by Ren Richards
‘I’ll give you a ride,’ Oleg said, sliding out of his booth.
‘That’s all right,’ Nell said, and came to stand beside him. He was so tall, and she found herself imagining what it would be like to lean forward and rest her head against his chest. Would it be soft? Solid? Either way, she knew it would be warm. ‘I’m only a block away.’
‘I’ll walk you then.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Nell said.
‘I know.’ He was already heading for the door, and she hurried to keep up with his broad strides.
It was a frigid night. Nell tugged up the lapels of her wool coat to cover her ears.
Oleg was still talking as they began to walk. His breath made dissolving clouds. He recounted another of his failed romances, a young woman named Akilina, who’d left him for another man, leaving him to care for the pet raccoon she’d domesticated. ‘Pooped in the dish where I kept my keys,’ Oleg said. ‘One morning I reached for my keys and picked up a pile of raccoon poop.’
‘Stop,’ Nell laughed. ‘What did you do with the racoon?’
‘I set him free,’ Oleg said, with wistful mock-pride. ‘I like to think he’s still out there, majestically foraging for garbage behind apartment buildings.’
Nell snorted with her next laugh, and promptly covered her nose with her palm.
Oleg smirked, looking straight ahead. ‘It’s good to see you feeling better.’
Nell stepped onto the front step of her building’s entrance. Even then, she was nearly a head shorter than Oleg. ‘This is me,’ she said. She took the keys from her pocket, volleying them between her fingers. ‘Thanks for walking me.’
When she raised her eyes, she saw that Oleg was watching her. His eyes were bright, like burning blue galaxies against the winter sky. They’re so beautiful, Nell thought. He was beautiful, his cheeks bright pink from the cold. His eyebrows were the same white-blond as his hair. His lips were full and smooth; her eyes settled on them. She saw his Adam’s apple move under his skin when he took a breath.
He started to say her name, or maybe to say goodbye, but he changed his mind and kissed her instead.
She sucked in a breath and tasted the coffee on his tongue. She heard him breathing in her ears. His fingers were feather light under her chin.
Nell forced herself to break away, and as she did so, she realised how much effort it took.
‘I’m sorry,’ Oleg said, when Nell averted her eyes. ‘I thought you wanted me to.’
Nell shook her head. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I should have told you that I’m seeing someone.’
Seeing someone. Bas would be heartbroken to hear their relationship put so simply, but what was she supposed to say? ‘I’m living with a man who wants us to buy a house and a dog together’?
Or she could tell him the truth. That she was so damaged that it was a wonder she’d found someone who was passionate, and good, and drop-down-dead in love with her. That she spent every day terrified of ruining it, and she loved him too much to let that happen.
‘I’ll call you when I need another interview,’ she said, and the words felt clumsy on her tongue. Before he could respond, she was up the stairs and through the glass double doors.
28
THEN
Within an hour of asking for an attorney, Matthew Cranlin showed up at the police station. Nell didn’t know his home number, but she had found his law firm listed in the phonebook beside the station payphone.
The first thing he’d asked her was, ‘Are you under arrest?’
‘I don’t know.’ She’d been trying not to cry.
‘Did you ask if you’re free to go?’
‘No,’ Nell said. ‘I—’
‘Don’t say anything, do you hear me?’ Matthew told her. ‘Keep your mouth shut until I get there. Don’t even answer if they offer you a glass of water.’
Nell had done as he said, sitting with her hands knotted in her lap. She flinched when Matthew entered the room. Nell had only met him in person a handful of times – at his wedding to her sister, and standing in the doorway waiting impatiently whenever Nell drove Lindsay back home.
He was tall, with lean muscles and golden blond hair. He had sparkly green eyes, and he was pretty in the way that Lindsay was pretty. Side by side, they looked like the photo that came with the picture frame. But Nell had never liked him. She didn’t like who Lindsay was since meeting him, either.
But Nell was desperate. The Eddletons had an attorney, but if they saw what was on that security footage, Mrs Eddleton would drive Nell to the county jail herself.
