“All right, but no funny stuff.” She brandished the revolver, and there was something too relaxed in the gesture, as if she didn’t mean it seriously. But maybe it was an act, some kind of head game to keep Gilly off balance.
“Trust me.” She spoke over the hammer of her pulse. “I’m not into funny stuff when someone’s got a gun on me.”
Liz’s grin was snarky, which seemed out of place. Was she high? On the same dope she’d given Gilly and probably Zoe, too?
They crossed the hall, and at the bathroom doorway, Gilly turned, looking deliberately into Liz’s eyes. Although the light wasn’t good, she could make out that her pupils were contracted, not more than pinpoints. Her face and neck were flushed, too, all signs she was on something. It didn’t surprise Gilly. She raised her arms. “Can you take the cuffs off? Either that, or you’ll have to—”
Liz huffed in disgust, annoyance.
“This wasn’t my idea,” Gilly said. “I’m ready to leave anytime.”
“There’s no way out of the bathroom, so don’t even think about it.” Liz pocketed the gun, unlocked the cuffs, and slipped them from Gilly’s wrists. “Get on with it.” Stepping back, Glock in hand, she pulled the door, not closing it all the way, giving Gilly some privacy.
Not that it mattered. The only window above the tub was boarded with plywood from the inside, the same as the one in the bedroom. Gilly couldn’t have left had it been wide open, though. Not without Zoe. She did her business, and Liz pulled her across the hall, entering the bedroom behind her. She stood inside the doorway, dangling the cuffs. “I’ll leave these off s’long as you don’t try anything.” Her speech was slurred, her posture careless.
Gilly smiled. “Not going to try anything,” she said. “Scouts honor.” She put three fingers above her brow in salute. “Or is it two?” She fumbled, giggling. It wasn’t difficult. She was stoned, too. But some sharper urgency was alive in all the haze, and she knew it was there, fighting to be alert. If not for herself, then for Zoe.
Keeping the gun in one hand, Liz set the handcuffs on the floor and withdrew a syringe from the pocket of her hoodie. “You want to party?”
Gilly retreated. “I’m good.”
“Hard or easy.” Liz wasn’t taking no for an answer.
Gilly snickered, playing it off, pretending coyness.
“Sit down.” Liz set the gun on the seat of the single chair, and staring at it, Gilly imagined knocking her aside, running down the hall, retrieving Zoe, and getting the hell out. But for that plan to work, she’d need to scoop the Glock from the chair, wrangle the key to Zoe’s room from wherever Liz had stashed it, and get the key to the getaway truck outside. Fat chance.
Liz sat beside her.
Gilly felt the mattress sag. She held her breath when Liz injected her—in her upper arm this time—as if not breathing would stop the drug from entering her bloodstream. “What is it, anyway?” she asked, and she was friendly, all sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth chummy.
“Morphine. Pharmaceutical grade. Pure as the holy house of healing where I got it. I figured you of all people would appreciate it.”
Gilly stared at Liz.
“You’re an addict, right? Girl, I know everything about you.”
Faintly, Gilly said, “All this time, I was worried what you’d think, Who are you?”
“Not your friend. Not a pharmaceutical rep, or an abused wife, or any of the crap you thought. When we met it was no accident, trust me.”
“You set it up, when I saw you in the park?”
“Getting next to you was the best way to stop you before you wrecked everything.”
“Wrecked . . . ?” The word died in Gilly’s mouth almost before it was uttered.
Liz picked up the revolver and sat in the chair, balancing her ankle on her knee, keeping the weapon in a loose grip in her lap. “I like you. That’s the hell of it. We might have been friends in another time and place, but watching you around Jake and Zoe—the way you look at him all goo-goo eyed, those cutesy little pancakes you make for Zoe, hanging over her, talking a blue streak—like you’re her mom—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jake comes into the café, there you are, hanging over him, like you belong together. He doesn’t even see me. He—everyone in that fucking town looks through me like I don’t exist.”
“You said you were divorced, that you were getting a restraining order. You said your ex was on your porch—”
“I said a lot of things.”
“You never said you knew Jake.”
