by Lisa Unger
Kreskey’s face was a bloody mask when the police took him out.
“You fought him, son,” someone said—maybe it was the EMT. “Good for you.”
You never go home. Not after something like that. That cop, he told us, never, ever let them take you. I understand now what he meant. If they take you, you never come back, whether you survive or not.
“You’re over the line,” says Tess from the back seat.
“Is there a line?”
That thoughtful pause. Remember how she used to do that. Kind of cock her head to the side, push up her glasses. “Isn’t there?”
I leave her there, shut the door and step out into the night.
I shoulder my pack. Pull up my hood.
She’s right. This one’s a little different. There has been no lengthy trial, no obvious travesty of justice. There’s no mountain of irrefutable evidence. There’s just one child’s suffering, her not-quite-reliable claims, the lingering suspicion that there might be something not quite right happening on this isolated property.
And maybe, maybe there’s something else.
Dare I admit it?
An appetite.
TWENTY-TWO
Gillian swept into the house rather than arrived, a beautiful bluster, laden with bags, gifts for Lily, for Rain, her overnighter, her laptop case.
“Ugh,” she said as Rain helped her unload. “What a week!”
Something about the sight of her friend made all the tension Rain was holding in her body just melt away. Roommates, coworkers, partners in crime, they’d seen each other at their best and worst. Gillian was a hold-your-hair-while-you-puke, tear-drying, belly-laugh, potato-chip-binge bestie. She filled the room with her warmth, her good humor, her scent of lilacs.
“Where’s my girl?” said Gillian, dropping to her knees in front of Lily. “There she is!”
Lily bounced up and down in her swing, vibrating with excitement.
“Oh, my goodness, you’re such a grown-up girl,” she said. “So pretty. But no! You’re brilliant, powerful, in charge. Forget about pretty. Pretty is boring.”
Rain laughed, putting the gift bags on the table, Gil’s luggage by the stairs.
“Mommy and Daddy are going to have a date! And we’re going to have a girls’ night! Yay us!”
Lily giggled, delighted, as Gillian gave her a big smooch.
Rain and Gillian lay on the floor with Lily and spent a while chatting about office politics, and how their former boss was facing harassment allegations (handsy asshole), Gillian’s new subscription to Stitch Fix, and how she wanted to buy some Bitcoin. It was the usual exuberance of both of them talking nonstop, one topic bleeding into the next, tangents taking over the conversation. It had been like this since college; they couldn’t stop talking when they were together.
When Lily got fussy, Rain took the baby up for her nap. She came back down to find her friend was making coffee. Gillian knew her way around their kitchen as well as Rain knew her way around Gillian’s.
“Tell me,” said Gillian. Rain held the monitor, watched Lily fight sleep.
“What?” Rain suddenly felt weary, sank into a seat at the table and let Gillian take over.
“Don’t even,” said her friend. “You’ve got circles under your eyes—you’re preoccupied. I know that look. Tell me what you’ve got. Chris told me you two have been talking.”
“Oh, did he?” she said. “Over drinks?”
“Don’t even try to redirect,” she said lifting a palm. “That’s not going to work with me.”
Gillian carried over coffee, slid her tall, lean frame into the chair across from Rain. She was sporting some pretty dark circles herself. Rain noticed the lick of one of her tattoos snaking out her sleeve. It was a snake that wove around her arm. She almost always wore long sleeves when they worked. Gillian regretted that tattoo, bitterly, a drunken night in college, hanging out with the wrong guy. But she’d stopped short of having it removed. I have too many scars already.
Gillian put a hand on Rain’s, and it all came out in a tumble.
The papers her father had kept, how she’d been poring over them, her visit to the Kreskey house, what happened with Lily, the FBI visit that had her feeling off-kilter and nervous. Gillian listened in that way she had, leaning in close, chin in hand, as if all her focus was on the sound of Rain’s voice. Nodding. Making all the right affirming noises in all the right places.
When Rain finished, Gillian was quiet, traced the rim of her cup.
“This is the perfect story for us,” she said finally. “You know that.”
Of course she knew. This was exactly the kind of thing that they could sink their teeth into together, a long, looping story that spans decades, a mystery, so many questions.
“Andrew’s pitching it next week,” said Gillian. “They’re going to say yes. Are you ready for this?”
“I think so,” said Rain, gazing at Lily through the video monitor.
Gillian gazed out the window, took a drink from her cup. “Have you talked to him?”
When Rain didn’t answer: “He’s the logical next person to talk to. I’m sure you realize that.”
Rain told her then about the letters. How he wrote every couple of weeks—long, eloquent missives. Gillian didn’t seem surprised, just gave that thoughtful nod she was so good at.
“What do they say? What does he write?”
Rain shrugged. “Memories of that day. Things he holds against me. Sometimes apologies for the way things ended between us. Musings. Mundane things about his day, his life. Sometimes he’s angry. Sometimes he’s nostalgic. Like an old-fashioned correspondence. Except that I don’t answer him.”
