by Wendy Walker
None of this is her fault.
But something about her makes me stop. Something I know in my gut. The exaggerated sobs. The flow of tears. It is not normal. It is reactive. Responsive, but not like any child I have ever known. Whatever has happened in this house, it has invaded her mind, wired it in a way that I cannot comprehend. And if I cannot comprehend it, I cannot trust it, either.
“Alice,” I say. “I’m sad because you told me this might be the end and I don’t want to leave you. It makes me scared because I don’t know what it means.”
Her eyes widen. New tears fall from them.
“Well,” she says, trying to find words to explain things, “when my first mommy started to sleep with me, she said it was to get away from him. But then he would sneak in with us anyway, and that was when she got lost in the woods. That was when she died.”
I think about what this means—was her first mommy trying to escape him by sleeping with her child? Thinking he would leave her alone? And when he didn’t, when he still came into her bed, exposing Alice to whatever it was he did to her—maybe that was what made her try to escape. Maybe she thought it was safer for Alice if she left than if she stayed.
The thought is sickening. And yet, here I am, willing to do anything to keep my own daughter safe. Maybe this other woman thought she could make it out and then come back for Alice.
Alice squeezes my hands tighter and a smile appears. Happy Face.
“But,” she says. “I think I was wrong about this being the same thing,” she says.
“How come?” I ask. “What’s happened?”
She pulls her hands away and wipes her face.
“He said I can’t sleep in your room anymore.”
I am nervous about the implications. Is he trying to keep me from getting closer to Alice, or does he want me to himself now, at night?
“And,” she says, excitedly, “he went to buy us groceries so you can help me cook—things that only go in the microwave so I don’t set the house on fire!” She giggles then. “That’s what he said.”
I smile now. And it comes from my heart. My heart that turns darker every moment I spend here.
“So we can make dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” she says. “I even asked him for the Jell-O like you said.”
My smile grows bigger. My heart darkens another shade.
“Is he going to come home to eat with us?”
Alice shrugs. “I don’t know. I never know anymore. Not since you came.”
Information, I think. New information. I have been distracted by thoughts of poison. Poisonous thoughts. I should have thought to ask the questions that are now before me.
“What did he do before?” I ask now. I want to fire them off, all of them, but I speak slowly and wait patiently. I am just making conversation. Passing the time. Getting to know her better.
Alice shrugs again. “Sometimes he would come home and bring dinner. He likes to watch TV until he falls asleep.”
Patience. Patience.
“My husband likes to do that. He watches things I don’t like so I usually read. What does he watch on the television?”
Alice shrugs. Sad Face now.
“Does he not let you watch with him?” I ask, guessing about the head-spinning change in her mood.
“He doesn’t like to be here at night anymore. And I don’t like being alone.”
I consider this. And I tread carefully forward.
“Is it because of what happened to your first mommy? Maybe that makes him sad to be here without her.”
Yes, I think. I need to know these things. Did he love her? Did she live here behind a prison grate? Or did she love him, too? Were they once family that went wrong? Very, very wrong?
I will stay here all day if I have to. Asking questions. Doing schoolwork. Asking questions. Eating peanut butter sandwiches. Asking questions. Playing with our dolls, Hannah and Suzannah.
But she doesn’t answer. Sad Face is morphing into Angry Face.
“That’s okay,” I say, trying to turn her mood again.
“You don’t have to talk about it. I bet it makes you sad too. You know what I think?” I ask.
She shrugs.
“I think you loved your first mommy.”
Sad Face, and with it are more tears. They are tears I haven’t seen before. They run down cheeks that are bright red, with sobs that are uncontrollable. They are real, these tears, and I know I have struck gold.
“Oh, sweetheart! I know. I know…”
I do not try to touch her. I do not even want to breathe. I have reached a well of humanity inside this child and it cannot be disrupted.
Even the hatred inside me begins to retreat. Even as I sit in a cage. Even though she has the power to free me.
Patience.
I think about the groceries and the dinner. I think about what I know of the ethylene glycol and how I will put it into food that will be made just for him. I think about how he will collapse and writhe in pain as the chemicals form sharp shards that slice through the tissue inside his gut. And how I will then leave him to suffer. Perhaps even die.
I do not think what I will do with Alice or how I will feel when she watches this happen. I cannot afford to think about that because it might ruin my plan and I can feel the weakness inside me—the weakness for the girl who now cries real tears.
“I know…” I say this several times with long pauses. I let her cry.
When she begins to calm, I wait just a little bit longer before I start back in with my questions.
Patience.
“Alice,” I say. “What was her name, your first mommy?”
She becomes ethereal now, daydreaming about her first mommy with the real blond hair.
Then she says her first mommy’s name. The one who is dead. Who died in the woods.
“Daisy,” she says. “Daisy Alice Hollander.”
26
Day fifteen
Nic left Booth’s apartment and ran across the street to the bar. It was just after eleven. Kurt was opening for lunch.
She burst through the door, sending the string of bells clanging against the wall. Kurt was behind the bar pulling glasses from the dishwasher.
