Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

  He pulls me by the wrist into a hug, and around his shoulder I see Cerny’s silver Mercedes parked just a couple of feet away. It’s idling. Then Heath speaks again, low and soft.

  “When they find this on the ground near her body, the case will be closed.”

  I jerk back. He’s holding up my engagement ring. Cecelia’s ring. I feel like I’m having a heart attack. My hand dips toward my boot, fingers between the leather and wool, and I draw up the knife.

  “No, no, no . . .” is all I can say. I am shaking and crying, swinging the knife in wild arcs.

  He catches my wrist easily, wrenches the knife out of my grasp, and tosses it into the bushes beside the police station. I can’t stop crying—nose running and mixing with the tears—as he hustles me to the car.

  “Don’t worry, Daphne,” he says once we’re locked in. His voice is soothing and he pulls the seatbelt across me. “If they find her with the ring, I’ll tell them that you were with me all night that night. That you couldn’t have kidnapped Holly or taken her to the woods and tied her up. That you couldn’t have done all those horrible things to her.” His face splits into a grin, but one so full of evil I cannot move. “You see? We can’t go back.”

  Heath stops for gas on 515, at a place just south of Ellijay. It’s one of those shiny new mega-stations with endless rows of gleaming pumps and a combo convenience store and Ye Olde Donut Shoppe. And it’s hopping, even this late at night. Inside, I walk past a bank of cappuccino machines sandwiched between the sizzling hot-dog rollers and slushie station. I’m starving, but Heath’s got my purse with him in the car, and he hasn’t given me any money.

  The ladies’ room is down a short corridor, a spacious, exceptionally clean single. He’s let me go alone—there’s no reason for him to follow me in there. If I run, he’ll just plant the ring and then tell the police I killed Holly Idlewine.

  After I use the bathroom and wash up, I stare into the mirror. I remove my smudged glasses and splash water on my face, then wash my glasses. My face looks so normal—pink and healthy. I touch my cheeks. My skin is warm. I am still alive. Still breathing. Still able to think and to reason and to act.

  I am still myself.

  When I emerge from the bathroom, a yellowed old woman with a thick head of glossy chestnut hair and a purple terry tracksuit is waiting. A brown fake-crocodile purse is slung over her stick arm.

  “Whew,” the woman says in her Marlboro-roughened voice. “Thank you, sugar. You’d think they’d have more than one potty in a place this big.”

  I smile and she locks herself in. I stand there, letting the information filter through my consciousness: that was a wig she was wearing, and her skin had a yellow tinge to it. She’s ill—cancer, most likely. And then, I can’t help it, I picture myself waiting until she unlocks the door, then pushing my way into the bathroom with her before she realizes what’s happening. In my mind, I snatch the wig, the tracksuit, and her purse. Disguise myself and walk out right under Heath’s nose like something out of a bad spy movie.

  But no. I close my eyes and turn away from the door. I’m going to have to find another way. Assaulting ill old ladies isn’t an option. I haven’t sunk that far yet.

  I head toward the doors of the convenience store, and I’m just about to push through when something stops me. Outside, parked a couple of pumps down from Cerny’s Mercedes, a green pickup truck. The driver’s-side door is ajar. It has a long white unbroken scratch down the side of it. I inhale sharply.

  A young man, medium, compact build, wearing a gray hoodie, jeans, and a black knit cap, stands on the other side of the truck at the pump, hand on the nozzle. His cap is pushed far back enough to see the brush of close-cropped light-brown hair. He is scanning the pumps.

  I start to move forward again, but something yanks me back by my coat collar.

  “Hold up,” a voice behind me says. It’s Heath. I can smell him—the stink of Cerny’s blood on his clothes or skin—but surely I’m imagining that. “He must’ve followed us here. Did you see him at Baskens? Did you tell him what we did?” Heath twists the collar tight and pulls me back against a rack of Grandma’s cookies and beef jerky.

  “No,” I say.

  He nudges me. “He sees the car. Look.”

  He’s right. Luca’s edged past the pump and is staring at Cerny’s Mercedes.

  “He knows,” Heath says.

