Every Step You Take: A Psychological Thriller

by Avery Lane

  Riley couldn’t even scream.

  The shock had taken over. She watched as Sierra pulled the knife back out and threw it aside.

  “No!” she cried. “No, no, no! Brighton!” Sierra’s eyes looked wild. She looked up for Brighton. “Get something to stop the bleeding! Anything!”

  Brighton grabbed the roll of canvas that Sierra had by her embroidery. He tore into them, handing strips of it to Sierra who quickly wrapped them around Riley’s wound.

  Riley’s vision was fading again. She looked over at Gabriel. He was still moving, groaning in agony.

  “We have to take them to the hospital,” Brighton pleaded. “You got him pretty bad. And Riley – she’s – how is this going to affect the baby?”

  “And what do we tell them?” Sierra seethed. “That I stabbed them?”

  “I was breaking and entering,” Gabriel grunted in desperation, his breathing rapid and wheezy. “You had reason to attack. Just tell them that.” He was trying to pull himself up, but the wound in his back had his muscles haywired. He collapsed again, breathing shallower now.

  “Gabriel,” Riley said. Her voice was weak. Breathy in a way that made her concerned. She still barely felt any pain, but something didn’t feel right. “Gabriel, where’s my mom?”

  “She’s fine,” he rasped. “I got her. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m sorry, Riley. I’m so sorry,” Sierra cried. She cradled Riley in her lap, stroking her hair. Riley could feel Sierra’s tears falling on her. She could feel the vibration of her body as the sobs ripped through Sierra’s chest.

  Then everything went black.

  43

  Riley woke up to the same sensation she had felt when she lost consciousness.

  Someone stroking her hair.

  She opened her eyes to find Judy sitting on the hospital bed. The slightest smile spread on her face when their eyes met.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Judy said. “Everything will be fine.”

  “Mom,” Riley managed to force out of her throat.

  “I thought I was going to lose you,” she replied.

  “You always think you’re going to lose me,” Riley joked. She hoped Judy was in the mood to receive it. To her relief, Judy laughed.

  “This isn’t the same, Riley! You were just stabbed!” Judy guffawed. It was weird to hear her say those words in such a jovial manner. “But you’re going to be okay. The doctor said everything will heal nicely.” Judy bit down hard on her trembling lip, looking skyward as she tried to will the tears back into her eyes.

  “What?” Riley asked, frightened. “Is it Gabriel? Is he okay?”

  “Yes,” Judy whispered. “He’ll be fine too.”

  “So I’ll be fine and he’ll be fine. Then what is it?”

  “When you were born, we weren’t sure you’d make it,” Judy said. “But you did. Because you’ve always been so, so strong. But then Jujube left. And I lost your father. After all that, I just couldn’t see that anymore. I thought you were some fragile, porcelain doll that I had to protect with all my might. Not because you weren’t strong enough, but because I wasn’t strong enough. Because I didn’t know how to raise you with the truth.”

  “I understand,” Riley said, nodding. “Please don’t cry, Mom. I really do understand now.”

  “I hope you can forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. We do what we think is right at the time. We never know how it’ll turn out. But if you just told me…I could have helped you,” Riley said. She cleared her throat in an attempt to sound stronger, to reassure Judy. “I could have helped you,” she repeated. It sounded convincing this time. “If I had known what made you this way, I would have understood better. We could have gone through it together.”

  “I couldn’t burden you with it, Riley. I didn’t want you to somehow think it was your fault what happened to Jujube and what happened to Dad. I was afraid that’s what it would look like if I told you.”

  Riley wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. It had all been done. It was all in the past now. The truth was out there but it didn’t change the way that any of them had led their lives.

  Judy ended up where she was.

  Riley ended up where she was.

  And Jujube became Sierra.

  “How exactly is Gabriel doing?” Riley asked. “It looked so bad, Mom. It looked really, really bad.”

  “He’s really okay,” Judy insisted. “The doctor said it was a subcutaneous wound. It didn’t hit anything that would do permanent damage, luckily. I’m not sure it would’ve been the same if he didn’t have all that excess muscle.”

  “Excess muscle,” Riley muttered, laughing just a bit. “And how did he get you out? How did he know where we were?”

  “You’ll have to talk to him yourself,” Judy said. “All I know is that he climbed up through the window and got me. Then he used the same rope Brighton used to tie me up and climbed back out with me on his back. It was terrifying, but we somehow made it.”

  “He left Margaret alone at home?”

  “No,” Judy chuckled, shaking her head. “She was in the car when he put me in there! The man brought his elderly mother on a rescue mission. He must have been pretty confident he’d be coming back.”

  “I wasn’t,” Riley said. “I wasn’t confident any of us were going to make it.”

  “I was so frightened in the car alone with Margaret,” Judy explained. “I could hear the commotion upstairs through the window. I was afraid that we would both learn tonight what it meant to lose a child.”

  “Did she know what was going on?”

  “She was more present than was convenient,” Judy said, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner in an attempt to make Riley laugh. “But Gabriel had called the cops already. They took us here to get checked out. And we’re fine. They just gave me an IV and I felt a lot better.”

  “I thought they drugged you,” Riley replied. “You seemed so out of it.”

