It Ends With Her

by Brianna Labuskes

  April 2002

  The man slid a cup of coffee across the cheap plastic table to Adelaide while pulling out the chair across from her. And then just watched her.

  She tried not to fidget, not wanting the coffee, but taking it so she’d have something to do with her hands. It had been twelve hours since they’d found her cuffed to the radiator right next to the bodies of the dead Mr. and Mrs. Cross.

  Apart from managing to tell the first police officer on the scene who had done this to the couple, done this to her, she hadn’t talked to anyone.

  Her eyes flicked up to the man’s when he didn’t try to get any information out of her. Or buddy up to her. Wasn’t that what they were supposed to do? Make her feel comfortable enough to give them what they wanted? Good luck. She wasn’t even sure her vocal cords were actually working. That’s what hours of screaming would do.

  The silence filled the room, though, and he didn’t seem to be inclined to fill it, like most people would. Maybe he was waiting for her to do that.

  He glanced up as a second man entered. This one was tall and swarthy. Objectively handsome. He carried himself like he had some authority, and Adelaide immediately wished he would leave again. So that it would just be the stout teddy bear of a man. And his silence that was beginning to feel like a balm against the open wound of her emotions.

  The second man didn’t sit, just stood by the table, his hip brushing the first man’s shoulder.

  “Hi there,” he said, and she glanced up to meet his eyes. “My name is Roger. This is my partner, Sam. We’re with the FBI.”

  She didn’t react. Was he waiting for acknowledgment? She knew they were FBI. The kind police officer had told her they were going to interview her next before he’d left her in the cramped, little interrogation room. She wasn’t in trouble, the officer had informed her; they just wanted to have a private place for the interview.

  “Right.” The second man—Roger—cleared his throat. She made him uncomfortable, she realized. “How are you feeling? Can we get you anything else?”

  He was annoying her with his voice and his questions, and she wanted him to go away. She let her gaze drop away from his and turned back to the teddy-bear man. “Sam,” Roger had said. Kindness lurked in the little lines around his mouth and his eyes, ones that would be crevices in a few years. It meant that he smiled and laughed. Roger’s skin was smooth.

  Make him go away, she thought at Sam. He tilted his head as if he’d actually heard her. Then he leaned back, his shoulder sinking into the soft space next to Roger’s hip. Roger looked down as Sam glanced up at him, and something passed between the two men. In a different situation she might have been surprised and intrigued, but it didn’t make a dent in the numbness that had settled in around her.

  And then, miracle of miracles, Roger left. Just turned and walked from the room. Sam turned back at her and quirked a brow.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, and realized she had indeed broken their little game of chicken.

  “He’s not so bad,” he said with a grin, and she liked his voice. Rough and gravelly and tinged with a little bit of affection he didn’t try to hide.

  “He wants me to answer questions.” Hers was raspy, but it wasn’t completely gone, like she’d thought might be the case.

  Sam nodded, his smile slipping. “Yeah.”

  “You want me to answer questions, too,” she said.

  “Well”—Sam considered—“I want to do what makes you comfortable. But I do want to catch whoever did this to you. And the only way we’re going to do that is if we know what happened.”

  “You won’t catch them,” she said, weary, and for the first time since he’d come in the room, she saw the FBI agent in him. The way he tightened and sharpened, almost imperceptibly.

  “We’re actually pretty good at our jobs,” he said, keeping his voice easy as if she wouldn’t notice the way he’d snapped to attention. “Why do you think we won’t catch . . . them?”

  “Yes, there were two of them,” she said, giving him that. “Simon Cross and Matthew . . . well, I don’t know his last name anymore. Cross maybe. But maybe not.”

  His eyes flicked to the glass behind her. Go agents, go. Scatter. Search out and eliminate the villains.

  “I told the EMT guy this already,” she said.

  Sam met her gaze once more. “You were a little under duress at the time, Adelaide.”