  “’Scuse me, sugar.”

  It’s the elderly woman in the purple tracksuit. As she passes, she smiles at us both—a warm, grandmotherly smile. Then, in an instant, she’s out the door, and I realize I have a plan. Or, at least, the beginning of a plan. I face Heath, inch closer to him.

  “We can put it all on him. Cerny, Glenys, all of it.”

  “What?”

  “He knows I’m in danger, and he’s trying to be a hero. We can use that.”

  There’s a beat, then Heath lets out a soft sound of disbelief.

  I meet his gaze. “We lead him somewhere, maybe to the woods where you left Holly. Make it look like he was threatening me. Then kill him.”

  My heart is racing. I’m not sure if anything I’m saying is making sense, but I can see his gears grinding.

  “If we don’t do it now,” I add, “we’re going to have to do it later. You said it yourself. He knows.”

  Heath clears his throat. Runs a finger down my cheek all the way to my lips.

  “We should go back to the car,” I say. “Get him to follow us.”

  His eyes are locked on mine, their intensity dizzying. “Let’s do it,” he says.

  We push out the door. I don’t look in Luca’s direction, but every nerve in my body tells me we have his attention. I’m right, because as soon as we step off the curb and head in the direction of the Mercedes, something whizzes past me, hitting Heath square in the center of his back. He whips around.

  “The fuck—”

  I look down. A set of car keys at our feet. A gift.

  A gift meant for me.

  It only takes me half a second to scoop up the keys, pivot, and run like hell for Luca’s green Tacoma. At the same time, I can see Luca take off, jogging away from the gas station toward the highway. It takes Heath a second or two longer to figure out what’s happened—and to figure out who to chase, me or Luca—but by the time he reaches the truck, I’m locked safely inside, jamming the key in the ignition. Heath yanks at the handle and blazes at me.

  We lock eyes, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much hatred condensed in one human’s face. But he can’t make too much of a racket because there are people everywhere. I put my foot on the brake and grip the key. My body is practically vibrating.

  I look up the highway and see Luca, about a dozen or so yards up the northbound side, pounding the gravel on the shoulder, all stops out. He’s heading in the direction of Dunfree. Run, run, run, I think. Straight to the police.

  Heath follows my gaze, then turns back to me. He runs his finger across his throat. I feel sick, but I crank the truck anyway.

  The next thing I know, he’s darting through the pumps, sprinting in Luca’s direction. Heart punching in my chest, I maneuver around the other cars and roll out onto the highway. Ahead, Luca veers from the shoulder onto the highway too, directly into the oncoming traffic. Heath follows him, and I gasp. A couple of cars screech and skid to avoid hitting them, as Luca tears up the center of the highway, adjacent to the median. Heath is only a couple of yards behind him now, narrowing the distance.

  I’m closing the distance too, between them and me, white-knuckling the wheel, weaving around traffic. Maybe cars are honking. If they are, I don’t register them. I’ve become my heartbeat. My pulsing blood and gulping breath. Every function of my body transformed into a laser aimed at stopping Heath.

  I will hit him with the truck. Crush him under the wheels. I won’t stop until there are smashing lungs, spurting blood, crunching bones.

  We’re the same . . .

  I shake his voice out of my head. It�
�s not true, it never was. And yet here I am, foot on the accelerator, calculating the shrinking distance between the nose of the truck and his body. I’m about to do this monstrous thing. But it has to be done, I know it. And I am the only one who can do it.

  Not because I’m a monster, but because I am not.

  I pull up behind Heath—there’s only a few feet between us, a few yards between him and Luca—and hold steady. This is it. I have to do this now or I’m going to lose my nerve. I inhale, squeeze the wheel, and gun it, the truck leaping forward. But at the same time, Luca swerves up onto the median and onto the other side of the highway, and Heath does the same.

  The next instant, I’m thunking up onto the median too, slowing between the clipped crepe myrtles, then grinding to a stop. Cars whiz past me and I catch my breath, scanning the southbound lanes. Where did Heath go? And where’s Luca? A few seconds pass, and I spot them at last, Luca scrambling up the embankment toward the woods. Heath sprinting across the road in pursuit.

