Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  And then they shifted toward each other. And for a second, they looked like kindling sticks laid for a fire, their bodies making an upside-down V. It occurred to me that Omega no longer seemed like one of the Super Tramps—a high-school girl talking to her foster father—but like an adult, just like Mr. Al. Like Everlane pleading with Dex.

  Especially when Mr. Al caught her by the wrists, and she wilted against him. Then when she lifted her face, I saw her reach up and press her lips against his. He jerked back, reeled back almost, releasing her from his grip. She let out an anguished sob, stumbled through the cars toward the highway, and started running in the direction of town.

  After a moment or two, Mr. Al turned and lumbered toward the church. When he caught sight of me, his face broke into a sad smile.

  “Hey there, Daphne-Doodle-Do. Why aren’t you inside?”

  I lassoed him with my arms and let him hold me. His spicy aftershave-and-coffee smell comforted me. I wanted to stand there with him forever, my face pressed into the stiff material of his suit jacket. I didn’t feel one bit cold. Just electrified and scared by what I’d witnessed.

  “You know, Daphne, what just happened—” he started.

  “Is Omega your girlfriend?” My voice was muffled in his jacket.

  He let out a harrumph sound, but I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or it was something else. I stayed very still, hoping he wouldn’t let go. He circled his hand between my shoulder blades. “No, darling. I love her, just like I love you. But not that way.”

  “Why did she kiss you?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “She’s confused. And she’s sad,” he said.

  The idea of Omega being sad felt like the world being folded up with me inside of it. I couldn’t bear it.

  “We should go get her in your car,” I said. “She’ll miss the funeral.” And the food afterward, in the fellowship hall, I was thinking too.

  Mr. Al let out a heavy sigh. “Mrs. Bobbie has the keys.”

  It was the last thing I wanted to do, tear out of his embrace, but somebody had to go after Omega. Somebody had to cheer her up. So I did. I wove my way through the cars in the parking lot and, when I got to the road, kicked off the clogs and started running as fast as I could in the direction I’d seen Omega go.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Friday, October 19

  Morning

  I was peering through the crack in our door, hoping to catch sight of Jerry McAdam, when I heard Heath roll over in bed.

  “You showered already?” He squinted at me though sleep-swollen eyes.

  “I woke up early,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was six forty-five now, but I’d been wide awake since around five, snapping the band on my wrist. My head throbbed dully.

  Obviously, McAdam hadn’t called 911 last night; it was possible he hadn’t even seen my note. The hallway was deserted and silent, and no sign of Luca. Breakfast wouldn’t be ready yet. There was no certainty that even if McAdam got the note this morning, he’d do anything. He could think it was a joke and throw it away. He could tell Dr. Cerny and get us thrown out.

  Not that I’d mind going home. In fact, that would be hunky-dory with me.

  Heath groaned behind me. “Daphne, leave it. She’s a grown woman. She can stay in her room if she wants to. Cerny’s therapy is really intense. She may not want to talk to you. You should respect that. Give her space.”

  “And if something happened to her, if she’s lost somewhere up on the mountain—”

  “Or at the bottom of a cliff . . .” he said.

  I glared at him, then turned my back.

  “She’s not Chantal,” he said gently.

  “I know.” A rustling sound and a couple of thumps rose from the foot of the far stairs. Luca, bringing up the breakfast trays. I closed the door a fraction of an inch more and positioned my eye at the crack.

  “Good God,” Heath sighed. But I didn’t care. I was going to stay at the door until I saw something. Anything—McAdam or Glenys or anyone—and then I would make my move. From the bathroom, I heard the squeak of the faucet and the shower start to run. Fine, Heath. Take a leisurely shower even though a woman’s gone missing. Wouldn’t want your day inconvenienced in any way.

  At last I spied Luca rounding the corner, bearing a single tray. Poor guy. He had to make three separate trips, three times a day, up those endless stairs. I was surprised the doc had the place wired up like the CIA, but he couldn’t manage to rig up some kind of dumbwaiter for poor Luca.

