You Will Never Know

by You Will Never Know (retail) (epub)

  There wasn’t much of a coaching staff at the junior high, so Mom, who had done some track in high school, had offered to run with her and train with her as much as possible during the week and on weekends. That meant Mom juggling her work schedule at the bank and pressing Emma to run when Emma would rather just sit home and play games or text with her friends, but with each new win and new ribbon or trophy, Emma had begun to love running with Mom.

  Until that day in Carlisle, the next town over from Warner, an easy run from their home.

  It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, late spring, with lots of birds chirping. She and her Mom were running on a country road near the Warner River and had the one-lane road to themselves, just keeping up a pace, running by some of the old stone walls and rare open farmland in this part of town. The road didn’t get much traffic, but on this afternoon a light-blue Toyota Camry had slowed down and then sped up after passing them, the horn honking a couple of times.

  Mom was next to her. “You know them?” she asked.

  “Um, no, Mom, none of my friends are old enough to drive yet. You know that.”

  “Okay.”

  Three minutes later the car came back, heading toward them, slowing down. Two men were in the front, the windows were down, and each guy leaned out and whistled at them. They looked to be in their twenties or so, and each had a thin beard, and each was grinning as they went by.

  “Nice ass, Mom!” the passenger yelled.

  Mom whispered something under her breath and said, “Just ignore them, Emma. Ignore them.”

  “Okay, Mom,” she said.

  But the car returned again in a few minutes and slowed down so that it seemed to be pacing them. Mom reached into a small fanny pack that had a water bottle and her cell phone and said, “Shit, no coverage out here. Can you believe it?”

  Emma said, “Who were you going to call? Stepdad Ted?”

  “No, the cops.”

  “Mom!” she protested. “It’s okay.”

  But a few more feet passed in their running, and it didn’t feel okay, because over the low sound of the motor she could hear the men’s voices in bits and pieces:

  “. . . look at Mom’s ass . . .”

  “. . . shit, daughter looks fucking fine, too . . .”

  “. . . Mom’s got better tits . . .”

  “. . . daughter more fun . . .”

  Up ahead was a dirt driveway. A new home was being built in the woods, and dumped at the side of the road were some lumber, shingles, and lengths of pipe. Mom stopped at the new driveway, grabbed a length of metal pipe, and ran back to the car.

  “Hey!” the driver yelled.

  “Leave my daughter alone!” Mom shouted. She swung the pipe and caught the driver right in the face, and his back arched up and he screamed. It was the first time Emma had ever heard a man scream. Again and again the pipe came down on the man’s face and head, each time Mom shouting, “Leave my daughter alone!”

  The passenger desperately got his window up, but Mom went to that side of the car, broke the side window with the pipe, and started pounding him as well. More screams from inside the car.

  More yelling from Mom: “Leave my daughter alone!”

  Emma just stood there, not moving, catching her breath as another car stopped. Two women got out. A cell-phone call was made, and the police came. After spending some time at the police station, she and her mother had been driven home by a Carlisle detective driving an unmarked cruiser. Her stepdad had been at a charity golf tournament, and her stepbrother was off with his moody friends. Mom sat her down and said, “Our secret, all right?”

  And a while later Mom whispered to her one day that no charges were going to be filed, because the driver of the car had been on probation and his father didn’t want anything to show up in the legal system, so that had been that.

  Except that Emma never ran with her mother again.

  Slap, slap, slap. Her feet on the trail.

  Run, run, run. Quick glance back. All alone. Perfect.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  Up ahead the trail broke free of the woods, offered a quick glimpse of the playing fields, and then swung back into the trees.

  There. Nearly empty playing field, there was Mom, and—

  Oh, shit.

  Craig was talking to Mom and was now pointing at her. He was doing what he had threatened to do.

  Oh, Mom, she thought, swinging back into the woods. Protect me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Craig liked seeing his stepmom like this, a bit shook up. He couldn’t remember the last time he had called her “Mom,” if ever, and now was the time to get things settled.

