Always Watching

by Chevy Stevens

  What else had he kept to himself all these years? Then I remembered what Steve had said, that Levi had seen a woman with Finn, and a dark feeling unfurled in my stomach. I didn’t want to be there anymore, didn’t want to hear what Levi had to say, but I couldn’t stop the words. “Why did you retract your statement to the police after Finn died? You told them you saw a woman.”

  “Your mother, she was dancing with Finn, and she took him into the woods.…”

  I could see it now, remembering how she loved the little children, making daisy chains for their hair, then picking them up and singing as she twirled them around. I imagined her wandering off, in one of her foggy states, stoned out of her mind, showing the small boy a path and forgetting that she’d set him down.

  Levi was still talking. “She never came back with him. I told the cops when they were questioning everyone. Aaron pulled me aside, told me I had to keep it to myself.” He added, “Robbie knew—I told him at the commune.”

  Another piece of the puzzle snapped into place: Robbie’s real reason for distancing himself from Levi, why he hadn’t turned him in after the fight.

  How did I ever think Levi fun and affable? Now I saw him for what he really was. An insecure kid who snuck around and stole drugs.

  Robbie was right. Levi was a coward.

  I turned and started to walk away.

  He said, “Where are you going?” Sounding scared, like he wanted to keep the conversation going. “I’m sorry. I know I should’ve done more.”

  I didn’t answer, just kept walking.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  After I talked to Levi, I still felt uneasy, like I was missing something. I didn’t know if Mary had any answers either, but I couldn’t leave Shawnigan without at least asking. Since she had been released, she was back at her farm. But the police were still keeping an eye on her—in case Daniel tried to contact her.

  When I pulled in her driveway, she was running a hose to fill up a bathtub in the horses’ corral while they drank. The horses pulled their dripping muzzles out of the water to watch me, their tails flicking at the flies on their hind ends. The air was scented with hot fir trees and dried manure, dust from the gravel road as a truck roared by. In the distance, I could still hear the river, but softer and slower now. I studied the barn, expecting to be assaulted with painful memories, but it just looked like an old building. Harmless in the spring sun.

  Mary watched me come closer, a hand stroking the blaze on one of the horses, who was drinking again, its back leg kicking up at the flies on its belly.

  She said, “I’m sorry about your daughter.” She didn’t say it, but her eyes told me that she was also sorry about what had happened that day at her home.

  I nodded. “I’m sorry about your son.” Despite my feelings toward Daniel and what she’d done, she was still a mother.

  “I’ve already told the police everything I know.” She turned back to her task. One of the horses was getting greedy. It nipped at the one beside it, squealing its annoyance. “Cut it out, Midnight!” she said. The horses put their muzzles back in the tub, snorting and playing in the water.

  “I’m more interested in what you haven’t told the police. Someone has been watching my house and it could be Joseph. If he is still out there, then your son is also in danger. It would be better if the police find him before Joseph does.”

  She was silent, her back still to me.

  “Mary, if you know anything, you have to tell me. Too many people have died already, now both our children are missing. This has to end.” I started to cry.

  She turned around, squatted low, and sat on the railing, leaning forward slightly and resting her arms on dusty jeans. She was wearing gum boots, and hay was mixed in with her white hair.

  She said, “I think about the fire every day, wondering if I’d gone to the cops when you first came here, would they still be alive.” Her face was pale and heavy with guilt. She seemed to have aged another ten years in days.

  I wiped my tears away, took some breaths. “We can all play that game with ourselves, but we don’t know what else Aaron might’ve had planned. Did Daniel know Joseph was going to set the commune on fire?”

  She shook her head. “He would’ve warned them.”

  “And you have no idea where Daniel is now? Or Joseph? Did they have a safe house somewhere?”

  She met my eyes. “I don’t know where any of them are. I’m sorry.”

  I saw the truth in her face, the sadness, and felt drained by it.

