by Ren Richards
‘Whaa?’ Lindsay mumbled through the tape over her lips. Nell kicked her so she’d be silent. She couldn’t trust Lindsay not to infuriate their captor.
‘It was you, wasn’t it,’ Nell said. ‘The mannequins, and chasing me off the road that night.’
‘You’re the one who drove yourself into that swamp,’ Oleg said, sounding irritated. ‘I was only going to scare you.’ He smiled. ‘Autumn and I always enjoyed playing with our kills. It is better for them to be scared before the end.’
Nell remembered Lindsay’s stolen phone. How Oleg had arrived a mere twenty minutes after she had called him. Hadn’t she thought at the time that it was too quick? But of course, he hadn’t been coming from the motel. He’d just had to turn around. She forced herself not to be combative, even as the anger and the fear ran laps inside her brain. All she said was, ‘Why?’
‘Autumn upped the ante, not me,’ Oleg said. ‘She put up quite a fight. Stabbed me in the side. Thankfully she didn’t hit anything vital – don’t know how I would have explained it if I’d gone to the emergency room.’ He gave a congenial laugh that chilled Nell to her core. ‘But I gained the upper hand. And as I was strangling her there in the dirt, beside her final victim, I was already mourning her. What would I do without my favourite sister? Who else could possibly understand me? I even cried as I cleaned up her mess.
‘But after that? After that it felt satisfying. I want to clean more messes like that. When Easter told me about what you’d done to your little girl, it was like Autumn sent me a gift from the great beyond. Poor Easter. She thought she’d found another innocent, falsely accused, someone who would believe her.’
Oleg fiddled with the phone again, and Nell could hear the chime it gave as he pressed record.
‘And of course, there is the matter of your book. I could not allow you to write it, to perhaps discover the truth. You see, I truly believe you are good at your job. Easter must stay where she is. For my sake.’ He leaned over her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her lips. ‘And I will enjoy this necessity. I’m going to rid the world of another killer.’
THEN
Ethan sat tall on the witness stand. If his mother appeared to have shrunk since Reina’s disappearance, Ethan appeared to have grown. He was taller than Nell remembered. His hair, normally messy, was gelled into neat curls that resembled Reina’s.
Belinda Ambrose asked him to state his name for the record, and when he did, his voice was deeper than Nell remembered. She had known him since he was seventeen years old, and living across the hall from him had familiarised her with all of his moods. But now, at twenty-two years old, for the first time he looked like a man.
‘Please tell the jurors your relationship to Reina Eddleton,’ Ambrose said. She turned theatrically to face the court.
Ethan bowed his head closer to the microphone. ‘I’m her father.’
Nell made herself look at him, but he didn’t look at her.
‘Mr Eddleton, would you say that you were Reina’s primary caregiver?’
‘No.’
‘And who was her primary caregiver?’
‘Penelope.’ It was strange for Nell to hear him say her name like that. For years, he had only called her Penny.
Ethan pointed at Nell and their eyes met. Nell looked for any sign of the boy who’d sobbed into her shoulder on their last night together. But she barely recognised him at all.
‘Mr Eddleton, would you say the defendant was a good mother?’
‘She was okay.’
‘Just okay?’
Ethan shrugged, and for a moment Nell recognised him. Even dressed in a custom-tailored suit, he had never been comfortable with formalities.
‘Mr Eddleton, please elaborate.’
‘She lost patience with Reina a lot,’ he said. ‘It caused fights between us.’
‘Objection, your honour,’ Matthew said, standing. ‘My client isn’t on trial because she argued with her boyfriend about diaper rash.’
Ambrose rolled her eyes. ‘I’m establishing intent, your honour.’
‘I’ll allow it,’ the judge said.
Nell’s jaw tensed. Matthew picked up on it immediately and nudged her foot under the table.
‘Mr Eddleton, did the defendant ever strike your child?’ Ambrose asked.
‘No,’ Ethan answered.
‘Did she ever yell at your child?’