  “What’s up?” he said. “This is what’s up, Jessica. It’s time for you to know some facts, okay?”

  Her voice was soft. “What kind of facts, Craig?”

  He had to laugh. This was going to be fine. Months and years of frustration were about to come right out and slap his pretty stepmom right in the face. Yeah, she was pretty, and maybe she was a MILF after all, but this was going to be all right.

  Craig calmly said, “Your precious, pampered track star, your golden girl who can do no wrong, is one mean cold-blooded bitch.”

  “Craig, I’m not going to let you—”

  “Oh, you’re going to let me, Jessica, or I’m going to the police.”

  That seemed to knock her back on her heels. “The police? What for?”

  “To tell them the truth about Emma—and everything else.”

  Jessica turned her head and looked at the school. The wind had come up, disturbing her hair, and she had a memory of a Greek mythology class and a drawing of the evil Medusa.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  “What truth is that, Craig?”

  “Truth? Here’s the truth. Me and Emma, we went over to Sam Warner’s house Saturday night. Your sweet precious innocent little girl knew I’d done math homework for Sam, and she wanted me to introduce her. Seems like some of her teammates had been invited to this special party and she couldn’t stand being left out. She also wanted a chance to see if she could hook up with the captain of the wrestling team. Pretty basic, huh? But Sam had other ideas. I was there and found out he had her taken up to his bedroom after a few drinks. So I did the noble older brother thing, tried to go up and get her out of there, and this is what I got for being brave and looking out for your perfect daughter.”

  Craig slowly lifted his jacket and T-shirt, showing his stepmom the fading letters on his belly. FAG.

  Jessica gave it a good long look. He lowered his coat and shirt.

  “Emma barfed all over Sam. He was pissed, and as I got her out of there, after they whacked me around some, he told me that Emma had better come back sometime later to finish the job or he’d make her life hell at school.”

  “How?” Jessica asked.

  “Go figure it out,” Craig said, nearly shaking his head at how stupid she was. “You want to know why Emma was in her bedroom all day Sunday? She was still coming down off the drinking and the roofie. I told her what Sam was threatening to do, and then she came up with a plan.”

  Craig stopped talking. Waited. Jessica just stood there as if she were carved out of rock or some tough gray wood.

  She shook her head. “What was the plan, Craig?”

  “Pretty simple. When I went in to grab Emma, I saw that Sam was recording what was going on. I told Emma later. The plan was for me to reach out to Sam, ask him for a copy of the video, and then we’d make a trade—the video on a thumb drive, and then Emma would suck him off. Sam wouldn’t pass the video around, and Emma wouldn’t get the treatment.”

  Jessica said, “Oh, no.”

  Craig laughed. “Man, you really don’t know the half of it, do you, Jessica? That was only part of the deal. Emma wanted something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She wanted Sam dead.”

  Jessica gazed at the nearly empty stands and thought, how could she have been so stup
id? The wrestling team hadn’t been up there to support their fellow athletes, as she had assumed. No, they had been up there on a scouting mission, seeking out fresh meat.

  “I don’t believe you, Craig,” she said.

  “I don’t care if you do or don’t,” her stepson replied. “But it’s the truth. And there’s more.”

  Craig now knew what it must have been like to be Sam Warner, feeling on top of things, good and stable, and most of all, being in charge. Jessica was no longer his stepmom, complaining about toilet seats being left up or socks not going down the laundry chute. Nope. This adult woman, twice his age, now belonged to him. It felt great. No wonder Sam Warner had smiled all the fucking time.

  Craig said, “Emma came to me with her plan, her deal. The two of us would meet Sam in the town woods, Sam would hand over the thumb drive, and then I’d . . . I’d shoot him.”

  “You? How?”

