Hell to Pay

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Then she hears a floorboard creak, and her eyes snap open. “Jeremy?”

  Silence.

  Frowning, she stands and returns to the circular entryway. The door to the hall is still propped open, but there’s no sign of Jeremy.

  Hmm. Maybe pregnancy is doing strange things to her hearing, as well.

  About to head back to the couch, she spots a foil-wrapped plate sitting on the welcome mat and bends to pick it up.

  Christmas cookies, she sees, taking a peek. Sugar-sprinkled cutouts in various shapes that represent the Nativity: a star, a lamb, a manger, a stable . . .

  The plate is warm. No note or card, though, and she’s positive she didn’t hear a knock or a voice announcing a visitor.

  “Hello?” Sticking her head out the door, she expects to see a neighbor heading back down the hall, but it’s empty. Whoever it was seems to have just dropped off the plate and run away.

  Oh well. A home-baked treat fresh from the oven—it was a sweet, welcoming gesture from someone, and Lucy is sure she’ll eventually find out whom.

  Maybe the city isn’t so cold and impersonal after all, she decides, thoughtfully biting into a cookie.

  Carl Soto’s footsteps echo on the hardwood floor as he walks back through the empty apartment, having concluded that he’s satisfied with the way the tenants left it and he can return their security deposit. Good. One less thing to worry about.

  He’d been concerned that they might trash the place before leaving. A young married couple, they didn’t seem like the type, but hey, you never know. Especially under the circumstances.

  Evicting the Cavalons hadn’t been easy—wait, that’s wrong. It had been easy. Frightfully easy. All it took was a letter, drafted off a template downloaded from the Internet. He hadn’t even owed them an explanation, according to the terms of the lease.

  Good thing, because the only one he had probably wouldn’t have sat well with them.

  But what would they—or anyone—have done, in his shoes? It’s hard to say no when you’re flat broke and someone’s waving a fistful of cash at you. Even if it’s a total stranger who came out of nowhere with a bizarre request.

  “Are you Carl Soto?” she’d asked, stepping out of the shadows that cold autumn night as he left his latest night job at the gas station.

  “Yeah. Do I know you?” He peered into the darkness, trying to make out her features. He thought she might be a hooker, though they didn’t usually frequent this particular stretch of Westchester Avenue. Besides, a hooker—though he’d met his share—wouldn’t know his name. And even on a frigid winter night, a hooker wouldn’t be bundled from head to toe in some kind of flowing, hooded garment.

  “No, you don’t know me,” she said. “But I need a favor from you.”

  When she reached into the folds of her cloak, he braced himself, figuring she was going for a weapon, about to mug him.

  Ha—quite the opposite.

  She pulled out a thick stack of bills. Hundred-dollar bills, he saw, when she rifled them in front of his nose.

  He instantly lost interest in figuring out what she looked like, forgot about the cold and how tired he was, about his hands that stunk like gasoline, about how much he hated having had to take a second job to make ends meet . . .

  “I’m guessing you might be able to use some spare cash,” she said, and though he couldn’t see her face, he heard the smile in her voice. It unsettled him, but he was too mesmerized by the money in her hand to care that she might be a little . . . off.

  “Who can’t use spare cash?”

  “Thought so. This is yours if you let me move into your apartment over on Post Road. The upstairs apartment.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this had to be some kind of scam. Or maybe a practical joke. His friend Lee was always playing them. Lee, who had told him he was nuts to have bought the old building as an investment property almost ten years ago.

  “That old place is going to need endless maintenance, Carl,” Lee had said. “It’s going to suck you dry.”

  Lee was right about that. Carl would have sold it long ago, if anyone had been buying in this market.

  As Lee pointed out, “Who’d want to live in that old place when they’re putting up all kinds of brand-new high-rise condos downtown? You’ll be lucky if you can get decent tenants.”

  He was right about that, too. But those high-rise buildings were expensive; the rent on Carl’s place was right in line with the young married couple’s budget and in walking distance to the Metro North train station. They’d lived in the apartment for almost a year; it had been vacant for well over a year before that.

  And now he was supposed to believe that people were coming up to him on the street throwing money at him and begging to live there?

  Something snapped inside him as he stared at that wad of money. He was no fool.

  “Too bad, you’re outta luck,” Carl told the cloaked stranger, expecting his friend Lee to jump out at them any second, laughing at his stupid joke. “Someone’s already living there.”

  “I’m serious, Carl.”

  “I’m serious, too. Someone’s living there.”

  “Ask them to leave. I need to move in within the month.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He hesitated, gazed longingly at the money, then at the bushes at the edge of the parking lot. There was no sign of Lee. And she really did sound like she meant business.

  “Who are you? And why—”

  “My name is Mary. Look, I’ll pay you double what you’re getting for rent on the apartment for a year. Up front. In cash.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “Sentimental reasons. I lived there when I was a little girl. I’ll give you an extra five right here on the spot for keeping your mouth shut. You can’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Five bucks?”

