by Ren Richards
To the strangers in the room, she looked like a frightened mother who wanted to take her baby home. But she wasn’t like them, and she didn’t want to take her baby home.
She had always told Lindsay all her secrets. But in the year since the baby had been born, Nell had become a collector of silent fears and thoughts. Ugly thoughts. Cruel ones. And she didn’t dare say them out loud. Even Lindsay wouldn’t be able to understand. She would be disgusted. Nell could see it. She would surely not be sitting beside her now, petting her hair and telling her not to worry.
It was more than an hour before the doctor came to find her. By then, Nell had exhausted herself and was staring at the muted episode of Ricki Lake and trying to follow the captions.
‘Do you want me to go with you?’ Lindsay asked.
Nell shook her head. All the crying had made her tired, and as she followed the doctor down the bright hallway, his chattering barely registered. So rare to have a doctor that bothered to explain things, much less try to console her. She knew that she should be grateful.
He led her to the room where the baby was sitting up on a neatly made bed, beside a nurse who was trying to entice her with a stuffed bear.
She was wearing a clean diaper, and Nell remembered, with humiliation, the baby’s full diaper when she brought her in.
‘Quite a brave girl you’ve got,’ the doctor said. ‘Most of them cry when they get a shot.’
‘She won’t cry,’ Nell said.
‘The epinephrine may leave her with a little bit of a headache, but she should be back to normal by tomorrow.’
‘This is normal for her,’ Nell said, nodding to the baby’s dark and heavy-lidded eyes. ‘I think maybe she’s hard of hearing, or – well, I read an article about children with autism.’
The doctor grabbed the clipboard from a nearby cart and hit it against the wall. The loud crack made Nell jump. The baby whipped her head in the direction of the sound, her eyes fierce.
‘Nothing wrong with her hearing.’ The doctor laughed. He patted Nell’s shoulder reassuringly. ‘You have a perfectly healthy little girl. I always tell first-time mothers not to turn to books for parenting advice. It’ll only put worries in your head.’
‘She doesn’t cry,’ Nell insisted. ‘She got stung by a bee and it almost killed her, and she never cried once.’
‘Shock is a common symptom of anaphylaxis. She’s allergic to bees, so you’re going to want to limit her time outdoors. As to the not crying, I see about a dozen mothers a day who would envy you.’ He put his hands on his knees and leaned towards the baby. ‘Do you want Mom to take you home now?’
Reina stared at the doctor for a long moment. And then without a sound she held her arms out to Nell with the militaristic rhythm of a soldier giving a salute.
‘There, see?’ the doctor said. ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about.’
Looking back later, Nell would see this moment as a turning point in her life. The memory of this day would find her in every city, in every bed she would ever sleep in, from the Eddletons’ mansion to Lindsay’s couch, to her studio apartment in Rock-hollow with Sebastian’s leg hooked over her thigh.
Don’t tell anyone the truth, the memory would whisper. No one will ever believe you.
13
NOW
As proof that she was still alive, Lindsay texted Nell a photo of her newly pedicured toes, wearing spongy green toe spacers.
Nell stuffed her phone back into her purse as she crossed the apartment lobby. She was glad to be home, where there were multiple surveillance cameras, locked access to the elevators and security guards at all hours.
It also helped that the penthouse was thirty stories up. Still, Nell felt a sense of unease as she worked her key into the door.
Nobody could be here. She knew that. And yet, there was part of the imagination that never turned into logic. She checked all the windows, behind every door. She even pulled back the shower curtain.
At last convinced she was alone, she microwaved a mug of potato soup and heaped on a handful of shredded cheese. It was the first time she had had an appetite since last night’s ill-fated dinner, and just the smell of the food made her feel better. It was amazing how worry and optimism shifted like twists in a kaleidoscope. Nobody’s dead, she reminded herself. Nobody was even hurt. Matthew Cranlin was far away. The Eddletons were far away. The police would check the surveillance for the shop and find out who stole the mannequin. It would be neighbourhood kids, like Lindsay had said. If anyone had wanted to kill them, they would have tried by now.
