by Greg Iles
“Your diaries?”
She nodded. “That’s what I really wanted. I expected them to be in my drawer, but they weren’t. I searched the whole house, but I couldn’t find them. Then I went into the attic. We had a walk-in attic on the second floor. Remember? I found the diaries in a glass-topped box by the back wall. There was light up there, so I started reading them.”
Waters thought he saw tears welling in her eyes.
“Reading what I’d written so long ago…it was the opposite of how I’d felt in my room. I felt more alive then-more myself-than I had since the night I was raped in New Orleans. There was my true soul, right there on the page. As I sat reading, I noticed something odd about the wall. The edge of a board was sticking out. But it wasn’t like a warp. The board was propped there. I pulled it away and found a space. There was a book inside it. A big one. It was a photo album.”
“What was in it?”
“When I opened it…I saw pictures of a naked girl. I thought it was just regular pornography at first. Then I saw that the girl was me.” Disgust rippled through Lily’s body. “Me, Johnny. I was about twelve, and I was in the bathroom. My own bathroom. I flipped the pages and saw more pictures of myself, from age eleven to about twenty. I was always naked or partly naked, and always in the bathroom. They were all shot from the same angle. Later, I found the hole in the wall that he’d shot them through. There were pictures of my friends too. Anyone who had come over to spend the night with me. When I saw those pictures…I knew that everything I’d felt when I was a child was true. Things I’d punished myself for thinking about my father…do you understand? I felt raped. By my own father. And I knew what he did with that book. He sneaked up there all those years and…you know what he did. It makes me want to throw up.”
Waters remembered Benjamin Candler’s odd combination of arrogance and smarmy glad-handing.
“Don’t you remember how he took pictures of everything?” Lily asked. “Every football game, every pep rally, every school play. But those weren’t the pictures he really wanted.”
“What did you do with the book?”
“I put it back where I found it.”
“Why?”
“I went back to Eve’s house and thought about it. Let it sink in. And then, three days later, I went back. But that time I took a gun.”
Waters’s stomach tightened. “Why?”
“I knew he’d deny it. I went on my mother’s bridge day. That was his afternoon off. I waited for him in the kitchen. When he walked in, he saw Eve Sumner, realtor, standing there with a gun.”
“What did he do?”
“‘What’s the matter, Ms. Sumner?’” Lily cried in a hysterical voice. “‘Are you in trouble? Is someone chasing you?’ I laughed and said, ‘No, I just want to talk to you.’ He asked what about. ‘Your daughter,’ I told him. ‘My daughter’s dead,’ he said. ‘Are you sure about that?’ I asked. He said that wasn’t appropriate conversation. He asked me to leave his house. I refused. I said, ‘I want to talk to you about why you molested your daughter.’”
“Jesus.”
“He looked stunned, but he didn’t kick me out. He asked what the hell I was talking about. I told him I knew about the pictures he’d been taking all those years. His face went white, Johnny. I was like the ghost of Christmas past. He told me to get the hell out, but you should have seen him staring at me. I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering if I was one of those other girls who’d come to spend the night. He said he’d call the police if I didn’t get out. I dared him to do it. He told me I couldn’t prove anything about him. Then I opened the drawer next to me and took out the photo album. I’d gotten it from the attic before he came home. That was all it took. He turned gray, like there was no blood going to his face. Then he started to cry. He asked me who I was.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. ‘I’m Mallory,’ I said. He didn’t believe me until I started to talk. I told him things only I could know, like I did with you. I reminded him of things he’d said to me, things no one else could possibly have heard. I’d been talking for about two minutes when he grabbed his left arm. I ripped the phone out of the wall and walked out with the photo album. That night, I heard that he’d died of a heart attack.”
Savage satisfaction entered Lily’s face.
“Why did you tell me this?”
She cocked her head and smiled. “An object lesson. You betrayed me too, Johnny. Not like he did. You looked me in the face when you did it. You tried to ease the pain as much as you could, but in the end you only made it worse.”
