The Vanishing Year(82)

I see him doubt his own sanity. But sometimes, I see the way he draws a breath, quick and sharp, and I know my wildly flung guesses are occasionally hitting bull’s-eyes. I just have to throw out enough of them.

I nudge him with my unchained hand. “Hal. Please. I don’t want to wet the bed again. Remember how mad you were?” I try not to remind him of Zoe, only Tara. I try to morph into her, but biology trumps psychology. I have to go to the bathroom.

He staggers up, grabs a key off the dresser, and without a word, unlocks me. He studies me as I use the toilet, and I even find myself wondering if Tara would do this, this way. I wash my hands. He clears his throat in the doorway, the bathroom low lit with the vanity bulb.

On the vanity sits a wide, flat candle. I slather the soap between my fingers and stare at it. It has three wicks. Five pounds? Maybe two? I don’t have a plan, I just have the vague formation of a plan.

I dry my hands completely—I don’t want them wet slick. I glance at Henry, who is studying the handcuff key. Waiting in his boxer shorts. He glances back toward the bedroom.

I pick the candle up, over my head, and bring it down, fast and hard, right on Henry’s forehead. The edge hits the bridge of his nose and blood explodes everywhere.

I think he screams. I don’t wait to see if he’s conscious or knocked out.

I just run.

? ? ?

I’m out the front door and pounding across the lawn. The woods slap at my arms, my legs, my stomach. My stomach is bare. I’m in Henry’s T-shirt and women’s underpants that are falling down my hips. The branches scratch my face, but I run. I’m faster than Henry, who runs his five miles a day. I’m weak and small now, winded, out of breath, but I’m still fast. I cut a zigzag, off the path, and run in what feels like circles and the rocks dig at my heels. I’m barefoot and when I look down, my legs and my feet are bleeding. My hands are covered in blood that might be mine or Henry’s.

I can’t tell if he’s behind me. I can’t hear anything over the huff of my breath. My lungs burn and my stomach aches, a cramp pulling at my hip. I step on a rock, and I feel it break the skin, right in the bottom of my foot at the arch. I don’t scream, I don’t stop.

In the distance there’s a light. A soft beacon. A house. A tiny clapboard Cape Cod, a night-light shining in the window. I don’t know if it’s empty or if everyone is sleeping. I risk a look behind me, nothing but inky blackness. I stumble up the porch and fall, hitting my face on the step. Pain shoots up my nose and when I put my hand over it, it comes away bloody. More blood. God, so much blood.

I pound on the door and finally, I scream. “Help me! Please open the door! God, open the door!” I’m crying, the snot and the blood and the tears all mixing together in my mouth and it tastes like salt and metal. I pound harder, “Please answer the door, please please please please.”

The door flings open. Bare, red painted toenails, gray hair pulled back in a bun, her mouth open in an O, small and petite, her eyes wide with terror.

Penny. She pulls me inside, dead-bolts the door.

“Call the police,” I say, blubbering, still crying. She wipes my face, my hands with a towel and can’t stop murmuring Oh my God, Oh my God. When she picks up the landline, it’s dead. Her cell phone has no service. “We have to leave. He’s coming after us.”

“Who?” she whispers, her face chalky.

“Henry. He’s trying to kill me. Just please, we have to go. Get your car.” I pull at her sleeve, her arm. Panicked and wild, checking out the front window. He won’t announce his arrival. He’ll be armed. I say all this.

“I can’t leave, Zoe. Frank is upstairs.” Her face is horrified.

“Who’s Frank?”

“He’s my husband. He’s quadriplegic. I can’t leave him. Take my keys, go. Get help.” Her eyes dart from the front porch and back, to the stairs and back. I take the keys from her. “I have a gun,” she says.

Right as she says this, the front window cracks—spiderwebs, the glass implodes, and instinctively I duck down. I hear Penny scamper behind me, across the hardwood floor and into the kitchen. She leaves me here. Henry stands on the porch, framed by the hole in the glass.

“You think I’m stupid, Zoe.”

“Henry, you can’t fix this now. You can’t kill us all. Just put the gun down.” I’m calm now, I’m not crying. I can’t do anything else. This will be how it all ends, with Henry and a gun and me in my underwear pretending to be my dead twin sister. This is how I will die.

The crack behind me barely registers before Henry falls, thrown backward, his toes pointed up almost comically before settling back down to the earth. I smell the gunpowder and the blood before I see anything.

Penny stands, framed in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, holding a shotgun up on her shoulder. A hunter. Everyone hunts. When it falls to her side, her face looks blank, unlined and white with shock. She trembles. On the porch, Henry’s leg twitches, just once, like one of his dying deer.

“Now. Zoe. Go get help, now.”





CHAPTER 27



A steady beep beep pulls me from sleep, heavy and dragging. I want to sleep, I’m so tired. The dark is comforting, a warm electric blanket that I want to burrow under, but instead, my eyes twitch under bright lights.