Carlene Thompson

by Black for Remembrance (epub)

  "Why didn't you kill me?" Chris responded dully.

  "Because you're my daddy." She sounded like a little girl again. "You didn't mean to hurt me. The others did."

  "Not Fidelia. Not my husband," Caroline said.

  "And I didn't kill them, did I? Lucy said you were going away. I had to shoot your husband to keep you here. And that cleaning lady just got in the way. And she saw me."

  Caroline inched closer. She could see the sweat glistening on Hayley’s face now. "But even though she saw you, you didn't kill her. So far you haven't killed anyone who didn't hurt you a long time ago. Joy didn't hurt you, and neither did Melinda, so you can't kill them."

  "Oh, yes, I can."

  "Would Valerie want you to kill your own sister?"

  Hayley suddenly looked confused. "I loved Valerie. She loved me." It sounded like a litany. "But when she died, nobody helped me. Not even then. He went away. I was alone again. Just like before. I was alone."

  "But you're not alone now," Caroline went on desperately. "Daddy and Mommy are here."

  "You don't even live together anymore!" Hayley's hands clenched around the gun as she looked at Caroline. "And you had other kids. The boy isn't so bad—but her!" She waved the gun in Melinda's direction.

  Caroline's heart skipped a beat. "Hayley, listen to me. Things can't be the way they used to be, even if you kill Melinda."

  "I know that," Hayley sneered. "Do you think I'm stupid? Well, I'm not. I never meant for you to find out about me. I just wanted to be around you as Tina. And I wanted to marry Lowell and have another baby."

  Caroline took a deep breath. "You wanted to have another baby just like I did after you disappeared."

  Hayley went rigid. "It's not the same!"

  "It's exactly the same."

  She was enraged. "No, it isn't! My little girl died. I didn't die. You just decided I did because it was easier. Then you had another little girl to take my place." Her voice rose to a shriek. "I hate her!"

  "No, you don't," Caroline shouted. "You love her or you would have killed her already!"

  "I will kill her!"

  "No. You can't kill her. You want me to stop you. You've wanted me to stop you all along. That's why you said 'Help me, Mommy' in Lucy's storeroom and wrote it on the mirrors. You didn't even try to keep your identity a secret from Joy's mother. You thought she'd tell long before she did."

  "That's not true."

  "Oh, yes, it is. But now you're stopping yourself. You can't kill a little girl who loves you."

  "She doesn't love me."

  "Yes, I do," Melinda called. "I loved you when you were Tina. You were so nice to me and George. I thought you liked me. You said if you had a little girl, you'd want her to be just like me."

  "No, I didn't." Hayley seemed to waver. "I don't remember."

  "You did say those things," Caroline said. "Hayley, you can't kill your own little sister."

  "I will…I…"

  As Hayley raised her hands to her head in confusion, the gun pointed at Caroline, a shot exploded from the shadows at the far end of the boiler house. Shards of brick flew as the bullet hit a wall. Caroline screamed. The little girls shrieked. Hayley flinched, looking wildly around her. "You brought the police!"

  "No, I didn't!"

  Damn them, Caroline thought frantically. They'd found another way in and were going to frighten Hayley into fatal action. "Hayley, I didn't bring them!" Caroline's eyes searched the darkness. "Please stop firing!"

  "Drop the gun!" A man's voice. Footsteps echoing on the cold concrete floor. "I said drop the gun!"

  Hayley spun around, and in the bright light of the fire Caroline could see a dynamite detonator.

  "Chris!" Caroline cried, but her voice was drowned out by the shattering sound of Chris's gun firing beside her. Hayley stiffened, whirled to look at him in hurt astonishment, then fell forward.

  "I only hit her in the thigh!" Chris shouted. The little girls were screaming in the darkness while George barked hysterically. Vaguely Caroline was aware of the men climbing through the broken window as she and Chris ran to Hayley. He laid down his gun and gently turned her over.

  Her nose was bloodied from the fall and she looked at him with eyes exactly like his own. "I couldn't do it. I was only going to run away."

  Then, with the lightning movement of a cat, Hayley grabbed his gun, put it to her temple, and fired.

  Epilogue

  AND SO SHE HAD lost Hayley again. Caroline had only kaleidoscopic recollection of the time after Hayley's death: Tom arriving with the second police car, the first having found them after Detective Ames issued an APB on the jeep; the fire department roaring up to dismantle the bomb wired to Joy and Melinda; an ambulance coming to carry Hayley's body away; Chris driving her and Melinda home to leave them reluctantly with shocked and speechless Greg and David.