“Mallory-”
“Don’t worry. I forgive you. I’m trying to, anyway. I know why you did what you did now. I felt your guilt when I was inside you. You were so young. You couldn’t even imagine being married. It takes men longer to see what the important things are in life. I know that now. We had some bad luck…but now we have a second chance.”
“Mallory, listen-”
“We don’t have time to talk about this now,” Lily said, uncrossing her legs and sliding to the edge of the bed. “We have to take care of Annelise. She’s scared, and she doesn’t understand what she just saw.”
He remembered his daughter’s tear-stained face. “Mallory, you can’t…This is all wrong. You can’t do this to my wife.”
She shook her head as though he were speaking nonsense. “I am your wife now, Johnny.”
“Mama? Where are you?” Annelise’s frightened voice echoed up the hall.
As he turned toward the door, Waters heard Rose call, “Mr. John, this baby’s upset! She got to see her mama!”
“In here, Rose,” Lily called.
Annelise shot through the door like a missile, then froze and looked from father to mother. Lily held out both arms.
“Come here, baby! Mama’s right here!”
Annelise leaped onto the bed and hugged Lily tightly.
“What ya’ll want me to do?” Rose asked from the doorway, her voice strangely suspicious.
Waters sighed in surrender. “Go home, Rose.”
“There’s nothing but cornbread made. The pork chops and macaroni still got to be done.”
“I’ll do that,” Lily said from the bed. “Go on home and rest old Arthur.”
Old Arthur… Rose’s nickname for arthritis. Mallory could access Lily’s memories at will. No one would ever be able to discover the truth by probing her with questions. Only Waters, who saw the differences revealed behind the bedroom door, would know Mallory lay hidden behind Lily’s eyes. Perhaps with time Rose would sense something amiss, but by then it would probably be too late.
“All right, then,” Rose said reluctantly. “I’m going on.” She gave Waters a last look of disapproval and walked down the hall.
“Are you really, okay, Mom?” asked Annelise.
Lily gave her a storybook smile. “Sure I am. You go with Daddy and start the water for the macaroni. I’ll put on some real clothes and then make the pork chops and the salad.”
Ana hugged her again, then climbed down from the bed and came to Waters. “Do I get to cook the macaroni by myself?”
“Do you think you can?”
“Mama said!”
“Okay, then. Come on.”
With a last hard look at Lily, Waters picked Ana up and ran for the kitchen. She giggled all the way there, but Waters’s heart felt like a stone. He wanted to run right out the front door to the Land Cruiser and put as much distance as he could between Annelise and the lost soul dressing in the bedroom.
But running was not an option. Mallory wouldn’t even have to chase him. She could simply call the police and accuse him of kidnapping. He’d be lucky to get a hundred miles from town before he was arrested. And no judge in the state would believe one word of his story.
Twenty minutes later, the pork chops were simmering in a skillet full of gravy, and the macaroni was boiling on the range top set in the marble island. Lily had tried to make preparing the dinner a
family affair, but it took all Waters’s will to simply play the role of a sane father.
Lily and Annelise were working on the salad now, and whenever Ana’s attention was diverted, Lily would wink or smile at him. As the charade played on, one question filled his mind: Where is Lily right now? While inside Eve, Mallory had described her host as “sleeping.” What did that mean? The only encouraging thing Waters could recall-as horrible as the memory was-was that Eve seemed to have snapped back to herself before she was murdered. Which meant that her true self had survived, even after a year of possession. Mallory had been inside Lily for only forty-eight hours.
Lily lifted a butcher knife from the block and began to slice tomatoes. Watching her deftly handle the blade, Waters recalled Mallory sitting in a fetal position in an empty bathtub, methodically cutting parallel lines into her wrists. He felt a scream building behind his lips. The only thing that kept it there was his desire to spare Ana the trauma of seeing her father lose control. Yet how long could he spare her? He was trapped in a situation no one would believe: while a murder investigation moved ever closer to him, his daughter lived under threat from the real killer-a woman everyone would perceive as her mother. And if no one believed him, no one would help him. He would have to solve his own problem. There was only one solution that he could see. Mallory had to leave Lily’s body.
