Holly handed her a tissue and she blew her nose, dabbed at her eyes.
“You think guys leak like this when they’re upset?” Laney asked, because she wanted to talk about anything other than Harry and his betrayals.
“It’s okay to be upset,” Holly said. “You can cry. I won’t judge.”
“No, you won’t. But fuck that. Harry fucked his life all on his own. He deserves to be dead.”
“But you’re not crying ’cause he’s dead, are you?” Holly wasn’t looking at her, had her body turned away. “You’re upset that you didn’t read him well enough?”
She glanced at Holly. “You don’t have some kind of sex chamber in the basement, do you?”
Holly’s eyes rounded. “What?”
Laney shook her head. “Never mind. I’m beginning to think everyone around me has a secret life.”
“Well, most people have some kind of secret.”
“Well, I’m an open book. Husband left me, my son is an oddball, I tell everyone about this shit. What’s the point of hiding anything? Why, what are you hiding?”
Holly stared at the windshield, the corner of her mouth twitching. “If I tell you, will you call Ed and share what you’ve discovered?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Holly opened her mouth, and Laney raised her hand. “Wait. If you’re going to confess to dead bodies in your backyard or crushing small animals with your high heels, I don’t want to know.”
Her friend swatted at her, tsking. “Oh please. I should be that interesting. No, my biggest secret is”—she cleared her throat, her cheeks reddening as if she were a child—“I write stories.”
Laney furrowed her brow. “Yeah?” Why would that be a secret?
“Erotic stories.”
“Oh.”
“For a romance publisher.”
“What, like Fifty Shades?”
Holly turned her face toward the window, her fingers tapping at her throat. “Sort of. Yes, kind of like that.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. “And you get paid for that?”
“A little, yes. You know, wine and chocolate money.” Holly laughed her tiny laugh, and Laney found herself laughing as well. Perfectly poised Holly, typing away about tumescent body parts. “Expensive wine and chocolate,” Holly amended.
“Why the heck would you keep that a secret?”
Flapping her hand at Laney, Holly said, “Can you imagine the small talk at the Girl Scout den meeting? Please.” She rolled her eyes.
Laney slapped the steering wheel, and the car swerved on the icy road, fishtailed, righted. “What’s wrong with me? I thought Theo loved me and loved his life until the moment he told me he’d rather slit his wrists than spend another day as my husband. Harry was a fucking felon. My son, my only son—and God knows, if there’s anybody I should understand, it’s him—spends his afternoons with a dealer, doing God knows what, ’cause I sure don’t know, and then runs off.” She could barely speak, the words wrung out of her in a spray of spit through tense lips. “ ’Cause I don’t really know if he’s been kidnapped, do I? Maybe he did go on his own? Maybe he ran away. Maybe he chose to go with Hopper.”
Holly shook her head. “No way. Alfie is like a vampire; he needs his native earth around him when he sleeps. There’s no doubt in my mind he would have never left on his own.”
Laney cut a glance at her friend. “What do you know from vampires anyways?”
“Oh come on. I write erotic romances, remember? Lots of people like to read about erotic vampires.” She shrugged but then grew serious. “Laney, you can’t ever fully know another person. Don’t beat yourself up for it.”
“I just don’t know how I can be pretty good at detective work and so unbelievably blind when it comes to people I care about. It’s downright uncanny.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t believe I know my husband’s dark secrets.” Then, so soft Laney barely heard, “He definitely doesn’t know mine.”
“Oliver has dark secrets?” Steadfast, gentle Oliver?
Holly snorted in exasperation. “Everyone does!” She turned and pointed at Laney. “Even you do.” She held up her palm. “And don’t feel you have to tell me about it.”
They drove in silence for another ten miles, and then Laney said, “You’re right. I do.” She touched her friend’s knee lightly before putting her hand back on the wheel. “Don’t feel you have to tell me yours either.”
Holly didn’t respond right away. Then, “Just cut yourself some slack, will you?”