  He stopped when he saw me, then pivoted, depositing the tray in front of the McAdams’ door, giving it a light rap. He nodded at me, then headed back down the hall to the back stairs. I thought of all the cameras, whirring away from the safety of their hiding places. I was just going to have to risk Dr. Cerny diagnosing me as a voyeur or paranoid or some other type of mentally ill person. I wasn’t leaving my post.

  But the McAdams’ door never opened, and the tray sat untouched outside the room. When Luca returned with the next tray, he seemed to hesitate at the top of the stairs. I lifted my hand in greeting, and he deposited the tray in front of the Siefferts’ door. Before heading down again, he glanced back at me. I withdrew, leaving the door cracked wide enough to spot Glenys or her husband, if either one happened to retrieve their tray. Which they didn’t.

  Presently Luca was back at the top of the stairs with our food. I hurriedly pushed the door closed and scuttled backward farther into the room, which was a ridiculous move, seeing as I’d obviously been watching him throughout the whole process. Still, when he rapped, I lunged forward, swung the door open, and smiled like I was astonished to find him there. He froze, bent halfway to the floor.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He straightened and gave me a look, but it wasn’t a friendly one like we’d shared in the kitchen. He seemed annoyed, maybe even angry. I stared back at him, either waiting to understand the hidden meaning behind his eyes, or daring him to speak—which he eventually did.

  “Café da manhã.”

  “Come in.” I beckoned him into the room, but he didn’t move. I stepped back, gestured to the table. He entered tentatively, like he thought Heath—or an angry bear—might come crashing in at any minute. “You can put it on the table,” I offered, and he did, as quickly as I’d ever seen any hotel room-service waiter do.

  He started to back away, but then stopped. Slid his eyes toward the closed bathroom door.

  I took a deep breath. Plunged right into the deep end. “He’s in the shower. And the cameras don’t record sound, I don’t think.” I held my breath. “I know you want to tell me something.”

  His eyes flashed for a brief second, then he moved to the open door.

  He spoke in heavily accented English, then melted back into the dark hallway.

  “Look behind the mirror,” was all he said.

  Friday, October 19

  Night

  The police receptionist—if that’s what they call her—is sitting at a small desk right inside the front door. The waiting area is lined with plastic chairs, and one of those huge, chainsaw-carved wood bears stands guard in the corner. When I tell her I need to speak to an officer because of something that’s happened up at Baskens, she gestures at the chairs.

  “I’ll have an officer out to talk to you soon as I can. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Yes, please,” I say. I’m starting to feel light headed. Nauseated from the water I gulped down earlier. In my fog, I notice yet another TV, this one a flat-screen affixed to the wall beside the reception desk. No football game playing on this one, it’s the local Atlanta news.

  “Co-cola? Sprite? Diet?”

  I try to concentrate on what the woman is saying. “A Coke, please. Thanks.”

  When she returns from the back—and presumably telling one of the officers I have a crime to report—she hands me a cold can. I pop the top and tip it up.

  She slips behind her desk again.

  “Oh. One more thing.”
I hold up the iPad. It’s fogged and slick from being tucked against my sweaty back. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of earbuds, would you?” She can’t disguise a quick furrow of her brow, but she produces a pair of black earbuds from one of the desk drawers and hands them over.

  “Thanks.”

  She nods, but she doesn’t make eye contact. I wonder how long it’s going to be. There can’t be that much going on in Dunfree, Georgia, on a Friday night.

  I return to my seat, plug in the earbuds, and tap in the numbers 5353. In the Notes section, I find the patient folders and click on Heath’s. When his voice fills my ears, goose bumps cover my body.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Friday, October 19

  Morning

  By the time Heath emerged from the shower, I was already well into breakfast. He joined me, digging energetically into the stack of pancakes. A lock of wet hair fell over his eye as he ate.

  But all I could think of were Luca’s hazel eyes fastened onto mine, his voice in my ears.

