Survival Instincts

by Jen Waite

  * * *

  —

  “So, Thea, I’m going to say this again, even though I know you strongly disagree. I think we should file a restraining order against—”

  “Mom. No.” Thea set her jaw in a line. Looked out the window, away from her mother. She saw her school come into view and her stomach clenched. It was her first day back since “the incident,” as her principal referred to it in their numerous meetings leading up to this day. Her mom and the principal argued that, though school was almost out for the summer, Thea should spend the last couple of weeks getting acclimated and reconnecting with her peers. “I told you, Mr. Redmond is gone and he’s not coming back. The police don’t even know where he is.” Thea had told the police about her Spanish teacher when they asked her if she knew anyone named David Redmond in the hospital.

  “David? Do you mean Ted?” Thea stared at Officer Searle, a look of confusion plain on her face. “Why are you asking about my Spanish teacher?” The officer was just as confused as Thea in that moment. Officer Searle and his colleagues would have discovered him sooner or later, but at that early point, only an hour into the investigation, they had not yet dug into David Redmond’s file, so they did not know yet that David Redmond had a little brother named Edward.

  “Are you saying you knew the perpetrator? And that he was your Spanish teacher?” Officer Searle took notes as he talked.

  “What?? Mr. Redmond is my Spanish teacher, not the man from the cabin.” Thea’s voice rose with anxiety. Officer Searle put down his pencil. “Hold on. You have a teacher by the name of Redmond as well?”

  Thea explained that Ted Redmond was her substitute Spanish teacher, he’d started at her school just a couple of weeks after she started in her new school and he was by far her favorite teacher. “Everyone’s favorite teacher, actually,” Thea said with a small smile. “And he definitely has nothing to do with that . . . man.” Thea shuddered.

  But now Thea knew she’d been wrong. Ted did have something to do with the man; they were brothers, or at least half brothers. The police found that out pretty quickly—that David had been paroled only twenty-four hours before he killed his father and went after Thea, and that his only surviving family was his mother, Diana, and his brother, Edward. And Thea, herself, as it was. Thea found out from Officer Searle that Mr. Redmond disappeared . . . or left, would be the less suspicious way to put it.

  “There is a distinct possibility that they were working together, Thea,” Officer Searle told her at a follow-up meeting a couple of weeks after she’d been released from the hospital. “But we don’t have the smoking gun we need to put out a warrant for arrest. We can’t figure out how Edward and David were communicating. The last time Edward visited David was months before his parole and there are no calls between the two of them. Something isn’t adding up. Is there anything you can tell us about your interactions with your Spanish teacher . . . anything that felt . . . off about him?”

  “No, he was just a normal teacher,” Thea said. There was no way she was going to admit to her massive crush on her dead brother’s brother. And then hastily added, “He did tell me I could call him by his first name. But that’s because we were friends.”

  Her mom and Officer Searle shared a glance. “A twenty-four-year-old man isn’t friends with a twelve-year-old girl,” Thea’s mom said sharply. “Those sick bastards.”

  “Mom,” Thea said now, bunching her backpack into her middle as they came to a stop in front of her school. “He left. He’s gone, ok? And what are we going to do? Sue him for saying I can call him by his first name?”

  “He was basically stalking you, Thee. Do you really think he just happened to take a job at your school? And even beyond that, even if he didn’t grow up with the man who tried to kill us, from what you’ve told me, his behavior with you was totally inappropriate. You’re twelve and he’s—”

  “First of all, I’m twelve and a half. And second of all, can you please stop being a therapist for one second?” She looked at her mom pointedly but smiled when she saw her mom’s grimace.

  Her mom sighed. Her eyes slid to the top of the windshield and rested on the flag being slapped back and forth in the wind. “Ok. I love you, Thea. We’ll talk about this more later.”

  Thea sighed, too, a big, dramatic sigh that filled the car. She wrenched open the passenger door. “Ok.”