  She flinched at hearing her name. I love you, Adelaide. Those words tugged at her, wooing her back into a black place that held nothing but pain and death and blood.

  Sam noticed. Of course he did. But he didn’t comment on it, just let her regain the shaky control that was keeping her from breaking into a million pieces.

  “So you knew these two men?”

  “Just Simon. Matthew was before my time there,” she said.

  “With the Crosses?”

  “Yeah. But I knew of Matthew. Simon left a few years back and met up with him. They’ve been hanging out since then, apparently.” She didn’t know if she was making sense. “It’s all in a file somewhere, I’m sure.”

  Sam nodded. “Yes, we’ll pull all the information.”

  They sat in silence again, and she sipped the coffee for lack of anything better to do. It was lukewarm and tasted like shit. Why were they giving a sixteen-year-old coffee anyway?

  “Why don’t you think we’ll catch them?” he finally asked.

  “He’s wicked smart and a sociopath. Psychopath. I don’t know the right term,” she said. “Whatever. He’ll crawl off to a hole somewhere. He talked about Colorado once. But he told me about it, so now he might not go there.”

  “Colorado. That helps. Thanks,” he said, his eyes flicking back to the mirrored glass behind her.

  She shrugged. “I have a lot of stuff that might help. Letters. Pictures. I’ll give them to you.”

  “That’s good, that’s good,” he said. But he didn’t push. She was grateful for it. Now that she knew what Simon was truly capable of, the little box at the back of her closet was screaming at her. The voices clambering over each other to worm their way into the base of her neck and down her spine. She held them off, barely.

  “So what’s going to happen to me?” she finally asked.

  He tipped his head at her. “What do you want to happen?”

  It surprised her. She didn’t think she’d have a choice. And she didn’t have an answer ready. What did she want to happen? She wanted to be able to go to sleep without seeing the Crosses bleeding to death in front of her. She wanted to be able to hear her name without remembering Simon’s sick voice saying it. She wanted to go back to last week when none of this was her reality. When she never would have believed it could be her reality. She wanted to go back to when she was seven and her caseworker was dropping her off with the Crosses. Instead of letting it happen, she wanted to turn around and march right back to the car. She wanted to go back to when she was six and Daddy told them they were going to the beach. She wanted herself to feign a sickness, throw a fit, anything to stop them from leaving the house.

  But what did she want now? Was there really a future to be had in this new, altered reality? She didn’t think so.

  Instead of saying all that, though, she simply lifted a shoulder and let it drop in a half-hearted shrug.

  “He’ll just come after me again,” she said. And she knew it was true in the very core of her being. They were fated to be, he’d told her, and it had been a promise.

  “Hey, no. We won’t let that happen.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes fierce. “We’ll make sure you’re protected. We’ll place you with a family that’s prepared for this. Cut and dye your hair. Change your name. Hide you. Until we find him and bring him in. Because, believe me, we will.”

  It wouldn’t matter. He read it there on her face. Saw the resignation.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “No.”

  “What aren’t you telling us?”

  Sh
e laughed at that. “Where to start?”

  “I find that starting at the beginning can usually be effective.”

  “Do you?” she said, surprising him with her sarcasm. But pleasing him, too. She could see the humor and relief in his eyes. Maybe she seemed more catatonic than she’d realized.

  “Actually, you know what? It’s your story to tell, kid. You can start anywhere you want. Just know in the end . . . in the end, I’ll be here. I’ll keep you safe. I promise you that.”

  She had absolutely no reason to believe him. But she did anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CLARKE

  October 2018

  Clarke ran the tip of her finger along the edge of the chipped white coffee cup so that she didn’t have to look at Bess. They met for lunch at least once a week in the shitty little diner around the corner from Bess’s shitty little apartment on the outskirts of Silver Spring, Maryland.

  It was awkward.

  Clarke forced herself to come anyway. Made herself order a sandwich and eat most of it, because Bess would worry otherwise.

