Every Step You Take: A Psychological Thriller

by Avery Lane

  “I didn’t want you to feel bad,” Judy explained. “Everything I did was because I didn’t want you to feel bad. I wanted you to have the life I couldn’t give Jujube.”

  “I know that now,” Riley said. “But why didn’t you just tell me about her? I could’ve handled it. You let me believe I was an only child. You let me believe I was your miracle baby. That you were only able to give birth that one time.”

  “You were my miracle baby,” Judy insisted.

  “Why did dad kill himself? What did he do?”

  The door opened with such violence that Riley and Judy screamed.

  Brighton stood on the other side, staring down at the two women with a complete blankness.

  “Who are you?” Judy cried. “Why have you taken us here?”

  He bent down, picking Riley up off the ground.

  “No!” Judy screamed. “No, please no!”

  Riley could still hear her screaming as Brighton let the door shut behind them.

  “What are you doing?” Riley asked. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t say a word.

  He kicked open yet another door before setting her down on some cold tiles.

  Then he left.

  Riley sat against the wall, realizing now that she was in a bathroom. It was barebones, just another little room divided from the rest of the studio. There was a wide, porcelain sink, and beside it, a toilet.

  Sitting on the closed lid was Sierra.

  She was dressed unusually for her, in just an old, loose tank top and a pair of gym shorts. Her face looked tired. Her black hair was pulled into an unkempt ponytail behind her.

  It was then that Riley noticed the scrapes on her knees, the scratches on her neck. Riley had definitely struggled before Sierra was able to take her.

  “What are you doing, Sierra?” Riley asked. Sierra didn’t look at her. “Why’d you take my mom too?”

  Sierra remained silent before holding her fist out in front of her, right before Riley’s face. She released her fingers one by one, dramatically, until a silver chain dropped from her fist and dangled from between her thumb and forefinger.

  “My bracelet,” Riley said.

  “Nope,” Sierra laughed. She tossed the bracelet at Riley. It skidded across the tiles. Where her bracelet should read Riley, this one read Jujube.

  “I don’t…” She was going to say she didn’t understand, but then it her. Everything. All at once. “You…you’re lying about your age. You’re not thirty-five.”

  “Can’t blame a girl for wanting to be young, right?” Sierra said, her voice teasing and singsong, as if they weren’t in this bizarre scenario. As if they were just getting drinks during happy hour.

  “You’re Jujube,” Riley breathed. “You’re my sister.”

  40

  “A whole decade,” Riley scoffed. She felt bitter now. She had been duped a thousand times over. “God, you were really pushing it.”

  “You didn’t notice,” Sierra snapped. “No one did.”

  “You lied to Brighton this whole time?”

  “He doesn’t care how old I am,” Sierra smirked. “Besides, he knows everything now and he’s still with me.”

  “Shouldn’t it matter a little?” Riley asked. “He wanted to have children with you.”

  “We can still have children.”

  “Not if you can’t get pregnant.”

  “I can get pregnant just fine!” Sierra snapped.

  Riley wasn’t about to be sensitive with this topic anymore. Not when Sierra was a straight up psycho. Not when Sierra was Jujube.

  “So what are you doing?” Riley asked. “What is all this? Why’d you kidnap our mother? What did she do to you?”

  Riley suddenly recalled all the times Sierra complained about her parents. How hands off they were. How similar they were to Gabriel’s parents. How much she hated it. It didn’t sound anything like Judy, but Riley got it now. That method had failed with Jujube. Jujube ran away, for whatever reason, and never came back. So when Riley, her miracle baby happened, she vowed to do everything exactly the opposite manner.

  “My mother is the reason we’re all here,” Sierra said. “She barely raised me. Barely wanted to. Then she turns around and treats you the way she did. Raised you to be tortured and scared. Drove you to a man like Evan and then left you in the dust.”

  “Can’t you understand though? She was alone. She didn’t know how to handle things. Yes, maybe she messed me up a little, but she didn’t mean to. She just wanted to do things right and that’s what she thought was right at the time. She didn’t have our father to help.”

