The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  She fumbled in the darkness, but didn’t turn on any lights until she reached Miles’s room. Even then, she only turned on a table lamp. She moved quickly in a room that was increasingly unfamiliar to her, but a room she knew the secrets of no less. Where he kept his extra keys, for example. Yes, they were still at the back of his sock drawer. That had never changed, not in all the years they’d been together and all the homes they’d lived in. She took out the keys and replaced them all, one by one, with extra keys of her own. Decoys so he wouldn’t know, unless he tried the keys in locks, that she had his extra key. The key to his office. The key to his desk. The key, she hoped, to finding out where her laptop and phone were.

  Outside again, it was dark except for the solar-powered lanterns along the path. It was windier than it had been earlier. Her hair lifted behind her. Miles’s office was in a small bungalow, just like hers. She climbed the stairs and tried two of the keys, then found the right one—the third. The door opened. Inside, it smelled like his cologne and the essential oil diffuser he kept running at all times. Even now, it was chugging away in the corner. They spent unfathomable sums on oils, bought from someone back home, a friend from the church.

  She turned on his desk lamp. She tried all the small keys she had, in his desk drawers and filing cabinets. None of them worked. She tried them again. She was running out of time. She stood in the center of the room, helpless and confused, a sheen of sweat on her brow. She glanced at his laptop, sitting on his desk. Then she walked over and opened it. It was password locked, of course. She tried a few combinations: his birthdate, her birthdate, Ruth’s. No luck. She bit back her tears and stood still. Think, Grace, think.

  His favorite Bible verse. Philippians 4:13. It didn’t work with no caps, it didn’t work with all caps. She tried one more combination, just a capital at the beginning and no colon—and she was in. But she paused when she saw a flashing notification at the bottom of the screen. Miles’s cellphone was linked to his laptop and a text was coming in.

  L: Miles, are you there?

  Grace stared down at the screen, wondering who L was. She scrolled backward in the stream of messages. There were hundreds of them.

  Miles: How is recruitment going?

  L: We have two more prospects. I’ll email you their profiles. They have money. They gave us all their banking info. How are things going there? Any updates?

  A few days later:

  Miles: I was there today. I watched her swim. I wore socks so I wouldn’t get that silly rash she always gets. I know she does it on purpose, but she’s not fooling me. She never has. Anyway, it’s perfect. I just need to find the right time.

  L: It will take great courage. But you’re a courageous man. That’s why we follow you. Now keep following her.

  Miles: Thank you, darling. And you are a courageous woman. All of you are. We’ll be here together, soon. I’m working as hard as I can. I’m looking for someone who can help you lead. It’s going to be big. You’ll need help.

  Grace’s palms had started to sweat. She had to wipe them on her skirt so she could continue to read back through the messages.

  ...Make it look like an accident.

  ...Accidental drowning.

  ...I followed her to the cenote. It’s perfect. But I need to wait for the right time.

  I have her laptop but need to find someone who can help me hack into her encrypted files. I know she has money somewhere. I know she lied when she said her mother left all her money to her childhood church...

  ...When she’s gone, I’ll be free. I can end all this and start doing what I really want to do.

  Our organization will be strong, it will be formidable. Together, we will embrace our destiny.

  Absurd, nervous laughter bubbled up in Grace’s throat. He had started a fucking cult. He was planning to kill her. She put her hand over her mouth, and the laughter turned into a terrified sob as she saw a message from Miles come up on the screen.

  Miles: I’m busy now. We have an activity going. But, our prayers have been answered. Our prayers for guidance and clarity in how to cleanse my life of abomination and sin. God has sent us a storm. There will be no question it’s an accident. The storm is how she will die. Leave it with me. And more tomorrow.

  As if to punctuate his words, the wind outside increased its strength and a gust of it caused the bungalow walls to creak. The power flickered and she stayed where she was. Then she opened the internet browser and searched in the news for “Mexico storm.”

  “You monster,” she said.

