Until the Day I Die(83)

Or my grandfather may turn on me too.





46

ERIN

I locate a small rocky outcropping that gives me almost a 360-degree view of the jungle below and a fairly long section of the river. After a day hanging around there, I spend one more night in the shelter of my hollow tree. But the next morning when I wake, it occurs to me I’ll go bonkers if I spend one more minute just passing time—waiting for either Shorie to contact me or Lach to find me and put a bullet through my head. I need to be proactive.

Even if it means putting myself in danger, I’ve got to move.

As I walk, though, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m overwhelmed with the feeling I’m going in circles around this island, just using different paths. Eventually I stop to rest, collapsing on another high ledge at the crest of a hill that overlooks the lapping green ocean. My body is crying out for a real night’s sleep, but I can’t quit thinking about Deirdre and Agnes. Their discolored, bloated bodies tied to the tree, buoyed up by the river’s current.

According to the spreadsheets on Zara’s computer, this isn’t the first L’élu III Antonia’s organized. So there had to have been official stories to cover the other missing women. Julie? I heard she ran off to an ashram in India. Such a shame, deserting her children that way, but, if you ask me, they’re so much better off. Rumor was, she was addicted to painkillers. And such a burden to her husband . . .

Whatever the case, Deirdre and Agnes—and probably other women—will decay there by the river, and no one will know those bits of flesh and bone were real people. Actual women with lives and loves, hopes and fears, secrets and regrets and dreams. No one will even care, because their families will just tell their own lies.

My brain keeps rewinding back to the oddest memories, places I don’t want to go. Shorie, two years old, gobbling up steamed cauliflower, all the while crowing, Pah-corn. Perry, standing in front of my study module on the third floor of Ralph Brown Draughon Library, two weeks after Sabine had introduced us. He’d been randomly matched as my calculus tutor, and we’d spent the entire hour saying how crazy it was and trying not to stare at each other in dazed insta-infatuation.

And then my mind fast-forwards to our honeymoon, in the seedier part of Florida’s panhandle: Perry, hair salty and stiff from swimming in the ocean, freckled shoulders peeling. His sunburned skin makes his hazel eyes the color of seafoam, and his lashes blond at the tips. We’re tangled in the sheets of the thin mattress on the crappy bed of the beachfront condo he insisted on paying for himself. His parents were embarrassed we wouldn’t let them send us someplace fancier, but he told them he wasn’t going to start our marriage by mooching off them.

He smiles down at me, his gaze on my lips. May I, he asks. I say yes, and after he’s done what he wanted to do, he makes another request. I smile and grant my permission. He continues, asking me again and again for my approval, a litany of delicious requests.

May I? Can I? Will you . . .

Every time, I say yes, over and over allowing him to do what he wants to, until the tension becomes unbearable, and I tell him I have a request of my own . . .

It’s light now, and I’m in some part of the jungle I don’t recognize. I’m out of plans and ideas and ways around this. Seems like the only plan I can come up with is to obsessively check my phone, like some mindless teenager. But Shorie still hasn’t seen Lach’s connection request or message—or at least she hasn’t responded to either of them.

I open Lach’s messages and type out another one.

I love you, Shorie. I always will. Mom

I stare at it for a minute. What else is there to say? There is nothing else. She’ll either get it or she won’t. But it makes me feel better knowing it’s there, out in the universe.

I close my eyes, wanting a picture of my daughter to come to me, but all I see is Sabine, my best friend and betrayer. She looks at me, eyes half-lidded, mouth twisted in a mocking smile. She played me. She played Ben too.

I stand and immediately feel a rough hand close on my wrist, twisting me around. I find myself nose to chest with Lach. He is red faced, his wild blond surfer hair loose and blowing around his shoulders.

“Hi, chickadee,” he says. “I thought I told you to stay put.”

I yank away from him. “Where’s Jess? What have you done with her?”

He grabs my neck. “Let’s go.”

He pushes me, and the next thing I know we’re crashing through the dense thicket of jungle, him acting like a human machete, and me, stumbling behind. I know where we’re headed—the French word reverberates in my head.

Volcan, volcan, volcan . . .

Whatever the reason, the best thing to do is to stall. I start talking.

“Why are you doing this?”

He doesn’t answer me.

“You’re the older brother, but your father gave your little sister his favorite hotel. What did he give you? Couldn’t have been much.” I’m out of breath from trying to keep up with his long-legged strides. “You’re out here, chasing me through rainforest and tying dead bodies up in the river. You got the shit detail, Lach. Why?”

He keeps marching.

“How many of these L’élus have you done? Two, three? Ten? A hundred?”

He keeps walking, pushing me ahead.