  “They put allergy medicine in some vodka and made me drink it. I didn’t know, but it does a number on you.”

  Allergy medicine in vodka? She used enough allergy meds to know that those things didn’t mix. It caused an unbelievable drowsiness, like getting roofied.

  It made you black out.

  It dawned on Riley that Sierra may had done the same thing to her those nights before she woke up with Brighton.

  “I gave birth to a nightmare, didn’t I?” Judy asked. Riley frowned.

  “I thought you were referring to me for a second. But then I remembered.”

  “You were a dream,” Judy replied. “I was talking about your…mother.”

  “Sierra – Jujube...whatever her name is,” Riley said. “She never was and never will be my mother.” She squeezed Judy’s hand. “You mothered me enough to last me several lifetimes.”

  Judy laughed a boisterous laugh. Riley was relieved. Another risky joke.

  But it paid off.

  44

  Gabriel hadn’t wanted to leave Riley’s side at all, but he had to get home to Penny and Margaret. He figured he’d do that first rather than stick around and spend however much time he’d need to placate Riley and convince her to come with him. Riley didn’t seem in a place to be reasoned with.

  But then he thought to badger Paul some more.

  He called again, offering up cash to find Judy. Paul didn’t want to take a job from a man who repeatedly threatened his life, but Gabriel offered to pay double what Judy paid.

  And it was then that they realized they weren’t talking about the same Judy. And that Paul’s Judy was actually Sierra. At which point, Paul informed Gabriel of that phone call that Sierra had forced him to make.

  So it turned out Paul wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

  Together, they concocted a plan. Paul would ask to pick up his final check early since he needed to go out of town. There, he would look to see if anything was out of place. When he saw Riley, he knew there was trouble.


  And when he told Gabriel, the wheels turned. He climbed a dumpster and made the leap up to the second floor. He hung from windowsills, swinging his body from each window until he peeked in to find the right one to enter.

  To his shock, the third window he looked into contained a small room where Judy sat alone. Tied up.

  “And then I got stabbed,” Gabriel said, a silly grin on his face. “And then you got stabbed!”

  He concluded the story from his own hospital bed, clearly still hopped up on some very strong painkillers. Judy had taken Margaret home, leaving Riley alone with Gabriel now. He looked so peaceful for someone who had sustained a pretty bad stab wound.

  “Hey, did I hear Sierra say you were pregnant?” Gabriel asked, looking dazed and confused. “Or did I imagine that?” Riley gave him a quick squeeze of his hand.

  “She did say that, but I’m not.”

  “Oh, good,” he nodded, considering the fact. Then he turned back towards Riley. “Wanna get pregnant?” he teased, a sleepy smile on his face.

  “God,” Riley smiled. “How charming.”

  She was charmed, though.

  Epilogue: One Year Later

  Brighton was what Riley could have been in so many ways.

  It upset her to know that he would be punished just as harshly as Sierra. Riley thought that seemed unfair. It was hard for the law to understand what it was like to be under someone’s thumb like that. How hard it was to break out of that sort of control.

  She was lucky that Evan never coerced her to break the law, although she wondered if it could have come to that. He was a vindictive man and Riley was just another tool in his manipulative arsenal.

  There were days where she felt for Sierra too. She was a wayward child who had misconstrued her parents’ intentions and carried it with her until it festered into a darkness that couldn’t be turned around.

  And perhaps there was a genetic element they hadn’t considered. Robert had to have suffered quite a mental struggle if he decided his suicide was the best option for everyone. Perhaps Sierra shared that gene with her father – a sensitivity to their difficult surroundings that ultimately wore away at their sanity and souls.

  Riley felt for them. She felt for everyone. And she felt it all so hard.

  But all that sympathy in Riley’s blood wasn’t entirely her own doing. It probably had at least something to do with the new hormones.

  “She can just call me grandma, it’s okay!” Judy exclaimed, setting out the milk and sugar for everyone’s tea. Riley sat on one side of the dining table with Judy while Gabriel and Margaret sat opposite them.

  “But you’re not going to be her grandmother, you’re going to be her great grandmother,” Riley said, running her hands over her small baby bump.

  “Oh God, that makes me sound so old!” Judy said, scrunching up her nose. “Listen, this is different. This isn’t a lie, this is semantics. I will tell her that I am technically her great-grandmother, but that it’s too much of a mouthful to say all that.”

  “Fine,” Riley rolled her eyes.

  “This is all very confusing,” Margaret said. “I think we should just stop talking so much and eat, shall we?”

  Riley smiled, watching as Gabriel and Margaret dug into their chicken pot pie, completely uninterested in Riley and Judy’s silly argument. Like mother, like son. Gabriel had no skin in the game on what everyone would be calling everyone. All he knew or cared about was that he’d be called Dad.

  And what a great dad he was going to be.

  Riley cradled her belly, thinking of the truths her own daughter might need to know one day. Like where Mommy and Daddy’s scars come from or the fact that Mommy had been married before. She would have to eventually know about Evan and Sierra and Brighton. She would have to learn about all those things one day.

  But as Riley watched the peaceful family dinner unfolding before her, she wondered how long she could go without telling her. She wondered if it was even necessary. All she knew was that she would let her daughter live this happy, peaceful future before them for as long as she could possibly let her.