Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  “That’s what we’ll do,” Heath said, and that cemented it.

  In Dr. Cerny’s room, we found a down coverlet to wrap him in and I snagged one of the doctor’s big canvas barn coats. Heath hefted Cerny over his shoulder and carried him down the back stairs. I darted back into the observation room long enough to scoop up the iPad and tuck it in the waistband of my pants, then hurried down the stairs too.

  I caught up to Heath in the kitchen. “Maybe I should stay behind? Keep an eye out?”

  “I don’t know if I can make it all the way up the mountain alone with him,” Heath said. “I might need your help.”

  Desperation threatened to smother me, but I nodded my assent. I’d have to figure something else out. Something once we reached the top of the mountain. We headed out of the house toward the trail.

  I ran after Omega until my stockinged feet burned and the green sweaterdress was heavy with sweat. Thick gray clouds had rolled in and banked, and a cold wind whipped across the soybean fields along the road. I was a fast runner, faster than I knew, because even without shoes, I’d caught up to her.

  She had slowed at one of the town’s newer municipal parks nestled among the fast-food places, office complexes, and car dealerships, then cut down the hill toward the blue tennis courts. There was no one playing, of course—it was freezing and overcast, and I could feel raindrops pelting me.

  On the rise above the courts, I saw her sitting on a white bench against the chain-link fence. She slumped, hands jammed in her jacket, her legs stretched out in front of her. I’d been down here a couple of times, on school picnics. Seen the tanned ladies who played there—ladies from nearby neighborhoods who wore flippy skirts and visors and always had the picnic tables covered with food and wine during their matches. They didn’t seem to have kids. Probably they were in school or with nannies. I thought suddenly how out of place Omega looked. She would probably never be the kind of person who played tennis here.

  I sat at the top of the hill and watched her for a while, until a rust-edged, dented-up silver car pulled in behind me. It sat idling, and after a minute or two, Omega stood and made her way across the tennis court in its direction—and mine.

  I stood, my nerves jangling. When she neared me, she stopped. I bit my chapped lip, feeling tears swimming to my eyes.

  “Hey, Doodle-Do.” She smiled down at me, but her eyes looked flat and tired.

  “Hey, Omega.”

  She looked past me. At the car, I guessed. I wondered who was sitting in it. How had they known to meet her here? Had she called them? I hadn’t seen her stop at a pay phone. But Omega’s ways were sophisticated and mysterious. I couldn’t begin to know them. Or maybe, in the warrens of memory, I’d forgotten how things had really happened.

  “I know what you did,” she said to me.

  I turned cold.

  “I saw you put the pills under the dresser.”

  I started to stammer out an excuse. “I didn’t—”

  “Shush,” she cut me off. “Whatever you do, don’t you ever fucking tell them, okay? It won’t bring Chantal back, and it won’t bring me back either. It doesn’t matter, what you did, Daphne. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, not now.”

  I didn’t understand everything she was saying, except the most important part. The part about keeping quiet.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She cast a dark glance at the idling car. “Do you understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me. Say it.”

  “Don’t tell them,” I said.

  “Not for any reason.”

  “Not for any reason,” I echoed.

  “Good girl.” She bent down and gently, tenderly pressed her perfect, pillowy lips against mine, and I felt a thrill roll through me, all the way down to the tips of my toes.

  “Don’t go,” I said.

  She just looked at me, her face congealed in sadness.

  “Don’t go,” I wailed and started to cry.

  Then she left me and went to the silver car and climbed in. There was a man driving. He looked almost as old as Mr. Al, but he didn’t look near as friendly. His hair was shaved down to nothing, and he had a bushy red mustache. The man with the red mustache drove Omega away in the silver car, and I ran after them.

  I kept up for a while because the car was old and the man drove slowly. But then, after a few blocks, the silver car accelerated, blew through a couple of yellow lights, then turned down a street that led toward town. It was raining steadily now, and my feet made slapping sounds on the cold pavement. They hurt too. My left toe was poking through a hole in Chantal’s maroon tights, and I watched it, counting my strides, letting my breath synch up. I felt like I could do this forever.