  “Thanks to Mark Borman’s dad. He’s a gun nut. Belongs to the NRA and the Gun Owners Action League. I took a shotgun from his collection that you can break down and put in a knapsack. So I had that with me, and when Emma was going to go up to Sam and take care of him, I was going to kill him.”

  There was a rumble of thunder. “That was going to happen Tuesday night, with us sneaking out of the house. We borrowed Randy McMahon’s Jetta, but the piece of crap died on us. I wanted to turn back, but Emma insisted we keep on going, even if we had to walk. We got on the trail, and—”

  Jessica said, “You found Sam Warner. Dead.”

  “Yep.”

  “So, no scavenger hunt?”

  Craig laughed. “I told Emma that you’d believe that story ’cause you wanted to, and that Dad would be suspicious. But it worked, didn’t it? So we came back home the long way and soaking wet.”

  “Some story.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not the end. One more thing, Jessica, one more thing, and if it doesn’t get settled, I’m going to the cops in the next fifteen minutes. And then their investigation is going to include Emma, and the whole world will know about it. Know about the real Emma Thornton, not the made-up running doll.”

  Jessica tried to bring back that sense she had had a few minutes ago of being on this track field, happy that at last things were being settled and were on the right path, and now this . . . boy. This creature, this demon, had come up to spoil everything.

  “Go on,” she said. “Tell me.”

  Craig thought, Well, now we’re getting somewhere. He said, “Emma promised me something to go out there and shoot Sam. She said, ‘We get out there and go home and Sam Warner is dead, I’ll take care of you.’ That was the promise.”

  “Really?” she asked. “You were going to kill a fellow student because of a promise my daughter gave you?”

  Lots of old memories came to him—of Sam bumping his books away, shoving him into lockers, tripping him in the cafeteria. He hated that his eyes were tearing up, but he said, “Once Emma got me going, I didn’t mind. Thing was, I wanted to kill the shit. I really did. And when we got there, he was dead, and then Emma, she backed out on the deal.”

  His stepmother said, “A deal? What kind of deal?”

  Craig couldn’t believe how happy he felt, telling his nutty stepmother the following sentence. “Jessica, the deal was, Emma said she was going to take care of me if Sam Warner ended up dead. Sam’s dead. And Emma hasn’t taken care of me.”

  “Craig—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “In exchange for seeing the captain of the wrestling team dead, your precious sweet innocent golden child was going to pimp out one of her friends. Kate Romer. She told me that Kate would go out with me and suck me off. And your bitch daughter didn’t come through. Stupid me, I believed her.”

  Jessica looked like she had just been slapped in the face. “That’s the truth?” she managed to say.

  He nodded. “The truth. And if I don’t get taken care of . . . well, I’m going to the cops. Christ, I don’t know what the cops will say or do, but I’m sure that Emma’s name will be out there. She’ll be humiliated, embarrassed. Hell, for all I know, maybe she did shoot the asshole.”

  “But Craig . . .”

  He lifted his shirt again. FAG. Kept it up.

  He said, “It’s one thing if a guy or girl comes out gay. So what? But it’s another if people think you’re a fag and you’re not. Kids in school are already talking. And so I need to prove that I’m not a fag, to shut them up.”

  His stepmom’s face looked frozen, like one of those Botoxed housewives she liked to watch so much on Bravo.

  “So you don’t want students to think you’re gay. You’d force your sister to have one of her friends perform oral sex on you, is that it? And then tell your friends later what happened?”

  Craig lowered his shirt. “She promised. I wouldn’t be forcing her at all. And she’s not my sister. So yeah, that doesn’t count.” He reached into his coat pocket, took out a thumb drive, made a twirling motion with his hand in front of Jessica’s eyes. “Here’s the video of your little girl with Sam’s cock in her mouth, before she got sick, that I hacked from Sam’s laptop. So yeah, that’s the truth. And in addition to going to the cops, I’ll email this to every student and teacher at Warner High School. Just to get even. For everything, including my dad getting arrested.”

