by Amy Stuart
“She told me to hide his body.” The words come out in a wracking sob. “She told me to get Markus to bury him somewhere deep on the property. Told me the story we’d tell was that Sally and her boy just left. That they left High River on their own and we didn’t know why. No one would question that. Women leave High River all the time. Come and go, sometimes under the cloak of night. Janice promised me that she would help Sally. We both would. Help her like we’ve helped so many women before. Help her escape and start a new life. Once she was here in this apartment, we’d figure out where she could go next. Except her son wouldn’t be with her.”
“You must have known Raylene would wonder what happened to her friend. Sally’s things were still at the house. They were close and—”
“I had a plan for that. We had a plan. But when Sally and I were headed for the bridge, she collapsed by the river. She was clawing at the ground. She was trying to throw herself in. She screamed. It took all my might to keep her from jumping. I managed to calm her down and get her away from the edge. I promised her everything would be okay. I told her to think about the baby she was carrying.”
“You knew she was pregnant?” Clare asks.
Helen only blinks. But it’s all the answer Clare needs.
“Raylene heard Sally’s scream,” Clare says. “By the river. But she didn’t see you.”
“Yes,” Helen says. “She heard her. And Raylene came to find me to tell me something was wrong, but obviously I wasn’t in the house. She’d seen Sally earlier, before the boy was dead, and Sally had seemed so agitated. So Raylene phoned Jordan. She told him something was very wrong. That she thought she’d heard Sally screaming by the river. And now she couldn’t find Sally, or me. After they hung up Raylene ran out to the river, but Sally was already gone. Jordan phoned the police from his loft. And imagine.” A desperate laugh escapes Helen. “By the time I got back from leaving Sally at the drop-off point, the police were arriving. Then Jordan arrived too. The cops were searching the riverbank, and Jordan told Raylene to lie to the police, to say she saw Sally go into the river instead of just hearing a scream. Because Jordan—good-hearted, sweet Jordan—was afraid that if Raylene didn’t say that, that if there was no eyewitness, the cops wouldn’t dredge the river. Sally would be treated as just another troubled woman gone missing. Another woman who probably just ran away.”
Another troubled woman gone missing. Those words jab at Clare.
“Sally was in a getaway car by then,” Helen says. “One of Janice’s trusted crew was driving Sally here. And Janice was in her bed at the hospice, orchestrating it all. William was dead and Markus was trying to hide the body. And I was on my porch at High River watching the police look for a woman I’d vowed to protect and her young son when I knew exactly where they both were.”
Now Clare cannot recount the specifics of her conversations with Helen in the days since arriving at High River. She remembers only the composure, the stoicism masking both this terrible story and the deception required to cover it up.
“I still don’t understand how the boy ended up in the river,” Clare says.
“Markus was beside himself. His one job was to take care of the body. But he panicked. He told me that he found a spot and buried him. And the search parties came and went and then the boy turned up in the river days later. ‘What did you do?’ I said to Markus. He told me he panicked. He realized the body would be found when the developers razed the place. So he dug him up and put him in the river so it would seem like he’d drowned.” Helen shakes her head. “Markus doesn’t think. He’s not a thinker. He doesn’t think of the science, the logic. That the coroners would uncover what he’d done. He thought the water would wash away the truth.”
It strains Clare to mask her disgust with Markus, with Helen. How could you do that? Clare wants to ask. How? She thinks of Somers in the café yesterday. People will go to extreme lengths, she said, to absolve their loved ones of wrongdoing.
“And Sally,” Helen continues. “She was crazed. The grief was too much, especially on top of the pregnancy. We needed to figure out something for her, but she said she didn’t want to stay here. We got her sleeping pills, had someone with her around the clock. But she wanted to see Markus. Markus!” Helen straightens up. “You know, if I were to do it all over again, I would not have lulled any of the women in my care into feeling safe. I would have given them all the same things. A roof over their heads, options for the future. But I would have told them there’s no such thing as safety. Because sometimes even the people who mean well end up being a danger to you. You will always be a rabbit in a hole. You should never let go of the fear.”
