Want to Know a Secret? (87)

My eyes meet Maria. It’s true—on a dark night, nobody could tell the difference between Maria’s old, beat-up white car and April’s shiny new SUV. If Maria had been the one following Brianna, she never would have known the difference. In the dark, it would’ve looked exactly the same.

But why would Maria kill Brianna? She had no motive. The only possible reason she could’ve done it is because of the way April threw herself at Sean. Revenge. And a way to get rid of April. But God, nobody is that diabolical.

Are they?

Maria winks at me. “Let’s try the cookies.”

She stands up and grabs a couple of plates from the counter over the sink. She’s humming a little tune to herself. She drops a couple of cookies on a white ceramic plate and slides it across the kitchen table to me.

“Go ahead,” she says. “I promise. They won’t be disgusting.”

I feel her eyes on me as I pick up one of the cookies and take a bite. It’s delicious.

Just as good as April’s.





Epilogue


JANET



The police came to talk to me about April.

The policeman was nice. He said his name was Hanrahan and he was young. So young. And also handsome. I liked his light blue eyes. It made me want to tell him everything. I’ve been wanting to tell everybody what I know for so long. I’ve tried, but nobody wants to listen. When you are in a place like this, when people think you’ve lost your mind, nobody listens.

Anyway, he was asking me about April. Some woman named Brianna Anderson, whoever she is. I told him I didn’t know anything about it. His light blue eyes looked disappointed, but he just nodded.

Then he asked me about Courtney. That was the question I was waiting for. I told him everything I knew. I’ve been waiting so long to tell that story. And I knew it was coming.

He told me he thought April was going to get in a lot of trouble for this. But I don’t understand that part at all. My brain is still fuzzy. Even now. Even though they’re weaning me off the medications, I still have trouble thinking. It could last a long time, they say. But I still don’t quite understand.

But here’s what I remember.

It was one of the nights when Peggy was giving me my evening meds. I know this, because she never gives me all my medications. Usually, when the nurses leave, I feel foggy. But after Peggy gives me my medications, I can still think. When she left for the night, she hugged me and said, “Hang in there. We’re going to get this fixed.”

The nurse on the unit that night was Deborah. Deborah spends the whole night on her phone. She doesn’t notice when you hit your call button. She doesn’t notice anything. Sometimes it’s annoying, but that night it wasn’t. That night, I didn’t want her to notice.

I left my room and went to the nurses’ station. Deborah was nowhere to be seen. She was probably out on the balcony, talking to one of her friends. She had left her big red purse on the counter. I fished around inside and found her keys.

The exit to Shady Oaks has a code on it. Over the years, I’ve heard the nurses talk about the code. What’s the code again? Everyone is always asking. I’ve heard it enough times that I’ve committed it to memory.

9419

I used to be a math teacher a long time ago, in my other life, back when I was young, and that’s how I know that all the numbers in the code are perfect squares. That makes it easy to remember. 9419. I punched it into the keypad and then I jammed my thumb into the red button below. I heard a click and the door unlocked.

It was that easy.

It was night time, so there were only a handful of cars in the lot outside the building. I looked down at the keys in my hand. One of them was a key fob. I pressed the unlock button and I saw a set of lights flash. It was a white SUV, just like the kind April used to drive.

My loafers sounded like gunshots on the pavement as I walked over to the SUV. Any second, I was sure Deborah would come running out of the home after me. It didn’t seem possible I was getting away with this so easily.

I opened the door to the white SUV and slid into the driver seat. I stuck the key into the ignition and the car roared to life. I stared down at the dashboard in amazement. I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car in so many years. I hadn’t even been in a car in years. But I was sure I could still drive. That sort of muscle memory never leaves you.

A little camera lit up on the dashboard. I had never seen anything like it before. The question stared at me on the screen. Where would you like to go?

Where did I want to go? I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away from that awful nursing home where they held me down if I didn’t want the medications that made me feel like a zombie. But what could I do? I had no money. I was wearing pajamas.

And then an address popped into my head. My son-in-law’s office.

If I went there, I could talk to Elliot. I always liked that boy. He would help me. I would tell him the whole story, away from April’s prying eyes. I could ask him for money. I would promise him that I would never do anything to hurt his family, if only he would let me get away.

It was as good a plan as any.

I typed in the address, and the screen lit up with directions. I pulled out of the spot and got on the road. I was right—I hadn’t forgotten how to drive. It came easy for me. And fortunately, there were very few cars on the road. I drove slowly and carefully though. I knew if I got pulled over, it would all be over.