  And then what happens, happens so quickly, I almost can’t believe it.

  A maroon SUV appears out of the dark, slams into Heath, flips him up and over the hood. I watch him slide onto the top of the SUV, then tumble to the asphalt, and a pale-yellow Cadillac runs over him. Front and back wheels. When the Cadillac is past, I can see Heath’s body, a shapeless, motionless lump on the highway. He looks like a stray dog, I think. Roadkill.

  Do I scream? I don’t even know; I don’t hear a thing, not even the sound of my own voice. I only see Heath, motionless on the pavement.

  The SUV and Cadillac screech to a stop, and both drivers jump out. I don’t move because I can’t. A wave of nausea, so intense I’m paralyzed, is slicing through me. I grit my teeth so hard I can feel my temples pulse, and I pray for the sensation to pass. It doesn’t. I lean over and vomit onto the passenger’s-side floor mat.

  When I look up again, I see Luca’s made it all the way up to the top of the embankment. He stands for a minute, surveying the situation below. Back on the road, one of the motorists, the guy from the SUV, is already on his phone. The Cadillac guy is pacing up and down in front of him and yelling. Nobody has approached Heath, not yet. I wonder if it’s because it’s obvious that he’s dead. In an instant, I see Luca turn and disappear into the woods.

  I grip the steering wheel and try to remember how to breathe. The police will be here soon. They’ll figure out that the Mercedes abandoned at the pump is Dr. Cerny’s. They’ll find the iPad inside—the files and Heath’s confession. They may not know how I fit into the equation, but before long, they’ll be looking for me, even if I wasn’t the one who hit him.

  Now more cars are slowing and stopping, their headlights illuminating the road. Another guy’s out and on his phone. An older woman who stopped has got her arm around the Cadillac guy, leading him toward the median. There’s no sign of Luca. I shift into reverse, my hand trembling, then ease onto the gas.

  I roll off the median and go farther up the road where I can hang a U-turn. I drive slowly past Heath and the clot of stopped cars. Nobody even glances my way.

  I ease up to sixty miles an hour. Still nothing happens. No police lights, nothing. I drive and drive and drive, slow and steady down the highway, keeping the truck at an even sixty. All the while, a constant, low humming vibrates through my brain.

  I don’t know how long it takes—maybe thirty, forty-five minutes—before I realize it’s actually me, humming a tune. Sinatra, if you can believe it. Goddamn Sinatra.

  And then I’m sobbing. Loud, inhuman wails and tears pour out of me, and I don’t try and stop them. I am due. Past due. I drive and cry. Drive and cry. For the little girl in an apartment alone. On top of a bunk bed at night, hungry. Sitting in a psychologist’s smoky office, terrified, telling a partial truth that will slither and encircle and squeeze the life out of her for years to come. I cry for the woman who, even for a split second, actually believed she could stay with a murderer. That she could love him.

  But I am alive. I’m alive and driving away from him. I was not willing to dig up a grave and climb in with the monster inside.

  I switch on the radio, and the tears stop. Strangely, I don’t feel the urge to count anything or snap a band on my wrist. I’m wrung out, my body quivering like a dog in a thunderstorm, but just driving seems like enough for me right now. I have no idea where I should go. South, for now, I guess. Back roads all the way, until I hit I-20.

  Then I’ll go west. I don’t have a phone, no money or identification. But west has a good sound to it. I remember having heard somewhere that getting a forged driver’s license, passport, birth certificate is possible—even though I don’t have the slightest clue how to go about it. I think I still have Jessica Kyung’s business card somewhere on me. She might be willing to help me. I hope so. She’s the only option I have right now.

  A cursory inventory of the truck reveals Luca’s stocked it with food, bottles of water, and a wad of bills that looks like it could last me several weeks. And something else. The truck’s license plate is tucked in the sun visor. Luca must’ve taken it off before he caught up with Heath and me at the gas station. The next time I have to stop, I’ll screw it back on. I’ll keep to the side roads. Someone could have witnessed the green truck that was bearing down on Heath Beck right before he was hit. It’s impossible to know.

