Bo was a big man with a face like a ham—all meaty, shiny and pink. He heaved up a bag of ice and sliced the top open neatly with his pocketknife, dumping the contents into a cooler. “How’s your mom, Reg?”
“Fine, I guess,” Reggie said, squirming. She thought of her mother crawling into bed with her in the wee hours of the morning, reeking of gin, pretending to be the devil. Bo gave her a funny little smile that made her stomach hurt. Her mom and Bo had gone to high school together, had even dated once upon a time. Now Bo was married with a teenage stoner son, and they lived in a big old house out at the base of the mountain that was paid for by people buying Escorts and F-150s.
“You tell her I said hi, will you?” Bo said with a wink. His eyes moved up and down Reggie like he was searching for some sign of Vera there. Finding none, he gave a little snort.
“Sure,” Reggie said, thinking, Like hell, slimebag.
Tara leaned in to whisper to Reggie again, “Who is this pervert? He’s totally checking out my tits. Gross. And he’s so lying about getting ice, I can tell. He was probably banging some Girl Scout or something.”
Bo looked over at them, and Reggie thought for a second he must have heard. Tara looked right back at him and took a big brain-freeze-inducing bite of her ice cream cone, then licked her lips in a slow, satisfied way, never breaking eye contact. She was sick. Definitely sick.
“Guess I better go solve the mystery of the missing buns,” Bo said abruptly, jerking his gaze from Tara. He looked sweaty and distracted as he headed down toward the grill.
“CHARLIE’S AN ASSHOLE,” TARA said at Reggie’s house later. They were in the living room, watching MTV and sharing a bag of Doritos. “You shouldn’t listen to a word he says. That haircut’s very you.”
“Mmm,” Reggie said.
“News is on in ten minutes and we’re changing the channel,” Lorraine called from the kitchen.
“Bor-ring,” Tara moaned. Tara’s mom was working a double shift, and Reggie knew Tara wouldn’t go home. She hated to be alone. Tara pretty much lived at Monique’s Wish when her mom was working lots of hours.
“Can I ask you something?” Reggie said to Tara.
“Go for it,” Tara said, stuffing another orange chip into her mouth.
“Do you like him?”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
Tara chewed, thinking it over. “He’s fine and all, but he’s not my type.”
Reggie wondered what Tara’s type was. Maybe someone like the guys in drama club who listened to The Cure and had spiked hair. But Reggie had never seen Tara talking to anyone like that. The only kids at school Tara ever seemed to hang out with were Reggie and Charlie.
“Someone like Charlie,” Tara went on, “he could never get me. There’s stuff about me, secret stuff, that I’d never tell Charlie in a million years.”
Reggie nodded.
Tara looked right at her. “Maybe I’ll tell you, though. One of these days.”
Lorraine bustled into the living room. “Time’s up. Channel Three. Let’s see what Andrew Haddon has to say tonight.” Reggie was sure Lorraine was secretly in love with the Eyewitness News weatherman, Andrew Haddon. He was a gangly scarecrow of a man whose shirts never seemed to fit him right. During the weather, he always pulled this stupid slot machine that was supposed to sum up the forecast. Instead of apples and cherries, it had pictures of suns, clouds, snow, and raindrops. He’d spin the wheel with a smile, like he was using his machine to make the weather, then peer down and announce: It’s a four-sunshine day! Get out there and enjoy it! Or Nothing but raindrops today, folks. Be sure to pack your umbrella.
Reggie reached for the remote and changed the channel. There was a commercial with a guy in a chicken suit doing an ad for Bo Berr’s Ford Dealership. No credit, no problem. Don’t be chicken. Come on down.
“Do you think that’s actually dear old Uncle Bo in the suit?” Tara asked, eyes wide as she leaned forward a little, studying the television. Reggie remembered the suggestive way Tara had bit into her ice cream cone, then licked her lips while she stared Bo down. It made Reggie queasy to think about.
“Nah,” Reggie said. “He probably got one of the poor sales guys to do it. Or maybe it’s Sid!”
“No way,” Tara said.
“Who’s Sid?” asked Lorraine.