He looked up, surprised to see her.
“Hey,” he said. “How did things go yesterday?”
Nic walked quickly to the bar, standing across from him. In the mirror behind the bottles of alcohol she could see herself. It was startling—the wet hair, loose sweatshirt, crazy expression on her face.
She took a breath before speaking. Crazy was not a good place to start.
“I have to ask you something,” she said.
Kurt shrugged, wiped a glass. “Sure.”
“Do I look like Daisy Hollander?”
Now he put down the glass to study her.
“I mean … you have similar hair. Same color, length. And she was thin as well. Long legs which she loved to show off. Even in the winter she would wear short skirts with no stockings. But I wouldn’t have thought it if you hadn’t said something.”
Nic sat on a stool. She felt her nerves calm. Kurt had that effect on her.
“Why are you asking that?”
“Roger said I looked like her. Or reminded him of her.”
Kurt scrunched his face. “That’s a little creepy.”
“And he showed me the letter,” Nic said.
“Ah!” Kurt said, his eyes wide with sarcasm. “The infamous Dear Roger letter.”
“Do you know about it? What it says?” Nic asked. Booth had told her that no one else knew about the baby.
“Just that he got one. He had to explain why he suddenly stopped looking for her, harassing her family. People were curious. He went from this frantic lunatic—hounding the police, her friends, her poor sister in Boston—to this eerie state of calm. Everyone knew he’d found out what happened to her.”
“He’s pretty sure Chief Watkins drove her out of town, wherever she was going.”
“Yeah, I told you that before. He had this thing about helping kids get out of here.”
Kurt’s voice hinted of disdain. Nic hadn’t picked it up before.
“You don’t like him,” she said.
He smiled then, a big happy smile. “Everybody loves the chief,” he said. Again, with the sarcasm. “Especially his mini me.”
“Reyes?”
Now he looked surprised again. “Haven’t you noticed it?”
“Not really. Not like that,” Nic thought about the casino, those four drinks. The story that had kept her glued to her seat, drinking those drinks late into the night.
“I know Watkins helped him get a job here.”
She didn’t know what more to say. How much was public knowledge. How much Reyes had spilled out over drinks right here, at this bar. Reyes had been here for eleven years—that was a long time to hide a story from the past that changed your life.
Kurt answered her question before she could ask it.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We all know the story. How Reyes was a rookie up in Worcester. Shot and killed an unarmed kid.”
“Wait a second,” Nic said, feeling an urgent need to defend Reyes. “The kid had a toy gun. And he wasn’t a kid. He was almost twenty. Untreated schizophrenia. Living in the bus station—he drew the gun outside a school and wandered around until the police showed up.”
Now Kurt studied her face, the way she’d expected him to do before, when she asked about Daisy Hollander.
“He’s gotten to you, hasn’t he?”
“What?”
“He is a charmer. I’ll give him that.” Kurt’s tone turned bitter and Nic had a sudden realization that the things she knew about this town and the people who lived here were next to nothing. Like background music distracting her from what was really going on.
“That has nothing to do with the story. And, no, I have not been charmed or ‘gotten to.’”
“But he got you drinking, didn’t he? With his sad tale? I can still smell it on you.”
Stunned by the truth that had just left his mouth, Nic continued with her defense. “What does that matter? If I had some drinks? It doesn’t change the facts—four cops came to the scene. He was just one of them. They were waiting for the SWAT team but the kid kept pointing the gun at them, and then at the glass windows of the school. Three of the four opened fire. It just happened to be Reyes’s bullet that caught him in the chest.”
“I know the story.”
“It was suicide-by-cop. It wasn’t his fault, but it messed him up.”
“And there was the chief, coming in for the save.”
“No—that’s not what happened. At least, not how Reyes told it.”
“Look,” Kurt said, leaning on the counter so he could get closer to her. “I know all of it. He needed a new start. Applied for the job. The chief took a chance on him, got him all straightened out in his head. But that’s the point. That’s why Reyes has his back, whatever the hell he does.”
Nic had a flash of Chief Watkins with that prostitute, pushing her out of the truck. Calling her a cheap whore.
The dark gray pickup truck.
“And what is it he does?” Nic asked.
Kurt stepped back, threw his hands in the air. “Doesn’t matter. He helps kids, right? He helped Reyes. They run the town. The cops with their authority. And Roger Booth with his money. People like me working two, three jobs. I just left the Gas n’ Go after an all-nighter—and now I’m here. It’s all a fucking joke. Because this town’s a fucking joke.”
Nic didn’t respond. These were relationships that went back many years. Kurt had wanted to get out but got stuck here. Booth lost the love of his life. Reyes lost his future to a horrible misfortune and now had to be grateful for the scraps Watkins threw his way. And Watkins—Nic couldn’t even begin to unravel him.
Her phone rang.
“Excuse me a second.”
It was her father’s number. She closed her eyes, shook her head. She didn’t want to deal with this now.
“Hey, Dad,” she said.
He did not return the greeting.
“Where are you right now?” he asked.
