Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

  “My mother,” said Selena. The edges of the world felt fuzzy and gray. And Pearl was backing away. “My father. They told me everything that happened to you. Everything you did. I know you. I see you. All of it.”

  Pearl looked at her, a smile on her lips, something like kindness—or was it pity—in her eyes. There was a connection there. She’d felt it the moment they met on the train. It was true; it ran deep. But it was also dark, flawed, not sustainable in the real world.

  Pearl looked over her shoulder toward the sound of the sirens, then back to Selena.

  “Whatever happens next,” Pearl whispered, “the worst of your problems is about to go away. For good.”

  Selena closed her eyes. She thought for just a moment.

  “What about Geneva?”

  But when she opened her eyes again, the room was filling with light and shouting voices.

  And Pearl was gone.

  FORTY-TWO

  Selena

  She lay in the back of the ambulance, her house alit in flashing red. She counted—two other ambulances, four police cars, two unmarked sedans. There were twenty men and women, at least, cops and paramedics, moving about her lawn and house, calm in their work. Outside the cordoned area, neighbors collected in their pajamas—arms folded, faces worried. A crowd gathered around her house in the middle of the night, a chorus, an audience to the destruction of everything she’d built and thought was hers. But she felt lifted out, apart from it all. Maybe it was the meds they gave her.

  Detective Grady Crowe sat across from her, quiet, gaze intense.

  Her body ached. Her jaw, where he’d hit her so mercilessly. Her throat, where Graham tried to strangle her and nearly succeeded. Her shoulders, her back, her hips. Her heart. She pulled the blanket they’d given her tight around her shoulders.

  She watched as Graham was wheeled out in a stretcher, flanked by two police officers. She couldn’t see his face; she leaned back so she wouldn’t have to see him at all. Will, she thought, was still in the house, managing the situation. As much as a situation like this might be managed. It was a runaway train, decimating everything in its path.

  She’d told Detective Crowe everything—from the moment she met Pearl to the moment her sister had saved her life. She told him everything that Cora told her, too. How Pearl had been shadowing their lives for years, and Selena never knew she existed. She let it all go. Every secret and lie. He’d scribbled it all in his little book.

  “I had a visitor today,” said Crowe. “A man named Hunter Ross, a private detective.”

  The world was fuzzy and unreal, his voice sounded far away. But she listened.

  “He was the cold case investigator hired when a woman named Stella Behr was murdered and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Pearl, went missing, more than ten years ago now. A man in her mother’s life was suspected of the murder, and of Pearl’s abduction. Their case went unsolved and the department brought Ross in to keep following up leads.”

  Selena let the information sink in. She thought of the girl her mother described, thin and feral, following Cora in the grocery store. Someone on the outside, looking for a way in. Or maybe Cora was right about Pearl. That she was just a destroyer. Someone in pain, looking to give pain to others. She could be either. Or both.

  “Our father abandoned her,” said Selena. “Then her mother was murdered, and she was abducted?”

  Cora had never said anything about Stella, or Pearl’s suspected abduction. Maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe it was just another thing she hid. So many layers, so many secrets buried deep. Pearl was a child. Who took her? Where was she all those years before she showed up in their lives?

  “Ross was never able to find them,” said Crowe. “A man named Charles Finch, a con artist, had apparently worked his way into Stella Behr’s life in the months before her murder. But he was a ghost. Hunter Ross believes that Finch killed Behr, and abducted Pearl, raised her as his own.”

  Selena thought about Pearl, that darkness in her. No wonder.

  “But, believe it or not, that’s not who he came to see me about today,” said Detective Crowe.

  He took a picture out of the file he gripped in his hand. There was a picture of a young girl with golden curls and sad eyes. She was many years younger, but Selena recognized her right away. The paper shook a little in Selena’s hand.

  “This is Gracie Stevenson,” said Crowe. “Her mother was also murdered, and she, too, has been missing since that night.”

  “It’s Geneva,” said Selena.

  Crowe nodded.

  “Same scenario, a man worked his way into the life of Gracie’s mother, Maggie. Maggie was strangled in her bed, just like Stella. And Gracie disappeared. When Hunter Ross saw Geneva’s picture on the news, he recognized her. All these years, he’s kept investigating both cases, following stories he heard in the news, pinging the system for any new DNA evidence. Nothing until now.”

  Selena struggled with it, how the pieces fit together.

  “So, they were connected,” said Selena. “You think the same man abducted them both?”

  “This woman,” said Detective Crowe, holding up a picture of a young Pearl, “is the sister that reported Geneva missing in the first place.”

  “They were working together,” said Selena. How could that be? Selena met Geneva on the playground. She alone had invited Geneva into their lives. But maybe that was the plan all along. Maybe that was all part of a long game that started years ago.

  Crowe went on. “Maggie Stevenson’s murder was never solved. Gracie was never found. And the man who was part of their lives, they knew him as James Parker, another ghost. Not even a picture of him left behind. They all disappeared.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Outside, the volume was coming up, voices raised a little, news vans arriving.