  Later, when she had read all she could, she went into her own room. She turned in a circle, wondering what she would take, if she could take only one thing. She opened one of her drawers and reached to the back of it. She found the letter she had taken from her mother’s home, after she had died. Dear Garrett, I’ll get right to the point, I am the son you and a woman named Barbara Moore gave up when you were teenagers. She folded it small and put it in her pocket. Somewhere, a part of her brother walked this earth. Somehow, knowing that made her feel less afraid. But only a little.

  Miles had the microphone. Ruth stood in the shadows behind him. Grace wasn’t there yet. Johanna felt uneasy as she sat with her husband, in front of a makeshift stage: just a platform with a curtain, dark red and billowing in the wind that was blowing into the open-air restaurant, a wind that had picked up as the evening progressed. The tablecloths were weighted down, but a glass blew off a table and shattered. There was only one waitress, an older woman. She eventually brought over a broom. She looked worried, maybe even afraid. Miles stood over her as she cleaned up the mess.

  Then, “We should get started,” Miles said. Johanna’s sense of unease increased. Still no Grace. She could feel the soothing balm on her ankle. Grace had been right, it had worked almost immediately. But, where was she?

  “This is my favorite night.” Delight in his voice, eyes behind his glasses dancing. “Our entertainment team...has taken the night off,” he said, curving his head toward the stage behind him. “But that’s okay, because I have a game planned. First, I need three couples to volunteer. The word of the night is trust. You have to trust me. Just raise your hands, then come to the front.”

  No one moved and as the moment dragged out, Miles’s smile faltered. Then Grace appeared. She was wearing a royal blue dress. It had long sleeves and flowed down past her ankles but there was a slit up one side and it flared out as she passed Johanna and Ben’s table. Johanna saw the golden skin of her leg, and the redness at the ankle, her polished toes in golden sandals. She felt a yearning so deep inside her that she almost rose from her seat.

  “You okay?” Ben asked from across the table. “You’re not getting another headache, are you?”

  “Maybe,” she lied and touched her hand to her forehead as Grace passed.

  “Have some water,” Ben said, pressing a frosty glass in her hand. She held it but didn’t drink. Ben kept watching her.

  Grace was standing beside Miles now. Her easy smile, the one she had flashed at them all so often, was gone. She was holding herself stiffly. And Miles didn’t acknowledge her as he usually did.

  “Three volunteer couples, please,” he repeated, and still, no one moved. In the flicker of candles in hurricane vases, Johanna could see that there was fear in Grace’s eyes. Even more than there had been earlier, when they had been in the kitchen with Miles.

  “We should volunteer,” Johanna said, and Ben looked surprised. “Come on, let’s go up there.”

  The stage was set up close to the edge of the restaurant, next to the sheer drop, and those hammocks she and Ben had lounged on, their first morning. It felt like a long time ago. Johanna looked to her left and to her right. At those sharp rocks at the bottom, lit by lanterns on stakes driven into the rocks. She looked at Miles, and she thought of the bruises. And now that familiar voice. You should be dead. I should kill you, like I kil
led her. She wished that voice would go away forever. She imagined herself pushing Miles over the edge, and had to battle that thought away. It wouldn’t help, to hurt in return.

  “All right, stand here,” Miles said, pointing to the front of the stage. Ben was beside her and Grace was at her other side, standing, looking out at the crowd.

  “Two more couples,” Grace said and just as she did, the lights flickered, on, then off, on—and then silence and darkness and a collective gasp of surprise filled the room.

  Who reached for whom? Johanna would wonder this later, over and over, how it came to pass that the smooth, recognizable palm of Grace’s hand pressed against hers in the darkness. The wind blew and she felt Grace’s dress dance across her calf. Grace’s voice, in her ear. “We need to meet. Come to my office after this. There’s something I have to tell you. I need help. We all need help.” They both squeezed and then let go, all in one moment, as a distant generator kicked in and the lights came back. In the light, they were standing apart, as if they had never touched.

