Hell to Pay

by Wendy Corsi Staub

Whenever he sees the rare glimmer of uncertainty in his pregnant wife’s eyes, Jeremy is terrified.

  You can’t screw this up. You can’t.

  Mustering a smile, he stretches a hand toward the plate and lifts the foil.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Having a cookie.”

  Looking relieved, Lucy smiles back at him. “You sure you want to take a chance?”

  “Why not? I’d say the odds are pretty good that there’s no evil queen hanging around here.”

  Watching them bite into the cookies she left for them, she smiles smugly to herself.

  “They have no idea,” she tells Chaplain Gideon. “Absolutely no idea they’re being watched.”

  Thanks to decades’ worth of furniture and artwork that fill Sylvie Durand’s apartment, the tiny cameras were easy to conceal in every room, transmitting images directly to her computer screen. She’ll be able to see what they’re doing, hear what they’re saying, any time of the day or night.

  This particular camera—the one that clearly broadcasts the image of the Cavalons sitting in their living room—is concealed in the scrollwork of an elaborate antique folding screen that sits directly across from the couch. They’d have to be looking for it to find it—and even then, it wouldn’t be easy.

  She watches Lucy brush crumbs off her hands and ask Jeremy, “Are you sure you don’t want me to ride back up to White Plains with you to return the truck?”

  “No, I want you to stay here and rest up so that I can have my way with you when I get back.”

  “Have your way with me? Who are you, Rhett Butler?”

  Watching them share an intimate laugh, disgusted by the turn the conversation has taken, she coils her hands into fists.

  Sometimes, the urge to destroy Jeremy and Lucy Cavalon is so powerful that she must pray for self-discipline. Soon enough, they’ll realize that there is no safe haven in this world—or in the next—now that Judgment Day is imminent.

  It had all happened just as she’d been promised it would, back when she was in prison and Chaplain Gideon was her only visitor, coming nightly to read the Bible with her. It was all there in black and white, every detail. If you read the Bible with care, you would know what was going to happen, and what you were supposed to do.

  Chaplain Gideon is the only one in the world who knows she didn’t die on the night when—as foretold in the Bible—the Tribulation began with a great earthquake.

  The prison collapsed and burned, rendering most victims’ charred remains unidentifiable. No one could have realized she wasn’t among them.

  “So what do you think?” Lucy is asking Jeremy, who’s munching a second cookie. “These are pretty good, right?”

  “I bet the poison apple was pretty good, too.”

  “They’re glib,” Chaplain Gideon whispers. “Both of them. Look at them.”

  Yes. You’d think they’d have learned, all those years ago, never to let their guards down.

  Killing them both, right here and now, would be so easy for her . . .

  “But Lucy must be allowed to live,” Chaplain Gideon reminds her, whenever temptation threatens to get the best of her, as it has in the past.

  Yes. He’s right. Lucy Walsh—who is carrying the Messiah in her womb—must be allowed to live—for now.

  She’s late.

  It figures: late on the one day Ryan finally managed to get out of the office and actually make it to his and Phoenix’s regular meeting spot with time to spare.

  Most nights, she’s already here waiting for him.

  Now, standing on the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, holding an open umbrella and a cellophane-wrapped bouquet from the Korean market, Ryan keeps an eye on the south and east. Phoenix will be coming from that direction; the company where she works as a corporate accountant is located in the East Forties.

  “I just like the West Side better,” she said over the phone earlier, rebuffing his suggestion that he meet her at her building for a change. He’d love to take her to his favorite piano bar, Mimi’s, over on Second Avenue, or maybe for tapas at Solera on Third . . .

  “We’ll do that someday. No rush,” she told him. “We have all the time in the world.”

  “Excuse me, sir . . .”

  Ryan turns to see a heavyset couple in fanny packs and wet hooded parkas. Tourists—the city is crawling with them right now. They’re here to see the Rockefeller Center tree and skating rink and the Rockettes and the department store windows—all the magic of Christmas in New York. All the magic the locals avoid because the streets and sidewalks are clogged with out-of-towners.

  “Do you know where Radio City Music Hall is?” the woman asks him, as her grouchy-looking companion wrestles with a soggy map.

  “Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.” Ryan points across Seventh. “One block over, take a right at the next corner, walk down six blocks, and you’ll see it across the street on the left.”

  “Didja hear that, Mel? It’s that way. I told you!”

  Mel turns the map sideways, then upside down. “Says here it’s on Avenue of the Americas.”

  “That’s the same thing as Sixth Avenue,” Ryan tells him. “We just don’t call it that.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “They changed the name to Avenue of the Americas years ago,” Ryan explains, “but it never caught on.”

  “How come?” asks Mel, who apparently comes from a place where the citizens call the streets by their official names, unlike these unruly New Yorkers.

  Ryan shrugs. “I guess we’re just creatures of hab—”

  “Come on, Mel!” the woman shrieks, grabbing her husband’s arm. “The light just turned! Let’s go!”

  Ryan smiles to himself, shaking his head as the man allows himself to be dragged into the crosswalk, off to see the Christmassy sights of Manhattan with his frenzied wife.