  Look behind the mirror.

  Behind the mirror above the dresser in our room? Or some other mirror? I didn’t know. It was all he’d said.

  My pulse was racing so fast now it felt like I was about to kick into a panic attack. I played with my food, pretending to eat, pushing the pancakes and bacon around. I’d broken into a sweat despite the frigid room.

  I leapt up. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where you going?” Heath said, working his way through the pancakes.

  “I left the book I was reading downstairs.”

  “There you go, read a book. Much healthier than worrying about everybody else around here.”

  “Back in a sec,” I chirped and scooted out of the room.

  In the hallway both trays were still untouched. I still had a chance to make contact with Jerry McAdam. I tapped on the Siefferts’ door, but there was no answer. I moved on to the McAdams’ and knocked quietly.

  “Mr. McAdam, it’s Daphne Amos.” There was no answer. I bounced on the balls of my feet. “Jerry, I really need to talk to you. I know you have a phone. So I need you to call the police for me. For Glenys Sieffert, okay? That’s her name. Glenys Sieffert. She and her husband are staying right next door to you. Just call 911, please.”

  At the end of the hall, the pocket door was open. Beyond it, I could see that Dr. Cerny’s bedroom door was shut. He was either still inside or he was already downstairs in his office getting ready for the day. In either case, I had a chance to get up to the attic without him hearing me. I gauged the time. Soon Heath would be done eating, and Luca would be back up to collect everyone’s trays. I had to go now.

  I made it up the stairs in seconds. The monitors were on, but the Sieffert screen showed nothing. No people. No activity. The room was empty.

  The McAdams were eating breakfast.

  But how was that possible? I’d just seen both trays still sitting by the respective doors.

  I leaned closer. Their faces were hidden, but I could see the meal clearly enough. Soft-boiled eggs in old-fashioned cups and what looked like grapefruit halves. Which was strange, because back in our room, Heath was shoveling down pancakes and bacon.

  “What the hell . . .” I said softly.

  So Luca cooked different breakfasts for different guests? That was an extraordinary amount of work for one person, and above and beyond providing dietary substitutions. Something about this felt off. Way off. I backed out of the room, headed down the stairs, but stopped dead at the pocket door.

  Both breakfast trays still sat outside the McAdams’ and Siefferts’ doors. They looked exactly like they had when Luca had dropped them off, like they hadn’t been touched at all. I hesitated. I knew what I’d just seen—the McAdams eating their made-to-order eggs and grapefruit. Was it possible that in the time it had taken me to climb down the stairs, they’d put the tray back out?

  I crept toward the McAdams’ door and the tray, knelt, and lifted one of the metal lids. The plate underneath was empty. Not just cleared of food but absolutely clean, like it had just come out of the cupboard. I lifted the cover off the other plate, and it was the same. A perfectly pristine plate. No food. Nothing.

  I unscrewed the lid of the coffee carafe and turned it upside down. Nothing came out. It was completely, utterly empty. I dropped it, ran over to the Siefferts’ tray, and lifted those covers too. The plates were clean.

  I flung the covers across the hall. Kicked at the tray, and utensils and glasses and carafe shot in all directions, clattering across the runner and bouncing off the opposite wall. My brain wasn’t computing the images. They didn’t make any sense. Not in the world where I was living and breathing—the dark hallway in a crimson house hidden away on a mountain. Where my fiancé ate syrupy pancakes down the hall like everything was perfectly normal and right.

  But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

  There was something terribly wrong here. Utterly and irrevocably wrong. I couldn’t zero in on what it was exactly, but I did know a few things: I knew Matthew Cerny had led me and Heath to believe we were on a retreat, a weeklong retreat with two other couples . . .

  . . . who were nowhere to be found.

  . . . who were being delivered trays of empty dishes for their meals.

  But the other couples had been here at one point, hadn’t they? I’d met the McAdams, Jerry and Donna, just a few days ago. I’d seen them with my own eyes. Had they left? Gone down to Dunfree, like Reggie Teague, for some reason? But why would they? And why had Glenys and her husband left too?

