The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  Is it that late? I’ve zoned out, something I’m prone to do more and more lately. A glance at the clock reveals that it’s almost three, her usual departure time.

  “No,” I say. “Go get your girl. And have a good night.”

  “My mother can get her if you need me.” Brenda has her russet hair back in a tight ponytail, wears a simple black sheath and polka-dot scarf. Her brow knits with concern, but I wave her off.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “Go home to your family, tell Ryan I said hello.”

  They are the rare intact healthy family, balancing careers, a child, their marriage. I’m not going to be the one who messes with their well-oiled machine.

  “If you’re sure,” she says. “I’ll leave the outer door open on my way out.”

  My internet browser is open to the file I was reading. I ate lunch at my desk. Half the sandwich still sits in the wrapper by my keyboard. The article I was reading, about the effects of early childhood trauma on physical health later in life—I’ve only read a few paragraphs.

  How long have I just been sitting here?

  That’s when I notice there are other browser windows open. I’m surprised by what I see there. Shocked, actually. I click the windows closed one by one, my hand shaking. The crime scene photos provided by Agent Brower—gruesome, bloody—disappear one by one. Kreskey. Smith. Markham. How long has he been looking at them, that other side of me?

  It reminds me.

  Sometimes I forget. I’m not entirely well.

  SIXTEEN

  Little had changed about the one-story ranch house where Tess had lived, not the buttery-yellow color, not the simple landscaping of squat shrubs, lined with the same type of perennials planted and removed each season, replaced and removed again. Even the red aluminum mailbox seemed to tilt on the same angle. Maybe it was a little worse for wear.

  Rain pulled into the gravel drive and sat, taking it in. The trees were taller. Some of the other houses on the block had been renovated. But if she blurred her eyes, she could see it all just as it had been, Tess waving manically from her bedroom window, or sitting on the brick stoop, waiting for her. She’d come running when the car pulled into the driveway, already talking about one thing before Rain even stepped on her walk.

  As Rain sat now, the door swung open and Tess’s mother, Sandy, stood there, smiling. For a moment it was Tess, the way she might have looked now—with long blond hair, willowy and tall. Sandy came out with arms wide.

  “Oh,” the older woman gushed when Rain climbed out to greet her. “Look at you!”

  They embraced, and Rain had to bite back a rush of emotion. The scent of her shampoo brought back a vivid sense memory—lying in bed with Tess, her mother kissing them both good-night.

  “And look at that baby!”

  She took Lily as soon as Rain got her out of the car seat. Lily, of course, was all smiles.

  Sandy had been the youngest of their mothers—and definitely the coolest. Funny and pretty, she’d turn up the radio in the car and sing along (not like Rain’s parents, always listening to some talk radio show on the public station), watch soaps and music videos on summer afternoons with them (not make them go outside like Hank’s dad). She didn’t have that many rules, let them eat whatever they wanted. At Tess’s place, they could stay in their pajamas all day, have the leftover pizza for breakfast. There was always something just light and easy about her; she seemed less grown-up than Hank’s or Rain’s parents.

  She still had that lightness, that youthful bounce to her step as she bustled about, offering Rain coffee, getting Lily settled.

  With Lily on a blanket on the floor, a pile of blocks in front of her (Tess’s old toys), Rain and Sandy sat on her couch, chatting about Sandy’s work at the hospital, how Rain was doing at home full-time.

  “It’s been a little over a year,” said Rain. “It’s been good—for all of us.”

  “I didn’t think you were the stay-at-home-mom type,” said Sandy, giving her a long look.

  “What type is that, exactly?” asked Rain, really wanting to know.

  It was a thing she heard over and over and wasn’t sure she understood. Was there a type that could stay home, a type that couldn’t?

  Sandy shrugged, pulled at the length of her still-blond hair. Again, for a second Sandy was Tess. It would have been like this, wouldn’t it? Maybe Tess would have had children of her own. Maybe they’d be at the park together with their kids, out to lunch. She pressed down a wave of helpless sadness. All the things that could not be changed.

