The Caretakers

by Maxwell, Eliza

  That’s the last thing Tessa expects, but a far cry from the potential disasters she’s been imagining.

  “Mom, if you’re not up to it, we can postpone until you feel better. Reservations can be changed. I may have to call in a few favors to trade out the theater tickets, but that’s not the end of the world.”

  “I’m not postponing, Tessa. I’m not coming.”

  It takes a moment to process the full implication of her mother’s words.

  “But . . . why?” Tessa asks, taken aback by the wave of hurt that washes over her. “We always . . .”

  “Not anymore,” Jane says, her voice bristling with determination.

  Tessa is speechless. She casts her gaze around her apartment. It’s neat, tidy, and very, very solitary. Most of the time that’s okay, but the week her mother spends with Tessa in the city brings a warmth into the space that sustains her.

  It’s little enough to ask, especially since Margot has her the rest of the year.

  The thought is so selfish that Tessa determinedly pushes it away. She’s a grown woman, not a jealous child.

  “This year, instead of me coming to you, I want you to come home to Linlea,” Jane says.

  A cold sliver of fear pierces Tessa at these words.

  “This has gone on long enough,” Jane says. Her voice has a practiced rhythm. She’s rehearsed this. “It was a mistake to allow you girls to continue this ridiculous estrangement, and I should have put a stop to it years ago.”

  Tessa stands, wraps her arms around herself, and paces her apartment, an attempt to stave off the sensation of being cornered. She counts her breaths—one, two, three—a trick that sometimes holds the anxiety at bay, but it has little effect.

  “I can’t do that, Mom. You know I can’t,” she says quietly. “Please don’t ask me to.”

  Jane is silent for a moment. Tessa stops breathing altogether, hoping her mother will reconsider.

  “I’m not asking, Tessa. I’m telling you. I expect you here. One week, at home, with your family. Your entire family.”

  Unconsciously, Tessa reaches to her throat. She grips the brass key on a gold chain her mother gave her the day she left. Tessa knew then she wouldn’t be back for a very long time, if ever.

  Jane had slipped the chain with the small key from around her own neck and placed it on Tessa’s. It was the first time she could recall seeing her mother without it.

  “I’ve had this for as long as I can remember,” Jane said with a soft smile. “I’ve never known what it unlocks, but I suppose the mystery is part of the appeal. Take it with you, Tessa. Let it remind you that you always have a home to come to, no matter how far life takes you.”

  Even as her mother said the words, Tessa wondered if that was true.

  “Mom, I can’t come home. Not if Margot’s going to be there.” Her sister’s name catches in her throat.

  “You can. You will. And so will your sister. This is coming to an end.”

  “You act like any of this is up to me. It’s not.” Tessa’s hands are trembling, and she wonders if another drink might not be such a bad idea. “She doesn’t want me there.”

  “How would you know? The two of you haven’t spoken since you were eighteen.”

  “I know because we haven’t spoken. She doesn’t want me there!” Tessa takes a deep breath, forcing her voice into a reasonable tone. “And I don’t blame her. Would you want to see the person who almost killed you?”

  But even the truth, as inelegant and painful as it is, doesn’t deter her mother.

  “That’s an excuse you’ve hidden behind for far too long, sweetheart. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  3

  The next morning Tessa’s head is pounding. She’d like to blame the champagne, but suspects it stems more from her mother’s unsettling ultimatum.

  After a restless night, she drifted to sleep in the early hours of the morning only to jolt awake gasping for breath. She was falling, her sister’s name stolen from her lips by the wind rushing past. It’s a dream she’s had many times.

  But that isn’t how it happened. It wasn’t Tessa who fell.

  She squints at the coffeepot, presses a few random buttons, hoping for the best, then fumbles in a drawer in search of a bottle of aspirin.

  There’s a mountain of work waiting in her office. Contracts to look over for the upcoming project, production notes to file for the previous one. Phone calls to make and appointments to keep. Tessa’s not up to facing any of it.