  “Charles Finch, Pearl, Grace—they’re con artists,” said Crowe. “Working their way into people’s lives and taking what they can get.”

  Con artists. It seemed like such an old-fashioned idea, something almost amusing, harmless, a minor scam like a shell game or three-card monte. An email that you might get from a Nigerian prince. Not this. Not lives destroyed, women hurt and killed.

  “So, Geneva works her way into my home, becomes our nanny, then seduces Graham with the intent to blackmail him. And Pearl? What’s her role in this? And why?”

  “That I can’t answer,” he said. “Only she knows what kind of game she was running, what she wanted. Maybe she was just trying to hurt you.”

  There was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Selena thought. More than a game with my life?

  “My guess is that they didn’t know what your husband, Graham, was capable of. They misjudged him. Geneva tried to blackmail him like she did Erik Tucker. And he killed her.”

  A jolt of sadness, a rush of tears to her eyes. She moved to wipe them away.

  “You think she’s dead,” said Selena.

  Crowe rubbed a hand over the crown of his head.

  “We have some footage of Graham disposing of something in a dumpster a few miles from his brother’s apartment the night Geneva went missing. We have the body of another young woman connected to your husband. He has a history of violence against women. And tonight you barely escaped him.”

  Her husband was a monster. She heard Pearl’s whisper: The worst of your problems is about to go away. Was there compassion and tenderness in Pearl’s voice when she said it? Had Pearl, on some level, thought she was helping Selena?

  The ambulance Graham was in pulled from the drive, sirens whooping to clear people and other vehicles, then going silent as it proceeded out of view. A police car and an unmarked sedan followed. Crowe’s gaze traced the vehicles.

  “Do you have anything else you need to tell me, Selena? About Graham, about Pearl Behr, about Geneva?”

  “
No,” she said. But there were things she wanted to say. Things he probably wouldn’t understand.

  Geneva was a blackmailer and a home wrecker, but she was a good nanny; she took great care of Oliver and Stephen. She tended to them, played with them, and cared for them as well as Selena could have. The boys loved her; and they were going to miss her. Under other circumstances, Pearl might have been a good friend, a good sister; and she’d saved Selena’s life, even as she’d essentially destroyed it. Graham had been a good husband much of the time, a decent father. She’d loved him, forgiven him, believed in him. Then, he’d tried to kill her, take her from her children.

  They were bad people who had done unconscionable things. But there was more to them than that. Detective Crowe could never understand all the layers, all the facets, all the glittering good folded in with the bad. How complicated we all are; even the worst among us might still be worthy of love.

  “No,” she said again. “You know everything I know.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Geneva

  The footsteps grew closer, and Geneva held her breath. She’d had a lot of time to think, about the Murphys, the Tuckers, all the things she’d done. She’d made some decisions.

  Closer, louder. Then she heard the outer door unlatch. It swung open with a squeal and then someone was coming down the stairs to the cellar. She roused herself from the cot, sat up.

  Pearl turned on lights and came into view, stood slim in the doorway.

  “You can’t just lock me in here every time you don’t know how to handle me,” said Geneva.

  The truth was, she didn’t hate it down here in the root cellar. At least it was quiet. There was time and space to think about all of your mistakes, how you wanted to change, what you would do if you ever got out. She’d made some decisions.

  “You were getting squirrely,” said Pearl. “You had to be managed. Be happy you were in here. Things got ugly.”

  “Are the boys okay?” she asked, feeling a stutter in her heart. “Selena?”

  A shrug, a wrinkled brow. “They will be.”

  Pearl approached, boots knocking on the floor, the sound echoing off the concrete walls. She carried a heavy black duffel bag on her shoulder.

  “I’m done,” Geneva said. “I’m done with this. For real.”

  Probably she should have just kept it to herself. She couldn’t best Pearl in a fight; that had been proven time and again. What was to keep her from locking Geneva in here forever?

  “You know what?” said Pearl. “So am I.”

  Geneva rubbed at her eyes. She was exhausted. How long had she been in the root cellar? Maybe not more than a day or two. It felt like a month.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “You’re worse than he was. He never locked me up.”

  There was a catalog of things that Pop had done to each of them. But the truth was, he was the closest thing to a father either of them had ever had. A terrible, manipulative, murderous, con artist father, who had loved them each in his way.

  “It’s not so bad down here,” said Pearl. She wore that smile she had, sphinxlike, always laughing at a joke no one else got.

  “It’s a dungeon, bitch,” said Geneva. “You locked me in the dungeon to keep me quiet and run your little game. That’s fucked. You know that.”

  “You always had a flair for drama.”

  Pearl dropped the big duffel on the floor.

  “What’s that?” asked Geneva, eyeing it suspiciously. God only knew what was in there.

  “Half,” she said. “Half of everything I made with Pop and since. There’s a clean identity from Merle—driver’s license, passport, and Social.”

  Geneva dropped to her knees from the cot and opened the bag. It was stuffed with cash. How much? A lot. Enough. She opened the envelope that lay on top.