  It was strange, that concern. Clarke wasn’t used to someone caring about her well-being for the sole sake of caring for her well-being. It made her do things she didn’t want to do, like order grilled cheeses and sit in tense silence every week.

  When Clarke glanced up, the girl was watching her, eyes wide and mouth pursed. They weren’t easy with each other. That was the problem. They tiptoed over eggshells and couched their words and spoke of Bess’s job and the weather. Clarke asked about Anna every few weeks, as she knew the girls stayed in touch. Kept each other sane when the shadows got to be too much.

  When those subjects ran dry, they simply sat and counted down the seconds until their self-imposed hour was up.

  But still, they met.

  Bess’s eyes flicked to the big neon-rimmed clock on the wall behind Clarke’s shoulder. The space between her eyebrows creased before smoothing out, and Clarke knew without looking that they weren’t close to that moment where they could finally excuse themselves from each other’s presence.

  She liked the girl, she did. That alone had been a surprise in that dark time right after Sam’s death. No one had talked much at all those days. They sat around in hospital rooms and pretended the bruises underneath their eyes were normal, and politely looked the other way when the crying became too messy.

  Roger had put Clarke under careful watch, and she hadn’t been able to explain why it wasn’t necessary. All she’d demanded was to be able to see Bess.

  “The nurse snuck me two cigarettes,” Bess whispered one night. Clarke was curled in the chair beside the girl’s hospital bed, in loose sweatpants underneath the flimsy gown they insisted she wear. There wasn’t enough fight left in her to protest the indignity of it.

  “I don’t smoke,” Clarke said, her voice rough from disuse.

  Bess smiled back at her, a ghost of what it must have been at some point in her life. “Me neither.”

  For the first time since Sam had bled out beneath her hands, something other than guilt and hatred and overwhelming heartache pressed against Clarke’s rib cage. It was soft and warm and felt almost like amusement.

  She tilted her head toward the wide windowsill, and Bess scooted off the edge of the bed to follow her over. Clarke jimmied open the window the couple of inches it would allow, and they settled down with their backs pressed to the wall. Bess handed over one of the cigarettes, and neither of them mentioned the fact that they didn’t have a lighter.

  Clarke touched the seam of the paper and then dug her fingernail under it, wanting to rip it apart, deconstruct it until it was no longer the sum of all its parts, until all that was left was a collection of random pieces that once used to actually be something.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” Bess finally said, her voice low and hesitant, like she knew she was wandering into dangerous territory but decided to do it anyway. There was something about intense situations that bred a closeness that wasn’t supported by years of building up trust.

  Clarke pressed her lips together so the sharp words that sat on her tongue wouldn’t spill out into the fragile space between them. She wasn’t angry at Bess. But whenever she so much as peeked into the dark emotions that roiled within her over Sam’s death, the void yawned out in front of her and threatened to woo her into its soothing numbness. And she refused to break her promise to Sam to survive.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you earlier,” Clarke said, instead of any of those thoughts. She wondered what she would have said if Sam were here instead of this stranger, who was really her sister.

  “No. Please.” Bess cut herself off, swallowed hard. “Don’t start with that, please.”

  Clarke turned the cigarette over between her fingers. “Why?”

  Bess was quiet for a moment. Then there was a hitch in her breathing, as if she’d made some decision. “Abusers do that, you know? Manipulate fear and sadness into self-hatred. Soon you’re blaming yourself for things you had no control over. Soon you’re believing you’re responsible for something you could never have stopped in the first place.”

  Clarke wanted to protest. Of course it was her fault. The self-loathing was justified. But Bess shifted so that her shoulder pressed against Clarke’s, stopping the thoughts before they could form into coherent words.

  “Everything, all of this, was Simon’s doing,” Bess said. “Don’t let him win, Clarke, by blaming yourself for it instead. He wanted to destroy you, and he never could. Don’t finish the job for him.”

  Clarke didn’t say anything. But she didn’t move away, either.

