by Laura McHugh
Heaney had his back to me, as though he was no longer worried that I’d try to get away. He squatted down to pick up the items he’d gathered, and I lurched forward, knocking the flashlight back behind the freezer, nearly blacking out the room.
“Goddamnit!” Heaney hissed. In the moments before our eyes could adjust to the darkness, I ran blindly in the direction of the door. Heaney barreled into me and knocked me back against the stairs, and I heard the shovel clatter to the floor. My head was swimming. He grabbed at my legs, grunting, and I kicked as hard as I could, clipping him in the face. I squirmed backward, but he caught me at the knees as I tried to get up. My fingers scrabbled over the concrete seeking the shovel, and I latched on to it as Heaney yanked me toward him. I struggled, unable to wrench my legs away, and I knew it would be harder to fight if he managed to straddle me and pin me down. Time had run out, and I had no leverage to swing the shovel, so I clutched its metal head in my hands and smashed it into Heaney as hard as I could.
He howled and I struck him again, feeling his grip loosen as he recoiled and tried to grab the shovel from me. I scrambled to my feet and started swinging, the blade coming down on him over and over, until he quit fighting, and then I swung again. I would not be the girl who only hit hard enough to gain a head start. I had to be sure that I could beat him to the boat.
When I stopped, the room was still, and I was dizzy. I had screamed my throat raw, and my ears were ringing. Heaney made a gurgling noise, and I knew that he was breathing. I wanted to get out of the cabin and away from him, but first I had to kneel down and dig through his pockets to retrieve the keys, expecting at any moment that he might reach out and grab me. I staggered out into the night, taking the shovel with me, and ran down the dirt path until it emerged from the woods. Lights glittered over on the mainland, signs of life beyond the empty fields. I jogged to the end of the dock, sweating despite the cold, and untied the boat with shaking hands. I used the shovel to push off and then heaved it out into the channel.
The boat drifted lazily into the current and I fumbled the key into the ignition, twisting hard and begging it to start. The engine cranked but didn’t turn. I tried to focus, to remember what Heaney had done, but instead I thought of my father, of all the times I had sat on his lap as he drove the Ruby Slipper. He’d position my hands on the wheel and the throttle and place his hands on top of mine so that I could help him drive. I could hear his voice as clearly now as if he spoke over the water. Nothing to it, kid. Just like that.
My breath puffed out in white clouds, and low waves slapped the sides of the boat as Little Belle gradually slid past. I told myself that there was no need to panic. I was safer in the boat, away from the island, away from Heaney. This time, I pumped the throttle before turning the key, and the engine rumbled. I eased the shift lever forward and steered the boat toward shore.
I worried that I would miss the unlit marina, so I edged the Bayliner as close to land as I dared and moved at a crawl. When it finally came into view, I did my best to maneuver toward the dock, but as I focused all my effort on steering, I neglected to pull back on the throttle and rammed into the slip. I leaned out and clawed at the dock, grabbing hold of a cleat and pulling myself out without bothering to tie up the boat.
My fingers were numb, and I kept dropping the keys as I fumbled my way into Heaney’s truck. Once inside, I locked the doors and huddled in the driver’s seat, my breath shushing in and out, my entire body shaking. I drove down the gravel road in what I hoped was the right direction, glancing obsessively in the rearview mirror, as though Heaney might appear at any moment in the darkness behind me.
Was it true that he’d found the twins’ remains in the basement room and blackmailed my father? He had told me those things thinking that I wouldn’t leave the island, so there was no reason for him to lie. What would it mean, if I found my sisters there? That I had been terribly wrong about so many things. That my father had known they were dead all along, and he knew who had killed them. It would be one answer out of countless questions, the end of one kind of grief and the start of another.
—
I parked Heaney’s truck down the block from Arrowood and used his keys to let myself in through the laundry room. The house still smelled faintly of apple pie, thanks to Mrs. Ferris’s candles. The first thing I did was run hot water in the laundry sink to thaw out my trembling hands, and then I found my phone and dialed 911.
“There’s been an accident on Little Belle Isle,” I said. “A man attacked me—his name is Dick Heaney. I fought him off, and I think I might have hurt him. It was self-defense.” I hung up before the operator could ask me any questions. I knew I would have to go to the station and talk to the police—and it probably wouldn’t look good that I hadn’t done so right away—but it would have to wait.
From the utility closet, I retrieved one of the trowels that Heaney and I had used to plant flower bulbs. I tossed it down the hole into the hidden room and climbed down after it, lighting the way with my phone. I knew where to dig, in the far corner where the water dripped down the wall. I knelt and ran my hands over the smooth dirt floor, the cold slowly seeping through my clothing, into my skin, chilling my knees and fingertips. I nosed the trowel into the hard ground and scraped up a furrow of earth. I continued, dissecting the floor in careful layers, both fearful and hopeful that something would surface.