  Her mother has turned on her. Turned on her and her sister both. Ironically, the person Tessa would most like to talk to about that, the one person who would understand, is Margot.

  She sighs. Twisting off the cap of the bottle, she palms two white pills and washes them down with water from the tap. It’s not the first time she’s ached to hear her sister’s voice. It won’t be the last.

  Her phone buzzes, vibrating its way across the kitchen counter. Tessa groans and briefly considers tossing it into the East River. But the satisfaction of watching it hit the water, even in her fantasies, is swept away by the same sensation of falling that overwhelmed her dreams.

  She turns and checks the number. It’s not Margot. Of course it’s not. The logical part of her stopped expecting that years ago, but she’s yet to convince her heart.

  Tessa presses the button to accept the call.

  “Morning, Anne,” she says, with a forced brightness that she doesn’t feel.

  Tessa’s false cheeriness is wasted. The greeting is barely out of her mouth before her assistant says in a strained voice, “Have you been online yet?”

  “No, I just got up. Why?”

  Anne pauses. “You might want to sit down.”

  The video is shaky is Tessa’s first inane thought, and the last coherent string of words she’s able to pull together as two minutes and seven seconds of deepening horror play out across her computer screen.

  When Oliver Barlow’s face comes into focus, she gasps. How long has it been since she’s seen him? A year? More? His face is gaunt and pale. Prominent cheekbones stand out above a scruffy, unkempt beard. Locks of greasy hair frame red-rimmed eyes.

  It isn’t the face of a free man, living his best life. It’s the face of a prisoner of war.

  “My name . . .” His raspy voice breaks, and he stops to lick his lips. His gaze darts at something unseen behind the camera, then he starts again. “My name is Oliver Barlow. You think you know me, but you don’t.”

  Oliver turns and stares directly at the screen, his eyes boring into Tessa’s.

  “To Chief Winters and the Bonham Police Department, I was a problem to deal with, so they dealt with me, even if they had to break a few laws to do it. They locked me up and patted each other’s backs. But they got caught. You’d think cops would make better criminals, wouldn’t you?”

  Oliver chuckles, but there’s no humor in it, only a deep and seething anger Tessa’s never seen before.

  “Then for a while, I was a story. An underdog to champion, to show off your virtue, and, most importantly, to sell, sell, sell. But hey, who am I to complain? The crooked cops got called out, and a judge let me out of jail. Everybody loves a happy ending, right? RIGHT?”

  Tessa flinches when he yells the last word, his palpable rage a force that feels directed at her personally.

  “But there’s one problem. Nobody cares what happens next. Nobody gives a damn when their favorite underdog is set free, but the world has closed up around the place that was meant for him. Nobody cares when there’s no life left for him to go back to.”

  Tessa tastes the coppery tang of blood as she bites down on the inside of her cheek.

  “Where are the reporters now, huh? The movie people? The lawyers working pro-fucking-bono to spit-shine their own reputation? They got theirs. They got their happy ending. And me? I’m supposed to be grateful for the scraps of a life and shut the hell up.

  “But I’m not your pet. You wanted me to sit and sh
ake and roll over like a good dog, but I won’t do it anymore.”

  A slow grin spreads over Oliver’s face, and Tessa’s skin prickles.

  “You took everything from me, Winters. Everything. Now it’s my turn.” He leans close to the camera, and his voice drops to a low, satisfied whisper. “Do you know where your daughter is, Winters? Pretty little Valerie? I know where she is.”

  Tessa struggles to breathe.

  “You won’t find her alive. But if you do what I say, exactly what I say, because make no mistake, I’m the one in charge now, I might tell you where to find her body.”

  Oliver looks straight into the camera. Tessa doesn’t recognize the man staring back at her. She dives for the wastebasket beneath her desk, but even the sounds of retching can’t block out the final words of Oliver Barlow’s message.

  “Then you can bury her like you buried me.”