‘You’re Ms Wendall’s attorney, I take it,’ the officer said.
‘That’s right,’ Matthew replied, taking his seat beside Nell. ‘Is my client under arrest?’ There was a menacing gruffness to his voice.
‘Mr…’ the officer began, giving a pause for Matthew to introduce himself.
‘Cranlin,’ Matthew said, reaching across the table to shake the officer’s hand. There was nothing civil about it; even Nell could see that.
‘Mr Cranlin, your client reported her four-year-old daughter missing two days ago, and it’s the job of this unit to find that child. Your client is withholding information that allows us to do that.’
‘Withholding information?’ Matthew pushed back his chair and looked under the table. He grabbed Nell’s shoulder and pushed her forward, so he could inspect the space between her back and the chair. ‘My client doesn’t appear to be hiding a child under her clothes, officer. I’d like to see what evidence you have that’s so compelling you’d subject a frightened teenage girl to a police interrogation.’
The officer played the security footage for Matthew, who remained reactionless from start to finish.
‘What did I watch?’ Matthew said. ‘That was just a woman entering a grocery store. The last I checked, that’s not illegal in the state of Missouri.’
‘Your client,’ the officer said, pausing for dramatic emphasis, ‘had the entire grocery store on lockdown looking for a child she knew full well wasn’t there.’
Matthew was still unmoved. ‘Is my client under arrest or isn’t she?’
‘Not yet,’ the officer said, slamming the laptop shut. ‘But I hope for her sake you’re a damn good attorney.’
29
NOW
Nell opened a new Word document and made a list of everything that was possible:
– The mannequins were a prank by someone in Lindsay’s neighbourhood
– The mannequins were a prank by someone angry about the book
– Autumn has faked her own death and is responsible for all of this
The last item on that list should have made the least sense, and yet it was the most plausible. Nobody would suspect Autumn. Nobody would be looking for Autumn. Nell stared at the list for a long time, trying to come up with a fourth item that would put her mind at ease. Something that would be easy to explain.
Without stopping to think, she added:
– Someone knows about Reina
When the apartment door opened, Nell quickly hit CTRL + A, highlighting the text. One press of the delete key, and the Word document was blank again.
‘You’re home early,’ she said, spinning in her chair to face Bas.
‘You weren’t answering any texts,’ he said, and Nell could see the effort he was making to sound light. ‘I was a little worried.’
‘Sorry.’ Nell blinked. ‘I guess I was just really into what I was doing and spaced out.’
Sebastian dropped onto the couch. He patted the space beside him, and Nell fell into place. He wrapped an arm around her and kissed the crown of her head. ‘I’ve been thinking we should go away somewhere,’ he said. ‘What about Hawaii? We can stay away all winter and spend it on the beach.’
‘You know I can’t do that,’ Nell said. She had been leaning against him, but now she sat up. ‘I have interviews to conduct for this book.’
‘The book can wait a little, can’t it?’ Bas said.
‘It’s not like you have a deadline. You could still back out if you wanted to.’
‘Back out?’ Nell blurted. ‘Sebastian, I made a commitment. Oleg left his home in Russia to stay in a crappy motel, just to be here for this project.’
‘Well who asked him to do that?’ Sebastian shot back, raising his tone to match hers. ‘I don’t get why he needs to be here anyway. They have phones in Russia.’
‘It’s because he cares about his sisters,’ Nell said.
‘He cares about something,’ Bas muttered.
Nell stood. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means I think you two are spending a little too much time together, Nell. You called him in the middle of the night when you were stranded.’
‘Because you never pick up your phone when it’s important!’ Nell cried. Her entire body felt hot, electric with anxiety and anger.
Sebastian stood and brushed past her. ‘Forget it,’ he muttered. He made it halfway to the kitchen before he spun around to face her. ‘You know, sometimes I wonder if there’s any point to this, Nell. You’ll never love me as much as your work.’
‘Any point?’ she echoed. ‘You’re asking if there’s any point to what? To us?’
He shook his head. ‘Forget it.’