  Was it possible that Heath and I were actually alone here?

  I tore down the hallway, charged back up the cramped staircase to the hexagonal attic. Sure enough, on the monitors, the McAdam and Sieffert rooms were buzzing with activity. Mrs. McAdam was making the bed while, across the room, her husband tied his shoes. Mr. Sieffert was pulling on pants, tucking in his shirt, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the closet door. Glenys was nowhere in sight.

  I moved closer to the Sieffert monitor. Waited until the bathroom door opened, and a woman emerged, then sat on the bed, her back toward the camera.

  It looked like Glenys, but honestly, I couldn’t see her face, only her back and profile. It could have been anyone. Any woman who was tall and slender with lightish hair. The next monitor over, Jerry McAdam—or somebody that looked a lot like him—watched his wife disappear into the bathroom and shut the door. He waited a second, then pulled out his old-school flip phone.

  I spun to face the wall behind me. Studied the massive blocks of metal, their complicated faces of knobs and dials and gauges humming and clicking away. It sounded the same as every other time I’d been up here, but I’d just assumed it was part of the doctor’s J. Edgar Hoover setup. And I’d never bothered to really examine it.

  Even though it was broad daylight outside, the attic was still dark. I ran my hands over the machinery, and all the way at the end, I found a section of boxy-looking green metal units, stacked four high. They were almost hidden, wedged between the bigger machinery and the wall. Each of them had one vertical slot.

  Four in all.

  I studied them, waiting for my brain to catch up with what my gut was already telling me. I knew what this was, I did. It was just that I was used to seeing one of these gadgets as a slim black box, sitting on top of a TV, with one horizontal slot and a few buttons underneath. But this was the same thing. It was the exact same goddamn thing.

  A VCR.

  A whole VHS system connected to the monitors up on the shelf.

  I stuck my hand in one of the slots, and my fingers hit plastic. I could feel the mechanism whirring under my touch. I pushed on it, thinking it might release and eject, but it didn’t. I stepped back. Started randomly pressing every button, turning dials and knobs indiscriminately. I hit a black square button and, like magic, one of the tapes popped out from the last slot on the row.

  “Shit.”

  I pulled it out of the slot
and looked at the label. Sieffert, Randall & Glenys—2006.

  I practically smashed the other buttons, and another tape popped out. I yanked it out and looked at the label. McAdam, Jerry & Donna—2007. I dropped it, then shoved the Sieffert tape back into the deck. The tape chunked into the player and began to whir.

  When I turned back to the monitors, the woman—the Glenys Sieffert doppelganger—was on camera. She was dressed in a sweater and trousers, her hair still dripping from the shower. She stood in the middle of the room, in a block of sunlight from the window, fluffing her hair. I watched her, mesmerized.

  I couldn’t believe that I’d missed it. It was so obvious. I’d expected to see the Glenys I knew—I’d wanted to, and so I had. But this woman wasn’t Glenys. She was tall and thin, yes, but her face was all wrong. Her eyes too close together, her nose long and slightly hooked in profile, instead of Glenys’s straight, elegant one.

  I felt my breath go shallow, my whole body tingle in alarm. The woman I’d been talking to all week had told me her name was Glenys. Cerny had made sure he had a tape of her look-alike playing at all times on the monitors. All of this was part of a carefully thought-out plan. A plan designed to fool me and Heath.

  But why?

  What possible reason could Cerny have for hiding the identity of the woman I’d befriended?

  I heard a door slam somewhere downstairs. I backed out of the attic and flew down both flights of back stairs just as Luca was entering the kitchen from outside. We each stopped dead at the sight of the other.

  I waved at him, wildly, probably looking like a crazy woman. “You need to go. Get out of here.”

  He shook his head. I could tell he was worried about me, that he wanted to stay and help, which was sweet. But this was not a time for chivalry. No good could come from either of us hanging around here for one minute longer.