“Bo Berr’s son,” Reggie explained. “He’s kind of a pothead.”
Lorraine made a sour face.
“Mom and Bo were an item once, right?”
“I don’t recall,” Lorraine said in a dismissive tone.
“No way!” Tara squealed. “Really?”
Reggie nodded. “My mom told me. It was back when they were in high school. Bo was like this big football star then.”
Lorraine fiddled with a loose string on the arm of the couch and said nothing.
“Where is Mom, anyway?” Reggie asked.
“I don’t know,” Lorraine said. “She got up just before noon and left without a word.”
After the news, Reggie knew Lorraine would go to the garage for her fly rod and waders, then make her way down the slope of the backyard to the creek, where she’d stay until it got too dark to cast flies. The left side of the couch where she sat night after night was infused with the tangy, fish smell that seemed to follow her everywhere she went. Reggie half expected to look at her neck one day and see gills.
“Two more weeks till summer vacation,” Lorraine said, still focused on the loose thread.
“Mmmm,” Tara said, reaching for another Dorito. “Then it’s good-bye, Brighton Falls Junior High. Thank God.”
“Maybe you two should get jobs,” Lorraine said.
Tara laughed. “We’re too young.”
“I was working in my father’s shop when I was twelve,” Lorraine said.
“That was back before the days of child labor laws,” Tara shot back. “The Dark Ages,” she added, wiping orange cheese powder on her black jeans as she gave Reggie a conspiratorial wink.
“I don’t think it’s good for young people to be idle,” Lorraine said.
“We’re not going to be idle. We’re going to finish the tree house,” Reggie said. “And I’ll probably help Charlie do lawns,” Reggie added. Charlie had been cutting grass around their neighborhood since just after his mom died. He made good money and was always looking for help.
“Speak for yourself, Dufrane,” Tara said. “I plan to be as idle as possible. Lay around. Eat bonbons. Work on my tan.”
Reggie laughed. The idea of Tara sunbathing was bizarre. Reggie had never even seen her in short sleeves. “Don’t you die if sunlight hits you? Spontaneously combust or something?”
Tara smiled. “Can’t see my reflection in a mirror either. And keep your damn crosses away from me!”
“Tara!” Lorraine snapped. “That’s quite enough.”
“Sorry, Miss Dufrane,” Tara said in a singsong voice.
The six o’clock news came on and the lead story made them all hold their breath, leaning toward the television and the newscaster with perfect hair and a square jaw who sat behind the Eyewitness News desk.
“A woman’s right hand was discovered on the front steps of the Brighton Falls police station earlier today. An unidentified source in the police department reports that the hand was left in a milk carton wrapped in brown paper.”
Reggie had this sense of slipping into a movie, leaving real life behind.
“What the hell?” Tara said, and Lorraine was too shocked to reprimand her for swearing.
Reggie jerked her leg involuntarily, like when the doctor tapped her knee with a rubber hammer. Her body felt twitchy and strange, like it was pulled on by invisible strings.
There was now a detective being interviewed and he had little else to say. He was a red-faced man with a bushy mustache and green polyester sport coat.
“Oh my God,” Tara yelped. “That’s Charlie’s dad!”
“Is not,” Reggie said, moving closer to the TV.
“
Regina, don’t hog the television,” Lorraine scolded. “You’re blocking our view.”
Reggie went back to the couch.
“It totally is,” Tara said. “He’s like . . . famous now.”
“Do you have any idea whose hand this might be?” the newscaster asked. “Or whether it was taken from someone dead or alive?”
“I’m afraid I can’t comment on that at this time,” the bushy-mustached detective said. He asked anyone who might have been downtown and seen a person with a brown paper package to call the station. Reggie looked at his face. Tara was right. It was Charlie’s father. He looked fatter, more washed out and potato-like than in real life. But then again, she hadn’t seem him a lot lately. Charlie didn’t invite her over all that much these days, and when he did, his dad was always working.
“Je-sus!” Tara said, her mouth staying open, her eyes huge and hungry, all lit up like they got when she was playing one of her end-of-the-world games.