  The funeral was a nightmare. Crowds gathered to see the burial of a woman who had murdered three people and kidnapped two little girls. They hurled epithets as well as stones, cups, and empty cigarette packages.

  I don't think I'll ever be able to like people again, Caroline thought stonily as she walked to the graveside.

  Police struggled to subdue the crowd without interrupting the ceremony, but their efforts were useless. Not even the first snow of the season falling in a heavy veil over the rolling, brown-grassed knolls of the cemetery could daunt the crowd's barbaric enthusiasm, and Caroline knew she would have the grave guarded until the furor died down.

  David had accompanied her, looking pale and sick.

  It was his first day outside and he had no business taxing himself so strenuously, but he had insisted. He stood beside her, supported by his crutches, his strained face trying to give her an encouraging smile whenever their eyes met.

  Chris stood by himself, his hands clenched, his eyes sunken, and Caroline realized he was even more devastated by Hayley's reappearance and death than she, possibly because there was no one in his life to cushion the shock. They'd had no chance to speak since that awful night at the boiler house, and as soon as the service was over, he turned and walked rigidly away.

  As Caroline took David's arm to help him down the hill, Lowell Warren strode toward them. He looked ten years older than when Caroline had seen him at a party the Christmas before.

  "Mrs. Webb, I know there's nothing to say at a time like this." His voice was tight, and Caroline saw the beginning of tears in his eyes. "I want you to know I loved Tina—Hayley—very much."

  Caroline smiled weakly, aware of the lingering hostile crowd who watched her. "Aside from her father and sister and me, I think you're the only one who did."

  The vertical lines between Lowell's eyebrows deepened. "We all have a dark side. Hayley's just took control because of the ghastly things that happened to her. But even that monster Longworth wasn't able to completely destroy her spirit. She was still capable of loving me, her little girl, Melinda. That's the side we have to remember, Caroline."

  Caroline choked back a sob and impulsively hugged Lowell. He was shaking, but he hugged her back, fiercely.

  As she helped David to the car, she looked back to see Lowell, hands in his pockets, staring at the coffin that would soon be lowered into its cold grave.

  For two days after the funeral Caroline lay listlessly in her bedroom, the strain of the past few weeks having finally taken their toll. They had decided to keep Melinda home from school for a week to give the scandal a little time to die down, and the child, who seemed to have bounced back remarkably after her experience, was playing self-appointed nurse to both parents, bringing juice and chattering nonstop.

  "Fidelia's gonna be all right, you know," she told her mother one morning. "Daddy said some little bone in her neck was cracked but not broken. She was unconscious because she had a concession."

  "A concussion," Caroline said, sipping cranberry juice through a striped elbow straw.

  "Yeah, well, I talked to her on the phone and she said she wants to see me a
s soon as she gets well."

  "Maybe I can take you to see Fidelia when she gets home," Caroline said.

  Melinda brightened. "That'd be neat. Do you want your pillow fluffed?"

  "No, honey. You just did that ten minutes ago."

  David had given her an old stethoscope, which she now donned in order to listen to her mother's heart. Caroline sighed and submitted. "One hundred and fifty beats a minute," Melinda announced after a considerable search for the heart. "Just right."

  "I'm glad."

  Although she seemed to be in such good spirits, Caroline was worried about the effect of the kidnapping and Hayley's suicide on Melinda. So every now and then she asked a few cautious questions. "Melinda, why did you go with Joy that day after school?"

  Melinda sat down on the side of the bed. "When she came up, I told her to go away because I thought she was a ghost. She giggled and told me to touch her. She said if she was a ghost, my hand would go right through her. It didn't. Then she said she'd come to tell me George got loose and got hit by a car. She said she'd take me to him."

  Of course it had to be something like that, Caroline thought. Fear for her adored pet would make Melinda forget a thousand warnings that had been drummed into her head.

  "When we got there Tina, or Hayley, was in her car. She jumped out and said you'd already taken George to the vet's, and she'd take me there."

  "Did she hurt you or Joy?"

  Melinda looked down. "No. But she had a gun and she pointed it at us. That's how she made us hold still till she'd tied us up."

  "Were you very frightened?"

  "Very, very." Melinda looked up, frowning. "But way deep down I didn't think Tina'd really hurt us. Even when she put on the wires and said they were hooked up to dynamite, I didn't think she'd blow us up. I thought she was mixed up. She kept talking to herself and she kept calling me Valerie."

