Don't Look for Me

by Wendy Walker

  “Thank you,” Nic said.

  “And what will you do? Where do you want to go?”

  “To the hotel, I guess. I don’t know. Where should I go? What should I do now?”

  How pathetic she sounded, even to herself. But that was how she felt.

  “I think you need to figure things out with your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who do you think it is? This other woman?”

  Nic had her suspicions. “He has an office manager who’s divorced. Same age. He wouldn’t look for someone younger. He would want someone like…”

  “Your mother,” Reyes finished the thought. “I get it. He lost her the same day he lost your sister. It makes sense he’d want to get that feeling back. When you lose someone you love that much, you want someone who was just the same. Because you know that’s the kind of person your heart desires and nothing else will satisfy it.”

  Nic studied him now, curiously.

  “Did you lose someone you were in love with?”

  Reyes sat up straighter. His face flinched. She’d hit a nerve.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s none of my business.”

  “It’s okay.”

  But then, he didn’t answer.

  When they reached Laguna, Reyes pulled the car up to the curb. He handed her a piece of paper and a pen from the center console.

  “Here—do me a favor. Write down your father’s full name. Make and model of his car. Where he works. The name of the office manager. Anything else that might help me look into this for you.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Just write it down and then call me later if you want me to do something about it. I’ll wait to hear from you—promise.”

  Nic wrote down the information, though each stroke of the pen felt like a stab in her father’s back.

  “Do you want me to go up with you?” Reyes asked, folding the paper into his pocket.

  “No, I’m fine. Will you come back later?” It was strange how she wanted to be alone but how it also terrified her.

  “Of course,” he said. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

  And then the anxiety shifted. As she got out of the car. Watched him drive away. And remembered the gate that was now locked at that house.

  And who was this woman he’d loved and lost and was trying to replace? Maybe with her?

  She walked into the lobby and smelled the sickening sweet pull of the bar, and the instant relief that was waiting for her there.

  39

  Day sixteen

  Cyanide.

  I taught this in one of my eighth grade chemistry units.

  Hours pass as I sit on the floor and help Alice with her homework. She is very sorry about my daughter but life must go on. I must be a good mommy.

  Thank you, Alice, for reminding me of what’s important.

  She does a math problem on the other side of the bars. I sit cross-legged and pull from my memory what I learned years ago about cyanide. I steady my expression because Dolly’s eyes are surely watching very carefully now.

  In small doses, the body will change cyanide into thiocyanate which can be excreted in urine. In larger doses, it prevents cells from using oxygen, causing those cells to die.

  The heart, lungs, and central nervous system are the most susceptible. Symptoms can include shortness of breath, vomiting, dizziness, weakness, and confusion. Seizures. Cardiac arrest. Death.

  Apple seeds contain amygdalin, which will turn into cyanide when exposed to the enzymes in the human gut. They must be crushed or chewed for the amygdalin to be released. It can take thousands of apple seeds to kill a grown man. But how many, I wonder, to make him sick?

  The time does not go to waste. I do not allow myself to indulge in the panic that is at my door. I have removed the splinters from my skin and applied some ointment Alice found in her bathroom. I have changed my clothes which were drenched in the sweat of the morning’s terror. I have showered. And I have cried the last of the tears I will cry.

  I think about cyanide. I also think about Nicole as the clock ticks away.

  There are only two things that would bring her back to this town. The first is a man. The second is me. I know my daughter. I understand her suffering. A man would not hold her attention for long. The newspaper article said she was here for four days. That’s long enough for her to get drunk and meet a man. A man like Mick. A cop, probably involved in the search. I remember those first few days—how he came and went. And now—she has returned, maybe for him. But it won’t last.

  She will peel him off of her like the rotten skin on the apples outside. Even if he was wonderful. Perfect. Even if he offered love. Especially if he offered love. She cannot accept love. Not from anyone.

  Oh, how I understand her suffering.

  That leaves one reason for her to stay now. Me. Finding me.

  I remember her words the morning I left for Evan’s school. I remember her face when she said them, and how they jabbed at my heart in quick bursts as they left her mouth.

  I hate you—but that was just a small one. A little jab. But then, You killed my sister! The first big one, and then, You killed your own child!

  I know my daughter. She has carried her own guilt from that fateful day. Not answering her phone. Not driving Annie to her friend’s house. Not being there in time as her sister ran down the driveway.

  And now this—the belief that she caused me to walk away from them. Not just her, but Evan and John. This thought nearly breaks my steeled expression. This thought causes the blood to surge into my face, pulsing around the scrapes.

  Evan. John. Nicole. My life.

  In these long hours I have thought about the possibilities. I know how Mick learned about me. The cameras at the Gas n’ Go. The traffic stop. There is a lot of information online because of Annie’s death.

  But then my family came to look for me, and everything changed. Now he wants Nicole.

  Why did he bring her here? Why did he drill that hole so I could see her?

  I know about human nature, about need that overcomes reason. Teaching children who were on the cusp of maturity has given me this tool, which I now use. Mick needed me to know what he’s done. What power he wields.