  “Levi didn’t know anything either.” I leaned against the railing, watched one of the horses. “I talked to him before I came here. He told me some stuff about my mother, things that happened at the commune.”

  I felt Mary studying me. She said, “You look like her, but you’re a lot stronger. She talked about you all the time. She was here the night she died.…”

  I turned to face her, caught off guard. “I’ve never really thought about where she was going that night. Dad just told us she’d gone for a drive.”

  “Kate and I stayed in touch. Not a lot, but sometimes when she was fighting with your dad, she’d come out here and we’d smoke a joint.”

  I flashed to an image of the two women, sitting on the back porch, their shared memories of living in the commune surrounding them, mixing with the sweet marijuana smoke in the air, following them wherever they went.

  “What was she doing here that night?”

  “You’d visited, asking about the commune. It stirred some stuff up for her. She’d felt bad for a long time about what had happened to Finn.” She said the last part like she was testing the waters, wondering how much Levi had told me.

  “You knew she was responsible?”

  She nodded. “I was with her when Aaron told her what Levi had said. She was really upset—she’d been so stoned that she could barely remember walking off with Finn, but she knew she’d done it. She’d left him somewhere and planned on going back for him, but fell asleep in the field. She wanted to tell the police herself, but Aaron said social services would take you and your brother.”

  My mind filled with a memory. Finn’s mother had sobbed and fallen on the ground, screaming that they were stealing her baby. Now I remembered my own mother crying in the background, Mary’s arm around her shoulders.

  “Whatever happened to all the marijuana?”

  She looked down, eyeing me from the side, still not trusting.

  I said, “I’m not going to tell the police if you had anything to do with it.”

  She studied my face for a couple of beats, then said, “There was a logging truck driver who used to come by—he liked the girls. We’d give him bales of pot, and he’d sell it for us, keeping a bit of the profit.”

  Larry and his red truck. I remembered now, the sounds of air brakes the night Finn went missing. I said, “So he got rid of it before the police came?”

  She nodded. “We took it up to the road, and he loaded it on his truck. After that, he wanted a bigger cut. That’s when Aaron decided to leave Shawnigan—he didn’t trust him. So I told him I’d stay behind to keep an eye on things.”

  “My mother, she told me she’d wanted to leave after Finn died, but she never explained how my father knew to come get us.”

  “She left a note for your father at the store. Told him that she wanted to come home, but she was scared of Aaron.”

  “He wouldn’t let her leave?”

  “She didn’t ask. When Finn died, we’d talked and she wanted out. She was going to tell Aaron, then I showed her this.” She held up her hand with the missing finger. “That’s when she got in touch with your dad.”

  I remembered my father showing up, the rage on his face and the gun in his hand. There was something else I had to ask.

  “Did she know that Aaron was molesting me?” My body tensed, braced for the blow.

  Mary held my gaze. “Not at the time. But after you came up here and talked, she didn’t understand why you couldn’t remember so much.
Later, she started thinking about it more, how Aaron would take you swimming alone, the way he’d touch you, kind of possessive, how you changed that summer.…”

  I was crying again, wanting to stop the words out of Mary’s mouth, but needing to hear them.

  “She figured out that he’d probably done something to you. She was upset—and angry at herself for not protecting you. She was going to talk to you about what she suspected, see if it would help you remember.”

  “So she was just speeding?”

  “She’d been smoking pot all night, drinking some too, mixing it with those pills she was always taking. I told her she should stay that night, sleep it off and go in the morning. I was making up her bed when I heard her drive off.”

  She looked down at her boots, dragged them through the dirt, clearing a spot, like she was trying to erase something. “I heard the next day that she’d had the accident. I couldn’t go to the police, because Aaron had Daniel.”