  Run and run and run and run.

  I ran into town, past the pawnshops and tattoo parlors and donut shops. Past the old houses that had been made into offices. Past the courthouse on the square and all the stately old buildings where people used to do their shopping. Now there were mostly junk shops and stores that sold medical supplies or wigs.

  I ran until I found myself in the leafy, flat neighborhoods with one-story wood houses and dogs that wandered in the street. I ran past a fire station and the library, then there were more fields and farmhouses and a bridge. I stopped and threw the tights over the bridge and watched them swirl away in a brown creek. And then I ran some more.

  I ran all the way through Macon and made it almost to Rutland before fainting in the parking lot of a Hardee’s. The manager found me slumped against his dumpster and called the police. Around ten or eleven, Mrs. Waylene came to pick me up. The manager had given me a double bacon cheeseburger and a Coke, and I slept the whole way home, exhausted, my secret hidden deep inside me.

  The wind buffeted the mountain, and I shivered in Cerny’s too-big work coat. Heath sloughed Cerny off his shoulder like a sack of concrete, and when the body hit the rock, I winced. The sound was muffled but heavy—flesh and bone and blood. Heath groaned and flexed his arms behind his back, his spine cracking. I glanced at the rolled-up blanket with Cerny’s body inside. Sometime on the journey up, a spot of blood had bloomed on the side of it.

  “Daphne.”

  I turned away from the body, gathered my hair back against the blustering wind, and looked out over the edge. I felt like I’d been dropped into some gothic horror novel. How could I have gotten here? About to dispose of a body? To cover up a murder?

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  I met his eyes.

  “Do you still . . .” He faltered, then tried again. “Will you . . .”

  “Yes,” I said quickly. Maybe too quickly. “I will, Heath.”

  He knit his brows. “Even after knowing what I am? After seeing what I’ve done?”

  I mustered a smile, even though the sight of him made me physically ill. Even though I wanted to scream and run and forget I’d ever met him. “I love you, Heath. That hasn’t changed.”

  He heaved a sigh. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear you say that.” He eyed me. “I can’t believe how lucky I am. That you understand why all of this had to happen.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I jutted my chin toward the drop-off. “So, you should do it.”

  He rolled the blanketed body to the edge of the rock slab, then straightened and kicked it off. I heard tree branches snap and the echo of them reverberate through the valley, and I turned away. I was feeling light headed. Nauseated.

  Heath hitched up his pants and wiped his brow. I knew he’d come back with Cecelia and roll her off the cliff like he’d done with Cerny. And then what? We’d head back down to his car and drive off into the sunset. Bonnie and Clyde, the millennial version. Only, how long would I have to wait to make my move? To run like hell and hope to God he didn’t catch me?

  He took my face in his hands. Smiled down at me. “He was a hell of a guy, you know, and I got a kick out of coming back here and watching him do his thing. Th
e fake couples, the video playbacks in the attic. It was what they did best, he and Cecelia—turned real life into a show.” His expression softened. “It’s worked out better than I could even have hoped. I love you, Daphne, and I would do it all again. I would go to the ends of the earth to hold on to you.”

  His hands were so cold and hard against my cheeks, and I’d begun to shiver uncontrollably. I needed to get away from this place. From this man. Just being in his presence was eating away at my sanity. I realized, suddenly, that I was looking past Heath to the stone cliff, out over the tops of the trees. I realized also that the precipice was only a few short steps away from where I stood.

  It would be so easy, I thought, just a matter of forward motion, of closing my eyes and letting gravity take me.

  “My dear,” he said.

  His face swam into focus again. It was the second time he’d called me that, and the word sounded saccharine coming out of his mouth.

  “You should hurry,” I said. “Go back down and get Cecelia. I’ll wait here.”

