He still missed her, and he was still searching for her. But a small part—a tiny, nearly infinitesimal part—had moved on.
Selling houses and making it up to his partners for being such a dick helped occupy his mind most of the time. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t love her. It didn’t mean that he didn’t miss her.
Then Woodward called and it changed everything again.
Martin hated the part of him that wished Woodward had never called.
“You all right?”
Woodward sounded tired.
“Yeah,” Martin said, unsure of how to address his friend. Time apart, even as little as a few months, changed things between people—made things as awkward as a first date.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause that Martin eventually broke.
“Woods, I just wanted to thank you for, you know…”
“For what?”
“Well, for coming with me. For being a good friend during this hard time. For—” At this point, Martin could feel his face getting red, and he hoped that taking a breather would let Woodward know that it was okay to jump in at any time.
He didn’t.
“For, you know, helping me when the hick strangled me.”
“And?”
And what? What the hell?
Martin swallowed hard.
“And for, and for—”
Woodward’s laugh halted Martin’s awkward speech.
“Just fucking with you, man. No problem. Listen, what happened on Coverfeld was fucked up. I wanted to lie low for a bit, make sure the ogre didn’t place any calls about us breaking in there. It was fucked-up shit, man. We could—” His voice lowered. “We could have gotten into real shit. I mean, what if I’d had to shoot the guy? If he’d kept choking you? Then what?”
Martin didn’t want to think about it. Besides, it hadn’t happened—the man had let him go—so why torture themselves with ‘what-ifs’?
“No kidding,” he said instead. He could feel cold, thin fingers wrapping around his throat, squeezing and squeezing…
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right. Anyways, did you look into 1818 Coverfeld Ave? You find anything?”
Of course Martin had looked; he had used any and all of his Internet research skills in addition to his access to real estate records. And both came up with the same answer: 1818 Coverfeld Ave didn’t exist.
“Yeah, but came up dry. Nothing. Nada.”
He thought he could hear Woodward’s chins flapping as he nodded in agreement.
“Put another request in here to see if anything came up on police records. Came up blank, as well. It’s like a ghost house. 1818 Coverfeld Ave doesn’t exist according to any public—or police—record that I could find.”
Martin exhaled.
“It’s like a ghost house,” Woodward repeated. “With one giant fucking Deliverance-type ghost living there. Fuck, a gardener? For real? There was no gardening going on there.”
Martin almost chuckled, but then he felt his throat constricting and his smirk became a grimace.
“So weird,” Martin muttered after swallowing hard.
“So weird,” Woodward admitted.
* * *
Martin awoke gasping for air, his hand immediately reaching for his chest. He thought he was having a heart attack.
Blinking in the darkness, he tried to calm his heaving body.
Fucking hell.
He’d been having a nightmare, a good old-fashioned nightmare in which he was trapped in the fucking house—1818 Coverfeld Ave—and the tall, lanky fucker with the skinny hands was chasing him. And no matter where he went, he always ended up in the family room staring at the circle of clear space on the coffee table. The space that looked exactly like it had been made from the bottom of a glass. Like a glass had been there only minutes before Woodward had kicked the door in. There was someone there.
Yeah, and he was a fucking eight-foot monster.
Sweat dripped into his eye and he rubbed it away—it stung like a bitch.
There was something else about the dream, something else that had seemed out of place at the house. He tried to think back without reliving the nightmare experience of the man chasing him.
It wasn’t about the house, he realized; it was when they had left the house, when he had kicked the stupid mailbox that someone had tried to hide. The rusted rectangle had been spinning in the mud, over and over again. The number 1818 rotating around and around…
Martin stopped rubbing his eye and froze.
1818.
1818.
What if it wasn’t 1818? What if it was 8181?
His heartrate, which had slowed over the last minute or so, kicked back up into high gear.
What the hell? Why didn’t I think of that before?
Martin could see the box spinning in his mind, and indeed the numbers could have as easily been 8181 as 1818. They had only thought it was 1818 because when they saw it from the car it was facing that way.
“Shit,” he muttered in the darkness.
The glowing green digits of the digital clock beside him read 1:16.
He wished those numbers were the other way around too, that they read 9:11. There were no nightmares after nine.
It sure as hell could be 8181 Coverfeld Ave.
Martin wanted to go back to sleep, to forget the horrible dream. But that was the problem; the dream had been ongoing for what seemed like forever now.
He threw his bedsheet off, surprised that it was soaked with his sweat. His first instinct was to search on his phone, but sometime during the night it had run out of batteries. With a huff, he made his way down to the computer that his wife used to use for her copywriting. It had been so long since he had powered the thing up—he used his cell phone and had a computer at his office—that it took at least twenty minutes to apply all of the awaiting updates.
