Robin was killed in our kitchen. Her car and body are at the bottom of a nearby lake.
I interrupt Josh. “Do you know when this information will be released?”
“Soon, I’m sure. They can’t hide those bodies forever.”
He keeps talking, but I think only of Claire Wellington. It will take her about a minute to show up at our door, asking about Millicent’s sister, Holly.
And why she was never reported missing.
Because we thought she just moved away.
Because we didn’t care.
Because she used to torture my wife.
Because she was crazy.
I text Millicent.
We need a date night.
She turns me down.
No date night. I’m at the hospital.
I read it three times before throwing money on the bar and leaving First Street Bar & Grill without saying another word to Josh. Or maybe I say I have to go. I’m not sure.
Millicent calls me as I’m trying to call her. She is talking fast, and I’ve been drinking, so all I catch are the highlights.
Rory. Emergency room. Fell from the window.
I don’t bother with the car, because I’m close enough to run. The hospital is three blocks away, and I arrive to find Millicent pacing in the hall.
As soon as I see her, I know.
Rory is okay. Or will be.
Millicent’s fists are clenched, lips pursed, and it feels like an electric current is shooting out of her. If Rory was really hurt, she would be worried, crying, or in shock. But she isn’t. She is bursting with anger.
She grabs me and hugs me. It is quick and violent, and then she pulls back to sniff my breath.
“Beer,” I say. “What happened?”
“Our son snuck out of the house to see his girlfriend. He fell climbing up to her window.”
“But he’s okay?”
“He is. We thought his wrist was broken, but it’s a bad sprain. He’ll have to wear a sling—”
“Why didn’t you call me when it happened?” I ask.
“I did. I texted you.”
I pull out my phone. There it is, right on the cracked screen. Depending on the angle, it can be difficult to read. “Oh god, I’m sorry—”
“Forget it. You’re here now. The important thing is he’s okay.” Millicent’s anger is back, if it had ever really left. “He’s just grounded for a century.”
Someone giggles.
Around the corner, Jenna is sitting in a waiting room. She waves. I wave back. Millicent directs me to a vending machine for coffee. It is bitter and burns my tongue, and is exactly what I need. It settles me down instead of the opposite, because my heart is beating too fast, from the sprint over, and the alcohol, and my son in the hospital.
Millicent disappears into the examining room to be with Rory. When they come out, Rory has a brace on his wrist and a sling on his arm. Millicent’s anger has softened, at least for now.
He does not look me in the eye. Maybe he is still angry at me, or maybe he knows he is in trouble. Hard to tell, because right now I am torn between knocking him upside the head and hugging him. I ruffle his hair.
“If you don’t want to play golf, you should have just said so,” I say.
He doesn’t smile. He loves golfing.
We get home after midnight. I check on Rory a few minutes after he goes to bed. Even he falls asleep right away.
I sit down on my bed, exhausted.
My car is still at the First Street Bar & Grill.
And there are bodies buried under the church.
“Millicent,” I say.
She comes out of the bathroom, halfway through her nighttime routine. “What?”
“I was drinking beer tonight with Josh. The reporter.”
“Why would you—”
“He told me there are bodies buried in that church basement.”
“Bodies?”
I nod, watching her. Her surprise looks genuine. “Did he say whose bodies?” she asks.
“I assume Holly and Robin.”
“They aren’t anywhere near that church. You know that.” She walks away, back into the bathroom.
I follow her. “You really don’t know anything about the bodies buried down there?”
“Absolutely not.”
“There’s just a pile of random bodies in a church basement.”
“Jesus, I don’t know. This is the same reporter who claimed there was a message on the wall. Where’s that?”
She has a point.
Maybe Josh has it wrong. Or maybe someone is feeding him lies to keep him from the truth.
Fictional police do that all the time. And Claire might be just as smart as they are.
Sixty
NOW THAT MILLICENT has discovered that Rory has a girlfriend and has been sneaking out to see her, she wants to meet with Faith’s parents to discuss the situation. The Hammonds are clients of hers, and they readily agree that we should all meet for dinner. Neither Rory nor Faith is invited.
We are on the way to the restaurant, a traditional place with white tablecloths and a menu of comfort foods. Their choice, not Millicent’s.
“They’re reasonable people,” Millicent says.
“I’m sure they are,” I say.
When we arrive, the Hammonds are already waiting at the table. Hank Hammond is small and blond, like his daughter. Corinne Hammond is not small and not a natural blonde. Both wear classic clothes and polite smiles. We get straight to the food. No one orders wine.
Hank’s voice is twice as big as his body.
“Faith is a good girl. She never snuck out until she met your son,” he says.