  As she trod up the stone walkway to the front door of her middle school, she stopped suddenly and ran back to where her mother had been idling a few seconds before, but the car was gone. She looked frantically around the parking lot, eyes stinging with tears, though she didn’t know why she was almost crying and she rubbed her eyes roughly, embarrassed. She turned around again and started walking.

  “Thea?” She heard her mom’s voice over the wind, thin but there.

  Thea turned. Her face broke into a smile that quickly shrank as a group of eighth graders pushed past her.

  Her mom jogged toward her. “Hi, honey, I saw you in my rearview mirror and pulled over. What’s up?”

  She looked around, embarrassed for a different reason now—her mom was smack in the middle of everyone swarming into school. So she said in a low voice, “I just wanted to say that maybe we can watch Pride and Prejudice tonight after dinner.”

  “That sounds great, Thee. See you tonight. I love you.” As Thea trailed the other kids to school, she heard her mom yell, “Have a great day!” She cringed, but a small smile stayed on her face as she slipped into the closing doors.

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon, Thea slid into her desk in Spanish class, ignoring the whispers coming from the other kids. In her previous three classes, she’d had Livi twice and then Gretchen to insulate her from the murmurings, but this time, she was alone. She stared straight ahead at the chalkboard and the cursive that spelled out the new substitute’s name: Señora Perez. She suddenly felt like crying again and focused hard on her textbook.

  “Hey, Thea.” Rachel’s strong voice carried across the room and Thea’s head whipped up, color already rising into her cheeks. “I’m really sorry about . . . what you went through. The incident or whatnot.” Rachel’s voice stumbled for a moment. “Seriously, that’s so awful.”

  “Oh, yeah, thank you.” Thea gave a small nod.

  “You’re really brave,” Ronan added from beside her, and the rest of the class buzzed in agreement.

  Thea breathed out, “Not really,” but smiled slightly and lifted her eyes from her desk. While they waited for the teacher to arrive, Thea reached into the hollow opening of her desk, feeling around for the book that she’d left there. Her hand folded around the spine and she pulled it out and flipped to the dog-eared page near the end. She looked down at her desk. A thick square of folded papers had fallen from the book. She looked to her left and right cautiously before picking up the pages. She stuffed them in her jeans’ back pocket before picking her book back up with trembling fingers.

  A few minutes into class, she raised her hand. “El baño, por favor?”

  In the bathroom stall, she closed the toilet lid and pulled the pages out of her back pocket before sitting down. She took a deep breath, stilled her hands, and started reading.

  Dear Thea,

  I hope you get this. I put it in a spot that I thought you’d be sure to look. I wish I could have stayed to explain in person, but . . . well, I didn’t think that would be a good idea, for various reasons. I’m not sure how to start this so I just will. I grew up with an older brother named David. From an early age, I knew there was something very wrong with him, but I tried to convince myself that maybe that was just how older brothers acted: mean, violent, scary. He started hitting me when I was just a toddler, probably before that, though I don’t remember. At one point, when I was nine and we went to a pool party, he almost killed me when he held me underwater and wrapped the pool thermometer around my neck. Luckily,
an adult saw and dove in—everyone thought I’d just gotten tangled up and I was too frightened to come out against him. Now I know words like narcissist and psychopath, but as a kid, I only knew that I was terrified of my brother. I noticed that my mother took special care of David and always seemed to either come to his defense or turn a blind eye to his behavior. My feelings about my mom are complicated, but I believe she tried her best. And then there was my dad . . . who just checked out completely—I think David was too much for him and so he turned to work and drinking. I’m not writing this for you to pity me, seriously, I want to explain that from a young age, I suspected there was something wrong with my brother, but I didn’t know how wrong until David did what he did when he was sixteen.

  I heard him leave the house that night. It was the middle of the night. I felt in my bones that he was up to something bad, but I didn’t stop him. I just wanted him to leave. I wanted him gone. I was fourteen at the time and not perfect myself, and I’ll admit that I didn’t care where he was going or what he was going to do as long as he stayed away. I could have woken up my parents. Or called the police. I could have done something and I didn’t.