  I nodded, looking at her house. For a moment I imagined I saw my mother on Mary’s porch, walking down the front steps, ready to protect her daughter. She turned and blew me a kiss. Then she was gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Though we still didn’t know if someone was out to harm me, I refused to live my life as a prisoner. The next day I was kneeling in my yard, weeding one of the garden beds, my cell within reach, when I heard a soft thump to my right. I jerked around, the trowel in my hand like a weapon. It was the cat. I hadn’t seen her in months. She watched me lazily from across the yard, blinking in the sun. I pretended to ignore her and continued with my work. She strolled over and rubbed against my side, bumping her head on my elbow. I got up, slowly, but she still skittered away a few feet, ready to break into a run as she watched me brush dirt from my knees. I said, “You hungry?” then walked toward the house.

  I glanced back. She was following, but cautiously, taking a few trotting steps forward, then pausing. Inside, I put some tuna on a plate and went back onto the porch. She was on the top step. When she smelled the tuna, she cried plaintively, weaving back and forth between my legs, staring up at the plate.

  “Well, little miss—you’re going to have to come in and get it.”

  Leaving the door open, I walked back into the house and placed the plate on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, then walked farther into the house, sitting at the dining room table with the newspaper, where I could watch out of the corner of my eye. The cat stood at my back door, meowing loudly. I ignored her, turned a page.

  She crept in, body low, ears flicking back and forth. Then at the plate, she lapped at the food, purring so loudly I could hear her from my chair.

  When she was done, she cleaned her paws, and still sitting in the same spot, examined my house. I turned another page, reading words that had no meaning, my breath slowing as I watched the cat. She stood up, stretched. I expected her to run back out the door, but instead she sauntered past me and jumped onto the chair near the fireplace. Lisa’s chair. She curled into a ball. One amber eye blinked at me, then she tucked her nose into her tail and fell asleep.

  * * *

  Two weeks later they finally identified Joseph’s body. I was glad that he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again but frustrated that we’d never be able to find out if he knew what happened to Lisa. And if he was dead, who had been keeping an eye on me? I hadn’t had more creepy feelings since that day Kevin chased the person down the street, and I hoped that was the last of it. But I still wondered if it had been Daniel or maybe another member with a grudge. Part of that question was answered the following week when Daniel was caught trying to cross the border into the States. He was arrested on the spot—and claimed he didn’t know that his father had planned to hurt anyone. He also said that he hadn’t been anywhere near me. I believed him, but he still had to stand trial for his part in the events.

  A couple of days after Daniel was apprehended, I was on the couch, reading a book with a blanket wrapped about me, and the cat, now named Glenda, purring on my lap. I turned the pages with my free hand—if I tried to take away the one that was stroking her, I’d earn myself a growl. Someone knocked on my door, and the cat leaped off, making my heart jump. Thinking it was Kevin, who was on his way over, I opened the door.

  But it wasn’t Kevin on my doorstep. It was Lisa.

  She said, “Mom, I—” then broke off, crying.

  I stared at her, sobs ripping out of my chest, my body shaking violently. I couldn’t move, nothing would work, my limbs frozen, blood roaring in my head. She stepped forward, and I grabbed her, my forehead pressed into her shoulder, my hands gripping her so hard it must’ve hurt. I couldn’t get my breath, couldn’t form words, just loud gasping sobs as I held her to me.

  Lisa was also vibrating. Her hair tangled in my mouth, my nose was running, I tried to get some air, but I still couldn’t control my body. I held the back of her head, stroking her hair over and over, rocking back and forth.

  Finally, some words escaped my mouth in strangled sobs.

  “Oh, God. Sweet Jesus. Thank you.”

