by Nina Laurin
“It’s not what I meant. You don’t understand. Nobody can be trusted. Not with this.”
We stand across from each other, the bed between us. I’m breathless. I have to turn this situation around, and I go for the only means I have left at my disposal. Attack.
“And speaking of shutting you out, what exactly was I supposed to do? Your freaking parents had a PI follow me around before we went on our third date, for God’s sake!”
He groans. “You are not bringing that up again.”
“You bet.”
“I already explained it. And I apologized, over and over—”
“There were things I was going to tell you. On my own time. But your mom and dad deprived me of that! I was an open book to you from the start. How convenient.”
“Andrea, you’re being irrational. I’m not the enemy.”
“Really? Or maybe the parents were just a good excuse. Maybe you did it yourself so you’d have all the dirt. Stealing the playbook before the game even started—very clever of you.”
“Oh, is that what you think?” He’s almost yelling now. “For fuck’s sake. I loved you. You broke my heart. What more do you want me to say? And now you’re clearly in over your head, and even now, you keep me at arm’s length. Even though you have nothing left to lose.”
This is too much. Just one step further than I can allow.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask, calm now.
“Nothing. I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
I storm past him, through the door into the hall. He follows on my heels. “Wait.”
“You have something at stake here?” I snarl. “What is it? Are you spying on me for someone too? My brother? Figueroa? The police?”
“Are you insane?” he yells back. “What—”
“Or you just get off on fucking fucked-up people. Is that it?”
His nostrils flare, and I realize I went too far.
“I loved you,” he repeats. “I still do.” He steps toward me and reaches for my shoulder.
I move out of the way. “Don’t touch me.”
I start down the stairs, holding on to my sheet. He thunders after me, grasping at the edge of the sheet. “Let go!” I scream, trying to tug it free. “Let go of me!”
I hear fabric tearing, and part of the sheet comes away in Milton’s hand. I stumble, and my back hits the railing painfully. I lash out from pure reflex. My arms outstretched, my hands connect with his chest before I realize what I’m doing.
Milt loses his footing, flails, grasps for the railing—but too late. He tumbles down the stairs, landing on the floor below. He groans and then goes still.
I clasp my hand over my mouth.
“Milton?” I don’t really expect him to answer. “Milton?”
Not feeling my legs, I race down the stairs and crouch next to him. Oh God. He looks fine—nothing is at a weird angle, no blood. There’s a big bump just below his hairline that grows and turns purple right before my eyes.
My first instinct is to shake him, to try to straighten him—no, I mustn’t touch him. I remember from first-aid class that you should never touch anyone who fell because it might aggravate their injuries or even kill them, especially if the skull or spine is involved.
Oh God. What have I done?
As carefully as I can, I touch my fingertips to his neck. Thankfully, his pulse is thrumming strong and fast. He seems to be knocked unconscious.
What I should do is call an ambulance. Where the hell is my phone when I need it? I run to the counter where I remember leaving it, my feet slipping on the floor. But before I pick up the phone, I know how stupid it would be. I’m a murder suspect, even if Figueroa hasn’t made it official yet. And now I’ve shoved my ex-fiancé down the stairs.
It looks worse than bad.
Shit. But I can’t leave him. I can’t. I pace for a few seconds before the solution comes to me. I look around and locate his jacket, which he left flung carelessly over the arm of the couch.
The side pockets are empty. When I reach into the inside pocket, my hand connects with something but it’s not a phone. It’s small, square, and smooth.
Bile wells up in the back of my throat, and I think I might puke. Holding my breath, I pull the object free.
My knees buckle, and I sit on the floor. The jacket slips off the couch’s armrest, and I cradle it in my arms. Tears fill my eyes when I look at the little box again. I know what it is before I open it, yet I can’t stop myself. It’s there, the platinum band, the diamond winking like a star, impossibly clean and bright. It’s not a copy or reproduction; it’s the real thing, the one I wore on my ring finger for many months.
