by Jen Waite
Rose felt doubt creep into her body. She remembered when Anne was in third grade and her daughter told her entire class and teacher that her parents were divorced. Her teacher couldn’t hide her confusion when Rose and Sam came in for their parent-teacher conference holding hands.
“I believe my daughter.”
“Of course. And I think Anne believes it, too—that I pushed her down the stairs, that I’ve been abusing Thea . . .” His voice was incredulous. “I would never, ever harm my daughter. The truth is, all I’ve ever tried to do is be the best partner I could be to Anne.” Ethan’s face was earnest. He shook his head sadly. “I think it’s time we consider that Anne may be a bit unstable. Ever since she had Thea, she’s been . . . struggling, and she’s taking it out on me. All I want is to help her, Rose.”
“What about your coworker?”
“What?”
“The coworker you were having an affair with.”
Ethan laughed. “Wow, Anne will really make up anything, huh?”
Rose sighed. It was time. “We did love you.”
“Love?” Ethan’s voice snapped Rose’s eyes from her target to Ethan’s eyes; they were dark, almost black. She blinked as he continued in a tone she’d never heard before. “You and Anne don’t know the meaning of the word ‘love’.” He laughed again, a quick, piercing sound; Rose clenched the gun tighter. “You want to talk about affairs? Why don’t you ask your precious daughter about Joseph.”
“Stop lying,” Rose said, trying to keep her arms steady. Something was happening to the room, it was coming in and out of focus.
“If Anne wasn’t such a slut, we could have been the perfect family. But she made me look like a fool. And now she’s making you look like a fool.” Ethan laughed again but it was not her son-in-law’s laugh, the one she’d heard a hundred times before. She had the sensation again that Ethan was someone else; that someone else stood across from her wearing an Ethan skin suit. The thought brought a giggle to Rose’s throat and she fought it back. She held the gun steady and willed her eyes to focus.
“I know you don’t want to do this, Rose. Let’s sit down and talk. You and I can figure this out.”
“How could you hurt Thea? How could you?” Rose did feel like a fool; her brain told her to shoot. She had a clear shot. But now she wanted answers and maybe this other person, this monster, would tell her.
“I would never hurt a child, Rose. What do you think I am?” Now Ethan was back, the one she knew, his eyes pleaded with her.
Rose looked at her son-in-law carefully. The room came back into focus. “I don’t know what you are.”
The crack cut through the air; Rose was used to it by now but still internally flinched at the sound. She watched Ethan fall to the floor; blood began to trickle steadily from the small hole in his forehead. She stood there watching for a few more minutes, expecting a flood of emotion, but she felt nothing. She lifted her sweatshirt and reholstered her gun, picked up the casing from the floor, and moved her eyes back and forth over the area behind where Ethan had been standing. She located the bullet easily, in the door frame leading to a small sitting space off the living room. She walked back to the kitchen and rummaged around in Ethan’s drawers until she found a corkscrew. She followed Sam’s instructions, inserting the point of the corkscrew into the lead base of the bullet and twisting until she felt traction and then slowly wiggling it out. The bullet came out of the wood frame, stuck on the end of the corkscrew. She twisted the bullet free and dropped it into her sweatshirt pocket with the casing. She rinsed the corkscrew at the sink before drying it on a dish towel and placing it back in the drawer. Rose walked to the entryway, slipped on the sneakers, swept her eyes over the kitchen and living room one last time, opened the front door, and walked outside.
“Good boy,” she said to Sal, who was whining softly, looking to her for an explanation of the loud sound. “Come on, everything’s all right. Let’s go home.”
TEN YEARS
BEFORE THE CABIN
ANNE
After Ethan was killed, it took months before Anne started sleeping through the night without waking up multiple times, gasping and drenched in sweat. But the night terrors subsided and there came a point when she didn’t think of him every hour, and then there came a point when she only thought of him once a day, and then once a month. It took Thea a fourth of the time; she asked if she was going back to her dad’s a dozen times, and each time Anne told her that she was not, he was gone. Thea slept without a pillow for a month and then one day she asked for it, as if she suddenly realized she’d be much more comfortable with something soft under her head. They all healed—Rose and Sam, too. It sank in that Ethan wasn’t coming back; he was gone forever. When the realization truly hit Anne, she cried for hours, her whole body shaking. She thanked Sam only twice. The first time was right after. Her father could barely look at her and said only, “Don’t thank me, Anne.” She never figured out how he did it, how he managed to be in two places at the same time. But even after the police found evidence that Ethan had been laundering drug money through his investment bank—a discovery made after an anonymous tip was called in asking the detectives to keep an eye out for a black notebook containing strange numbers—and marked the case “cold,” filing it away as an “unsolved drug-related homicide,” Anne knew the truth. And if she had any lingering doubts about Ethan and what he was, they were washed away a few weeks after he was killed. It was evening, and she didn’t usually answer calls from numbers she didn’t recognize, but she was expecting a call from Grace and answered immediately, before the first ring had even sounded all the way through.
“Hello!” Anne’s voice, sure and expectant, was met by one hesitant and soft.
“Anne?”
