by Lisa Unger
Langdon and I were trekking through the cold, haunted woods. He was grumbling and complaining, tripping every few feet.
“I’m not really the outdoor type,” he said.
“No kidding.”
Prior to our activities over the last few days, I don’t recall ever seeing Langdon out of doors. He was a man who seemed designed to dwell only in a library or classroom, possibly in a bookstore café, sipping some type of warm, herbal beverage from a travel mug. Not that I was throwing any stones; my feet were growing numb and that heavy fatigue that had settled over me felt like a weight on my back.
We came to the clearing and I saw the decrepit old barn sagging in the moonlight. It looked like it was built from cards, might crumble onto itself with a good wind. A shiver of dread moved through me. I froze at the edge of the trees and found I couldn’t go farther.
“He brought her out to a place like this and buried her body.”
Langdon stood beside me. He seemed to intuit that I was talking about my life, not about the life that had ended here.
“I watched him do it,” I went on.
I could see my father digging and digging while I sat shaking and crying. I kept watching the rug, willing it to move. Maybe she was still alive. But no, her skull was shattered. The shape of it; I’ll never forget that or all the blood. “I watched him bury her.”
He dropped an arm around me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
“Luke knows about me,” I said. “He must. A body buried in the woods? But how did he find out?”
It was a half admission. I didn’t tell him about the call, or how Luke was taunting me, what he had said. If I told him that, I’d have to tell him everything, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him what happened between Beck and me, and how Luke seemed to have some knowledge of that. There were so many layers to my lies, so many moving parts to my problems. I was becoming tangled in the fishing line of my deceptions.
“So that’s what this is about,” he said. “That’s why you’re so hooked into this game.”
I folded my arms around myself, gave a single nod of my head. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Only an instinct for self-preservation would have me this desperate to follow his clues.
“Who else knows about your past?”
“You,” I said. “Beck.” But of course neither of them knew everything. “Dr. Cooper.”
There was no connection between the three of them, no place for them to intersect and exchange information about me. Not that either Beck or Dr. Cooper would share anything about me with some strange kid even if the opportunity arose. I said as much. Neither of us made a move toward the clearing or the barn. It was spooky, even for me, who prided myself on not fearing anything.
“And what about the first clue?” asked Langdon. “I thought you said it didn’t have any meaning to you.”
“My father tried to kill himself in prison,” I said. “But, unfortunately, he didn’t succeed.”
I felt Langdon’s eyes on me. It was kind of a callous thing to say, and I could feel him analyzing my words, my demeanor, like any good shrink would. But there you have it. I wished my father were dead. He deserved to be dead. Not her; my mother should have been alive and none of this shit should have been happening. I couldn’t wait until they pumped his body full of poison. He’d turned my life into a horror movie, and now he wanted closure. Fuck him.
“So you think Luke knows that?”
“Apparently.”
“There was nothing else about that clue that resonated with you?”
I could feel him pressing at me. He didn’t buy that it was just about the suicide. And that’s because it wasn’t.
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
Again, the silence of his analysis. I turned to look at him and his face was paler than usual in the moonlight. I heard an owl calling, and something rustling in the leaves caused us both to start. A black cat hurried from the brush and crossed our path. Perfect. As if my luck wasn’t bad enough.
“You’ve forgotten the other possibility,” said Langdon. “That this is about Luke and not about you at all.”
But I didn’t think it was, not after the telephone conversation we’d just had. The moon moved from behind the clouds and the clearing was washed in a silvery-blue light. I moved toward the barn, and after a moment Langdon followed. He reached out for my arm.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he said. “We should just go.”
I shook him off and kept walking. Aunt Bridgette and Dr. Cooper were always going on about how hiding from who I was and what had happened to me was just a temporary fix. At some point, you’re going to have to face it, said my aunt. You’re going to have to own it. Until then, it owns you.
My aunt, my mother, and my grandmother had all moved and changed their names after my grandfather was convicted of the crimes he had committed. My aunt said that she used to lie awake at night, imagining what would happen if anyone discovered that she was the daughter of a murderer. Now she has a blog where she bares it all. It’s embarrassing and painful to read, but she’s received some positive attention for it. And she’s established a foundation to help the families of convicted murders. I think that’s why she’s so hell-bent on “helping” me. You should write about your experiences, put them on paper. There’s power in claiming and narrating your life. But I don’t want to see those words on the page. My story is more complicated than Bridgette’s. And I can’t just cast my mother and myself as victims and my father as the villain. It’s so much more complicated than that. We are all complicit in our own disasters, aren’t we?
But there was something inexplicable about Luke, about his trail of bread crumbs leading me into the forest—the pull was inexorable. Maybe it was time. Everything was rising up, and it was time to face it or be swallowed by it.