He got it back. He never told me. He got it from the pawnshop, and he was going to give it back to me.
On the heels of that realization comes another, and it makes me want to howl. He didn’t betray me. He lied on my behalf. He told a lie to the authorities without even knowing what he was covering for. The only person in the world who really, truly loved me, with all my flaws and not in spite of them.
I suspected he might get hurt in all this. I just never thought it would be like this.
Even though it’s all over, I can’t get it out of my head. He loves me. He was going to give back the ring. He loves me. He was willing to lie for me…
Except those things never turn out quite the way you want. He doesn’t know it yet; his life hasn’t taught him. But when you lie for someone, they are in your debt. And the debt carries serious interest.
I’m numb with pain when I get to my feet. I pick up my clothes, pull my jeans up my thighs, throw on my T-shirt, and slip my feet into my sneakers. His phone is on the coffee table, right in my face. How could I not have seen it? I pick it up, unlock it—the passcode is my birthday. I punch in 911, my thumb hovering above the Call button, but instead of pressing it, I turn off the screen. I rush over to Milton and kneel on the floor and let myself look at him, for only a few moments.
I love you, I mouth, before leaning over and letting my lips touch his forehead.
Then I dial emergency services and wipe the screen with the corner of my discarded sheet. I leave the phone on the floor, near his hand.
Tears blanketing my eyes, I grab my purse, then exit the house, leaving the door closed but unlocked for when the ambulance arrives.
Then I start walking, leaving behind the only home I’ve ever known.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
No doubt this is a question that crossed most parents’ minds at least once: Are children capable of evil?
But Eli Warren’s parents didn’t realize anything was wrong until it was too late. Perhaps it was willful denial: We never want to think the worst of our own child, and it’s easy to explain away or overlook the signs. Or perhaps Cassandra Warren, a single mother, simply got too caught up in trying to provide for her children to notice something was off about her son. In any event, the only thing we know for sure is that the Bianchis’ failure to take action had fatal consequences for their family. The family home cannot be brought back up from the ashes, and the dead cannot come back to life. What was done can never be undone.
—Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.
Fifteen years earlier: before the fire
“I’m going to run away,” Eli repeats.
Andrea isn’t sure what kind of reaction he expected from her. It sounds so ridiculous it can’t possibly be true. So the only response she can muster is a weird, half-stifled laugh.
But the angry tears that fill his eyes are real, and so is his furious scowl.
“What…” she stammers. “What about me?”
“What about you?” he mocks. “It’s not about you, for once.”
Nothing is ever about me, she thinks fleetingly.
“I can’t stay here. Our mom and Sergio want to send me off to some reform school. And you, presumably, will go on with your insipid life. Getting Cs, hiding from Leeanne in the bat
hroom. Lucky you.”
“Reform school?” she asks. Separate them? How is that even possible? How could their mom even think of doing something like that?
Unless it wasn’t their mom. Unless it was Sergio. Andrea flinches as the brief flash of memory goes off in her mind, the sound of the slap so clean and loud it might as well be real.
Ever since the incident, everything changed, in a subtle, insidious way. Sergio became different—with her, with their mom, with everyone. He no longer brought Reese’s Pieces from work to give to Andrea in secret. He was guarded. Distant.
“Why?” Andrea asks.
Her brother scoffs. “Addie…”
“I’m not too stupid to get it. I get it,” she says breathlessly. Although she suspects that might not be true. But he has to tell her. He has to. Because they tell each other everything. They’re two sides of the same coin…
“And what just kills me,” Eli says, cutting off her train of thought, “what fucking kills me is that she’s such a hypocritical bitch. You think she’s some kind of a saint but she’s anything but. Why do you think she lets Sergio treat me like shit?”
“Who? Mom?”