“This is she,” Anne replied, with a rigidity that she hoped shut down the possibility of ongoing conversation.
“My name is Diana. I knew your husband. Years ago.” The line went silent. “I’m sorry. Ex-husband.” Silence again. “I’m sorry for your loss. I was hoping to speak with you about Da—I mean, about Ethan.”
Anne felt a tingle travel up her spine, not entirely unpleasant. “You knew Ethan,” she repeated slowly. She became aware of once again standing between two sides of one reality. Whatever this woman said next would force her to step into yet another version of time and space where nothing made sense.
“Briefly, yes.” Diana’s voice sounded steadier. “We were involved for a period of time over ten years ago. We were both in our mid-twenties when we met. It only lasted a few months, but . . . it was very intense. I’ve always considered David to be the love of my life. Until now, of course.” She ended with a bitter laugh.
“I’m sorry, ‘David’?”
“He was David to me. I didn’t know that much about him. I knew he worked a lot and that he didn’t really have any family—but I thought I knew everything that was important, which was that I loved him and he loved me.” The woman seemed to be trying to convince someone, whether it was Anne or herself, wasn’t clear. “When he disappeared, I thought something horrible had happened to him. He just vanished. We were so in love, we had plans for the future, so I knew he wouldn’t have just left me.” Diana’s voice came fast and hard now.
“I don’t know what to say.” Anne chose her words carefully. “I never knew Ethan—David—either. Not really. I’m sorry.”
“When I read the article in the Times and saw his picture,” Diana continued, as if Anne hadn’t spoken, “I realized that it was all a lie. He was a lie.”
Anne paused, letting the other woman’s anger settle into the silence between them. What does this woman want?
“I don’t know how I can be of help. I’m sorry,” Anne started, panic setting in. “What my husband did to you, it’s not my—”
“I feel free now.” Diana’s laugh, joyful and clear, rang out of the phone. Anne closed her mouth.
Anne started to respond, but before she could get out any words she felt her throat collapse. She heard Diana say, “It’s ok. I know,” as she sobbed. They talked for another hour, about Anne’s almost completed master’s degree and raising a toddler, and about the man that Diana eventually married, a good man, and their son, a straight-A student about to enter middle school. After that phone call, Anne felt lighter than she had in years. She wondered how many other women there were out there who had been conned by Ethan . . . or David. It was a strange thought, but also a comforting one, to know she was not alone.
Two years later, she thanked Sam for the second time, in the hospital. He only had a few days left at that point, it was clear by looking at him that the cancer had taken its final hold, but Anne and Rose sat around his bed, talking about Thea starting kindergarten in a few months and how excited she was to get picked up by granddad on her first day. Anne waited until Rose left the room and then she reached for his hand, an acknowledgment that there really wasn’t much time left because it had been years since she’d held her father’s hand, perhaps not since she was Thea’s age, and said it again, “Thank you, Dad. For what you did for me and Thea.” This time he looked her right in the eye. He grasped her hand back and said, “There are some choices that are just the least wrong ones.”
THE CABIN
ANNE
Anne tried to make as little noise as possible as she sucked tiny streams of breath past her broken ribs and into her lungs. Her chest and stomach were on fire and each breath fanned the flames. She thought back again to the day of the softball game when she knocked the wind out of herself to catch a fly ball. How she loved that game; there was not a more perfect feeling than jogging out to right field on a hot summer day, the wind at her back, the smell of fresh-cut grass in her nostrils. Stretching her arm back, the tendons begging her to stop, and then the slingshot force forward, as the ball sailed from her hand all the way from the outfield to the catcher. Her freshman year of high school, she started every game, and by the time she was a senior, the coach called her “The Arm.”
Thea never liked softball, even though Anne signed her up for T-ball and then Little League. Anne was so thrilled to dig out her old worn leather glove that she didn’t notice, or ignored, her daughter’s boredom as they tossed the ball back and forth on crisp autumn afternoons. She figured Thea would learn to love it, like she had, but her daughter never did. The last afternoon they played catch was when Thea was ten years old. It was a gorgeous day, the sun burned down, and the wind rolled off the lake and infused the air with a fresh tang. They’d only been tossing the ball back and forth for a few minutes when Thea whined to go indoors. Anne’s arm was already wound back behind her head, the ball already pushing off the tips of her fingers, when Thea turned her head longingly toward the house and then whipped her head back around and the ball smashed right into her face, right into her mouth. There was blood everywhere. Anne kept saying, “It looks worse than it is. The mouth is full of blood vessels, that’s why you’re bleeding so much, honey,” because Rose had said that to her once, when Thea tripped and fell as a toddler, biting a chunk out of her bottom lip. But there was so much blood this time that Anne didn’t really believe herself. She spat out the phrase on repeat and rushed Thea into the house, frantically gathering paper towels and ice. Eventually, Anne mopped away most of the blood. Sometime after that Thea stopped crying. She was fine, other than a cut lip and a chipped front tooth, but for some reason right now, curled up in the fetal position on the hard floor, Anne wanted desperately to tell Thea that she was sorry for forcing her to play softball all those years. It felt so tremendously important and she realized with a sob that stayed trapped in her body that she would never have the chance to tell her.
