“I’m going shopping with Nana!” she announced as soon as Amy removed the mask.
“We’ll go to the park today.”
“I want to go shopping! Nana wants to buy me a present.”
“Maybe another day. But today we’re going to stay here.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” Because it’s safe here, she felt like saying, but couldn’t. She didn’t want to scare Emma any more than she’d already been scared. It was great that her daughter seemed completely unaffected by what had been happening at home. It was as if she’d left all that stress behind in Steerforth.
Amy wished that was true for her, but coming here had just brought different stress. What was she going to do? She didn’t know how to answer that yet, but she could endure Emma’s cold shoulder while she figured it out. Let her daughter think that she’d spoiled her fun day with her grandmother. It was better than telling her the truth.
She watched Emma playing with the porcelain music box that Amy’s father had given her when she was about her daughter’s age. He’d brought it back from one of his conference trips, the hinged lid opening to reveal a tiny fairy, also made of porcelain, with a real tulle tutu and translucent wings. She held a tiny wand aloft and spun around and around while the tinny sound of “When You Wish Upon a Star” played over and over again.
Amy felt a sudden yearning to be a child again, to return to a time when she believed in the power of wishes.
“Make a wish, Mommy,” Emma said, holding the box aloft.
Amy closed her eyes and wished to go back in time, to when things were easy. She remembered the moments early in her relationship with Chris, when she was nothing but excited that other women looked at him, thinking that they couldn’t have him, that he was hers. She remembered sitting in the hospital bed with Chris sitting next to her, warm against her hip and day-old Emma in her arms, thinking that now her life was complete.
Before the asthma, before the cheating, before the world she thought she was building splintered then shattered.
Late in the afternoon they took their walk, three generations of Busby women, but not at the park as originally planned because Emma chose the beach instead.
Dorothy came out of the house buttoning a red barn coat and locked the door. “There. We’ve got at least an hour before the chicken’s done. As long as we make it back to the house by then we should be fine.”
It was a brisk fall day and the leaves were falling faster. The maple trees that bordered the road along the beach were in high color, a swath of rosy, orange-red splendor. The wind came faster along the water, blowing across the small pebbles and coarse sand and muting the noise of the traffic a few feet away.
Emma ran along the beach in front of them, pausing to examine empty crab casings and mussel shells. Amy remembered doing this when she was a girl, running along with Michael while their parents walked sedately behind them.
She remembered walking along this beach as an adult, too, the week after her father died. The funeral had come and gone along with the steady stream of visitors. The thank-you notes for all the flowers and food had been written and Amy remembered how they’d been waiting, a tidy stack of small ivory cards bordered in black, on the table near the front door.
Then, as now, Dorothy Busby had walked along in silence, hugging her jacket around her as if to contain the grief. She’d seemed to slip so easily from one role to the next, wife then widow, mother than grandmother. If these transitions caused her angst she was careful not to show it.
Emma began picking up flat pebbles, trying to skim them along the water’s surface. Amy remembered the weekend two years ago when Chris taught her to do that. She’d always been astonished by the patience he could exhibit when he chose, the way he’d repeatedly wrapped her small fingers around each pebble, guiding her arm in the motion needed to make the stone skip across the surface of the sound.
“Have you talked to Chris?” Dorothy said, as if she could read Amy’s mind.
“No.”
“You should call him.”
“No, Mom, I shouldn’t.”
Dorothy sighed, scanning the water, as if the words she looked for were hiding in its silver ripples. “It’s time to stop this, Amy.”
“Stop what?”
“This notion that you’re going to support Emma and yourself and do it all alone. This is just foolishness. You need a man in your life—if all this killing hasn’t taught you that I don’t know what will.”
“I’m earning good money now—”
“Oh, I’m not talking about finances,” Dorothy interrupted. “You’re a smart girl and I have no doubt that you could earn enough to survive with Emma. But why make that choice?”
“He’s still cheating on me, Mom.”
“You need to let that go.”
“He didn’t just do it once. He’s done it over and over again. He’s going to continue doing it.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of forgiveness? You don’t want to hold onto these hurts, Amy, it’s just hurting you.”
“How many times am I suppose to forgive that? And how can I forgive someone who isn’t really sorry?”
“He’s said he’s sorry, hasn’t he?”
“He keeps doing it, Mom, how sorry could he be?”
Dorothy waved her hand as if brushing away a fly. “He’s a man, Amy. To men, sex is like water.”
The phrase was what did it. The same words, the same intonation. Fifteen years fell away and Amy remembered the moment when she’d learned the truth about her parents’ marriage.
She and her friends were Christmas shopping at the mall when she spotted a man who looked like her father. Only it couldn’t be her father because he had his arm around a woman with curling red hair that draped down the back of a long, fur coat. They had their backs to Amy, the man nuzzling the woman’s neck as they stood at a jewelry counter.
Then the man turned and Amy saw that it wasn’t just a similar-looking man in a camel’s hair coat, it was her father. At the same minute, he saw her, too, and they stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. The smile slipped from her father’s face. She turned away, running to catch up with her friends.
