by Skylar Finn
“Easy,” said Cynthia. “While you were busy pulling weeds and painting shutters, I was exploring. And I, unlike you, notice all of what I see.”
She opened the door and pulled a pen light out of the pocket of her jeans. She disappeared through the door. Richard couldn’t see anything beyond the pale pinprick of light she held. Beyond that was nothing but darkness. He hesitated at the entrance.
“Come on!” Cynthia’s voice drifted, impatient and exasperated, from the darkness within. Theresa scuttled in immediately. After another moment’s hesitation, Richard complied. It was bad enough his sister had a cooler fort than he did; he didn’t want anyone to know she was also fearless, while he was afraid of the dark.
Richard and Theresa trailed Cynthia closely as she led them through the intricate network of secret tunnels in the walls of the big house. They went to the attic, where Cynthia bragged she’d nicked a bunch of stuff and sold it to consignment stores or sometimes just went there to dress up in old clothes. “I even fell asleep up here once,” she said. “Nobody even noticed. They never come up here.”
They went to the bedrooms, which were opulently decorated and looked more comfortable than any room Richard had ever seen. There was never any reason for him to go in any of the bedrooms when he worked at the house, and it was the first time he’d seen them. He was immediately jealous: jealous of Cynthia, for discovering this first; jealous of the Meades, for their personal fireplaces in each room and the chandeliers dripping crystals and the deep, thick, wine-red rugs. The rugs alone looked more comfortable than Richard’s own bed and he wondered, not for the first time, why some people got to have so much while others had so little.
At last, they stopped by the parlor. They could hear the gentle laughter of the Meades, who still loved each other after many years of marriage, and the polite inquiries of Henrietta: would Mrs. Meade like another sherry? Was Mr. Meade ready for his whiskey and his cigar? Cynthia shook her head, frowning, her eyes squinty and mean. Richard knew she hated the sound of Henrietta’s pleasant serving voice, because he hated it, too.
Cynthia turned to them and whispered, “This is where they keep the safe. The old man talks to himself, and he always says the code out loud while he turns the dial to the numbers. The idiot.”
Richard didn’t think it was all that foolish of Mr. Meade to remind himself of the code aloud as he had no reason to believe that a small girl was hiding in the walls of his home, watching him, but there was no point in vocalizing that to Cynthia. She thought everyone was a fool but her. And though he hated to agree with her about anything, he couldn’t deny that while his sister was many bad things, a fool wasn’t one of them.
Cynthia gestured to them with her pen light, and they followed her down the tunnel and out of the house.
They stole many things from the house over the years: money from the safe, knickknacks from the attic they knew wouldn’t be missed, as they’d been packed away in boxes with enough dust on them to imply they’d been there since the Danforth children had been born. The money they made from the house granted them little luxuries they wouldn’t have otherwise: Theresa bought make-up and new clothes so she could fit in with the girls at school. Richard bought a car when he turned sixteen. Thoughts of running away still tugged at his mind, but then he met a girl. He had a car, so he could take her out on dates. He stayed out late and went to work early when he wasn’t in school and the rest of the time, he slept, his mind too tired for dreams.
He never knew what Cynthia bought because he never saw the evidence, not until her senior year of high school. Richard was still working up at the house. Cynthia got into college. She was as smart in school as in life and knew it was her only ticket out. She got scholarships and paid for her plane ticket with a hidden cache of money Richard couldn’t imagine the proportions of. Money had gone missing from his secret stash over the years, no matter where he moved it: his money from the Meades that they paid him, and the other money that they didn’t know about. Cynthia took all her money and she got away.
Theresa’s grades were terrible. Richard hoped for a baseball scholarship, or basketball, but he wasn’t good enough as his back problems got increasingly worse by his senior year. His girl broke up with him for the quarterback. It seemed like the plot of a bad movie, but instead of making a comeback, getting his due, and having his day, Richard’s life seemed to grow paler and paler until he could no longer remember where he once dreamed of escaping.
