Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(20)

No. She can’t let herself do that.

She pushes her way to a stack of tubs against the wall. Ancient history back here—maybe this will be easier to deal with.

The topmost one is full of clothing.

Marin lifts out the first item, a plain old blue T-shirt.

Why would I have saved this?

Then she spots the flaps in the bodice and realizes it’s a nursing top. There are a dozen more; nursing bras, too, and nightgowns, even maternity dresses. She saved them all.

Didn’t she realize, after the disastrous circumstances of Annie’s birth, that there would be no more babies? Was she really holding out hope for another child?

She remembers being terrified that Caroline wasn’t going to survive her illness; terrified that after bearing three children, she would be left with only one.

Tears fall freely as she sorts through the remnants of early motherhood, remembering the days of morning sickness and labor pains and endless wee-hour feedings…

With Annie, anyway. She’s such an easygoing kid now that Marin rarely remembers what a demanding, fussy, colicky baby she’d been.

After a few exhausting months, the pediatrician said she didn’t need to nurse in the middle of the night. “She’s not hungry, she just wants attention. She’ll learn to comfort herself if you let her cry it out.”

Cry it out? Marin was aghast.

Not Garvey, though. He’d wanted to let her cry it out beginning when she came home from the hospital.

Garvey had his reasons, Marin knows, for resenting Annie from the moment she was born. No…even before she was born. When prenatal testing confirmed his worst fears, he was faced, for the second time in his life, with an unwanted child. And for the second time, he told Marin they weren’t going to keep it. It, like some castoff object and not a person.

Bastard.

Marin had learned the hard way not to let anyone rip her own flesh and blood from her arms. All that talk about what a great gift she’d bestow upon a perfect stranger…

This time, she ignored it, determined to keep her baby, to raise Annie with enough love to make up for everything.

And I have. I’ve done all that…

For Annie.

I’ve done for her what I didn’t have the strength to do for Jeremy.

If I’d found the strength to do the same for Jeremy, would he be alive right now?

Marin wipes away her tears, dumps the heap of nursing clothes into a black garbage bag, and ties it shut.

There.

One bittersweet chapter of her past, closed forever.



Driving over to the Long Hill Road Sunoco in midday traffic, Brett found his imagination carrying him to some dark places.

Now, spotting Elsa’s dark blue Volvo sitting at the edge of the gas station parking lot, he exhales for what feels like the first time since he spoke to her back at the office.

He pulls up alongside Elsa’s car. Sitting behind the wheel, she raises a fingertip to her lips and gestures at the backseat.

Seeing Renny curled up back there, small and defenseless, sound asleep, Brett feels sick inside. If Elsa is right—and she’s not the one who’s imagining things—then someone, some monster, in the truest sense of the word, was in Renny’s room last night as she slept.

God only knows what might have happened if she hadn’t woken up and called for help.

It was Elsa who went in there, not you. You rolled over and went back to sleep. How could you?

If anything had happened to his little girl…

But nothing did.

And nothing will.

Because Brett knows, deep down inside, that his wife is sometimes frighteningly fragile; that her imagination can be vivid and powerful; that her mental health history includes episodes of delusion…

But he’d thought—hoped, prayed—all that was behind her now.

Brett turns off the car and climbs out. Elsa does the same, leaving the door open. Wordlessly, she shows him the Spider-Man action figure.

He stares down at it.

“Is that…?”

“Jeremy’s?” Elsa swallows hard. “Maybe. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like—the one that went missing with him—but—”

Her voice breaks, and Brett pulls her close, his thoughts whirling through the possibilities:

It might be a colossal coincidence. Maybe it didn’t even fall out of the car. This is a public place. Maybe some little boy lost it…

Or maybe it was tucked somewhere among the Cavalons’ possessions for all these years and Renny came across it and carried it with her…

Or maybe Elsa herself found it somewhere, or bought it somewhere, and—and she forgot about it, or she’s delusional, or…

“Brett, say something.”

“Don’t worry,” he says automatically. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

He opens his mouth to contradict her, but thinks better of it. She’s right. He doesn’t know that. Christ, right now he doesn’t know anything.

“Did you discuss this with anyone?” he asks, releasing her.

“Not yet. I didn’t want to make any calls until I’d talked to you.”

“We have to report the break-in now…don’t you think?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “I mean, I think so.”