“You’re no different. You kept secrets from me. Like I had to read online how when Brian was killed you lost your baby. I kept waiting for you to tell me. I actually thought, If Gilly tells me that then maybe I’ll have to rethink the rest.”
“The rest? I don’t know what you mean.”
“I lost my baby, too.”
“Is anything you told me about yourself true? Are you from Dallas? Are you divorced? What about the house in Wyatt? You put earnest money down—”
“Sounds nice, doesn’t it. Like a nice life. It almost makes me wish it was true.”
Gilly stared, trying to work it out, but this Liz, the one holding the gun, talking in her flat voice, didn’t mesh at all with Gilly’s recollection of her friend Liz, the woman she’d looked forward to knowing better.
“My little girl was stillborn. I named her Cassandra Marie after my mama. Cassie for short. It’s what Mama’s friends called her. So adorable. I had all her clothes, diapers, crib, rocking chair, toys, everything. Had her prom dress picked out, her wedding gown. Ha ha! Not really, but you know. I’d dreamed her whole life. Then she was—she never even took one breath. It killed me. I lost a part of myself. You know what I mean, though, don’t you?”
Liz locked Gilly’s eyes. The moment felt breathless.
“Don’t you?” Liz insisted.
“Yes.” Gilly was mesmerized. It was probably the dope, but she felt drawn to Liz in the way you might feel drawn to a cliff’s edge to see what sort of wreckage had been flung over the side. Maybe they would go over together, hand in hand, Thelma and Louise–style.
“No one else gets it, do they? The terrible pain it is, losing a child before you even have her.” Liz kept Gilly’s gaze. “I’m so sorry for you, for everything you’ve been through.”
Gilly cupped her elbows, rocking herself a bit.
“After I lost Cassie—if it hadn’t been for Roger—he’s my husband—if it hadn’t been for him—You okay? You don’t look so good. You want more?” Liz grappled in her hoodie pocket, producing another syringe.
“No,” Gilly said. “I’m good.” Too damn good. She touched her face, which felt numb. Her body hummed as if it were inhabited by bees.
“You try to kill yourself? I did—”
“I guess, yes—you could say—” Gilly cut herself off before it could spill out of her—the sordid history of her addictions, her run-in with the law over the kidnapping charge. Liz was holding a gun on her, for God’s sake. It’s okay. You’re stoned out of your mind, the monkey said. Get a grip, Miss Goody said. Zoe, think about Zoe, said some other voice, the one that was most rational. “Are you giving morphine to Zoe? I don’t think you should—”
“I’m an RN. Eighteen years. Worked mostly in the OR and the ER. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s dope.” Liz pocketed the needle. “I’ve got plenty, too.”
“Zoe’s so small—”
“I know what I’m doing, okay?”
Gilly nodded. The last thing she wanted was to rile Liz further. “Did you get the morphine from the hospital where you work? Is it in Dallas?”
“Lubbock. I live in Lubbock. Don’t work at the hospital there anymore, though. Got fired last December right before Christmas. They caught me stealing medication. Har har. Job dragged me down anyway. Most of the patients’re nothing but a bunch of crackheads looking for a legal way to get high. I felt like I was just doing what they wanted. Shoo
ting them up. It made me sick.”
But you’re no better than them. Neither one of us is. The thoughts wandered through Gilly’s mind. Focus! the voice—the rational one—shouted in her brain. She straightened, dug her nails into her palms. “So you lied about Dallas. What about being divorced—”
“People don’t understand, do they—when you lose a baby?” Liz went on as if Gilly hadn’t spoken. “They say terrible things, like You can have another kid, and Maybe this one wasn’t meant to live. Or worse, they say God wanted her, and now she’s a star in his crown, or she’s singing in his angel choir. Give me a fucking break.”
Gilly had heard those things, too, from well-meaning folks. Before she could stop herself, she said, “Once I told one of my mom’s friends that Sophie wasn’t a puppy that could be replaced.”
“Exactly!” Liz crowed. “God! It kills me how much we have in common.”
“We can still be friends,” Gilly began.
“No!” Liz sliced the air with the gun. “That’s why I finally did it, took Zoe now, before—”
“Before?” Gilly tried to catch Liz’s gaze, which had fallen. She looked disoriented now, as if she were lost. And she was, Gilly guessed, in the drugged haze of her own mind.