  He gave me a long look, his eyes two black unchanging pits, then left. When the sound of his crashing footsteps on the trail below had faded away, I sank to the ground, my back against a pine.

  Maybe, if I could just be patient, an opportunity would present itself.

  Maybe I didn’t have to end my own life to save it.

  I just needed to think. To plan.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I felt the air change, the temperature drop, and raindrops start to fall again. I pulled out the iPad. All the video files popped up—the archived footage from Heath’s childhood, but there were other files as well. Files simply labeled Heath. I touched one of them.

  This one was just an audio file, dated only a few days ago. I hit “Play,” and Cerny’s voice rang out.

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t plan it. I hadn’t been thinking or fantasizing about it, in any way. Not lately.”

  “Because of Daphne?”

  “I think so. But then it came back, like before. A fully formed idea—more detailed than the others, not just thoughts. More like plans.”

  “Describe what you did, Heath.”

  “I didn’t go home after work. I went out. To a bar. I had a drink, met a woman, and we left together . . .”

  I tried to swallow, but my throat felt raw. I felt like time was rushing past me, a huge rocketing freight train, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop listening to the tape. I couldn’t stop Heath from returning with Cecelia and throwing her off the cliff either. I couldn’t stop any of it. Sweat beaded under my arms and breasts.

  “Where did the two of you go?”

  “We got in my car and drove around for a while. We talked. I told her about my life—how I grew up. About you and Cecelia. About the time I hurt myself, and Cecelia held me in her arms.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “She felt sorry for me. She wanted me to have sex with her.”

  “Did you?”

  My heart slammed in my chest.

  “No. I drove her east of town, outside the perimeter, and down this gravel road. I explained to her that the only way I could connect with another human was to hurt myself or them. And then I told her that I was not going to hurt myself.”

  “Was she frightened?”

  “She tried to run.”

  “You stopped her.”

  “Yes. I stopped her. I strangled her. It felt . . . it was good.”

  “How so?”

  “I felt close to her. We talked . . . I talked to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of hours.”

  (laughter)

  “What’s so funny, Heath?”

  “I don’t know. That I thought you actually could do something to stop me from being me.”

  “I can help, if you’ll give me a chance. This doesn’t have to be a life sentence. But I can only do it if you’ll stay here at Baskens. I need you here, where I can administer intensive therapy. We need time and privacy—”

  “No. We agreed: one week to wrap up your study, and to help me stop the nightmares, and then you owe me. You help me tell Daphne. But there’s more. You need to do something about Cecelia.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s been talking to Daphne. Telling her things she doesn’t need to know.”

  Leaves rustled and twigs snapped just below the trailhead.

  Heath, back with Cecelia.

  I leapt up and gripped the iPad, my heart skittering wildly. He would pitch her off the edge of the mountain, and we would troop back down to our car and drive away from this hellhole. We’d head down the switchback roads, back through Dunfree, slowly, coolly, like he hadn’t just murdered someone—maybe two people—and I’d helped him dispose of their bodies.

  I couldn’t do this anymore. This was the end of the line. The end of everything.

  I walked to the edge of the cliff and closed my eyes, Heath’s crashing footsteps echoing in my ears. He was almost to the top. And he would expect to find me here, waiting.

  Friday, October 19

  Night

  When I see the green truck drive past, relief and elation wash over me. Luca is okay. And if I can get to him, I will be too. I burst through the door of the station.

  But it is a mistake.

  The minute I hit the sidewalk, I’m blindsided, football-tackled and pushed to the dark side of the building. I yelp once—a swallowed cry—then find myself looking up into Heath’s eyes. They glitter, catching the light from the street lamps lining the sidewalk behind us. Or maybe it’s the reflection from the sparkly cutout jack-o’-lanterns and ghosts tied to the lamps.

  Heath snatches the iPad I’m clutching and tucks it into the back of his jeans.

