Scared to Death

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “You’re sure you don’t know where your sister might be?” one of the cops asks Annie, who’s sitting beside Marin, stroking her hand.

  “No. Her bedroom door was closed when I got up. I thought she was in there.”

  Marin raises the water glass to her lips, taking another sip. The medication is still in her system, but she’s coming out of it now. At least she can focus on what’s going on.

  Caroline is out somewhere…

  But that’s not why the police are here.

  They’re here because Elsa Cavalon’s daughter is missing, and for some reason, they thought Marin might have had something to do with it.

  They still might think that, judging by the way they’re watching her every move.

  But they’re definitely concerned about Caroline’s absence. Maybe because they’re wondering if Marin has something to do with that, too.

  She told them about the argument they had last night. “Just normal mother-daughter stuff,” she’d called it.

  They didn’t seem convinced.

  They’ve called Caroline’s friends. None of them are even in town, and none has heard from Caroline in the last twenty-four hours.

  Marin sets down the half-empty water glass, shaking so badly that droplets slosh over the rim. Annie reaches for her hand and squeezes it.

  “Annie…” Marin leans her head on her daughter’s surprisingly sturdy shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For being here with me. For me. You…you’re the only one I can count on. Ever.”

  Annie strokes her mother’s hair in silence.

  It should be the other way around, Marin thinks. Mother comforting daughter. No matter what happens—no matter what—things are going to change around here.

  She’s going to change.

  I know what I have to do to make that happen.

  Right now, before I lose my nerve.

  She starts to rise, thinking only of the pill bottles in her bedside drawer.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Wait. There is one thing…”

  Marin sits again. “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to get into trouble.” She glances anxiously at the police officers who are watching and listening with interest. “You have to swear you won’t tell Caroline.”

  “Tell her what?”

  “I’ll be right back.” Annie gets up quickly and disappears down the hall.

  Marin and the cops wait in strained silence, but not for long.

  Annie returns clutching something in her hand. “I was kind of…looking through Caroline’s room…I do that sometimes…”

  Marin closes her eyes. How many times has her older daughter accused her kid sister of snooping?

  I always stuck up for Annie.

  But Caroline was right.

  “I found this in her drawer.”

  “I’ll take it.” The cop closest to her stretches out his hand. She looks at Marin, who nods slightly.

  Annie hands him what looks like a crumpled napkin.

  He inspects it. “Whose phone number is this?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe it has something to do with where she went.”

  Caroline hasn’t said much since Jeremy met her at the train station, and he wonders what’s wrong with her.

  Is she having second thoughts about being here?

  He’s having second thoughts about it, that’s for sure. Maybe he isn’t ready to tell her the truth yet. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want La La here when he tells her.

  Maybe?

  Hell, he doesn’t want La La around anywhere. She’s smothering him. He can’t take it anymore.

  Guilt brought him here in the first place; guilt has kept him coming back.

  But he’s had enough. He was going to tell La La that this morning—tell her it’s over.

  She was gone, though, when he woke up, and then Caroline called, and now…

  Now everything’s a mess.

  He turns on to Regis Terrace, thinking again of the first time he came here, last fall.

  La La had made the first move that night, but he hadn’t fought her off very hard.

  Oh hell, he hadn’t fought her off at all. She was a beautiful woman, and despite all he’d been through with Papa, he was a red-blooded man. Women had been drawn to him ever since he ventured out the front door of Papa’s house and made his way to Texas.

  He’d known it would be wrong to get too close to any of them, though. As much as he craved love and acceptance, he was nowhere near ready for a real relationship. Not after what he’d been through.

  But it was different with La La Montgomery—or so he’d tried to convince himself just before he got carried away and fell into bed with her. Different because she wasn’t really a stranger, and because she wasn’t like the carefree young girls he’d met in bars. La La had been through her share of pain; she was, in many ways, older than her years, with a nurturing quality that enveloped him, made him feel momentarily safe and warm.

  And yet, after he left her that first night, he’d promised himself it would never happen again, just as he had with the others who’d come before her.

  La La might understand him better than anyone, but he still wasn’t capable of a relationship, and they both had too much baggage, and anyway, there was something about her—about the intensity of her gaze—that made him uneasy.

  He would never have gone back if not for the hysterical phone call from La La the next morning, saying she’d just found her mother, tragically killed in a drunken fall down the stairs.

  “Please, Jeremy—please come. I need you.”

  She’s always telling him how much she needs him, how much she loves him, how he’s all she has…

  That much is true. La La lives in complete isolation, alone now in the brick mansion she inherited along with her parents’ fortune.

  He knows she graduated from college, that she had vague plans of moving away and finding a career of some kind.

  “But then I found you instead,” she likes to tell him.

  As he pulls into the driveway, Caroline speaks at last.

  “Whose house is this?”

  What do I even tell her? Do I explain here, in the car? Or wait until we get inside?

  “Jake?”

  Maybe La La won’t be here after all. Maybe she’s…out somewhere. Or sleeping—she couldn’t have gotten much sleep…

  Thoughts racing, Jeremy reaches for the garage door opener.

