The Good Neighbor

by Cathryn Grant

  Taylor Stanwick: Then what?

  Moira Cushing: I don’t think you grasp what a train wreck this woman is.

  It wasn’t sitting easily in my mind. Crystal might have been a wreck ten years ago, she might still be an addict, but she was clearheaded about what she wanted and about her devotion to her missing child. Nothing I’d said had persuaded her otherwise.

  I went into my office and clicked on the icon for our new security camera. When we set it up, I’d noticed that along with covering the pathway to our courtyard door and the door itself, it also captured a section of the Cushings’ driveway. If Crystal had gone directly to their house, if she no longer needed me as a go-between, it might show on our surveillance recording.

  The static image flickered by, numbing me as I stared at the screen, waiting for activity of any kind. Finally, at the four-twenty-five Thursday afternoon mark, the camera showed Alan’s sleek sedan pulling into his driveway. A woman sat in the passenger seat. The car quickly moved out of the camera’s range. I assumed the garage door opened as usual, and he slid the car into its spot.

  I replayed the few seconds showing the car six times. The woman had blond hair. Moira’s was dark.

  I picked up my phone and called Moira.

  When she answered, I didn’t bother with the pretense of asking how she was doing. “Have you seen Crystal?”

  “No. I already told you that.”

  “I saw—”

  The doorbell rang. It startled me enough that I almost dropped my phone. People always texted before they came over. Hearing the bell when it was far too early for package delivery was unsettling. The sound was loud and insistent as someone pressed the button repeatedly without pausing. With my train of thought interrupted, I didn’t speak to Moira as I walked toward the entryway and out into the courtyard.

  “Is that all?” Her voice was terse. She sounded tired.

  “Let me call you back.”

  “There’s no need.” She ended the call.

  I stuck the phone in my back pocket and opened the door.

  In front of me stood Luke, a girl I’d never seen before, and a girl I would have recognized anywhere. Brittany Cushing, or rather, Brittany Green.

  My first instinct was to fling my arms around her and pull her close, but I was a stranger to her. Unable to restrain myself, I reached out and took hold of her wrist, pulling her toward me. “Brittany…everyone has been so worried!”

  She gave me a confident smile, but her eyes were checking me out, cycling through impressions of me, comparing them to whatever Luke had said about me. He was furious at me. Why had he brought her to my house? He…I shoved the thought aside.

  “Your mother, your parents…” I swallowed. “It’s such a relief to see you’re okay. You’re alive.”

  “I didn’t mean to create such drama.”

  I stepped outside, still holding her wrist. “Let’s get you home.”

  Luke held up his hand. “We need to talk to you first.”

  “Why?” So he had known where she was. All this time he’d known something, and he’d remained silent. I wondered whether that meant trouble of a different kind for him.

  “Can we come in?”

  “Moira and Alan are frantic.” Crystal flashed across my mind. I bit down on my tongue.

  The girl standing beside Luke spoke. “It’s important that we speak to you first.”

  I nodded and moved to the side, and they followed me through the courtyard into the house. We settled in the living room. It felt like a scene from a movie, unnatural and without a clearly developed script.

  “I’m not a pervert,” Luke said. “You see that now.”

  I didn’t see it at all. I turned toward Brittany. “Where were you all this time?” I tried to keep my tone gentle, but she drew back slightly.

  “She’s been staying with me,” the woman…girl…with copper-red hair and exotic eye makeup said.

  “And you are?”

  “I’m a friend of Luke’s.”

  “Why was she staying with you?”

  “Tell her,” Luke said. “Tell her about the shit-show you lived with, Brittany.”

  I stood and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I thought about Crystal and my interrupted call with Moira. Keeping Brittany in my living room, letting Moira suffer for one second longer than necessary, and Crystal, for that matter, wherever she was…I had to let them know. “We should call your mother.” As I spoke the words, I wondered whom I was referring to. Moira? Crystal?