  The next day, when we started to find out details of what David had done . . . well, I won’t go into it but I remember throwing up in the kitchen sink.

  A few months ago, I went to visit my brother in jail, for the first time since he was arrested. I just . . . I needed to know if he’d changed, if maybe being in prison had reformed him or simply growing up had made him better. But, of course, it hadn’t. He was exactly as I remembered him—dark, manic, scary. And he went on and on about a young girl, his sister, he claimed. At first, I thought he was just delusional—this was the first I’d heard of Ethan Mills—but the more he talked, the more I thought he might be speaking about real things—the newspaper clipping, his biological father, and you, his sister, the only person who would ever understand him, his “light in the dark,” as he said. He never said so explicitly, he’s too smart for that, but I left that visit knowing that he was going to try to find you. And I knew that it was very possible he would be paroled at his next hearing, since he’d been sentenced to ten years with the possibility of parole and had already served close to nine.

  I failed that first girl, Thea, and I made up my mind to try to protect you, whatever I had to do. I found you pretty easily thanks to social media and the internet. I knew that he had taken the first girl from her school and so I decided to try to get a job near your school and couldn’t believe my luck when your school was hiring for a sixth-grade Spanish substitute teacher. Did you know that all you need is a bachelor’s degree to get hired as a sub?

  If you’re wondering why I didn’t tell the police, well, I did. I made a call the same afternoon of my prison visit and was told that the information would be “put in his file.” But I knew that if David got out on parole, he would go straight for you and I thought the only way I could stop him was to try to physically be there.

  I’m sorry, Thea, for everything. I didn’t save you; you saved yourself. Not everything I told you was a lie—I did study in Colombia and I’m headed back there now as my partner lives in Bogotá. You’re a bright, wonderful person and I hope you can, if not forgive me, then understand why I did what I did.

  Your Friend,

  Ted Redmond

  Thea sat on the toilet for a few more minutes, thinking, then she carefully refolded the letter, put it in her back pocket, and walked back to Spanish class.

  SIX MONTHS

  AFTER THE CABIN

  ROSE

  Rose sat and waited anxiously for the couple to arrive. She drummed her fingers along the kitchen countertop. She’d gotten good at waiting anxiously. This type of waiting, though, was different from all the waiting she’d done in the past—first waiting to kill Ethan and then waiting to kill the man. Unsure if she was doing the right thing, unsure how it would turn out. She wasn’t waiting to kill anyone this time. That in itself relieved some of the pressure. But then again, Rose postulated, when do you ever know how something will turn out? She certainly hadn’t counted on Sam dying and being a workaholic widow at the age of sixty-four. She got up from the island stool she sat upon and stretched. She looked at the oven clock. The couple’s arrival was due to an e-mail she’d sent six months ago, followed by more e-mails, phone calls, and finally plane ticket confirmations forwarded with the subject line “See you soon.”

  It had been six months since they escaped. Every week, Anne and Thea made the short drive from Burlington to Charlotte and the three of them met at a coffee shop. Thea always ordered a chocolate frappé, Anne a latte, and Rose black coffee. They sat and talked, not always about Ethan and David, but when the men did come up, usually brought up by her granddaughter, Rose and Anne tried not to shrink away from the subject.

  “I remember a voice from when I was a baby,” Thea had said last week, pausing over her milkshake. “I thought I’d made it up. I used to play pretend when I was little, and there was always a scary man in my games. I can’t remember what he looked like or what he said but I remember being scared of him.”

  Rose glanced at her daughter. Anne set down her cup. “I think those memories are from your overnights with your dad. You only had a few before he died.”

  “Yeah,” Thea said. She took a gulp of milkshake. “I know it’s weird, but sometimes I feel kind of bad for my brother.”

