Pretty Ugly Lies: a gripping and chilling domestic noir

by Pamela Crane

  For years she had supported me through every mishap and mistake. She was my lifeboat in the storm. Except for this. This storm I couldn’t weather with her.

  She’d never forgive me. Jo, on her perfect pedestal, with her perfect husband, with his perfect job, and their perfect house, with their perfect kids, could never understand something of this magnitude. Devoted, honest, passionate about Jay, she could never understand the urge to cheat. The compulsion I lived with every morning, every afternoon, and every evening for something more, something exciting. While I lay in bed next to my husband, who I loved, the thoughts plagued me that it wasn’t enough. I felt so utterly empty and I didn’t know why.

  I’d never be able to tell Jo about Kelsey. I didn’t know why I couldn’t tell my best and only friend in the world that I had been having an affair all this time. Maybe it was her look of disappointment that I dreaded. Maybe it was her admonishment I didn’t want to deal with. I knew how it would unfold. She’d tell me to stop instantly, then insist on me confessing to Trent … or else. I knew what her “or else” would mean: she’d threaten to tell if I didn’t. Jo was honest like that. I both respected and despised her for it.

  All I wanted was to go back to my life eight months ago—just me, Trent, Arion, Tenica and our blissful drama-free family. Was there any path back to that? Even if I lost the baby, Kelsey wouldn’t let me walk away—not after what I’d just done, accusing him of rape and all. Only one journey to freedom came to mind … and it was unthinkable.

  “Thank you,” I said as the girl helped me to my feet.

  “Congratulations.” She smiled at me, picking up the test and handing it to me.

  If only she knew …

  “First one?” she asked.

  “No, my third,” I replied, hoping this was the end of our chitchat. My claustrophobia began closing in on me as I felt the floor shifting, the walls creeping in on me.

  “You sure you’re okay?” The girl sounded as uncertain as I felt.

  “I will be once I’m home.” But I wouldn’t. Not until this whole thing was over.

  “Well, make sure you take care of yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah, I will. Thanks.”

  I grinned stiffly through the nerves that rumbled in my belly. My chest tightened, lungs constricting. I needed to breathe. I was sure I was having a panic attack … a suffocating, blinding fear verging on hysteria. My heart strained to pump blood, and a dizzying blackness tunneled my vision. The stark walls began leaning in on me, soon to crush me if I didn’t leave right now.

  I pushed through the restroom door, feeling the eyes of drugstore lurkers watching, wondering who I was—the crazy lady who passed out on the toilet. Heading straight for the front doors, I ran the rest of the way to my car, fumbling with the unlock button on my keychain until I heard the click.

  Crumbling into the driver’s seat, I counted rhythmically. One, two, three, four, five …

  Inhale.

  Once I caught a fish alive …

  My brain unwittingly conjured the nursery rhyme song that Tenica was currently obsessed with singing.

  Exhale.

  As my chest deflated, the pungent stink of my stress breath mixed with the stale car air, nauseating me. The sounds of wheels screeching and horns honking thinned into the lull of rushing blood in my ears. The winking lights and stretch of parking lot narrowed into a spot of bare space in front of me. My head felt woozy, and I suddenly had the urge to climb out of my skin.

  I needed help, but who could I turn to that wouldn’t judge me? Who would keep my secret? Who would be honest with me? Who would tell me what I needed to hear? There was only one person I could bring this kind of news to, and I was pretty sure she would kill me when she found out.

  Chapter 18

  Jo

  Another hopeless day passed. After talking to a couple dozen people strolling through the park, not one had anything helpful to offer. No one had seen anyone suspicious. No one recognized the man fitting the description Abby recounted—which basically described every white, brown-haired, middle-aged male in America. With every passing minute I was losing my daughter a little more, as if I was feeling her fingertips slipping out of mine.

  Detective Cox had just finished fingerprinting the men’s restroom at the park along with the playset where Amelia was approached by the kidnapper. He was outside the restroom packing up his equipment when he turned to me.

  “Jo, I want to be straight with you, because that’s the only way we can find Amelia.” He frowned and continued. “But I’m probably not going to find anything from these prints. There’s a lot of partials, too many people touching everything. If he used the restroom, he was probably smart enough not to leave a calling card behind. But any usable prints I’ll run through the system to see if something comes up. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I appreciate it. I just wish there was more I could do.”

  “These posters are great.” He held up the stack I had given him. “We’ll make sure every Durham resident sees her face, okay? We’ll saturate the media—TV, radio, newspapers. And there’s always the possibility that he’ll return her … when he’s done with her.” He stuttered the last part of his sentence, and I wondered what that meant.

  “When he’s done with her?” I yelped.

  His chest rose and he avoided meeting my glare. That’s when I knew the worst was coming.