Rain retrieved the stack from the drawer in the kitchen where Greg had put them. She handed them to Gillian, who thumbed through them, reading.
“Letters,” said Gillian.
“What?”
“Handwritten, on this thick stationery paper. This beautiful, long-form prose.”
Rain peeled open one of the envelopes. Had she told Greg she didn’t really read them? She did. She read them over and over.
His handwriting was neat and beautiful, still somehow masculine. His sentences, about his isolated house, his work, were somehow soothing as if he was writing about another place and time when things were quieter, more peaceful.
“The common mode of modern communication, especially among the dating set, is texting,” said Gillian. She picked up her phone, which was on the table beside her. She’d tapped on the home button at least three times since they’d sat down; Rain had done the same. Everyone was always checking, checking, checking. What were they all waiting for?
“You meet someone, you get a text,” said Gillian. “Maybe you hook up. Then it’s more texts. More hookups. Or not. You get ghosted. Or you stop answering.”
Gillian took her phone, tapped it a couple of times, then handed it to Rain.
Hey, we met last night. You said you wanted to connect again. Drinks tonight?
Can’t tonight. Tomorrow?
Sounds good. Where and when?
I’ll text you tomorrow.
Great.
What time tonight?
Sorry, can’t. I’ll text you.
Ok. LMK if you have time later this week.
Hey, what’s up? Are you out and about tonight?
Hello?
Hello?
Ok. Whatever.
“Sad, right?” said Gillian. “This hollow, stripped-down way we talk to each other now.”
“You blew him off?” Rain handed her back the phone.
She shrugged, looked at the phone, bit her lip. “I guess I did. I wasn’t that into him.”
She was still in love with Chris; Rain knew it. Gillian knew it. Everyone else fell a little short. They’d get into that whole th
ing in a minute. Gillian twisted a long strand of hair, looked out the window.
“But Hank’s writing letters—long, detailed, personal,” she said. “Expensive stationery, black ink.”
“He’s a psychiatrist, a writer,” said Rain. “Communication is important to him. He’s kind of a throwback, too. No smartphone. He had a flip phone when I knew him. He didn’t text.”
“Why is he still writing to you?” she asked. “What does he want?”
Rain knew the answer. He wants to be known. It’s what everybody wanted, wasn’t it? People want to be seen, to be understood, accepted. Hence the cultural social media addiction—everyone vying for attention, creating a persona posted for approval.
She put a finger to the thick ecru envelope. His letters, his poetic descriptions, his long, flowing sentences, his thoughts about patients (whom he never named), the world in general, they lulled her back to the place she occupied with Hank in those few torrid weeks when she was sneaking around behind Greg’s back, before she acknowledged that there was—another side to him. Gillian saw it immediately, warned her off. You have a good man who loves you, who you love. Don’t throw it away for this guy. He’s not right.
It was late when Hank’s call came in and she left her dorm room to go to his Lower East Side loft. Greg was studying that night. They’d had an early dinner together and she knew Greg wouldn’t call again that night; that he wouldn’t drop by.
She’d almost told Greg at dinner, almost broke up with him. Whatever was happening with Hank, it was getting more intense. Even when she was with Greg, she was thinking about Hank. It wasn’t right. Her feelings had swept her away, fast, downriver; she wasn’t sure she could get back. Wasn’t sure she wanted to. Hank connected her to a part of herself that she’d forgotten.
When she got to Hank’s building, he buzzed her in and she climbed the dingy stairwell, pushed through the open door to his place. He was standing by the window, his big, muscular body in silhouette against the blue-black night, the light coming in from the streetlamp.
“Hey,” she said.
He turned to face her. There was something hard about his expression. Something dead in the eyes. She felt a flutter in her chest, which was silly. Because she knew him. It was as if she’d always known him. Preschool through middle school. He picked her up after she fell off her bike and helped her home to her mom. She defended him against Max, the school bully, got a detention for swearing. She wrote his book reports; he helped with her math homework. Hank was in love with her, always had been. It was just something she’d always known, even before she knew what it meant to be in love with someone.
“What is it?” she asked, moving closer even though something inside told her to move away. The door closed behind her.
“We’ve never talked about it,” he said. “Not really.”
“About what?”
But she understood. It always lingered in the air between them. That summer afternoon when the world changed.
“About what happened to us. I never told you the details.”
“No,” she said. That complicated swell of feelings—a sick fear, shame, anger—it all rose up from her belly into her throat.
“What happened to Tess, to me,” he said. “At Kreskey’s house.”
“I read the transcripts,” she said, sitting at the rickety kitchen table where he studied. “Not then. But later.”
They’d each given their testimony in chambers, just the attorneys, their parents, the judge. They were spared the courtroom; the media largely left them alone. Hank’s family left town shortly after. Rain’s family stayed. When she returned to school she felt embraced, people were kind—teachers, even the other children.