“They all want me out of their lives,” he mutters. He stares at the floor in front of his toes, like he’s talking to himself, not to her. Like he forgot she was there. “I’m in the way. Without me, they can all go back to pretending their fake lives are actually real. She can pretend she has it made, he can pretend his marriage is doing all right…Both of them can pretend we’re all one big happy family.”
He looks up, and his smile is nightmarish. “I mean, it’s one thing to lie to everyone else but lying to yourself is pointless.”
“What does it mean?” Andrea bursts out. “Eli, I don’t understand. Just tell me. Please. Where are they sending you?”
He shakes his head, and a suspicion sneaks into her mind that this might be yet another one of his games. That he might be making this up to get a rise out of her.
“I just want them to die, Addie,” he says, and his voice is so shockingly sad that she’s taken aback. “I want them both to die. A horrible, painful, fiery death.”
Much later, Andrea will repeat this exact sentence to the police. She won’t wonder why she remembers it so clearly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Once I make sure—from a distance—that the ambulance arrives and Milton is cared for, I start walking and then break into a jog. My thoughts are a thorny tangle. Guilt still crushes my chest, and my temples ache from exhaustion and a budding migraine. Through it all, I try to think.
It looks bad. Figueroa has an inkling Adele was blackmailing me, and it’s only a matter of time before she finds proof. Then she can pin the two murders on me. And now I attacked Milton. Something tells me she’ll be turning up in his hospital room too. And after what I did, he has no reason to cover for me.
Only now it hits me how dire the situation has become. I realize I’ve run out of places to go. Whatever my brother was trying to do, he succeeded: I feel the world closing in on me. And like an animal in a trap, I become desperate.
Desperate is bad. Desperate people do crazy, stupid things.
I go over my options, which aren’t many. I could always go back to Cynthia’s and have her mobilize her legal team on my behalf but I’m no longer sure it’s a good idea—or that the lawyers would be of any help to me now. At best I’d be a sitting duck for Figueroa and the police to descend upon when she decides she has enough proof to arrest me.
And then what? Bail, trial, siphoning money I don’t have. And at what point will even Cynthia throw in the towel? When Figueroa produces my belt as Sunny’s murder weapon? When she shreds my alibi for Adele for good? When they confiscate my lighthouse keychain and discover there’s a lighter inside?
Meanwhile, my brother will be a thousand miles away. If he knows what’s good for him.
The answer goes off in my mind like lightning. I stumble, break my stride, and cover my mouth to hold in a laugh. It’s very simple and completely insane. But it’s worth a shot.
I look around. The nearest ATM is in front of a convenience store down the street. I’ve hit both the store and the ATM on numerous occasions in the past so it won’t raise immediate red flags. I jog up to the parking lot and then remember—the cameras. The ATM has them, and there’s probably one over the front door of the store too. I stop, catch my breath, smooth down my flyaways with my damp palms, redo my ponytail. Wipe away the tear trails. I check myself in the side-view mirror of one of the parked cars and practice my fake smile until I get it right. I keep flashing back to the engagement ring in Milton’s pocket but I banish the thought from my mind.
Normal. I’m normal; everything is fine.
Suspect last seen on security camera footage, looking calm.
I stop by the ATM and withdraw everything I can. It’s not much, especially since at least half of it I’m going to need for what’s next, but I can think about the rest later. When I’m not about to be arrested. When I’m free.
Once the ATM spews out the thick handful of bills, I fold them and put them away safely. Then I step away from the machine and take a deep breath. No taxis, no public transit—there are cameras all over the place in every bus. I’ll have to walk. Good thing I know where I’m going.
All my years of working with the homeless and the disenfranchised, those who have nowhere to go, are finally paying off. I know how to vanish. How to fall off the radar, disappear from the system so subtly no one realizes I’m gone for days, maybe weeks.