  “Five hundred.” She peeled off five bills and held them out to him.

  “You want me to believe that you’re going to just hand me five hundred dollars right here if I get rid of my tenants and let you move into my apartment.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “I told you.”

  Yeah, she lived there as a kid. So what? Sentimentality is worth thousands of dollars?

  Even now, weeks later—with the five hundred bucks long since spent, and a hefty cash deposit in hand once he’d delivered the eviction notice—he doesn’t quite believe her.

  Oh well. Does it matter?

  He’d been able to quit his night job, pay off some bills, even bought a plane ticket to fly down to North Carolina for his oldest granddaughter’s First Communion in May.

  Who says money can’t buy happiness?

  Hell, enough money can buy just about anything, Carl Soto muses, stepping out into the hall and locking the apartment door securely. Anything at all.

  After wearily depositing the final damp cardboard box with the others, Jeremy finds Lucy in the living room, thumb-typing on her phone’s keypad. Wearing jeans and one of his old chambray shirts with the sleeves rolled up, she’s sitting with her sneakered feet tucked beneath her, heedless of the upholstery. Effortlessly pretty, with her long brown hair held back in a simple ponytail, Lucy looks about a decade younger than she is, fresh-faced and carefree.

  Carefree . . . If only that were really the case.

  She looks up expectantly from her phone. “Well? Is that everything?”

  “Yeah, the truck is empty. Finally.”

  “Good.” She pats the seat beside her and he sinks into the sofa.

  “Do me a favor and shoot me if I ever threaten to buy another book. What I just moved could stock an entire library.”

  “It wasn’t just books.”

  “No . . . but there were a lot o
f them. And they weigh a ton.”

  “We probably should have just put them into storage with our furniture. It’s not like we’ll have much time to read once . . .” She trails off momentarily before concluding, “. . . once we’re not taking the train to work anymore.”

  That isn’t what she originally intended to say, Jeremy knows.

  Once the baby comes was probably more like it, but Lucy doesn’t like to talk about that.

  So different from her first pregnancy, when all they did was speculate about their future child, and what parenthood would be like.

  Even the second time, they were optimistic—if cautiously so.

  But now, it’s as though neither of them wants to voice their hope.

  “I’d just be happy if you’re able to get a seat on the subway in the mornings,” he tells her, and she snorts.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Then I’m going to start riding with you.”

  “How’s that going to help?”

  “I’ll tell every jerk who doesn’t give you a seat to bug off. Only I won’t say bug.”

  Lucy grins.

  “I’m serious. You can’t stay on your feet all the way to work every day.”

  “It’s not that far. I’ll be fine.”

  “I just wish . . .” It’s his turn to hesitate before shifting gears. “. . . I wish the subway weren’t so crowded during rush hour.”

  What he’d meant to say was that he wished she didn’t have to work. But she does have to, and he knows it—even though he’s foolishly tried to convince her otherwise. As if she doesn’t know the bills are piling up and they can’t pay them as it is.

  Why, oh why did he follow his heart a decade ago, convincing himself that he was meant to be a social worker, helping kids who were lost souls, as he once had been? Why didn’t he think in practical terms and choose a career that paid more money?

  He can’t even support his pregnant wife. Hell, if it weren’t for his conveniently dead grandmother, they’d be out on the street.

  All right, their parents would never have let that happen, but still . . .

  It’s so hard to look at healthy, vital Lucy, who has always done everything exactly right, and imagine that anything could go physically wrong.

  Yet it has, twice before. And though the doctor more or less told them the double miscarriages might have been a cruel fluke, Jeremy isn’t sure he can accept that. There might be something they’re missing, something that can be done to prevent it this time. Something, anything . . .

  God, I hate feeling helpless.

  “Want me to come with you to drive the truck back up to White Plains?” Lucy asks him.

  “No, you stay here and rest.”

  “All I’ve been doing is resting.” She sets her phone on the coffee table and picks up a foil-covered plate. “Want a cookie?”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “Someone left them for us.”

  “Who?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Jeremy frowns. “Wait . . . what do you mean?”

  “I found the plate by the door. I guess one of your grandmother’s neighbors must have left it—you know, welcoming us to the building.”

  “My grandmother kept to herself. The only neighbor of hers that I’ve ever even met is Chiara Ronzoni.”

  “You mean the opera singer?”

  “She must be eighty years old by now if she’s still even alive. And if she is, I guarantee you that she’s not baking cookies for us,” Jeremy tells her, remembering that Elsa called the two women dueling divas, and for good reason.

  “Well, whoever made them . . . they’re great.”

  “You mean you ate them?” He gapes at Lucy in alarm.

  What the heck is she thinking, eating cookies from God-knows where? Have the pregnancy hormones clouded her judgment?

  “I saved you some. Geez, don’t look at me like that—I was hungry.”

  “That’s not what I’m— Come on, Lucy, we’re in the city. You don’t just—”

  “I know where we are,” she interrupts, and the gleam in her light green eyes makes it very clear that she hasn’t forgotten the way he cut her off earlier, when she was telling him about her brother’s office.