  “Jake!”

  Oh. Right. He’s supposed to be Jake, and Caroline is waiting for him to answer her question.

  “It’s a friend’s house.”

  The door opens and he pulls into the garage.

  No luck. La La’s Mercedes is parked there. He’d known it would be, and yet he feels sick at the sight of it.

  He turns off the car, closes the garage door behind them, and gets out.

  Caroline hasn’t moved.

  “Coming?” he leans in to ask her, and she turns to him.

  “Is this your girlfriend’s house, Jake?”

  The question catches him off guard. Her dark eyes are narrowed—eyes that are so like his own that sometimes he feels as though he’s looking into a mirror.

  How can she not know? Doesn’t she realize that we have some kind of connection? Doesn’t she sense that the same blood runs through our veins?

  “Jake…I asked you a question.”

  “Yeah. The thing is…she’s not going to be my girlfriend for much longer. It’s over.”

  “Mrs. Quinn?”

  Caught up in a wistful reverie, she’s startled by a male voice beside her. She looks up to see the cop who left the room a short time ago with the telephone number Annie had found in Caroline’s room.

  “Two things. Your credit card was used this morning at an electronic kiosk in Penn Station to purchase a one-way ticket to Boston on the Acela.”

  “What?”

  “Also,
we’ve checked your daughter’s phone records, and she called this number last night and again this morning.”

  “Whose phone is it?”

  “We traced it to a twenty-two-year-old named Jeremy Smith from California.”

  Jeremy.

  “La La?”

  Standing with her back to the doorway, she hears her name spoken behind her, but it doesn’t register.

  Nothing has registered, other than the words that floated to her ears from the garage, when she opened the door to greet Jeremy.

  She’s not going to be my girlfriend for much longer. It’s over.

  La La chews her lip, tasting blood.

  Really?

  Really, Jeremy?

  You’re going to leave me, after what you did to me?

  Arms folded, she stares at a photograph on the mantel. In it, she’s with her father, sitting on his lap. He’s grinning, and her mouth is wide open. She’s probably singing. She was always singing.

  Then Jeremy came along.

  “There you are.”

  Slowly, she turns.

  There he is.

  Not Jeremy the way he used to be—a dark-haired imp with troubled eyes. Not the Jeremy who beat her beyond recognition. Not on the outside, anyway.

  This Jeremy looks different.

  His hair is blond now.

  He had plastic surgery to repair the damage to his face, as did she. But his was more recent: surgery to repair the scars and bruises and broken bones inflicted by the man he called Papa.

  Her own scars, bruises, broken bones—her broken voice, her broken heart—were inflicted by Jeremy.

  This Jeremy. He’s still the same person, deep down inside. The person who destroyed her.

  “La La! What are you doing?”

  She blinks.

  He isn’t alone.

  She recognizes the girl.

  “This is Caroline. Caroline, this is La La.”

  Looking hesitant—so different from the cocky girl La La followed in New York the other day—Caroline cautiously takes a step toward her. “Hi, Lila.”

  “It’s La La! Not Lila. You stupid bitch.”

  “Hey!” Jeremy steps in front of Caroline, almost as if he’s protecting her. Her—not La La. That’s rich.

  La La strides toward the two of them.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just telling your little sister that she got my name wrong.”

  “Jesus, La La, shut up!”

  “Oh, and I think she has your name wrong, too. She thinks you’re Jake. Isn’t that funny, Jeremy?”

  Beside him, Caroline Quinn has gone pale, her mouth gaping open as she absorbs La La’s words.

  Jeremy turns toward her, touches her arm. “Caroline…”

  “Sister?”

  He shakes his head, and La La grins.

  Caroline touches the door frame, as if she’s going to faint. “You’re—”

  “No, Caroline, I—”

  “What is she talking about?”

  “She’s crazy.” He glares at La La.

  Rage flares inside her. “It’s the truth and you know it.”

  “Who are you?” Caroline takes a step back from Jeremy, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “I’m—your parents are—”

  Obviously, he can’t even bring himself to say the words.

  La La does it for him. “Your parents are his parents, get it? He’s your brother. The one everyone thinks is dead. Surprise!”

  Caroline looks from Jeremy to La La and back again. “How—how can…You’re alive?”

  “Don’t worry,” La La can’t resist saying as she reaches into her pocket for the gun. “He won’t be, for long. And neither will you.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Cavalon…”

  Elsa looks up to see Detective Gibbs in the doorway of the kitchen, where she and Brett are seated at the table with Lisa, the police sketch artist working on a composite drawing of Melody Johnson. Brett keeps saying he’s seen the woman somewhere before, but he can’t remember where, and it’s driving him crazy.

  “We’ve had a development.”

  Elsa’s heart stops.

  No. Please, no.

  She braces herself for the worst news.

  Brett grabs her hand and squeezes it, asking Detective Gibbs, “Is Renny…?”

  “No,” he says hastily, “it’s not about her. No. We’re still working on a couple of leads, but…Lisa, would you mind giving us a few moments’ privacy?”