I can almost see the ball swing over to our court. Millicent smiles, polite and syrupy. “I could say the same about your daughter, but blame isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“I’m not talking about blame. I’m talking about keeping them away from each other.”
“You want to ban Rory and Faith from seeing each other?”
“Faith is already banned from seeing your son anywhere but at school,” Hank says. “I suppose that’s impossible to avoid.”
“You could homeschool her,” Millicent says. “That way they would never see each other.”
I put my hand on Millicent’s arm. She shakes it off.
“Perhaps your son is the one who needs homeschooling,” Hank says.
Corinne nods.
“You really think that forbidding them to see each other will make them . . . stop seeing each other?” Millicent says.
“Our daughter will do as she’s told,” Hank says.
I can feel Millicent biting her tongue, because I’m doing the same thing.
Corinne breaks the tension. Her voice is stronger than expected. “It’s for the best,” she says.
Millicent shifts her eyes to Corinne and pauses before saying, “I don’t make it a habit of just banning my kids from doing something.”
Lie.
“I guess that’s where we differ,” Hank says.
“Perhaps we should get back to the subject at hand,” I say. “I don’t think we need to get into our parenting philosophies.”
“Fine,” Hank says. “You keep your son away from my daughter, and that’s the end of it.”
The check arrives, and Millicent grabs it before Hank can. She hands it to me and says, “We’ve got it.”
The dinner ends with a terse goodbye.
Millicent is silent on the way home.
Rory is waiting at the door when we walk into the house. He has a sprained wrist, cannot play golf, and he is grounded. Faith is the only thing he has, or thought he had. I am not looking forward to telling him he has lost her, too.
Except we don’t. Millicent
walks over to Rory and places her hand on his cheek. “All good,” she says.
“All good? Really?”
“Just don’t ever sneak out again.”
“I promise.”
Rory scampers off with his phone to call Faith, who will get a different message from her parents.
Millicent winks at me.
I wonder if this is how some girls learn to be so sneaky. From someone else’s mother.
* * *
• • •
THE NEXT DAY, we get a call from the school. Jenna, not Rory. And this time, it is not about a weapon or her stomach. Now, it’s her grades.
She has always been an honor student, but her grades have fallen over the past month. Today, she neglected to turn in a paper that was due. Jenna didn’t even give her teacher an excuse.
Neither Millicent nor I had a clue. Jenna has been such a good student I don’t even check the weekly reports posted online. After a flurry of texts and calls, we decide to talk to her after dinner.
Millicent begins by telling her about the phone call from school and then says, “Tell us what’s going on.”
Jenna has no real answer, other than some hems and haws and a shake of her head.
“I don’t understand,” Millicent says. “You’ve always been an excellent student.”
“What’s the point?” Jenna says. She stands up from the bed and walks across the room. “If someone can just lock me up in a basement and torture me, what’s the point?”
“No one will do that to you,” I say.
“Bet those dead women believed that.”
Another punch to the gut. This one feels like an ice pick.
Millicent takes a deep breath.
Ever since meeting Claire, Jenna seemed to be better. She talked about being a detective all the time. But it all stopped when we found out about the church.
We go around in circles with her, trying to use logic to take away her fear. It does not really work. All we get is a promise that she will not flunk any of her classes.
As we walk out of Jenna’s room, I see a notebook lying open on her bed. She has been researching how many women are abducted and murdered each year.
Millicent gets on the phone, trying to find another therapist.
This is on the third day without new information about the church. Claire holds a press conference every evening to repeat what we already know.
* * *
• • •
DAY FOUR BEGINS with a barking dog. We have several in the neighborhood, so there’s no telling which one wakes me up at five in the morning, but it will not stop barking.
I sit up in bed, wondering why it never hit me before.
A dog.
One big enough to make Jenna feel safe, and protective enough to bark when someone is outside. Like Rory, when he tries to sneak in and out.
I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. A dog would solve so many of our problems.
For once, I am up before Millicent. When she comes downstairs in her running clothes, I am drinking coffee and researching dogs on the Internet. She freezes when she sees me.
“Do I want to know why you’re—”
“Look,” I say, pointing at the screen. “He’s at the shelter, a rottweiler-boxer mix.”
Millicent takes the coffee out of my hand and helps herself to a sip. “You want a dog.”
“For the kids. To protect Jenna, and to keep Rory from sneaking out.”
She looks at me and nods. “That’s kind of brilliant.”
“I have my moments.”
“You’ll take care of this dog?”
“The kids will.”
She smiles. “If you say so.”
I take that as a yes.