Lindsay wasn’t entirely liberal with details sometimes; she had probably pissed someone off, complaining that they’d parked too close to her flowers or their dog barked too much. That’s all this was. Or bored privileged children mimicking a horror film for laughs.
Nell took her soup to her desk and opened her laptop.
The first paragraph of Easter and Autumn’s story sat half-written on the screen. Nell stared at the unfinished sentence. She was always doing that – leaving little messes for herself to sort out later.
Easter thought Autumn was
What? What had Easter thought about the sister she’d murdered? Nell had been confident enough to begin the sentence, but now without its conclusion the words were meaningless.
This was the first time Nell had written about sisters. As with all things relating to Easter Hamblin, she felt at a loss for where to begin. Nell’s only experience was Lindsay. Complicated, abrasive, beautiful Lindsay, who was every bit as fucked up as Nell. Perhaps more fucked up, in fact, because she was the oldest and had understood more of what was happening to them as children. But the story of Easter and Autumn Hamblin managed to surpass anything Nell and Lindsay had lived through, because Nell and Lindsay were still alive. That was more than could be said for Autumn, who was buried in East Rock cemetery in an unmarked grave so that the family could mourn her privately.
Nell tried to imagine Easter as a teenager, bearing the scars from where her sister had been built into her hip and forearm. The co-dependency mixed with resentment. Jealousy. Easter had been so bitter when she talked about Autumn socialising with the neighbours.
Nell finished the sentence.
Easter thought Autumn was hers.
She spent the next hour writing furiously, deleting and rewriting descriptions of Easter Hamblin as she had looked through the glass at Royal King’s State Penitentiary. She wrote of Easter’s green eyes, which sparked brightly – even flirtatiously – when she was about to say something wicked.
Nell didn’t stop until she’d completed five pages, at the end of which she knew this would not be a story with a sympathetic villain. Easter Hamblin was interesting, as was her dead sister, but there was nothing for an audience to love but her mystery.
The first chapter was done. Her audience would now have a clear picture of Royal King’s State Penitentiary, sitting on a flat expanse of concrete like the final castle in a perilous conquest. Within that prison is Easter, a twinless twin, still muttering with mad conviction that her sister isn’t really dead.
Easter Hamblin is a Mariana Trench, Nell wrote. She is the darkest wave in the deepest ocean. We don’t need to see what’s swimming inside her to know that there are frightening things.
Nell began the next chapter; Autumn’s chapter, she decided. First the murderer and then the prey. She forgot all the private browser tabs of searches into her own sordid past. As long as she kept writing, she had focus and drive. She had a puzzle that could be neatly assembled using evidence filed in court records. She had grisly crime scene photos that revealed exactly where Autumn Hamblin’s body had turned up and forensic reports that explained what had happened to her. The hyoid bone had been crushed: clear evidence of manual strangulation. It was a tragedy for the Hamblins; but it was also a relief, because there would be no more wondering. No more hoping. No private browsers opened so that they could search for traces of their missing daughter and all the secrets she kept
.
A key turned in the lock and Nell flinched.
‘Oh my God.’ Lindsay burst into the apartment, dragging the lone syllable of that last word. ‘It took me like an hour to drive three blocks. What is with the constant construction in this fucking city?’
Nell clicked save on her Word doc and then spun in her chair. Lindsay was her usual state of flustered and still somehow magically put together. She held up an engorged plastic bag. ‘I bought Chinese for dinner. Never let it be said that I don’t contribute.’
Lindsay moved into the kitchen and began dismantling the contents of the bag, still rambling about her afternoon. The blood drawn by her zealous manicurist, and the woman getting a pedicure, whom Lindsay had affectionately nicknamed The Cunt Rocket.
Nell hadn’t said a word, and Lindsay scarcely seemed to notice when Nell slid onto a barstool to watch her. Lindsay kept busy when she was nervous.