There was a hole in the ground, cordoned off by wooden posts and a frayed piece of crime-scene tape: Marla Holt’s grave. A door-size piece of wood had been laid over the opening, but it had clearly been moved aside a number of times. From where I stood at the edge, I could see beer cans and cigarette butts accumulating at the bottom. People had no respect for anything, it seemed. A woman had died here, been murdered and buried. And yet some people still apparently considered it a cool place to party.
I kept walking toward the barn.
“Seriously,” Langdon called. He was lingering at the edge of the grave. “That doesn’t look safe. Don’t go in there.”
But I kept moving and he didn’t come after me. He seemed frightened now. I always knew he was kind of a wimp; I didn’t hold it against him. I assumed he’d come in after me if he needed to, but there was no reason to act the hero until it was necessary. He was nothing if not completely rational.
I stood in the doorway and heard a whistling where the light wind outside was finding its way in through the cracks and gaps in the rotting wood. There was graffiti on the wall, the usual unimaginative scrawls: and (really?) and Liquor bottles, cigar and cigarette butts carpeted the dirt floor, a filthy, careless confetti. There was a little pit where someone had stupidly built a fire. I saw used rubbers, and a composition notebook covered in something red and gooey, magazines faded and swollen with moisture. The whole place was a testament to how badly people sucked, how stupid and boring they were, how totally base. Places of neglect always made me hate the world, how no one takes care of anything, or worries about the consequences of their actions. Beck would have understood that. I could have told her that and she would have nodded her head, and said, Fucking losers. But she had abandoned me, just like everyone else.
I walked a careful circle around the space and looked for something shiny and new in the sea of rotted debris, a straight line in a chaos of furled and uneven edges. The moon was bright, so I could see fairly well and I didn’t see anything. But part of me knew that Luke wouldn’t have put anything in here. He wouldn’t have liked it in the barn; the disorder of it would have unsettled
him. And I knew that because it unsettled me.
He wouldn’t have lingered looking for a good place to hide his clue, someplace obvious but not too obvious. I knew then where he’d left it. In the grave, of course. Because that was the worst place to hide it—the place that would most upset me.
When I returned to the grave, I saw that Langdon had moved aside the wooden cover and climbed inside. I found that very surprising. It takes some sangfroid to climb into an abandoned grave filled with who knows what kind of garbage. He was lifting himself out as I approached, and then stood panting from the effort, dusting off his pants.
“Why did you do that?” I asked him. Suddenly I had the strong sense that someone was watching us. I scanned the open field, the trees around us. Maybe the police were following me. It would make sense, since they seemed to think that I had something to do with Beck’s disappearance. Now they seemed to think I had something to do with Elizabeth, too. But I didn’t see anything in the dark shadows.
“I saw something,” he said. He was bent over, still out of breath. He was one of those thin people who were out of shape in spite of outward appearances. He was sedentary, a creature of intellect. His brain was so big, he hardly needed his body at all. At least that was my impression of Langdon. I remembered what Beck had said that night. I heard he has a boyfriend in the city. Was it true? I didn’t know; we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Usually there was a careful, respectful distance between us. This was as close as we’d ever been.
“What did you find?”
He had an envelope in his hand. I saw my name scrawled on the surface, but it had already been opened.
“You opened it?” I said as he handed it to me.
He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “Curiosity killed the cat and all that. I thought better of reading it, though.”
I snatched it from him. I kept hearing Luke raging about how I shouldn’t have told anyone and how it was our game.
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
He glanced toward the trees, around the clearing, as if sensing, as I had, that we were being watched.
“I don’t know,” he said. He offered a weak smile. “I’m your adviser. I’m advising you.”
He looked a little embarrassed, with a half smile and a hike of his shoulders. He put his hands in his pockets, keeping his thumbs out. He started rocking a little up on his toes. The result was that he looked boyish and unsure of himself. I unfolded the envelope and took out the sheet of paper. It was the stationery I’d seen in Rachel’s drawer, from the box she kept next to her journal—white linen with a silver-embossed edging.
“You didn’t read it?”
He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him. My hands were shaking, from the cold, from fear. The stress I was under was like a vise, slowly tightening every second. Dr. Cooper had left a note for me at the police station. She’d apparently waited until my aunt arrived. They wouldn’t let her in to see me, my aunt had said. I was supposed to call her when I got home. Don’t hesitate to call me. Don’t let the pressure get too intense. And don’t forget your meds.
The smart thing to do would have been to hand the letter to Langdon, go back to my dorm room, and let my aunt take me back to Florida—if the police would let me go. The truth was, I really couldn’t handle this. And Luke’s game seemed, in that moment, like it might be the thing to push me right over the edge.
I didn’t want to read it. I wanted to tear it up and throw it away. But, of course, by the light of the moon, I did read it. Curiosity didn’t kill only the cat.
You shouldn’t have let her touch you.
You shouldn’t have let her see.
You should have known all along that
You belong to me.
Where did she go when you left her?
Why did she run away?
Why is it that no one you love ever seems to stay?
She knows all your secrets.
She knows all your lies.
