The Night Before(75)

“Don’t come upstairs,” he reminded me. “Or go outside. Not unless you hear three thuds on the ceiling.”

“I know,” I said. He’d repeated the instructions over and over, so I didn’t question him. I knew I could be wrong about what I was thinking. But in the end, I would have to decide. I had to trust reasoning that had proven to be untrustworthy without fail.

And what I was thinking was that Gabe had lost his mind.

He was gone for the second time, and when I heard the car pull away, I climbed up on an old trunk and peeked out the small window that faced the front of the house. I saw his car disappear down the driveway and toward the top of Deer Hill Lane.

I climbed down from the trunk and ran up the stairs to the door. I didn’t know where I would go, but I would look for Rosie’s purse, which had my phone, and try to charge it and call her. Or I would find a computer or a phone in the house. Or I would simply run—out of this house and through the woods that led to the preserve. I knew every inch of it, and I would hide until I could find out what was going on.

I reached the top step, crazy with fear, and I put my hand on the knob and turned. But it wouldn’t open. I turned one way and it stopped. I turned the other way, and it stopped. The door was locked from the outside. I tried pulling on it, hard. Maybe it would break open. But it was strong and I remember when we entered that it had a dead bolt as well. I couldn’t remember if I heard it slide closed when he left, but I didn’t have time to find out.

I ran back down the stairs and through the door to the utility room, past the water heater and the refrigerator to the very back corner where there were cement steps and the two large folding doors of the Bilco hatch. I slid the latch to open them and pushed against the outer one. I’d opened these doors a hundred times and they hadn’t been changed. But the door wouldn’t budge more than an inch, and I could see through that inch the links of a metal chain, locking that door from the outside as well.

I screamed out in frustration. Once, twice. I folded over and screamed again, pounding my fists into my legs. There was no other way out. The windows didn’t open and were too small for a body to squeeze through. Just two doors, that was it. And they were both locked.

I was not being rescued, saved from the police and the crimes I didn’t commit. I was a prisoner. Gabe’s prisoner.

Something inside me gave way then. Locked doors would not stop me from getting out of this house.

I began a search—every inch of this basement would be torn apart until I found something I could use to cut the chains or break down the door. I started in the corner by the mattress and worked my way around, opening boxes of old memorabilia, his mother’s clothing, framed photos. One of them was of Rick—the one on top, and I wondered if Gabe came down here and stared at it and if that was what had made him crazy. Remembering the lifetime of abuse he suffered in this house at the hands of his brother.

So many secrets on this godforsaken road. How had his parents not seen it? How had they not stopped it until it was too late to undo the damage? It was becoming clear—this picture of Gabe, so different from the one I had growing up.

Dr. Brody had seen it. Kevin. He asked me frequently about the Wallace family as he got to know me. I thought he was just appalled by the negligence of his parents, but it was more than that.

I put the picture back in the box, and then remembered the last time he asked me about Gabe and Rick.

Where was Gabe the night Mitch Adler was killed?

I thought I had the answer. I believed what everyone believed—that he had gone back early to college. But then he was there the next day. He came to cheer me up after he found out what had happened. He came to be my protector, just like he’d done now.

He said he’d protected me my whole life. He said he’d protected me from his brother. And then he told me I had to stop being with men who wanted to hurt me and use me. He mentioned Mitch Adler when he said it. And Dr. Brody—he mentioned Kevin.

I didn’t stop to put this together, although it was coming together all on its own. That night in the woods. The man who pulled Mitch Adler from the car was strong and quick. Not the body of an old man who lived in the woods.

It was Gabe.

The thought exploded in a violent scream. I closed my eyes and tried to see him, see his face as he opened that door and dragged Mitch from the car. But I didn’t see it. I never saw the face. I hid in the bushes by the side of the road. I waited until the car was gone. And then I picked up the bat.

What did I do then? I can never remember.

I moved frantically then, tearing open every box and trunk, finding things—clothing and boots and luggage and, finally, a bag of sports equipment. I stopped with those. Golf club. Hockey skates. Baseball bat. Remnants from Gabe’s childhood. If I could slip the blade through the crack in the Bilco doors, and then hit it hard with the club or bat, it might break the chain.

I took the skates and hockey stick back to the utility room and set them down next to the door. And when I did, I saw a small opening, a crawl space, with a duffel bag inside. It was strange, because that crawl space always flooded in the winter when the ground was too hard and cold to absorb the groundwater. They never kept anything in there.

I reached inside and pulled the strap. It was unbelievably heavy. I grabbed it with two hands and pulled with all my weight until, finally, it slid close enough for me to open the zipper.