“Hey, punkin?” he prompted Annelise. “Time to get the Velveeta ready.”
While Ana worked to tear open the foil packet, he strained the macaroni in the sink, then transferred the noodles to a ceramic dish. “You want to stir the cheese in this time?”
She clapped and grabbed a big spoon from the drawer.
“You know how to do it,” he told her. “I’m going to show Mom something in the dining room. We’ll be back in a second.”
“Okay.” Ana climbed up on a chair and began squeezing Velveeta into the noodle dish.
Waters took hold of Lily’s wrist, pulled her into the dining room, and shut the door behind them.
Lily seemed amused by his action until he grabbed her throat and pushed her up against the wall.
“Listen to me, Mallory,” he hissed. “You cannot do this. You have to get out of my wife.”
She gave a constricted laugh.
Waters squeezed harder, cutting off her air. “You know as well as I do that I can’t kill you. Because I can’t kill you without killing Lily. You’re like AIDS, or cancer. But there are things I can do.”
“Such as?” she croaked, her eyes still bright with laughter.
“You think you felt dead when you saw that room at your parents’ house? If you don’t get out of Lily, this is how it will be. When Annelise is around, I’ll treat you just as I would Lily. But the minute she’s gone, you won’t exist. I won’t look at you. I won’t speak to you. I won’t acknowledge a word you say. I won’t sleep with you. Ever again.”
Lily’s eyes seemed to dilate with fear, but the moment he loosened his hand, she laughed. “You’re so naive, Johnny. I’m going to let this little outburst go, because I know you’re in shock. But you don’t tell me what I’m going to do. You strangled Eve.” She batted his hands away from her neck. “All I have to do is give them your name, and they can match the DNA to the semen you left in her body. Okay?”
Waters’s mouth fell open. “My God. That’s why you killed her.”
Lily’s mouth flattened to a thin line, and her eyes went arctic cold. “You have no idea what you put me through. You gave me two babies, and you made me kill them. Then you walked away. Well, for once you can’t walk away from me.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “Do you know what it’s like to hate someone enough to kill them, but love them too much to do it? I thought of killing you a thousand times. And her. But I’m glad I didn’t. Because now I have you.” She pinched some skin on her arm and pulled it up. “And her too. And that’s all I want, Johnny.”
Fear ate through his bowels like a ravenous worm.
“I know exactly how things are going to work out,” Lily said, “so you may as well accept it all now. Six months from now, you won’t even remember Lily-”
Waters seized her throat again and squeezed with enough force to crush her windpipe. His arms quivered from the strain, and Lily’s face went red, then blue.
“Mama?” Annelise called.
Waters let go the moment the dining room door opened.
“The macaroni’s-Mom? Your face is all red! What’s the matter?”
Lily knelt and hugged Ana. “Nothing, baby. I bent over to look under the table, and the blood just went to my head. It’s nothing. Let’s go eat!”
She smiled at Waters and led Ana back into the kitchen. He waited a moment, then followed, his hands shaking at his sides.
Lily was brushing mushrooms into an empty bowl, which she then handed to Annelise. “Do you remember how to take the stems out, baby?”
“Of course I do. That’s easy.”
“Will you do it for me?”
Annelise nodded and sat on the floor, the bowl between her knees. Lily turned to the cutting board and resumed slicing the tomatoes.
“I hope Pebbles doesn’t come in here and try to eat from this bowl,” Annelise said. “She won’t like mushrooms.” She looked up at Waters. “Will she, Dad?”
Tears stung Waters’s eyes as he looked down at his daughter. “Probably not, punkin.”
