by Ren Richards
‘I’m still dealing with that situation we previously discussed, if that’s what you mean.’ Lindsay’s way of saying that she was still pregnant without having to spit out the actual word.
Nell was surprised to realise she was relieved, even though it meant her sister was still tethered to Matthew Cranlin. All of that seemed a lifetime away. They could sort it out later. Later, there would be fighting, arguing, crying – the way there always was when Matthew’s name came up. But for now it didn’t matter.
‘Promise you won’t leave my sight,’ Nell said, and grabbed her wrist.
Lindsay put her hand on top of Nell’s and laughed. Even her laugh sounded tired. ‘Sister, a crucifix and a gallon of holy water couldn’t purge me from this room.’
‘Nell!’ Sebastian’s cry was hushed by the instinctive lull hospitals encouraged. He set two cups of coffee on a metal tray and ran to her.
‘Hey,’ she said, a moment before he took her face in his hands and kissed her. She felt his stubble against her lips, tasted the coffee on his breath.
He drew back to look at her. ‘What do you remember?’ he asked.
‘Everything,’ Nell said. ‘That’s my job, remember.’ Already she was wondering about Oleg’s trial, and how the press would cover this. The police would immediately know from the video that she was Penelope Wendall. They would come to question her about that night with Oleg in the woods, and all of the things he’d done leading up to it. It would be impossible to hide all of this from Sebastian; she had to tell him the truth, or he’d hear it from the police.
Sebastian was tracing her jaw with his thumb. He leaned down to kiss her nose, her forehead, before he took the empty chair beside Lindsay. Lindsay backed up just enough to let them have their moment, but she didn’t leave the room.
‘God, Nell.’ He squeezed her hand.
‘You must be so sick of always worrying about me,’ Nell said, smiling tiredly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you to get better, and then we can spend the rest of our lives worrying about each other.’
Nell smiled, despite everything. Soon, he might not feel the same way. Once she was able to keep herself awake, she would tell him about Reina. She would tell him all of it, because she owed him that much, even if it cost her everything.
‘Someone should get the doctor,’ Sebastian said.
‘Yes,’ Lindsay pointedly replied. ‘Someone should.’
Sebastian squeezed Nell’s hand before he stood, and he kissed her again.
Once he’d left the room, Lindsay groaned. ‘He’s been insufferable,’ she said. ‘Like a slow song at the end of the dance and it just won’t end. It goes on and on and you get more depressed the longer you have to listen to it.’
‘You’re jealous,’ Nell said. ‘He loves me more than you do.’
‘I don’t love you at all, you little rat,’ Lindsay said. And then she doubled forward and laid her head beside Nell’s on the pillow.
Nell inched closer. Three days unconscious and she had gotten the easier bargain. She hadn’t dreamed, hadn’t thought, hadn’t felt anything. All the while Lindsay had kept vigil, doing the lion’s share to protect them. It had been her role for Nell’s entire life, and Lindsay had never resented her for it once. Not a single time.
THEN
Nell didn’t pack more than she could fit into one duffel bag. Neither did Lindsay. They’d both spent a lifetime in Missouri. They’d both lived for a time in sprawling estates, with manicured hedges and swimming pools and housekeepers. But they had learned to never be sentimental about four walls and the people who lived inside of them, and now it was time to leave the past behind.
They listened to the radio for the first two hours, belting out the lyrics to Jay-Z and Shakira, pointing to each other and laughing when they sang out of key.
It was only after they’d crossed state lines into Illinois that Lindsay reached over and lowered the volume. She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she spoke with palpable difficulty. ‘Whether you want to call yourself Penelope or Nell, you’re still my sister, and I’m always going to be on your side,’ she said. ‘I need you to know that.’
‘I know,’ Nell said, and her stomach began to tie itself in knots.
‘Then you know it’s time,’ Lindsay said. ‘It’s just you and me here. Nobody else. I need you to tell me what happened the day Reina disappeared.’
