Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(83)

And I miss Thomas. I wonder what he’s doing right now, even as I struggle to understand what happened Wednesday night. I did call him. And he came, because he always came. For twenty-two years, he’s been my anchor, my rock. I might scream in terror at night, but he greeted me each morning with love. At least, that’s what I thought it was.

Or was it? For all of his talk of our closeness, I’d moved into the guest bedroom. More proof that at least some part of me knows more than I’m ready to consciously face? When I first woke up in the hospital, my initial response wasn’t love but anger. I wanted him gone, away. I loved him; I hated him. The concussions may have scrambled my brains, but maybe there were head games going on way before that.

Why haven’t I ever called my mom, made some kind of contact with my family? I got out. Somehow, someway—

Vero learned to fly.

But I never went home. I stayed with Thomas. Always Thomas.

Do you trust me? he asked Wednesday night, handing me the pair of gloves.

Except why did I need to wear gloves? And why did I say yes?

I’m angry with him, I think. For torching our home, for disappearing in the middle of the night, for leaving me with so many unanswered questions.

“Run,” Vero speaks up in the back of my head. And I know she isn’t talking about the upcoming meeting with my mother. She’s talking about Thomas.

Ten fifteen. The sound of a car engine breaks the unbearable silence. I pop off the bed, follow the noise of the vehicle approaching, the crunch of tires as it turns into the parking lot. Instinctively, I head toward the door. Tessa gives me a stern look and orders me to sit back down. I notice her hand has gone to her side, as if reaching for a gun, and the nervousness officially becomes too much.

I rush back into the bathroom to vomit. When I return, voices are now in the hall, followed by the sound of a key jiggling in a lock. The door of the room next to ours. This is what they planned. Tessa has reserved this room here; then, under a second name, the adjoining premises.

Nothing to trace back to the sheriff’s department, which the press must be watching like a hawk. Nothing to suggest my presence. Or Marlene Bilek’s.

Now, when no media vans suddenly scream into the parking lot, when no photographers suddenly bound down the hall, when the midpriced hotel remains just its normal level of off-season quiet . . .

The connecting door slowly swings open. Sergeant Detective Wyatt Foster steps into the room.

Then . . .

Marlene Bilek appears before me.


* * *



WE DON’T SPEAK right away. It’s one of those moments . . . What do you say? Instead, we stand, we stare, we absorb. I’m holding her quilt. Her eyes go right to it; then she smiles.

“I knew that quilt was going to where it needed to be,” she whispers.

I’m crying. The tears pour down my face. I can’t stop; I can’t move; I can’t even wipe them away. I just stand there, staring at this woman, with water coating my cheeks.

Not everything is as I expect. The image I’ve pictured in my mind all these years is of a twentysomething mom, a little lost, a little resigned to her fate even before her beloved daughter was snatched from her. I thought of her as softer, her body rounded in a comforting mom sort of way. This woman, on the other hand: Her face is drawn, features stamped by years of tough decisions. Tessa mentioned that she kicked her abusive ex to the curb, stopped drinking, turned her life around.

She still carries an unmistakable air of sadness. A woman who’s lost much and knows she can never get it back.

“Why don’t we, um, take a seat,” Wyatt says. He gestures to the two beds. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

He and Tessa exchange a glance. Tessa has her iPhone out. She is recording us, I realize. But of course, even this “private” reunion is still the subject of much scrutiny.

Marlene enters the room slowly. She is wearing her dark-red uniform from the liquor store, as that was the ruse they devised to throw off the press. But I’m surprised she didn’t bring a change of clothing, something more personal for her first meeting with her long-lost child. It unsettles me further. I’m looking for Mom but mostly seeing state liquor store cashier Marlene Bilek.

I take a seat on the edge of the bed closest to the door. She takes a seat on the bed opposite me. Wyatt and Tessa move to the small circular table shoved in the corner of the room, trying to give us privacy, while still very much part of the space.

“Your hair is exactly as I remember,” Marlene murmurs now, her gaze raking over my face. I find myself rounding my shoulders self-consciously. “Long brown waves. Once a week, I used to bathe you in the kitchen sink. Then, if it was sunny outside, we’d sit by a window and I’d brush your hair until it dried. You had such gorgeous locks, much nicer than my own.”

She touches her short, graying brown curls as if embarrassed. I’m trying to remember exactly what her hair looked like back then, long, short, curly, straight, but coming up blank. She looked like Mom; that’s what I’ve preserved after all these years. Not an image of a specific woman, but a generalized ideal.

“It’s funny, though,” Marlene says now. “Your eyes were much grayer when you were a child. Now they look more blue. I guess that’s the way it is with some kids. I had a friend whose son was a blond until he was eight or nine. Now he’s a brunette.”