Helen’s expression is impassive. Empty.
“It’s not too late to tell the truth,” Clare says. “You can still help Sally. We can find her.”
“I watched my father kill my mother,” Helen says.
“I know you did.”
“Do you remember what it’s like to be fifteen? Imagine seeing such a thing at that age. Your brother is screaming, hiding under the sink. And your other brother, a baby, is asleep upstairs. And your mother is dead on the lawn and your father is standing in front of you holding the gun that killed her.”
“Markus did the right thing, killing your father,” Clare says. “He had no choice.”
“Ha!” Helen says. “See? You don’t know. No one does. Markus? He stayed under that sink. Cowering and crying. I got the gun, not him. I went and got the gun. I stood by the sink to make sure my father wouldn’t kill Markus too. I had no idea how to fire a gun beyond what I’d seen on TV. All I remember thinking is, Don’t let him speak. My father, I mean. Because I knew he’d say something to stop me. He’d make an excuse. He’d blame my mother. She deserved it, he’d say. Or maybe he’d try to convince me it was an accident. I knew I couldn’t let him say anything. So when he came through the kitchen door, I fired right away. Got him in the arm. And he stumbled back, then looked down in shock at the blood. Like he couldn’t understand why he was bleeding. The second shot got him here.” She touches the soft spot at the base of her neck. “There was no look on his face after that. No expression. He fell over like a log.”
The scene paints itself perfectly in Clare’s mind, where Helen would have stood in the kitchen, the very place her father would have fallen dead to the floor.
“Why didn’t you tell the truth when the police showed up?” Clare asks.
Helen’s gaze is far away. “Markus climbed out from under the sink. I handed him the gun and went over to my dad’s body to make sure. I turned him over so Markus wouldn’t have to see his face. I told Markus to call the police then I went upstairs to get Jordan. He was so heavy for such a little boy. It was hard for me to carry him. By the time I got to the bottom of the staircase the cops were busting through the front door. A neighbor had called them when they heard the first shot. And Markus was standing where I’d left him. He was still holding the gun. It was chaotic. And the cops just assumed.”
“They assumed Markus killed your father,” Clare says. “Because it could never have been you. The girl.”
“That’s right,” Helen says. “ ‘You’re a hero,’ one cop said to Markus as he stood over my dead father. ‘You saved your sister’s life.’ The ambulance drivers, all the cops who showed up, the detectives. They all chimed in. And Markus basked in it. He needed the attention. It was a distraction for him, a distraction from losing his parents the way he did. I couldn’t tell the truth after that. And Markus was quick to embellish the story, to add details every time he told it. He needed to be the hero. He was just a kid.”
“You were brave,” Clare says.
“No, I wasn’t. I was vengeful. I hated everyone after that.”
“Of course,” Clare says. “What happened was traumatizing to you. To Markus.”
“Once we moved in with the Twinings, that’s when Markus started to get angry too. We were both angry, but he couldn’t bury it in the same way. He’d come into my room at night
and lean into my pillow. ‘Why did you kill our father?’ he’d ask me. I couldn’t understand the question. In some ways, he was gentle, kind. Most of us are a mix of our parents, a bit or a lot of each. It’s taken me a long time to understand that my father’s weakness is in him too. Markus isn’t a smart man. He doesn’t think. I don’t know if the trauma froze him in time, or something. Left him with the brain of a child. All I can do is love him anyway, right? Protect him. I can’t—”
There’s a knock on the door. Both Helen and Clare jump.
“Ginny,” Helen whispers.
Clare stands and looks through the peephole. She sees Ginny’s face in close-up, her chin raised in defiance. Clare opens the door. Ginny looks shocked to see her. Clare steps aside and allows her to pass.
“What is she doing here?” Ginny asks Helen. “Do you know she’s a cop?”
“I’m not a cop,” Clare says.
“Rourke said you were lying about being Sally’s friend. Who lies about something like that?”
Rourke. At the mention of his name Clare feels the goose bumps crawl along her skin. Ginny looks around the apartment, backing against a far wall, as much distance from Helen as she can create.