  4

  Tessa, clammy and dazed, looks up and realizes nearly an hour has passed. Time she’s spent wide-eyed and sour-stomached. Her pajamas are soaked with sweat, and the hangover of earlier is a child’s tantrum compared to the boulders shifting and grinding between her temples.

  Oliver poured a trail of gasoline and lit a match, and the world is burning in his wake. Tessa is burning with it. She scoured the news sites, searching for every detail. Each story is frustratingly the same.

  The video was sent directly to the media, to multiple outlets, ensuring that even if some of the networks found the ethics to contact the police rather than broadcast it, at least one of them was bound to leak it. And they did.

  The footage was sent from Valerie Winters’s phone, which was later found in her empty apartment along with clear signs of a struggle.

  Chief Winters’s daughter is only twenty-five years old, a student studying to become a vet.

  The photograph that runs in most of the stories, likely pulled from a social media account, shows a fresh-faced girl with a large smile. Her shoulder-length hair, cut into choppy waves, is the same deep brown shade as her eyes.

  Valerie Winters was last seen leaving a friend’s party late the previous night.

  Questions lash at Tessa. Her thoughts circle back to the call from Ollie she ignored the night before.

  Did he reach out to Tessa as he was waiting outside the girl’s apartment? Or was he already inside? Did he kill Valerie, then, with blood on his hands, dial Tessa’s number? Would anything be different if she answered his call? If she answered any of the calls he made to her in the last few months?

  She has no answers.

  Facts are scarce, the investigation ongoing, and most articles resort to a rehash of old information. The Morley case is brought up again and again. Inevitably, someone suggests that, given the latest developments, it appears the state had the right man in prison for the murder of Gwen Morley all along. At least until a popular documentary convinced the public of his innocence, prompting a new investigation and the eventual release of a monster.

  She slams her laptop closed.

  This can’t be happening. But even as the words float across her mind, Tessa recognizes them for the denial they are. The low-level dread that normally sits warm and ready at the base of her stomach is awake now and roaring to be fed.

  Oliver Barlow is a killer.

  She staked so much on that statement being false. Her career, her reputation.

  The life of a girl she never met.

  Tessa reaches for the wastebasket again. The brass key her mother gave her swings forward on its chain, clinking against the trash can.

  There’s nothing left in her stomach.

  Oh God, what has she done?

  5

  KITTY

  A world away, deep in the northern Pennsylvania forest, a small wooden chest lies in darkness, hidden beneath the floorboards of an ivy-covered cottage. It has brass fittings and a lock with no key.

  Two old women sit in the early afternoon light on the front porch. Deirdre, the eldest, holds a pile of green beans on an apron across her lap. She snaps the ends off each before dropping it into a bowl by her side. She works slowly, her movements weighed down by age and the onset of arthritis she refuses to acknowledge.

  The other, Kitty, is clearly younger, but not so much as one might think. Generous genetics and a sunnier disposition have left her skin less ravaged by time.

  Kitty holds a bone-handled paring knife in one hand and an apple in the other, such a glossy red it borders on profane. Not a speck of yellow mars the relentless crimson.

  With a practiced gesture, the younger old woman slices just below the skin and turns the fruit in a slow, smooth motion that peels away the red in a continuous ribbon, revealing the ripe flesh beneath.

  “Do you have any regrets, Dee?”

  She hadn’t realized the question was forming until it fluttered past her lips into the silence between them.

  A slight break in the rhythm of the beans snapping is the only indication her sister hears the question.

  “I regret I didn’t add cinnamon to the grocery order,” Deirdre eventually says. “The bit we have will have to do.” She eyes the number of apples Kitty has left to peel. Her own hands don’t stop their work. “I’d like to get that pie in the oven so it can cool before suppertime.”

  Kitty makes no effort to increase her pace.

  Deirdre squints into the distance where the trees stand between the two of them and the world outside.

  It’s always been this way. Deirdre never looks back, even now, with far more of their lives behind them than in front.

  “You’re an irritating woman,” Kitty says, common words with no heat behind them.

