Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “Come on,” Chloe said.

  Chloe and I ran up the stairs. With the Porters gone, the living room felt empty, cold and dank, as funereal as if another death had occurred in the family. Chloe went to the window, looking left and right, up and down the street.

  “Let’s get going,” she said. “I should never have taken the time to give you that soup, but I didn’t want you fainting again.”

  “Where are they really?” I asked.

  “School, I told you!”

  My heart seized. I didn’t believe her.

  “They’ve gone to Black Hall, haven’t they?”

  “Aren’t you listening to me?”

  “She’s going to kill my mother!” I said. Just then we heard tires crunching the snow outside. The car stopped behind the back door, between the house and the barn. In a minute, the Porters would walk into the kitchen.

  “They’re back,” Chloe said. She grabbed my hand, pulled me toward the front door.

  “They’ll see us.”

  “Just hurry!”

  Was she really helping me? Or was this a sick trap? She opened the front door, let me out, then muted the latch as she silently closed it behind us. I had no choice, so I followed her down the steps.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Casey’s. He’s waiting for us. But if we cut through the trees, they’ll see our tracks.”

  The yard was three feet deep with snow. Every second felt eternal, and I imagined the Porters’ eyes on our backs as we ran down the hard-packed driveway toward the street.

  Circling around the woods and thicket between our houses seemed to take forever. It was late afternoon, and the light was fading. The snow was purple with long shadows. I felt the encroaching darkness trying to hide me.

  We tore up the trail to Casey’s house, and I looked for his father’s SUV. That had been half our deal: We would wait for Mr. Donoghue to get home, and for the Porters to be busy, and then we’d call for help. But the vehicle wasn’t there, and the Porters had probably already discovered that I wasn’t in the basement and were anything but distracted.

  Casey’s front door was open. I saw smoke wisp out of the chimney, dissolve in the frigid air. Chloe and I ran up the steps. Casey was inside waiting. With one hand he slammed the door behind us and with the other he pulled me close. My heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t breathe.

  “She’s not safe!” Chloe said, pacing the front hall. “They’ll figure it out; they’ll be here in a minute.”

  Casey double-locked the door. He led Chloe and me through the living room, turning off lights behind him. We climbed two creaky flights of stairs. The third floor was frigid, like walking into a freezer. The walls weren’t insulated; you could see lines of blue ice through the cracks between boards. But there were storage chests tucked under the eaves, and Casey pulled out two blankets. He gave one to Chloe, wrapped the other around me and himself. Shivering, we knelt by the small window facing the Porters’ house. Even though I knew we were up in the mansard roof, and the attic was dark and we wouldn’t be silhouetted, I imagined Mrs. Porter with supernatural eyesight, homing in on me, coming to get me.

  “I should go back,” Chloe said. “I can play dumb.”

  “No, she’ll get it out of you,” I said.

  “I will never tell,” she said.

  “Why are you helping me? They’ll be so mad at you.”

  “Because Casey said you told him everything,” Chloe said. In the half light streaming through the tiny window, I saw her eyes pool with tears. “He told me what it’s doing to you.”

  You’ve been living with me, seeing it all along, I wanted to say. Why didn’t you help before? Why didn’t you see it’s been killing me? Instead, I took her hand, filled with a surprising rush of love.

  “What are we going to do now?” Chloe asked.

  “Wait for my dad,” Casey said. “He’s driving back from New York. When he gets here, he’ll help.”

  I snuggled against him under the blanket. His arm was around me. The heat between us made a force field, a safe shield, and no one could get through. But then I saw the Porters’ back door wink open, just long enough for a splash of orange light to spill onto the snow, then disappear. Through the rattling old window glass I heard someone running.

  “Lizzie! Get back here right now!” Mrs. Porter’s scream sliced through the cracks in the walls.