A bright reflection suddenly flashed past his eyes. He looked up at Lily, and his heart stopped. She was dangling the butcher knife over Annelise’s head like a miniature sword of Damocles. Its point swung back and forth as Ana patiently picked stems from the mushrooms.
“Your daddy’s in a funny mood today,” Lily said, her eyes mocking Waters. “I think he ought to realize how much he has to be thankful for. Don’t you think so, Ana?”
Annelise pursed her lips as she worked at a thick brown stem. “Daddy knows what to be thankful for.”
“I wonder sometimes.” Lily lowered the knife to within a half-inch of the crown of Annelise’s head. “Do you, John? Do you know what to be thankful for?”
“Yes,” he said in a shaky voice. “I do.”
Lily smiled, then lifted the blade about twelve inches. Waters felt slight relief until she dropped the knife and caught the flashing blade just above Annelise’s head.
“Oh!” Lily cried in an exaggerated voice. “I almost had an accident!”
“Be careful,” said Annelise. “More kids get killed from accidents than from getting sick or anything else. I learned that in school yesterday.”
Lily winked at Waters, then went back to slicing the tomatoes. He fell to his knees and hugged Annelise until she told him to stop. Ninety minutes later, Waters was tucking Annelise into bed upstairs.
“Why isn’t Mama tucking me in too?” she asked.
“Mama still feels tired.”
“She said she was all better.”
Waters nodded. “Mothers fib a little sometimes, so daddies and little girls don’t worry so much. But she’ll be fine. You sleep tight. Hang on to Albert tonight.”
Ana clutched her stuffed rabbit to her chest.
He kissed her forehead, then walked to the stairs.
“’Night! Love ya! See ya in the morning!” Annelise called, and she laughed when he repeated it back to her.
As he descended the stairs, he realized why Mallory had let him put Ana to bed alone. She wanted to emphasize just what was at stake if he didn’t get with her program. For Waters, the stakes did not need emphasis. But as his foot hit the bottom step, he realized that Mallory’s latest object lesson cut two ways. Everyone feared losing someone, and Mallory was no different.
He found Lily in the bedroom, lying across the down comforter in a nearly transparent camisole that she had received as a gag gift at a friend’s bridal shower. She had never worn that piece of lingerie before tonight. He walked to the foot of the bed and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion.
“I want you to listen carefully. You think yo
u hold all the cards, but you don’t. The final card, I hold. And if you don’t do what I tell you to do, I’ll play it.”
She must have heard something new in his voice, for her smile vanished, replaced by a crafty attentiveness. “What card are you talking about?”
“The death card. The ace of spades.”
Lily twined a lock of her short blond hair around her finger and began to twist it. “What do you mean?”
“Before I let you destroy my wife and child, I will blow my fucking head off. And you will never have me.”
She seemed not to have heard his threat. Or perhaps not to have fully understood it.
“You know me, Mallory. If you leave me no choice, I’ll kill myself.”
Lily shook her head. “You won’t. You wouldn’t leave Lily and Annelise without you.”
“You’re right. I’d take Lily with me. A bullet in the head for her. Then me.”
She went still, her eyes wide with fear. At last he had rattled her. “You wouldn’t do it,” she said, sounding not at all sure. “You wouldn’t abandon Annelise.”
“Here’s why you’re wrong,” Waters said. “When I shoot Lily, you die with her. I couldn’t live with myself after killing my wife, so I’d finish the job on me. But Annelise would survive and be safe. She’d go to live with her grandmother. That’s already arranged in our wills.”
Lily’s head moved slowly back and forth. “That will never happen.”
“You don’t think so? Do you know why I survived the hell that was the end of our relationship? Because I’m stronger than you are. How many times did you try to kill yourself? Four? Five? But you couldn’t do it. It was all theater. But I don’t act, Mallory. You know that. The day I decide to do it, consider it done.”
Lily got up and began to pace the bedroom, her mouth working in frustration. She gave off the desperate fury of a wild animal pacing a cage. Suddenly she stopped and met Waters’s eye.