  All around them there were pictures—Tess on horseback, Tess and Rain on the swings, Tess as a baby. Printed photos, fading with age. She remembered how they used to take photos, bring the roll to the photo shop, go back a week later to see what they’d captured. Everything was instant now, digital, forever floating in the cloud. Weren’t all those images less real somehow?

  “Some women take joy in it, some don’t,” Sandy answered her question. “That’s all. No judgments. I am a fan of being true to who we are. Not everyone can do it, the full-time mom thing. It’s more demanding than most other things, the stakes very high.”

  “I do take joy in it,” said Rain quickly, almost defensive. She did. Why did she always have to prove it? Nothing in life was perfect, no choice ever exactly the right one. Wasn’t that true of everything? Even if she’d chosen to stay at work, wouldn’t that be fraught, too?

  “But is it enough for you?”

  Now it was Rain’s turn to shrug; she glanced over at Lily, who was happily banging and cooing. It was a question you didn’t dare ask, wasn’t it? “It’s not really about me. It’s about Lily.”

  Lily agreed with a bang of a big red block, and a happy laugh.

  Sandy got down on the floor and helped her stack.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Me? I never wanted anything else. I went back to work because I had to support us. I would have been happy with a bunch of kids, making cupcakes and shuttling them all over. Even as a little girl that’s all I wanted.”

  Rain believed it. Her own mother had said the same thing. Sandy handed Lily a green block.

  “You said you wanted to talk,” Sandy said, leaning back and letting Lily stack. “About this?”

  She shook her head. The coffee was strong and rich. Rain was grateful, as always, for the rush of caffeine.

  “I wanted to talk about Kreskey,” she said, his name sticking in her mouth. She hated the way it sounded on the air. “About what happened to us, to him. Do you mind if I record?”

  “Back to work after all?” said Sandy, nodding her assent.

  “Maybe.”

  Sandy wasn’t one to shy away from this topic; she’d talked to Rain even when her own parents were still too raw to process, too sick with fear and anger and grief and all the things that might have happened to Rain but happened to Tess instead.

  But Sandy always took it head-on, never turned away from the brutality of it. She found some reserve within herself to comfort Rain even though she’d suffered the most unimaginable possible loss.

  “Eugene Kreskey was a very sick man,” Sandy said, bowing her head. “Deeply, terribly disturbed.”

  A psychiatric nurse, Sandy had that way about her—the one Rain saw in law enforcement, health professionals, soldiers. These were the people who stood on the front lines of humanity. They knew something about life, about the human condition that other people couldn’t grasp. It either made them hard, or it filled them with compassion. Sandy was the latter. “He was the victim of terrible abuse and psychic trauma as a child. I forgave him long ago.”

  Sandy had mentioned this before, that she’d forgiven Kreskey. It was a thing that Rain didn’t understand. How do you forgive someone who did what he did? It was part of that whole Zen thing that eluded her. Forgiveness. It might be overrated.

  “And you th
ree were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I look back and think you all had too much freedom. We thought the world was a better place than it was. We thought you were safe—no, we knew you were safe. And we let you go too far, too young. That was our failing.”

  It was a similar thing she heard from her own parents, how they’d failed. But it was Rain who hadn’t followed the rules, Kreskey who’d lain in wait for them. Rain who’d hidden while he took them away. How could she forgive him? How could she forgive herself?

  “Do you remember when he was released?” asked Rain, pressing the conversation forward.

  Sandy nodded, leaned back against the edge of the couch. The sun from the window danced on her hair. “You and Hank were in your twenties by then.”

  “Kreskey came back here,” said Rain. “To a halfway facility not far from his childhood home.”

  She nodded again more stiffly this time, her face gone grim and still. “That’s right.” Then, “Why this? Why now?”