Lorraine smoothed the front of her stained fishing vest and shook her head, then closed her eyes for a moment, like she was making a wish.
Reggie reached up and touched her new ear, pulling it loose, then attaching it again with a satisfying metallic click.
Chapter 7
October 16, 2010
Worcester, Massachusetts
“REGINA?” THE WOMAN UNDER the covers crooned. “Is that you?”
Her face was skeletal, her skin so thin and white you could see the blue veins pulsing behind it. Her hair, once a radiant platinum blond, was now limp and colorless as rice noodles. But it was Vera, no doubt.
Reggie froze in the doorway, a tight squeezing sensation in her chest pushing all the breath out of her, nearly stopping her heart.
Go on in there, you fucking coward, she told herself.
“It’s me, Mom,” Reggie said. How strange, to find herself wondering who it was her mother saw. Was there some part of the kid she used to be peering out from under the dark bangs of curly hair, the five-foot-eight frame—still all elbows and knees like some absurd marionette? Maybe not much had changed after all. In her leather jacket, jeans, and boots, she was still dressed like the tomboy she’d always been.
The walk from the doorway to the bed seemed to take forever. Reggie’s boots slid on the freshly waxed floor like it was ice. Like she was ten again, back at Ricker’s Pond, skating toward her mother.
She got to the edge of the bed and put a shaky hand on Vera’s shoulder. There was very little flesh there—Reggie could feel the knobby bones making the loose framework that held her mother together. Reggie was reminded of the Lincoln Logs she’d played with as a kid, putting several sets together to build a tower right up to the ceiling; a tower that leaned and swayed and eventually came crashing down to the ground. Vera’s arms were tucked under the covers, and Reggie found herself staring down at the shapes they made, trying to imagine the right one ending at the wrist. The blanket covering her was thin and white, the words PROPERTY OF UMASS MEDICAL CENTER stenciled in blue letters. Vera’s knees were bent, making a tent of the covers. The pillow beneath her head was damp and stained.
Their eyes locked. Reggie turned her head slightly, pushed the hair away to reveal the scars around her prosthetic ear. Proof. Vera smiled, then whispered something Reggie didn’t catch.
She leaned down. “What was that?”
“You have to be careful here. People aren’t who they say they are. Like her.” She stared past Reggie at Carolyn Wheeler, who hovered in the doorway. “She knows Old Scratch.” Vera’s breath was warm and yeasty smelling. She was missing several teeth.
“Would you like me to send her away?”
Vera’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”
Reggie smiled. “Just watch me.” She stood up, went over to the social worker, and asked if she and her mother could have some privacy. Carolyn looked flustered. Her eyes went from Vera to Reggie, then back to Vera. Was Reggie supposed to be untrustworthy? Dangerous even? Maybe she was in on it with Neptune?
“Of course,” the social worker said at last. “I’ll be right down at the nurses’ station if you need me.”
Reggie smiled sweetly but couldn’t think of a single situation in which she’d need Carolyn Wheeler. Reggie shut the door. She would have locked it if that had been possible.
“Better?” she asked, returning to her mother’s side.
Her mother. God, even though she was here, touching her, breathing her in, she couldn’t believe it. Vera, alive. Reggie did a quick calculation and realized her mother was fifty-nine years old. With her gaunt features and sagging skin, she looked closer to eighty. Was this the result of the cancer or years of hard living? What did it take, to break a person down like this? To turn them into a shrunken doll that only faintly resembled who they’d once been?
Carolyn Wheeler seemed to think her mother’s mind was too far gone to be able to reveal anything helpful about the killer. But she must remember something, right? And whatever details she did remember weren’t likely to get spilled to strange-faced detectives or a social worker with broccoli in her teeth.
“I’m going to take you home, Mom.”
“Home?”
“To Monique’s Wish. Would you like that?”
Her mother looked up at her with watery gray eyes. “Is that where you live?”
Reggie stiffened. Hell, no. Not for over twenty years.
