by Ren Richards
36
NOW
It was raining by the time Nell turned out of the prison parking lot.
Lindsay had fallen asleep waiting in the car, but she stirred when the car hit a pothole. Nell glanced over and saw her eyes start to open.
‘You have a better shot at this,’ Nell said.
Lindsay pushed herself upright, blinking groggily. ‘At what?’
‘Motherhood,’ Nell said. ‘You raised me, and look how well I turned out.’
Lindsay smirked at the windshield wipers. ‘Like a soufflé,’ she said with a dazzling French accent.
She meant that sincerely, Nell knew. Growing up, it had never been Chuck or Bonnie’s approval she sought. Her parents were distant relatives she visited sometimes, bearing drawings and wilted dandelions she’d plucked from the sidewalk. Lindsay was the one who was proud of her.
Thinking about it now, Nell was furious with Lindsay for enduring this pregnancy alone, but angrier still with herself for not thinking to check in with her sister. What was wrong with her? She was ordinarily so logical; ten anniversaries had passed since her daughter’s disappearance, and with practice she had numbed herself to them. But not this year. The meteoric rise of her career may have had something to do with that, and Sebastian’s increasing hints at an impending proposal. She feared marriage for the same reason Lindsay had ended hers: the expectations of a domestic life were too daunting.
‘Hey.’ Lindsay’s eyes brightened. ‘You took forever and I’m starving. Wanna get waffles?’
‘Sure,’ Nell said. ‘Just so you know, Sebastian and I are due to have one of those long boring talks about our relationship.’
‘You two are so disgusting when you’re sweet,’ Lindsay said.
‘Linds?’ Nell ventured. ‘I think maybe I’m going to tell him the truth.’
‘Truth?’ Lindsay echoed, letting the word fill her mouth like a giant gumball. Then her eyes went wide. ‘About—’
‘About Reina. It’s either tell him or end things now,’ Nell said. ‘I’ll never be able to have an honest connection with him if I keep a secret like this.’
‘First of all, you sound like an article I’d read in the gynaecologist’s office,’ Lindsay said. ‘Second, there’s no such thing as an honest relationship. Everyone lies to the person they’re sleeping with.’
‘Sebastian doesn’t lie to me,’ Nell said. ‘Nine out of ten times, I know when the people I’m interviewing are lying to me. There’s a quality.’
‘A quality?’
‘If they look at me the way you look at the entire world, I know they’re lying.’
‘Okay, now you’re just being an asshole,’ Lindsay said.
‘I thought you’d be happy,’ Nell said. ‘It was your suggestion for me to tell him not that long ago.’
‘That was to get ahead of Easter. I didn’t know what that psycho was going to do, but now I think she was just playing with you. She won’t tell him anything because it’ll mean losing you as her little chew toy.’ Lindsay sounded angry all of a sudden. This was how she used to get when she caught Nell smoking in middle school, and when she couldn’t talk her into having an abortion. ‘And what about your career? What if he not only leaves you but he goes to all your good friends at the press? They’ll pick your life apart. You want to go through that again?’
‘He wouldn’t do that to me,’ Nell said.
‘Anyone is capable of anything,’ Lindsay countered. ‘You know that. Nell, this will ruin your goddamned life.’
‘My life was already ruined that day,’ Nell said. ‘Do you honestly think that things can ever be normal for me? For either of us? Don’t kid yourself, Lindsay. You love to say that we’re unbreakable, but we’re already broken. We started out broken.’
‘You’re just feeling sorry for yourself,’ Lindsay said. ‘You do that. You make everything out to be catastrophic just so you have an excuse not to fight when things get hard.’
‘You’re one to talk.’ Nell snorted. ‘What about Robert? You gave up on someone who was good for you because you didn’t want to start a family with someone who loved you and treated you like the fucking centre of the universe. And for what? To have a baby with the man who tried to murder you.’
‘Matthew did not try to murder me!’ They were both shouting now. The tendons in Lindsay’s neck bulged and her face had turned pink. ‘You weren’t there for all of it. You don’t know anything about it!’
