by Ren Richards
‘But when I drove back to that road, she was gone. I remembered exactly where we’d left her because there was a big sign advertising new condos. I was sure I had the right place. There was nowhere for her to have gone. The nearest gas station was at least a mile away, and the construction site was abandoned for the winter. And it was daytime; there wouldn’t be any coyotes or wolves.’
Nell could see this, too. Her beautiful field of grass that she had so admired. It was a crisp, smooth ribbon of eternity that made the entire world seem clean and empty. And somehow her daughter had been swallowed up by all of that nothingness.
‘I thought someone must have found her. It was a small, safe little town where nothing bad ever happened. I thought that if I went to the grocery store like I’d planned, and I told someone that I lost her, eventually someone would come up and tell me that she’d been returned to the police and that she was safe.’ Nell said that last word – safe – with venom, as though it had betrayed her.
‘But no one found her. Her picture was all over the news. It was on every telephone pole. Every news website. It was in every state – it even went international. And still I thought, someone will find her. Someone will bring her home. How could it be possible that she just disappeared?’
Nell thought about Reina every day. The words she said to Sebastian now were not new to her. But suddenly she sobbed. The teenage Penelope and the adult Nell intersected. The hope of a young girl and the unflinching understanding of a woman. Nell knew all of the things that could happen to a child left alone in the world. She knew that there were things that could rival even Reina’s ugliest tantrum. And she knew enough to understand that she would never know what her daughter had seen.
‘But this case went to trial,’ Bas said.
Nell nodded. She popped open the dashboard and found a napkin and blew her nose. ‘Everyone thought I killed her, and I figured it was the same difference. I could have stayed with her. I could have pulled the keys out of the ignition. But I didn’t try.’
‘Why didn’t you say what really happened and Ethan’s role in it?’ Bas asked.
‘If I’d taken the stand, my attorney promised me that I’d lose,’ Nell said. ‘The prosecution was just dying to get their hands on me. But if I didn’t testify, they couldn’t.’
‘But after the trial,’ Bas said, gently. ‘Or now. When the press comes for you again with this upcoming trial, you could tell them the truth.’
She looked at him. ‘No one would believe me. No one ever believed me about Reina,’ she said. ‘And it would only destroy Ethan’s life. My trial is over; I can’t be charged with the same crime twice. But if anyone knew he was with me that day, he would be arrested for child endangerment and I don’t know what would happen to him. I don’t want that.’
‘So you took the fall, and he just let you.’ Even though the engine had been off for a while now, Sebastian gripped the steering wheel. He stared through the windshield at the pellets of hail bouncing off the hood. He woke up in bed each morning beside Nell Way, but he had never met Penelope Wendall, the exhausted teenage mother whose C-section scar ran breastbone to pelvis too. It would take him time to reconcile the two people, until their overlapping images formed one shape.
For the first time all morning, there was a hint of anger in Sebastian’s voice. ‘You were public enemy number one, and he gets to just live a peaceful life.’
‘No he doesn’t,’ Nell said, with certainty. ‘There will never be peace for either of us. No matter how many years pass, we’re both going to turn up the volume on the news whenever we hear that human remains have been found. He’s always going to blame himself, the same way that I blame myself. We’re both always going to wonder.’
She didn’t know what Ethan had done in the near-decade since she’d seen him last. She didn’t know if he’d met someone new, or if he’d had more children, or if he was afraid to. But she did know that he would always be more broken than he appeared on the outside. Just like her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me all of this a long time ago?’ Sebastian asked.
‘For the same reason I didn’t jump out of the car that day, I guess. I was trying to save myself.’
Sebastian was still looking straight ahead when he reached over and put a hand on Nell’s knee. ‘We can talk about this a little later,’ he said. ‘It’s getting cold in here. Let’s go home.’
43
NEXT
By August, Oleg’s trial had concluded. Nell last saw him at his sentencing, when she sat beside Lindsay and heard the judge sentence him to fifteen years in prison for their attempted murder. She watched him shuffle between the pews with his hands cuffed in front of him. His white-blond hair was slick and shining beneath the courtroom’s neon lights.