  “Some men will abduct children for short-term purposes and then drop them off somewhere when they’ve gotten what they wanted. I don’t think you want details, but the important thing is the children are returned alive. Most child abductors don’t plan to kill a child. They usually have an ulterior motive. So it’s very possible Amelia is alive. We just need to find the clues that will lead us to her.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad news—that Amelia had been raped and would have to live with that for the rest of her life. Having her innocence stolen so young would change her, wouldn’t it? Could she ever be the sweet, silly girl she once was? Would she remember every horrible evil committed against her chubby little body, or was she young enough to forget? I shook the thoughts away before the visuals overtook me.

  “You think she was sold into a sex-trafficking ring?” I’d read about this happening, local to my very own town. Children and girls abducted and sold for a few hundred dollars to people who would hold them captive, selling them for sex. Just the idea of my daughter … going through that … no, I refused the thought. I felt bile rising up my throat.

  “No, I’m not saying that. But if that’s the situation—and that’s a big if—we’ve alerted police to keep an eye on all highways and interstates for a girl matching Amelia’s description. If whoever took her is traveling with her, someone will spot her. Her face will be on every phone, on every social media site, on all the news stations. Her kidnapper won’t get far, Jo.”

  He sounded so sure of himself, so positive that she would be like a majority of missing children and returned safely home. But I feared the reality of that small percentage of victims who were never found … or who never made it out alive. Thanks to the media, those were the only stories I could bring to the forefront of my memory. Not the survivors. No one could know for sure how this would end, but not all little girls escaped a deadly fate. The question was: would mine?

  “You mentioned clues—how do we find them?” I asked, knowing that if he had the answer, he would have already found my daughter.

  “Keep asking people if they’ve seen her. Keep putting her picture everywhere. If there’s anyone from your past that might have reason to take her, any secrets we need to know about—that’s often a clue.”

  I didn’t have secrets, no skeletons to hide—except for one. One that couldn’t possibly be linked to Amelia’s disappearance. That secret had been from another lifetime, and no one knew about it except for me. Certainly that blemished moment in history had nothing to do with Amelia. There was no reason to unearth a lie that had long ag
o died. But what about Jay? Was he hiding something? A sin that might have attracted Karma’s destruction of our family? I knew my husband, adored my husband, trusted my husband—at least I did … but most wives did until something changed. Until a lie unraveled that proved why we should trust no one.

  I didn’t want to live like that—untrusting and suspicious of everyone. But my daughter was stolen, my life upturned, and whoever did it watched from the shadows. Someone picked my Amelia out of the thousands of other little girls out there, and he did it for a reason. That reason was connected to someone we knew. I could feel it crackle through my body.

  “You’re assuming her kidnapper is out running around town with her. But what if she’s hidden in his basement somewhere, never exposed to the public? What then?”

  Silence. My question had stumped the know-all wunderkind detective. It was the dead end we both dreaded.

  “We’ll cross that bridge once we’ve exhausted every other option. For now, let’s focus on seeing if anyone saw them the day she disappeared. Maybe we’ll get a hit on where they were headed. We’ll find her, Jo. We will.”

  But no matter what empty promises Detective Cox offered, one fact would always remain: my daughter, whether alive or dead, would not be returned to me the same as she was before. Trauma always left an ugly imprint, marring the soul. How damaged would her innocence be when—or if—we found her alive?

  I sighed, trying my damndest to keep my tears in check. It was getting harder and harder not to spill my fears all over myself. “So what should I do now?”

  “Go home, Jo. Go home, make some tea and a sandwich, put on a television show, read a book, try to sleep—anything to distract yourself for just a few minutes from this.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop me. “I know you’re in pain. I know you want to do something to help us, but there’s nothing you can do right now. I need you healthy. I need your brain functioning. And you can’t function without sleep or food. Please, take care of yourself and your kids and let us do our job.”

  I shook my head, kicking a patch of dead leaves at my feet and scattering them. “You don’t understand. And I hope you never have to. But I won’t rest until she’s in my arms.” I left him standing there, trudging back to my car. I fell into my seat wearily, my eyes glancing in the rearview mirror where the pink butterflies decorating Amelia’s empty car seat caught my eye. Another reminder of the emptiness in my heart.

  Minutes later, as I pulled up to my house, one of the Oleander Way Powerwalkers, as I called them, waited on my front porch holding a Tupperware dish of a casserole I was sure I wouldn’t eat. Marcy Grayson—the alpha dog of the pack. Her painted smile never faltered, her white teeth always sparkled, her tight body always stole men’s glances, and her voluminous hair never grayed. She was a beautiful phenomenon that every woman hated and yet wanted to be.

  Her piteous smile greeted me as I parked and walked up the walkway to a house that no longer felt like home.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Marcy said, patting me on the back like we were old chums. “How you holdin’ up, hon?”

  “How am I holdin’ up? How do you think I’m holdin’ up, Marcy?”

  Her eyes, blue like a cloudless day, widened like I’d just slapped her. “Not … good?”

  “You think?”

  “I’m so sorry, Jo. I really am.”