‘No. She always took it out on me.’ Ethan squirmed uncomfortably. ‘But I worried about leaving her alone with Reina when she was angry.’
‘Please elaborate.’
Ethan lowered his head, and Nell’s stomach clenched. If she’d been able to eat anything today, she would have vomited right there on the table. She knew this look. He was averting his gaze, and his voice had lowered to a mumble. He only did this when he was lying.
‘Because one time she told me, “I can’t look at her. I’ll kill her if I do.”’
The lie bore straight through her, and for the first time during the entire trial, Nell had to restrain herself from standing up and screaming her protest.
She stared at Ethan, willing him to look at her. But he didn’t.
NOW
Oleg was dragging Lindsay away from Nell towards the hole. She twisted in his grasp, kicking the tripod over in her fury. The phone fell into the snow with a soft thud, and Nell flinched. Oleg threw Lindsay to the ground, and Nell was certain that Oleg was going to shoot her. She rose, scrabbling frantically to find her feet, and sprinted towards them, hearing the phone’s screen shatter under her heel as she ran.
Oleg shouted something in Russian and pointed the gun at her. Nell knew she couldn’t stop now. She charged forward with what strength she had left and launched herself on top of him, jamming her knees into his torso. Pain shot up from her wounded wrist and she screamed, primal. She screamed in pain, and she screamed for Lindsay to get the gun.
Lindsay was upright now. She raised her taped hands over her head, and in one deft, fast motion, swung her arms down. The force of the movement ripped the duct tape, and she was free. Something she’d doubtless learned in those self-defence classes she took after divorcing Matthew.
Nell reeled back and punched Oleg, hard. Then she heard a loud bang, saw the muzzle flash.
Lindsay’s shot him. She’ll be put on trial for murder.
Then she felt the burning pain in her side, and the world shook on its axis. Oleg was still holding the gun, and he let out a roar and threw himself forward, Nell pinned beneath him. She drew up her legs, trying to kick him off, but the pain made her body lock up. All she could do was thrash under the weight of him.
The cold barrel of the gun touched her temple.
‘Tell me what you did to her!’ he grunted. ‘Tell me what you did to Reina!’
There was the click of the barrel turning. Nell knew that he was going to kill her.
Then there was a loud thump of the shovel. Oleg moaned and turned to dead weight on top of her.
‘Come on,’ Lindsay was saying, the duct tape now hanging from her chin. She grabbed the gun from Oleg’s slack hand and kicked his sodden form, until he rolled off Nell. ‘Come on, come on,’ Lindsay said again, and Nell didn’t know who she was talking to. Stars exploded across her vision, but she managed to get to her feet. She climbed into the passenger side of Oleg’s car, and Lindsay fired up the ignition. She spun the car into a U-turn and sped down the narrow path between the trees.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Lindsay said. ‘Nell? Goddamn it, Nell, open your eyes. Stay with me.’
‘Is he following us?’ Nell’s voice came as little more than a breath. Her eyelids were heavy, but she lifted them just enough to see trees blurring by, lit up by the high beams.
‘No,’ Lindsay said.
Nell shook her head. It rolled lazily against the headrest of her seat. ‘Linds, we have to tell the police where he is.’
‘Fuck Oleg. I’m more worried about you.’
‘Listen to me.’ Ne
ll’s words were starting to slur. ‘We can’t just leave him there.’
‘He’s probably dead,’ Lindsay said. ‘I hit him pretty hard with that shovel.’
‘Tell the police,’ Nell panted, ‘about his phone. They can still get his video from the cloud. Proof you acted in self-defence.’
‘Tell them yourself,’ Lindsay said.
‘This is important,’ Nell said. ‘I’m trying to save your fucking life.’
‘Fuck that – I’m trying to save yours!’ Lindsay cried. Nell could feel the engine vibrations under her feet. She didn’t know how fast they were going, but the world was a blur.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nell murmured.
‘Nell.’ Lindsay’s voice was loud and stern, but it wasn’t enough to keep Nell awake.
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Nell!’