  45

  Alan

  There were no streetlights running along the swampy edge of Bolinas Lagoon. It was darker than any place I’d ever been. The headlights, turned up to bright, were watery and ineffective in the mist that hung low over the lagoon and drifted across the road that was only a few feet above the water level.

  Moira and I had agreed I would bury Crystal’s body in the Sierras, but during the hour-long drive from Silicon Valley, up the east side of the San Francisco Bay, my eyes glazed by headlights, I’d realized that was all wrong. Minutes before I reached the junction with Interstate 80, I made the decision to turn west, heading toward Point Reyes. I turned south on Highway 1 and drove to Olema Bolinas Road.

  First off, I didn’t think I was capable of digging a hole more than two feet deep, especially not at the end of summer when the clay earth was packed hard as concrete. I didn’t have the strength to spend hours lifting shovelfuls of dirt, muscles straining, my mind chewing over what we’d done. All the things we’d done. Every moment risked exposure.

  This had been my train of thought for the first ten miles. Then I’d realized a shallow grave would likely lead to a premature discovery of her body. A grave screamed murder. If she was found floating in the lagoon, near a community like Bolinas, known for attracting residents who lived along the edge of the norms of so-called conventional society, it would look more natural. A town whose residents were so reclusive they were proud of their repeated tearing down of road signs pointing the way to the small community said everything I needed to know about the place. A drug overdose, a fall into the water. Of course, an autopsy would show the overdose had killed her, not the water, but hopefully it would still leave questions that didn’t immediately point to murder.

  Without identification on her body, and given the drugs in her system and no clear-cut murder investigation, it would be a long time before they figured out who she was, if ever. Oddly, that thought made me inexplicably sad. She’d done nothing terribly wrong. Life had simply happened to her. That horrific car accident had left Crystal with nearly unmanageable back pain. She’d slipped down the muddy slope that so many followed when the oxycodone no longer provided enough relief.

  Then she’d had the misfortune to meet a woman who wanted a little girl at any cost.

  I slowed, maneuvered the car onto the shoulder of dirt, dead leaves, and gravel, and turned off the engine. After a few moments, the headlights went dark. The blackness around me was complete except for the half-moon covered by the thin layer of fog. The darkness and desolation of the area were good for lifting the body out of the trunk and rolling it into the shallow water a few feet below where the car sat, but the emptiness and lack of light was also unsettling. Anyone could be watching and I’d never know.

  On the right side of the road was an incline of about four or five feet, dense with trees and untamed brush. There were no dwellings I could see, none with lights on, but that didn’t mean some hippie type wasn’t taking a midnight walk. To get to Bolinas Lagoon I would need to carry the body a few yards to a low wire fence, then down a slope and across some grassland. I’d thought the water was closer to the road, but now realized I’d misremembered from our drive to Stinson Beach with Brittany. The stretch where the water almost lapped at the side of the road was farther south on Highway 1. I was here now. I needed to get her body into the lagoon and get back home, back to the pretense of normality, back to worrying about Brittany and trying to push the police into more actio
n.

  I gripped the steering wheel. It was time to get out of the car. The tick of the engine cooling was like a giant insect in my ear canal, boring into my brain. It was the tick of minutes passing, the tick of the inevitable decay taking place in the trunk. We hadn’t fully considered what residue might be left behind in the tightly enclosed space. The tarp was inadequate. Was there an odor yet? I took a deep breath, inhaling new leather and the smell of my own skin. It wasn’t offensive, but by the time I was done, my body would smell of awful things no one wanted to encounter.

  Without allowing my mind to go anywhere else beyond the mechanics of what needed to be done, I flung open the car door. I closed it quietly and stood in the night air. It was so much more pleasant out here. I felt I could breathe. I was no longer aware of the weight of her bones and muscle, skin and pooling blood. And there had definitely been a sensation of weight in the trunk, even if it was only conjured by my fixation on what I was carrying.