  She told Sandy about the story she wanted to investigate and write, one that reached into a past she’d sought to bury. When she was done, Sandy sat a minute, staring at a picture Rain had seen so many times that she’d stopped seeing it. Tess, Hank and Rain, lying on the ground, heads together, Hank smiling broadly, Tess squinting, Rain laughing with mouth wide. Sandy had stood over them and taken the shot from above—green all around them. She remembered the bright blue day, their laughter. They’d been bored and told Sandy. She suggested they go outside and join the Cloud Appreciation Society.

  What’s that?

  It’s when you lie on your back and notice how beautiful is the world.

  The air was warm that day, the breeze light. Those high cumulous summer clouds towered, growing gunmetal gray inside as they watched. Later it would storm. All those days were so vivid still.

  “I always found it interesting,” she said. “The work you and Hank chose for yourselves. You an investigative journalist, Hank a psychiatrist. Like all these years, you’re still just trying to understand what happened that day. What do you think will happen if you can put together all the pieces?”

  Rain didn’t have an answer for that.

  “You were working that day,” she pressed instead. “We were supposed to go to the mall. But you got called in to the hospital. What do you remember?”

  Sandy pulled her legs in, wrapped her arms around them so she sat in a ball.

  “I remember kissing my daughter goodbye in the morning, sitting on the edge of her bed, touching her hair. Remember how silky it was? I told her what I told her every day—be good to yourself. Be good to others. Be careful and kind.”

  She stared down at the floor a moment, then went on.

  “Then I went to work, resentful as hell that I couldn’t spend the day with you two,” she said. “It was days like that when I hated her father the most.”

  Sandy was still in college when she’d had Tess and married Tess’s father—a drummer in a local band. The marriage imploded while Tess was still a baby. Tess’s dad was mostly absent, showing up now and then for the grand gesture—an American Girl doll (which Tess hated), once a trip to Disney. When Tess and Rain were older, he took them to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert once.

  Tess hated her dad a little, but was giddy with excitement when he’d called, or sent her something in the mail. She deflated when afterward he disappeared again. Now, a parent herself, Rain could see how totally messed up it was. But then—it just was. That was Tess’s life. And Rain often found herself wishing that her dad would buy extravagant gifts and take them to concerts and amusement parks—museums and summers overseas didn’t quite cut it. The fact that at least her father was there mostly—when he wasn’t traveling for work, or locked in the attic working, or drifting about, “thinking”—didn’t seem like much at the time.

  “I remember thinking on the way to the hospital that the real stuff of parenting is in the details, the day-to-day,” said Sandy. “I felt like a failure for having to work when other women could stay home.”

  “You were never a failure.”

  But Sandy’s gaze had grown distant. She was back there, and Rain felt a spasm of regret for having opened this door into the past.

  “The day is a blur after that,” she said softly. “Until the call came. The rest of that day and night, the week, and the year after, her missing, her found, the funeral, the trial—well, it’s every parent’s nightmare, isn’t it? It’s a tunnel I walked through, kept looking for the light of forgiveness, which I knew was the only way I’d survive it. I remember that I wanted to survive, which is odd. Because—why? Any mother would rather die than face that pain. But there was something alive inside that wanted to stay that way, even without her.”

  Lily started to whimper, maybe sensing the change in their mood, their tones. Sandy picked her up and nuzzled her. Predictably, Lily cuddled right up. Sandy reached into a bin under the coffee table and pulled out a small stuffed frog, handed it to Lily, who regarded it seriously.

  They sat quiet a moment. Outside somewhere a lawn mower hummed.

  “And when Kreskey was released?”

  Sandy stroked Lily’s hair.

  “Hank came to see me.”

  This was news to Rain. She couldn’t imagine Hank coming back here, to this town, to see Sandy. The rage he carried inside, it was a force. It had frightened her when they came to know each other again. She couldn’t be in the same room with it.

  “He did?”

  “Do you still talk to him?” Sandy asked.

  “No,” Rain answered, bowing her head against the complicated rise of feeling. He talked to her endlessly in his letters. But she didn’t talk to him. “He’s so—”

  “Broken.”