Guess what?
So do I.
Inside the envelope was the tiny gold star on a chain, the one I’d given to Beck, its clasp ripped away. Everything inside me went still. And I knew two things. I was in deeper trouble than I had imagined. And Luke Kahn had not written that note.
22
“There’s money,” I said. “Lots of money. And I’ll get it all when he dies.”
“How much?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “More than two million, I think. A lot of it went toward his defense and appeals. But there was a lot to begin with. Old money, generations of wealth which he inherited later in his life.”
“And it’s yours?”
“After he dies,” I said. “Or some of it when I turn thirty. Whatever comes first.”
Beck liked the idea of money, the way people who have never had money like the idea of it. They think it’s a kind of magic, a panacea, the cure for all of life’s woes. They imagine dream vacations and hired help, clothes and cars, yachts and jewelry. Only people who have money know the truth about it. It makes life easier, sure. But it doesn’t fix any of the important things that break and are lost. It doesn’t bring back the dead, or turn back the clock. It might look nice on the outside, but it doesn’t change anything on the inside. No matter where you go, or how you get there, like my aunt is so fond of saying, there you are.
“And the money is still his, even though he’s in jail?” asked Beck.
“Yes,” I said. “His lawyer manages it for him. But it’s not like they can just seize your assets because you went to jail. My mother’s family never filed a civil claim. No one ever saw the point in that.”
“The point is to get his money,” she said.
“They already have money,” I said.
The conversation annoyed me. Beck had her share of angst, but as far as any real grief was concerned, she was completely innocent.
I found myself thinking about this for some reason as I stood holding the paper in my hand. I didn’t take the necklace out of the envelope, let it sit in the crease at the bottom.
“What does it say?” Langdon asked.
I folded up that paper and put it in the envelope. There was a siren going off in my head, loud and long, more like an air-raid horn.
“It’s private,” I said. He must have read it. How could he have opened the envelope and not read the contents? It just didn’t seem possible.
“Really?” he said. “You’re not going to tell me?”
I started moving toward the car, and I heard him follow.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. This is none of my business. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
I had no idea what I was doing. I was flying blind. I just knew that Luke hadn’t written that note. I don’t know how I knew, something about the words and the rhythm, the maturity of it, the possessiveness. Luke was possessive, but in a childish, tantrum-throwing way. He would wrest what he wanted from you, snatch and grab. He didn’t have the self-control yet to tease and manipulate it out of you. Did he? He was still slamming doors and stomping up steps. He was still a kid.
But if not him, then who? To whom did I belong? Who knew all my secrets and lies? And did that person know what happened between me and Beck? Did they know where she was now? The game was no longer a game. It was a matter of life and death.
That night in the woods, my whole body came alive for Beck in a way I’d never experienced. I’d been wrapped up tight in an armadillo shell for as long as I had been aware of myself sexually. I was terrified of the touch of other people, of the reactions deep inside over which I had no control. Puberty came late, long after it was suspected to have passed me over altogether. It rocketed through me, setting my hormones ablaze. Desire was a sudden blast that sucked all the air from the world. And still I wrapped myself up tight. I wasn’t sure who I was, or what I wanted. So I chose to want nothing at all.
But Beck—she was my polar opposite. She wanted everything all the time. S
he’d been with boys and girls, and loved them both the same. Love is love, she said. We can all get each other off, one way or another. She was easy with her body, free with her touches. She would get naked anywhere with anyone. Sexuality radiated out from her like a beacon, and I couldn’t help but be drawn to her and repelled by her at the same time.
“Don’t be afraid of your own pleasure,” she whispered.
Her breath had been hot and wanton. She started tugging at my clothes, her mouth on my neck. The ground was cold beneath me, hard and uncomfortable. But she gave off so much heat, opening her coat and the shirt beneath. Her body looked like milk in the moonlight, glowing a translucent blue, and I couldn’t stop my hands from touching her. Skin contact … babies need it from their mothers, flesh on flesh. We all need it, all the time. But the virginal, the chaste, the sexually repressed—we hide our skin in long pants and shirtsleeves. We hide it, protect it, even as it burns to be touched. I could have died right there as Beck got to work on peeling back my layers.
“Don’t,” I breathed. “Please.”
But we both knew it was far too late for that. I was shuddering as she undid my belt buckle, the button on my jeans, unzipped my fly. I was a useless lover; I didn’t even know how to pleasure her. But she moaned at my tentative touch, pushed her tongue deep into my mouth.
She moved her hand slowly down my belly, and I reached up a hand to stop her. I grabbed her wrist hard.
But she just shook her head and smiled. “I know,” she said. “I already know.”
And I let her. I let her touch me. I let her know me. And it was so. Goddamn. Good.
A short while later, she would rip that star from her neck and toss it to the ground. How can you be so cold? I hate you. I fucking hate you. That was Beck, a tempest, powerful and unpredictable, thunder and lightning—so unlike me in every way.