  “My father,” Sierra scoffed. “He’s just a bleeding heart martyr. He chose to leave my mother behind like a coward. He didn’t have to. He just couldn’t handle any basic obstacle in life. He couldn’t handle a teenaged daughter who felt wayward and scared and needed guidance. He thought little trinkets like a bracelet could solve all our problems.”

  “What did he do to you?” Riley asked. “What did he feel so guilty about that he had to end his own life?”

  “Hell if I know. He probably that it was something he could do to redeem himself,” Sierra replied. “He drove me to leave. He called me lazy. He called me irresponsible. He called me stupid and heartless. I was only fifteen.”

  “That’s awful,” Riley said. “I’m so sorry he said those things.” Was that it? Was that all it was? Was that really all it took to upset Sierra so much?

  “I left that day,” Sierra said. “I threw my clothes into the river hoping they’d think I was dead. So they’d never come looking for me. I wanted to start over. Without them.”

  “Why did you have to leave? Why did you do this? If they never hit you, they never hurt you physically, what was so urgent that you had to leave home?”

  “You,” Sierra said. Her voice was soft now as she looked at Riley. “Me leaving was your only chance for peace. If I had stayed, you would have grown up in a household in constant battle. You would have lived in a war zone. How was I to know that my father was so weak he’d go and off himself? How was I to know that my mother would snap, go insane, be someone I never knew her to be? I thought I was doing what was best for you. It was all I could offer you, don’t you understand?”

  Sierra sat down beside Riley, untying the rope around her wrists. Then, she handed her a tall water bottle.

  “Drink,” Sierra commanded.

  “Why? What is this?”

  “It’s water,” Sierra replied. Riley eyed her suspiciously. “I’m not lying, it’s just water. You need to drink.”

  Riley didn’t think she had a choice. She took a cautious sip. It tasted like normal spring water.

  “Faster,” Sierra said.

  “Why?” Riley asked. “I’m not going to do it until you tell me why.”

  From the pocket of her gym shorts, Sierra pulled out a white stick. A pregnancy test.

  The waistband of her shorts dipped when she retrieved it, just enough so that Riley could make out the glint of a scar across Sierra’s flat belly. Sierra ran her fingers over it.

  “See, I can get pregnant,” Sierra replied. “And I can stay pregnant. But I had a little trouble, as you know. The miscarriage. The early birth.”

  Riley raised an eyebrow.

  “You were so small…” Sierra said, choking up. “I felt so, so bad when I saw you like that. But I was too young. I kept hearing that it’s good to have children when you’re young but I was too young then. Too small. My hips were too narrow. I was too stressed out. I don’t know what happened, but you came early. They had to cut you out of me. I was so scared.”

  It was as if the world had fallen away around them and Riley now existed in a total void, alone with Sierra. She watched as this beautiful, composed woman sobbed, kneeling on the ground beside Riley as if begging for forgiveness.

  How could this woman be her mother? They were nothing alike. They didn’t look alike. Didn’t act alike. Riley had more in common with Judy than she had with Sierra.


  “I just want a second chance,” Sierra continued, speaking into her folded hands as she slumped over her knees. “With you. With a new baby. This new baby I was supposed to have. But now it’s too late. I missed my chance. It took me far too long to find someone like Brighton. Someone who listened to me and cared for me. Someone who wasn’t some irresponsible druggie like your father was. But he was young too. Nineteen, I think. He knew he could take advantage of me and he did. And then he was just…gone.”

  Riley could see the glint of red and grey roots peeking out from Sierra’s dark hair. Her real hair color. The red that she was born with. The grey that gave away her true age.