  It was too dark to see what she was doing. Was she on the way here, to Casey’s? I imagined her flying straight onto the roof like a witch, oozing her way into the attic, enfolding me in black robes and hiding me forever. But then I saw car lights flickering through the branches and thick pines. I imagined something even worse than the witch coming here: She was going to Black Hall. I jumped up.

  “She’s leaving! We have to stop her!” I said. “Chloe, you know where she’s going to go.”

  “Here,” Chloe said. Her hands were trembling as she handed me her cell phone. “Call your mother and warn her.”

  Just the idea of being able to call home shoved a sob into my throat. I was shaking so hard, my fingers slid all over the numbers and I couldn’t dial. Car lights flickered closer to Casey’s house—had Mrs. Porter driven straight next door, coming to find me at the Donoghues’s house? But they weren’t just headlights; the pulse of blue strobes sparked the black sky. A police car sped into Casey’s drive. It stopped short, and two police officers got out.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, staring into his eyes. “Did you call them?”

  “No,” he said. “I promised you I wouldn’t. Did you, Chloe?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Her voice came out in a whisper.

  I had no idea why they were there, I didn’t even think about it, but I ran downstairs so fast my feet slipped, and I slid halfway down the second flight, barely catching my balance, my hand on the banister. Casey was right behind me.

  The doorbell rang, and he stepped forward and opened the door. The officers stood there, a man and a woman. They wore thick black uniform jackets and watch caps. The woman’s brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  I waited in the dining room, but I peered around the corner.

  “We’re looking for a missing girl,” the officer said.

  Casey was silent.

  “She’s from Connecticut. Have you seen anyone like that?”

  Still, Casey said nothing.

  “Two nights ago, a call was made. It pinged off the cell tower on Deer Rock Road, up near Benjamin’s tree farm. Were you up there?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Night before last, tobogganing. Casey had handed me his phone on that hill in the wilderness, and I’d dialed home, but the signal was dropped. I’d thought the connection hadn’t been made.

  “The Connecticut State Police traced the call to a cell phone registered at this address,” the officer said. “Did someone here try to call Mary Lonergan in Black Hall, Connecticut?”

  I walked out of the dining room, stepped around Casey.

  “I did,” I said.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Emily Lonergan,” I said. “I’m Emily. I’m the missing girl.”

  And then I started to cry.

  But there wasn’t time to be emotional.

  “This is life and death,” I said to the woman officer. I read the name tag sewn on the breast of her black Royston Police Department jacket: CLARKE. “I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The people next door—they’re going to kill my mother!”

  “Okay, hold on, slow down.”

  “No, you have to go there now, right away. If they see you here, they—well, she, Mrs. Porter—is going to go to Connecticut and murder my mom. Please hurry, stop her now.”

  Officer Clarke just stood there, an expression of apprehension on her face. The male officer, Peterson, had circled around to stand behind Casey and Chloe. I felt as if they were tryin
g to herd us together.

  “Why don’t we all go down to the station,” Officer Peterson said. “And we can sort it out there.”

  “You don’t get it,” I said. “We have to do something now.”

  “Emily, why did you run away?” Officer Clarke asked.

  “I didn’t,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and low, in case Mrs. Porter was lurking in the bushes.

  “She didn’t,” Chloe said.

  “Who are you?” Officer Clarke said.

  “Chloe Porter.”

  “And you?” she asked Casey.

  “Casey Donoghue,” he said. “That was my phone Emily used to try to call her parents—to ask for help. This is my house. Mine and my dad’s.”

  “And you helped Emily run away? You’ve sheltered her?”

  “You’re not listening!” Casey said. “She didn’t run away; she was kidnapped. We were just waiting for my dad to get here, so he could call you and the people next door wouldn’t know.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” I said, boiling over with panic. “They’re going to hurt my mom. Please go there now—she, Mrs. Porter, is probably already on her way. I’m sure she saw you pull in. She swore to me if I told, she’d kill her. Please let me call my mom, I have to warn her …”

  “Okay, okay,” Officer Clarke said. She pulled out her radio. It crackled, a voice came on, and Officer Clarke said a bunch of numbers, Casey’s address, then, “more units.” She turned back to me.