“What is this place? You just text me a random address?”
“It’s Janice’s apartment,” Helen says.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” Ginny says to Helen, choking on tears. “Since yesterday! Where the hell have you been?”
“Ginny,” Helen says. “There’s a lot I can’t—”
“I heard you!” Ginny yells. “I fucking heard you!”
“You heard what, Ginny?” Clare asks. “What are you talking about?”
Ginny jabs her finger at Helen, her voice piercing. “I was ready to just forget all this shit. Focus on school. Stay at the dorm and forget my crazy fucking family. But I was freaked out. Yesterday, after that whole stupid scene at the house. All of you—my whole family—you’re all bat-shit crazy. And I was in my dorm room and I kept seeing William’s body. Every time I closed my eyes. It’s like I can’t even remember what he looked like alive anymore. I even Googled him just to see if I could find an actual picture of him from the news to remember what a cute little guy he was in person. You know? The curly hair, the big eyes. To clear the image of his dead body from my head.”
“I’m so sorry,” Helen says quietly. “Ginny. I’m so sorry.”
“I took a cab all the way back to High River so I wouldn’t be alone,” Ginny continues. “And I came in through the kitchen and you were in the living room. You were on the phone, all whispery. So I stood back against the wall like some kind of spy and I heard you. ‘Sally!’ you’re saying. ‘Sally! Calm down. No one knows where you are. No one knows where Janice even lives.’ ” Ginny mimics Helen on the phone, hunched and secretive. “And I’m like, what? My delinquent mother is talking to the missing woman? What the fuck?”
“I was trying to protect you,” Helen says.
“That’s what you always say!” Ginny is yelling now. “But what have you ever done to actually protect me?”
The air between them, mother and daughter, is heavy. But Clare feels something else wash over her. A certainty, the dots connecting. She sees the panic in Ginny’s eyes.
“Ginny,” Clare says. “What did you do after you heard Helen on the phone?”
“I called Rourke,” Ginny says, sniffling. “I went outside and called him. He said he would take care of it.”
Clare feels light-headed. “Did you tell him where Sally was?”
“Yes!” Ginny says, her voice rising again. “I was freaking out. So I told him! And you want to know what he said? He said I was basically responsible for solving the case. He told me not to tell anyone. Not yet. ‘Can you get back to the dorm without anyone seeing you?’ he asked me. Oh, sure. I walked to the end of the driveway and called another cab. Rourke told me to wait at the dorm. So I did. And I just sat in my room all night freaking out. I haven’t slept, not at all. I was just waiting for someone to call me. You, Helen! But no one did! Rourke wouldn’t answer my calls and neither would you, Mom. I was afraid to tell Jordan, like he’d freak on me too for trusting Rourke, or for whatever. For fucking up. And I thought about calling Somers, but what if she arrested me? And I kept going online to see if the news had broke that Sally has been found. That she was safe. But nothing ever came up, there was no news, and—”
“I don’t understand,” Helen says to Clare. “I don’t understand. If Rourke came to get Sally, why wouldn’t he—”
“Ginny,” Clare says, cupping Ginny’s face and adjusting her own gaze so they are eye to eye. “Listen to me very carefully. Is there anything else you can think of? Anything else Rourke said about where he was going? Anything?”
Ginny thinks for a moment. “He has a boat,” she says.
“Yes,” Clare says. “He mentioned that once. So?”
“He offered to take me out on it a few days ago. Told me this story about buying a new sail, blue and silver, his baseball team’s colors, wanting to try it out on the water. And last night I was lying in bed, and I was thinking about you. And Sally. Like if you’re really an investigator, what sort of things would you be looking for? And a few times, Rourke had these coffee cups, when he’d show up at the house, these cups from some place called the Havana Café. I Googled it, and it’s right across from the marina. The marina on the river.”
“Yes,” Clare says. “Good. How far is that marina from here?”
“Ten-minute walk,” Helen says.
The three of them squeeze in, huddling close on the couch. Helen grasps Ginny’s hand hard.