41
NOW
One week after her ordeal, Nell was staring at her iPad as Sebastian wheeled her out of the hospital. Bas and Lindsay had tried to keep her from the news, but it had been futile. She was glued to every online article about Oleg, and was eager to visit Easter to get her take. After everything, Oleg had been the masterful liar of all the siblings.
‘I really wish you’d put that thing away,’ Bas said. He pushed her through the open glass doors, out into the winter air. It was cold, but the sun was bright and ice was melting on the concrete.
Nell tucked the iPad into her purse. A hospital orderly came to collect the wheelchair, and Nell stood. She’d almost expected to see paparazzi waiting for her in the parking lot, shouting, ‘Penelope! Where have you been hiding all of this time, Penelope?’
But of course there weren’t any. Oleg’s case was months away from trial. It would soon come around through, and then she and Lindsay would be summoned to testify against him. The recording would be played for the jury, and everyone would know that Nell Way was the alias of Penelope Wendall, the Missouri teen acquitted of her daughter’s murder.
The media would flood back into her life then, and there would be no stopping it. When they were alone in her hospital room, she and Lindsay whispered about it. Lindsay had nothing to lose, but for Nell the costs were high, and she had to accept that she could potentially lose a lot.
Nell had made an outline in her head, treating her own life like one of her books.
First, she would get back to her apartment. Surviving the hospital stay was step one.
Then, she would tell Sebastian the truth. All of it, including the things the jurors and the media never knew about her.
Then, she would call her agent to give him the heads-up that the media was about to descend. There would be outcry, calls for a boycott of her publisher. Jasper would eat it up. He’d find some way to turn it into a marketing ploy.
Then, she would deal with whatever came next. With Sebastian, or without him.
The car ride was quiet, and when they turned onto their block, Bas spoke for the first time since they’d left the hospital. ‘Look at that, there’s a space right in front.’ He manoeuvred into a flawless parallel park and switched off the engine. ‘You won’t have to walk very far, and then you can get some rest.’
He reached for the door handle, and Nell leaned over and gently grabbed his wrist. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Now?’ He blinked. ‘Can it wait five minutes?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I should tell you before we go inside.’
THEN
Nell didn’t know, when she descended the staircase and entered the Eddletons’ kitchen, that this would be the last day she spent with her daughter. If someone had told her that at the time, she might have muttered something like ‘good’.
Reina was lying on the kitchen floor, arms and legs spread out so that she looked like a bony little star. Her bowl of applesauce and pear slices was untouched. The meal looked magazine pretty, with an artful sprinkling of cinnamon in the shape of a cursive letter R. Mrs Eddleton loved to do things like that.
Mrs Eddleton was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her laptop and wearing her reading glasses. Nell never knew if she was ignoring Reina’s tantrums or if she truly didn’t see them, blinded as she was with love for her grandchild.
‘Ready?’ Ethan asked Nell, stopping only briefly to kiss her cheek. It was something he only did when he wanted something from her.
‘Ready for what?’ Nell asked
.
Ethan stepped over Reina’s sprawled body and dumped the last dregs of his coffee into the sink. ‘You’re taking me to class. I told you last night, remember?’
Nell had only a vague recollection of Ethan knocking on her door while she was half asleep. He had just come in from some campus party and had no concept of the ungodly hour. He’d said something about loaning his car to a friend, to whom he owed a favour. Nell hadn’t cared about the details. College. Friends. The world outside of motherhood – all of these things were alien to her.
‘We have to leave now then,’ Nell said, exasperated. ‘I have to get groceries for your mother’s church thing.’
‘Don’t forget the cake mix,’ Mrs Eddleton said, typing furiously.
Years later, Nell would look back at this morning and wonder what might have happened if she’d done what she wanted, which was tell Ethan to fuck off and find his own ride to class, or to simply leave everyone – Ethan, Reina, the Eddleton house and everything in it – and speed off towards the horizon and never come back. The prospect of those what ifs would appear before her mind’s eye like a banquet of shimmering gems.
‘Thanks,’ Ethan said. ‘Meet you in the car.’
