time. Summer-night dinners were burgers, or steak, or chicken on the grill, and fresh corn on the cob, fluffy green salads, buttery baked potatoes. Tess and Hank were at her place a lot for supper. Both of Hank’s parents worked big jobs in the city; they were never around. Tess’s father had left when Tess was small, and her mother was an ER nurse at the big hospital in town. She was often around during the day, leaving Tess alone in the evenings or for the late shift. Sometimes Tess stayed with Rain’s family. Only Rain’s mother stayed home, cooking, cleaning, driving them around.

  After dinner, maybe they went out again, played with the other neighborhood kids. Flashlight tag. Fireflies in jars. Shrieks rang through the night, squeals of laughter. Eventually, always, someone started to cry. Then moms were on the porches, hands on hips. Time to go inside. Do it again tomorrow.

  That’s how Rain grew up, anyway. Most people seemed to think that kids had lost something, that freedom to roam, to play unfettered. But Rain knew better. Kids lost their freedom for a reason. Because it wasn’t safe to roam.

  But they didn’t know that then. They didn’t know anything.

  “My mom doesn’t want me to cut through the woods anymore,” said Rain that day, twelve. “She wants us to take the long way around if we’re going to meet Hank.”

  She stood on the edge of the road. Here it turned off onto a dirt path that ran between two neighborhoods. The dirt path would carry them over a stone bridge, through a stand of trees, until it let them out by a field. From there it was another five minutes to Hank’s house.

  “The street is more dangerous, don’t you think?” said Tess with a shrug. “More cars lately.”

  That was true. There was a hairpin turn with one of those mirrors mounted up in the tree so you could see who was coming from the other direction. But there were lots of teenagers driving. They drove too fast, were looking at the radio or at each other, anything but the road ahead. A kid had been struck on his bicycle last summer. He was okay, walked around with a cast for a few weeks. They all signed it.

  It wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, as Rain saw it. More like a mention over breakfast.

  Stay out of the woods, okay?

  Why?

  Mom paused like she did when she didn’t want to answer, looked over to Rain’s father, who was hidden behind the newspaper.

  Just listen to your mother, darling. Her father rarely had rules, or chimed in on her mother’s. In fact, if her father ever told her to do anything, it was to question the rules, ask anything, push the boundaries. Believe half of what you see, he was famous for saying. And nothing of what you hear.

  “Besides,” said Tess. “It will take forever.”

  She was right. It was a long way around, two big hills, an extra fifteen minutes, maybe more. And it was hot. Just before ten in the morning and it was already blazing. They didn’t have their bikes. Tess had a flat and her mom said she’d fix it over the weekend. So they were on foot. The sun was bright, and the creek was babbling. She saw the red flash of a northern cardinal, heard its cry of alarm. It was a fairy-tale forest, a place they knew as well as they knew their own backyards.

  “Fine,” said Rain, following her friend onto the path.

  No cell phones. Rain thought about that a lot now. If they’d had phones, how would that day have been different? Would she have called her mom? Would their mothers have been tracking them the way people did now? Maybe her phone would have rung just then: I told you to stay away from the woods! Come home this instant!

  But there were no phones to ring. Just two girls, twelve going on thirteen. Neither one of them especially cool. Smart, A-students, but naive, sheltered. Tess had braces and enormous glasses, wore her mousy blond hair in braids; Rain, in braces, too, her black hair was wild, untamable. She couldn’t shimmy the rope in gym class to save her own life. Rain already knew she was a writer, like her father. Tess, an accomplished horseback rider, as at ease in a saddle as she was on a bicycle, was certain she was going to become a veterinarian. And Hank, who they were on their way to meet at his house because he had a pool, well, he was just a comic-book, video-game nerd. All he wanted to be when he grew up was a su
perhero. They were merely waiting for him to get bitten by a spider, or fall into a vat of toxic sludge, and emerge with his powers.

  “What’s wrong with the woods, anyway?” asked Tess. She was rail-thin, coltish, prone to tripping. “Since when can’t we walk through?”

  Rain looked at her jagged cuticles. She wasn’t clear on her mother’s reasoning. “My mom just said.”