  There had been too much death in my life for someone my age. Normal death—my parents. Unexpected death—a few college friends and a colleague taken by an early stroke. Heart-shattering death… My chest tightened so violently I thought I might be having a heart attack. I took a deep breath again, gasping as I tried to suck air into my lungs. My throat closed up. I pushed the thoughts out of my mind, back where they belonged.

  Look to the future; the past is irretrievable.

  And now this. Murder. None of those other deaths had been my fault, yet somewhere, in a place I couldn’t quite access—inside my heart? My brain? My soul, if such a thing existed…I wasn’t really sure. In that place, I knew some of the fault did lie with me.

  No one had ever loved a woman more than I’d loved, still loved, Moira. No one. I was sure of it. The sensation of my heart and throat swelling with longing for her was unbearable. I wanted her to be happy. Life wasn’t bearable when she was bereft. I couldn’t bear seeing the pain in her eyes, hearing the anguish that seeped out, incoherent, during her dreams. I would do anything for her. I had done anything for her.

  I clenched my jaw.

  Just do it and be done. It will be over. Finished.

  I could get back to the thing that mattered. The thing that consumed us entirely until Crystal had gotten off that airplane as if she had a right to re-enter our lives. All I wanted to care about was getting Brittany back, finding out who had taken her, or where she’d run off to on her own. I was becoming more inclined to believe it was the latter, and that made the ache of regret worse.

  Stop thinking.

  I strode to the back of the car, pulled out my phone, and turned on the flashlight. I had to see how the body was positioned before I attempted to lift her out of the trunk. Thinking of her as a person rather than a corpse was disturbing. I wasn’t sure which was worse. I couldn’t face that I’d deliberately ended a human life.

  Stop thinking!

  I had to be done with this and get out of the area without wasting another minute.

  I felt for the release and pressed it. The trunk rose slowly of its own volition. Light flooded the interior, falling across her face. Her eyes opened and she smiled.

  I gasped. Crystal moved swiftly, slamming the flat blade of the shovel into my jaw. I fell, landing hard on my side with a grunt. I tried to speak, but for a moment, no coherent thoughts formed in my head.

  As my head cleared, I wasn’t sure I could speak. The ache in my jaw was intense, spreading to my head, and I wondered if she’d broken it. I shoved myself to my knees, but the pain shot through my jaw and down my neck. I gasped and collapsed onto the ground.

  She laughed shrilly. “When you’ve been using as long as I have, it takes a lot more to be rid of me. Brittany will still have her mother.” She whimpered as she lifted her legs to climb out of the trunk, hauling the shovel after her. She raised her arms, gripping the middle of the handle.

  “No! Don’t. Please.”

  She brought the shovel down fast and hard on my head.

  With another blow to my chest, an unearthly cry came from her lips. A moment later she was straddling my hips, raising her arms above her head again. Holding it near the blade, she drove the edge of it into my face.

  While the pain was unbearable, the sudden and fleeting awareness that I’d never hold Moira in my arms again was worse. She’d be left to carry on without me.

  46

  Brittany: Now

  Taylor wanted to call my mom.

  Luke leaned forward in the armchair. “Not yet. You have to hear this. You have to get that I didn’t do anything. I’m not all this shit people are saying.”

  “Keeping a girl hidden, even if she wanted to be there, isn’t right,” Taylor said.

  Luke clenched his hands into fists. “All I did was keep my mouth shut, and now all this shit is coming down on me. I was trying to help. You should get that, Ms. Stanwick. Wanting to help. Her mom is certifiable. Brittany needs to explain so you get that I’m not the creep everyone seems to think I am.”

  “No one thinks that,” Ashling said.

  “Uh, yes, they do.” He folded his arms, resting his elbows on his knees like he was in the front row at a basketball game, watching the ball pounding down the court.

  Taylor pulled out her phone. “I should text your mom.” She stared at the phone like she expected Siri to answer that question with authority. “No.” She put it back in her pocket. “We need to get you home so they know you’re okay.”

  “Wait,” Luke said. “First Brittany needs to tell you. Come on, Brittany.”