It hadn’t always been this way. When they were children, worry made her stoic and mean – especially to their foster parents and the other children in their group homes. After they’d visit their mother in prison, Lindsay could go entire days without uttering a word, and she would tug aggressively at the buttons of Nell’s coat, tear out strands of hair with her aggressive brushing.
She only began busying herself after she married Matthew. Lindsay seemed to believe that if she moved fast enough, nobody would notice the bruises under her concealer, or her limp, or the new cap on a chipped tooth.
Nell was checking her sister for bruises now, out of habit. But nothing had outwardly changed.
Finally Lindsay looked up and said, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Nell knew she had to handle this delicately. Lindsay hated when Nell worried about her, and even more than that, she hated being vulnerable.
‘I’ve been thinking about the mannequins is all,’ Nell said.
Lindsay rolled her eyes as she opened a cabinet to retrieve the plates. ‘I meant to tell you, I have a lead on that. It was Lena Alway.’
‘Who?’ Nell reached for a fortune cookie, then thought better of it.
‘Stick-up-the-butt Botox Barbie,’ Lindsay said. ‘With the tacky long nails and neon bleached hair. She’s that blue house on the corner with the big fountain in her driveway, to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with.’
Nell was sure she’d passed the house a thousand times, but all the McMansions in Lindsay’s neighbourhood looked the same to her, just like every city block in Rockhollow looked the same to Lindsay.
‘She came forward?’ Nell asked.
Lindsay snorted. ‘No. But back in January she accused me of trying to steal her husband. Like I want that greasy douchebag.’
Nell’s gaze went flat. ‘You slept with him, didn’t you?’
Lindsay batted her lashes, and Nell burst out with a laugh.
‘It was one time,’ Lindsay said. ‘Two.’
Nell’s laughter was born of relief more than anything. Lindsay. Abrasive Lindsay, who made herself impossible to like by her own design. At last there was an explanation.
‘I’ve gone to the police, since I know that’s your next question,’ Lindsay said. ‘That Officer Rayburn guy we met with at the station. He said it’s hard to do anything without evidence, but we’ll get her.’ She grabbed her phone off of the counter and held it up. ‘I’ve been checking the cameras all day. We’ll get her.’
‘You’re staying here until then,’ Nell said.
‘She’s not going to hurt me,’ Lindsay said. ‘She’s rich lady nuts, not psycho nuts.’
‘Linds.’
‘You don’t want me here,’ Lindsay said. She gestured towards Nell’s laptop. ‘You’ve got your book, and Sebastian.’
‘Sebastian doesn’t mind,’ Nell said. ‘He likes you.’ Bas’s hesitant affection for Lindsay was a testament to his kindness. She wasn’t an easy person to take in large doses, and Nell knew it.
As though on cue, Sebastian’s key turned in the lock. He saw Lindsay dumping a carton of shrimp fried rice onto a plate and a dreaminess overtook his gaze. ‘I could smell that all the way from the elevator. I was hoping it was coming from here.’
Lindsay preened. ‘This is my way of thanking you for letting me sleep here last night, but I was just telling Nell that I’ll be going back home tonight.’
Sebastian took his usual barstool beside Nell and accepted the plate Lindsay slid towards him.
Nell was going to argue, but suddenly all she could think about was Easter, who believed Autumn belonged to her. Who held on so tightly that it broke her.
When she was researching the Widow Thompson’s story, Nell had been especially clingy towards Lindsay. She had nightmares of their mother getting paroled out of prison, climbing the trellis outside of Lindsay’s bedroom and then drowning her in the bathtub. One nightmare was so vivid that Nell drove to Lindsay’s house at three in the morning and stood outside ringing the buzzer to the security gate until Lindsay appeared, half asleep with murder in her eyes.
Was it happening again? Had Nell taken a petty feud between neighbours and turned it into a crime scene in her own head?
‘Hey.’ Bas bumped his shoulder against hers. ‘You okay?’
