The Stranger in the Mirror(18)

Lately I’ve begun to worry the same thing, too, that maybe I’m already married. Do I really have the right to start my life over without knowing what I’ve left behind? But I don’t tell Gabriel about these reservations.

“How did you leave it with her after she asked about the scars?”

“I told her that you don’t remember, but that whatever happened in the past is in the past, and if you do remember, we’ll figure it out together.”

I still can’t let it go. “She must have been horrified, though.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder. “If she was horrified, it was at what you’ve gone through, not at you. But I have a new topic,” he says, picking up a folder from the coffee table and handing it to me. “I was thinking we might want to move into something larger than my condo. Look at this restored town house. It’s got the original hardwood floors and moldings. We’d still be in Fishtown, but we’d have lots more room. I was thinking we could go to the open house this weekend.”

I flip open to the first page of the pamphlet and look through the photographs. My eyes rest on a picture of the living room with its light-gray rug, and suddenly my body begins to shake violently, uncontrollably. A picture flashes through my mind. A woman’s body is sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood that has spread to turn the gray carpet a dark black. Half of the woman’s face is gone, and her brains are splattered around her. Clutched in one of her hands is a broken lamp. As fast as the image appears, it’s gone. My heart is pounding, and sweat runs down my face even though I’m shivering with cold. Gabriel’s hands are clenched around my shoulders, and I can hear him saying my name, but it’s hard for me to focus on his face.

“Addy, Addy, what is it?”

Finally my breathing slows. “I . . . I don’t know. I just got dizzy for a moment.” I can’t tell him what I saw until I know what it means. It was so real. Like something I’d seen firsthand. Did I hurt that woman? I close my eyes and try to summon the picture again, but it’s no use.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re shaking.”

I open my eyes, take a deep breath, and swallow. “Can you get me some water?”

He looks back at me as he walks to the kitchen, and I force a smile to my lips to assure him I’m okay. But the truth is, I’m terrified. I remember the lamp—its base is made from two golf clubs crisscrossing. It hits me with absolute certainty then. I’ve been in that room before. I saw her like that. The question is, did I kill her?





??15??

Addison




Gigi is sitting on the front porch when I walk over from the garage. I frown as I get closer and see that she’s crying. I pick up my pace and run to her.

“What’s wrong?”

Gigi looks up. “Today’s the anniversary.”

September 25th. I can’t believe I forgot. “Oh Gigi, I’m so sorry. What can I do for you?”

She pats the empty space next to her on the porch swing. “Come and sit. Just be with me.”

I sit down, and we rock back and forth in silence. I don’t know a lot about their daughter, Beth, but what I do know is that ten years ago she ran away after a huge fight with them over her boyfriend, who they’d disapproved of from the very beginning. It was after ten when they discovered that she’d snuck out of the house and tried to hitch a ride to his apartment. The man who picked her up was a convicted rapist who had just been released. He graduated to murder the night Beth got into his car.

The swing sways gently as we sit in silence. I can feel Gigi’s grief as if it’s a tangible thing. “I’m so sorry,” I repeat.

“You know?” Gigi says. “They say that some good comes out of everything. I never did see what good could ever come from Beth being murdered.” She folds and refolds the tissue in her hands. “There is one thing, though. Maybe her death has kept another girl safe.”

I knew that this was the reason Ed had made it his mission to be the savior of female hitchhikers. He will never pass one without stopping and always warns them of the danger and tries to get them help, though I’m the first one who’s actually come to live with them. Gigi told me that he once picked up a girl who turned out to be a trafficking victim, so he became an active member of Truckers Against Trafficking, an organization dedicated to combating human trafficking. I think it’s the reason they were so willing to take me in. I don’t believe that I can in any way replace Beth, but I think it makes them feel good to set the table for three again.

After a while, Gigi turns to me. “She would have been twenty-six by now.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just nod. It’s so rare that Gigi opens up about Beth, and I never want to cause her more pain by asking too many questions, so I just try to listen now.

“He only got twenty years, you know,” she continues. “He’ll be forty-seven. Still young enough to do it again.” She shakes her head. “I can only hope something happens to change him.”

“That’s terrible. He should have been put to death,” I say, infuriated at the injustice of it all.

Gigi gives me a strange look. “No, child. We are not God. We don’t get to decide who lives and dies.”

I’m quiet because I don’t agree. I think he should be made to suffer the way Beth suffered, the way Ed and Gigi suffered. It makes my blood boil knowing that he’s still allowed to breathe the air that he deprived Beth of, and I don’t understand how Gigi can stand the thought of him living while her daughter is long dead and gone. I guess that’s something else I’m discovering about myself—I’m not very forgiving.