The walk takes more than an hour, even though I’m trying to keep up the pace, breaking into a jog when I can. Still, by the time I reach the overpass, I’m freezing and exhausted. The hems of my jeans are soaked through with mud, splatters of it going as high as the knees. More of it squishes inside my once-white sneakers. The backs of the sneakers have rubbed my tendons raw, and I wince with every step.
I’ve never been here before. The place once had factories but those were long ago shut down and demolished, and since then the inconvenient stretch of polluted land has been semiabandoned. The closest I’ve come was a drive past on the overpass above, safe in my car and in my own little world, not giving a second thought to what might be going on far below my wheels. Which makes me no different from the thousands and thousands of others. But I’ve heard of the place, more than once. The teenagers at the shelter talked about it in hushed voices so we wouldn’t overhear.
Now I feel the ground shudder as an eighteen-wheeler thunders overhead. The noise of cars is relentless. Directly under the overpass, I can hardly hear myself think. No wonder the whole area is pretty much deserted, the empty lots unappealing even to the greediest of urban developers and condo builders.
My destination is an abandoned house, from the 1930s or earlier, on the edge of the lots. It’s the last stop for those who have nowhere else to go. It’s a place where you can buy low-quality heroin and high-quality fentanyl, and everything in between. It’s also the place where, for the right price, you can buy an ID with the name and birth year of your choosing.
Nervousness gets the better of me as I approach. I hide my sweaty hands in my pockets but I can’t do anything about the thunderous thrum of my heart. I become aware of the folded-up bills hidden in my bra, their pointy corners poking my flesh. Here, someone could easily kill me for that much money. Stab me in the neck and leave me to bleed to death in the dirt. A death no one will investigate because, in this place, it’s the kind of thing that happens. Anyone who has other options should have known better.
It’s dark under the overpass, even though the sun has just started to set in the real world. In this one, it’s perpetual gloom, like something out of a film noir. My eyes take their time adjusting. Then I see that I’m not alone, and my heart jumps. There are figures sitting up against one of the giant concrete beams. I see glowing cherries of cigarettes, and the smell of acrid smoke, too nasty to be plain tobacco, wafts through the reek of exhaust and moto
r oil.
I waver between stopping to ask which exact house I need and just walking on before they can notice that I don’t belong here. I decide to walk on.
In the periphery of my vision, they raise their heads and follow me with listless gazes that burn the back of my neck. I dip my chin toward my chest and fight the urge to walk faster. I can’t—I mustn’t show that I’m afraid.
My imagination turns shadows into moving figures, making me hear steps that grow closer and closer. The roar of cars overhead fills my ears until I can’t be sure what’s real and what isn’t. I stare straight ahead, forbidding myself to turn around no matter what. Soon, just a few more yards, I will be out of here—out in the open, in the dust and sunlight.
I was wrong, I realize with a pang of dread. I don’t belong here—I wouldn’t last through a week of this life. I thought I could relate to the people who crossed my path in my line of work. I thought we had a similar burden to carry through life, only mine was hidden and theirs was out in the open. I couldn’t be more wrong. I thought I had the intelligence to lie where it counted and fake normal until I made it. How many times did I study my charges’ files and find myself rewriting their lives in my head, changing one decision or turn of events, correcting and adding as if I were marking a term paper? I, who always thought, deep down, that it was only a matter of pulling yourself together, now find myself among the people I swore I’d never become.
Maybe that’s my real punishment.
Finally. I emerge from under the overpass and let myself draw in lungful after lungful of polluted air. In front of me is an empty blacktop lot, to the right a chain-link fence, to the left an expanse of gouged dirt that serves God knows what purpose. Far ahead, I see the shapes of squat little buildings that might well be my destination. I start toward them, trying to calm the tremor in my legs.
“Hey!”
I jump and spin around, twisting my ankle in one of the potholes in the asphalt. My heart jumps into my throat when I see a figure in an oversize coat standing at the edge of the concrete under the overpass. It looks like a teenage boy. Immobile, he’s staring right at me.