Reina screamed as Nell buttoned her into her coat. She screamed until she threw up the watery remnants of her breakfast in the car, and Nell had to turn around at the end of the driveway so she could go back into the house and change Reina’s coat.
Nell sped down the suburban back roads. Not even eight o’clock and already her head was pounding.
Ethan was in the passenger seat, staring at the open textbook in his lap. He always studied in the minutes right before an exam, rather than in the days leading up to it.
‘Reina,’ he said. ‘Cut it out.’
Miraculously, the screaming stopped.
Nell glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw Reina sitting in her car seat with her lips pressed together, her cheeks puffed out as if she was holding in a scream.
Ethan cut a smug look at Nell. ‘Maybe if you tried, she would listen to you.’
Reina wasn’t listening to Ethan because she respected his authority. This was just another of her many games. But Nell didn’t bother trying to explain; it always ended in a fight.
They turned onto Gold Meadow Lane. It was a long strip of land that had belonged to family farms for generations, but now was being converted into condos. It was a straight drive to the university, but Nell came this way even when it added time to her errands if Reina wasn’t in the car. She liked the way the grass seemed to stretch on forever, and she would pretend that she could build a house right in the middle of it. All that nothingness would be like a moat, protecting her from the life she’d somehow fallen into.
Now, though, the grass was torn up in several places, replaced by cement mixers and mounds of dirt. A sign by the road showed a painting of little grey condos above big red letters: COMING SOON.
Nell smelled it even before Ethan raised his head up and said, ‘What is that?’
Nell closed her eyes in a long blink. Urine. Reina had wet herself. This had been the cost of her silence, and one of the many reasons Nell had long stopped asking her daughter to be quiet, or be still, or to behave.
Ethan looked in the rear-view mirror and Nell followed his gaze. Ethan’s backpack was in the back seat, unzippered. Reina had taken a stack of papers from it and was now holding them pinned between her thighs.
Urine dripped down her legs and onto the upholstery. The pages were soaked.
Ethan gasped. It was a sound Nell had never heard him make, and in that moment she felt an odd spark of hope. He saw it, too. Reina had finally graduated to destroying something that mattered to him.
Nell flicked the turn signal and pulled over. Ethan was already jumping out of the car before she’d come to a complete stop. He threw open the door to the back seat and grabbed the stack of papers, holding them pinched between his thumb and index finger.
‘Goddamn it, Penny! This was my term paper! It’s the last day of the semester. If this isn’t on Professor Gillan’s desk today, I lose fifty per cent of my grade.’
Semesters. Professors. Grades. All things that used to matter to Nell but were now just pieces of a long-lost world.
She undid her seatbelt and rummaged through the trunk. ‘Okay, calm down. I have some wet wipes.’
‘Wet wipes,’ he said, throwing the papers back into the car. ‘Wet wipes aren’t going to do anything, Penny!’
‘Why are you screaming at me?’ Nell tugged several wipes from the canister and got on her knees to scrub the upholstery at Reina’s feet. ‘I’m not the one who left his backpack unzipped. You know she likes to destroy things.’
Reina watched all of this with a blank expression. When Nell undid the seatbelt Reina went limp, but she didn’t struggle when Nell tugged her out of the car seat and set her down on the grass.
The car seat was going to need to be dry-cleaned, but the floor hadn’t taken much damage. That’s what Nell was thinking when Ethan hoisted Reina up by her underarms and shook her.
‘Why did you do that?’ he burst out.
Reina hung suspended in his grasp. Her coat bunched up by her face, making her look like a suede turtle in pink fur lapels. Her mouth twisted into a smile, but even on her soft and pretty face, it looked wicked.
Ethan shook her. He shoved her hard against the door, and the entire car rocked.
Nell dropped the wipes and ran to him. ‘Hey.’ Her voice sounded strangely calm. She touched his shoulder. ‘Hey, it’s all right. We’ll go back to the house and you can print it out again. So you’ll be a little late. No big deal.’