  “Is that why you’re running from me? Because of what you heard on that?” He’s in my face now, and I can see that even though he’s wiped most of Cerny’s blood off, a trace of it has settled into the creases around his eyes. The bloody crow’s-feet give him a demonic look.

  “Please, Daphne,” he says. “Can’t you see that running’s not a possibility for you now? Too much has happened. What you’ve done, what I’ve done . . . we’ve gone too far. We can’t go back.”

  I can’t answer. My throat feels used up, rusted out.

  “We have to face this together. Can’t you see that I’m the one person in this world who understands you? I read you like a book from the first moment I met you. I read you, and I gave you everything you ever wanted. A hero, a rescuer, the strong, silent type, right out of a romance novel, who wouldn’t ask too many questions, who wouldn’t get too close. I played it perfectly and you believed me. And now we’re a team. I know you. And now, finally, you know me.”

  I don’t answer, and I can tell it frustrates him.

  “I was going to tell you about who I was, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. That’s why I took the extra key from the Nissan. I couldn’t take the chance of you running away. But then Cecelia wouldn’t let up, constantly trying to meet with you, acting like the two of you were friends. I told her to stop—that it was my story to tell—but she wouldn’t listen. She was jealous of you, how much I loved you. She was going to tell you everything just to spite me.”

  He lets go of me and rakes his fingers through his hair. The crazy thing, the thing that doesn’t make an ounce of sense, that the most astute therapist in the world couldn’t untangle, is that even after all I know, I still have the impulse to comfort him.

  “I’m smarter than this,” he says. “I swear, I just miscalculated.” His eyes are wide pools of innocence. I wonder how he makes them look that way, how he fakes it so well. “You have to believe—I only killed the other ones, the other girls, because I wanted to prove to Cerny that he had hurt me. I thought it would make him feel guilty when I told him how he’d driven me to do it. But the man has no remorse. He did
n’t care, not about the girls, not about the fact that telling you about my past had to be handled very delicately.”

  The girls.

  Girls, plural . . .

  “You’re lying, Heath.” My voice is shaky. “You told him you wanted him to help you adapt what you did. Make it SUSTAINABLE.”

  He claps a hand over my mouth, but I claw it away.

  “You didn’t kill anyone to prove a point to Dr. Cerny. You did it because you enjoy it.”

  His eyes widen. “Okay, yes. Yes. See how bad he messed me up? Do you see? But it doesn’t matter, does it? The bottom line is, Cerny couldn’t cure me. I am who I am. We are who we are.”

  “What do you mean, ‘We are who we are’?”

  “What you did,” he says, like I’m unbelievably dense. “What you had to do to survive. It was just like me.”

  “What I did? You mean . . . hiding Chantal’s medicine?”

  He’s cocked his head and is regarding me with an amused expression.

  “No, Daphne. I mean what you did to Holly Idlewine.”

  “What I . . .”

  “At the bar last week,” he continues. “You flipped her off, then gave the bartender your credit card. You told him to charge all Holly Idlewine’s drinks to you.”

  He’s right. I did do that.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” I say weakly, but I know it doesn’t matter. He has been planning this day, this moment, for a long time. He is way ahead of me. I am outmatched in every way.

  “You paid for all her drinks because you wanted her so completely smashed that when she stumbled out of Divine, you could easily drag her to your car. Put her in the trunk and drive her to some dark, isolated location.”

  My lips part.

  “A nothing piece of property so far out in the country, nobody would ever think to look there. That’s where you tied her up. Tortured her and killed her.”

  I can no longer feel my fingers and toes. The electrical impulses in my skull have dulled to a low buzzing. It feels like my body is shutting down.

  “They haven’t found her yet, and they won’t until I want them to. What they do know is a woman named Daphne Amos, a woman who was once questioned in the suspicious death of a fourteen-year-old girl in a state park in north Georgia, paid for Holly Idlewine’s drinks the same night she disappeared.”