It was almost noon by the time he’d found a place for everything he’d brought home the night before. Handling the items always gave him a certain amount of peace, as if for a moment the hole inside him had been comfortably filled. These were his things and nobody could take them away from him. They comforted him, at least momentarily. But, he knew it wouldn’t be long before that aching, painful hunger would fill him once again.
The day passed as most Sundays did. He went out to the garage where his washer and dryer were located and did several loads of laundry then neatly hung the clothes on the racks in the detached building.
After that he mowed the lawn and made sure from the outside of the house nobody would ever suspect what existed within. Once the yard work was complete he went out to the back garden where a concrete bench sat amid his growing collection of projects.
Above each body he’d planted a rose bush, a memorial to mark the project so he could come out here and think about his failures. The first one had been named Samantha. When he’d seen her at the Wal-Mart store three years before, he’d been certain that she’d be the one to stop the pain inside him. But, she hadn’t been.
Others had come after her and none of them had been the panacea for the torment that pierced pain through him day and night. Edie was the one. He felt it in his gut. She was the one who would finally stop the unrelenting pain.
It was after ten that night that he left his house and punched Edie Carpenter’s address into his GPS. The magic machine would lead him right to her doorway.
He wasn’t ready to take her yet, didn’t know enough about her personal life, but he wanted to get the lay of the land, to see the structure she called home. He wanted to check how easy it would be to breach any security she might have.
A hum of pleasure buzzed in his head as he followed the directions to the far north of town. As the crow flew he and Edie were practically neighbors, but it took him nearly twenty minutes to arrive at the entrance to her driveway.
He drove on past, seeking a place to park his car where it wouldn’t be noticed while he got closer to the property on foot. He found what he sought about two miles down the road, an overgrown entrance to a pasture. He pulled in far enough that his car couldn’t be seen from the street and then got out.
His blood pounded in his temples as he jogged along the side of the street, trying to keep to the shadows of the trees that lined the pavement.
The night was hot but he scarcely noticed the heat or the bugs that buzzed around his head as he moved silently.
As a car approached in the distance, he stepped behind one of those trees, until the tail lights had disappeared in the opposite direction.
Isolated. That was his first thought when he saw Edie’s ranch house. Isolated and surrounded by plenty of trees. A large plastic trash bin set at the end of her driveway. Her trash pick-up was apparently on Monday mornings.
Interesting that they’d both chosen secluded places to live and that definitely made it easier for him. There was a part of him that wanted to call her outside, grab her by the shoulders and fling her into the trunk of his car. But, there was also a piece of him that enjoyed the fact that he stood in her front yard without her awareness. He savored the fact that he knew what her future held and she didn’t. She couldn’t even begin to dream how the stars had aligned in the sky designating her destiny.
His destiny.
He had no idea if the man he’d seen her with at the signing lived here with her or not. It didn’t matter. He would find a way in, find a way through the man to get to the woman who was his salvation, the panacea for the never-ending pain.
He drew a deep breath of air. There was something so seductive about being in her space and he imagined he could smell the scent of her in the grass, hanging from the trees, wafting in the air. It smelled like blood, like the sweet transference of pain from his body to hers.
He would have liked to peer through one of her back windows, but the yard was fenced. As he drew closer a dog began to bark frantically.
He quickly backed away, not wanting to draw attention from the fucking yapping dog. He hurried back to where he parked his car and got into the seat, pausing for a moment to catch his breath.
She was definitely going to be his biggest challenge. She worked at home, she had a yappy dog and he still didn’t know if the man she’d been with at the book signing lived with her or not.
Not that it mattered. Sooner or later she’d be out alone. Sooner or later she’d be vulnerable and she would be his. He tightened his hands on the steering wheel. He wanted her now, but he’d have to be smart, be patient.
He started his car and as he drove by her driveway, he pulled to the side of the road once again. He got out of the car. If he couldn’t have her tonight, he could at least have her garbage.
Grabbing the large trash bin, he opened his trunk and dumped the contents inside, then placed the bin back where it had originally stood.
As he drove away he trembled as he thought of going through her garbage. It was intimate…almost like having sex with her. He could gleam all kinds of personal information about her by examining the things she threw away. After tonight he would know her more personally than if they’d spent hours together talking about their life stories.
After tonight, he’d have the keys to the best way to make her his, to get her into his paper room where he could ease his pain.
Chapter 13
Monday morning Edie once again sat in Colette’s kitchen, sipping coffee as Colette shared more about her experience with her kidnapper.
They had been talking for more than two hours and Edie knew they had just about reached the limit as to how much Colette could take in one sitting.
“You want to hear something awful, something I’ve never told anyone?” she said to Edie.
Edie tensed. What Colette had already shared with her about the time she’d been held captive had been awful. She couldn’t imagine what could be worse than what she’d already shared.
“What’s that?” Edie asked.