  “Who kidnapped you?” she asked. I swear, her eyes looked more suspicious than understanding. I would suspect me, too: It must have seemed to them I’d been free to leave at any time. They hadn’t discovered me in the locked basement, but right here in Casey’s house, no kidnappers in sight. I shuddered so hard my teeth chattered, and I couldn’t speak.

  “My parents did,” Chloe said. “They took her.”

  I turned to look at her. Tears were pouring down her pink cheeks. She gazed toward the grove between the houses, as if she could see through the trees, straight to her mother.

  Things started happening fast after that.

  Two more police cars sped up the street, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing. Casey’s dad had arrived, just turned into the driveway, but an officer stopped the SUV, wouldn’t let him come closer.

  Casey’s arm was around me. On the other side, I pressed against Chloe. She was shaking and cold. Officer Clarke went out to talk to the newly arrived police. Mr. Donoghue was speaking to them, too, animatedly, pointing at the house, wanting to come to us.

  I was dying. They were all just standing there talking. Why were they wasting their time here instead of stopping Mrs. Porter? I grabbed Casey’s hand.

  “I have to get over there,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said. While Officer Peterson was talking on his radio, Casey, Chloe, and I backed surreptitiously out the front hall, walked quietly into the den, and flew out the side door. Officer Peterson called after us. The snow hadn’t been shoveled. There was no trail between the houses. The heavy pack was iced over. The ice held in places—it was like skating on a frozen river—but then the crust broke and I sank into snow thigh-deep. I ran through as if it wasn’t there. Casey and Chloe were right behind me.

  The first thing I noticed: The minivan was parked next to the barn. That was a blast of relief until I realized Mrs. Porter might have had another vehicle hidden nearby. She had said she had secret ways of getting to my mom. I thought of the shoe on my bed, of her sneaking into my mother’s closet to get it. She could be driving the secret vehicle right now.

  All three of us tore into the house.

  Casey and Chloe began searching the first floor. I heard Mr. Porter’s voice calling down from one of the bedrooms. Mrs. Porter wouldn’t be up there. I knew where to find her. I walked down the basement stairs.

  She was sitting on Lizzie’s bed, holding one of the pillows. She clutched it to her chest. Her face was screwed into a knot of pain. When she looked up, saw me standing in the door, the anguish relaxed. It didn’t go away entirely, but she gave me a small, broken smile. She looked surprised and guardedly happy to see me.

  “You came back,” she said.

  “I thought maybe you … would have been on your way to Black Hall by now,” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  “But my mother,” I said. “You said …”

  “She’s safe,” Mrs. Porter said.

  My eyes teared up with relief.

  “The police are here,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I saw their lights. This pillow”—she buried her face in it—“still smells like Lizzie. It’s from her shampoo, I suppose. That you wash your hair with.”

  “Mrs. Porter,” I said. “We should go upstairs.”

  “We will. In just one minute. Stay a tiny bit longer, talk to me, just so I can take the memory with me, remember it always. Please.”

  Reluctance kept me rooted in the doorway, but she was looking at me with such warmth and sadness. I saw the old Mrs. Porter, the one I used to love, who had always been kind, had always cared about me, the one I’d felt so close to for so long.

  She held up the letter I’d found in the clock. I could see Lizzie’s handwriting, the envelope addressed to Mame.

  “I chose this town because of Lizzie,” Mrs. Porter said. “There were so many places we could have moved after she died. But she had such a fascination with Royston, her connection to Sarah through Mame. And I thought … wouldn’t Lizzie love it here? Wouldn’t she be fascinated to live right next door to the house Sarah had built for herself and Nora? Another mother and daughter who were so close, looked after each other. Right here! And this house was for sale, so it seemed meant to be.”