He thought that perhaps, when the Meades passed on, they might think of him and his family in their will after so many years of service. They didn’t. They left all their money to charity and gave the house to their granddaughter, Matilda.
It was then that Richard realized that to the Meades, some nameless, faceless organization had been more deserving than his family, who spent countless hours, days, weeks, months, years making the Meades’ lives better and easier than they already were. And that blood was always thicker than water.
The thought of a lifetime of servitude and dissatisfaction enraged him to the core. He watched as Matilda moved in. He watched as she brought in all the children with nothing. Just like the children with nothing who existed unnoticed in her very backyard for all her life. The hypocrisy of it unhinged Richard over time. At first, it was just a nagging thought, and for a while, it remained one. Then the thought grew bigger. It ballooned into a fixation, which became an obsession.
Why them? Why not us?
He watched her. He watched them. He watched her give them a better chance, but where was the better chance for him? Who had helped him? Cynthia would have said you have to help yourself, unless you want to end up helpless. But he had helped himself. He helped himself, his father, his sisters, his mother, and the Meades—but who helped Richard?
No one. He was just the help.
Cynthia came back from school, and she was crazier than ever before. She’d gotten everything she wanted, and it still hadn’t been enough. All the girls were effortlessly more beautiful, poised, educated, well-dressed, and well-liked than she was. They knew all the right things to say to all the right people. They looked down on Cynthia, but politely, as if she was merely the salesgirl helping them try on their shoes. It made her completely insane.
She couldn’t find a job. She went to the most competitive city in the world where everyone around her started out far, far ahead of her. They had families who helped them get started. She had nothing and no one. She couldn’t steal her way out of it. The social stigma of getting caught would be more shame than she could stand. She would be ostracized; exiled.
In the end, Cynthia exiled herself. She came back home and met an insurance salesman. He lived in a large and beautiful house, and Cynthia figured, why not? Better to be in a large house with one person you didn’t like than a small one with five. (Cynthia didn’t always like herself, either.) But she was wrong. Ray was so devoted to her, so insufferable and needy, it was all she could do not to drown herself in their vast Jacuzzi tub at night just to get away from him.
She appealed to Richard. His original suggestion was to bump off Ray—his life insurance was obscene. It would be the perfect crime. It took him awhile to get Cynthia to admit the truth: her mother-in-law hated her so much and was so distrustful of her that she’d threatened to write Ray out of her will if he didn’t get a pre-nup. Ray believed they’d need his mother’s money to one day send their many children to college (Cynthia was a very good actress, when she wanted to be), so he’d asked Cynthia to sign. She could have refused, of course, making something up on the grounds that if he really, truly loved her, he’d never prepare for the end. But he wasn’t. For him, it was a step to ensure their future—their long, endless future—and to refuse would have looked suspicious.
“What about Matilda?” Cynthia wanted to know. “What’s happening at the big house these days?”
Richard told her. He told her all about Matilda, and the kids, and the orphanage. Cynthia snorted with disgust in all the right
places, and he thought of how he missed her. It surprised him. But sometimes, she was the only one who understood.
“What a waste,” Cynthia said. “What a complete and utter, terrible, ridiculous, awful waste. That idiot of a woman. I get that orphans can net you a lot of money, if you foster enough of them at once, but I mean, why? Why not just sell the house and retire to Cabo?”
“I don’t think people retire there,” said Richard. “I think it’s more like a vacation type of place.”
“Who cares, Richard? What does a distinction like that matter? The point is, we should be there now, rather than freezing to death in this godforsaken town for yet another year of our lives. While that woman sits up there frittering away the most massive investment imaginable. Our father spent his life maintaining that investment, if you think about it. She wouldn’t even have it to ruin if he hadn’t nearly killed himself painting the walls and cleaning the gutters. We’re entitled to that house, Richard. Think about it. It should be ours.”