  He felt terrible the moment he snapped at her. He always feels terrible when he gets angry.

  Most of the time, he can keep his temper in check using techniques he learned long ago, in anger management therapy. Thankfully, the occasions he’s found himself truly flying off the handle have been few and far between—very rarely in recent years, and never in Lucy’s presence.

  Sometimes lately, though, he feels like the deep, dark well of anger inside him—fed by the stress of the move, his grandmother’s death, the third pregnancy—has been transformed into a bubbling hot spring.

  According to his shrink, Dr. Kitzler, that’s not out of the ordinary, especially for someone who’s suffered as Jeremy has.

  “Overreactive anger often stems from long-suppressed rage,” he told Jeremy. “All those years of abuse have taken their toll on you.”

  All those years . . .

  Being shuttled from foster home to foster home, then finding a loving family at last, only to be snatched away, abandoned in a foreign country, and ultimately condemned to spending the remainder of his childhood with a sick pedophile who forced Jeremy to call him Papa . . .

  He survived—but only because he did what he had to do.

  He hates the memory of it; hates that any of it ever happened; hates that he can’t change the past, or seem to forget it.

  Most of all, he hates that it isn’t over, even now, and never will be. There was never closure—Papa was never charged with abuse. No one even knew about it when he was still alive. Not that he had a circle of friends or family. He kept the residents of the small California town at arm’s length. But they knew who he was. They’d have been shocked to learn that the mild-mannered man who waved to his neighbors and tipped the paper boy every week was a dangerous pedophile.

  When Jeremy finally had a chance to tell his story to the authorities, long after Papa died, there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not even any evidence that it happened.

  And so, Jeremy is doomed to carry around the anger and hurt forever.

  And he can’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not even his wife.

  Lucy does know what he did to La La Montgomery—how he attacked her the first time, when they were children, and again when he smashed her skull with an andiron that day she kidnapped Renny and tried to kill Caroline.

  Lucy knows all that, but she doesn’t know the rest. She doesn’t grasp the extent of what he’s capable of doing . . .

  She doesn’t know what else you actually did.

  Even Dr. Kitzler never knew.

  Knew—past tense.

  Jeremy hasn’t been to therapy in a few years now.

  He stopped going not long after he and Lucy were married. He was happy then—so happy. He convinced himself that the euphoria would last forever.

  But gradually, life got back to normal. The honeymoon was over, as they say. Troubling memories began to pop up again, along with the familiar anger—and guilt.

  Guilt—over what he did, years ago—is the most dangerous emotion of all.

  For all those years of therapy, he carried the overwhelming burden into—and right back out of—every session, and he worried that he might spontaneously confess.

  His own social work training told him enough about ethics and confidentiality to know that he has to tread carefully when it comes to discussing his past with anyone, even Dr. Kitzler.

  The “least harm” principle would come into play if he spilled his secret, and it would be up to Dr. Kitzler to decide whether to keep Jeremy’s confidence, or turn him in. If the psychiatrist decided that the
least harm would come from the latter option, Jeremy would lose everything.

  And now that he’s built a life for himself, with a wife he loves and a baby on the way, he has more to lose than ever before.

  Nothing—no one—is going to take that away.

  He can never risk therapy again. He can never be tempted to tell anyone what he did.

  “Are you okay?” Lucy asks, and he realizes she’s watching him closely.

  “Sure. It’s just been a hell of a day. I’m tired and hungry.”

  “Here—have a cookie.” Lucy offers the plate again.

  He takes it from her and she starts to smile, then frowns when he sets it on the marble coffee table.

  “Goose, you just don’t go eating stuff when you don’t know where it came from, like . . . like . . .”

  “Snow White?” she supplies when he falters.

  “Snow White?”

  “She ate an apple poisoned by an evil queen in disguise.”

  “Then I’m sure there wasn’t a happy ending.”

  “Really? You don’t know? I can’t believe you really aren’t familiar with Snow White.”

  “Yeah, well, my childhood wasn’t exactly filled with fairy tales.”

  Lucy stiffens. “I know that. I’m sorry.”

  Of course she knows. Why remind her?

  Yet every once in a while, when someone mentions some kind of mundane childhood experience that Jeremy was denied, he still feels a stab of resentment. Even though he’s come to terms with the fact that he was robbed of his childhood. That he’ll never get it back. He’ll never be like everyone else.

  And it’s certainly not that he wants—or needs—pity. He never did, and especially not after all these years, from Lucy or anyone else.

  Anyone else . . .

  That voice, La La Montgomery’s voice, echoes through his head sometimes, even now. She’s dead, and yet he hears her still.

  I’ve done everything you’re too weak to do. I’ve punished them all for what they did to you, and this is the thanks I get?

  She’d said he was weak, called him a coward. But he faced her down, and he won, and he thought he’d never be afraid of anything ever again.

  He was wrong about that.