  She held out the envelope for me to take. I stepped closer, hesitating. I was on high alert, listening for voices and footsteps upstairs. A door opened and closed softly; I imagined Officers Clarke and Peterson, the other police officers, too, in the house now, asking where I was.

  “Take this,” Mrs. Porter said, handing me the letter. “I want you to have it. It’s good to have a talisman. An object from this place, from this precious time on earth, to take with you where you’re going next.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Her words were bizarre. Going next? Home, Mrs. Porter—to my family, to Black Hall. But I was eager to read the letter, and I tucked the envelope into my jacket pocket.

  “Could I ask you one more favor?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Sit with me until they come for me. Be Lizzie for one more minute.”

  My throat caught. I felt a wave of nausea, thinking of the nights she had hovered over me, watching me sleep. I knew I should hate her for everything, but in that moment, she was so calm, her voice so normal—erasing the evil Mrs. Porter and bringing back the old one I’d loved.

  “I can sit with you, but I can’t be Lizzie again.” I eased down on the edge of the bed. Our elbows were lightly touching. She leaned against me, put her head on my shoulder. I felt physically sick.

  “Your hair smells like her. It’s the same color. If I close my eyes, I can pretend it’s her. Do you know what that’s meant to me? You’ve given me the greatest gift. I told myself you wouldn’t mind, that you’d come to accept being Lizzie.” She turned to me, brow furrowed. “I’m sorry it’s been so hard.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. The point was, this was almost over. My heart galloped, wanting to get upstairs. But I told myself as long as she was right here, sitting still, she wasn’t on her way to my mom. Everything would be fine now.

  “Will you say it one more time?” she asked. “I’ll close my eyes, and you say it, and I’ll hear it forever, wherever I go.”

  Mom. She wanted me to call her that, but there was no way, never again. That request broke something inside me, whatever had been holding me in suspended animation, and I knew if I didn’t get out of there I’d throw up or scratch her face off.


  “Let’s go now, Mrs. Porter,” I said.

  “Please, say it just once more. Will you call me by the right name? It will make this so much easier …”

  This? Going to jail? Suddenly the insanity in her expression was back, and I started to jump up. But she clawed my wrist, nails digging into my skin, pulling me back down.

  “Lizzie,” she said. “Lizzie, we’re going together.”

  “I’m going home,” I said, trying to yank myself free.

  Then I saw her other hand.

  Her fingers were closed around the knife with the silver blade, the one I’d seen in the video, and in her pocket, and so many times in my nightmares.

  “I am doing this because I love you,” she said, her voice soothing, almost honey sweet. “This life is unbearable. The cruelty of losing the people you love, of having them die and being left here alone. But we won’t have to lose each other again. There’s eternal peace. That is what I am giving you.”

  “No, you’re not!” I screamed.

  I fought her. I hit her as hard as I could, heard my fist crack her cheekbone. I tried to kick her, but she’d leapt up from the bed, gripping my wrist, and my foot missed. She was waving the knife, stabbing the air, but I kept ducking, trying to pull away.

  “You brought this on,” she said, her eyes red with tears. “You made me do this. We could have been happy, if only you’d tried harder. We could have been a family again. This is the only way.”

  I put everything I had into it, and I tried to shove her again, but the knife got in the way. It felt like a punch in my chest, not sharp at all. But I heard my bones splitting, and I felt my insides melting. My heart sped up, and with every beat, I heard a gush of my blood, saw the bright red stream pulsing onto the floor.

  Voices surrounded me. Chloe’s, Officer Clarke’s. Mrs. Porter’s. Mrs. Porter was crying, “Let me die with her; I want us to die together.”

  My spirit started to rise. My body stayed crumpled on the floor. I could see it—my eyes open, glassy, staring at nothing. Blood so fresh with oxygen it was scarlet pouring out of my chest. My spirit felt light as air. It looked like gauze, a shapeless wisp spiraling toward the ceiling.