  "Valerie was her own little girl who died."

  "That's so sad. Then Valerie would have been my…cousin?"

  "Niece. Does it bother you to know Hayley was your sister?"

  Melinda lifted her shoulders. "I don't know. She was pretty. And she was nice before, even if she got mixed up later. I know she didn't mean to hurt Fidelia or Daddy or your first husband. And she didn't hurt George. People who are good to animals are good people." Her eyes filled with tears. "But she shot herself in the head!"

  "Did you see it?"

  "No. I had my eyes closed. But I heard it."

  Caroline wrapped her arms around her child. Someday soon she and David could take her to a psychiatrist to see just how much emotional damage had been done, but for now it seemed best simply to give her a lot of reassurance.

  "What you have to remember about Hayley is that she's all right now, Lin," she said softly. "She's probably a lot happier than she was when she was alive."

  "You think?" Caroline nodded. "Is that because she's in heaven with Valerie?"

  "Yes, I'm sure she is."

  "Then she'll probably be real glad to see you and me and George when we all get to heaven, too." She sighed. "Do you want another blanket?"

  "Sure. That would be great."

  By the next day Caroline told herself she'd spent enough time languishing in bed. Hayley was dead, but she had a husband and two children who were very much alive. She decided to make the morning a festive occasion, and when she reached the kitchen bright with winter sunshine she found them already gathered. Greg sat at the table while Melinda bustled around her father asking if he wanted her to take his pulse. "Kiddo, I'm fine," he said good-naturedly. "Why don't you sit down and stop acting like Florence Nightingale?"

  "I'm not Florence Nightingale. I'm Nurse Hot Lips Hoolihan from MASH. Do you want your temperature taken?"

  "You've taken it three times this morning. Go take Greg's."

  "He didn't even get shot. Come on, Daddy, just once more?"

  Groaning, David acquiesced. After a few seconds Melinda removed the thermometer. "Two hundred and ten degrees."

  "I thought I felt a little warm," David said.

  "Squirt, if Dad's temperature were that high he'd ignite," Greg said, laughing.

  Melinda looked at David in alarm. "Are you going to catch on fire?"

  "I haven't heard of any cases of spontaneous combustion lately. I think you might have read the thermometer wrong."

  "Oh." Melinda looked in puzzlement at the thermometer.

  "Okay, here's the first batch of blueberry pancakes," Caroline announced, forcing gaiety into her voice. Try as she might, she couldn't fight off the darkness that had descended when Hayley put the gun to her head. "Greg, would you get the sausage off the stove?"

  "This looks great, Caroline," David said.

  "We even have blueberry syrup to go with the pancakes."

  "Be sure to save some for George," Melinda said. "He loves pancakes with butter and syrup."

  Melinda sat down as Caroline returned to the skillet. "Honey, aren't you going to eat?" David asked.

  "In a minute. I'll just get another batch going here." Actually, she felt as if she were going to cry. She'd tried this too soon. She couldn't be light-hearted when she had just buried her daughter three days before. Maybe she would never be lighthearted again.

  "Well, let's dig in," David said heartily.

  "Wait!" Melinda said. "The blueberry syrup!"

  "It's on the counter, sweetie," Caroline told her absently.

  Melinda hurried over to the counter near the phone. Then she screamed.

  Caroline's heart skipped a beat and Greg jumped up from the table, their nerves wrecked by the horrors of the past few weeks. "What is it?" David shouted. "What's the matter?"

  "It's Aurora!" Melinda held up the pot bearing her bean sprout. "She's alive!" She ran over to Caroline and thrust the pot in her hands. "Look, Mommy, she's growing!"

  And sure enough, there stood a tender green sprout. Greg got up and came to peer at the plant. "Amazing," he said softly. "I thought for sure the thing was dead."

  "Oh, I always knew she wasn't," Melinda said confidently. "It just wasn't easy for her. She had to have lots of care and attention. She had to know somebody loved her. Mommy told me that, didn't you, Mommy?"

  Caroline's eyes filled with tears. She gazed at grinning David, shining-eyed Melinda, strong and handsome Greg. They looked right together, the three of them. And maybe with lots of care and attention, maybe with lots of love, they could all put the memory of the past few weeks behind them.

  She looked at David and smiled.

  CARLENE THOMPSON was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1952. She has bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Marshall University in West Virginia, and a Ph.D. in English from Ohio State University. She taught at Rio Grande University in Ohio for seven years and now teaches part-time for Marshall University. She lives in West Virginia with her dogs and cats.