All the Dangerous Things(60)

When I woke up this morning, there was water on the carpet, the bathroom floor. Damp towels growing musty in a heap and a clean nightgown replacing the one I had fallen asleep in. Fresh mud caked to my skin.

I think of my mother, the way she had looked at me in the kitchen: anger and sadness, her shoulders stiff and her mouth a thin cut across her face. The way she had stood up, brushed past me, and slammed the door behind her. She knew, and my father did, too. Maybe they had wandered out there, unable to sleep after Margaret told them about the footprints, and found us outside together in the dark, our white nightgowns glowing in the moonlight. Me, standing at the edge of the marsh, while Margaret floated gently beside me, face down, her hair splayed across the water like a blot of ink, expanding slowly.

I picture them running across the grass, yelling her name. Pulling her from the water, her wet, limp body no longer too hot but, suddenly, too cold. Mud clinging to her skin, her hair. That terrible, awful smell.

I imagine my mother carrying her inside, laying her delicately on the kitchen tile. Shaking her shoulders, begging her to wake up—or maybe just pretending that she was still asleep. Maybe she couldn’t handle those wide, unblinking eyes so she had simply pulled her lids shut with her fingers and prayed for them to click open on their own, just like that doll’s.

And then there’s my father, leading me inside, just like that night of the fire: my hand in his, entirely unconscious, as he stripped off my clothes, patted me dry. Led me back to bed with unseeing eyes.

I can picture it, I can: Margaret, waking up next to me as I flung myself from the sheets, tossing my legs over the mattress in the dark. Following me down the hall, down the stairs, into the backyard. Working up the courage to reach out, grab my shoulder, as I approached the edge of the marsh.

“Did you try to wake me?” I had asked.

“Mom said not to. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous. That’s an old wives’ tale.”

She listened. Margaret always listened to me. To everything I said.

“I won’t hurt you,” I had told her. And she nodded her head, believing. Trusting.

It was a promise I couldn’t keep.





CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE


NOW

I can barely breathe as I sit in the silence, Waylon’s laptop glowing in the dark like that spring tide moon. I continue to stare at the headline, the memories pummeling over me like water from a broken dam, until I hear a low growl from somewhere across the house.

I slap the laptop shut and twist around, relief flowing through me when I realize it’s just Roscoe pawing at the back door.

“Oh God,” I whisper, my head feeling airy and light. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

I stand up and walk back into the kitchen, guilt washing over me as I realize he hasn’t been outside all day. Then I open the back door and let him out, deciding to step into the backyard with him. I need some air.

I slide the door shut behind us and take a deep breath, trying to steady the shaking in my hands. It’s muggy out tonight, a stifling damp in the air that hints at impending rain. Roscoe sniffs around, his senses in overdrive after an entire day stuck indoors, and I guess mine are, too, because everything seems to be somehow intensified tonight, like I’m looking at the world through a microscope. I can hear the unified croak of the toads in the marsh a few blocks east; the cicadas, nature’s white noise, suddenly deafening in my ears.

I pace around a bit, my eyes adjusting to the dark, and think.

Waylon is looking into Mason’s case, that much is the truth, but it seems like he’s been looking into it for far longer than I thought—and more than that, it seems like he’s looking into me. The case file and recordings are one thing, but the pictures and article seem to be something else entirely. It seems more personal, more targeted.

All I know is I can’t trust him anymore. I can’t trust him to help.

I need to start finding some answers on my own now, without him, and suddenly, my neck snaps up. I have an idea.

I walk over to Mason’s window and move a little to the right, to the exact spot that I had seen peeking out between the trees as I sat in that rocking chair just four days ago. I realize now that if Paul Hayes can see into my backyard from his porch, then that means, standing in the right spot, I should be able to see his porch from here, too. I look across my backyard, past the fence, through the gap in the foliage, and squint. It’s dark outside, but I have the light from the moon, the stars glowing bright against a cloudless sky. There’s a streetlight near his house, the one that shines almost directly onto his porch, and that’s when I see it: a subtle alteration in the air like the shifting of a shadow or the gentle sway of a rocking chair.

He’s there.

Moving quickly, I let Roscoe inside and shut him in my bedroom, grabbing my cell phone and leaving again through the front door. Then I walk around the block, making my way toward 1742 Catty Lane.

I approach the house, my heart beating hard in my chest, and think about Dr. Harris’s words.

Hallucinations, delusions.

I think about what Detective Dozier told me just this morning: that Paul Hayes lives alone. I think about that comment I had seen—that I thought I had seen—and how, suddenly, it was no longer there. But was it even there to begin with? Honestly, I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure about anything ever since I saw myself on that laptop screen, standing over Mason’s crib in the dark. I don’t know what I’ll do if I get to Paul’s house and find that the porch is empty; if that rocking chair is just moving on its own, being pushed by the phantom legs of the breeze. I can’t really stand to think about it. But the closer I get, the more confident I feel: He’s there. I can see him so clearly, staring straight into the void. That same weathered face, old, like leather left out in the sun; bulging eyes like cloudy marbles.