  “No problem.” The sketch artist pushes back her chair, flashes them a concerned smile, and slips out of the room.

  Detective Gibbs crosses toward them, carrying an open laptop. “I’ve been on the phone with New York.”

  New York…

  Marin Quinn is in New York. So is Garvey Quinn.

  “I need you to take a look at something I just received,” Detective Gibbs says, almost gently, as he sits across from them, the laptop facing in his direction. “You might want to prepare yourselves. It’s going to be a shock.”

  Prepare ourselves? Elsa thinks incredulously. How are we supposed to prepare ourselves? For what?

  He turns the laptop so that they’re looking at the screen.

  There’s a picture on the screen. A photograph of a young man.

  Peering closer at it, Elsa is struck by an impossible thought.

  No. It can’t be.

  And yet, Brett gasps. “Is that…?”

  “No,” Elsa says sharply. “It isn’t.”

  Of course not. Brett just wants so badly for it to be him that he’s seeing him, just as Elsa did, for all these years.

  Always looking at little boys, at teenagers, at young men who were the same age her son would have been. Always searching for that familiar gleam in a pair of big dark eyes, for the quick smile that could light up a room; always searching for Jeremy.

  Even after she knew in her heart that he was never coming home again—she never stopped looking for him.

  Never.

  Not until they told her, last fall, that he was dead.

  Detective Gibbs clears his throat and asks, very softly, “Do you recognize him?”

  “Yes,” Brett whispers.

  “No!” Elsa turns to him. “No, Brett, don’t. That isn’t him.”

  The features are different.

  “Elsa—”

  “Don’t let yourself get caught up in…in hoping, and wishing. It’ll only hurt more.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not him. It can’t be. They told us—”

  “Elsa, please, just look at him again. Look at his face.”

  “Why? He’s dead, Brett. We both know it. He’s dead.”

  “Mrs. Cavalon,” Detective Gibbs cuts in gently, “we have reason to believe that this is your son. He’s twenty-two years old, and his name is Jeremy.”

  “He’s…twenty-two?” Brett’s voice is ragged. “He’s alive?”

  “He’s alive. Mrs. Cavalon…?”

  Elsa forces herself to look again, to really look this time.

  Look at his face.

  Look at his eyes.

  She does.

  And then she knows. She knows.

  She presses her fists against her mouth, tears streaming down her face.

  “That’s him. It’s Jeremy.”

  “Look at you…you’re scared to death, aren’t you?”

  Yes, Caroline’s scared. She’s terrified. Terrified of this…this person, this La La, who’s clearly insane…

  And terrified of Jake, who brought her here.

  No, not Jake.

  Jeremy.

  Her brother.

  “You know, everyone’s afraid of something—like being closed into small spaces…that’s called claustrophobia, did you know that?” La La doesn’t wait for an answer, rambling on, “Then there’s Jeremy—he’s afraid of everything. Including me. Aren’t you?”

  She abruptly whirls to face Jeremy, standing beside Caroline. She sneaks a glance a
t him and sees that he’s fixated on the gun.

  He’s going to try to grab it, she realizes.

  “He’s not a man. He’s like a little boy. No—like a little girl. How about if I lock you away, too?” She pokes the gun at him and he flinches.

  She laughs, a sound that sends chills down Caroline’s spine.

  She’s going to kill us.

  Oh God. I’m going to die.

  She wants her mother so badly that the pain takes her breath away.

  Mom.

  Not Daddy.

  Mom is the one who’s there for her, she realizes. The only one.

  There was a time when Caroline was convinced she’d be better off without her mother—and vice versa.

  It’s not true. I need her. And I’m never going to get the chance to tell her.

  Staring at the gun, Jeremy knows he’s running out of time. He has to do something.

  Any second now, La La is going to kill him, and Caroline, too.

  “After all I’ve done for you…you were going to leave me?”

  “What have you done for me?” He looks past her, scanning the living room for some way out, or for a weapon…

  “I’ve done everything you’re too weak to do. I’ve punished them all for what they did to you, and this is the thanks I get?”

  “Who?” he asks, his gaze falling on a pair of and-irons beside the hearth, just a few feet away. “Who did you punish?”

  “Who do you think?” She laughs again. “Look at you—you’re pathetic. You’re nothing.”

  In her eyes, he sees the same streak of mocking cruelty that made him lash out at her all those years ago.

  Back then, she was just a mean little girl, and he was a confused, angry, abused little boy.

  Now she’s a cold-blooded killer…

  And I’m…

  I’m not pathetic.

  I’m not nothing.

  I’m a man.

  Looking at her, he sees Papa’s face, and he sees the faces of all the others, too, the ones who tortured him before he came to Elsa.

  He closes his eyes so he won’t have to see, and he claps his hands over his ears, trying to drown out the scornful laughter filling his head.

  “What’s the matter, Jeremy? Are you scared?”

  Scared?

  No.

  He’s not scared. He’s been to hell and back, and nothing will ever scare him again.