Scared to Death

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I didn’t say that.” Brett shakes his head grimly. “I don’t know what to think. But at least we know who we’re dealing with now.”

  Opening her eyes, Marin sees that her bedroom is brighter than usual. Frowning, she turns her head to look at the bedside clock and is startled to find that she slept through the night for a change. She must have been really exhausted. Or—thinking back, she remembers that she’d had an empty stomach last night. The medication must have hit her harder than usual.

  Last night…

  She yawns, stretches—then sits up abruptly.

  Annie.

  Marin bolts from the bed.

  Annie was sick, in the hospital…what if something happened to her in the night?

  Marin hurries down the hall to her younger daughter’s room. The door is closed. She doesn’t bother to knock. Annie’s probably asleep, and even if she isn’t, she’s not the privacy fanatic her sister is.

  Opening the door, she’s relieved to see that her child is resting peacefully: eyes closed and mouth open, snoring as usual.

  Reassured, she closes the door quietly and starts back down the hall.

  Caroline’s door is closed, too.

  Should I look in on her?

  Remembering the way they’d left things last night—in anger—Marin hesitates.

  Caroline’s attitude problem was increasingly difficult to handle even before yesterday’s near-disaster. Marin probably still has some cooling off to do before she can possibly have a rational conversation with her.

  Probably?

  Even now, thinking of poor Annie in the hospital, she’s furious all over again.

  In fact, she can’t even picture herself and Caroline forgiving each other and moving past this.

  There’s nothing wrong with needing outside help…

  Lauren Walsh’s words ring in her ears…yet so do her own.

  All I need is time, and everything will be just fine.

  Yesterday, she honestly believed that.

  Today…

  I don’t know what to believe. I don’t even know who I am anymore…

  Or, she thinks as she keeps going, right past Caroline’s door without a backward glance, who my daughter is.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Brett murmurs, shaking his head.

  “I can’t, either.”

  Sitting across from Brett at the kitchen table, coffee mugs in front of them, Elsa notes that this is exactly where they were forty-eight hours ago—after Renny’s first nightmare about the monster in her room, and the open window…

  Despite what she told Brett earlier, trying to rationalize Marin Quinn’s actions as a mental imbalance brought on by profound maternal grief, she finds it almost impossible to believe that Jeremy’s birth mother would actually sneak into their house in the dead of night, wearing a rubber mask…

  And that’s the least of it.

  Incredible. Beyond incredible, and infuriating, and bewildering…

  But there’s no denying that bizarre phone call out of the blue.

  And here I thought I was the one who’d gone off the deep end.

  Brett, too, had thought so, remembering what she’d gone through after Jeremy disappeared. For all he knew, in her dissociative state, Elsa herself could have been capable of crawling in someone’s window in the middle of the night.

  That’s why he hadn’t told her about Mike’s accident right away, or that he was headed for Mumbai when it happened. He was afraid, he said, that it might push her over the edge.

  Elsa watches Brett sip his coffee, wondering if he’s thinking about Marin Quinn. His theory is that Marin convinced herself that Renny is Jeremy, and she wants to rescue—

  Brett’s cell phone rings, startling them both. He pulls it from his pocket as Elsa glances at the clock.

  It’s past six—not the middle of the night, but still early enough for a call at this hour to threaten bad news.

  Brett glances at the caller ID pane. “Oh no.”

  “Who is it?”

  He holds up a finger, already answering the phone. “Hello?”

  She can hear a male voice on the other end of the line, though she can’t make out what he’s saying. Judging by the look on Brett’s face, she can tell that she was right. It’s bad news.

  “When?” he asks hoarsely. After listening for a moment, he nods. “Was anyone with him?” He listens again, shaking his head, and Elsa sees that there are tears in his eyes.

  Comprehending, she whispers, “Mike?”

  He nods, and a lump of unexpected sorrow clogs her throat.

  She closes her eyes, seeing his familiar handsome face—not as it was this last time, etched by age and stress—but as it was when she first met him, years ago.

  Mike Fantoni had promised, that first day, not to give up until he’d found out what happened to her lost son.

  He never gave up.

  If there is a heaven, she thinks, wiping away a tear that managed to squeeze through her lashes, then one thing is certain: they’re both there: Mike Fantoni and the little boy he’d so longed to bring home alive.

  A few hours in the downy cloud of a featherbed that once belonged to La La’s parents was hardly enough.

  But it will have to do for now. The sun is up out there beyond the drawn shades, and it’s time to get moving.

  The first floor of the huge house on Regis Terrace is dim and still this morning. Moving through the rooms, it’s hard to remember that the place was actually lived in, a comfortable family home like any other in this quintessential small New England town.

  Once upon a time, a clock ticked steadily on the marble mantel in the living room. But it was the kind that needed to be wound nightly, and there’s no longer anyone here to bother.

  The silence is unnerving.

  It’s going to be another long, exhausting day. Some caffeine would be helpful.

  In the kitchen, there’s a percolator, a canister filled with dark roast coffee, even milk that isn’t yet outdated. But the beans would need to be ground, and the grinder is loud enough to wake the dead, as Candace Montgomery, La La’s mother, used to say.