  I looked at her, assessing her artificial frown caked in pink lipstick. She knew nothing about me, other than that I hosted bake sales for the elementary school and cheered on the sidelines at Preston’s soccer games. She didn’t know the depths of my broken heart, or the fear that feasted on my flesh. How dare she act like she was a friend, comforting me in my time of need? I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs that my life was destroyed, my heart ached with every excruciating moment that Amelia was gone, and it would be nice if for one second Marcy and her minions could step down from their pedestals and actually care. I wasn’t a person to them; I was full-course gossip, and we both knew it. That was why she was here. Never once had she shown an ounce of interest in my life—other than my husband—until drama beckoned her like a moth to a flame. But before my anger spewed out, Jay opened the door, rescuing Marcy from an ear beating as he guided me inside with a firm hand.

  “Marcy, so nice of you to stop by.” Jay always had a matter-of-fact way about him—genuinely nice with a subtle professionalism. I had always liked that about him, because it left little room for misinterpretation by predators like Marcy.

  “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But I thought your family might need a home-cooked meal during this tough time.” She handed Jay the dish while I rolled my eyes behind the cover of the door.

  “You’re so thoughtful, Marcy. Thanks, and we appreciate it.”

  “If there’s anything else I can do, Jay, let me know. Me and the girls will help in any way.” Me and the girls. It was fitting of the pretentious clique that they were.

  “Just tell everyone to keep looking for our little girl. That’s what we really need.”

  “Of course, Jay.”

  They exchanged goodbyes, and a moment later Jay shut the door and turned on me. “What the hell, Jo? Our neighbors are trying to be nice and you looked like you were about to bite her head off.”

  “Oh!” I scoffed. “Don’t be fooled. Marcy just wants the scoop on the latest drama on the block to talk about at her weekly hen gatherings. She doesn’t give a shit about Amelia.”

  “Whether Marcy’s being sincere or not, does it really matter? The more people who know what’s happening, the more likely someone might find her. We need every set of eyes and ears we can get. Even Marcy’s.”

  He had a point, but I wasn’t in the mood to concede.

  “Maybe it’s not just Marcy’s sympathy you’re interested in?” I shot him the glare I only reserved for our harshest of fights.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Maybe you want to dig in to more than just her casserole.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re insane.”

  “Am I really? Am I? Don’t think I don’t see you out there, showboating for the reject cast of Desperate Housewives, doing your yard work.” I didn’t know why I resorted to accusations, because I didn’t really believe this, but I couldn’t stop the venom from flowing.

  “Showboating?”

  “Showboating! It’s 50 degrees out. What earthly reason do you need to have your shirt off? And don’t try to feed me some bullshit line about you not wanting to get your nice shirts dirty, because you sure as hell had no problem wearing the brand new jeans I bought you to play soccer with Preston. Grass stains all over the knees.” It had taken three washes and a bottle of stain remover to clean them, and I could still see a green remnant.

  “Knock it off! Don’t you try to turn this around on me.”

  “Turn what around?”

  “This.”

  “And what’s this?”

  “What you’ve done to our family.”

  And there it was. The colossal finger aimed at yours truly. The flashing neon sign above my head pulsing GUILTY in alternating crimson and clover, over and over. I knew it was coming, but it was more than I could bear. My own husband against me when I needed his support the most.

  “What I did?”

  “Yes, what you did! You lost our daughter! She was your responsibility. Yours. Not Abby’s. Yours. You were supposed to watch her. Protect her. Keep her safe. That was your only job.”

  “You have no idea what it’s like trying to keep track of three kids at once.”

  “Don’t give me that. Preston was on the soccer field. I’ve seen him play, so I’m not going to believe in some enthralling performance you couldn’t peel your eyes from. That just leaves Abby and Amelia, and they were together. So that’s one … one place you needed to keep your attention. But no. You couldn’t do that. You were off in the clouds, in your own little world, detached and unaware of everything around you.”

&nbs
p; “That’s not fair.” It came out a whimper. I could feel the tears coming.

  “Fair? Don’t give me fair. How is you losing my daughter fair? I work and slave to provide for this family, give you everything you could ever want. Your only responsibility is the children, and you let some stranger just walk off with one of them.”

  “And where were you? The only reason we were at the park was because of Preston’s stupid soccer game. A sport you forced him to play.”

  “I was working! Providing for this family. Keeping you in your Pradas and Guccis, and your valets, and your Whole Foods …”

  “I never wanted any of this. I never asked for any of it. I never gave you a salary requirement when we first met.”

  Life had been so simple back then. Money was tight, but we got by paycheck to paycheck—together. We may not have thrived, but we survived. Not all the money in the world was worth the death of our marriage.

  “Right. Well, you certainly seem to have no problem spending it.”

  “Do you think this is my ideal life? To be raising three kids basically on my own with an absentee husband, who periodically graces us with his presence and leaves heavy canvas sacks full of money marked with cartoonish dollar signs on occasion?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No! I don’t give a shit about any of this! The cars. The clothes. The house. The money. I don’t fucking care. All I want is you. The man I married. The man I fell in love with. The man I shared a shitty one-bedroom apartment with, way back when. Just you, and the family we made … together.”