Eventually, what had happened became a kind of folklore, a ghost story—for everyone else. She became a character in a story that might have happened, or maybe not. Unbelievably, as the years passed it faded for her, as well. That day in the woods took on the gauzy quality of a nightmare. There were the scars, the dreams from which she woke screaming, the anxiety she felt around strange men, her strong attachment to her mother—she never went to another sleepover after that. But over years, with therapy, with the help of her parents, she recovered. She moved forward. There was guilt in that truth, too. She lived her life while Tess could not.
The years passed. By high school, kids were sneaking out to the abandoned Kreskey property, claiming it was haunted by the ghosts of the parents who’d abused and tortured him there. They’d died from carbon monoxide poisoning, an “accident” that almost killed Kreskey, too. If only.
Hank sat. “I want to tell you.”
She shifted back from him. Everything about him was off, his expression, his body language. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she nodded. She owed him, didn’t she? To hear his story, from his own mouth.
She was weeping by the time he was done. They both were.
He brought her back there with him—what he saw, what Kreskey did to Tess, Hank’s battle with Wolf, the inside of the house. It wasn’t a nightmare. A thing that might never have happened. She could hear and smell and taste that day—Tess screaming, the blood in her own mouth, the sound of the dog, the scent of rot from the tree where she hid, the wet leaves, how the gloaming settled, and she couldn’t move.
The look on Hank’s face, the anger, the hatred, the blame—everything she imagined in her grimmest suspicions of how he must feel about her—was there.
“I am sorry,” she said, shivering. “I was a—child. I was in shock.”
“We were all children,” he said.
She got up from her seat and began to move, still facing him, back toward the door.
“He’s going to be released, Lara. Did you know that?” he said. “I got a call today from Detective Harper.”
She had known Kreskey’s release was a possibility, that it might happen that year. But no, no one had told her that Eugene Kreskey was about to be released. A chill moved through her, drained her of energy. She leaned against the wall.
“Do you ever think about it?” he asked. “Do you ever wonder about who lives and who dies and why?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Who makes those decisions?
“He came for you,” he went on into her stunned silence. “Why did he get Tess instead?”
“I don’t have the answer to that.”
“Was it because you were stronger? Because you fought, and she didn’t?”
“It’s all so complicated,” she said. The images came back. The bridge—how Tess wanted to cross through the woods, and Rain had her mother’s warning in her head. How she gave in out of sheer laziness. Kreskey by the creek. Wolf. “Those moments are a blur. But we both fought, and we lost. He would have taken both of us. Except you showed up.”
“And then he got me instead.”
His gaze was relentless. She felt small and ashamed before him. She knew what Kreskey did to him; she’d seen the scars on his body, touched them with her hands.
“I don’t remember how things unfolded.” Her voice was just a whisper. How many hours had she spent in therapy, working through that day. But there it was, alive and well, a hollow within her. “How I got away.”
“What were you thinking when you watched him drag us away?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” she said. It was the truth. “I was gone, out of my mind in shock. I barely remember how things happened.”
“Have you forgiven yourself, Lara?”
“No,” she said truthfully.
Something changed on his face. He bent forward into his palms. When he looked up again, the hard mask had dropped, and it was Hank again.
He sat up straighter, looked around the room as if confused. When his eyes fell on her, he got up from his seat and moved toward her, outstretched his hand.
“Hey,” he said, clearly unsure of
what was happening. “When did you get here?”
She moved back from him, closer to the door, the strangeness of the moment expanded. What was happening? What had just happened?
“What’s wrong?” He reached for her. “Hey—are you crying?”
“Is this a joke?” she said.
He seemed afraid suddenly, seemed to realize he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He grabbed one that was hanging over the couch, shifted it on. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers, popped the tops and slid one across the counter to her. She stayed where she was, watching him.
“I—uh,” he said, looking down at the floor. “I don’t seem to be able to orient myself. When did you get here?”
He looked at the clock. “Is that the time?”
She wanted to leave, but she stayed. She sat at one of the counter stools, took a deep drink of the beer he’d offered.
“You called,” she said, wobbly inside. “I came.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Awhile.”
“What did we talk about?”
“Kreskey,” she said. “About what happened to us—to you.”
He rubbed at the crown of his head. “Why do you look so—scared?”
She didn’t know what to say. He was Hank again. The man she’d been with earlier; he was someone else—voice, body language, energy. Utterly other.
“You were someone else,” she said. “Someone with so much anger toward me.”
He shook his head. “No.”
He paced back and forth a couple of times.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.
“I got a call from Detective Harper,” he said. “Do you remember him?”
She nodded, the detective who’d coaxed the memories from her, the one who saved Hank.
“He told me that Kreskey was going to be released.”
“And then what?”
He sank into the couch. “It’s a blank. I don’t even remember how the call ended.”
“Has this happened to you before?”
He just sat, didn’t answer. She grabbed her coat from the chair.