‘I know what it looks like when someone is trying to kill someone,’ Nell cried.
‘I provoked him, Nell. I provoked the hell out of him that day. You didn’t see that part.’
Nell shook her head. ‘Oh my god,’ she muttered. ‘You haven’t learned anything at all. You’re really going to take him back. You’re going to make me bury you.’
‘Don’t be dramatic,’ Lindsay said.
‘You think I’ve never written this one?’ Nell said. ‘I have. Right now Matthew has you vulnerable and he’s playing to that. You think he’s changed and he’ll worship this baby and treat you like a queen. He won’t, Linds. He’ll panic. He won’t want to be shackled to a baby – all the screaming and the smell of shit and how tired you’ll be. Your stomach is going to get bigger and Matthew will have his epiphany that he’ll always be second to this baby. He won’t be able to control you.’
‘Nell,’ Lindsay growled; a warning.
‘He’ll kill you both. You’ll be on one of those missing posters, everyone praying for a miracle. Meanwhile you and your giant stomach will be anchored to the bottom of the Hudson. Did you know that the body expels the foetus post-mortem? It’s called a coffin birth. All the gases in your stomach will build as you decompose until it just pushes everything out. That’s where you’ll be while church groups are combing fields with flashlights and calling your name.’
‘Shut up!’ Lindsay roared. Nell looked over and saw tears streaming down Lindsay’s face; her lips were wet and quivering. Lindsay sobbed and wiped her nose with her wrist. ‘Just shut up.’
Nell wasn’t sorry. Lindsay needed to hear it. She needed to be scared. She needed to be reminded of what Matthew Cranlin was. He wielded his masks with finesse, but Nell had not forgotten the putrid monster he was underneath all of them.
They weren’t even on the interstate yet, and already she and Lindsay wanted to kill each other. This was so typical, to get into an argument in the middle of nowhere. She said nothing, though the anxiety of it made her stomach hurt. She stared ahead at the road that revealed itself through the November fog.
Too late, she saw something lying across the asphalt. A plank, Nell thought, or a dead coyote. She felt strangely calm as she slammed the brakes and swerved. She heard the thuds as the tires were blown out by a spike strip. She felt the force of the car spinning. Her head hit something, hard. The world filled with stars bleeding stars.
37
THEN
Matthew never asked what happened on the morning Reina disappeared. Instead, when they returned to the house, he sat across from Nell at the kitchen table and he asked her only what he thought was relevant. He paused after each of Nell’s responses to take notes.
‘Were you alone with Reina when you left the house that morning?’
‘No.’
‘Who was with you?’
‘Ethan.’ Nell tugged at a piece of her hair.
Matthew raised his eyes. ‘Stop that. Don’t fidget. When you get into the courtroom, jurors are going to analyse your every move. You need to learn to sit still. Have no reaction no matter how upsetting some of these things will be to hear.’
Nell straightened her posture. She folded her hands neatly on the table.
‘Was Ethan with you when you went to the grocery store?’
‘No.’
‘Good job. Where was he?’
‘At school,’ Nell said. ‘I dropped him off.’
‘I didn’t ask you if you dropped him off.’ Matthew pointed his pen at her. ‘Never volunteer e
xtra information. The prosecutor will be a shark. Anything you say will be turned into something incriminating.’
Nell wanted to cry but she didn’t let herself.
Matthew stared at his notepad, considering something. Though the interrogation frightened her, Nell preferred this side of Matthew. It was more predictable, at least. He was focused and driven and calm. It didn’t matter that he hated her. She had landed herself at the heart of a high-profile case and he was determined to win it. This was going to bolster his already thriving career. For now, Matthew loved her, because Matthew Cranlin loved anyone he could use.
‘How did you meet Ethan?’ Matthew asked.
‘At a party,’ Nell said, mindful not to volunteer extra information.
‘You had sex that night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you drunk?’
‘A-a little.’ Nell’s voice faltered. She’d had a couple of beers in red Solo cups, but she hadn’t exactly been too drunk to know what she was doing. She remembered the entire night. She’d been dragged out by Shayne, the only girl in her latest group home who was nice to her.
‘How old were you, do you remember?’ Matthew pressed.
‘I was fourteen.’
‘And how old was Ethan?’
‘Seventeen.’ It was easy for Nell to recall little details like this. She was always storing them in her brain like pieces of trivia. She collected things that weren’t important to anyone else, the way children collected seashells and pebbles and called them treasure.
Lindsay was sitting on the counter, sipping a glass of merlot. She found Nell’s eyes and gave her the same look of encouragement she’d given Nell when she answered a question right on her homework. Great job, kiddo.
Matthew was grinning at his notepad.
‘What is it?’ Lindsay asked. ‘Did you figure something out?’
‘The age of consent in the state of Missouri is seventeen,’ Matthew said, ignoring Lindsay’s question and looking at Nell. ‘It doesn’t matter how drunk or sober you were. He was old enough to give consent and you weren’t. That’s statutory rape.’
‘Rape?’ Nell parroted back, her voice too loud. ‘He didn’t rape me.’
‘Actually, he did.’ Matthew tapped the back of his pen against the pad. ‘And we’ve just found our defence.’
Lindsay slid off of the counter and took the chair beside Nell. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
Matthew’s eyes were bright. He was excited, inspired. ‘How could anyone think you’d kill your daughter?’ he said to Nell. ‘You didn’t have the agency to do something like that. You’ve never had any agency in this relationship at all. You were an underage girl who met a young man at a party. He took advantage of you and got you pregnant. Then, because he had all the money and the influence and you had nothing, he kept you in his parents’ home. He used you for sex whenever he wanted it, and then he went back to his expensive school, and later to college, leaving you at home to take care of his child.’
Nell felt sick hearing the spin he put on her relationship with Ethan. On the surface, much of what he said was true. Nell had been forced to drop out of high school when the toll of caring for Reina was too taxing, but Ethan had never so much as been late for a class. He didn’t even appreciate it; he hated school, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Nell was the one with dreams, and nobody ever asked about those.
But Ethan wasn’t the one who held her back. Ethan wasn’t the one who chipped away at her confidence and her social life and her ability to write. That was all Reina.
Wasn’t it? Suddenly it all felt murky. Nell had been too many days without her daughter, and she couldn’t get a clear picture of her face.
‘Did Ethan have other girlfriends?’ Matthew asked.
‘Sometimes.’ Nell shifted uncomfortably in her chair, then remembered to sit still. Because Matthew had told her to never volunteer extra information, she didn’t tell him that she’d never cared who Ethan slept with, as awkward as it was when Nell got up late at night to pee and heard his latest conquest flushing the toilet. They loved each other the way that old friends did, but there was no expectation that they would ever marry or be exclusive. Even when they did have sex, there was no romance. There never had been.
‘Did you have other boyfriends?’ Matthew asked.
‘No,’ Nell said. Again, she didn’t volunteer the rest. She didn’t date anyone else because nobody would want a girl with a child, much less a girl who lived with the father of that child. But this was irrelevant anyway, because she was too tired for sex, and her ineptitude as a mother made her feel too ugly and unwanted to try.
‘Ethan Eddleton stole your life, Penelope,’ Matthew said, slamming his hand on the table and making Lindsay flinch. ‘You were a young girl. A young, intelligent girl with her whole life ahead of her, and he took control over everything you did. And the prosecution wants to accuse you of murdering your child? Please. You didn’t have the power to do that.’
‘No,’ Nell burst out, finally reaching her limit. She jumped to her feet. ‘I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to say that Ethan raped me, or that he killed Reina.’
‘Maybe he didn’t kill her on purpose,’ Matthew shot back without missing a beat. ‘Maybe it was an accident, and he panicked, and he forced you to cover it up the way he forced you to do everything since the night you met. And now he’s home with his parents while you’re the one going to trial.’
‘Stop it,’ Nell cried.
‘Sit down,’ Matthew said.
‘No!’
‘You’ve already spent most of your teen years in a cage,’ Matthew burst out. ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life in one?’
Nell stood there in silence, letting the words sink in.
Then she sat back down.
38
NOW
The turn signal was ticking. It was a tiny heartbeat in a world that had gone still.
Nell opened her eyes. Her skirt was wet and clinging to her thighs. At first she thought it was blood, but clarity returned and she realised that it had begun to snow, and it was coming in fast through the broken windshield.
Lindsay was beside her, slumped over the dashboard in a shower spray of glass.
Nell tried to call for her, but no sound would come out. She wrestled with her seatbelt, tugging weakly until she found the cognisance to press the release.
She leaned over to her sister. ‘Linds.’ Her voice was hoarse. She wanted to scream. Why couldn’t she scream? ‘Lindsay.’
Lindsay moaned. She tried to lift her head off of the dashboard but fell unconscious again.
‘Lindsay.’ It was all Nell could think to say. It was the only word that meant anything. ‘Lindsay!’
Nell could taste blood in her mouth and she knew that she was going to lose consciousness too. Screaming at her sister would do nothing. If she fell asleep now, they would both die here.
She struggled with the door. Her arms felt so weak. Her vision blurred and doubled. Tugging on the handle did nothing. She threw her weight against the door, toppled out into the wet grass and mud.
The road looked as though it were a thousand miles away. Nothing made sense. And still, something told her to go forward. She crawled, sliding in the mud, grasping at grass that broke apart in her fingers. She fell against the earth, and it was so soft, cold at first and then warmed by her skin. Her eyes closed.
No. She forced herself back awake. Making it to the road would have to be enough. It was all that she could do.
Headlights burned against the fog. There was the sound of tires skidding. Brakes. A door opening.
‘Nell?’ She knew that voice.
She saw his shoes, and that was the thing that made her remember. Oleg was always particular about his loafers. They were polished shiny leather, but now they were caked with mud.
It was strange that he was here. Nell knew this, on some distant level.
Arms hooked under her armpits, h
oisting her up. She tried to take a step and staggered forward. He was here, and he was trying to help her. She collapsed against the side of his car. It smelled familiar, bringing up the faraway memory of the morning he’d picked her up. And it smelled like him. How had she never noticed that? It smelled the way he’d tasted when he kissed her out in the cold.
He was saying something, but he sounded like he was underwater and Nell couldn’t make out the words.
‘Wait,’ she heard herself saying. ‘My sister is still in the car.’
She collapsed against something hard. There was the sound of a door slamming, and then silence.
THEN
Reina disappeared in November, and by January of the following year, the case had gone to trial. Nell sat at the defence table beside Matthew, her muscles tense and her gaze set forward. Despite the chill in the air, she could feel the sweat gathering in her armpits and above her upper lip. She could taste the tears in her throat, but she didn’t cry. They had been rehearsing this at home. Matthew called her every awful thing the press was going to dole out. He called her a slut, a baby killer, a manipulative psychopath. He said it over and over, until Nell learned that they were only words and that they had no power over her.
But despite everything, the prosecutor’s opening statement pierced through her defences. She was a tall, slim woman whose high heels slapped the tile floor with every step. Her dark hair was pulled into a severe ponytail.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. My name is Belinda Ambrose and I represent the state of Missouri. There will be several witnesses called in this case. The first will be a clerk from the Saveway grocery store where the defendant reported her daughter missing. The next will be a professor from the university where the defendant’s boyfriend attended class at the time of this incident. The third will be a paediatrician who treated the defendant’s child after a near-fatal allergic reaction to a bee sting.’ She strode to the trial exhibits and hefted a 2x4 piece of cardboard and brought it to the easel beside the witness box. She flipped the cardboard to face the jurors and the courtroom as she set it onto the easel.