And Richard did think about it. He thought about it when he was sweeping the steps and painting the walls and cleaning the gutters. He thought about it while he performed the same mindless work he had for decades now, decades of his life spent devoted to the upkeep of a single house, a house that wasn’t even his own and never would be.
But what if it could?
At first, Cynthia made it sound like they would just wait. She would get a job working for Matilda, on the inside, and get close to her. She would get into her good graces and into her will. They’d never once seen or heard about any living member of Matilda’s family, and concluded they were all either dead or hated her or she hated them or both. Matilda was getting older. She couldn’t live forever.
But she could live for quite a while, Cynthia pointed out a few months into her employment. There was really no telling how long a person could live. Obviously, it would be best if they expedited the process.
Richard was reluctant. He didn’t like the idea of killing Matilda. It had been much easier to picture bumping off Ray, whom he neither knew nor particularly liked. He knew Matilda well enough at that point to know what kind of person she was: earnest, honest, and kind. She never had a bad word to say to, or about, anybody. Wouldn’t killing a person like that send you straight to hell?
“I’ve got news for you, Richard,” said Cynthia, when he vocalized his concern. “We’re already there.”
Then Richard thought about his life. He thought about continuing on this way, in perpetuity, until he lived no more. The thought was worse than he could stand. Worse, even, than killing Matilda. He told Cynthia this, and she smiled.
“All right, Richard,” she said. “All right. In that case, if you’re on board—I have a plan…”
32
Emily stared at Richard. She felt many things, at that moment, which were hard to distill—fear, resentment, hostility, and under all this, a powerful undercurrent of pity, which astounded her. He killed Matilda and the children. He planned to kill them. How could she feel pity for a murderer? But something in Richard’s story was painfully relatable: the quiet desperation of living hand to mouth, dreaming of a better life. But why like this?
“Why like this?” Emily asked. “Why does it have to be like this?”
Richard was still staring into the fire, as if still caught up in the throes of the past he’d just re-lived, and she hated to remind him that she was there: his final problem. But she had to know. “If you were just a good person who couldn’t get over being poor, then why resort to murder? Do you expect me to feel sorry for you? We have our problems, too. But we’d never hurt anyone.”
Richard snorted with contempt. “You had each other, is what you had. What kind of problems can you possibly have? A few unpaid credit cards and a student loan or two? I never went to college. I never even imagined it. Cynthia went, and it did her no good. I watched over people with more of everything than I had for over half my life, but who watched over me? Nobody. Sooner or later, you’ve got to watch over yourself.” He turned from the fireplace to look at Emily and Jesse. “I really did like you, you know. It’s a shame it had to be this way. But I’ve waited far too long for this.”
Emily closed her eyes and wished for a solution: any solution. She was surprised to feel Richard undoing the duct tape bindings from her ankles. Had he changed his mind?
“I’m a fair man,” he said as he sawed at the tape with a pocket knife. “That’s the difference between me and Cynthia: she’s the snake in the grass you never even see coming. She’ll throw dirt in your eye and hit below the belt. But I believe in giving people a fighting chance. So I’m going to take you outside and give you exactly thirty seconds. Then I’m going to come find you.”
Emily stared at him. He was giving them a chance to get away?
Richard looked at her and laughed. It was as if he’d read her mind. “Oh, you won’t get away, of course. I’m not that fair. Been hunting for years now. Lately, there hasn’t been that much to shoot.”
With these chilling words, he released first Emily’s feet, then Jesse’s. He left their hands tied and Jesse’s gag secure. Then he brandished the gun at them and gestured for them to get up from the couch.
“Now walk,” he said.
Emily walked ahead of Jesse and Jesse walked ahead of Richard. He marched them to the front door. Richard kicked it open with the toe of his black cowboy boot. He nudged them onto the porch.
“Stop,” he said. They froze in place.