The snow was going through a personality crisis as they drove, going wet and soft, turning to gray sluices of rain, then back to flurries. According to the GPS, they were within ten miles of their destination. They exited the highway and were now on a two-lane narrow route climbing up a mountain. An old, overgrown forest rose on both sides of the road—snow-topped pines, bare maples and birches with a thicket of brambles blocking out any light between the trees. The light, already as gray as stone, had darkened further, and Laney flipped the headlights on. The GPS clicked and told them they had lost the signal.
A shiver ran through Holly, and she tugged her scarf closer around her throat. “Who would live up here?” she asked, peering at the empty road, the encroaching woods. “It’s so lonely.”
“Some people hate being around other humans,” Laney said. “If this Jane Hopper grew up in some tight-ass quarters with everyone on top of everyone else, she might want nature and solitude. Think about it, for years all you have is concrete and crowds, the stinking subway, trash everywhere. And then, this.” She wouldn’t have been able to live anywhere this isolated herself, but she could see the appeal.
“Who do you think she is? Your guy’s sister? Mother? Aunt?”
Laney had been contemplating this ever since she noticed the connection between Jane Hopper and Owen Hopper. “Someone close,” she said. “Someone who didn’t mind the drive to visit him.”
The road curved sharply again, the snow growing icy, and Laney slowed. In the past six miles they hadn’t seen a single off road, not one driveway or house. And so when the gravel entrance appeared to the right just as they came out of another curve, Laney shot right past it. She screeched to a stop, put the car in reverse, and backed up to the path, which, she saw now, was a driveway, a mailbox crooked and snowed over at the corner.
Her heart quickening, she took her foot off the brake and turned in. The driveway was long, and so overgrown with a canopy of pines that they might as well have gone into a tunnel. One hand on the steering wheel, she unsnapped her holster and made sure her gun was accessible.
As they pulled into a clearing, she slammed the brakes so hard that the car bucked and they both jolted against their seat belts.
“Oh no,” said Holly.
“Fuck!” said Laney. It took her painful moments, way too long moments, to unstrap herself with fingers gone numb with fear, and she shoved the door open, stumbling out, her feet skittering on the iced gravel.
The house before her still smoldered. Half of it was gone, blackened skeletal frames pointing to the sky. The other half stood awkward, blind, its glassless windows gaping and dark. Somewhere in the back of her awareness, Laney heard Holly dialing 911, saying something, then cursing.
“There’s no signal,” Holly said.
Of course there wasn’t. The reception even in Sylvan was uncertain. Up here, in these mountains mobbed with trees, they would be lucky if they could get a satellite phone to work.
“I think I’m getting something.” Holly crunched over gravel, her voice growing muffled.
Laney drew her gun, pointed it forward, left hand supporting her wrist. She walked slowly toward the house.
“Is anyone there?” she yelled.
CHAPTER
47
ALFIE WAS COLD. The cold was inside his bones, inside his heart, inside his stomach, his throat, his head. He’d been cold before, sure. During the Boy Scout Iditarods, for example, when
he had to sleep outdoors in January on a mountaintop. The night of last year’s Iditarod, the mountain temperature fell to single digits, and one of the other Scouts got frostbite on his toes. But Alfie did okay on that camp-out. He had his subzero socks and boots, his snow pants and extra-thick thermal underwear. His mother had outfitted him well, and he spent the night burrowed into his sleeping bag, watching flakes flutter like tiny dust bunnies against the moonlit snow. Those evenings with the Scouts featured campfires and the company of others, hot food, chocolate bars. As usual, he didn’t participate in any of the conversations, told no jokes. But he liked listening, and he liked watching, and he liked the smell of woodsmoke and pines and cold snow.
Now was different. Now he walked through calf-high drifts in nothing but his flannel shirt, jeans, and socks. His jacket was smoldering in the house he’d escaped hours ago. What else might be smoldering or burnt black was a question his mind gnawed for the past three or four miles. The basement where he’d been kept—burnt or salvaged? The crusty couch? And both deep under those thoughts and blindingly on top was Hopper—the sight of him, his shirt, hair, and part of his face on fire, a horribly yellow-black fire full of chemical smells and oily smoke; the sound of him, screaming, high-pitched, terror filled.