‘No,’ Nell said. ‘No, I can’t forget something like that. If you have something to say, come out and say it.’
He stared at her, breathing hard, the way he did when he was extremely upset. Nell had only seen it a handful of times. The first had been the night she told him about her C-section scar after he’d grown fed up with how closed off she was. The other times had all been because of something outside of their relationship – his sister’s asshole boyfriend, or trouble at work.
She hated this side of him. It was a stranger who broke into their apartment and vandalised their lives.
‘All right, I will,’ Sebastian said. ‘I don’t like all the time you’re spending with that man.’
‘Oleg?’ Nell blurted out. ‘Sebastian, it’s for my book!’
‘Maybe to you it is, but I think he has another idea.’
‘You’ve never even met him,’ Nell said.
‘I don’t have to meet him to know he’s the one you called when you were stranded. I don’t have to meet him to know you came home wearing his clothes.’
At that, Nell took a step back. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. ‘What are you accusing me of?’
He ran his hand roughly through his hair. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, but he didn’t have to.
Nell spluttered an incredulous breath.
Just a moment ago, nestled against Sebastian, she had felt calm and warm and tranquil. He had that effect on her. Right from the moment they met, when she spurned his advances and ignored his increasingly obvious affections, he had put her at ease. He cut a tall figure, but he was gracious. He didn’t hold open doors or pull out chairs, but he knew how to move in tandem with her erratic pace. Whatever bizarre dance she put him through in their courtship, he found a way to make it work. It was a hypnotising calm. But when it turned ugly, it was overwhelming.
She headed for the bedroom and he followed after her at a distance. She wasn’t angry with him for the accusation; she was angry with herself because he was right. She had kissed Oleg, not because she’d wanted to but because it was in her nature to sabotage everything. Everything. Even Bas.
‘Nell, wait—’
She kept her back to him as she pulled clothes from her dresser drawers and began stuffing them into her laptop bag.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Sebastian tried to stop her by putting his arm on the doorframe, but she squeezed past him. When she pulled open the apartment door, Sebastian reached over her shoulder and slammed it shut. ‘Nell!’
The outburst startled her. This was not the Sebastian she knew.
She turned, her back against the door, pinned under his arm.
‘Say something,’ Sebastian burst out. ‘Christ, Nell, you drive me insane the way you do that – you just look at me like I’m a blank page in your book and you haven’t decided what story you’re going to tell me.’ His eyes were wild with anger. Frustration.
He was right. Nell couldn’t see her own expression, but she knew that must be exactly how she was looking at him. He felt just like a blank page in that moment. This man she had slept beside for two years. How could she tell him what she was thinking when she couldn’t admit it to herself?
‘Bas,’ she said. Her voice was quiet, but it was a warning. ‘Let me go.’
His eyes were still locked on hers as he lowered his arm. He took a step back.
‘I can’t do this anymore, Nell,’ he said. ‘I never know which version of you I’m going to come home to.’
Poor Sebastian. That’s what she wanted to say. He hadn’t known he was taking on such a lost cause when he first smiled at her. What had it been? Her dress? Her eyes? Or maybe he had sensed that she was broken and wanted to fix her. Children who aren’t loved grow up to have a certain palpable quality. Nell possessed enough self-awareness to know that about herself.
Lindsay, at least, embraced it. She capsized the heart of any man who made the mistake of loving her. She wasn’t afraid to scream and slam doors and shatter vases. She wasn’t afraid to get a good divorce attorney and take everything the law could extract from her captive.
Nell liked to believe she was better than her sister in this regard, but she wasn’t. The only difference was that she had no interest in Sebastian’s money, or his car, or his friends. She only wanted to be what he believed her to be. She wanted to look like a woman who had not been broken, whose mother was not in a prison cell and whose father wasn’t burning through his liver. She wanted to be childless. Truly childless. She wanted the faint, shining scar that ran from her hip to her breastbone to be gone.
Nell was not childless, though. Reina would always be somewhere on this earth, long since rotted away, but still hers. And Nell would always be the broken thing that had lost her.