  The only thing I am sure of is that I want to live. So I will run.

  It’s the one thing I know how to do.

  Eight Months Later

  Twilight in the Canadian summer is a lovely time. Enchanting, some might call it. People who use words like that. People who believe in magic.

  The sun kisses the southwestern side of Bowen Island good night, then disappears into Tunstall Bay, and in an instant, you can see the container-ship lights wink against the purple dark. It’s quite a thing. As often as I can, I watch the whole show from the rickety Adirondack chair on the hilltop deck of the house I look after. I’m usually sipping a glass of whatever I’ve chosen from the local wine shop down near the harbor. I’m not picky—red, white, rosé—as long as it smooths over the rough edges. My current brand of magic.

  A jaunty horn section drifts from outdoor speakers, making its way through the pines and over to my deck. My next-door neighbors, who I haven’t met and don’t intend to, playing their favorite Pandora jazz mix. First Mel Tormé, then Sam Cooke, and Dean Martin, which is fine. Inevitably, however, Sinatra always comes on. Tonight when it happens, my entire body tenses, but that’s the extent of it. I’m past the counting and hair-band snapping. I know another song will always come after.

  Today’s sunset—blue melting into pink, then warming to orangey red—is as spectacular as always. Even so, I’m surprised to find tears dripping down my cheeks. I blot them with the sleeve of my flannel shirt, but don’t move from my chair. I don’t want to go inside—don’t want to take a pill or put on my running shoes and head out for a jog. I mostly walk now, anyway. It feels kinder to my body.

  It’s been eight months since I escaped Heath. Not the first time I’ve sat on this deck and cried. Just the first time I’ve done it because I know everything is going to be okay. So I can sit here and ride out the tears, I guess. Sometimes it’s good to just feel things.

  Behind me, on the drive, there’s the sound of crunching gravel. It sends jolts of electric fear into my arms and legs. Under the chair, my fingers close around my ever-present canister of bear spray. A reflex.

  “Ms. Green?” a man calls from around the side of the house. Somewhere near the foot of the steps.

  The voice is oddly familiar.

  He must’ve cut through the thicket of blackberry bushes alongside the driveway and come around to the back deck. It doesn’t mean he’s a threat. He may have already tried the front door. I keep the alarm on and everything bolted up even when I’m here.

  “Sydney Green? Are you here?”

  Leaping up from my chair and knocking over my glass of wine, I run across the deck
to the giant spruce that grows up through the middle of it. I slip behind the tree. Press my back against the trunk and carefully ease off the safety on the bear spray. The man is standing on the far side of the deck. I can practically feel the vibration of his breathing across the planks of wood. I wish for a gun. A good old-fashioned American revolver, but this is Canada, and I’m not that resourceful.

  “I saw the last name on the mailbox,” the man says. “And the lady down at the market in the cove said she knew a Sydney Green who’s caretaker of this cabin.”

  I can’t place the accent—I think I’ve heard it somewhere, but my heart is hammering so hard, I can’t be sure. Footsteps thud, and that out-of-body panic sensation takes hold. He’s getting closer. I will myself to stay put. To wait until he’s within spraying range. When I judge it’s time, I jump out, executing a neat one-eighty and depressing the trigger in short bursts like the YouTube video instructed. The man leaps backward, yelling and windmilling his arms, eventually stumbling down the deck steps.

  I throw the can at him, run inside the house, and lock the door, just before I hear him yell out.

  “Daphne!”

  At my kitchen table, Luca takes the damp washcloth I offer and mops his red, swollen face for the umpteenth time. From a safe distance, I study him. Navy sweater and black jeans. Worn black combat boots, laced halfway up. Wavy brown hair that he keeps raking off his forehead, even though it just falls back in his eyes every time. It’s grown out since I’ve last seen him.

  My hair’s different too. Pixie length and dark brown. I keep fiddling with it, oddly self-conscious. Also, I keep apologizing. But that’s only fair. I’m a crack shot with bear spray, and even though the level of capsaicin in it is substantially lower than in the human variety of pepper spray, it still hurts. Good thing I didn’t have a gun.