She remembered the noise of the mall, the tinny sound of Christmas carols and the greasy smells of the food court. She remembered the sour taste her Diet Coke left in her mouth, the way she smiled and laughed with her friends as if nothing was wrong, the way she took the bus home, struggling to hold back tears.
Deciding on the bus that she couldn’t hurt her mother, she’d said nothing, using a headache as her excuse for going to bed early, beating her father’s return home. She lay awake in bed until she heard his car pull in the drive and then she’d feigned sleep when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
The door creaked open, she’d felt the light from the hall across her face, but she wouldn’t open her eyes to see him standing in the doorway. After a moment he shut the door.
She waited until he left in the morning, which wasn’t hard because he took the early train into Manhattan. When she came down for breakfast her mother fussed over her, but waited until Michael had gobbled up his meal and left before sitting across from her daughter.
“Daddy told me that he saw you at the mall yesterday,” her mother began and Amy looked up at her, unable to hide her surprise.
“He said you seemed upset,” Dorothy Busby continued. “I don’t want you to be upset, Amy.”
“Did he say who he was with?”
Her mother nodded. Took a sip of tea. “I know who he was with, Amy. That was Daddy’s special friend.”
“But she and Daddy, they were—”
Her mother held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about what she and Daddy were doing, Amy. That’s not important. What’s important is that you know that your daddy loves all of us very, very much and wouldn’t want to hurt us.”
“But, Mom, he was with another wo—”
“I know, Amy!” The words bar
ked, shutting her up. It was the only time her mother expressed any emotion about it. “What Daddy does with his special friend doesn’t matter because he still loves us.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true. You’re not a little girl anymore. I know you’ve had sex ed. It’s time you learned one of the fundamental differences between men and women. To men sex is like water.”
And here Dorothy Busby was, fifteen years later, saying the same thing. She’d never let on that her husband’s cheating bothered her. Appearances mattered. This was what Amy had been taught from an early age.
It was important to dress nicely when you went into the city. It was important to comb your hair even if you were sick with the flu. It was important that the neighbors not hear you shrieking even if you’d been stung by a bee. And it was important that you never, ever acknowledged your husband’s infidelity.
Throughout the family’s house were photos of her mother and father. The loving couple on their wedding day, smiling on an anniversary cruise, standing on the front lawn of the Episcopal church on Easter Sunday with their two children, all of them looking like they’d stepped out of a Talbots catalog.
Nowhere was there a picture of Dorothy Busby in her nightgown sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of bourbon open in front of her, drinking alone because her husband was spending the night with someone else.
When she was eighteen, Amy rebelled. She went to school in Rhode Island and left her hometown far behind. She adopted black as her favorite color and took up photography in earnest, focusing on nudes because it shocked her mother.
She hadn’t realized until this moment that while she’d put so much energy into ridding herself of the external markers of her parents’ lives, she’d continued to carry around the same internal messages and had re-created, unwittingly, the exact same life with Chris.
“You didn’t like it that Daddy cheated on you, Mom.”
Dorothy Busby flinched. “I don’t know why you’re bringing that up. That has nothing to do with this.”
“You didn’t like it, but you pretended it was okay. You taught me that it was okay if my husband cheated. You taught me that I couldn’t expect fidelity from a man. You and Daddy taught us that this was the model of marriage and look what it’s done to me and to Michael.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Michael is perfectly happy in his marriage.”
“He cheats on Bonnie!”
“Oh, Amy, I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”
“Why? Because it’s the truth?”
“Because it’s vulgar.”
“Well, it’s a pretty vulgar thing to do, to break your wedding vows and have sex with another person.”
“Men and women have different needs.”
“I don’t believe that, Mom. I believe that some people are selfish and they lack self-control. I believe that Daddy played around because he wanted to.”
“Your father was a good man.”
“And because he knew you wouldn’t do anything about it, no matter how much you hated it.”
The slap came so fast and as such a surprise that Amy had no time to duck. Her cheek blazed with pain and she raised her own hand to it, staring at her mother with wonder.
“Don’t you talk about your father that way,” Dorothy said, two spots of color high on her own cheeks, her eyes hard and shiny. “He was a good husband and a good father. Did you ever want for anything? Who do you suppose paid for all your riding lessons and your art school and your trip to Europe your junior year?”
“He hurt you, Mom. He hurt all of us. Not all men cheat.”
Emma ran up to them. “Did you see? Did you see?”
“No, sweetheart, what?” her grandmother said, grateful, Amy could see, for the interruption.
“It skipped seven times!”
“Wow! That must be a record!”
Dorothy took Emma’s hand and they stood together, talking about the pebbles and looking out at the sound toward the sea. Amy didn’t know if her mother had really heard her, but she realized it didn’t really matter. She’d faced the truth, faced her own desire to live in a fairy tale. Now she knew she could let that go.
The walk home was quiet, the two women swinging Emma by the hands. There was a small package on the front porch next to the door.