Richard set his handgun on the small round table next to the Adirondack chair. He picked up a hunting rifle leaning against the wall next to the door. From behind her, Emily heard the sounds of a gun being loaded. Fear coursed through her, followed by adrenaline.
“Remember what I told you?” Richard said.
At first, she wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to her or Jesse, or what specifically he was referring to. He’d told her many things over the course of the last hour, most of which she’d like to forget.
“Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire,” he said. Then he laughed. It was the high, maniacal cackle of a madman. He nudged Emily in the back with the rifle. “All right, girl, you got thirty seconds. Better make ’em count. They’ll most likely be your last.”
Emily looked at Jesse. Jesse looked over at her. They stumbled off the porch side by side. It was hard to run after being bound for so long, and her feet felt numb. After about ten seconds, when they were just out of Richard’s eye line, Jesse pulled her down behind a hollow tree.
He’d worked most of his duct tape gag off by rubbing his face against the couch arm while Richard was talking. Richard, lost in memories of his childhood, hadn’t noticed. Jesse loosely refastened the tape over his mouth before Richard unbound their feet and led them outside. He reached his bound wrists up and ripped the tape off. He scrabbled around on the ground for a sharp rock and sawed quickly at the tape around Emily’s wrists. He whispered very quickly while he looked directly into Emily’s eyes.
“We can’t outrun him. I haven’t eaten anything or had anything to drink since they took me, and I’ll slow you down. We won’t get far. I’ve seen him shoot before. He’s a perfect shot.”
“Ten seconds!” shouted Richard gleefully from the porch.
The tape around Emily’s wrists gave. She took the rock and went to work on his.
“We have to overpower him,” Jesse said.
“But how?” whispered Emily. “He gave me a gun, but I’m sure it’s not loaded.” She gave a final hack at the tape and Jesse pulled his wrists apart.
“Let me see.” Emily lifted her shirttail, and Jesse lifted the gun out.
“Five…four…three…two…one…” Richard counted down from the porch.
“It’s not,” Jesse said grimly, checking the chamber. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t use it.”
“Olly, olly, oxen free,” called Richard. They froze and listened as he stepped off the porch.
�
��He probably thought we’d run as far as we could,” whispered Jesse. “Be quiet and keep still. Wait for him to pass.”
Emily clutched Jesse and closed her eyes, trying to regulate her breathing so that it was inaudible even to her own ears. Richard’s footsteps crunched closer through the underbrush, and Emily felt Jesse’s intake of breath as he held it.
Richard paused near the tree. Emily and Jesse froze. Then the footsteps continued.
“I know you didn’t get far,” shouted Richard. “Might as well give yourselves up now. I’ll make it quick.”
His footsteps passed them and receded. Jesse turned to Emily again. “I’m going to distract him,” he said. “When he aims at me, you’ve got to sneak up behind him and hit him with this rock. It’s our only chance.”
Emily shook her head. “It would be better if I distracted him.”
“I can’t let you do that, Em. If he shoots you, I don’t think I could live with myself.”
“I know, but listen: he’s much taller than me. Unless he’s lying flat on the ground to aim at you, I’m not going to be able to hit him over the head. And if I don’t hit him hard enough the first time, he’ll shoot both of us. You have to do it.”
Jesse bit his lip. He knew that she was right, but he didn’t want to admit it. Emily knew this without him saying anything. They’d known each other for a long time now and knew each well enough that they no longer needed to speak. Emily thought of Richard’s story. She thought of the original Meades, laughing gently in the parlor while they played backgammon. She thought of Richard’s mother, who loved his father no matter what his station. She squeezed Jesse’s hand. Without giving him a chance to argue, she got up and ran into the woods.
Emily ran in a straight line from their hiding place, so Richard would pursue her directly in sight of Jesse. He might be a masterful hunter and an excellent shot, but there were two of them and only one of Richard. It seemed possible that their gambit to distract him could work. At least, that’s what Emily told herself as she purposely ran into Richard’s crosshairs.