  They almost didn’t see him; the big man sat as still as a boulder by the side of the creek. They might have walked right over the bridge and passed him without noticing—if not for the dog.

  “Rain?”

  She practically jumped out of her skin, adrenaline rocketing through her. Lily whimpered, shifted crankily in her sleep at the sudden movement. Greg stood over her, a hand on her shoulder.

  “Did you fall asleep?” he whispered. He lifted Lily from her arms, kissed the baby’s head softly and placed her in the crib. He stood watching their little girl.

  Rain came to stand beside him, and he turned to her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was a low blow.”

  He put his arms around her again and they stood swaying, turtles from the nightlight dancing on the walls.

  You were right, she wanted to say but didn’t. It is about what happened. Everything Rain had done since that day was about what happened. How could it not be?

  She let the comfort of the room, her husband’s arms, the present moment wash over her. She pushed that day, and everything that happened after, back down into the box where she kept it, and locked it up tight. She envisioned herself throwing the key down a deep well.

  Don’t let this slow you down, kid. Her father had issued this directive right after, and at critical moments since. If you let it get its claws into your haunches, it’s over. Remember that.

  She’d been running. Fast as she could. Why did she always find herself back there?

  “Whatever you want to do,” Greg whispered. “Whatever you need, I support it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, holding on to him tight.

  But wasn’t there a part of her that wished he’d stop her? That he’d tell her no, that Lily came first, and they’d agreed someone should be home full-time. Wasn’t there a part of her that wished he’d keep her from following that trail into the woods? Again.

  They stood there awhile, holding each other, watching Lily, the big, sweet-faced moon hanging from the ceiling watching them. Her eyes drifted outside to the street, where she saw the headlights of a sedan switch on across the street. The car sat idle for a moment, then pulled away slowly. Her heart thumped.

  It’s nothing. It’s no one, she told herself. Even though a part of her knew it was a lie.

  EIGHT

  Do you see me? Do you know it’s me?

  He loves you. That’s obvious as I watch you hold on to him, sway in the dim light of the nursery. I shift in my seat, stare at the monitor in my hand, its glow shining blue on the dash, on the door. I’m happy for you, believe it or not. I didn’t think you two would actually get married, let alone stay married. Of course, it’s early days. Still, you seem to get each other. It’s not perfect—I’ve heard the two of you fight, and fuck, make up, argue again. But it’s healthy. It’s real. When he kisses you, I turn the monitor off.

  I start the engine and drive away.

  You know what I remember about that day, Lara? Everything. Every detail.

  I woke shivering because my parents kept that house as cold as a fucking icebox, didn’t even bother turning it up when they left for work. They were both gone, as usual, when I got up.

  Remember that feeling? That summer feeling. You open your eyes and there’s absolutely nothing to do. The day stretches ahead, leisurely and beautiful. No school, no responsibilities, no chores in my case—hey, there was a cleaning service for all that—just the blissful freedom of the unsupervised adolescent.

  I knew you guys were coming, that we’d swim. There’d be pizza and video games, and some stupid movie. I figured we’d ride our bikes back to your place. Your mom always made dinner; my parents might not come home until eight, carrying fast-food burgers or fried chicken in greasy white sacks—they loved their junk food, didn’t they? Remember how we’d eat that later, too? Eat at your place, eat again at mine. Your dad would come for you, so you wouldn’t ride home alone in the night. Sometimes you’d just leave your bike and get it the next day.

  I had a stack of new comics that my dad brought the night before from his favorite shop in the city. I read one—Batman—as I ate a huge bowl of Cocoa Puffs, then drank the chocolate milk that was left behind. The way we ate. Remember how we’d ride to the general store and buy bags of junk—gum and candy bars, those peanut butter cookies, and cheesy puffs, potato chips in cans. We’d just sit on the sidewalk and eat it all. I look at those old pictures and we were all so skinny. I guess that’s the magic of being a kid, right. Eat whatever you want. No consequences. Until much later.

  I remember the sunlight glittering on the pool. The birds singing in the backyard. The hum of a lawn mower from across the street. There was a note from my mom: Get out and do something today. Don’t just lie around in front of the television. Love you!