“I’m not letting you get inside my head.” Liz’s chin came up. “Not letting you screw this up. Been planning too long. I’m not having you come in, swooping down like some superhero to the rescue. I know your game. I heard it on the news, how you’re supposedly psychic—” Gun in hand, Liz made air quotes. “What a load of shit. I can’t believe Jake fell for that garbage. He used to be a smart guy.”
“He didn’t hire me—”
“If you can see the damned future, how come you didn’t see what I was planning that day in the park when we met, or any time since? Huh? How come you’ve never known why I came to Wyatt? That it was to take Zoe? We’ve spent time together, but you never saw shit, did you? ’Cause you can’t, that’s why. ’Cause it’s all a lie. Even your damned dream about some woman taking Zoe. Yeah, I heard about it. What the hell use was it? You didn’t even know it was me.”
“You’re right—”
“Shut up. I’m talking now. I’ve got you, got you here. I can blow your head off or shoot you up. Whatever I want, ’cause you are not taking Zoe out of here and handing her back to Jake like some prize and y’all walk off into the sunset like you’re in a romance novel. I didn’t come this far for that to happen. I’d as soon see us all dead.” Liz rocked forward, planting her feet flat on the floor, eyes blazing. Her posturing was a come-on, a dare.
She looked lit up from the inside as if by some unholy light, and that’s when it hit Gilly for real—that she might not get out of here alive. Might not live to get Zoe out. A scream loosened from the well of Gilly’s gut, traveling like a rocket toward her throat, but somehow she managed to contain it in the cage of her ribs. She made herself breathe. Think. The voice in her brain barked the order. “Are you from Wyatt? Is that how you know Jake?” Gilly was playing a hunch, buying time.
“You want the story? The whole pathetic soap opera of a drama? Yeah, I’m from here, born and raised. Jake and I went through school together.”
“You’ve been driving back and forth between here and Lubbock all this time—two months? That’s a lot of miles.”
“A lot of time to think. I’ve been doing it six months. First time was last December. I come whenever Roger’s on the road. He’s a long-haul trucker. Leaves me on my own. Probably more than he should.” Liz’s grin was brief.
“Six months? Really? In all this time no one’s recognized you? No one has figured out who you are?”
“I’m smart, that’s why. Rented that little RV in the park on the outskirts of town. Drove in and out any damn time I pleased. A lot of times, if I was going to spend time in town, I wore this hoodie.” She pinched up a bit of fabric. “A cap, my big sunglasses.”
“But whenever we got together, when you came into Cricket’s—you wore suits.”
“Ha! Yeah, I was the pharmaceutical rep, a professional drug pusher. Sweet, huh? They say when you lie, keep it as close to the truth as you can, right?” Liz waited, expectantly, as if for praise, and when Gilly failed to offer it, she said, “Gotcha, didn’t I?”
Gilly didn’t rise to the bait, if that’s what it was.
“Anyway, it’s been more than twenty years since I’ve been gone from this crap town. My hair’s a different color now, and I’m wearing it shorter. I’ve lost weight, too. Anyway, I told you I was keeping a low profile, remember? That police sergeant—Ken Carter—he was freaking me out. He was a year ahead of me in school, but it was only a matter of time till he—or somebody—figured it out. Another reason to make a move.”
“You and Jake—did you date?”
Liz threw back her head, hooting like it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard.
Gilly saw herself rushing Liz, pushing her over, chair and all.
Liz’s glance fell on her hard as if she’d read Gilly’s thought. “Did we date? I gave that guy everything, body and soul. So did my mama and daddy; they loved him. Looked on him like their son. Mama was always going on about our babies, when was she going to get a grandbaby.” Liz let go a gust of air. “She was over the moon about Cassie.”
“What happened?” Gilly asked, although by now she could guess that it had ended badly.
“The week before our senior prom, he broke up with me and started dating this bitch Courtney behind my back.”
“You were pregnant.” Gilly wasn’t asking. The direction of Liz’s story was obvious.