Cold sweat tracked down my scalp as I uncovered the eroded edge of a thin plastic tarp. I dropped the trowel and dug with my bare hands, my fingernails clawing the dirt until I exposed a broad swath of the plastic. It lay in tatters, disintegrating as I tried to peel it away. At first I thought there was nothing beneath it, but as I felt around, my hand touched something solid in the dirt, a dome like a turtle shell. One, and then another. Two small skulls. I closed my eyes, unwilling to see.
When I was hospitalized after my accident, a nurse had started an IV antibiotic that I was unknowingly allergic to. I’d felt a sharp pain in the back of my hand where the needle bit in, and a tingling in my arm as the drug flowed into my veins. There was an icy sensation as it reached my heart and fluttered across my chest, my blood pressure plummeting and the edges of my vision turning black and curling up like a photograph that had been set on fire. I was going into shock. I felt the same way now, the ice in my chest, the overwhelming urge to vomit.
My sisters were here, in this hidden room. For all the years I’d waited for them, they had lain side by side in the dark, cold earth. They had not grown up. They had not left this house. They had been here, beneath us, until my father took my mother and me away from Arrowood and left the twins behind. I had finally found them, what remained of my beautiful sisters. I withdrew my hand from the smooth curve of bone, and as I got to my feet, I noticed a small object that had been dislodged from the dirt. A button. I slipped it into my skirt pocket, then climbed out of the hole, my limbs weak, my fingers struggling to grip the rungs and haul myself up. I gathered my things and hurried out the door.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Once the adrenaline wore off, I felt the full extent of my injuries. I stopped at a Break Time in Cedar Rapids and bought their entire supply of tiny packets of Advil. The fluorescent lights buzzed like angry hornets in the otherwise silent store, and the guy behind the register eyed me warily as he rang up my coffee and pills and beef jerky, setting my change on the counter to avoid contact with my filthy, outstretched hand.
I locked myself in the restroom, soaking paper towels in the sink and scrubbing at the dirt that streaked my face and caked my fingernails. There was a cut on my forehead. My hair was tangled and my eyes bloodshot, the side of my face where Heaney had struck me swollen and beginning to bruise. I looked like I’d clawed my way out of a grave.
Back in the car, I tore open two foil packets of Advil and washed the pills down with scorched coffee. I checked the map, the red and blue highways branching out like a network of arteries and veins, and continued north, toward Minnesota, the ro
ad stretching into darkness beyond my headlights. If Heaney was telling the truth, my father had known that the twins were buried in the basement of Arrowood. If my father knew, there was a chance my mother knew, too, and she was the only one left alive who could tell me what had really happened.
—
The sun rose as I neared Rochester, revealing a slab of low gray clouds. I exited the highway and wove through a labyrinth of suburban streets to reach the upscale subdivision where Mom and Gary lived. Their house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, the yard edged with spindly, perfectly spaced maples that had been planted when the house was built five years before. It would take five more years for them to grow above the roofline. Not a single dead leaf blemished the lawn; Gary paid a service to suck them all up every fall, to apply mulch to precisely delineated areas, to exterminate every last dandelion. Like most homes in the neighborhood, the brick ranch’s most prominent architectural feature was a protruding three-car garage. Inside, every surface, from walls to floors to counters to woodwork, was a neutral shade of brown. No hundred-year-old wallpaper, no stained-glass windows, no ceilings clad in decorative pressed tin. It was exactly what my mother had longed for, a house with no history. She had wanted to start someplace fresh, with no reminders of the past.
It was just shy of eight when I rang the bell. An enormous wreath hung on the front door, with little pinecones spelling out GIVE THANKS. When the door opened, my mother stood there in her velour robe and slippers, confusion twisting her face.
“Arden? Dear Lord! What are you doing here? What happened to you?”
After making me take off my filthy boots, she led me into the living room, which, like the rest of the house, was decorated to Gary’s taste. Or maybe it was my mother’s taste, too, now that she was Gary’s wife. Fake flowers. Puffy La-Z-Boy recliners. An assortment of pillows and plaques instructing you to COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS and PRAISE THE LORD and LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE.
“Sit down,” she said, grabbing the phone off the coffee table. “Were you in an accident? Gary’s already left for the early service. I can call him back here.”
“No,” I croaked. “It’s better if he’s not here. I need to talk to you.”
She set down the phone, her forehead wrinkling. It had been a long time since I’d seen her without the makeup and hairspray and bright clothing that I associated with her life with Gary. She looked tired and uncertain, tiny red veins marbling her nose and cheeks. I remembered her slicing through the wake of the Ruby Slipper on skis, never once falling. My mother, before the twins disappeared, before she knew about my father and Mrs. Ferris, before life disappointed her in too many ways, was a different person. We all were.
Garbled voices drifted in from the TV in the kitchen. The Home Shopping Network. “Well, what is it, Arden? What kind of trouble are you in now?”
On the drive up, I’d tried to figure out what to say, but now the words wouldn’t come. I took the button from my pocket and held it out to her, dropping it into her palm. She stared at it for a moment, and then her hand started to shake as she realized what it was. A little button shaped like a duck, from one of the blouses Grammy had made for the twins. The blouses they’d been wearing that day.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Arrowood.”