  She looked at Bess now. She liked the girl, she did. But there had been something in that moment they hadn’t been able to replicate since. Understanding.

  “Do you have plans?” Clarke asked.

  The girl blinked at her, slow and confused. “After this? No.”

  Clarke nodded once and then dropped a twenty on the table before standing up. “Come on.”

  She didn’t check if Bess was following her as she pushed through the door of the diner. They climbed into Clarke’s car, and Bess didn’t ask where they were going. For the first time in months, it was comfortable, easy.

  It wasn’t long before she was taking the familiar turn onto the long, bumpy path. The slim trees rose up around them, blocking the farmhouse until almost the last moment. Clarke parked beside the sleek black BMW and tried to ignore what its presence meant.

  Bess trailed after Clarke as she got out of the car. The girl faltered slightly when Clarke headed toward the woods instead of the farmhouse, but then she jogged lightly to catch up. Any questions Bess may have had remained unasked. They just walked until the wind changed and the trees thinned out and the gentle gurgle of a nearby stream replaced the quietness of the woods.

  Clarke stopped when the pond came into view, and then found the large, flat stone at the edge of the water so she could sit. Bess followed suit, leaving some space in between them.

  “He didn’t want to be buried,” Clarke said, her voice too loud after so much silence. “Sam. He grew up here. We scattered his ashes here.”

  Bess made a little startled sound in her throat but didn’t push further.

  “It’s funny how we don’t think of our parents as real people,” Clarke continued. “That’s what he was to me, you know. A father. More than anyone else could claim.”

  It was a challenge, but Clarke didn’t regret it. They had yet to talk about their biological father, and a part of her wondered if they ever would. But Bess wasn’t defensive about this man neither of them had known. Instead, her eyes were eager and bright, hungry for personal information after months of stilted conversations and empty words.

  “When I met Sam, I was so damaged and young—God, so young,” Clarke said. “And everything became about me. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, and even when he tried to tell me that later, I still didn’t get it. Everything was through my lens,
and I never saw him as a real person with flaws and a history and a life of his own.”

  She smiled without any real humor. “I didn’t even know he had the farmhouse. He inherited it after his parents died, and came out here on weekends sometimes. It was his favorite place. This. This was his favorite place.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Bess whispered.

  “It’s a strange sensation learning about someone you thought you knew everything about,” Clarke said. “I could tell you his Chinese-takeout order, but I couldn’t tell you he used to play guitar in a cover band in college. I could explain his theories on childhood abuse and how it’s tied to the compulsion to commit serial murder, but I couldn’t tell you that his sister died when he was eleven.”

  “Oh,” Bess breathed out, and shifted closer. Her shoulder pressed against Clarke’s, a warm reassurance that she was listening.

  “He was in the house. With her. When she died,” Clarke said. Savior complex, she’d accused all those years ago. The memory of it was a hot slash of fire against tender skin. “A simple break-in gone wrong. She was older, and she shoved him in a closet to hide. He heard her die.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” Clarke rested her cheek on her upturned knees and watched Bess for a minute. She breathed in deep and let the heavy smell of damp earth ground her. “He’s my family.”

  “I know.”

  Clarke met her eyes. “You can’t replace him.”

  Bess flinched, but didn’t look away. “I know.”

  Clarke’s lips tipped up in a ghost of a smile. The girl was stronger than she probably realized. “Okay.”

  “I won’t push, Clarke,” Bess said, her voice wavering only slightly. “But you should know you’re my family now. And I’m not going to give up on that.”

  Clarke looked back toward the lake. “Good.”

  They were quiet for a bit, but it didn’t take long before the itch on the back of her neck became unbearable. “How much did you hear, you nosy bastard?”

  Bess jolted slightly. She must not have known Roger had been standing there, in the shadows of the trees.

  “All of it,” Roger said, without any shame. Clarke rolled her eyes, and Bess looked back and forth between them.