Colette frowned, the gesture tugging her scars into an odd pattern. “When he was taking me to the Wal-Mart to drop me off, I kept wondering what I’d done wrong. Why he didn’t want me anymore. Isn’t that crazy? For three years all I could think about was getting away from him. Then suddenly when it was actually going to happen, when I knew I was finally going to be free I was terrified at the idea.”
“Three years is a long time. You’d learned how to exist in the state of his mind. I’m sure it had to be frightening to wonder what would happen to you when you were free.”
Colette nodded. “My parents died when I was in college. Frank was really all I had at the time I was taken. I figured he would be married by the time I was released and once my face was cut that I’d be so scarred I’d have to live the rest of my life alone, with nobody to care what happened to me.”
“But, Frank didn’t get married. You stayed in his heart and in his soul the whole time you were gone. He’s a wonderful man and both Jake and I enjoyed dinner with you two on Saturday.”
“Jake seemed nice, too. And we won’t even talk about his general hotness,” Colette teased.
A flush of warmth swept through Edie as she thought of Jake. “He is pretty wonderful,” she agreed.
“And it’s obvious he adores you. Why haven’t you two tied the knot yet?”
“Jake wants to get married, but I have some personal issues to work through,” Edie replied. A knot of tension formed in her stomach at the subject. She definitely had some personal issues, like the fact that she had a drug-addicted alcoholic father who she’d initially told Jake was dead. She also lived each day with a crushing guilt that she never took out to examine. She was afraid that if she looked at it too closely it would consume her.
“Right now things are good between Jake and me. I’m not ready to make any big changes.” She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready to take the next step in her relationship with Jake.
&
nbsp; He’d told her that if she disappeared like Colette had he’d wait forever for her. How long was he willing to wait without her disappearance, without anything obvious standing in her way?
It was a thought that followed her home when she left Colette’s several hours later. She should probably be in some sort of therapy, trying to find the reason why she was so afraid to completely commit to Jake.
The thought of therapy scared her almost as much as the idea of marriage. The last thing she wanted to do was dig through her past, discuss her sister’s murder, her parent’s divorce and all the drama that had been in her life.
She was in a good place now mentally, doing work she loved and satisfied with the three-day a week relationship with Jake. She was happy where she was in her life and she could only hope that Jake remained satisfied as well.
She parked her car in the driveway and then trudged back to the street to retrieve her trash can and store it back in the garage until the following Sunday night.
She frowned. The trash man had been a bit sloppy, dropping several fast food containers and miscellaneous shredded paper onto the driveway. Must have been in a big hurry this morning. She picked up the trash, threw it back into the trash can and pulled it back up the driveway.
Reaching the house, it struck…that creepy feeling of being watched. The hairs on the nape of her neck rose like a warning system that somebody was somehow invading her space.
Gazing around the yard she saw nothing amiss, no reason for the sensation. Moving closer to the house, she heard Rufus barking from inside, but his barks sounded like the normal, happy, glad you’re home kind of noise.
Maybe she’d been working too closely with Colette, getting pulled too deep into her story. There was no question that she was having problems maintaining any emotional distance with this particular project.
The crimes against Colette horrified her, creeped her out to the max. It reminded her that the world was filled with evil people. One of them had found her family once and one of them had found Colette. She prayed that none of them found another of them again.
Dismissing the odd feeling, she unlocked her door and walked in to Rufus’s excited greeting. “Hey, baby.” She bent down to scratch him behind his ears and then led him to the back door.
Rufus exploded out of the door, having spied a rabbit in the yard that would be long gone by the time he got to it. She left Rufus to run. She had meant him to be an outdoor dog, but within two weeks of owning him she’d had the doggie door put in so he could come and go in and out of the house as he pleased. Usually when she was gone from the house she made sure the doggie door was locked, not wanting any other wildlife like a raccoon or a stray cat to make its way inside.
She’d just settled in at her computer when her cell phone rang. It was her father. She should have known it was about time for him to need money and food. “Dad,” she said into the phone.
“Could you help me out, Edie? I’m short of cash and out of food. I showed up for some day work this morning, but all the jobs got filled before they got to me.”
“Don’t you go anywhere and I’ll be there within twenty minutes.” She clicked off the phone, locked the back door and then grabbed her purse.
She kept her mind blank as she drove to the motel to see her father. She knew any sort of professional would tell her she enabled her father in his unproductive, destructive lifestyle. The best thing she could do for him was step away and allow him to bottom out.
But, none of them understood that James Carpenter had hit bottom the day his eldest daughter, his precious Francine had been victimized and killed.
And for the next ten years he’d shoved the bottom away to care for Edie. Her mother had run out and there was nobody else to take care of the child that had survived.
James had fought against the bottom until he believed Edie didn’t need him anymore and then he’d succumbed. He’d swallowed his grief until it couldn’t be swallowed any longer. Now he wallowed in it.