When Owen bent over him that morning, grimy wool blanket in his hands, ready to spread it over Alfie as if the boy really was his son, Alfie had been ready. He drew the can of WD-40 he’d found under the sink, pressed the nozzle with all his strength, and lit the spray with the lemon-yellow lighter.
The resulting flame wasn’t spectacular, nothing like what a can of spray paint would have given him, but at a one-foot distance, it was enough. Oily, messy, hot, and sputtering, it hit Hopper in the upper chest, igniting his shirt, catching the side of his neck, then jumping to his hair.
Hopper reared back, emitting a terrible scream, and Alfie wondered in a shocked moment if the fire was right then flying into Hopper’s lungs as he drew the blazing air into himself to yell. Hopper threw himself against a wall, trying to dampen the flames, then lurched toward the bathroom.
Alfie bounded off the couch and ran for the door. He heard Hopper turning the shower on, then a horrendous hiss, cursing, followed by a full-throated scream filled with pain and fury.
The front door was still padlocked. Alfie dashed for the nearest window as Owen stumbled out of the bathroom, drenched, red boils blooming on his neck and at his hairline. Half his hair was fried, as was one eyebrow. One eye swollen shut, he lunged for Alfie, and the boy ducked under his arms, bolted for the wood stove and lifted a thick branch from the pile. He swung, connected with the singed, blistered half of Owen’s face, then ran around the man when he dropped to his knees, bellowing, hands blocking his head from further assault.
Incredibly, Alfie still had the lighter in his pocket, and as he ran past the armchair, he clicked it and held it to the fabric, forcing himself to count to ten while it caught. The room was dry and cold, and the elderly upholstery gave itself to fire willingly.
Owen was rising to his feet, muttering something that might or might not have been words. Alfie grabbed an old newspaper and held it to the burning chair. As it too caught and flamed, he tossed it at the man staggering toward him, singeing his own fingers. Running down the hallway toward the back door, he set fire to a roll of paper towels with the lighter, then used the roll as a torch, igniting a curtain, a stack of magazines piled on a stand, dropping it onto a rag rug when the fire reached his hands. The rooms began filling with smoke as the dry-rotted furnishings surrendered to flames.
A padlock on the back door.
Hopper’s heavy hand clamped on Alfie’s shoulder, and Alfie yelped, startled and scared, before elbowing the man just under the ribs. It wasn’t a great hit, but it was enough for Hopper to let go, and Alfie skirted around him, dashed to the kitchen, and, to his surprise, saw a can of spray cooking oil. A flick of the lighter while depressing the nozzle and the room whoomphed bright and hot, flames squirming on the greasy linoleum, on the walls for ten seconds, twenty.
Alfie tugged on the window, but it wouldn’t give, and the latch, when he tried it, broke his fingernails. He straightened and turned around.
Across the kitchen, Owen scowled in the doorway, one-eyed, two-faced, grim.
Alfie lifted the rusted toaster oven (thank God it was next to the window) and smashed it into the glass, shattering the single-glazed pane on the first try. The window was old, original to the house, brittle, and had broken easily, shards exploding outward, fragments littering the floor. He had to hit it a few more times to knock out enough glass. Flinging his body through the toothy opening as if performing a circus trick, he stretched his arms over his head, face tucked in, muscles stretched taut, and then collapsed into a ball when he hit the snow-covered branches and rocks underneath.
The random bits of fire in the house, given extra oxygen with the influx of fresh air, roared behind him. He ran, oblivious to the cuts in his arms, on the side of his cheek. Heedless of his shoeless feet, of his jacketless torso, hatless head.
He did not feel the cold for a while, fear and adrenaline keeping him alert and running for almost a mile before he stopped and bent over, hands on knees, spitting yellow bile onto the shadowed snow. After that he walked for another mile, his back to the house, not because he had the strength but because being stationary meant either Hopper finding and killing him or the cold doing the job.
Hypothermia was a serious concern, and he slowed to take stock of his body. The Boy Scouts had an entire brochure on cold-weather camping, and he’d read it and memorized it two years ago. He was shivering, so that was reassuring. It meant his body was in good enough shape to try to stay warm. He didn’t think his mental acuity was affected. But he was in trouble—the lack of shoes the most serious of his problems. He scooped a handful of snow from a pine bough and put it in his mouth, letting his body melt it before swallowing. Dehydration was another worry.
His second concern was he didn’t know his location. Not knowing his location meant he didn’t know which way to go home. He had paid little attention to signage on the drive over, but he guessed Hopper’s house was north of Sylvan, if only because south of Sylvan was New Jersey and higher population density.
So, he had to head south. He’d gotten his orienteering badge earlier in the fall, but that had been with a compass and a group and an adult to walk with him. Nevertheless, he remembered an exercise for when a compass was broken or missing. He chose a straight stick about two feet in length and stuck it into the ground. The sunlight, though dim and gloomy, was bright enough to cast a shadow. He placed a pebble at the end of the stick’s shadow. Then he had to wait. He peed. He made a snowball and threw it against a tree. He did thirty jumping jacks to stay warm.
He wondered what his father was up to. He wondered if his father would mind if he died. This led him to speculate how his father would find out. As far as he knew, his mother did not have his father’s contact details.
And this in turn led him to the question that confounded him the most—what was the point to relationships? Everywhere he turned, he was told that friendships were important, that love between two people was a wonderful, magnificent thing. Children needed parents, parents loved their children; BFFs, best buds, romances, and bromances filled his reading lists and the conversations of everyone around him.
But for what? He’d set out his freshman year with the intent to make a friend. He wasn’t sure why, but he could no longer resist the pressure from his mother, his counselors, asking him didn’t he want a buddy, a pal, a playmate.
And so he created the spreadsheet. First, he recorded the names of all the kids he came across during his day at school—classes, band, gym. Then he created columns—how often their paths crossed, what they talked about, whether they already belonged to a clique, what they wore, if they paid attention in class or fucked off.
He immediately crossed out all the girls. Girls were an effort he felt beyond him. He then
crossed out everyone already in a clique, everyone who struck him as stupid, everyone who struck him as boring. At the end of two weeks of observation, he had circled two names on the list. For the week after that, he focused exclusively on those boys. He listened to their conversations and made notes. He documented the clothes they wore, the music they listened to, the social media they used.
He had settled on Jordan but been unsure how to begin when the talent show curtain fire fiasco solved the problem for him. Obviously, knowing Jordan had gotten him nothing but trouble, and here he was, freezing, starving, lost in the woods in the middle of winter. Although arguably his mother was the more accurate cause of this particular trouble. He concluded that every relationship in his life thus far either ended in misery or bred danger.
He looked at his stick and saw that the shadow had shifted. He placed another pebble at the end of the new shadow. According to the activity he’d learned with the Boy Scouts, as the sun moved, the direction of shadows made it possible to orient oneself. The first pebble was west, and the second pebble was east. He stood with the toe of his right foot touching the west pebble and the toe of his left touching the east one. He now faced south, and south he would go. If he heard cars, he’d head in that direction but stay out of sight until he could be sure it wasn’t Hopper searching for him.
The path before him lay open and clear, and he peered at the trees, wondering if a blaze marked the trail. After another half hour of walking, he saw a glossy black something under a thicket and went to investigate.
What he found made him smile for the first time in days, and he did a little dance as he unfolded the plastic bag and shook out the camping detritus someone had left behind. The trash itself was of no use, but the heavy-duty plastic bag was priceless, and he perched on a log, feeling slightly less scared now. He peeled off his sopping cold socks and carefully tore the bag in half along the seams. It was a large trash bag (and he said an uncharacteristic prayer of thanks), enough for each half to wrap around one foot like a puttee. He tugged free a few of the dormant vines surrounding him and used them as ropes, securing the plastic around his skin. He then pulled the wet socks back on over each contraption and tied some more vines around the ankles to keep them from slipping off.
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