  Maybe someday that’ll be me and Phoenix—middle-aged, married . . .

  What will Ryan be like in twenty years?

  He can’t help but compare himself, as he often does, to his own father. Handsome and vibrant advertising executive Nick Walsh was at the top of his game when he was killed.

  What would he think of an anxiety-plagued, world-weary son who stopped growing taller halfway through his teens, can’t seem to hold on to a job, and still lives at home with his mother?

  At least Ryan has had the house to himself lately, with Mom and Sam still away for the winter. Maybe, by the time they come back, he and Phoenix will be ready to move in together.

  But as his older sister has been saying for as long as he can remember, you can’t count on much of anything in this world.

  He and Lucy have led vastly different lives since the family tragedy. Hers has been charmed by comparison; somehow, she’s managed to rise above whatever life has thrown at her.

  The unexpected eviction notice is a perfect example. Lucy and Jeremy barely had time to digest the news before they found themselves moving—rent-free—into a palace of an uptown apartment.

  To be fair, Jeremy’s grandmother had died to make that possible.

  And then there were the two miscarriages . . .

  Okay, okay . . . not so charmed after all.

  Lucy’s had her share of problems. They all have.

  Sadie finally straightened herself out and is in college, having been scared straight after seeing firsthand that drugs can kill. But for a while there, poor Mom had her hands full, and Sadie’s teenage troubles put a terrible strain on her relationship with Sam.

  So did mine, Ryan acknowledges uncomfortably. As an adolescent who’d just lost his father, he hardly welcomed a new man into the household. Thank God Sam was patient with him—with all the Walshes, really. He hung in there by Mom’s side through all the tough stuff, and now the two of them are finally enjoying
life together.

  Ryan wonders what his mother is going to say about Phoenix.

  He wants to think she’ll be happy he has a girlfriend, considering that she asked him just last summer if he’s gay.

  “What would you do if I was?”

  “You know it wouldn’t matter to me.”

  Yeah. He knew that. But—

  “It’s just that you haven’t dated anyone in so long . . . and I thought you might not want to come out of the closet because you were worried about what I’d say. But believe me, Ryan, I wouldn’t—”

  “Mom,” he said, amused despite his dismay, “I’m not gay. I’m just a loser no one wants to date.”

  That didn’t go over very well. Naturally, his mother did her best to build up his self-esteem. She’s an expert at it by now—Mom, his faithful cheerleader.

  I believe in you, Ryan . . .

  Chin up, Ryan, you’re doing great . . .

  Hang in there, Ryan, it’ll get better . . .

  It wasn’t always this way. Before he lost his father, Ryan was a well-adjusted, confident, athletic kid. He was the man of the house after Dad moved out, the one who looked out for his mother and sisters. He had friends, “went out” with girls the way you do when you’re thirteen . . .

  Then the bottom dropped out of his world. His father was murdered, and Ryan came perilously close to losing his own life as well. In the end, he’d survived—but not wholly.

  At first, it was as if he still lived inside the shell of the boy he’d once been, though his heart was shattered and his soul had lost its vitality. But as time went on, even the shell began to crumble, until he no longer recognized himself in the mirror.

  The emotional stress took a mighty physical toll—he bit his nails until they bled, his skin perpetually broke out, his height spurt ground to a halt, he lost—and then gained—too much weight, going from scrawny freshman to dumpy senior.

  His friends either developed a morbid fascination with the gory details of his own kidnapping and father’s death, or eventually turned their backs on him, fed up with his gloominess. The only friend who might have actually stood by him—Ian Wasserman—was forbidden by his mother to hang around with Ryan anymore.

  Janet Wasserman wasn’t just the town busybody, she was utterly paranoid. She seemed to think that the tragedy that had struck the Walsh household was contagious and might follow Ian back to the Wassermans’ huge brick house over in Glenhaven Crossing.

  By the time Ryan graduated high school, he trusted no one other than his mother and Lucy and Dr. Rogel, the child psychiatrist who taught Ryan coping mechanisms that never really helped.

  His grades suffered; he got into college by the skin of his teeth, and almost flunked out before dropping out—only to return when he realized he’d never make anything of himself without a degree.

  Hell, he hasn’t made much of himself anyway. He’s quit, been fired, laid off—and never felt a great loss about any of it. Career failure paled by comparison to what he’d lost in the course of his life.

  This latest job—in the benefits administration department of a large corporation—isn’t any more promising than any of the other random corporate entry-level jobs he’s had.

  He just can’t seem to figure out, even after all these years, who Ryan Walsh is or what he wants or where he belongs.

  Maybe this would have happened to him anyway. But he—and Mom—blamed his troubles, and Sadie’s, too, on what Garvey Quinn had done to their family.

  The fallen politician had died of a massive heart attack in a West Virginia federal penitentiary while serving a life sentence for his crimes.

  There have been plenty of days in the past fifteen years when Ryan feels as though he, too, has been sentenced to live out his days in hell.

  But that changed when Phoenix came along and fell in love with him. It’s too good to be true, and yet . . .

  It is true. She loves him. He loves her.

  Again, Ryan looks anxiously at his watch.

  Where is she?