“Back at the inn. I was about to go upstairs,” she lied. She didn’t want to explain why she was at the bar at eleven a.m. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sending you a photo. It’s from Mark.”
Mark—the PI her father had hired.
“Did he find her?” The world stopped for one short moment.
“No, no—I’m sorry, I should have explained this better. I had him look into that woman, Edith Moore. It’s just too strange that she waited this long to come forward.”
Nic had been so preoccupied with Chief Watkins and Daisy Hollander, Reyes and Booth and Kurt Kent, she had nearly forgotten about Edith Moore and the lie she’d told about having been in New York.
“Listen—she met with a man in the parking lot of the hospital where she works as a nurse. I couldn’t place him, but I swear he looks familiar. Like someone we met in Hastings. Schenectady is a long way to go for a visit in a parking lot.”
Nic felt a shiver.
“Can you send it?”
“I just did. Put me on speaker. I don’t want to lose you.”
Nic hit the speaker button, then opened the text from her father. She could easily make out Edith Moore. The other figure was slightly hidden behind her, but she had no trouble making him out either. He was unmistakable.
No …
“Nic? Did you get it?”
Nic took the phone off speaker and held it to her ear. She smiled and slid down from the bar stool. Her cheeks were trembling.
“Do you know who it is?” her father asked.
She held her hand over the receiver as she started to walk toward the door. Kurt was watching her carefully, curious now.
“I have to go—something back home,” she said to him.
But he didn’t believe her. She could tell by the expression that didn’t change.
“Nicole!” her father said again in the phone, pleading with her to answer.
With the phone still pressed to her ear, she bounded the last few steps until she was at the door. She swung it open and walked outside, then raced across the street.
“Nic? Are you there?”
Finally, she stopped moving.
“I’m here,” she said, standing at the edge of the parking lot for the inn.
Her father repeated the question.
“Nic—do you know that man?”
She exhaled to calm her voice. Then she answered.
“Yeah, I do.”
27
Day fifteen
I hear the car outside. So does Alice, and she leaves me to run to the front door.
We have been doing her schoolwork through the bars, making sure Dolly sees us.
I hear a high-pitched squeal of excitement. Then a man’s deep laughter.
They go to the kitchen. Cupboards open and close. Voices muted. Plates. Glasses clanking.
I sit with my back to the camera and make no motions. I am perfectly still on the outside.
On the inside, I am racing—to the end of this day, to my escape.
Time passes. I hear footsteps and turn. It’s Alice with a tray of food. Not the usual peanut butter sandwich. Today I have grilled cheese and tomato soup.
“It’s so good if you dip the sandwich into the soup!” she explains.
She opens the bottom panel. She slides the tray through, then relocks it.
I wonder now why she has brought me the food and not Mick. Usually he does it when he’s home with us.
“Why did you bring the tray?” I decide to ask her.
Alice shrugs. “I don’t know. He asked me to do it.”
This, and he hasn’t looked at me since he slept in the bed with us.
She stands now, watching me.
“Do it!” she says.
I look up at her from my spot on the floor.
“Do what?” I ask. And I ask so nicely.
“Dip the sandwich in the soup!”
“I will,” I say. “You don’t have to watch me. I know he’s waiting for you in the kitchen. He came home just to see you, right?”
It was not easy to remember to ask a question. I feel anger boiling up as I sit behind my bars. An animal trapped. There is no way around it, the feeling this provokes.
“He came home with groceries so you can make dinner later. Just like he promised! And besides, he’s busy cleaning up.”
Alice crosses her arms defiantly.
“Do it!” she commands again. “Take a bite!”
I force out a smile. I take the sandwich and dip a corner in the soup. I put it to my mouth and insert it and close my lips around it and pull off a portion with my teeth.
I gag as I chew and swallow, making facial expressions and sounds of culinary delight.
Mmm.
I used to make this for my kids. We first had it at a ski resort in Vermont where we went in the winter months. John and I both love to ski. Loved to ski, I should say. I can’t remember the last time we went skiing.
It was different after we had children. Our days were spent tethered to little bodies that grew heavy with the pull of gravity, and we would become exhausted after a few runs on easy trails. John liked to hold Nicole’s poles and ski beside her, forcing her to make turns and learn how to control her speed. I would hold the back of a harness tied to Annie’s waist and snowplow behind her. Evan—he always went with the other kids in the group lessons. It was too embarrassing to learn from his parents.
Oh, how Nicole had the taste for speed! She would scream into the cold air, faster, Daddy!
When they were settled in the hotel room, John and I would sneak down to the pub and drink cold beer and listen to country music cover bands. It would remind us of our time together before the kids when we would ski hard all day, get drunk on beer, make love, and fall asleep. Spent and happy.
There was one day that could make us laugh even years later. A man had ridden up with us on the lift, bragging about his proficiency, his house on the mountain, his brilliant children. Then he’d fallen just sliding off the chair, poles, skis scattered around him; the lift stopped, people rushing to help him. Only his ego was hurt, and we laughed so hard it made us cry.