Under Her Care(54)
“Was it always that way?”
She shakes her head. “Everything was fine before things got all weird with Mason.”
“You keep saying Mason was fine before. Can you tell me more about that?”
“Just what it means.” She gives me a shrug. “He was fine; there wasn’t anything different about him.”
I tread lightly because I know how sensitive these things are. “When you say ‘there wasn’t anything different about him,’ what exactly do you mean by that?”
She looks slightly annoyed that she’s having to break it down so specifically for me, like someone who’s a psychologist should already know these things, and she’s right, but that’s not why I’m asking. “I mean, nothing was wrong with him. He was just a regular kid. He did kid stuff. He was happy. Bubbly. Loved to play and be outside. He followed me everywhere, but I never cared because he was so adorable, especially when he was a toddler. He loved putting on my makeup with me. He’d babble the entire time.”
“Babble? How old was he?” All the reports show a lack of babbling.
“I guess that’s what you call it. And I don’t know . . . however old you are when you’re a toddler? He was still in diapers. Does that help?” she asks, looking to me for approval.
“It does.” I nod. That’s exactly when babbling should occur. “Did he talk?”
“Yeah, he talked. He wasn’t one of those kids that’s a nonstop chatterbox, but he talked. He was just shy, but there’s nothing wrong with being shy.”
“Absolutely not,” I agree. I was a shy kid. I’m a shy adult.
“That was the weirdest thing about all of it.” She scratches her jaw. “He had all these words, and then he just . . . lost them.”
I lean forward, stretching across the table. “What do you mean, lost them?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head in bewilderment. “I was so young, but he used to talk. He had all these words to say, and then one day he didn’t. He just lost all his words.”
TWENTY-FOUR
GENEVIEVE HILL
I step back, sick and dizzy; my knees go weak. I press the phone back up to my ear. “How dare you bring up my husband?” My voice shakes. So do my insides. “You don’t know anything about him. Or me. Us. Nothing. You don’t know anything.”
He lets out a laugh. “Oh, I think I know plenty. I’ve seen you at your finest. I know exactly who you are and the things you’ve done. To the people you’re supposed to care about, no less.”
“What are you talking about?” I sink into the couch, grateful it’s there to hold me up, because I’m not sure I can stand. This has nothing to do with John. It can’t. There’s no way. I hold all the secrets, and I’ve never told anyone. That’s the only way to keep secrets—never tell. What does he think he knows? My hand goes to my chest.
“I bet you’re sitting there trying to wrap your pretty little brain around a lot of stuff right now, but I’m just going to help you out so we can save all of us some time. How’s that?” He snorts. The air pulses around me, thick. So heavy I can’t breathe. “Your husband sent me the video. I’ve seen it.” Another deep chuckle, rough like a smoker’s. “In fact, it’s right here on my phone, and I can watch it whenever I decide I might like to do that. I can send it to anyone I want too.”
His words echo inside a tunnel in my brain. Their sounds meld into a big blur, thrumming around me. Inside me. Everywhere. There’s quicksand underneath my feet trying to pull me under. Dear Jesus.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” I force myself to speak, trying to sound stronger than I feel.
“You don’t want to talk about your husband. You don’t want to talk about what happened down at the creek with Simon. What do you want to talk about, Mrs. Hill?”
I hate the way he says my name. “I want to talk about you staying away from me and my family. That’s what I want.”
“And I told you what’s got to take place for that to happen.” His breath is heavy on the phone. “You pay me what I want, and everything goes away. That’s how this works.”
“What about the truth?”
“The truth doesn’t matter.”
The truth always matters. You can’t trust people who lie, but I don’t have a choice.
“I have no clue how I’d get that kind of money in cash, but let’s just say for a second that I could—how do I know you’re going to follow through with things on your side? That everything goes away? What’s my assurance?” I can’t believe I’m even considering this. You can’t negotiate with a madman, but I’m not sure there’s another option. “You could just skip town. Leave me hanging with Simon lurking around. Never knowing if he’s going to decide he wants to bash my head in like he did Annabelle’s. And what about the video? How do I know you’ve deleted it? Or that you didn’t send it to someone else before you did?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you serious? You can’t be serious.” Look what happened to the last criminal I blindly trusted. Fool me once . . . we all know that ditty. “How stupid do you think I am?”