  The power cut out again. But this time Johanna didn’t move. The waitress was shining a flashlight, talking to Miles animatedly. Another staff member had come out of the kitchen. He had found a flashlight, too, and a lantern, which he placed on a table. Miles was shaking his head, and his voice was rising. Johanna knew some Spanish but it was rusty. Yo lo hago. Es mi trabajo. “I’ll do it. It’s my job,” was what Miles was saying. While Johanna watched, the man from the kitchen threw up his hands, then untied his apron and tossed it on the ground in front of Miles’s feet. Miles smiled benignly as the man walked away, as if this sort of thing happened all the time with the staff.

  Then he turned to the small crowd. “We’re having some issues with power. It happens sometimes,” Miles said reassuringly, his voice loud over the rain outside. “We can’t run the power up here, apparently. Something is wrong with the generator. So tonight’s event is canceled. Everyone should go back to their villas, where, rest assured, the generators are working and you do all still have power. The path-side lanterns are still lit. Look down, you can see them, can’t you? We’ll try again tomorrow. Get into your robes, and have a cozy night. Meet back here in the morning. We might have a little tropical storm blowing in that we need to discuss, but nothing to be worried about at the moment.”

  All at once, a commotion at the entrance of the restaurant. The voice of Colin, Shell’s husband. Shell was standing beside him. “You’re not going to say anything, Miles?” Colin shouted. “You’re not going to tell anyone about the hurricane you’ve probably known about for days?”

  Johanna heard a sharp intake of breath from Grace, who was still nearby.

  The smile didn’t leave Miles’s face. But she saw him turn and mouth the words Get Security to Ruth, who had been hovering behind him.

  She saw Ruth mouth back, No one is left.

  Johanna began to feel afraid. She began to understand that, as terrified as she had been before, it hadn’t been enough.

  Someone in the crowd shouted, “What storm?”

  “What the heck,” Ben, beside her, muttered.

  “It’s really no big deal,” Miles said smoothly. “Just a little weather.” But Johanna didn’t believe him. It had happened right in front of her, in front of all of them, and they’d been too trusting to notice. Or, perhaps in her case, too distracted. She looked at Grace. But Grace was staring straight ahead. The idea that maybe she had known about what Colin was accusing was deeply unsettling. “Alongside our clients, Grace and I stay off the internet when we’re in session and only read the news on weekends, when we have a little time off. If there really is a storm, as you say, I had no idea. I just thought we were having a bit of weather. That a tropical storm might be blowing in, and that’s nothing we can’t handle. Now, please, can we get a security guard here? I’m sorry you all had to see this. Sometimes, clients get a little—”

  “But Ruth had internet,” someone said. “I was emailing my kids.”

  “She said it’s been out for a few days—”

  “Exactly. How could she have known?”

  “It’s all lies!” Colin shouted. He grabbed Miles by the collar and held his fist aloft while Shell, behind him, said, “Please, Colin, don’t, he’s not worth it.”

  Johanna saw Miles’s eyes shift briefly to Shell, as if just noticing her there, but then they moved away. He looked up at Colin’s fist, his expression still impassive. “Take your hands off me,” he said.

  “Wasn’t that the crazy lady, banging on everyone’s doors tonight?” Johanna heard someone murmur.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Ben to Johanna. “She was at our door, looking for you. She seemed really off. Do you think what they’re saying could be true?”

  “Look around you, Ben. We should have seen it.”

  “Miles would tell us. I trust him. He’s my therapist. He wouldn’t hide something like this.”

  Now two of the guests, the big man from anger management and another, were behind Colin, wrestling him away from Miles.

  “Don’t you see?” Colin was still shouting. “Miles is a liar! He’s insane!”

  “You’re the one who seems insane, bro,” said one of the men.

  “Jo, this whole thing is nuts,” said Ben. “They need to get that guy Colin away from him. And we should just go. Back to our room, like Miles said. We don’t need to see this.”