  Alice Grace Miller. Nice and simple, just like Pop would have wanted it, with a nod to her past self. A girl that was so long gone, Geneva didn’t even remember her anymore.

  “You can go anywhere now,” said Pearl. “You can be anyone. You’re free.”

  Geneva looked up at Pearl—who were they to each other? Sisters of circumstance, Pearl had said once. Geneva figured that was right. She searched herself for feeling, found something that was like a grudging affection, a kind of pact they’d sworn without words. They’d suffered together, knew each other. It bound them somewhat. They’d keep each other’s secrets, take them to the grave.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Pearl said. “I’ll find my way.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Come on,” said Pearl. “I’ll give you a ride. We’re a long way from anywhere.”

  There was something about the root cellar. It was cold and dark, but it was safe, predictable. Light shone in from outside from the door Pearl had opened, bright licking at the dark shadows. The whole big world was out there. Every place. All the possibilities of what her life could be, and damn if there wasn’t part of her that just wanted to stay hidden.

  Instead, she stood and found her shoes, her jacket. She shouldered the bag and followed Pearl outside, shielding her eyes against the blinding sun. Pearl closed and locked the door behind them. It was all but invisible in the brush.

  “If the shit ever hits the fan,” said Pearl, “just come back here, to the cellar. Text me.”

  She nodded. But she was never coming back here. She was never going to text Pearl.

  Just a few feet away, they’d buried Pop and the woman who killed him. Years ago. Five minutes ago. The grave site wasn’t visible to the eye, lost, grown over by time and forest detritus. Geneva wasn’t even sure where it was until Pearl stopped there for a moment, staring at the ground.

  “I’m all done here, Pop,” she said.

  There was something small about her voice when she said his name, something young and soft. But her face was set in the hard lines of determination. And after a moment, she kept walking.

  Geneva—Alice—climbed into the car. As they drove from the property, she looked in the rearview mirror to see billowing clouds of black smoke where the house would be. The place Pop had brought her that night so long ago. Where she lived with Pearl after Pop was gone. It was their home, in a weird way.

  She was about to say something, to ask Pearl what she had done.

  But, of course, she’d burn it all to the ground.

  That was her way.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Pearl

  The divine nowhere of airports. The ultimate liminal space, neither here nor there. Not truly in the place you’re leaving, nor in the place you’re going. A bardo. Here there might be a breath, a pause between selves, between worlds.

  Her last burner phone. She found a section of seats in an empty gate and dialed. The other line rang and rang again. It was early. She always took the earliest flight. Outside the sky was still dark, other travelers were dazed and groggy, with their smartphones and coffees taking up all available bandwidth. Not Pearl. She was wide awake.

  In the reflection of the big window looking down on the tarmac, there was a slim woman with a honey-colored bob wearing black leggings, turtleneck, a bomber jacket, black running shoes. Her makeup was light and natural; her belongings, like her outfit, all basic black. She amped down her beauty for this last journey—no lipstick, no perfume, just a light brown eyeshadow. Not much skin exposed, glasses she didn’t really need.

  Emily Pearl Miller. Her final identity.

  She’d have to explain to Ben that her name wasn’t really Gwyneth. He’d understand why she felt she needed to protect herself. You can never be too careful with a man you meet over the internet. There were cons and criminals, bad men, lying in wait everywhere.

  She was about to hang up when the call engaged.

  “Hunter Ross.”

  If he’d been sl
eeping, he didn’t sound it.

  “It’s Pearl,” she said, “Pearl Behr.”

  The name sounded off, felt awkward and stiff in her mouth like a lie. But it was the truest thing she’d said in a while.

  There was a drawn breath, a moment of surprised silence. Then, “Hi, Pearl. I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”

  “I know,” she said. “Thank you. I think.”

  He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”

  There were things she wanted to know, and things she wanted to tell. Hunter Ross was the only person she trusted.

  “Did you ever find out who he really was? Charles Finch?”

  “I never did,” he said. “Don’t you know?”

  “No,” she said truthfully. “He had so many identities even before I knew him. I’m not sure he remembered himself. And after he died, I looked through all his belongings. I never found a single authentic document.”

  “When did he die?”

  “About five years ago,” she said. “A woman he conned or tried to. She hunted him down and killed him, then killed herself.” That was not the whole truth, of course. But she had to protect her little sister.

  “Who was that?” he asked. She wondered if he was recording the call.

  “Her name was Bridget.” She didn’t remember the last name. She felt oddly embarrassed by that. She didn’t remember many of the names of the people she conned. They weren’t people. They were marks.

  “Okay,” he said. “Where are their bodies?”

  She flashed on that night. Digging the graves. Grace weeping.

  “If I tell you, what will you do?”

  There was a moment of quiet, where she figured he considered lying. But Hunter Ross was an honest man.

  “Call it in,” he said finally. “Someone will go and dig them up.”

  Did she want that? Did she want them dug up? What would happen to Pop’s remains, some government grave?