  * * *

  It took us a long time to calm down enough to move inside. My body still shaky, and my head light. I had to stand for a moment, lean against the wall, tears still hurrying unbidden down my cheeks as my daughter held out a steadying hand. She looked good. Her hair windblown, but her clothes tidy, a new jeans coat and cargo pants. Her eyes were bright, though red-rimmed from crying. She’d gained some weight, her face filling out. I wanted to know everything, where she’d been, what had happened. But she was hungry, wanted to eat, then talk, said that it would help us calm down. And she was right, the activity bringing back some sense of normalcy to a surreal situation. We made some tea and toast, like we used to when she was a little girl. One of us buttering the bread, the other spreading the honey. I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to touch her, to stroke her hair, to assure myself that she really was standing there. Finally, we sat on the couch, our knees touching.

  She started talking. “The fire, Mom, it was so horrible—but I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t get them out.”

  “You saw the fire? Where were you?”

  “I was in the chamber. Aaron had put me there a couple of days before—he said it would answer all my questions, but it just messed me up. When Joseph opened the door and told me to go upstairs, I tried, but I got dizzy, and I had to sit down. He didn’t notice. He was too busy running around and grabbing containers, then he left so fast he didn’t know I was still there. I was so scared. I didn’t know what was going on. Then I heard this huge bang, Mom. I started running upstairs. The hallway was full of smoke, and I could hear this awful screaming. I tried to figure out where all the people were, but everything was on fire. It was so hot.”

  My mind filled with horrifying images, people crying for help, flames racing through the building, and Lisa trapped. “I’m sorry, baby. I know you tried.”

  “I had to leave them there—” She broke off in a sob, and I knew this pain would be with her for a long time, the survivor’s guilt enormous. She pulled herself together, started again. “I crawled under the smoke, and smashed one of the back windows. Outside, I saw how bad the fire was, and I knew…” She paused, her face tortured with memories. She swiped at her eyes, taking some breaths. “People died that day, lots of people. But I lived, and I just—” She shook her head, looked down at her toast. “I just didn’t understand why God would let me live after everything I’d done.” Tears were rolling down her face.

  I wanted to comfort her, but I sensed she needed me to be silent. I rested my hand on her knee, gave it a squeeze. She set her hand on top of mine.

  After a moment, she continued. “I ran away, hitchhiked all the way back to town. I was living on the mainland, doing drugs and trying to forget everything. One day I woke up, passed out with some guy, and I still didn’t understand why I was alive. I started thinking maybe I was saved for a reason, like I was supposed to do something with my life.”
She fiddled with her toast. “I moved back and found a program.” She smiled at me through her tears. “I’ve been sober for over a month now.” I smiled back. She said, “It’s been hard, really hard. I wanted to call you, but I needed to know I could get through this, that I was done for sure.”

  I nodded, sad that she’d felt like that, but understanding.

  “I was also scared that maybe you wouldn’t want to see me ever again, maybe you hated me for the things I said to you that last time.”

  “No, Lisa, I could never—”

  “Wait, Mom. Please. I still have to make amends.” She cleared her throat, started again. “What I did to you, all those years. I made your life hell, and putting you through all this, I’m so sorry. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. But I’m trying to change. And I need help.”

  I cupped her cheek, looked her straight in the eyes so she could see the truth of my words, the love. “Of course I’ll help you. Whatever you need.”

  She started to cry again. “I’d come by the house sometimes, trying to work up the courage to talk to you, but I was terrified that you’d tell me to go away.”

  I put it together. “Were you in my shed?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I was looking at your trees. I wanted a piece of one, so I could have something of yours to keep with me. I came back another time just to sit with your things.”

  “So it was you who Kevin chased off?”

  “Yeah, he was fast. I’d borrowed my friend’s car.”

  “It doesn’t matter, none of it matters.” I hugged her to me. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

  She relaxed into the hug. “Can I come home?”

  I closed my eyes, savored the words, the smell of my daughter’s hair.

  “You can always come home.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to start by thanking my readers around the world for their support and encouragement. I truly appreciate all the great e-mails you send me and love staying in touch on Facebook and Twitter. This can be a lonely job, with hours at the keyboard, so it’s nice to feel a connection with the people who are actually reading my stories, and not just the characters who are walking around in my head.