by N L Westaway
After the fiftieth check over her shoulder, she was still worried he would catch up to her, but so far, she hadn’t seen any sign of him. She had never stated exactly where her mother lived, so he wouldn’t know where to find her, Gwen had originally thought, but as she stepped off the train now, into the humid early evening air, a sick realization hit her in her already throbbing brain. He could find them. He was a cop; he had the means to look up her mother’s address and find her. Gwen retrieved her phone from her knapsack’s zippered pouch and then shoved it into her back pocket. Despite being the only person getting off the train at this stop, Gwen kept up with checking over her shoulder as she walked the distance from the station to her mother’s home.
Arriving at the house, Gwen called out for her mother, but unfortunately like the previous time she had been there, she heard only the sound of the pumping air conditioner in response. Gwen locked the door behind her, then dashed from the hall into the dining area, dropping her knapsack on the table before reaching the stairwell. Two at a time she sprinted up the flight of stairs to the second floor. Freaked out and off-the-chart impatient, she headed to her mother’s bedroom closet, desperate and in search of answers.
Heart pounding in her chest, stomach lurching, Gwen knelt and lifted the lid of the old trunk yet again. She found then that two new books now topped one of the piles. The first was a Firearms Safety Manual from some police academy, and the other was a textbook with a title that she recognized, Atlas of Human Anatomy, and was a newer version to the one she had had from her first year of college.
Standing then, with the textbook in her hand, she flipped it open to find an owner sticker on its inside cover. “Property of Professor Timothy Armstrong, Biology 101,” she read aloud. And it was labeled from the same college she had attended.
Gwen’s cell phone hummed in her back pocket. She slid it free and then answered it without looking. “Hello?” she said, hoping it was her mother—finally calling her back.
“Rachel’s mother was murdered—same MO as the others,” Inspector Franklin’s voice boomed in her ear.
Gwen turned then to find her mother standing at the opening to the walk-in closet. “Oh-my-gawd-you-scared-me. What did you do to your hair?” Gwen asked, shaken and stunned by her mother’s appearance. Her mother said nothing, only stood there staring blankly back at her. Though her mother’s familiar face had eased some of Gwen’s panic, it wasn’t just her sudden presence in the closet doorway that had startled her, it was her mother’s hair that had shocked her. It was out of its usual bun, and it was wild, untamed and it was… red, dark russet red. “Why do you have this textbook?” Gwen asked, despite the detective still talking in her ear. “This belongs to that dead biology professor—the one that was just killed.”
Her mother’s expression shifted then to something reminiscent of anger. But determined to get answers, Gwen turned away to grab up another textbook, her cell phone still pressed to her ear, the detective still prattling on. One-handed, she flipped the next book open, then read aloud the person’s name on the inside cover. Continuing, she did the same with the next textbook, then another, and still another. Turning back to glance over her shoulder, Gwen noticed that her mother had stepped closer into the closet. Gwen spun her head back to the trunk grabbing up the last book, the police manual, and inadvertently dropped her cell phone in the process. Ignoring the phone, she opened the cover of the manual to see Bradly Stinson written on the inside. She turned back to look at her mother. At least she recognized her as her mother standing next to her, but then a cruel awareness struck her.
Her mother’s eyes, they reminded Gwen of that woman she and Scott had transported to the psychiatric hospital. This wasn’t her mother. Someone resembling her mother had taken her place she grasped, as Detective Franklin’s voice yelled out through the quiet confines of the closet through the fallen cell phone. Gwen bent reaching for her phone just as a buzzing-snap sounded from behind her. Then a stinging sensation shuddered painfully through her body as she crumpled to the floor of the closet, cell phone just out of reach. She made an agonizing attempt to lift her head and reach for the phone, just as the surface of a large book swung down into her view.
Chapter 18
Gwen awoke on the floor of the closet, with the side of her head throbbing and the nasty scent of the old carpet permeating through her nasal passages. She could see her cell phone near her right hand, and she moved her arm to reach for it only to find that something had been tucked into the crook of her elbow. Gwen pushed herself up from the floor to a sitting position and the something fell.
It was an envelope, though nothing was written on the front. She reached for it, then stopped, listening. She listened carefully then for any sounds in the house, but she could hear only the sound of her own breathing. She held her breath and waited a moment, listening intently again.
Nothing.
Nothing other than the sound of the A/C unit pumping. Breathing a sigh of relief, she leaned her back against the door jamb, then glanced around the closet. Near the open trunk, lay the textbook that had been written by Professor Michael Rampton, but the weathered belt that had been wrapped around it, was no longer there. She shuddered, then reached again for the envelope.
Despite there being no name or address, the envelope itself resembled the others, like the ones Rachel had sent to her mother. It was only when Gwen opened it, then drew out and unfolded the papers, that she saw that this one had been addressed ‘Dear Gwen’. She read the first paragraph then paused. That first letter, the single-page letter Rachel had written about her parents, it had mentioned the abuse, the beatings, and that she’d had to leave town, and this one mentioned the same things, but unlike that letter, this one wasn’t about Rachel, it was about Rachel and Laura, and it was several pages long. She read the first paragraph again.
Dear Gwen,
I wrote you this letter to make sure you knew that Laura, that your mother, is with me and that she is safe, and that there is nothing for you to worry about.
Then she paused again. “Where the hell is my mother?” she asked the universe. Gwen picked up her phone then and dialed her mother. Of course, it went to voicemail. “Mom—where are you? Please call me. I need to talk to you.” Then she hung up and began reading again.
I also wanted you to understand what has truly been happening, since I realize now that you have read all my letters, the ones I had written to my mother.
You know now about the abuse I suffered at the hands of my father and the neglect from my mother, and it is true that I had to endure the sexual depravities of my father as a small child, but when Laura came along, I knew I had to protect her, protect her from my father.
They’re sisters, they must be, Gwen thought.
I let Laura believe that she was loved by him and made sure she was never aware of the abuse he had put upon me, and as a teen, I made sure I was the only one who took the beatings. I had told Laura, that our mother was mean to her because she was jealous of how much my father loved Laura and that they both loved books so much. We were both good in school though my mother said she didn’t think we were very smart. I had protected Laura all those years in that house, but I knew we had to get out of there. I had reported the beatings thinking I had bided us some time but when that failed, I had had to make another plan to get us out of town.
I had plenty of money from my earnings to take us far away, but Laura had wanted to go to Hanover, New Hampshire because it had a world-class college and a thriving art community, that Laura had craved. When we got there, Laura signed up for a course in Art History, stating that she had had enough of the intensive subjects such as American history and brain numbing Trigonometry that we had taken in high school, and that she preferred to focus on something creative. The professor teaching the course flirted with the female students and had gotten too friendly with Laura, but I fixed that. I had to protect Laura and those other women he was fraternizing with. Laura hadn’t been
able to finish her course obviously and since she’d had to borrow a textbook for it, and loved school and learning so much, I took the professor’s personal textbook for Laura to keep for herself.
When Laura found she was pregnant, she was in denial saying she didn’t know how it could have happened. She claimed she only had a faint recollection of a man but nothing more, but I knew how it had happened.
I had called our mother that same week, and that was when she told me about my father, how she blamed me for his death. I told Laura about the call, but in order to protect her, I had to lie to her and tell her that mother had sent someone after us. That’s when I changed our last names, and had showed her how to dye her hair and I had even invented a story about a dead husband she could use if anyone asked about the pregnancy or the baby. Then I told her we needed to leave town, and that our best chance was to split up. I explained to her that I would be watching over her, protecting the two of you now.
We moved to Maine and once again Laura found herself associated with another professor who had a problem with keeping it in his pants. January of the following year Laura had taken a basic computer course in the evenings at Bowdoin College, needing to learn to use the computer at her job, but the gossip around campus was that the Computer Science Professor, Laura’s professor, had had an affair with a student, and I would not stand for him going after Laura next. As you know, he ended up dead. And again, I took the class textbook, this one was titled the Computer Science Illuminated.
When we were in Vermont, Laura insisted she take a course in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Middlebury College, which I thought would be a good education for her and might empower her more when dealing with these types of men, give her a little more backbone. While in her class, she had unfortunately had a run-in with the professor who taught Comparative Literature, a card-member-holding misogynist, who had made some vulgar remarks about Feminism. As you know, my father was a professor of Literature and he had felt the same way about a woman’s place in the world. So clearly this professor too needed to be dealt with, and was found dead in the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies meeting room. Which I thought was a nice touch. And I took his Comparative Literature textbook as well.
Six months later we were in Clinton, NY, and Laura had gotten a job as a baker owned by a nice Spanish couple, and she had wanted to learn to speak Spanish, to better communicate with the other bakers and cooks who spoke very little English. She signed up for a class at Hamilton College but instead of learning some words and phrases to help her at work, she had ended up with another lech of a professor who hit on all the female students, not just Laura, offering extra credit for private study sessions. She left the class, and quit her job, and we moved. The professor had been dealt with, and I took his textbook, the Living Language Complete Edition, in fact. Laura just couldn’t stomach being around the other Spanish-speaking men, a constant reminder of that professor.
We moved to Lewisburg next, stayed for a year without any issues, until that asshole Professor of Food Systems had come into Laura’s work and mouthed off. The food at the bakery was amazing and Laura was an amazing baker, but he still made negative remarks about the place despite eating there every day. He was taken care of, but Laura had gotten questioned by the local police along with the other staff, so to avoid any suspicion, we’d stayed for a year there before moving on. I did get Laura a nice textbook though, the Introduction to Food Science and Food Systems. No harm in learning more about food.
Next, we moved to Maryland, it was very nice, and the Notre Dame of Maryland University was beautiful. The school offered Maryland’s only women’s college, with programs to help prepare students for leadership and success. We stayed there for two years before any more trouble came our way.
Laura was taking a course in business, recommended and paid for by her new boss, who had wanted someone to help run the place, not just doing the baking. It was a great opportunity, but on the nights she took her class, she had seen female students coming and going from the office of the Professor of international Business—a different female student each time, always fixing their clothes and hair or whatever. On the last night of her course, she had seen one come out crying. That professor gotten what he deserved, and Laura, she was made manager at the bakery and we had ourselves a nice textbook on International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace. But we left the following year.
We liked the towns that had renowned schools, like the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We were there for a year when Laura decided she wanted to expand her cooking knowledge and the school had offered government funded cooking classes in the evenings. It had been a pretty intensive class for Laura, but she had loved it. Though, on the last day, when she and her classmates had been celebrating with a holiday meal they’d prepared, Laura had crossed paths with the Professor of The Politics of Food. He seemed to think men were better cooks than woman, but fortunately or unfortunately—for him, his last meal had been one prepared by Laura and her classmates. Laura got another nice textbook out of it, and she went on to help develop a new line for the bakery which she ran for two years before we move to Asheville, North Carolina.
Laura worked for a catering company there for two years, and during that time the company often provided their food services at the university for department functions. But it was at the university’s Engineering Department’s function that things went bad. There was a visiting professor at the event, and apparently he was not well-liked, another typical misogynist who felt he had to tell the female engineers at the event it was a man’s world and there was no place for women in the engineering field, but they were ‘welcome to play in it’. No one seemed to mind it when they heard he’d been killed, and he wouldn’t miss the textbook I took, the Fundamentals: An Introduction.
We were off again shortly after that, to West Virginia and Laura was at yet another job, this one at a bakery/supermarket. She had wanted to better herself further and had signed up for an accounting class at the local university. She had been thinking that maybe she could get a manager job and help run the place. As long as Laura was happy, I was all for it. The only male professor in that department was an old guy who really didn’t teach and had young male teaching assistant do all the work. Surprisingly though, Laura told me later that the old professor was a bit of a lech, and she and the other female students tried their best to avoid him. He’d come into the class spouting ignorant things like how women were not good at math, that they had computers to do all the work for them. Apparently, he had tenure there, and because he was hated so much, when he’d been found dead, some of the professors had been under suspicion since the old guy’s spot on the faculty would be up for grabs. We stayed in town for a while since the cops didn’t seem involved in investigating. Then when some visiting detective from Detroit had come to town, we’d heard on the radio that despite the guy being 80, his murder had the same MO, and we were gone again after that. I did get Laura a nice textbook on Accounting Principles that she could use though.
We didn’t make it very far that time, only as far as Ohio. You had gotten sick, some kind of stomach issue. We had to stay for a bit and Laura had to get some crap job to pay the medical bills since she had no insurance. That pathetic excuse for a doctor/professor kept saying your pain was all in your head. That failure of a human being only taught one class at Kenyon College, an intro class in child psychology but he thought he knew it all. He was the one who needed his head examined, but his textbook, that information in it was interesting I have to say, plus, it gave us an excuse to get out of that town as fast as we could.
We stayed for two years next in Greencastle, you were young then and probably don’t remember that, but you were doing well there, healthy and enjoying school. The university there had a pretty extensive art program and Laura signed up for an art class, no theory, just some drawing and painting. But as par for the course, there was another sicko of a professor at this university as we
ll. This Professor of Film Studies was a real doozy too. A video he had made had gotten out, one of him with a female student where he’d tied her up and he’d threatened her not to tell anyone. That had been the end of his film career, but the textbook he used for his class had some fascinating stuff about movies I’d never seen.
Gwen didn’t remember much any of it, not really. There were patchy memories of moving, and different houses and schools, and of course she recalled when she had gotten sick, but she hadn’t kept track of the all the cities. The thing she remembered the most about those years, was how much she hated the moving.
You’ll probably remember this next move, because you and Laura took a summer course on Nutrition and Healing with Food at Eastern Illinois University. I’m not sure if you would remember this other professor, the one who taught Sports Nutrition, but he was another know-it-all who thought doctors were all idiots. When he got wind of why you and Laura were in the class, he felt he needed to tell you what was what, but everything he had said was the opposite to what you’d learned in the course and what the doctors had said to Laura. He thought he knew all about eating healthy, but healthy didn’t get you anywhere if someone killed you. I think Laura still has his textbook. I never read it. We had only been in Charleston for the summer when we got the tip to change direction for our next move and that’s when we went to Michigan instead of continuing West.
This move, Gwen did remember. It had been eating at her brain since Detective Franklin had mentioned of the murder, and when she’d asked her mother, she confirmed they’d lived there. After that, Gwen had started to have a clearer memory of her mother arguing with some teacher, and she had remembered correctly, and now she even knew why they’d been arguing. She knew a hell of a lot more than she had ever expected to know now, most of it she wished she didn’t, or at a minimum, wished was not true.