  “Yes.”

  “He wanted something that we can never have,” said Sandy.

  “What’s that?”

  “Justice,” she said.

  “But justice was done.”

  “Was it?”

  “Kreskey is dead,” said Rain. “Someone killed him, the way Tess died, in the same place.”

  “Is that justice, Lara?”

  Rain didn’t bother to correct her. She would always be Lara to Sandy, to Hank. She’d always be LAH-raine to her father.

  Rain was the name she gave herself. It was her survivor’s name.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Do you feel better? Does Hank? Did Tess come home? Can I turn back the clock and not go to work that day, take you girls to the mall instead?”

  Rain didn’t say anything, just looked around the room, which was the same as it had always been, cozy, safe, a fat Buddha on the coffee table, a Tibetan singing bowl, two papasan chairs, the same velvety couch.

  “Justice is a modern concept,” said Sandy. “In ancient cultures, time, life, is a continuum, no beginning, no end.”

  “No justice?”

  Sandy smiled, patient, loving. “Justice is not for this plane. Punishment, yes. Consequence, certainly. For someone like Kreskey, damaged beyond repair by violence and trauma. How do you break something that’s already broken? How do you repair something that has so many critical pieces missing?”

  Lily issued a noise that Rain recognized as a shift in mood.

  “How did you feel when he died?” asked Rain.

  Lily started to fuss again, and Sandy handed her over. Rain fished through her bag while Sandy sat silent, retrieved her shawl and started to nurse. So much for weaning.

  “Sad,” Sandy said finally. “Sad for the horror of his life, that more evil was done. Sad that it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to anyone or anything except to make the world seem a little harsher, uglier than it already was. Violence is never the answer. I believe that with all my heart.”

  Rain told her about the other men—Smith and Markham. How she thought there might be a connecti
on, someone looking to deliver justice in a world where it was in short supply.

  “Do you know the concept of karma?” asked Sandy when Rain was done. Lily had fallen asleep in Rain’s arms.

  “Of course,” she answered, glad for the warm weight of her sleeping daughter. “If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.”

  Sandy shook her head and pulled her legs into a half lotus.

  “Karma is about balance. It’s about the natural order of the universe, the delicate dance of light and shadow. ‘An eye for an eye’ is not a karmic concept—that’s a misconception. What happened to those men, it’s just more darkness. We fight violence with more violence and only more violence follows. We dig our grave deeper and deeper—there’s no end.”

  Rain saw Tess everywhere—lounging on the couch, digging snacks out of the cupboard, half sliding down the banister that led to the living room, homework spread out on the coffee table while she slouched on the floor.

  “How often do you talk to him?”

  “Hank? Not as often as I talk to you,” said Sandy. “He calls on her birthday some years. Sometimes on the day she died. Sometimes he comes by, brings tulips or Oreos.”

  Those things were Tess’s favorites. She thought tulips were the happiest flower. And that skinny kid could pack away Oreos like nobody’s business.

  “Part of him never moved on,” said Rain. “He’s still back there.”

  “I’d say that’s true of all of us, right? Or we wouldn’t be talking about this today.”

  She nodded toward the digital recorder.

  “Did he ever talk to you about what happened to Kreskey?” she asked.

  Sandy looked away, down at her fingernails. “No.”

  “Sandy.”

  The older woman looked up at Rain, eyes shining.

  “Don’t go down this road, Lara.” Her voice had gone low with warning. “He can’t move on. But you can. Look at that baby, asleep in your arms. She’s the future and that’s where you need to be headed.”

  Shame warmed her cheeks—again. The baby—that’s all that mattered. Seemed that everyone kept reminding her of that. Sandy, her husband, Gretchen on the playground. Her father had the opposite warning—don’t let this slow you down. She was Lily’s mother, an awesome responsibility, an earth-quaking love, a profound gift. But she was still Rain Winter, survivor, journalist, a woman with a lot of questions about the world, about her own life. Couldn’t she be all the things she was?