‘I can’t do this anymore either,’ she said, and opened the door.
It wasn’t often that Nell let herself cry, but that night she did. It was the sort of ugly, screaming, guttural cry that left her stomach feeling clenched and sore.
Lindsay sat on the couch, holding Nell’s head in her lap and rubbing circles against her back. She hadn’t asked for an explanation when a cab pulled up outside and deposited her sister on her doorstep. That was the beautiful thing about Lindsay; while Nell obsessed over every detail, Lindsay only cared about the result, not the cause.
When Nell finally did offer an explanation, it was without any prompting or expectation. ‘It’s never going to happen, Linds.’
She sat up, her hair flying in static-charged wisps around her face.
With a pitying expression, Lindsay yanked a tissue from the box and dabbed at Nell’s leaking nose.
Nell sniffed. ‘We’re never going to have that life. A marriage, a house, a dog maybe. It doesn’t matter how close we come to it. It’s never going to change that our lives are trash.’
‘Hey now,’ Lindsay said. ‘I like my trash life. It comes with a housekeeper and a view of the river.’
Nell laughed at that, and Lindsay gave a triumphant smile.
The amusement was short-lived though.
‘Sebastian and I had a fight,’ Nell confessed.
‘I figured as much,’ Lindsay said.
‘It was about work,’ Nell said. ‘He thinks I’m too intense about it. And he’s jealous about all the time I spend with Oleg. He insinuated that I’m cheating on him.’
Lindsay tucked a piece of hair behind Nell’s ear. ‘Men are all in a pissing contest with each other,’ she said. ‘Once Sebastian calms down, he’ll realise he was being an idiot. It isn’t really about Oleg, Nell. Oleg is just the manifestation.’
Nell blew her nose. ‘Manifestation of what?’
‘He thinks he’s competing with
your job,’ Lindsay said. ‘Deep down, all men want to marry June Cleaver and be the provider.’
Nell smirked into her soggy tissue. ‘I don’t know about all that.’
‘So your boyfriend wants to be a bigger part of your life,’ Lindsay said. ‘Apparently that’s something normal people do.’
‘Was Robert like that?’ Nell asked. Lindsay had never offered much about her second marriage and Nell had never asked. Robert had seemed decent enough, if a little too good-natured. More than once Nell wanted to warn him off. When she and Lindsay were children, sometimes they would have a foster sibling who latched on to them. Lindsay was pretty and she was charismatic, and she lured the weaker, nicer souls into her light like moths. Those were the kids whose few precious trinkets went missing; the first thing Lindsay did in any new neighbourhood was locate the pawn shops. And Robert – debonair, handsome, attentive Robert – had been just another foster child with something shiny that Lindsay could turn into a profit. It wasn’t that Lindsay didn’t love him. She did, and it had frightened her.
‘Oh, Robert was always interested in me,’ Lindsay said. She got up and walked to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder as she went. ‘Sometimes I think he was asking about my childhood just to gauge how fucked up our kids would be if they were like me.’ She came back to the couch with a glass of water and handed it to Nell, who realised that she was dehydrated from crying.
‘How did you handle it?’ Nell asked.
‘You know how I handled it.’ Lindsay shrugged. ‘I’ve never pretended not to be a mess. It isn’t my fault he thought he could turn me into one of those mothers you see on TV talking about which brand of peanut butter they feed their little angels.’
‘I guess we have a type,’ Nell said. ‘Men who want to fix us.’
Lindsay’s expression turned soft, and it worried Nell. Lindsay was not one for warm sentiments, and she had to be very concerned if she was resorting to them. ‘You were more than just a smart kid, Nell. Even with the paltry crumbs we were thrown from the education system, I always knew you’d do something big with that brain of yours. You weren’t going to be like me, or any of those other kids that shuffled in and out of our lives wherever we went.’ She put her hand over Nell’s. ‘But that kid of yours, Nell. You really tried. You tried harder than Bonnie ever did with me, and harder than anyone ever did for you, but you met your match with her. Right from the day she came out of you, she started chipping away at your life.’