“It’s addressed to you,” Dorothy said, handing it to Amy so she could unlock the door. “Did you have your mail forwarded? Who on earth even knows you’re here? Mmm, that chicken smells good. I’ll bet it’s done.”
Emma ran ahead of her grandmother into the house, hurrying to go show Riley her small collection of shells. Amy slowly followed, looking at the address on the box. Her name was printed in black ink on the plain brown wrapper. No return address.
“Oh, yes, it’s just perfect,” she heard her mother say as she placed it on the secretary in her mother’s living room and fetched a silver letter opener from one of the drawers. The paper fell away. Inside was a plain cardboard box. Her mother hummed in the kitchen and something clattered in the sink.
She sliced the tape that held the lid closed. Lifted the white tissue paper inside. And screamed.
“Jesus, Amy! What on earth is the matter?” Dorothy Busby stood in Amy’s peripheral vision, hand to her chest. Amy couldn’t look at her; she couldn’t look away from the box. Lying on a bed of cotton was a severed white finger, complete with lacquered red nail.
Her stomach heaved and Amy held one hand to her mouth, waving her mother off with the other hand. “Don’t look!” she cried. “Don’t look!”
Another ear-splitting scream, this time from Emma. Amy ran for the back door, her mother ahead of her.
Emma was standing near Riley’s house, the dog at her feet, screaming and screaming. There was red on her face and her hands.
“What? What is it?” Amy grabbed her by the shoulders, checking her for injuries.
“Riley’s dead! Riley’s dead!”
Only then did Amy notice that the dog hadn’t moved, that his head was slumped at a weird angle. She knelt and carefully lifted his head by the fur on top. Blood was thickly matting his neck, dripping onto his front paws and soaking into the grass between his feet. His throat had been slit.
Chapter 37
She’d left without saying goodbye. That wasn’t polite. She’d gone before Guy knew if she’d received the pictures. He’d gone to such trouble to deliver them, too. Impersonating a security system employee required careful attention to detail. He created a uniform, complete with fake ID. With a computer, color printer and a laminating machine he could become virtually anyone. That and the magnetized company logo he’d stuck on the van seemed to convince the cops.
After that, it was simply a matter of using the copy of Amy’s key that he’d made. He left the envelope in a prominent spot, making sure that they’d been seen. He’d taken such great care with the photos, especially with the lighting, and he’d been pleased with the thought that a professional would be evaluating them.
Amy wouldn’t be able to ignore the package. Perhaps she thought she was escaping by staying at her mother’s, but it had taken only a little ingenuity to get that information out of the babysitter. After that it was more a matter of when to send her a clear message than how. The how came to him in one brilliant stroke and he enjoyed every bit of the execution, the careful wrapping of his present, the marking of the box.
All of it with gloves of course. Guy was both amused and amazed by the stories of other supposedly brilliant minds who left DNA on stamps or put their fates into the hands of local postmen. When the box was ready, he carried it in a small plastic bag out to the car. When he’d gotten close to the exit, he pulled over to the side of the road and while he pretended to be checking something under his car, actually changed license plates.
Guy wore the drab brown pants and shirt of a deliveryman, but the license plate and the uniform wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Killing the dog eliminated his b
arking, but he had to admit it was an extra little stroke that brought him pleasure.
He’d gotten the idea when he saw Emma playing with the beast, hugging its shaggy neck, lolling around on the same dirty ground. Amy should be more careful. Animals carried germs. She didn’t want Emma to catch something, did she?
He befriended the dog with a little whistle and a pat, and once he’d gotten close he slipped the knife from his boot and slit it from ear to ear.
He had a talent for improvisation, for thinking on his feet, for knowing how to seize the day. Violet should have appreciated this in him, but the truth was that she was too pedestrian. She didn’t understand that he was exceptional, just that he was different. And different to her was bad. Just like his mother. Another woman of limited vision.
If he had one fault, it was his inability to choose women well, for now it was clear to him that Amy was limited, too. He needed to dispatch her. It was time to move on.
Chapter 38
After Feeney’s death, the mood at the station turned both grim and determined. The officers, dispatchers and even the secretaries moved at a faster pace and with resolute looks on their faces. Black ribbons were worn across the badges of uniforms and a makeshift memorial had been set up near the entryway, with an airbrushed photo of Feeney and a small votive candle and flowers.
Despite this, a calm had come over Mark that allowed him to face the longer hours and tedious work of investigation with a determination he’d previously lacked. He wasn’t drinking anymore, either. Not that he didn’t have a thirst for it, but he didn’t need to hide anymore and so much of his drinking had been about hiding.
He stopped for his own health. And he stopped for his partner. Partner as in boyfriend. It was still a hard word for him to say. He couldn’t say it at work. He hadn’t said it yet to his parents, but he would just as soon as the stress of this case was behind him.
He told his parents he was moving back to the city just as soon as he helped them find a night nurse for his father. He’d said he was going to be staying with a friend, but he thought his mother might know. Once this case was behind him he would talk to her, talk to them.
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