  “Brighton was everything I wanted in a husband. Everything I knew would be the perfect father. He was willing to do things my way and I knew that my way was best now. I had a very long time to figure out what was right. But we waited too long. And we tried and tried and miscarriage after miscarriage, I realized it wasn’t going to happen. But I wanted this. I wanted my second chance. We kept trying, but I also wanted to see you again. So I went looking for you. I sent Paul to find you and when I did, when I learned you were doing so well and you owned your own business and you were married, God, I felt so proud. Then I realized I had no reason to be proud. I had nothing to do with your success. You were whatever you were because of my mother. Because of how she raised you. Because as much as she may have made your life miserable, she didn’t fail you the way she failed me. She got a second chance to do things right. Why couldn’t I? I wanted that too. I wanted my own child, with my genes, my blood. And I wanted her to be perfect. The way I know we can be. The way we have yet to be.”

  Riley stared at the pregnancy test in Sierra’s hands. She understood fully what had happened now.

  “You wanted Brighton to get me pregnant,” Riley said, choking on her words as she realized. Sierra probably knew that she hadn’t been taking the pill thanks to Paul’s constant surveillance. Or worse yet, maybe she was the one who had taken them. Maybe it was Sierra who had broken into the apartment that one time, and not Evan. “So that first night I woke up next to him…we had…we did…”

  “It didn’t stick though, did it?” Sierra laughed, scornfully.

  “And Paul saw me buying tampons...” Riley felt sick. “So…so you tried again.”

  “Oh, c’mon. I could tell you liked him,” Sierra said. “Brighton has that effect on women.”

  “You babysat Gabriel,” Riley replied. “You knew him. You acted like you didn’t. You acted like you didn’t know me. You deceived all of us. Even Brighton. You control Brighton like he’s your slave. You’ve brainwashed him. You treat him just like Evan treated me.”

  “You never thanked me for getting rid of Evan, by the way,” Sierra replied. “And here I thought that was a pretty good gift.”

  “It was you…” Riley’s jaw dropped. The surveillance footage had shown two men. That’s what the police said. But Sierra was tall. In the right clothes with her hair covered, she could possibly be mistaken for a man in a grainy video. “You and Brighton…”

  “We didn’t mean to kill him,” Sierra explained. “We just wanted to scare him off. Brighton, that man just doesn’t know his own strength.” The cuts and bruises on Brighton’s hands. The black eye and the busted lip…those weren’t from Sierra. They were from Evan.

  “So why did you bring my mom here?” Riley asked, suddenly horrified.

  “My mom. She’s not your mom,” Sierra said, sounding almost like a petulant child. She sighed. “Okay, so how do I explain this? Judy…Judy’s kind of in the way of our plans.”

  “How?” Riley asked. “She didn’t even know you were alive until you obviously told her to lure her out here. How did you even do it?”

  “Oh, that was easy,” Sierra said. “I had Paul call her. We pretended I was a psychiatrist and that I suspected my patient was potentially her missing daughter. I dangled all the right things in front of her – the nickname, Jujube. The right year I went missing. The pregnancy.”

  “She always held out hope you’d come back,” Riley realized. That was why Judy was so tied to their upstate home. Why she wouldn’t move back to the city, even when Riley did.

  “Yeah, yeah, if she’s such a great mother how did she let me get knocked up at fifteen?” Sierra scoffed. “She did bring me my bracelet though. And I have yours somewhere, I had it the whole time. Now we can match.” Riley eyed Sierra, seeing how insane she truly was. She remembered that day Gabriel asked her about wearing a white jumper to a messy dinner – whether that made her confident or just a risk-taker. Riley could see now that Sierra was neither. Sierra was just plain old crazy.

  “What are you going to do to my…to your mother?” Riley asked. She knew the answer, but she had to hear it.

  “Oh, you know. Put her out of her misery.”

  “She doesn’t have to be miserable, Sierra,” Riley said. “We can all live together, peacefully. We can work it out. It’ll be fine.”

  “We can work it out, you and me,” Sierra replied. “And the baby we’re going to have. But Judy doesn’t get to be a part of this picture.”

  “She’s an elderly woman, Sierra,” Riley said. “She’s harmless. She couldn’t possibly get in the way of…”

  “What do you think she’d do when she learned you were pregnant? She’d have questions. She’d want to be involved. She would pretend like this was her first grandkid the way she pretended you weren’t her grandkid. She’d continue the ruse and extend the lies into yet another generation of our family.”