On a break between lessons, I stop by the shelter. A nice woman gives me a tour while I explain what we are looking for. She recommends a few different dogs, and one is the rottweiler-boxer mix. His name is Digger. She checks the paperwork and says he would be a good family dog, but the kids have to come to the shelter and meet him before they’ll allow us to adopt. I promise the woman I will be back.
The dog makes me feel a little optimistic.
I stop at a drive-through for an iced coffee and a panini. As I sit at the pickup window waiting for my lunch, the TV inside is visible. Claire Wellington is having another press conference. The words at the bottom of the screen make my heart jump:
ADDITIONAL BODIES DISCOVERED IN CHURCH
When the cashier slides the window open to hand me the food, I hear Claire’s voice.
“. . . the bodies of three young women have been found buried in the basement.”
I listen to the rest of the press conference in the parking lot, on my car radio.
Three women. All were murdered recently.
The police have to be wrong about the timing. There is no way someone buried bodies while Lindsay was—
“At least two of the three were recent enough for investigators to identify how they were murdered. Like the others, they were strangled. There are also signs of torture.”
I cannot catch my breath because Claire does not stop talking.
“We also found words written on the wall of the basement, behind a shelf. While we do not have the DNA tests back yet, the blood type matches Naomi’s.”
When Claire says the words on the wall, my heart stops.
Tobias.
Deaf.
Sixty-one
NAOMI COULD NOT have written Tobias’s name. She had never met him.
I turn this over in my mind, trying to figure out how it happened. Lindsay knew Tobias. She knew he was deaf.
But her body was found before Naomi disappeared. They could not have spoken, could not have exchanged information like that.
Millicent was the only one.
It does not make sense. None of this does.
As I get my food and drive out, I turn on the radio to hear the end of the press conference. When it’s over, the announcers keep talking. They say those words on the wall again and again.
Tobias.
Deaf.
Naomi didn’t know about Tobias.
Lindsay did.
And Millicent.
I pull over to the side of the road. My mind is so muddled I cannot think and drive at the same time.
Tobias.
Deaf.
I turn the radio off and close my eyes. All I see is Naomi in the basement of the church, chained up on that wall. I try to force it from my mind, to think clearly. But I still see her, huddled in a corner, dirty and covered in blood.
It makes me sick. Bile rises in my throat; I taste it in my mouth. I step out of the car, feeling nauseous, and the phone rings.
Millicent.
She is already talking when I answer the call.
“Flat tire?” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re sitting on the side of the road.”
I look up, as if a drone or a camera is looking down on me, but the sky is clear. Not even a bird. “How do you know where I am?”
She sighs. A big, exasperated sigh, and I hate when she does that. “Look under the car,” she says.
“What?”
“Under. The. Car.”
I kneel down and look. A tracker. Just like the one I’d put on her car.
That’s why I never knew about the church.
She knew I was tracking her.
* * *
• • •
THE REALIZATION OF what is happening explodes like a bomb in my head.
There is only one person who could have written that message using Naomi’s blood. I knew this when I heard about it—I’ve just been looking for another explanation.
There isn’t one.
“You set me up,” I say. “For all of them. Lindsay, Naomi—”
“And the other three. Don’t forget about them.”
My mind is flooded with images of Millicent killing women alone, framing me for the murders.
Now, I know what she has been doing while I was at home with Jenna all those days and nights when she was sick.
The future rolls out in front of me like a bloody red carpet.
I close my eyes, lean my head back, and think of all the ways Millicent could set me up. All the DNA she has access to. Everything she could plant, could give to the police. That does not even include the people who knew me as a deaf man named Tobias.
Annabelle. Petra. Even the bartenders.
They will remember.
Everything will point to me.
My mind fights against this idea. Around in circles I go, mapping out an idea, following it to the end, realizing it will never work. Every path is blocked, every idea already thought of by Millicent. It feels like a giant maze with no exit. I’m not a planner after all, not like my wife.
I pace up and down the length of the car. My head feels like it’s being shocked again and again.
“Millicent, why would you do this?”
She laughs. It sounds like a bite. “Open your trunk.”
“What?”
“Your trunk,” she says. “Open it.”
I hesitate, imagining what could be inside. Wondering how much worse it could get.
“Do it,” she says.
I open the trunk.
Nothing inside except my tennis equipment. Not a single racket out of place. “What are you—”
“The spare tire,” she says.
My phone, the disposable one. The one with messages from Lindsay and Annabelle. I reach inside the rim of the tire, but I don’t find it. Instead, I find something else.
Pixy Stix.
Lindsay.
The first one I slept with.
It happened after that second hike.
You’re cute. That’s what Lindsay had said.
No, you’re the cute one.
Millicent’s voice brings me back to now. “You know, it’s amazing what people will tell you when they’re locked up for a year.”
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