“I was never angry at you,” Riley says at last. A voice fractured by anguish, and in it there is so much regret. Regret that drills deep into her until it hits marrow.
“It was like all of a sudden this giant wall shot up between us, so tall and thick that I couldn’t figure out how to tear it down,” Erin says, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “And it kept getting worse, and everything felt bigger than us, and completely destroyed.”
“You could have tried.”
“I didn’t understand you anymore!” Erin sniffles and wipes her nose. “I’m not even sure if I know who we are. All I do know is that it feels like there’s nothing left of us.”
Both women fall into heartbroken silence.
“And the worst part?” Erin goes on, trembling. “The worst part is that I’m not sure if either of us knows how to find our way back.”
She walks away, leaving Riley alone beside her daughter’s grave.
74
Riley catches up to Erin’s car just as she’s about to drive off.
“Wait!” Riley says through the open window, face stained by tears and trying to catch her breath. “You’re not leaving that easily. You don’t get to just drive off now.”
“I’m done here.” Erin angrily shoves the shifter into park, then looks up at her sister. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“I’m not losing it again, and I’m going to prove it to you.”
“Damn it, Riley! Don’t you get it? This is no longer about proving something. This is about damages. Broken feelings can heal. Broken relationships? Not as often.”
“We aren’t broken.”
Erin waves off the comment.
“We’re not. All that ugly stuff has been brewing in us for too long. It needed to come out. And as difficult as that was, I feel better now.”
“I don’t.”
“You will. Think of it like vomiting.”
“Wow. There’s a lovely visual to help this along.”
“It always feels gross when you purge bottled-up emotions, even for a short time after. Then it gets better.”
“Great. Now I’ll see throw-up every time I think of you.”
Riley almost grins, then she becomes serious. “Erin, we’re going to make it through this. We are. We’ve been through the tough stuff before and survived it. Remember when Mom’s cancer finally took hold and she was put in hospice? How, during her last days, you and I held each other up?”
Erin’s pinched-up face softens a hair. “It was the closest we’d ever been.”
“We were there for each other then. Please, be here for me this time,” Riley says. “Can you get into the car with me?”
“Why?”
“To prove I’m not going nuts again.”
“Where to?”
“To meet the woman formerly known as Rose.”
Erin stares sightlessly out at the cemetery and says nothing.
Riley tells her, “Maybe I need to see she’s real, too.”
Erin turns. “Now you’re having doubts she exists?”
“Not that. Maybe this is more an attempt to gain some kind of footing on my life. To feel anchored. I guess doing it with you feels like a safe place to start. It always has.”
“Not always. Not anymore.”
“It was never gone. We just couldn’t see it beneath all the garbage that came after losing Clarissa.”
Erin doesn’t look at Riley this time, but her eyes, wet and softened, seem to speak what she can’t say.
“I still see her sometimes.” The comment comes out as if free of Riley’s will, as if she’s been waiting so long to tell her sister this.
“I know,” Erin says with so much sadness. “I see her all over the house, can almost hear her, then, when I turn to look, she’s not there, and I realize it’s one of many haunting memories from when she’d stay with me . . . and it hurts so much.”
Riley struggles to speak through the grief that squeezes her heart. “In the moments when I see her, I feel like I can reach out and touch her, smell her beautiful scent, and it’s comforting, Erin, so damned comforting. But then she disappears, and my world collapses, and it’s like having to watch my beautiful girl die all over again.” She stops and tries to keep the hurt from knifing her in the heart. Then, in a ragged voice, “I miss her so much.”
“Me too,” Erin says.
75
They park in Riley’s lot.
Erin exits the car and, with a stunned look, says, “Please don’t tell me she lives right in your building.”
“Relax. Don’t you think I would’ve told you? No, wait. Let’s not do that one again.” Riley points to the other complex. “She’s over there.”
Erin looks at the place and, with mocking approval, says, “Nice digs.”
“She’s loaded.”
“An artist who makes a great living? Never heard that one before.”
“The statues didn’t make her rich. Her father did. She gave me some made-up story about how he abused her mother, who ended up killing herself, then he died of a heart attack. But none of that ever happened. The mom ran off with some guy, and Rose probably killed her dad for the inheritance after they moved away.”
Erin doesn’t comment, but at least she’s not questioning Riley’s accusation or Rose’s existence. It’s a start. A delicate one, but nevertheless a start.
At the wrought iron gate, Riley mindlessly punches in the keypad numbers. Though Erin doesn’t comment, it seems evident that dubious thoughts are entering her mind, most likely a product of Riley’s confession about breaking into the apartment.
The buzzer goes off. Riley opens the gate and gestures for Erin to walk through. At the building’s entrance, Riley again punches the code. This time Erin looks as if she’s pretending not to notice. But once they’re inside, there’s no way to avoid what she sees.
“Holy Moses on a pony,” Erin says, sight bouncing in every direction. “This place is way over the top.”
At the apartment, they look skittishly at each other. Rose’s door is open about four inches, and all that’s beyond it is a swath of darkness.
“I don’t like this,” Erin says. “Not one bit.”
Riley takes hold of the knob to keep the door steady, then knocks her cast against it a few times.