  Interesting turn of phrase.

  The dead.

  No one was ever meant to die.

  Certainly not her.

  But on the stormy December night of Jeremy’s first visit to this house, as soon as she realized who he was, she opened her mouth. Opened her big, fat, loud mouth and said all the wrong things.

  I couldn’t help it. I just snapped.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been standing at the top of the back stairs when she started blabbing…

  But she was. Standing with her back to the tall, steep flight, her heels just inches from the edge of the top step. It was so tempting to just reach out and…

  And I tried to fight it. Really, I did.

  But in the end, it was no use. It took precious little effort to shut her up. Just one swift and mighty shove, and over she went, tumbling down the steps with a bone-crunching commotion.

  After she hit bottom, all was silent…at first.

  Then a faint moan floated up the stairs.

  It wasn’t over. She was still alive.

  But not for long.

  Her blue eyes were wide open, staring in helpless horror until the last moment, when the pillow—a plush European down pillow from La La’s own bed—came down over her face.

  Wow—what a way to start the day, with such a grim memory.

  Coffee probably would have been better.

  But not this morning. Not here, anyway.

  The last thing I want to do in this house is wake the dead.

  If it wasn’t too late to call Jake last night, Caroline reasons, then it probably isn’t too early to call him this morning. Right? Right.

  She dials his number quickly, before she can question her own logic.

  Who knows? Maybe he didn’t sleep any better than she did, as anxious to see her today as she is to see him.

  She almost expe
cts him to pick up on the first ring, but he doesn’t. It takes several before she hears a click and a “Hello?”—a groggy-sounding one, at that.

  “Jake?”

  “N—I mean, yeah. Yeah, hi.”

  She forces a laugh. “Did you forget your own name there, for a second?”

  “No, I…sorry, I’m just…sleeping.”

  “Really? I guess no one told you this is the city that never sleeps,” she says lightly, trying to make the best of having woken him up so early.

  “Yeah…about that…”

  Uh-oh.

  “I’m kind of…not exactly in New York.”

  Her heart sinks. “‘Kind of not exactly’?”

  “I’m not. I got called away yesterday by…a friend.”

  “Oh.” Bummed, but trying not to sound it, she asks, “Where are you?”

  “Just outside of Boston. I might need to be here for a couple of days.”

  “Boston? That’s not so bad.”

  “Bad?”

  “Far, I mean. I could meet you there,” she blurts.

  Are you crazy? In Boston?

  “In Boston?” he echoes her incredulous thought aloud.

  “Sure, why not?”

  Why not? Really? Why not?

  She can think of a thousand reasons why she can’t just take off and go to Boston to meet some guy…beginning with the fact that he didn’t invite her.

  But she can think of an even better reason why she should—the only reason she really even needs.

  She has to get away from this apartment and her mother for a while.

  Maybe even for good.

  She hears herself say, “Just tell me where to meet you, and when, and I’ll be there.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am dead serious, Jake.”

  Renny is still in their bed, but when Brett checked her a few minutes ago, in the room to grab his laptop, she was beginning to stir. They need to make this quick.

  Opening the Internet search engine as Elsa hovers behind his kitchen chair, he types “Marin Quinn.” He hits enter and almost immediately, a list of hits pops up on the screen.

  “What are we even looking for?” Elsa asks as they scan the results.

  “Anything. Anything we can find out about her. Anything that might tell us what she’s been up to lately, and—whoa. Look at this.”

  He quickly slides the mouse, moving cursor over the third item down: a New York Post entry.

  Elsa leans in closer. “That’s today’s date!”

  “Exactly.” Brett holds his breath and clicks on it. Waiting for the screen to pop up, he wonders why Marin Quinn is in the news. Did she do something drastic, like…kill someone? Kill herself?

  But he finds himself looking at a grainy photo of a woman on a city street. She’s attractive, but a far cry from the polished political wife in all the file photos shown back when the news first broke about her husband.

  “That doesn’t even look like her,” Elsa tells him.

  “I guess it does now.”

  “When was it taken?”

  Brett points to the accompanying caption.

  Reclusive Marin Quinn emerges for a rainy day stroll on an Upper East Side street yesterday morning.

  “Yesterday morning? Brett—you said that’s when Mike was hit by that car in Boston.”

  “Right.” He nods slowly. “So she couldn’t have done it.”

  “You said you didn’t think it was deliberate anyway.”

  “No…I know.”

  He said—thought—a lot of things. But he isn’t positive about any of it.

  Isn’t it too coincidental that Mike was mowed down just hours after Elsa and Brett went to him for help—and just as he was leaving for Mumbai? Now he’s dead.

  “She doesn’t strike me as a cold-blooded murderer,” Elsa comments, gazing at the woman onscreen.

  “Neither would her husband, at a glance. But look what he did.”

  Eyes hardening, Elsa turns away.

  Brett takes another long look and closes out of the screen, wondering where Marin Quinn is right this moment and hoping—praying—that she’s far, far from here.