  He wanted this more than he feared what I might do.

  Or maybe he doesn’t know how fiercely a mother will fight to protect her child. Maybe he never learned that.

  Either way, he has misjudged me like an adolescent child. I will not yield to his power. I will not behave when he has set his hands upon my daughter.

  Alice looks up.

  “I can’t get this one!” she says. Angry Face is here.

  She shoves the paper through the bars and I see what she’s done wrong.

  “Two negatives make a positive,” I remind her.

  I hand the paper back. She takes it and resumes the problem.

  “I have an idea when we finish your homework,” I say.

  “Shhh!” she commands.

  Fine, Alice. But we will talk about my idea. About the apples in the yard. The ones that have fallen and begun to rot. We will talk about how you and I are going to make a special treat for Mick and how you are going to sneak around Dolly’s eyes to get outside, and put on your mask, and collect as many apples as you can find.

  Maybe I was selfish to have children, knowing they would have to die one day. Maybe I deserve to suffer for it. More than I already have.

  But further punishment will have to wait. Because today, we are going to talk about those things.

  We are going to do those things.

  And we are going to save my daughter.

  40

  Day sixteen

  It took sheer will to walk back outside, away from the bar. She needed the fresh air. She needed to drive, and to push aside the thoughts that were twisted up in her mind.

  Reyes, the tortured soul who truly understood her—who might be strong enough to save her from herself.

  R
eyes, the damaged man who used women the way she used men—and who might just pull her into his despair as well as her own.

  She couldn’t possibly know the difference. Not in two days’ time. And not with all that had happened.

  She found her mother’s car where she’d parked it the day before. She wasn’t sure where she was going. Not back to Hastings. Not home.

  She checked her phone and the texts that had been piling up. Three from her father—all with the same message. When are you coming home? Come home, sweetheart. Where are you—you need to come home.

  One from Evan. Did you find her? What’s happening?

  It was the final one from her father that provided the most distraction. Edith Moore is Edith Bickman. Moore is her boyfriend’s name. Probably used it to hide the fact that she worked at the bar in Hastings four years ago. And Kurt Kent did time for a gun offense. Two bad apples. Scam. Also—Mrs. Urbansky said she did not give out your number to anyone. Another lie! Call me or answer your phone!

  She had two missed calls and voicemails from him as well. She responded with a text. I’m fine. Will call soon.

  But was she fine? Drinking and sleeping with strangers again. Infusing her reckless actions with meaning that might be pure fiction?

  We are the same …

  How could he say that when they’d just met? How could she have believed it. And yet it had felt so real. She wanted it to be real, even now, as the doubt crept in.

  She sat in her mother’s car. Smelled her smell, which was fading more every day. She turned on the ignition and closed her eyes. The list of loose ends—what was on it now? Edith Moore—or Bickman—and her plot with Kurt Kent, her father’s PI was looking into that. But what about the lie she’d told about getting Nic’s cell phone number from Mrs. Urbansky? It had been Reyes who’d put those words in her mouth. She remembered that now. Maybe he’d assumed it, and then she jumped on board, not having a better answer.

  Her mother had not been at that house. No one had, and it was a long shot anyone had been there the night of the storm. Next, Watkins and the truck—but Reyes said he was going back to find him. Her father and his affair, and the stop he’d made at the gas station in West Cornwall. She should call him, ask him for the truth, for once. But he had already lied to her about the handwriting analysis.

  And then, Daisy Hollander—the woman Chief Watkins helped get a scholarship to a fancy summer camp in Woodstock, whom he’d supposedly driven out of town when she’d needed to escape the fate of becoming Mrs. Roger Booth. Watkins and his truck. Watkins and Daisy Hollander.

  Daisy Hollander. She remembered the way. The names of the roads, and even the road with no name.

  Down Laguna Drive to the end. Then right on Route 7. She was a mile from the Gas n’ Go when she saw the dark gray truck—the Silverado—with Chief Watkins in the driver’s seat. She turned her head and sat low as he drove by. Then she picked up speed, turning onto Hastings Pass. She drove through town, past the police station, until she got to the end—to River Road. Then right onto Pond, left onto Jeliff. Then the road with no name. She remembered the way.

  As she made the final turn into the dense woods, those words were still ringing in her head. Making her stomach turn now.

  We are the same.

  41

  Day sixteen

  Alice has been such a good girl.

  “Can we play Hannah and Suzannah?” she asks me.

  Of course we can, you good, good girl.

  “Of course we can,” I say, hiding my excitement.

  She runs off to get the dolls and I return to the bathtub to check on the rotting apples Alice has collected from the yard.

  There are forty-five of them. And they all have seeds.

  Alice went to the kitchen like I told her. She went to make us lunch. Peanut butter sandwiches and milk. Yes, milk today, because she wants to make me suffer a little. She wants me to suffer because somewhere inside her little brain is the knowledge that I am lying to her about the surprise for Mick.