  “Aye,” Deirdre replies, but her eyes are still trained on the woods, an extra furrow in her wrinkled brow. “Supposed to be a storm coming.”

  Kitty follows her gaze, but there’s no sign of what, or who, her sister is hoping to see.

  “He’ll be back when he needs to be,” Kitty says. “Aiden knows these woods as well as you or I.”

  Deirdre frowns. “Aye, and I know him. He’ll be putting off coming home, dreading the rain keeping him indoors. He’ll drag up at the last possible minute, soaked to the bone and tempting pneumonia.”

  Kitty shrugs. “At least you’ve gotten a head start on being mad about it.”

  Her sister glares at her. Kitty smiles sweetly. Deirdre snaps the last of the beans with more force than necessary and stands, brushing off her apron. She’s a tall woman, where Kitty is short and plump. Deirdre is all angles and corners, age having carved away any softness she’d once had. She leans down to pick up the bowl.

  “Try to finish those apples sometime before the resurrection, will you,” she says as she walks past Kitty toward the door.

  “Quit fussing,” Kitty says. “If Jesus comes back by suppertime, he’ll have a nice apple pie waiting. With not quite enough cinnamon.”

  “Well, I hope he has enough sense to come in out of the rain, or we’ll be nursing two men with pneumonia.” Deirdre slams the door behind her. Her footsteps echo across the worn floorboards as she heads to the kitchen.

  “You can’t catch pneumonia from getting wet, Dee!” Kitty calls. “Doctors discovered these crazy things called viruses, and they don’t travel by rain.”

  Kitty smiles when the window between the kitchen and the porch closes with a bang. She turns back to the apple in her hand, but movement catches her eye, and she lifts her gaze to follow it.

  They’ve been there a while now, the figures playing hide-and-seek along the path that leads to the big house. They laugh with an abandon that only comes with youth, and the sound brings Kitty’s heart a rare kind of joy.

  Deirdre didn’t see them, of course. She never does, and Kitty’s learned not to ask. She doesn’t like to upset her sister.

  It’s a shame, though. Such wild, lovely children.

  She watches them until worry begins to nibble at the edges of her enjoyment like a hungry mouse. They have no idea how beautiful they are.
An overwhelming need to protect them comes over her. To warn them.

  From what, she doesn’t know.

  The smallest one spies her, then stops to wave.

  Kitty raises her hand to wave back, but they’ve gone.

  She drags in a sharp breath and glances down at her other hand. A line of red, the exact shade as the glossy apple, wells up across her palm where the blade of the knife has sliced her.

  Cursing her carelessness, she squeezes her hand tightly into a fist and rises to get a bandage before Deirdre notices.

  Her sister worries too much.

  6

  TESSA

  Tessa can’t catch her breath. She’s left with nothing but her own tangled emotions, and there’s little peace to be had, alone with her churning thoughts.

  It’s a familiar feeling, the sensation of breaking apart in slow motion. It scares her, knowing where it can lead if she can’t get a handle on herself.

  She’s got her feet firmly on the road to a setback.

  Setback. Her therapist’s term for it. Privately, Tessa thinks the phrase sucks. It’s nothing so benign. It’s a descent. A descent into a dark, lonely place. A place she’s terrified of being trapped again.

  Because this time, she won’t be alone. The image of Valerie Winters will be there to keep her company.

  Her intercom buzzes for the fourth time in the last half hour. The first three were reporters. This one, thank goodness, isn’t.

  “Tess? Tessa, it’s me. Can you buzz me in?”

  The voice is distant, mechanical, but there’s no doubt who it is. She’s been expecting him.

  She told him not to come, but she didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t have called if she hadn’t wanted, needed, him to come.

  She presses a button to open the door downstairs.

  When the knock on the door comes, Tessa hesitates. This is the reason she called. A friend. Support. A lifeline.

  “Let me in, Tessa,” says the voice on the other side of the door. “I know you’re there.”

  She sighs. She’s not fooling anyone. Not even herself.