  Jessica just stared at him. Her look should have scared him, but it didn’t.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” he asked. “Mom?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jessica just stood there, looking at this foul child that her dearly beloved husband had spawned, and she just repeated the last two words. “The truth,” she said.

  Craig smiled, still holding up the thumb drive. “That’s right.”

  And Jessica just stared, and thought, The truth. Here’s the truth.

  I’ve never once trusted you, young man, ever since we joined our families together. And I know what you thought about me, how you thought I was just a simple bank teller, and you never suspected that I had twenty more years’ experience than you working with computers.

  From day one, after we moved in, I’ve been monitoring your internet activity, your search results, your email, using a public terminal at the town library, and, trust me, young man, librarians won’t give up anything without a search warrant.

  So I knew about the party—and I admit that knowing that Emma was attracted to that lunk still disappoints me—and I know what happened that night. And the video I saw you viewing Tuesday night when I came into your room? What, you don’t think a mother recognizes her own daughter?

  But Sam had already been dead for nearly a day when I saw that video.

  I had texted with him earlier in an encrypted chatroom, pretending to be you—although I almost gave it away by using the name of my favorite computer hero, Grace Hopper, as an avatar—and set up an appointment to kill him.

  Very simple, of course. Because I had made a spare key to the gun cabinet a week after we moved in, just in case I needed to defend Emma and myself if there was a break-in. And on that crowded Chamber of Commerce night, do you think anybody really missed me when I drove out to the Warner Town Forest and blew off that rapist’s head? Do you?

  And when the little shit came down that bridge over the stream, I said one thing to him, to make sure his last bit of consciousness on earth would be to think that his victim had paid him back.

  “Rapist!”

  So that’s the truth.

  Which you will never know.

  Aloud, Jessica said, “Can I trust you, Craig? Can I trust that the video of Emma and Sam—that it only exists on that thumb drive?”

  There was the briefest hesitation, and he said, “Sure.”

  She said, “You’re lying, but that’s understandable. All right. You know I’ll do anything, anything at all, to protect Emma. But it begins with you handing over that thumb drive, showing me your computer’s hard drive, and promising that the video doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

&nbs
p; “Why should I do that?”

  “Because,” Jessica said, holding out her hand, “I will make it right for you. But only if you give me that thumb drive, right now. No hesitation.”

  She waited, wondering how he would react, and a little voice inside cried out Yes! when the drive was slowly placed in her hand. Jessica closed her hand around it and slipped it into her left-hand coat pocket, where it nestled next to the drive she had taken from Sam’s body that blessed night.

  “Okay,” she said, and she rubbed at her shoulder where it had ached for days after she shot that rapist.

  And then, finally emerging out of the woods into the errant sunlight from overhead, where the sun had just broken through the overcast skies, here came her Emma, running alone, running safe, ready again to cross the finish line on her way to a safe, happy, and productive future, doing everything that her mother could never have done.

  Craig said, “Now what?”

  She took a breath. “There’s a new girl at work. Maybe two years older than you. Stacy Kiln. She’ll do anything I ask her to do, so I’ll set the two of you up. This week. How does that sound?”

  He hesitated. “That . . . that sounds okay. But, I mean . . .”

  “You want to know if she’ll do it for you? Give you oral sex? So your friends know you’re not a fag?”

  Craig nodded.

  “I promise, I’ll take care of you.”

  Jessica turned away from her stepson, looked out to the playing fields. Her child, her pride, her Emma, was coming right to her, smiling so widely, so happy, so safe, so ready to go on and on.

  “You mean that?” Craig asked, nearly whispering.

  “Oh, yes, Craig,” Jessica said, meaning every word. “I’ll take care of you.”

  YOU WILL NEVER KNOW

  Scarlet

  An Imprint of Penzler Publishers

  58 Warren Street

  New York, N.Y. 10007

  Copyright © 2020 by S. A. Prentiss