  “Ben, come on—”

  “But what’s going on?” someone else called out. “Is there a storm, or isn’t there? Is this guy just crazy? It does seem awfully windy. And the power...”

  “I’m going to make a call,” Miles said, now that Colin had been pulled back. “How about that? Why don’t you all just hang tight, and I’ll be back in a few minutes with some news.” He was pulling a phone out of his pocket.

  “Hey wait,” someone else said. “He has a smartphone. So how could he not have any access to the internet...?”

  “The internet wasn’t working,” someone else hissed.

  Voices rose around Johanna again but she heard only Miles as he said, “Grace,” his tone sharp, the phone still in his hand. “Could you come with me, please? And Ruth. My office. Now.” Grace stood still, staring at her husband. She shook her head. Johanna saw her mouth the word No. Then she turned and walked away from him.

  Johanna waited only a moment before she followed Grace, without saying a word to her husband, knowing that if he followed, she would say no, too.

  Sixteen-year-old Grace sits silent, unsure of what to say or if she can trust herself to speak. But she takes the pill and drinks the water because her throat was raw and sore for days after the last time. Her esophagus felt like it was coated in battery acid; by the end of it, she was throwing up bile, and she can’t do that again.

  “We spoke to your brother,” Pastor Kesey says.

  Grace closes her eyes. “I know,” she whispers. “He was really upset. I didn’t mean any of it. He didn’t hurt me. It’s just that you asked me and I said the first thing that—”

  “We spoke with your parents. And they’re on board with us having separate sessions with Garrett, to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. He needs to be held accountable.”

  “He hit me with a toy truck. We were kids. It was a stupid thing to tell you.”

  “But you did tell us. And we can’t ignore it.”

  “What do you know about my brother? You know nothing! He has his own problems, he’s struggling with his own stuff, he and Barbara gave the baby up for adoption, and my dad is really—he’s been hitting him a lot—and dealing with this has just thrown him—”

  “Are you saying your brother is mentally unstable?”

  “No! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying this has nothing to do with Garry, and that you need to leave him alone because he’s struggling!”

  “Grace,
leave this to us. We’re experts.”

  “Are you really? Have you done this before?” She sensed the same feeling rise up inside her that she had felt sometimes in church during Sacred Music Night, a feeling so intense it was almost rage. She had gone home and written in her diary, “I think I felt the Spirit move within me tonight,” but now she realized it was just raw human emotion, it was just passion, and you could feel it about anything, good or bad. “You are all sick. Something is wrong with all of you, not with my brother!”

  “Shut your mouth, child. The demon is coming through you. I’ve seen it in you before and it’s here again.”

  Grace is scared. Grace believes in heaven and she believes in hell and she’s scared. She wishes for simpler days. Days when her questions didn’t contain such fear. Sometimes, when she was younger, she would look down at her hand and try to envision it, and all of humankind, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Naked Eve and her temptress ways. But back to even before that, when there was only a great Nothing. She asked her mother so many questions that her mother finally made her an appointment with the pastor. He was kindly and patient, but not enlightening at all. “When there was nothing, where was God?” she had asked him.

  “God was everywhere and everything,” the pastor had said, sounding a little tired.

  “And now? Where is he now?”

  “He’s everywhere and everything now, too.”

  God is in the church basement now. She knows this. And he’s judging her. And she’s so scared. So she doesn’t say anything more. She let them chase the demon away—and it chased a part of her away, too. The part of her that her brother had known. Perhaps she was his only true friend in the world.

  What did they say to him, what did they do to him? She’ll never know. She never asked. He is mentally unstable, he is a sinner. So many labels, after the fact. And it’s true, a mentally sound person would not have done what Garrett eventually did: walked into the ocean in the middle of a storm, for the purposes of ending his own life. But the Grace in the church basement, in that moment, didn’t know the storm was coming. Not yet. She had no idea what her brother was going to do, in just a few more months. Had no idea that she was going to lose him.