At least this time the wait afforded him an opportunity to get a glass of water, which he sorely needed in order to replace some of the fluids he had lost during his nightmare. He also realized that it wasn’t just his sheets that were soaked, but his boxers as well. His entire body was covered in a sheen that had dried, making his arms stick to his armpits and his thighs stay glued together. He felt gross.
Is it too early to shower?
The computer pinged and he lost the thought and instead loaded up the browser.
The first thing he typed in was 8181 Coverfeld Ave. A shot in the dark, a one-hitter.
No luck. As with any search that included a name and a series of numbers, the results were just random pages in which ‘Coverfeld’ was mentioned and the numbers were from some strange coding string. Definitely not the 8181 Coverfeld Ave he was looking for.
He tried a few more combinations, adding ‘South Carolina’ to the mix.
Still nothing.
And then when he typed “8181 Coverfeld Ave, Elloree,” an article appeared with that exact combination of words.
An exact match.
His finger froze above the blue-highlighted words—the link.
Part of him wanted to turn the computer off again. Part of him was screaming for him to just shut it down. To let it be.
But part of him wanted him to click it, needed to click it.
Just fucking click it. Don’t be a pussy.
Martin shifted in his chair, peeling the inside of his thighs away from each other. His face twisted into a grimace and he pressed the link.
The first thing he saw was the bold title, “8181 Coverfeld Ave, Elloree,” just like his search string.
And then he scrolled and saw the photograph.
“No.” The word escaped his mouth in a partial moan. “No.”
His entire body shot full of adrenaline, a tingling that ran from his scalp to his toes.
“No fucking way. It can’t be.”
Chapter 32
Batesburg, SC
?
Martin,
Hope has come.
Ariell
e
Chapter 33
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
Even though Martin was speaking to Woodward, he wasn’t looking at him. Instead, he was staring at the tendrils of smoke that drifted up from the end of cigar like tiny, devilish fingers tickling the air.
Woodward didn’t answer.
“Do you think,” he began, finally looking up at his friend, “do you think she went there? Somehow her brain was wired to go there, even though she remembers none of it?”
Woodward put his own cigar back in the ashtray and picked up the framed photograph. He was staring so hard that Martin half expected him to squint one eye and tilt his head, as if he were trying to interpret an abstract painting. Thankfully, he didn’t—this was not a time for comical gestures. Instead, he put the frame gently back down on the table and then picked up his cigar again.
“I don’t know, Marty. I really don’t know. Have you taken the picture out of the frame?”
Martin nodded and brought his glass to his lips and took a swallow. It was no Talisker 18 in his glass—those days had come and gone—but it would do.
The two of them were again in his kitchen, this time sitting beside each other on barstools. It was almost ten in the evening, the earliest that Woodward could make it to his place—still wearing his uniform this time—which had given Martin all day to try and figure out what the fuck he had seen.
The image that he had found on the Internet—the one that his search for 8181 Coverfeld Ave had uncovered—was the exact same picture that Arielle had on her bedside table. The exact same photograph—the photograph, the only thing that Arielle had had to her name when she had been found at twelve years of age, wandering the streets naked, blood dripping…
He squeezed his eyes shut tightly.
How can this be? How can it be that she found her way back there after all this time?
It was a simplest of websites, with only the photograph and the caption that consisted of the street name and number at the bottom. Nothing to click, no other information.
It was haunting in its simplicity.
“Marty? Did you take it out of the frame?”
He didn’t bother looking up.
“Yeah. Someone wrote ‘8181’ on the back in pencil.”
Another pause ensued, with each of the men taking more puffs from their respective cigars.
She ran away from me and went back there? To where she was born? Why?
Woodward reached over and picked up the frame again, turning it over in his hands.
“Do you mind if I open it?”
“It says 8181 on the back, Woods.”
“I know, but can I open it?”
Martin shrugged.
After thoroughly inspecting it, Woodward placed it back in the frame again. Then he leaned toward Martin and stared directly into his eyes. Martin felt tired again, just like he had during the first few weeks after Arielle had run away, and his eyes were starting to water.
Over time, even the worst wounds became numb. But the image he had seen on the Internet felt like a bandage being torn off, revealing a bloody scar beneath. One that would never completely heal.
He just wanted it over with, one way or another.
“There is another possibility here, Martin. One that you might not like to hear…”
Martin blinked.
“Shoot. Don’t hold back.”
“What if”—Woodward grabbed the picture again—“what if this isn’t her, Marty? What if this”—he tapped the little girl in the photo—“is just some random girl?”
Martin picked up his cigar and leaned away from his friend. The thought had actually crossed his mind.
“What if this is just a random girl, and what if someone just gave this to Arielle and she thought that this was herself as a child? She remembers nothing, after all.”
Martin puffed again, a great billow of smoke covering his face for a moment, obscuring his vision. When it cleared, Woodward was holding something in his hand. A folder.