  “That’s not weird, Thee,” Anne responded. “I think David did try . . . but he couldn’t help the way he was. Ultimately.”

  “Yeah,” Thea said again, and Rose couldn’t quite discern her granddaughter’s expression as she went back to her straw.

  “Mom,” Anne said slowly. “Have you thought any more about Burlington?”

  “Yeah, Mimi! Are you going to come live with us?” Thea grinned over the top of her milkshake.

  Rose chuckled. “I have been thinking about it, you two. And I appreciate the offer, but you know I have my life in Charlotte and I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you have a life, Mom, and obviously you can take care of yourself . . . and then some.” Anne smiled. “Just . . . think about it some more. Oh.” Anne’s face changed. “Oh, I have to take this call. Sorry, guys!”

  “Is that—” Rose raised her eyesbrows and smiled encouragingly.

  “Yes! Yes, it is. I’ll be right back!” Anne jumped up from the table and Rose heard, “Hello? Lana! Hi, oh my god, it’s been so long—” as Anne walked outside to the street.

  “Please think about it, Mimi!” Thea stared at Mimi. “We’d have so much fun.”

  “I will,” Rose had promised her granddaughter. And that’s what she was doing now, when suddenly the air outside the house changed. There was a crunching sound of tires over gravel followed by the slamming of car doors. Everyone, Rose, her daughter, and her granddaughter, perked their heads up; Thea from the book she was reading on the couch and Anne from her laptop at the dining room table. Anne and Rose made eye contact and a silent message passed between them: There’s no turning back now. Scraping sounds came from just outside the front door, suitcase wheels being dragged up Rose’s front steps, and then the doorbell sounded.

  “Guys, they’re here,” Thea said, her tone somewhere between excitement and distress.

  They all moved toward the door. Rose got there first and opened the door; Anne and Thea hovered behind her, forming a trifecta.

  “Oh!” The one syllable escaped Rose’s mouth before she could reel it back in. She had meant to open with “Hello!” or “Welcome!” but the resemblance was so striking that she brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh my goodness,” she said again. She hadn’t seen it at their wedding, Anne and Ethan’s, for obvious reasons, but she saw it now, the uncanny similarities between Tom’s face and Thea’s. His light blue eyes, almost gray; the perfectly rectangular forehead; the small, neat teeth and the way when he smiled, one side of h
is mouth lifted higher than the other.

  “Well, hello!” Tom opened his arms and widened the stance of his feet, as if to stabilize himself.

  “Tom! Tom, get out of the way, let me get to my granddaughter.” Lynette shook her head and feigned annoyance, but already she was crying and laughing as she plowed past Tom into the house. “Rose! Anne!” She gave them both a firm hug as she made her way to Thea. Lynette enveloped Thea in a hug. Rose, a few hours ago, had worried that this initial visit would be fraught with tension and the awkwardness of something so big looming in between them, but now she felt only relief and release; she found that she also had tears running down her face. Lynette and Thea pulled away from their silent embrace and looked at each other, wiping tears out of their eyes and giggling. Anne ushered Tom into the entryway, insisting that he leave the suitcases on the porch for her and Rose to collect later.

  After Rose took Lynette and Tom through the house, showing them the upstairs and where they would sleep, they all settled around the kitchen table. Lynette placed herself next to Thea and reached out every few minutes to squeeze her arm. Thea looked from Lynette to Tom as if they would disappear if she took her eyes off them. Rose brought a pot of coffee to the table and poured four cups and they passed around the cream. There was stirring and clinking. The silence was comfortable but anticipatory. Tom put his mug down and cleared his throat. “We’re so sorry, Anne. We’ve been talking around this for years, Lynette and me. We didn’t know about . . . about Ethan,” his voice dipped on his son’s name. Anne looked quickly at Thea, opened her mouth, “Thea, I don’t think . . .” She closed her mouth, took a breath in through her nose before saying, “Thea, I think you’re old enough to stay and have this conversation with us.”