Nell forced a smile. ‘I’ve been writing about the Hamblins all afternoon. It’s made me feel gross is all.’
After dinner, the three of them settled in front of the TV. Lindsay stayed for Jeopardy, during which she got virtually none of the questions right. Then she stood and grabbed her coat off of the hook. Nell could see that there was no sense arguing.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Lindsay said, catching the look on Nell’s face. ‘Officer Whatsit said he’d send a patrol car to sit outside of my house all night if I ask.’
‘Rayburn,’ Nell said.
‘Yeah, him.’
‘Please take him up on it,’ Nell said.
Lindsay winked as she opened the door. ‘I’ll send you proof of life when I get home.’
As promised, Lindsay texted a picture of herself lying in bed. Nell told herself not to worry. Everything was all right. The entire world was not as dark and cruel as the cases Nell researched.
Autumn Hamblin and the Widow Thompson’s children were the unlucky ones. But they were the exception, not the rule.
14
NOW
For the next week, there were no further incidents. There was still no evidence of Lindsay’s neighbour staging the mannequins, but there had been no threats either. Lindsay said the cop car parked outside her house had been enough to scare her off – and probably embarrass her into minding her own business.
Still, Nell woke every night worrying, resisting the urge to speed to Lindsay’s house. Sebastian stirred beside her and she knew that she had woken him, though he never let on.
On Friday at three in the morning, Nell decided to turn her insomnia into something productive.
She slid from the bed, made herself a cup of hibiscus tea and sat at her computer. Her latest unfinished chapter was about Oleg, the young man with the impish grin in the photo with the twins. Nell stared at it now, lit up by the cool glow of her screen. His blond hair was parted on one side, laid flat and caramelised against his head. It was 2010, and he was standing in front of a mall entrance with his hands in his pockets.
One of his sisters stood beside him; the other had presumably taken the photo. ‘That’s Autumn,’ Oleg had said, tapping the photo with his groomed fingernail.
‘You’re sure?’ Nell had asked.
He’d nodded. ‘Easter hated to be photographed alone.’
‘She wouldn’t have been alone. You were there.’
He’d met her gaze. ‘Her definition of alone meant not with Autumn.’
Nell stared at Oleg and Autumn now. A well-meaning brother and a sister with less than a decade left to live. If what he’d said about Easter was true, then she would always be alone now.
A shuffling behind her alerted Nell to Sebastian’s presence. It was the friction
of his socks against the hardwood floor. He was always cold in the winter, unhooking his robe from the bedpost even when he went to the bathroom at night. It was Nell’s fault; she never set the thermostat above 65, even as she padded around barefoot in nothing but a baggy t-shirt.
Sebastian leaned over her chair, his weight tilting it back on its axis just slightly. He hadn’t been in bed long enough for sleep to sour his breath; he still smelled like mint Listerine and dryer sheets. He kissed the back of her neck and Nell canted her head towards him.
She didn’t let on how uneasy she felt to have him near her. There was something unnerving about him seeing her unfinished manuscript, the story messy and incomplete and fraught with errors. She rarely allowed it, the same way she turned her back to conceal her caesarean scar from him when she was getting dressed.
Nell slammed the laptop shut and spun in her chair to face Sebastian.
He sat on the edge of the coffee table, putting them at eye level. Nell realised that all week he’d pretended to be asleep as she tossed and fretted about Lindsay, but his quiet patience had worn thin.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?’ he asked.
No, Nell thought. All she could ever afford him was a fraction of the story. She told him about her pregnancy, but not about Reina. Her childhood in foster care, but never the ugliest parts. She told him about the cases she researched and the toll they took on her, but never the real reason – the memories they triggered.
‘I can’t figure Easter Hamblin out,’ Nell said, by way of an answer. ‘Either she’s manic, or she’s playing a game with me.’
Nell curled her legs up onto the chair, hugging her knees, instinctively covering the scar hidden by her t-shirt. Starting at the beginning, she told Sebastian everything Easter had said about her sister during their interview.