  “I had to get out of that house,” I said. “I couldn’t stay there. And Ashling was so nice to me. She said I could stay with her as long as I wanted. Luke had nothing to do with it.”

  “What changed to make you come back now?” Taylor asked.

  “Someone trashed my car. You saw it! Everyone thinks I’m a creep,” Luke said. “And the cops are asking me questions. They think I did something to her. She came back so everyone will know that’s not how it is. Not even close.”

  “This isn’t about you, Luke,” Taylor said.

  Ashling patted my arm, which made me feel better. I wasn’t thrilled about telling this person I didn’t even know what happened to me. For some reason I couldn’t explain, it was embarrassing. Even though my mom scared me, I didn’t want people to think she was crazy. She loved me, yet did things that hurt me. It was confusing. “My parents really love me, I know that. But sometimes my mom is…I just had to get out of there. I didn’t have any real friends…”

  “Claustrophobic,” Ashling said. “Her parents had no right to keep her a virtual prisoner.”

  “I don’t think I was that,” I said.

  “You told me that’s how you felt.” Ashling smiled. “Don’t deny your reality, Brittany.”

  Taylor’s eyes were jumping around, looking at Ashling, then me. She looked like she didn’t believe me, but I hadn’t said anything yet. Not really. “It wasn’t just that,” I said. “A few weeks after we moved here, I started climbing out my window at night.”

  Taylor nodded.

  “I’d seen Luke and I wanted to meet him. I talked to him and Ashling and the others, and they made me feel like a real person.”

  “They’re adults,” Taylor said. “You should be with kids your own age. Your mom is right about that.”

  “Only kids she picked!”

  Taylor smiled, but she looked doubtful.

  “Tell her what was going on,” Luke urged.

  I didn’t want to talk about having a period in front of Luke. I’d talked about it a lot with Ashling, but this was different. Even with Taylor it seemed weird. How was I supposed to explain how stupid I was? Not that it was my fault, but I still felt stupid.

  “You need to tell her everything,” Ashling said, “or she won’t understand. She needs to get that Luke was protecting you.”

  Taylor looked like she didn’t believe that at all. I looked up at the ceiling and tried to think. It was a normal huma
n function. I shouldn’t be embarrassed.

  “My mom was giving me injections. She started when I was about ten. She told me it was something to help me not have bad dreams.”

  Taylor looked like we were making up stuff just to mess with her head.

  “I didn’t know about girls getting their period.”

  Taylor looked confused. She sat up straighter. “Is there a point to all of this?”

  “Just say it,” Luke said. “Tell her the whole thing at once so she gets it.”

  “One night, Ashling said something about having her period, and I was confused. I looked it up on the internet, and I asked my mom, and she said not to worry about it. I was really upset because she’d never told me a thing about it. She didn’t want to talk about it at all. I didn’t understand why I was fourteen and it never happened to me. So I looked that up too. I found out about a drug that stops your body from changing.”

  Taylor nodded.

  “I checked the prescription label, and the injections were that drug.” I sat up straighter so she could see my chest was as flat as a guy’s. That was the part that made me feel really stupid, that I was around other girls my age and I’d never wondered or even asked why my body didn’t look like theirs. “That drug wrecks your body. It destroys your teeth and bones. And I get a lot of headaches, which it also causes.”

  “I find it hard to believe that Moira would—”

  “Believe it,” Luke said.

  “It makes sense,” Ashling said. “She’s fourteen. She shouldn’t look like a little kid.”

  Taylor stood up. “Okay. Well I’m not sure I should get involved in that. It’s a wild story.”

  Luke and Ashling stood up also. I felt even more like a stupid little kid, huddled on the couch while all of them were standing and talking about me.

  “We need to get you home,” Taylor said.

  “Weren’t you listening?” Ashling insisted.

  “Of course I was. But Moira and Alan have been sick, absolutely wrecked with fear. We need to let them know she’s okay. Now.”