“Okay,” Clare says. “Listen to me very closely. I’m going to the marina now. And you two will call Somers. And you’ll tell her. You need to tell her everything you just told me.”
Clare pinches her backpack between her feet, the shape of her gun against her toes. All along she’s been searching for the connection, the missing piece tying Sally to Rourke to Malcolm. And now she finally sees it. She understands.
It’s me, Clare thinks. I am the final piece of this puzzle.
Clare ran the entire distance to the marina. Now she stands on the dock, working to catch her breath, scanning the rows of boats, the gun hidden against the small of her back, tucked into the waist of her jeans, her backpack left behind with Helen and Ginny. In the farthest row she spots a sailboat with a blue-and-silver sail wrapped around its mast. She closes in. Homer, the boat is called. Not the poet, Clare thinks. Homer, as in home run. Baseball.
“Rourke!” Clare calls from the dock. “Rourke?”
Clare hears a latch and the door swings open. Rourke pops out and up the stairs to the deck. If he is surprised to see Clare, he masks it well. He wears a T-shirt and jeans, his gun holstered to his belt.
“You’re here,” he says. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Where is she?” Clare demands.
Rourke scans the docks. “Come on board. We can talk,” he says, extending a hand to Clare.
“There’s no way I’m getting on that boat.”
“You probably should,” Rourke says, unholstering his gun and pointing it at the ground, arm straight. “I think you should do what I tell you to do.”
There it is, the stillness Clare has felt so few times in her life. The steady calm. The docks are empty, the rows of boats bobbing, the tallest masts tilting in the breeze. No one else in sight. Clare arches. She concentrates on the feeling of her gun against her back, its metal cool. She will go.
“I know you don’t want her to get hurt,” Rourke says. “Come on.”
The effort to pull herself onto the deck rips at Clare’s shoulder. Her eyes lock with Rourke’s, his face set in a smirk. He gestures for her to descend belowdecks. The boat’s cabin is cramped, the walls a faded mahogany, its ceilings too low to fully stand. And seated on a built-in bench at the cabin’s far end is Sally Proulx. Pale, thin, the smallest hint of a round belly poking out from under her shirt
. Her hands are folded in her lap, her wrists bound together with zip ties. She looks at Clare, eyes vacant.
“Sally?” Clare says. “Are you okay?”
Sally nods too slowly, dazed.
“Sit,” Rourke says, motioning to the bench next to Sally with his gun.
Clare obeys, crossing the cabin and resting a hand on Sally’s. If he frisks her, Clare knows, this will not end well.
“It’s okay,” Clare says to Sally. “Everything will be okay.” Then, in a hiss to Rourke, “What did you give her?”
Rourke blocks the door to the deck, his gun tight in his hand.
“It’s been tough keeping her calm. She’s got a lot on her mind. Don’t worry. I’ve been feeding her. She’s fine.”
“Sally,” she says. “My name is Clare. Has he hurt you?”
“I don’t know any Clare,” Sally says, barely a whisper.
“Everyone’s been looking for you. I’ve been looking for you. Tell me. Has he hurt you?”
A whimper emerges from deep in Sally’s throat. She slouches forward, her shoulders shaking. Clare hears the engine of a passing boat. Two seconds, Clare thinks. It would take her two seconds to snatch the gun from behind her back and aim it at Rourke. A second longer, she knows, than it would take him to aim and fire. Rourke reholsters his gun and crosses the cabin. He takes Clare sharply by the arm and grabs a tie from a shelf behind her to secure her wrists too. Clare does not resist, does not fight it, too afraid that her gun might come loose. Once Rourke is back across the cabin she feels it, the well of frustrated tears at a question she’s asked herself too many times before. Why didn’t you fight? Clare presses back into the seat to feel the gun against her back. What good is a gun if your hands are tied? Clare thinks. She must gather herself.
“Why did you bring her here, Rourke?” Clare asks. “What are you doing? What do you want?”
“I have the same questions for you, Clare. What are you doing?”
“My job,” Clare says.
Rourke smiles. “That’s cute. Your job. I like that.”