Anne had always been afraid of Thea. Starting when she was a baby in the NICU. She remembered looking at the machines and the tubes and feeling a heavy panic settle into her body—Anne was not the one who could keep her daughter alive. She was merely an observer those first weeks, and she understood immediately, now that her baby was outside her body, that she could not keep Thea safe. The fear that formed in the pit of her stomach never truly evaporated, it just wormed its way through her body as her daughter grew. Just as she had not been able to save Thea when she was an infant, Anne feared that one day her daughter would look at her and see the truth, that she was not enough then, and she was not enough now. Anne knew mothers and fathers whose greatest wish seemed to be to raise miniature versions of themselves, nudging their children toward the dreams that they themselves never quite accomplished. But Anne knew deep down that Thea would be better off if she grew outward from Anne, rather than parallel, because the truth was, Anne was weak and had always been weak. It should have come as no surprise that Thea was growing to despise her. The only real shock was that it hadn’t happened sooner.
These thoughts came easily as she lay on the cabin floor, thoughts she’d never allowed herself to think before. She thought of all the time she had wasted trying to protect Thea from herself and herself from Thea. She wanted more time; she could be better and stronger, more loving, more patient. She just needed more time. Tears rolled down her face as she understood that she would not get a do-over.
The man wasn’t going to let them go. That was not how this story ended, of this she was now certain. She should have known, better than anyone, the darkness that lurks inside some people.
The cabin was eerily silent. She didn’t dare move, even if she could; she didn’t want to attract the man’s attention. She saw Thea and Rose in her mind’s eye: Thea huddled close to the hearth, her pale face lit by the fire, her knees drawn to her body, and Rose, slumped against the wall, hands tied together and perched on her lap, head back against the wall. I’m sorry, she whispered to them both in her head. She was sure that Rose had given up by now and was hoping for a swift end, for Thea at least.
NO.
The voice roared into her head, so loud that she almost flinched. She squeezed her eyelids tighter against her eyes, but the voice was there, beating like a drum in her mind. She may have failed Thea in the past, with Ethan, but she would not fail her daughter now. Not without a fight. The man had been standing over her, she could feel him in the air above her, but now she felt him move away slightly. She took inventory of her body, assessing the damage. Her chest hurt with every breath, her spine ached, and her cheek and eye area throbbed with a deep pulse, but when she tried to straighten her body, ever so slightly, she found that she could move through the pain. She kept her movements small, imperceptible, as she squeezed the muscles in her arms and legs, ankles, shoulders, and neck. Her neck was the only place where a sharp pain shot into her skull and she almost cried out. She forced herself to nod her chin up and down in a slow stretching movement, with each nod the pain seared and then lessened. She was so focused on the pain peaking and then subsiding that, at first, she didn’t notice the soft footsteps. She opened her eyes, but from her angle on the floor all she saw were the wood planks straight ahead of her leading to the front door of the cabin. The footsteps stopped and then Thea’s voice pierced her brain. “Mom.” Anne had heard the word so many times before but never like this. She forced herself into a sitting position, using her hands and arms to take as much pressure off her ribs as possible, but the pain in her chest area was so great that for a moment she was afraid she would lose consciousness. Breathing slowly through her nose, she counted to five and opened her eyes again.
The man stood right in front of Thea. His hand was on her shoulder. No, his hand gripped her shoulder, and he was pulling. The word “Mom” escaped Thea’s body again. It was not a word but a plea, heavy with fear but also expectation. Her daughter still believed that she would save her.
NINE YEARS
BEFORE THE CABIN
ROSE
Rose sat on the grass with Thea, waiting for the seizure to pass. They were small, not the convulsions that she’d always associated with the word “seizure,” and if Anne hadn’t explained a hundred times Thea’s specific type of epilepsy, Rose might have just thought her granddaughter was playing a game. Instead of trying to straighten out Thea’s arm or grasping her chin in place, like she did the first time it happened, Rose simply held Thea on her lap, stroking her hair. They were quick, twenty seconds, a minute at most, and didn’t seem to hurt Thea, but still Rose’s heart sped up each time her granddaughter’s eyes unfocused and her body became not her own. Anne had explained to Rose that complex partial seizures had no definite cause, or at least the doctors couldn’t determine why Thea had developed epilepsy (the neurologist said there was a chance it was related to Thea’s premature birth, but he couldn’t say for certain), and they were mostly harmless. Anne always said that last part in a sharp tone. When Rose questioned whether the seizures might be linked to what happened during her overnights with Ethan and shouldn’t she consult another doctor, Anne retorted, exhaustion lining her face, that she’d seen the best neurologist in Burlington, and that, “He said to give the epilepsy medication at least a year with adjustments. And for the last time, Mom, he said there’s no way to know for sure what is causing them. Please, just let me handle it.” Rose saw that Anne was seemingly taking the opposite attitude this time with Thea’s health—instead of becoming obsessed and anxious, Anne was the voice of reason and logic. “Everything is going to be fine, Mom,” Anne said over and over. “Trust me.”