“I brought this, Martin. It’s the police report from when they found her. Or at least who we think is her… you know what I mean. They didn’t call her Arielle back then.”
Martin knew exactly what Woodward was talking about, because he had already read the file that Woodward had in his hand. He had read it six years ago when Woodward had first shown it to him. And in it there was no Arielle Reigns, not even Arielle McLeod, his wife’s her maiden name. There was only a description of Jane Doe, a scared, naked, and bleeding twelve-year-old girl.
“I thought you had to return that,” was all he could think to say.
Woodward frowned.
“There is no mention of a photograph in this report. No mention of her having anything. It is possible that one of the nurses might have had it on hand or something and, to help ease the mind of a girl who couldn’t remember anything, she gave it to her. Eventually, it just became part of her memories.”
Woodward sighed, as if saying this was taking a lot out of him.
“It’s called false memories, and it’s fairly common.”
“Jesus, Woods, you’re a psychiatrist now?”
Woodward leaned back and picked up his cigar. His expression remained serious.
Martin shrugged.
“So? So what if it’s not really her? Even if she thinks that she was born there or brought up at 8181 Coverfeld Ave, she would have—could have—gone there, right? And I was thinking about the whole car tracks in the mud. You know the ones that you said looked like they were from pushing?”
Woodward nodded. The man looked as if he had something else to add, but Martin had something to get off his chest too. Something that had continued to bother him even after the rest of it had become numb.
“The whole time I was thinking, if they were from Arielle’s car and they had her—”
Woodward opened his mouth to say something, which Martin assumed would have been along the lines of ‘there is no evidence to show that,’ but he didn’t let the other man speak.
“Let me finish. So if—big if—they had Arielle, they almost surely would have her keys, too, right? So why didn’t they just drive it?”
It was his turn to lean in.
“And then I started to think about the ogre, man, and I really doubt that that guy could actually fit in Arielle’s Audi. But—but—he could definitely push the thing. He was definitely big enough to push it.”
Martin grabbed his cigar when he finished, happy to finally get his theory off his chest. He watched as Woodward chewed his lip, clearly contemplating what he had said.
Good, he thinks it might have happened that way too. Could have. Might have.
Satisfied with himself for putting doubt in Woodward and giving him pause, Martin took another puff of his cigar and then a sip of his scotch.
The silence went on for too long.
“Well? What do you think?”
“I dunno, man.”
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know’? You don’t think that beast that literally picked me up by my throat could push a car?”
Woodward shook his head.
“It’s not that… it’s…”
“Spit it out.”
Woodward grabbed his forehead as if he were checking for a fever.
“No, I just…”
Martin narrowed his eyes and lay his scotch glass down on the table a little more forcefully than intended.
“Just fucking say it.”
Woodward sighed.
“Okay, look, you remember when we to go see that black guy in the gym? The guy you said that trained Arielle?”
Martin nodded. Of course he remembered the awkward meeting with Kevin.
“Well, I looked into his eyes, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think he might have been more than just Arielle’s trainer. One time, one of Charlene’s friends—”
“I know.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘I know.’”
&
nbsp; “You know what?”
Martin stared Woodward in the eyes.
“I know she slept with him,” then he added, “once.”
Woodward’s face looked like a slowly deflating balloon.
“One time, but it was a mistake.”
Woodward opened and closed his mouth so many times that he looked like a giant blowfish sucking air.
Martin threw up his hands.
“Just fucking say it, man. Say whatever it is that you’re thinking.”
Woodward exhaled.
“Fine. I just think we need to look at this objectively. Think of the facts: your wife wanted a child so desperately—there’s no secret there—for how long? Five years? Six?”
“Seven.”
“Fine, seven. For seven years, she’s been telling you that she wants a baby, and for whatever reason—one that I think both you and I can guess after seeing her file—she can’t have one. This is strike one. She’s fucking devastated, man, and embarrassed as hell. Not to mention that she knows you want a kid, too, so she feels like she let you down.”
“But—”
Woodward ignored his interruption.
“That’s strike one. Then she thinks she’s pregnant, and she was probably over the moon. I get that. I saw how she was when she arrived at our party. And then the bombshell. She’s not pregnant. Strike two. Tack on that she blows up at you and us in front of all of our friends. Now you tell me she slept with her trainer. Look, man, I’m really not trying to be a dick, but you need to look at this objectively.”
“What are you saying, Woods?”
“Well, at first I thought maybe something had happened to her, but—”
“I don’t care about what you thought then. I care about now.”
Woodward shook his head.
“But now I think you just need to accept that she left you. That she found someone else, or is looking for someone else. It’s not about you, Marty, I just think…”
Woodward’s words faded into background, elevator music. Martin could feel his face getting red, and wondered if he had smoked his cigar too quickly and the nicotine was getting to him.
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