No answer.
“This feels like a trap,” Erin urgently whispers. “We need to get out of here.”
Riley can’t argue the point. Rose has demonstrated exceptional prowess, always one step ahead, and in every situation savoring the shock value. She could be inside, waiting to leap out and attack.
“Let’s go,” Erin urges.
Before Erin can say anything else, Riley gives the door a good shove, and it swings open.
“Riley, stop!”
“Stay out here if you want, but I’m going in,” she says, one foot already through the doorway.
Erin groans and follows. Inside, an inkwell of darkness surrounds them. With timorous hands, Erin clutches Riley’s shoulder.
A few feet later, Riley finds the light switch and flips it on. Recessed floodlights ignite the living room. Both scan the apartment with wide, incredulous eyes.
“Riley . . .”
“It—This can’t be . . .”
The entire apartment isn’t just empty—it’s immaculate, not a sign anywhere that someone ever occupied the place.
“She moved out, probably to keep me from breaking in again or sending the police!”
Erin examines Riley, and clouds of doubt return, drifting across the plains on her face. With hot-blooded pigheadedness, Riley grabs Erin’s hand and pulls her toward the door.
“Riley! What are you doing?”
“Come on. Rose has been manning another apartment as an observation area to keep tabs on me.”
Erin pulls her hand away and, as if staring at a stranger, says, “Please. You have to stop this. Right now.”
“Stop what?”
“Can’t you see it? This
is your pattern! The same thing happened ten years ago when you brought me to an empty house, trying to prove your theory about an evil child named Rose who you believed had killed Clarissa. Now here we are again in an empty apartment, still chasing after her damned ghost.”
“I’m not! You have to believe me!” But her voice is the epitome of what losing ground sounds like. Once again, she’s drowning in a sea of doubt and suspicion, which, once again, Erin has thrown her into.
Desperation sends her sprinting down the hallway.
“Riley!” Erin shouts, chasing after her. “Stop before this gets worse!”
She jumps into the elevator without answering.
When Erin catches up, her sister stands before the other apartment, paralyzed by bafflement and watching while an older couple leaves.
“She—she must have been breaking in. You’ve got to believe me!”
“Come on,” Erin quietly says, owned by sadness so physical you could poke it with a fork. “Let’s go home.” She takes hold of her sister’s good hand, sweaty and trembling, then says, “We’ll find you some help. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not.” Tears flood Riley’s eyes. She yanks her hand away and says, “Haven’t you figured that out? It never has been. It never will be.”
76
It only takes one look at Riley’s cast, her teary, bloodshot eyes, and her new hairstyle for Wendy to move away from the door and clear a path to enter.
“Go sit,” Wendy says. After a final check through the peephole, she locks her door.
Riley takes a place on the couch. She pulls a tissue from the box on the table, wipes her face, and grapples for composure. Wendy is in the kitchen pouring ice tea. She brings a glass into the room and puts it on the table. With eyes fixed on Riley, she feels for the seat cushion beneath her and tentatively lowers herself onto it.
“The dark-haired lady did that,” Wendy says, pointing to the cast.
Riley drops her face into the good hand, and through it comes a timorous whimper.
“What is it?” Wendy says. “You can tell me.”
Riley looks up. She strokes the front of her neck, body and mind crumpling to despair. “I’m drowning. I’m sinking. And each time I reach for the lifeline, she pulls it farther away.”
“Who does?”
“Erin. My sister. It’s like I’m not here anymore,” she answers, anguish crushing her voice. “It’s like she doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hear me.” She looks away and sniffles.
“Riley . . . ,” Wendy softly says, “look at me.”
Riley shakes her head.
“Riley, please . . . just look at me.” When she does, Wendy continues, “Now listen, okay?”
Riley takes in a deep, sustaining breath.
“I see you,” Wendy says. “I will always see you.”
Then, as if they’ve waited the past ten years for this moment to land, a connection is made. Light fills in darkness, making it disappear. They surrender to the companionable hush, each fully aware of what the other is thinking, what she’s feeling.
Bang.
Wendy launches backward into the chair cushion. She throws both hands over her ears, trembling.
Riley moves quickly to her friend’s side and gingerly pulls one hand away. Instilling calm in her voice, she says, “It was the rear door of a truck. Everything’s fine.”
But it isn’t fine. Like a frightened child, Wendy looks up at Riley. All that comes out is, “I—I’m . . .”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed about anything when you’re with me.” Riley takes Wendy’s quaking hand in hers and holds it.
Wendy lets out a fainthearted laugh.
Riley tips her head toward the door. “You know, you won’t die out there.”
Wendy’s hands are still shaking.
Riley observes her for a moment, then, “You feel safe around me, right?”
Wendy nods.
Riley asks, “Safe enough to take a risk?”
“What—Where are you going with this?”
“I want to lead you out of this apartment.”
“I already did that the other day.”
“Farther this time. Let’s take a walk down the hallway.”
Wendy looks at the door, then at Riley. She shakes her head quickly and says, “I don’t think I can.”
“But you said you’d give anything to be out in the world.”
“It was figurative.”
“I don’t believe it was.”