  Drenched in a cold sweat, her heart racing frantically, Marin huddles on her bed. Her gasping breaths are coming too hard and too fast, terrible pain gripping her chest every time she inhales.

  What’s going on? Is she having a heart attack? Is she dying? Having some kind of reaction to the medication? Did she accidentally take too much of it last night?

  She could have sworn she’d had the usual dose, but maybe she was mistaken.

  I need to call someone…

  Ron.

  Heather’s husband is a doctor; he’ll know what to do.

  Wait—he’s not even here. They’re on their way to the Riviera.

  Marin clutches her aching ribs, feeling as though she’s going to pass out.

  Then I have to call 911.

  But if she does that, she’ll have to tell them that she took medicine that wasn’t prescribed for her. The press might get hold of it, blow it up into some nightmare scandal.

  Even through the haze of pain and panic, she can see the headlines—Quinn’s Wife Admits Drug Habit, or even Quinn’s Wife Attempts Suicide.

  No—she’d never kill herself. Never leave her girls alone. But…

  Does she have a drug habit?

  Of course not. She’s only taking prescription medications to help her sleep, and to ease the pain of her headaches, and to calm her nerves.

  But the pills weren’t prescribed to her. It’s illegal to take them. And dangerous.

  This is crazy. You’ve been acting crazy. Maybe you are crazy.

  But she can’t let this go on, can’t continue to drown herself in grief over her lost husband and son. They aren’t coming back.

  But she has two daughters who need her.

  Two daughters.

  Caroline is impossible. But she’s my child and I love her.

  Lauren was right.

  I need help.

  We all do.

  Marin has to pull herself together.

  Yes. She’ll talk to Lauren and get the name of a good family therapist.

  And after she does that, she’ll go straight into Caroline’s room, call a truce, and tell her they’re going to make a fresh start—beginning today.

  Pouring a bowl of organic cereal for Renny, Elsa asks, as she does every morning, “Do you want milk in it, or just on the side?”

  “Just on the side today.”

  Comforted by the sense of ordinariness that’s settled over the house now that Renny is up, Elsa pours milk into a plastic cup, then sets it and the dry cereal on the table. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks, Mommy.”

  Elsa leans over to kiss her daughter’s head, loving Renny so much her heart actually hurts.

  All I want is to be her mother. Why does it have to be so complicated?

  Though Elsa and Brett know who’s behind the threats now, one thing hasn’t changed: they still can’t risk losing custody of Renny—particularly with a new social worker on their case, one who doesn’t know them at all and might be tempted to go by the book. Undoubtedly, “the book” won’t allow any leeway to foster parents being stalked by a lunatic who wants to harm the child.

  It isn’t fair that their future as a family is hanging in the balance; that the slightest misstep now could destroy any chances of adoption.

  Elsa pats Renny on the head and leaves the room, surreptitiously wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

  She finds Brett in the master bathroom, lathering shaving cream onto his jaw. She slips in and closes the door behind her.

  “What?” Brett turns to look at her. “Is everything okay?”

  “She’s eating her breakfast. She hasn’t even mentioned what happened yesterday or last night. Maybe she thinks it was all just a bad dream.”

  “I wish it was.”

  “Too bad we can’t get her out of here for a little while, Bre
tt—send her someplace safe while we figure out what to do about this.”

  “We tried that. You went to New York. Look what happened. She was there. Marin Quinn.” The name sounds strange on Brett’s tongue, and Elsa wonders whether he’s ever even said it aloud before.

  For that matter, has she? She’s thought it countless times, and read it in the news over and over again…but has she ever had reason to say it?

  I wish I didn’t now.

  Brett turns on the water and picks up his razor. “How could she have known where you and Renny were, though?”

  “I told you—this house is bugged.”

  “I know you did.”

  Elsa frowns. The last two words make all the difference.

  He’s not saying, I know the house is bugged.

  No, he’s saying, I know what you told me.

  Even now, she realizes, he’s thinking she might be off her rocker—like Marin Quinn.

  Maybe he’s right. Just a little while ago, she was thinking the same thing.

  “Or maybe she really did follow you,” Brett says, carefully running the razor along his cheek, leaving a trail like a toboggan track on a snowy slope.

  “But I kept looking.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that you missed her?”

  Considering that, she shrugs. “I mean…maybe. I wasn’t looking for a woman. I know that’s crazy, but I just assumed we were dealing with a man. I guess she could have been right there on the train, or on the street, and I didn’t even notice her. But I was so sure…” She trails off, shaking her head.

  “What?”

  “Marin Quinn…wouldn’t I have recognized her if she were following me?”

  “When you saw that picture in the paper you said yourself that she doesn’t look the same.”

  “No…but…I mean, it’s not like she had plastic surgery and has a whole new face. You can tell it’s her. She just looks older, and tired. Not like a different person. I think I would have noticed her.”

  “So maybe she really did bug the phones or the house. May—ouch! Dammit!”

  He’s cut himself. A scarlet trickle runs down his cheek like a bloody tear.

  Seeing it, Elsa shivers, seized by an inexplicable chill of foreboding.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN