“That’s what he does,” I say. “He takes you apart, piece by piece. Just like our father.”
“But why?” she asks, her voice breaking.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think that he’s just like our dad. Sometimes I think he’s a victim, just like me. But something inside him is wrong. It’s empty. I think my father saw that. He used it. He used Drew against me. And against my mother, I think. And Drew let him.”
“But you were kids,” she says with earnestness. “You . . .” She stops herself, but then the words come, slowly. “You’re right. That’s almost the worst part. I was just so wrong.”
“That’s because you’re human,” I say. “You’re real. You have real feelings. Real thoughts. Drew isn’t like that. He has things that he wants. And things that are in his way.”
“He talked about your dad sometimes. He said that he was tough. And mean. He even told me that he was way harder on you.”
I feel a moment of surprise at this, but then it clicks. “He was telling you just enough of the truth to get a specific reaction. He knew you’d feel sad for us. That it would tie you to us.”
“Us?” she asks softly.
I nod. “It’s always been us. No matter how hard that is to understand. Without me, there would be no Drew. And without Drew . . .”
“What now?” she asks after a long pause.
“You know,” I say.
“No, I don’t,” she says.
“I can still fix it.”
“We can. But we need a little time to—”
“No. We can’t let him have time. We need to move fast.”
“Liam, I . . .”
“Just trust me, Patsy. Okay?”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then she looks over my shoulder, up to where Lauren stands alone, looking like a lost child.
“What about her?” Patsy asks.
“She doesn’t know the truth. Not all of it. Not what Drew had planned for her.”
“You’re sending her back to him, aren’t you?”
I nod. Patsy watches her for another minute. I notice her hand gently cupping her stomach. I feel dizzy, but my jaw clenches and I swallow the nausea down, pile it atop the rest.
“I need to talk to her,” she says.
“Patsy, you can’t—”
“Liam,” she interrupts me. “You can’t use her like this.”
I look down at her hand. Her long, perfect fingers. The nails are painted red. Not fiery, like my mother’s. More subtle. For some reason they make me think of something solid, something real, more like bricks than flames. And as I watch her, and as her words slip into my mind, they cut through the obsession. The frantic plans. I hear her. And I hear my mother’s words once again as well. Love makes us weak.
I’ve used Lauren. I made her something less than human in my eyes. She became a tool. A weapon. Something I could fire at my brother. Wound him with. And discard without any more concern than I would a spent casing. Just like Drew would do.
Yet my brother’s wife, the woman she openly betrayed, can find the compassion to consider Lauren’s feelings. Maybe I am not so different from him. Maybe I never will be. I feel sick again, but this time it’s not going anywhere. All I can do is scratch at the tattoo on my arm.
“I understand, Liam. I do. You’re doing what you think you have to do. But you can’t be him. You can pretend. You can act hard and cold. But that’s not you. Don’t let him make you into that.” Patsy pauses. “She’s a bitch. There’s no doubt about that. But you can’t send her back to him without her at least having some understanding.”
“I know,” I say softly. “But I need her to go to him. I need her to tell him what I’ve done.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need Drew to be angry. I need to get to him. Push him so off-balance that he makes a mistake. Just one. And maybe this can end the right way.”
Patsy rubs her eyes. “We can just go to the police. Tell them . . .”
I shake my head. “His lackeys, you mean. You think they’ll listen to us? Over him?”
“I know,” Patsy says. I see the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. I realize they are not for her, though. That they are for all of us. “I know . . . Just let me talk to her. I won’t tell her everything. I’ll give you that. But at least let me tell her that I understand.”
2
I stand with my brother’s wife and his mistress. I don’t belong here. I know that. But I can’t take the chance. I will give Patsy what she wants. What she needs. But I can’t let her go too far. I can’t let her undo everything I’ve done.
“I’m so sorry,” Lauren whispers.
She’s crying. Patsy isn’t now. Instead, my brother’s wife stands inches taller than her, her back straight and her eyes strong but not angry.
I feel for Lauren, in a way. She probably thought she was so slick, so careful. Now she stands before the wife of her lover. This is so much bigger than her affair, and maybe she has started to see that.
“Lauren,” Patsy says. “I know what you’re going through, but I need you to listen. He’s not what you think he is. He’s dangerous. Really dangerous . . . Because so few people see it. But think about it. Think about those moments you were with him. Something would happen, something small. Like some guy at a restaurant would call him ‘boss’ or ‘champ.’ Or maybe someone at the office would make a joke about him. You’d see it in his eyes. You’d see the change. It would be so quick, like a flash. One minute he is the most charming person on the planet. Then the truth would peek out. And after, you would laugh it off. But it was there. You couldn’t put words to it, or even describe it if you had to. But you saw it, didn’t you?”
I look back at Lauren. She is shaking now, her cheeks wet. I think to stop Patsy. That’s why I am here. But I can’t find the strength to do that.
“Maybe he hurt you once,” she continues. “By accident . . . or you thought it was. You probably felt like it was your fault.”
The words surround me. Pull me in. And before I realize it, I am a part of this. I share their pain. I know it is different for them. That he did things. Made them do things. But in the moment, we become one. We are all his victims.
“Maybe . . . Maybe he would make . . . you do something. Something you didn’t want to. Something that made you feel . . . wrong.”
Our wounds merge. It fills the charged air between the three of us. I feel it, too. That, and the burning, suffocating shame. I want them to stop talking. It’s like Patsy’s words are the beam of a flashlight, moving through the darkness, inch by inch, closer and closer to some unspeakable monster in the corner. I know that if the light shines on it, if I let it become real, it will consume us all. That’s why it is so shocking that when the conversation does continue, it is my voice, my words that pass between us, melding the three of us into one.
“He’d make you do it . . . ,” I say, knowing that we are not talking about the exact same thing. Knowing that only Patsy knows my truth. What I did. But I can’t stop myself. “After, though, you’d . . . you wouldn’t understand how he did it. They were only words. His words. But they changed you. And he would look at you after with that face, like you were the most disgusting thing in the world. But he’d be smiling, like it entertained him. Like it was funny to him. You’d look at him and feel so naked and so lost and so broken.”
I feel the dampness under my fingers. When I look down at my arm, I see that I’ve scratched the skin off my tattoo again. Blood drips down my arm and I want to cry. But this moment feels so different. For the first time in my life, I am not alone. The three of us have been marked by our pain, eternally drawn together by our will to survive. We are a burning, burrowing force, one that moved the three of us, pushed us into the darkness, and threatened to drag us under forever. In that moment, I feel the tiniest glimmer
of hope. And the sensation may be the most foreign feeling I have ever experienced.
When Patsy speaks again, I think she is speaking for all of us.
“It’s the kind of broken that can’t be seen. It can’t be fixed. It can just be pushed down, buried; otherwise it slowly poisons everything. You hide from it. Make excuses. Worse, you lie to yourself . . . and you believe it. Your lies become this fantasy truth. And in those moments, your mind begins to adapt, to alter. In an attempt to protect you, your brain allows the most fundamental of betrayals. It allows you to survive. To live with it. It fractures, and pushes those awful moments into the pits that form inside your soul.”
I continue. “Some days, I think about what someone might think if they knew. They’d feel bad for me, for all of us. But they’d judge, too. They’d think, ‘They were just words.’ To them, it would seem so easy to stand up to him. Go to the police. Vanish. But their minds aren’t broken yet. They don’t understand . . . because they can’t, not until they are there, until their own thoughts betray . . . and they’ve opened their eyes to see that there are no choices anymore, no paths forward. No paths back. That someone else is pulling the strings.”
Lauren is looking at me, but I don’t notice at first. I can’t see Patsy, but I can feel her. I blink and clear my throat, but my words are finished. I have nothing left to offer. The hope blinks out and I am only emptiness and resolve.
“He wanted you to kill me, didn’t he?” she asks.
I nod.
The air seems to leave her body. “I guess I already knew that. Maybe I always did. Maybe that’s just how strong he is. That I knew, but I didn’t run. That I let you take me. Because . . . it was just what Drew wanted.”
“We understand,” Patsy says, touching Lauren’s hand.
The younger woman looks at me. I see the swollen lip. Her injured wrist. I have hurt her. Badly.
“You saved me,” she says.
I swallow the bitterness and shake my head. “Not yet. Patsy’s going to drive you to the office. Go back to him. Tell him what I did to you. Tell him what you saw in that cabin. Everything you saw.”
All Lauren can do is nod. I watch her walk down the rise, down to Patsy’s car. I know what she will do. And I know what my brother will do once she tells him about the bones. Because this has been my plan all along.
3
As I watch Lauren walking down to the Audi, Patsy touches my hand. I turn and there are tears in her eyes.
“He . . . did that . . . to you?”
“What?” I ask.
“Everything you just said. Did he . . . ?”
I thought of Marci Simmons and how I reacted when she thought the same thing. This time, I just shake my head.
“But is it so different?” I whisper.
I immediately regret what I said. But Patsy surprises me when she says, “I don’t know.”
I think about what I did. What Drew and I did. And I see that Patsy is thinking about the same thing. Trying to understand. She has probably done that a million times since I told her. But I know she never will. And I’ll never fully understand her pain, either. That’s the horrible truth of abuse. It shackles you alone, in the dark, no matter how much you talk about it. Or don’t.
That’s why I changed the plans. That’s how I finally figured it out. How I knew that I was the only one who could end this.
“Liam . . . Come back, okay?”
“I will,” I say, looking into her eyes. “I promise.”
We watch each other for a moment.
“I need you to hide out,” I say. “Stay away until this is over. I had meant to send Lauren away before you got here. I just . . .” I glance back at my mother’s headstone. “I just got distracted. But he knows you’re involved. If I mess this up, he’ll come for you. You need to be ready, okay? Promise me that.”
“Look, we can still figure this out. My father knows the federal prosecutor. We can go to him. Maybe—”
“It’s too late for that, Patsy. You know it is.”
“It’s . . .”
“Don’t forget what he’s done. What he’s capable of. You want him thinking your family is involved, too? That they’re against him? Do you want to take that chance?”
“If it—”
I grab her arms. “Patsy, just trust me. Please.” I force myself to smile. “I’m not as stupid as he thinks.”
The corners of her mouth turn up, too. “I never once thought you were stupid, Liam. Far from it.”
I look down to her Audi. I can just make out the outline of Lauren sitting in the passenger seat now. Patsy looks down, too. Her head shakes slowly.
“So I guess I’m supposed to just drive her to my husband, huh? That seems wrong. On many levels, Liam. But . . . I’ll do it. Because I do trust you. More than I trust anyone else right now. Just . . . Promise me. Promise you’ll be careful. And that you’ll come back. Okay?”
I look her in the eyes. “I promise.”
Patsy’s arms wrap around me. Part of me has dreamed of this moment. Wished that one day I could feel her against me. But it is like all dreams; when my eyes open, I know it isn’t real. I realize that I never wanted it to be. That it was never close to being about that, no matter what my brother said. I pull back and see everything so clearly now.
“One other thing,” I say. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“My phone?”
I nod. And she hands it to me without hesitating. We look at each other for a moment. Then she hugs me again. I let her hold me. I smell her skin. I feel her warmth. I wish I could bury myself in them both, but not as I am now. Instead, I wish, for a second, that I am just a little kid again. And I could let her hold me, shield me. Protect me from everything that is to come. Everything that already has come to pass.
4
Patsy’s Audi winds along among the dead. I watch until they are out of sight. Then I turn and walk slowly up the rise. Back to my mother.
When I reach her, I kneel down in the grass. My hand reaches out and I slowly trace a finger along the engraving of her name.
“Mom,” I whisper to her cold gray stone. “I should have stopped him.”
My hand reaches down. It is shaking as I touch the ground under which she is buried.
“I was a kid . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
I kneel there, clutching the grass like I might be hurled away at any second.
“I didn’t know what to do,” I whisper.
“I think about you every day. I think I remember it right. That you loved me. And I loved you. That we would never hurt each other. I tell myself that over and over and over again.”
My hair hangs in my face, sweat dripping off the ends. My chest is so tight. Every breath hurts. I find it so hard to take air into my body. It’s like my energy simply melts into the ground. Pulling at my most basic instincts.
“They did this. I know they did.” My voice rises in anger. I pull a handful of grass out at the roots. “They hurt you.”
I throw the clump of grass and dirt over my mother’s headstone. Soil rains down on the cold granite. My hands are shaking but I gulp air like I did that night in the ocean. Like my pain had tried to drown me once again.
As I catch my breath, a strange calm falls over me. My eyes focus, back onto the path forward. When I reach down to the ground again, my fingers caress the blades, running along the tops like I am running free through a field.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say. “Either way, I’ll know the truth. Either way, it will be over.”
I push up to my feet. Then bend and touch my lips to my mother’s stone.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
5
I leave her then. But the question doesn’t leave me, no matter what I do. No matter how many times I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter anymore. The truth is
that it guides me as I walk back to the Mazda. When I pull out of the cemetery, I should turn right. That would take me to the cabin. Back to where it will all end. But that’s not where the wheels take me. Not right away. Instead, I head in the opposite direction, driving until I reach the short line of office buildings. My truck is gone, but I’m back. This isn’t part of the plan. But, like an addict, I can’t stop myself.
The tires howl as I bank into the parking lot. There are four or five cars in the lot, but that doesn’t matter. I barrel into a spot and get out. Without slowing, I push through the entrance. A woman sits behind a sliding window. I ignore her and walk straight back.
“Sir,” she calls after me.
I throw open the first door I pass. The room is empty, so I go to the next. In that one, two men sit across from each other. One looks on the verge of tears. I keep going and find her in the fourth office I check. Marci, her name was . . . is Marci. She sits across from a man who stares at me with the eyes of some hunted herd animal. The years have changed her but the eyes that widen at my sudden entrance are the same ones that I looked into as a teenager.
This moment has played through my thoughts for over a decade. I dreamed of storming into this woman’s presence. Demanding that she answer this one question that has poisoned my life.
Yet, as I stand there, with those eyes locked on to me, I realize something is horribly wrong. I expected those eyes to flash a heartbreaking recognition. Instead, Marci Simmons stares back at me with shock, and nothing else.
For a second, I can’t move. I hear the woman from the front desk. She is yelling. Talking about the police. The man in the chair cowers. Marci, to her credit, slowly rises. Her hands come up, palms out.
“Sir,” she says in a soothing tone that sounds nothing like I remember. “I need you to step back into the waiting room and have a seat. I’m in the middle of an appointment right now. When I’m done, I’ll come out and speak with you.”
The Perfect Plan Page 23