  “How about me?” Riley asked. “How do I factor into this? How do I trust that you’re not going to just take my child and leave?”

  “I’m not going to do that,” Sierra said, stroking Riley’s hair. “No, of course I wouldn’t, sweetheart. We would all do this together. The right way.”

  “And what would we tell the kid?” Riley asked. “Would we tell her the truth? Would that really be any better than a normal family?” It was just a hypothetical, but it suddenly dawned on Riley why Judy had lied. It was so much easier that way. So much better for Riley at the end – only because the other option was so much worse. Riley had always hoped for a better life, not realizing she had already gotten the better of the two options she was presented with.

  “Drink,” Sierra said, her voice militant yet again.

  “Sierra, we have to – ”

  “Drink the water!” Sierra shrieked. “Just drink!”

  Riley did as she was told, afraid of what Sierra might do next. She wondered if it was possible that Brighton was in the other room, ready to kill Judy. She thought of all the power tools, all the means they had to dispose of her body.

  Then she wondered if Sierra would eventually turn on her. She wondered if maybe Riley would eventually be another roadblock in Sierra’s happy dream life. If Riley were to get pregnant, maybe Sierra would be the sweet version of herself only until Riley gave birth. Then she’d change her mind and dispose of Riley the way she would dispose of Judy.

  That way she could have that child who shared both her and Brighton’s blood. She could finally live that dream she had always wanted.

  41

  “May I have some privacy?” Riley asked when she finally felt like her bladder would burst.

  “I changed your diapers,” Sierra scoffed.

  “Well, I’m an adult now and I can’t pee with an audience,” Riley replied. What she wanted to say was, “How many could you have actually changed when you ran off so soon after?” But her mind was still reeling and she was in survival mode now. She’d do what Sierra said, but she would try to maintain some sort of control. Anything that might mean she could get out of this alive.

  Sierra rolled her eyes, getting up off the floor next to Riley before pulling her up with her. Riley’s ankles were still bound.

  “This is going to be hard to do with my legs like this,” Riley said. She pulled at the rope, but it was knotted in some insane way that she couldn’t g
et out of. She’d need a knife.

  “Find a way,” Sierra replied, turning away.

  “Could you please…just step outside,” Riley asked. “I’m going to need to maneuver in certain ways that won’t be pretty. And I can’t do that with you in here. You can stand by the door and leave it open if you have to.”

  Sierra huffed, but she did as she was asked.

  Riley pulled her legs up onto the toilet seat, maneuvering in that ugly manner she knew she would have to so she could pee on that stupid stick.

  Then she set it aside.

  Riley wasn’t sure what she would do if she was actually pregnant. She was pretty sure that if it turned up negative, Sierra would just usher her out to have sex with Brighton again. She shuddered at the thought.

  She thought about Gabriel. And Margaret.

  Margaret who had inadvertently given her the first clues she needed to learn that her whole life was a lie. Sierra claimed she didn’t feel loved by her family which was why she was forced to run into the arms of another young boy. But Margaret had taught her father how to fishtail Sierra’s hair. And it actually happened, as evidenced by the photo Riley found.

  Why was Sierra incapable of seeing the love that was there?

  “Our dad…” Riley started. “Or, well, your dad…what was he like?”

  Sierra’s back was still to her, but Riley could see that she had flinched.

  “He loved his work,” Sierra replied. “He spent all day in the metal shop. He loved his wife. It was like they loved each other too much to have time to love me.”

  “What made you feel that way?” Riley was trying to be empathetic. To ask questions without sounding like she was contradicting Sierra.

  “My friends’ parents…they were involved in their lives. They suggested sports and piano lessons and playdates. They had an opinion on what they should do. Judy and Robert just thought they knew better than all the other suburban parents. They were so sure of themselves and their free-range children theory that they just…let me flounder.”