Ethan’s fingertips bore into Reina’s coat. Her smirk was gone, and now the two of them were staring each other down.
For the first time, Nell was witnessing an act of defiance from Reina that was not aimed at her. Nell may as well have been invisible, standing there beside them.
Ethan was breathing hard, little clouds bursting from his nostrils. His eyes were dark with rage, and Nell realised that for the past four years, Ethan hadn’t been blind to everything that was wrong with their daughter. He’d heard the screaming. He’d seen the destruction. He knew the things Nell told him were true. But he’d wanted to believe that they weren’t. He wanted to believe that if he was patient, if he loved her enough, Reina would be the child he wanted.
Reina let out a whimper and started to squirm.
‘Ethan.’ Nell’s voice was gentle. ‘You’re hurting her.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it.’ Spittle flew from his mouth when he spoke. ‘I just can’t.’
He threw Reina into Nell’s arms. Nell felt the dampness of the urine on her hip when Reina latched on to her. For once, her daughter coiled her little body around her waist. Later, Nell would wonder if this had been a sign that Reina did love her, that she understood her mother’s job was to protect her. And she would wonder if this, too, had been one of Reina’s games.
Ethan climbed into the driver’s side and turned the key in the ignition.
Nell pried Reina’s hands from her shirt and set her down on the ground. There was a light dusting of snow, and maybe it would clean some of the urine from Reina’s jeans.
‘Ethan, stop.’ Nell climbed into the passenger seat, leaving the door open behind her.
‘I can’t look at her,’ he said. ‘I can’t look at her. I’ll kill her if I do.’
Nell put her hand over his wrist. He was shaking. ‘I know what you’re feeling, Ethan, but it’ll pass.’
He turned his head sharply in her direction. ‘Does it, though? Does it ever stop?’
Nell didn’t answer. She couldn’t bring herself to lie to him.
When he leaned back in his seat, Nell worried that he would get out of the car and come for Reina again. She worried that he would grab her, or that he meant it when he said he would kill her.
Instead, he slammed his foot on the gas.
Nell nearly toppled backw
ards through the open door, but he grabbed her by the wrist and saved her from falling.
‘Ethan!’ She knew that she should have wrested out of his grip. She should have jumped out of the car and risked breaking both of her legs or even her neck, because Reina was still out there. She was still sitting in the snow and her own mess.
Nell wasn’t sure what kept her from trying to reach her daughter. She wasn’t sure what made her grab the handle of the car door and pull it shut, choosing to save herself instead.
42
NOW
Hail bounced off the roof of Sebastian’s car. Up ahead at the end of the block, a traffic light turned green and someone honked their horn. A group of teenagers in their parochial school uniforms passed by in a cloud of riotous laughter.
This was the first time Nell had told anyone other than Lindsay what happened that day.
Sebastian listened without a single interruption, and now he stared at Nell and the silence grew thick and uncomfortable.
He could have told her to get out. He could have sped away and left her there and sent his sister to collect his things so he wouldn’t have to ever see Nell again. But when he finally spoke, he said, ‘Did you go back?’
Nell nodded. ‘Of course I did.’ Her voice was hushed, like she was trying not to cry, although no tears came. ‘Ethan sped the whole way to the university. He ran every red light and I don’t know how we didn’t get pulled over. And then, once we pulled up in front of the building, he started shaking his head. I think he was having a panic attack, but I’d never seen him like that. He had always clamped down his emotions so much that you’d wonder if he had any. He was saying, “What did I do? What did I do?”’
Nell could still see it clearly, as though it had only happened yesterday rather than ten years ago. In her mind, Ethan was still twenty-one years old. And when she thought of him, she still felt like that frightened teenage girl who got pulled along in everyone’s current and could never find the footing to claw herself out.
‘He begged me to go back for her, and I said that I would. I told him to go to class and I said that nobody had to know this ever happened. I would clean her up – I always kept spare clothes in the diaper bag – and I’d go to the store and everything would be fine. I told him I wasn’t angry, that I understood. And I really, really did.