  Later, she blamed herself. She should have been home. If she had been—The way I see it, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

  The last time I wrote, you told me that you didn’t remember much of anything. You told me that you didn’t want to remember. That’s when you asked me to stay away, to stay out of your life. If you could go back and relive that day, change things, you would. But you can’t, you said, so you had no choice but to move on. You politely suggested that I do the same. Move on.

  It’s so easy for you.

  Not so easy for me, of course.

  What if I hadn’t gone out looking for you and Tess? What if I had, instead, called your mom, asked for you? She’d have known that you weren’t where you were supposed to be. She’d have come looking. It’s like you said, you can drive yourself crazy running through all the scenarios, all the ways things could have been different.

  You can really drive yourself crazy.

  The air smelled of cut grass, and the gravel driveway crunched beneath my sneakers as I left the house. My dirt bike lay where I’d dumped it the night before on the grass. Someone’s going to steal that thing, my dad complained the night before. And I’m not going to replace it. But like all spoiled kids, I knew if it did get stolen—which it wouldn’t—that he’d bitch a blue streak then get me another one eventually. Anyway, nothing ever got stolen, not in that neighborhood. Everyone had everything they wanted and then some. No need to steal. We didn’t always even lock our doors, would forget to close the garage sometimes. We felt safe. Remember that? Remember what it was like to feel so safe that you didn’t even know what it meant not to feel that way?

  I pulled the bike up from the damp ground, didn’t even bother wiping it off. Just hopped on it and headed toward the dirt road. Your mom told you not to cut across anymore. But I figured you guys, especially Tess, were too lazy to go the long way. The air on my face, hot and humid. The sudden coolness when I was on the dirt road, under the tree cover. A squirrel skittered in front of my bike. I swerved to avoid it. Mrs. Newman waved from the window over her kitchen sink. Hey, Mrs. Newman! I called back to her.

  I heard something then, something high-pitched and out of place, came to a skidding stop on my bike and listened. Birdsong, and wind in the leaves.

  Right there.

  I go back to that place. Because even though I convinced myself that it was nothing and I kept going, I remember the way the hair came up on my arms, that sudden stillness inside, the urge to freeze and listen. That’s instinct. That’s the brain picking up on something, a note out of the symphony of normal life. The way ahead was dark. I think I even looked back at the way behind me, the sun-dappled road home.r />
  If I had spun my bike around, then what? Then what?

  From the way you talked about it, I could tell that you’ve had a lot of therapy. I have, too, believe me. Years of it, shrink after shrink, well into adulthood. After something rips your psyche apart, they try to stitch you back together. The physical wounds, they’ve healed. Even the scars have faded.

  But whatever got broken inside, it’s still not right. Do you feel the same way? I suspect you do. I see it in you, too, Lara. That look, the one I see in the mirror. A kind of emptiness behind the eyes, a strange flatness. You’ve seen the things that make all the other things people do seem meaningless.

  Do you feel as if there are two of you? The one who’s living out her life—working, having relationships, going to the grocery store, cooking, reading. The person you would have been if it had never happened. And then there’s another you. The one who survived but is still somehow trapped in the nightmare.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me.

  I was a child, you wrote. And I acted out of terror and extreme trauma. Even though I wish things had been different, I don’t blame myself. I have moved on to try and live a whole and happy life. She would have wanted that for us. Don’t you think?

  I get that. I hear that. They give you the language of survival. The phrases you are meant say to yourself, words like a bridge over the bottomless gully of despair. I have those words, too. I dole them out to others now in my work with trauma victims, mainly children and adolescents. That’s the work that the whole and healthy part of me does; I help children who have suffered find their way back to normal, or forward to a new normal. It’s good work. Gratifying and healing.

  So I get what you’re trying to say. And part of me even agrees, that one way to honor Tess is to live out the lives we’ve been given.

  But no, I don’t think she would have wanted that for us. I mean, think about it. I’m fairly certain that if the choice had been put to her, she would have wanted one of us to take her place. I think she would have vastly preferred, as anyone would, to be the one picking up the pieces of that summer morning, trying to live a whole and happy life in the wake of a terrible event that she survived.