One hand closed around the button and the other clamped over her mouth.
“Mom?”
She sank down onto the overstuffed couch, her eyes pinched shut.
“They’re dead.” I didn’t want to believe the words as I spoke them, though they were undeniable as a key turning in a lock, the final click of a latch as it snaps into place.
“Arden—”
“Did you know?” I asked, my voice breaking. “That they were there, in the house, all along?”
My mother’s body shuddered, like something inside her was trying to get out. Tears coursed down her face and she didn’t wipe them away.
“Did you know?” I asked again. She didn’t answer. Numbness spread out from my chest. My arms and legs were tingling. “Please tell me.” I wanted her to say no, that she had been in the dark, like me, that she had fallen apart from the pain of not knowing, and that the news I had given her was a horrible, unbearable shock.
She looked me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Arden.”
There was a lag between hearing her words and understanding. “What happened? Who…?” She didn’t answer, and my throat dried up, the words coming out like bits of gravel. “Was it you, or him?”
She shook her head in slow motion. “I know you’re confused, but you have to know that your father and I would never have hurt the girls. We loved them so, so much. You know that.” She scooted over next to me, her icy hands settling on top of mine. I didn’t want her touching me, but I couldn’t make myself pull away.
“What do you remember from that day, Arden?”
“You know what I remember.”
“Tell me. Please.”
I gritted my teeth and tried to breathe slowly. “We were playing outside,” I said. “I left them for a minute, to pick dandelions in the backyard, and when I came back, they were gone. The gold car was driving away. I ran after it.”
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s what happened. But they weren’t…they weren’t in the car.” She paused for a moment, studying my face. “I came out to get them. They were tired and cranky and covered in grape juice. I called for you when I brought them in, but with all the noise next door, you must not have heard.”
My head buzzed and my pulse accelerated. I remembered the landscapers mowing and weed-eating at the Ferrises’. The twins’ little hands, sticky, stained with juice.
“I put them in the tub, and not long after, you came running up the stairs, calling for me, hysterical. Your eyes got so wide when you saw the twins. You told me about them disappearing, about seeing them in the gold car. It was just a mistake. Then the phone rang, and I asked you to keep an eye on your sisters for one minute while I answered it. It was Eddie, telling me he’d be late getting home. I knew he was with her—with Julia—and I was furious. I’d found out earlier that morning that he’d drained our savings account without telling me.”
My mother had been livid at the bank that day, though I hadn’t known why. My sisters and I were more concerned with the Tootsie Pops we’d received from the teller.
“I hollered for you to drain the tub and get towels for the twins, and then I went into the bedroom to talk to your father. I didn’t want to let him off the phone until he agreed to come home and explain what he’d done with our money, and I didn’t want you girls to hear us fighting. You heard me yelling anyway and got worried and came to check on me. I told you to stay with your sisters, get them dried off, that I’d be right out.”
I’d heard those words plenty of times from my mother back then, that she’d be right there, that she’d get out of bed or fix us lunch or play Candy Land or unstrap the twins from their high chairs. Instead, I’d hear the rattle of her pill bottles and find her sitting wherever we’d left her, staring at the wall.
“I don’t know how long I was on the phone. When I opened the door, you were still there, in the hallway. You’d fallen asleep on the floor, waiting for me. You’d been sick the night before, remember? You’d been up late. You were tired and feverish. I hurried back to the bathroom to look for the twins, and right away I saw the water. You hadn’t drained it out like I’d asked you to. It was spilling over the sides of the tub, and there were mounds of bubbles. When I left you with the girls, the water was only a few inches deep. I always hated those old claw-foot tubs—they’re too deep, too slippery. There’s nothing to grab hold of.”
I scrunched my eyes shut and folded myself over so my head rested on my knees, struggling to dredge up a memory that wasn’t there. Every single time the twins took a bath, they begged for more Mr. Bubble. You had to add water to make it foam, but my mother was always the one to do it; I hadn’t been allowed. Had I not listened when my mother told me
to drain the tub, or had I not heard? Was it possible that I had wanted to please the twins, that I’d given in to a request for more bubbles, and in doing so caused them to drown? I couldn’t remember. When I tried to return to that day in my mind, I still saw the gold car, the one that had obsessed me for nearly twenty years, the one I now knew had nothing to do with my sisters after all.
“It was too late. I took them out of the water and held them. It was the worst moment of my life, and it didn’t feel real. Your father came home and tried to blame me—he accused me of drowning them to punish him somehow. Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t true. He felt guilty because he should have been there. If he’d been home, if we hadn’t been fighting, it wouldn’t have happened.”
My mother kept talking, her voice blending in with the chatter from the TV. The truth was still seeping in, curdling inside me. I should have known, should have felt it. All the water in the house, leaking, dripping, overflowing. They’d been trying to tell me and I hadn’t understood. They had drowned.