The Ghostwriter(72)

The water continues, and it’s been thirty or forty seconds now, definitely past the half-ass motion that he considers hand washing. If he is in the shower, I have a guaranteed half-hour where he will be at home. Add time for him to get dressed and pack up some items… probably more like an hour. He won’t rush. Why would he? I am locked away, giving him all of the time in the world.

I spring to my feet and turn to the shelving, to the stacks of manuscripts there, my mind almost spasming with my next decision. Stay here and wait? Sit on my bony ass and do nothing? Or flood the house with carbon monoxide and kill him? Kill him and the possibility that he will ever hurt another girl again; kill him and ensure that Bethany’s innocence will forever be protected?

I close my eyes and work through the process. The time it would take for the carbon monoxide to fill the house. Simon growing sleepy. Lying down on the bed. Death. When I don’t show up to pick up Bethany. Mom will call. Grow worried. Come by. She will find Simon and call the police. She won’t want Bethany to see the body. She’ll take her into the backyard. The police will come. Search the house. I will be found.

I will have to tell them the truth. There’s no way they’ll believe the hot water heater malfunctioned on its own, not when I’d been locked inside the room with it.

Will the police understand? Will they consider it an act of self-defense? Or will they arrest me for murder? Even if found innocent, I might lose custody of Bethany in the process.

It’s worth it. I would rather my mother have custody of her than him. I would rather risk my own incarceration than him ever touch her, or another child. Am I too late? Has he already… I almost vomit at the thought. Surely not. Surely she is too young, surely his tastes aren’t that twisted. I close my eyes and think of every child at his school. The neighborhood full of kids that have sprinted across our lawn and dove down our slip-n-slide. Every smiling face we’ve welcomed into our home on Halloween or Easter. When she is older, we would have hosted sleepovers and movie nights. I would have gone up to my office to write. I would have left them alone with a monster and never been the wiser.

Imprisonment, losing custody… all risks I have to take. If I have the opportunity, right now, to stop him from getting to my daughter, or to any other child, I have to act.

I move aside five manuscripts before I find The Terrace. I rapidly flip through the pages, the first eighty percent of the book detailing the girl’s failed attempts. Skimming over the scenes, I realize exactly how screwed up my sixteen-year-old self was. Had I really hated my mother this much? Had I felt this detached? How many of these emotions had been fiction, and how much reality? I’d blamed my stiffness with my mother on her disapproval of my parenting, on her attempts to separate me from my child. But now, reading through my teenage thoughts, I am reminded of how different we have always been. In my upbringing, there had been no cuddly moments, no friendly lunches or the sharing of feelings. Any discussions had been examined through her psychiatrist magnifying glass, my emotions and motivations picked apart and analyzed to death. I learned, early on, to hide everything from her.

The plot progresses and I slow my reading, bending the page over at the section where Helen (such an original name) did her research. The detail, as in all of my early novels, borders on excessive—an insecure need to show my thorough research. And I remember the research well. The Internet hadn’t been as all-encompassing back then. I’d had to hunt down a local plumber and get my information from him. He’d found me strange, and had asked a lot of his own questions. What I planned to do with the information. If my parents were aware of my interest in killing someone via carbon monoxide. All of those suspicions had been overcome with a crisp hundred-dollar bill and a promise to mention him in the book’s acknowledgements. I hold my place with my finger and flip to the back, using a precious moment to verify that I had, in fact, acknowledged him. And sure enough, on the second to last page, on the book never published, there was his name. Spencer Wilton. I let out a sigh of relief, that debt paid. I return to the meat of the document, skimming over the content quickly, then a second time, my eyes darting occasionally to the tall metal tanks, as I verify the facts.

The good news is, water heaters haven’t changed in the last fifteen years.

The bad news is, I’m about to kill Simon.

I can do it. I can follow these instructions and pump our home full of deadly gas. In this airtight room, I will be protected. I could kill him and wait for rescue.

I scoot forward on my butt, toward the toolbox, and pick up the wrench.

I can do this.

I will do this.

I set down the manuscript and lean forward, toward the first hot water heater.





CHARLOTTE

Charlotte opens the manila folder, pulling out the printout and sliding it gently across the polished wood table. It is a front-page piece, four years old. In the photo, Janice Ross stares directly into the camera, despair radiating from the image. Above her picture, the title in big thick font: “IT WAS MY FAULT.”

The woman’s eyes are the only thing that moves. They dart to the page, to the photo, to Charlotte’s face, then back to the page. A bit of tongue peeks from her lips, then disappears. “That’s an old article.”

“Not that old,” Charlotte replies. “Do you still remember the day it happened?”

Her stare returns to Charlotte and she shakes her head minutely, a scornful sigh wheezing through her clenched mouth. “Of course I do. But like I told you before, I can’t—”