“No,” she said. “But I’ll stay with you there for as long as you like.” Reggie could see it so clearly: how she would bring her mother cups of tea and custard, and Vera would tell her all about what had really happened to her after she was taken. Reggie would get the answers the police hadn’t been able to. She’d crack the case wide open like a regular private detective, make sure that bastard got what was coming to him. If Reggie were in charge of the justice system, she’d have Neptune strapped to a table and give a big old carving knife to the relatives of the women he killed. An eye for an eye, a hand for a hand.
“Mmm,” Vera said, closing her eyes. Then, she opened them wide. “They do things to people here,” Vera said, lowering her voice and looking worriedly at the door. “They take them into the basement and slice them open. Then they put stuffing inside.”
Reggie stared down at her mother, unsure of what to say. She decided an understanding nod was best. Yes, I’m sure they do, Mom.
Vera began coughing. It was a wet, racking cough. Her eyes watered and her tongue stuck out. Her whole body thrashed. She brought her arms out from under the covers and Reggie saw the stump: the cut had been made just below the knob of her wrist. The skin there was glossy and pale—ghost flesh. If Reggie squinted, she could almost see the shape of the missing hand still attached, pointing up at her. Her mother heaved forward, coughing and retching with such force it seemed like she’d crack a rib. Reggie’s hand hovered by the red button on the bedrail—should she call a nurse? And then it was over. Vera readjusted herself in bed, reached into her mouth with her left hand, going so far back she gagged. Then pulled her hand out and held it open.
“See?” she asked.
Reggie looked down. The knuckles of her mother’s fingers were swollen and her pointer and middle finger were stained yellow with nicotine. And there, in her heavily creased palm, was what looked like a tiny piece of mucus-slathered white thread.
Reggie shivered, felt bile rising up into throat. “Let’s get you out of here,” she said.
She found a plastic PATIENT BELONGINGS bag and hurriedly loaded what little she could find into it: hospital-issue toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant, yellow plastic comb and body lotion. There were no clothes hanging in the closet or in the dresser. Only a coat—a large black, man’s wool dress coat. The lining was coming loose and it was threadbare in places. There was a hole in the left elbow.
“Is this yours, Mom?” Reggie asked, taking the coat off the hanger.
Vera nodded.
The coat was heavier than Reggie expected and soon she understood why:
the lining had been cut here and there and little makeshift pockets had been formed by resewing squares around the cuts. Reggie smiled at the magician’s coat her mother had created. That was Vera—ever resourceful, even homeless, even crazy.
Reggie reached into one of the pockets and pulled out an empty plastic grocery bag balled up inside a dozen rubber bands.
Rummaging through the other secret pockets, Reggie found matchbooks, a crushed cigarette, a broken cell phone, two cellophane packets of crumbling saltine crackers, bobby pins, and a wallet that was empty except for an expired coupon for Herbal Essences shampoo. Patting down the sleeves, she found one last hidden pocket at the end of the right sleeve, held closed with a safety pin. She undid the pin, reached in, and pulled out a worn red velvet jewelry box. Flipping it open, she discovered an engagement ring and wedding band inside. Reggie was no expert, but these didn’t look like cheap costume rings. A homeless woman carrying around valuable jewelry? It didn’t make sense. Unless . . .
“Are these yours, Mom?” she asked, lifting the wedding ring from the box. It was heavy and solid, no doubt real gold. “Did you get married?” The word caught on her tongue and she had to force it out.
Reggie knew her mother had never married her father. Vera had never even told her the guy’s name, claiming it wasn’t important.
Tusks, Reggie remembered, visualizing the picture she’d once cut out of Ganesh—the peaceful look on the elephant-headed god’s face, the four arms outstretched, hands poised and waiting.
Vera whispered into her covers and the only word Reggie caught was the last one: Soon.
Turning the gold band in her hand, Reggie saw there was an engraving inside—words in neat script:
Until death do us part
June 20, 1985
Reggie nearly dropped the ring, as though the engraving had reached out and stung her.
June 20, 1985.
The day Vera’s hand showed up on the front steps of the police station.
Chapter 8
June 1, 1985
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
“I KNOW THE LADY who found her.”
The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle Page 115