The trial date for Autumn’s murder had yet to be determined.
Since then, an appeal had been filed by Oleg’s state-appointed attorney, who was attempting to have him extradited back to Russia. If that happened, he’d be a free man so long as he never set foot in the United States.
For now, though, he was being held at Royal King’s State Penitentiary in the men’s housing unit.
Easter, cleared of all her charges, had been released and was being kept somewhere in isolation. All Nell’s calls to the Hamblins’ phone had gone unanswered. Nell’s agent was insistent that she keep trying, and she would. But Nell knew of another way to get the information she’d need to finish the story.
It was a hot day, and the AC was blasting in Nell’s new Subaru Impreza. She’d bought this car much to Lindsay’s exasperation. If Lindsay had her way, Nell would be speeding up the interstate in a red BMW, letting the entire world know she was a woman of means. And this was true. After the trial brought her identity to light, Nell had gone into recluse mode. She still barely left the apartment, and had just returned from a two-month hiatus to the Bahamas with Bas, where they’d both enjoyed a break from the press. But Jasper had worked his magic while she was away, and the Hamblin manuscript was already sold before it was finished.
Lindsay was reclined in the front passenger seat, her bare feet up on the dash, pink manicured toes wriggling in the heat of the sun through the glass.
When Nell pulled into the driveway of Royal King’s State Penitentiary, Lindsay looked over her shoulder. The baby had been quiet for the entire trip, but he was wide awake. His starry blue eyes stared up at the building that emerged before them like a gothic castle.
‘Welcome to our family tradition, kiddo,’ Lindsay said.
The baby laughed, bubbles of spit forming in the creases of his mouth. He was the happiest, goofiest baby Nell had ever seen. She often found herself scrutinising the way he looked out at the world. She waited for that cold, menacing glare to darken his face, but it never did. After he was born, a week had passed before Nell worked up the courage to hold him, and only at Lindsay’s insistence. She’d been so terrified that the moment she touched her nephew he would turn into something irreparably broken too. But instead, he had been warm and fat and squirmy in her arms. He’d smelled like a clean diaper, and powder and warmth.
But even so, Nell worried for him. That worry eased a little each day, but she didn’t know if it would ever truly leave her.
Nell parked the car, and Lindsay hopped out first. She opened the back passenger door and reached for her son, wiggling her fingers greedily because she couldn’t wait to gather him up.
He’d been born with Robert’s trademark auburn hair and long lashes, and a paternity test confirmed that this child was the product of one of the nights he and Lindsay had shared last summer after their divorce. Things were rekindling, but slowly. He was talking about moving back into the house, and Lindsay, who feared commitment almost as much as her sister, was considering it.
‘I can’t believe you wanted to bring him here,’ Nell said wryly.
‘Best to teach him what he’s in for while he’s still young enough to love me,’ Lindsay said, hoisting him against her chest. ‘
Besides, the look on Bonnie’s face will be priceless.’
In the visitation queue, Lindsay and Nell parted ways. They were here for different inmates.
Nell sat at the visitor’s window with her hand on the phone, waiting. A minute later, Oleg was escorted to the chair on the opposite side of the glass. He picked up the phone at the same moment as Nell, and he regarded her with a flat, defeated stare.
‘Hi,’ Nell said. ‘You approved my request to see you, but I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
‘Here I am,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
Nell reached into the purse that was resting by her feet. She extracted her yellow notepad and set it in her lap. ‘A year ago, you contacted me about a book. I’m here to write the final chapter.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Infinite thanks to the amazing team that helped bring this story to life: my agents extraordinaire, Barbara Poelle and Heather Baror-Shapiro, my wonderful, wonderful editor Miranda Jewess and the entire team at Viper and Profile Books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ren Richards grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and has an English degree from Albertus Magnus College. She is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, who has written more than a dozen YA and middle-grade books as Lauren DeStefano. Best known for her dystopian Chemical Garden series, she always dreamed of breaking into the adult suspense category.
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