Edie couldn’t walk away from him. He was the one who had stayed with her when her mother had left, the one who had cared for her. She couldn’t stand the thought of him on the streets, homeless and hungry. And so she paid his rent in the crappy motel, at least knowing he had a place to lay his head at night, a place where he wouldn’t be beaten or victimized while he slept.
Right or wrong, it was what she did. She kept it separate from everything else in her life. This was her shameful secret, her penance for being the daughter who had lived, the daughter who hadn’t been, who couldn’t be enough for her mother.
When she reached the motel she saw her father standing outside his unit. Love for him welled up thick and choking in the back of her throat.
James Carpenter was a man broken at his core, and it showed in the filth of the clothes he wore, in the scraggly beard that hung from his chin. Even his posture displayed life’s defeat. His shoulders slumped and his back bent forward as if to protect him from any more of life’s kicks.
He raised a hand in greeting as she rolled down her window and motioned him toward her car. “Get in,” she said. “I’ll take you to the grocery store.”
“You could just give me the money and I could walk there later.” His gaze slyly darted away from hers.
“Dad, we’re not going to have this argument. Get in the car.”
He smelled like the worst of the streets, like unwashed laundry and spoiled food with more than a whisper of cheap whiskey. It would take her a full day to air out the car after transporting him. What bothered her most was the silence that rode with them.
He never had anything to say to her unless it was to ask for something. He never inquired about her life, her work or anything personal. The silence ached in her heart each time she recognized that father and daughter had nothing to talk about, that Greg Bernard had even stolen that from them.
Minutes later they pulled into the nearest grocery store parking lot. The ride had been accomplished with the usual awkward silence that generally existed whenever they were together.
She never knew what to say to him, what might set him off into one of his crying jags that could last for hours. She didn’t have the words to make his world right. She couldn’t bring Francine back from the dead, all she could do was take care of her father’s most basic needs and give him just enough cash to lose himself in the altered world of booze and pot.
It didn’t take them long to zip through the grocery store, buying staples of bread and milk and bologna for sandwiches. She picked up a box of his favorite cereal and several packages of hamburger. He added several cans of beans and like a mischievous child sneaked in a package of chocolate covered cookies.
It wasn’t until she got to the cash register that she also realized he’d added a six-pack of beer to the cart.
She considered putting it back on the shelf and then thought what the hell. If she left him any money he’d just go to the local liquor store and pick something up. She might as well buy it here and keep her cash in her pocket. At least it wasn’t a bottle of gin or whisky.
Minutes later they were back in his apartment where she helped him put away the items they’d bought. “Dad, have you ever considered going into rehab? Getting clean and sober?” She’d never gotten the nerve to venture the question, but today she suddenly found this madness exhausting. There had to be a better way to deal with everything.
“Why? What difference would it make?” He squeezed his rheumy blue eyes tightly closed. When he opened them they were filled with tears. “If I stop drinking nothing changes.” He pulled the box of Fruity Pebbles from the grocery bag and clutched it tightly to his chest.
“This was her favorite cereal, you know, along with those silly chocolate Pop Tarts she used to eat.” The tears spilled from his eyes and down his sunken cheeks.
“She was the best, my Frannie.” A sob shook his shoulders. “Even if I clean myself up and get sober, she’s still gone forever. Not a minute of the day goes by that I don’t think
about her, miss her so much. She was daddy’s girl, my firstborn.”
He set the cereal box on the counter, then turned and disappeared into the bathroom where his sobs echoed throughout the small apartment.
She knew it was useless to attempt to get him out of the bathroom, to make him stop weeping. Woodenly Edie put the rest of the groceries away, wanting nothing more than to escape the squalor and the grief that was her father’s ‘house.’
When she was finished, she knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m leaving, Dad.”
There was a muffled response and Edie left the apartment, carefully locking the door after her.
She got halfway home before she realized she was going to lose it. She pulled into a fast food restaurant parking lot and found a spot at the very back of the lot.
Shutting off her engine she lowered her head to the steering wheel as hot tears began to burn her eyes and deep sobs welled up in her chest.
Francine had been the child that had sparkled and shone. She’d been the diamond. She’d loved attention and although she got good grades and had lots of friends, she was also one of the first to seek out her fair share of mischief.
Edie had been background chatter in her family, more introverted and much less shiny. She’d been the coal, easily overlooked in the presence of Francine’s brilliance.
The tears became sobs that shook her shoulders as the scent of burgers and fries from the fast food place filtered in through her half-opened window.
Although her father hadn’t actually said the words, she knew what was in his heart. And as if his inner sentiments weren’t enough, her own mother had found her not valuable enough.
Francine had been the child of their hearts. Edie had been an afterthought. If she’d just waited that day to walk home with Francine instead of getting frustrated and leaving Francine to walk home alone.
It had all been Edie’s fault. That’s what her parents believed. Although they’d never spoken the words aloud, their actions had spoken much louder than any words.
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