First, everything went quiet. And then it went black.
40
THEN
After Nell was acquitted, she would see Ethan one last time. It was a year later. Though northern Missouri was still peppered with missing posters of Reina’s face, the trial was old news. The nation was now obsessed with a wealthy Massachusetts couple accused of running a sex traffic ring out of their Zumba studio.
Lindsay was in the final stages of her divorce, and in one week’s time, both sisters would leave Missouri. Penelope Wendall would become Nell Way; she would make it official once she became a resident of New York State.
Nell had been sitting in the courtyard behind the hotel where she and Lindsay were staying. Ethan’s shadow eclipsed the pages of Nell’s notebook, and she looked up.
‘You’re writing again,’ Ethan said, with a contrite smile. ‘I’m glad to see it.’
She looked back at her page. ‘What do you want?’
Ethan sat on the bench beside her. The smell of his cologne and shampoo took Nell right back to the Eddletons’ house. Back to the life that felt like it had ended a million years ago.
‘The prosecutor coached me,’ he said. ‘She made me say those things.’
‘Funny, I didn’t see any marionette strings,’ Nell replied.
‘She said that the defence would blame me. And she was right. But you were the one on trial, so as long as you were acquitted in the end, I knew we’d both be able to move on after the verdict.’
Nell shrugged. ‘What does it matter now? Everyone decided I was a monster whether you confirmed it or not.’
Ethan shouldn’t have even been here. After the acquittal, Matthew had filed a lawsuit against the Eddletons on Nell’s behalf for emotional distress and harassment as a result of Mrs Eddleton’s slap in the courthouse. The suit was settled privately, and one of the terms was that the Eddletons were no longer allowed to speak to or about Nell in a public setting; they weren’t allowed to implicate her in Reina’s disappearance. In return, Nell wasn’t allowed to give any interviews regarding the Eddletons.
‘My attorney said you were going to get off,’ Ethan said. ‘She knew that the prosecution had a weak case and the death penalty was too ambitious without proof.’
Nell shrugged. She drew a spiral on the page. She imagined that it was the portal to another dimension, and that she could reach a place in the universe where none of this had ever happened.
‘I knew you could handle yourself and that you’d be okay, Penny. You always are.’
She sighed. ‘You should go. Lindsay will kill me if she knows I’m talking to you.’
‘I know, I just—’ His voice caught, giving way to a moment of vulnerability.
Nell looked at him. ‘Why did you come here?’
‘I just miss her, Penny.’ His eyes filled with tears. He knitted his hands together and stared down at them. ‘You’re the only one who would understand.’
Nell did understand. She had grieved for Reina over the past months. While the nation grieved for a sweet little girl with curly hair who disappeared into a late autumn sky, Nell had grieved for the real Reina. The child who never wanted to be held, who was only clever when she’d thought up some way to be cruel. The child who frightened her. The child who fascinated her. The person she had been, and the person she would never grow up to become.
But she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything for Ethan. Not anymore.
‘You shouldn’t have said those things about me in court.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ethan said. He sounded desperate and sad. ‘I wish I hadn’t. Everyone thought you were a monster and I confirmed it.’
‘I don’t care what the world thinks of me anymore,’ Nell said. ‘I just care about what’s true. And I never said that I wanted to hurt my daughter. I only said that I was tired of her hurting me.’
Ever since hearing Ethan’s testimony against her, Nell had hated him. And even now, as she sat so close to him that she could smell his tears, she wasn’t sure how much of that hatred was her own and how much of it had been put into her head by Matthew.
Had Ethan really controlled her for all those years? Manipulated her? Maybe. She didn’t know.
But now that the trial was over and her duffel bag up in the hotel room was packed, she wasn’t angry anymore. Ethan Eddleton was never meant to be a permanent place for her. He was just a prolonged foster home, and now that Nell was an adult, her days of sleeping in other people’s houses were over. It was time for her to grow up and find a place of her own.
‘Do you think we’ll ever get her back?’ Ethan asked.
‘No,’ Nell answered truthfully. She turned up the volume on the evening news whenever a body was found. She read the crime reports in every online newspaper in the country. All she ever saw were photos of children who didn’t belong to her, and the start of someone else’s horrible journey.
Ethan nodded. ‘I guess I wanted to know if there was ever a time when things were … you know, good. Even if it was just for a minute.’
If Nell appeared to be considering this, it was only because she had to muster the strength to say what she was thinking. Ethan had never asked her such a thing. No one had, not even the predatory reporters who’d asked her everything else. But Nell had asked herself a hundred times, and she knew the answer.
‘Her last Christmas,’ Nell said. ‘I’d taken her to visit my mother in prison, and she was terrible the whole way there. But then on the ride back, I guess she’d exhausted herself. When we were getting close to the house, we passed that field near the elementary school. I stopped, because there were a bunch of wild turkeys crossing the street out in front of us. I thought Reina was asleep, but she sat up in her car seat and she asked me where the turkeys sleep at night so nothing eats them. I told her that they’re wild birds. They fly up into the trees and they hide there until it’s morning and the threat is gone. I looked at her in the mirror, and she was watching me. She had never been interested in any of the books I’d read to her or any of the stories I made up, but for once she was interested in what I was saying. She said, “I never saw a turkey in a tree,” and I said, “That’s because you never looked up.” She smiled. But she caught me watching her in the mirror and she stopped.’
Nell was still staring at the courtyard, watching leaves skitter as they were pushed across the walkway by a gentle breeze.
‘I’ve pictured every horrible thing that could have happened to her,’ Nell said. She had seen what happened to missing children. She knew. ‘But I think the reason we never found her in a ditch or stream or shallow grave is because she isn’t in any of those places. She’s hiding out of sight where the wild birds sleep, and she doesn’t want to be found.’
NOW
‘Fuck,’ Lindsay said. Her voice was breathy, desperate, and the first thing Nell heard when she opened her eyes. ‘Fuck,’ Lindsay said again, and she leaned forward to kiss Nell’s forehead so hard that it hurt. ‘You scared the living piss out of me.’
Are we still in Oleg’s car? That was Nell’s thought. The room felt overly bright and unreal.
‘Linds—’ Her throat was so d
ry that she choked. Her body bucked and shuddered with pain.
‘Don’t move,’ Lindsay said. ‘You had surgery. There was a bullet right next to your fucking kidney.’
Nell focused on her sister’s face. There were bruises on her forehead, turning yellow as they faded. A gash ran across her lower lip, tied shut with black-thread stitches.
‘Sebastian’s coming right back. I sent him to the cafeteria for coffee. He was making me nervous with all his doting.’
Nell closed her eyes in a long blink. It would have been so easy to slip back into blackness and emerge again when everything made sense.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, sticking to a whisper.
Lindsay laughed. It was a loud, ugly snorting sound as her eyes filled up with tears. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m okay.’ Her blue eyes looked so big and worried, and Nell couldn’t stand seeing her this way. Lindsay never betrayed her calm unless she was angry. Nell had only seen this look in her sister’s eyes once before, when giving birth to Reina had almost killed her.
‘Oleg?’ Nell asked.
‘That piece of shit is still alive, too,’ Lindsay said. ‘I told the police where to find him, and you were right. The police were able to recover the video on his phone.’
‘Good.’ The word came out strained and breathless. Nell closed her eyes. ‘That’ll protect you from prosecution.’
‘I need you to turn off crime writer mode right now,’ Lindsay said. She gathered Nell’s hand in both of hers. ‘I’ve just spent three days sitting in this chair without anything resembling a shower, listening to your boyfriend read you shitty poetry because I didn’t know when you were going to wake up. So you need to stop trying to solve your next crime and focus on getting better, because I need my sister.’
Nell stared up at her. Lindsay. She looked so tired. Her skin was pale, marbled by blue and purple veins. Her eyes were sunken, almost bruised.
‘Are you really okay?’ Nell said.