Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(35)

“What’s going on?” Lauren carefully props the paintbrush on the tray and settles herself on the bottom rung of the stepladder.

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.

Not good.

“Marin?”

“I’m just…for one thing, I’m getting ready to put the house on the market, so I’ve been sorting through piles of old things. It’s brutal.”

“I can imagine.” Lauren’s done everything she can to avoid selling this rambling Victorian, the only home her own kids have ever known. Moving might mean leaving town altogether, considering that real estate in suburban Westchester County has skyrocketed over the past two decades, despite the recession.

Regardless of all that’s happened under this roof, Lauren simply can’t afford to leave.

Unlike Marin, who can’t afford to stay.

“I remember how hard it was when I had to go through all of our stuff last summer,” Lauren tells her, but doesn’t mention that she gave almost everything to a tag sale.

Yes, and look where that led.

“Try to just think of it as a miserable stomach flu,” she advises Marin. “You feel awful now, and the actual purge will probably be even worse, but trust me…you’ll feel a lot better once you’ve done it.”

“Thanks. I knew you’d have some helpful advice.”

“Yeah, well…been there, done that.”

Though a drastically different set of circumstances led Marin to become a fellow single mom—circumstances that make them improbable friends—Lauren can relate to her more than just about anyone else in the world.

She wasn’t looking for a confidante, though, when she first got in touch with Marin. Dogged by the press herself after the kidnapping nightmare and Garvey Quinn’s arrest, Lauren felt a strange sense of kinship whenever she opened a newspaper or turned on a television and spotted Garvey Quinn’s wife looking like a deer in headlights.

Poor Marin.

Poor both of us.

“Do you want me to come down there and help you go through everything?” Lauren offers, and holds her breath, waiting—hoping, really—for Marin to turn her down.

She doesn’t necessarily think she’s overstepping the bound of new friendship—though she might be. But in the six months since she and Marin met, they’ve seen each other only on neutral turf, meeting for lunch and dinner at various restaurants. She’s never been to the Upper East Side apartment where Garvey Quinn presumably plotted the atrocious crimes that destroyed life as Lauren and her kids once knew it. She has no desire to set foot in there.

“Thanks, but I think this is something I have to do myself.” Marin sounds resigned. “I just wish I could run away from home for a little while, you know? I’m so sick of dealing with all of this.”

“Why don’t you come up here today and visit?” Lauren offers spontaneously—then wonders what the heck she’s doing. Why would Marin want to do that?

Then again, why not? They’re friends. Plus, Lauren’s bloodstained kitchen walls and floor have been gutted to the studs and completely refurbished.

Great. No blood. How positively inviting.

To Lauren’s surprise, Marin says, “You know, maybe I will…if you don’t mind.”



Pedestrians scurry past Jeremy at a rate that makes his head spin. They all seem to be lost in thought, headphone music, conversation with each other or on their cell phones. They don’t wait for lights to change at crosswalks, weaving skillfully amid gridlocked cars and cabs and buses filled with more distracted, impatient people.

Where are they all going in such a hurry?

What would it be like to be one of them?

Torture, that’s what it would be. Pure torture.

Homesick, he wonders what he’s doing here. Big cities have always made him nervous.

No surprise there.

Every time he finds himself on an urban street, surrounded by strangers and traffic, he flashes back…

What happened right after the woman with the yellow eyes abandoned him is clouded—mercifully so. But there are bits and pieces. People everywhere. Honking horns and sitar music, thousands of voices speaking, shouting, arguing, all in a strange tongue. Steamy air pungent with curry and elephant dung and unwashed bodies.

He was alone for days, perhaps weeks or even months—and it was worse, far worse, than what had happened to him in the foreign hospital. Without his pain medication, he was in agony, crawling and crying, eating scraps of garbage, begging—but not, like the millions of other slum children, begging for food or money. No, he desperately needed someone to listen to him, to help him find his way home, and for a long time, no one—no one—understood what he was trying to say.

Then, at last, someone did.

In the fading light of another agonizing day, as Jeremy was dreading another terrifying night, someone listened, held out a hand, and said in English—in English, thank God!—“Come with me, little boy. I’ll take you home.”

Tears of joy rolled down Jeremy’s filthy cheeks as his prayers were answered.

Then the sun went down, and the nightmare began in earnest.



“Caroline?”

She groans and opens her eyes to see her mother standing over her bed. Closing them again, she murmurs, “I’m sleeping.”