  Still, she climbed out the back window of the kitchen. The back window near the sink, where Dolly’s eyes can’t see.

  She wore her mask and carried two brown grocery bags. She scurried like a little bunny rabbit, picking up the apples and filling the bags. She had to make two trips to bring them back to the window. They were heavy.

  She did all of these things. And she did them fast. She brought the apples to me in the bags, along with some groceries she placed on top. I emptied the groceries, bread and milk and peanut butter, then pulled the bags with the apples through the bars and brought them to the bathroom. I put the apples in the bathtub, then threw the bags in the garbage.

  I try not to think about where he is. And when I do, like I am now, I look at the apples and think about his cells suffocating. I think about his lungs closing. I think about his heart stopping.

  “Hey!” Alice calls out now. “Come out and play!”

  I have been too long in the bathroom with my apples.

  “Sorry,” I tell her, resuming my spot on the floor.

  We make lunch and eat. Then she hands me Suzannah and I straighten the doll’s hair.

  Half an hour passes slowly. It is late afternoon and there is no sign of Mick. Flashes of him kissing my daughter in the police car come and go. But mostly come and stay.

  Hannah and Suzannah have been discussing their mothers again. Alice likes this and I need this. Yes, I have my apples, but I will not waste one opportunity to gather information. To make inroads into my little prison guard. Into her head. Into her heart.

  What she did today was extraordinary. Not because of the logistics of getting the apples. But because she knows I am planning something devious. Wrong. Hurtful. She knows, and she helped me anyway.

  Then she served me my milk and I drank it down.

  Oh, the games we play, Alice and I.

  “It makes me so sad,” Suzannah says. She has been telling Hannah a terrible story about a fight her parents had and how her mommy still won’t be happy. Now she’s run away and Suzannah is afraid she will never come back.

  “I know,” Hannah says, and she reaches through the bars to give Suzannah a plastic doll hug.

  “Thank you, Hannah. You always make me feel better.” Suzannah pauses long enough for the sweet moment to pass. Then—

  “Do yours ever fight?” Suzannah asks.

  I swear I can see Coy Face run all the way down from Alice’s face, through her arm and fingers and onto the stupid plastic doll.

  “What do you mean?” Hannah asks.

  “Do they ever get mad at each other? Do they yell sometimes?”

  I am desperate to get back to my apples. I need to take out the seeds and grind them. I need to do this before we can bake the muffins.

  Time passes. Mick is with my daughter. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face.

  Hannah finally answers.

  “He loves my mommy,” Hannah says finally. “He loves her so much it makes him cry.”

  The image of Mick with my daughter leaves for a brief moment as I try to think about what this means. I can’t picture Mick crying.

  But then suddenly I can. Suddenly, my perspective shifts. Love can make people crazy. It can make them do crazy, evil things.

  “Because she’s so beautiful?” Suzannah asks.

  Hannah nods.

  “With her real blond hair and her thin body?”

  Hannah nods again.

  Alice reaches through the bars and takes Suzannah from me. She lays her on the ground, and then lays Hannah down beside her. Alice leans in close and so I lean in close. She doesn’t want Dolly to hear.

  “I have to show you something. It has to be a secret.”

  Yes. Please. Tell me your secrets.

  “I promise,” I say to her. Then she gets up and leaves. I hear her walk softly to her room. A moment passes and she returns.

  She sits down casually. Too casually, like she’s acting. And I can feel that her hea
rt is exploding.

  She carries a small book of nursery rhymes. She hands it to me through the bars.

  “The story on page twenty-three is my favorite,” she says.

  I open the book and carefully turn the pages until I find what she wants me to see. On page twenty-three, tucked into the crease, is a picture of a young woman.

  A young woman with real blond hair and long, skinny legs.

  I stare at the picture, trying to hide the surge of adrenaline as it pulses through my veins, turning my face crimson.

  I am looking at a woman who resembles my daughter.

  Alice picks up Hannah.

  “That’s my mommy,” she says. “Daisy Alice Hollander.”

  I look at Alice, then to the picture. Then to Alice again. Her face is transformed from that of a child to a grown, wise woman.

  A woman who understands and wants me to understand what’s happening here.

  Alice’s mother is dead. The mother that Mick loved so much it made him cry.

  And now he’s found a way to bring her back to life. He’s found a woman who has long blond hair and a sleek body and is young.

  He’s found my daughter.

  I nod slowly to Alice. She reaches through the bars and takes the book from my hands.

  Yes, Alice. I try to say with my eyes. I understand.

  42

  Day sixteen

  Nic stopped just beyond the clearing where she could see Veronica Hollander’s house. The trees were thicker here, evergreens mixing in with the pines and oaks, filling up the sky. The house seemed dark inside but smoke billowed from a chimney. She could smell the wood-burning even with the windows closed.

  A text broke through the silence. It was Reyes.

  At the station with Watkins. Will sort everything out.

  Heading back to see you.

  Nic stared at it, remembering she had just seen Watkins leaving town—back to the casino. And she had just driven past the police station. Reyes’s car had not been there.