“I’d just found out for sure. Then Mama and I did the test with the pendulum. I know some folks think it’s an old wives’ tale, but we knew I was having a girl. I didn’t tell Jake right then, though. I was so pissed at him, and sick, just sick to my stomach.”
“Why?”
“He was breaking up with me!” Liz was shrill. “Saying all this shit about how he didn’t love me anymore. Oh, but he’d keep our prom date. Like I’d go along with that. Be his fucking pity date. But I let him think I would. He showed up, too, all dressed like an ad out of GQ, driving a candy-apple-red Thunderbird. I saw him, listened to him knock on the door. He left my corsage on the porch, and I tore it up. He was there, watching me. I didn’t see him, but I could feel him, you know?”
“Did he ever know about the baby?”
“Not from me. Mama and Daddy went to his parents and told them. They tried to get Jake and his folks to do right by me, but they thought we were too young. They didn’t want Jake saddled with the responsibility. They said they’d pay for an abortion if I chose that, or help with adoption, as if either of those alternatives was acceptable.” Liz set her free hand on her belly. “I’d felt her kick. How do you consider abortion after that? How could Jake’s folks consider it? Their own granddaughter? How could they think I could give her away to another couple when she was mine? Mine and Jake’s. I just knew he’d see it, and tell them to fuck off.”
But he didn’t. Gilly didn’t need the words to know the outcome.
“They convinced him Cassie would ruin our lives, and when she died, they were glad. It’s their fault I lost my baby. They caused her to die; they took Cassie, took my life from me, and Jake let them.”
“You told me when Zoe was kidnapped that bad things happen in this world, but that isn’t what you meant, is it.”
“No.”
Gilly kept Liz’s gaze.
“Don’t stare at me like I’m crazy.” Her voice shook. “It’s the same as what that robber, the one who murdered your husband—wouldn’t you say he took your life from you? Huh? Wouldn’t you? Answer me!”
“Okay. Yes. He took my life.” It was true, in all but the physical sense, and God knew Gilly had wished for that to end. She had prayed to be gone from this earth, and it disconcerted her that there could be any truth to the words spoken by someone who was so obviously troubled and unstable.
“Don’
t you want to take something from him? Something of equal value? Something that would cause him an equal amount of pain if he were to lose it?” Liz sat back. “Like his life. Don’t you want to kill him?”
Did she? An image of Warren Jester formed from the haze in Gilly’s brain, and along with it, she felt a renewal of doubt that Warren was the one. That kind man. He had appeared ordinary, normal. Like Liz. She’d seemed normal, too, outgoing and friendly—all of it faked.
Gilly watched her now as she drew something from inside the collar of her hoodie—a gold heart-shaped locket on a chain. It glimmered in the uncertain light.
“See this?” Liz didn’t wait for Gilly’s answer. “It’s engraved with Cassie’s initials, CMH, Cassandra Marie Halstead. Mama and I settled on her name and bought it the very day we knew she’d be a girl. I was going to show it to Jake—my way of telling him—” Liz’s voice broke. She cleared her throat. “Last winter, Roger was gone, he’s always gone, I’d lost my job, had nothing to do. It was the week after Christmas—”
Liz’s speech hurried, rushing her words that were barely above a whisper. Gilly bent forward to catch them.
“The wind in West Texas—you ever heard it? It makes an awful racket. Dust everywhere. I started cleaning things, and I found the locket. It brought it back, all the awful memories.” She looked up at Gilly, stricken. “I saw Jake everywhere; I dreamed about him at night. I remembered how he and his folks treated me like gum stuck to their shoe. It wasn’t right, what they did to me. I have to make it right, you understand? I’m the only one who can do it, make it right. He doesn’t deserve Zoe. He didn’t even want her.”
“Oh,” Gilly said, “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Ask him, if you don’t believe me.” Liz picked up the Glock.
Watching her, Gilly waited to feel the bullet tear into her skull. But it did not.
Liz ran a fingertip along the gun barrel, speaking to it. “I knew I had to come to Wyatt. I had to see Jake. It was when I was driving here that first time that I thought of it, how if I were to take his little girl, he’d know how it felt when I lost our little girl. You see?” Liz looked at Gilly through eyes glossed with tears, eyes that begged for understanding.
What Lies Below: A Novel Page 25