Wendy gives her a look.
“Listen for a moment, okay? We don’t have to go far. To the staircase and back. I’ll help you do this.”
Wendy contemplates the door again, both palms stuck firmly to the seat cushion as if her stability were contingent upon it.
“I’ll be right beside you,” Riley encourages. “I won’t let anything happen.” She stands, then reaches out to Wendy. In what feels like the most delicate of moments, she sees burgeoning trust looking back at her.
Wendy rises.
As though crossing thin ice that may crack at any moment, the two friends tread hand in hand across the room, Wendy’s perspiring grip so snug that it nearly cuts off Riley’s circulation. Right before the doorway, she pulls to a jerky stop and looks at Riley. Riley nods her reassurance. Wendy faces down the doorknob as if she’s staring into the mouth of a bloodthirsty monster.
“Let’s do this,” she says, “before I pee my pants with terror.”
Riley laughs.
Wendy pulls open the door, then looks at her guide for support. Bound by trust well earned, by faith, they walk outside.
Little by little, they advance down the hallway, Wendy’s wide-eyed gaze bouncing from the walls to the ceiling to the floor. She places a loose hand against her chest, then looks at Riley. With tears falling down her cheeks, mouth quivering, she can’t speak. But there’s no need to. Riley sees the mix of amazement and joy drifting across her friend’s face—so physical she can almost breathe it in—and now she, too, holds back tears.
Slam.
Wendy whirls around, face ashen, chest rapidly rising and falling.
“It’s just a noisy neighbor closing a door from around the corner,” Riley assures her. “We’re good.”
They walk forward.
Four feet to the staircase. Three feet, then two.
They make it. Wendy places her palm flat against the wall, and for several seconds stares at it as if trying to validate the reality of this moment. She inhales a ragged breath.
Ten years, Riley surmises. That’s how long it’s been since Wendy has walked this hall. Ten years of fearing the external world instead of embracing it. Ten years of intense, inescapable agony that, no doubt, felt irreversible. Of mourning her son’s tragic death the only way she knew. By disappearing from life and from herself.
Wendy falls into Riley’s arms and breaks into tears. The two women cling to each other as if they’re holding on for life. And Riley needs it, needs it just as much, because she’s never felt so lost, so irreparably unconfirmed.
“We did it,” Wendy very quietly says.
“We did.” Riley pulls away with a tearful grin, and from somewhere deep inside comes an implicit message of mutual, restorative healing.
Brilliant sunlight spills through a hallway window. Wendy stares at it, transfixed, face reflecting the wonderment of a child who’s experiencing something magnificent for the first time.
“I don’t want to lose this feeling again. Ever,” Wendy says.
77
Wendy, in the fullness of time, got her chance to enjoy the taste of freedom, but Riley couldn’t be further away from it.
She can’t stay here any longer.
Rose has gone into hiding, which makes her more deadly. Riley knows her enemy is tightening the screws, and with each tick of the clock, this apartment becomes more of a death trap. Staying at Erin’s place is no longer an option; the chasm between them feels wider than ever. She has to figure out her next move.<
br />
She goes to her fridge and finds a small dose of consolation waiting there. The last bottle of water—of anything, really—stands front and center. She takes it to the living room, collapses across the couch, drinks greedily.
And falls fast asleep.
She wakes with a giant, heaving gasp and a hard, cold surface beneath her body. She’s groggy, and her back aches. As body awareness expands, so, too, does her grasp on her surroundings. She’s crammed into a confined space. Claustrophobia hits. Panic strikes.
Where am I? Where on earth am I?
Her autonomic nervous system kicks in, throwing her body into an upward thrust, but a viscous liquid beneath her counters the move. She looks down, looks around, and a firestorm of disarray torpedoes through her. She’s lying in a bathtub. Not any bathtub—it’s hers, and it takes a few additional seconds for her mind to grasp that she’s partially submerged in a pool of blood.
Oh no, oh no, oh no! I’m bleeding out! But from where?
Her mouth is so dry she could spit sand, and a hard knot of fright sits lodged in her chest, granting barely enough oxygen to keep her from passing out. Feverishly, she sends both hands searching her body for wounds while the coppery smell of lifeblood sends her stomach contents sloshing into a virulent wave of nausea. She looks to her left but only finds another source of wretched horror waiting there. More blood. Dried blood, ribbons of it, running down the tile. But nothing can prepare her for what she sees after following those ribbons to their source: a bloody pair of toes dangles above her, and as her vision climbs higher, a hanging corpse comes into view—so, too, does comprehension.
This isn’t my blood.
Terror ricochets through her. A faint, slow-moving mewl worms up her throat, gathering sound until it transmutes into an unyielding, unearthly scream that could crack tile. She tries to stand—tiny, frantic moans escaping between ice-cold lips—but the pool of blood beneath her won’t permit it; her feet slip and give way, plunging her back into the red liquid. Only after grabbing hold of the nearby toilet seat with her good hand does she manage to hoist her body over the rim of the tub and flop onto the floor. She slowly rises, her clothes dripping crimson, cold and wet. The moment she looks toward the shower wall, the floor seesaws, and the room curls in around her.
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 22