  The text from Carl Soto comes through on her phone just as she’s headed out the door.

  Apartment vacated. You can move in whenever you’re ready.

  She smiles and hits the delete button.

  Oh, Carl. I’m not going to move in. It was never about that.

  I just wanted to make sure that Jeremy and Lucy moved out.

  And now they’re right here . . . right where I want them.

  Chapter Three

  Several days later, reminding herself yet again that vomit is a very good thing, Lucy kneels on the cold tile in front of the toilet seat in the bathroom where Sylvie Durand drowned.

  So morbid . . . but will she ever think of this room in any other way?

  It’s not like she ever saw Jeremy’s grandmother lying dead in the bathtub—her housekeeper is the one who found her—but Lucy pictures it every time she walks through the bathroom door. Or races through, as the case may be—and has been these last few mornings.

  Standing behind her, Jeremy gently holds her long hair back from her face and says, “This is brutal.”

  No, brutal was losing two babies.

  This is normal.

  She’d tell him that if she wasn’t busy dry-heaving.

  When it’s over, she gets shakily to her feet.

  “Are you okay?” Jeremy hovers, holding her elbow.

  “Yeah, fine.” She flushes the toilet, and reaches for her toothbrush yet again. Third time this morning. She barely made it out of bed without running to throw up.

  Jeremy stands by, watching her worriedly as she brushes her teeth. “That can’t be good for the baby. I’m worried that you aren’t keeping enough food down.”

  “I’m okay.” She wets the toothbrush again. “It’s really just been in the mornings.”

  “No, you got sick the other afternoon, too, remember?”

  Yes, she remembers—the day of the move. Jeremy left to drive the truck back to White Plains and she spent her first hour alone in the new apartment huddled miserably on the bathroom floor.

  “That was probably just because I ate too many of those sugar cookies. Or who knows, maybe they really were poisoned,” she adds teasingly, and her eyes meet his in the mirror above the sink. “I’m totally kidding, Jeremy. I was feeling sick before I ate the cookies.”

  “I know.”

  Finished brushing, she reaches for a towel to dry her mouth. “Anyway, you ate them, too, and you were fine.”

  “I know,” he says again, but his dark eyes still look uneasy. “I just wish we knew who brought them here. You’d think by now someone would have mentioned it.”

  “We haven’t even run into any of the neighbors yet, though.”

  “Yeah, that’s the point. They all seem to keep to themselves.”

  “It’s the city. What’d you expect, someone to come pulling a welcome wagon down the hallway?”

  “No, I just . . .” He shakes his head. “You’d think if someone came by with cookies, they’d want to hand them right to us. Or if they did leave the cookies for whatever reason, they’d eventually come back to introduce themselves and say, ‘Hey, I’m the one who brought the cookies.’ It’s bugging me.”

  “I don’t know why. It’s really no big deal.”

  “Maybe it’s because . . .”

  “What?”

  “Because it’s happening here. You know?”

  “Here in New York?” Lucy isn’t following.

  “No, here in the Ansonia. In this apartment. This is where my mother and Renny were when she came after them at one point, back when . . . it happened.”

  It . . .

  She . . .

  Jeremy doesn’t have to define his pronouns. Lucy understands exactly what he’s talking about, and whom.

  Nonetheless, she
’s surprised he brought it up.

  They never really discuss La La Montgomery, who’d seduced him when he emerged from his abusive childhood as a scarred and vulnerable twenty-one-year-old—then gone on a murderous rampage to torment his foster and birth families because she’d decided they’d failed him.

  “You know, my mother and Renny were trying to find someplace to hide that day because Mom had a feeling someone was after them, but no one believed her,” Jeremy says now—perhaps more to himself than to Lucy. “They thought she was just paranoid, because of what had happened to me when I was little. No one realized she was right until it was too late and my sister had been kidnapped.”

  Lucy wonders, suddenly, if he’s trying to tell her that he’s feeling like Elsa did back then—as if an invisible threat is lurking.

  But . . . that is paranoid.

  After all, Garvey Quinn is dead. He can’t hurt them now—and neither can La La Montgomery.

  “We’re okay,” she says softly, and touches Jeremy’s arm. “No one is out to get us anymore. That was a long time ago, and it’s over.”

  He looks at her in surprise, and she realizes she must have read him wrong.

  “I know that, Goose,” he says. “And anyway, I would never let anything happen to you.”

  She smiles, but his words bring hollow comfort.

  They both know that there are some things you just can’t control.

  Waking up, Ryan rolls over lazily to find an empty pillow next to his own.

  “Phoenix?” he calls, and hears the shower running in the bathroom down the hall. He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the mattress, noting—as he has ever since he started seeing Phoenix—that his mornings waking up in his childhood bedroom are probably numbered.

  At his age—twenty-seven—he should probably be relieved about that. And on some level, he is.

  It’s about time you got a life.

  But deep down inside, he feels . . .

  Wistful? Afraid?

  A little of both, maybe?

  He can’t quite put his finger on the problem. Here he is in love with a terrific woman who loves him in return. Everything should feel right in his world at last, but he can’t seem to shake the nagging feeling that it’s just the opposite.