The House in the Pines(73)

“I’ll take a sick day tomorrow,” her mom said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m doing all right.”

This time Maya more or less meant it. It could have been relief, or the fact that she’d been awake for so long, or the hot air rushing from the vents, that made her feel as if she could finally sink into the kind of sleep that had evaded her since she quit Klonopin. The sleep of a baby in a car seat. She blinked, and the next thing she knew they were home.

She didn’t notice until they were inside that her mom was crying, tears dripping from her chin onto her boots as she knelt to take them off. Maya rarely saw her cry and found it alarming. “What is it?” she asked.

“I should’ve believed you.”

Maya sank onto the couch. She hadn’t cried at the police station, but she cried now. They both did. They cried, then hugged, then laughed at themselves. Her mom draped a quilt around her shoulders and looked at her with such love and sorrow that Maya almost wanted to comfort her. Because her mom was Frank’s victim too. Nothing hurt her more than seeing her daughter in pain.

“I don’t blame you,” Maya said. “The things I said didn’t make sense . . .” She had talked of magic tricks. Of spells.

“I could have tried harder to understand. And even if I couldn’t—I could have accepted that he . . .” A wave of anger threatened to burst from her mom’s mouth. “He hurt you. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone hurting you. The thought that I . . .” She’d never looked so broken. “I failed to protect you.”

“You saved my life, Mom.”

A shadow crossed Brenda’s eyes as this sank in. To believe her daughter meant believing that Frank had killed Aubrey and that he had almost killed Maya. It meant believing that he still could.





THIRTY-SIX




I’m not writing you a prescription for Klonopin,” said the doctor at the urgent care center.

“I’m not asking you to,” Maya said. She’d just finished explaining why she was here, and now the doctor had his arms crossed over his chest. He looked down at her sternly, as if he’d caught her trying to steal his wallet. She wanted to say that she wouldn’t have gone back on Klonopin if he paid her, but as she had no regular doctor, and no insurance, she bit back her indignation. She needed the man’s care. “I was hoping there was something else I could try? Something to help me sleep?”

The doctor wrote her a prescription for mirtazapine, an antidepressant that he said should make her drowsy.

Dan was relieved to hear that she’d seen a doctor, and Maya was relieved to hear he’d missed her. “Hasn’t felt like home without you,” he said to her on the phone. They made plans for him to pick her up the day after Christmas.

She’d start back at work on the twenty-seventh and was almost looking forward to it, the normalcy, the plants, even the customers, some of whom she’d grown friendly with over the years. Her boss had been understanding about the missed days, and the weight she’d dropped would lend credence to her story of having had the flu.

She slept for twelve hours straight that night in her old room on the new bed. The urgent care doctor had been right about the mirtazapine. It knocked her out like a frying pan to the skull. Her dreams were vivid, but as usual, she didn’t remember them upon waking, and all she was left with was the muscle memory of fear. A tight jaw. Weary legs as if she’d been running. It was noon when she woke, and she was drooling on her pillow. She hauled herself out of bed.

Walking downstairs, she noticed for the first time how nicely her mom had decorated the small fir tree in the corner of the living room. Maya recognized all the shiny baubles and homemade ornaments. The plastic angel. A tiny snowman she’d made out of clay when she was eight. Growing up, she and her mom had always decorated the tree together, but as Maya hadn’t come home for the past few years, the tradition had fallen by the wayside. She told herself it wasn’t too late to start again.

Her appetite came roaring back at the smell of bacon. The mirtazapine, in addition to making her sleepy, made her ravenous. It was the day before Christmas, and they doused their banana pancakes with maple syrup. The sun was warm in the window. After breakfast, she sank onto the couch and began to fall back asleep.

“Let’s go for a walk,” her mom said. “It’s gorgeous out there.”

The crisp blue air cut through some of the fog in Maya’s head. Ice crystals glittered in the snow. They walked past the houses of their neighbors, waving at Joe Delaney, out shoveling his walk, and Angela Russo, who, once upon a time, Maya had babysat, as she ran by with her dog. They passed the auto shop with its lot of sagging cars, and a few old industrial buildings, then walked beneath the railroad bridge to the neighborhood where Maya’s grandparents still lived.

They arrived at Silver Lake and began to walk along its north shore on the path that had been built after Maya moved away. The lake had been the site of a massive cleanup in 2013, and though it still wasn’t safe enough for swimming, and the fish still couldn’t be eaten, people could now boat here or walk on the paved trail. New trees had been planted, and wildflowers. Maya wondered what Aunt Lisa would think of it, the notorious pond slowly returning to its natural state.

Still, it felt strange to walk so close to the water. Strange to see the old warning signs replaced by park benches. To not hold her breath. Every step felt like an act of faith in the lake and this town.