Confessions on the 7:45(66)

“We’re not done, Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “But we’re done for now. Stay easy to find.”

She nodded but didn’t get up. Fuck you, Detective, she thought but didn’t say. She didn’t rise to show him out, just listened to his footfalls on the hardwood, the door open and close.

She felt her phone buzz and pulled it from her pocket, stared at the screen.

Great seeing you last night.
I think we need to talk, don’t you?
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
Now it read like a dare, like a taunt. Selena felt the cold finger of dread press into her belly. Selena’s truth was all over the news. And Martha likely knew everything, and knew that Selena had lied about Graham. But everyone knew that now, even the police.

Those images, that person on the street with Geneva. Was that Martha? What had she said during that first encounter on the 7:45?

Maybe she’ll disappear. And you can just pretend it never happened.

And now Geneva had disappeared.

Bad things happen all the time.

One thing was certain, the woman from the train wanted something from Selena. What was it? Who was this woman? And did she know something about what had happened to Geneva?

Was it just last night that she’d called herself a solution architect?

Beneath the dread was a current of hope. Who was she? What did she want?

Selena sent her response.



TWENTY-SIX

Pearl

She’d been sleeping. She didn’t know for how long. This drive. It seemed like they had been on the road for months. They’d changed cars twice, and now they were in an old Dodge minivan that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and something else—something sickly sweet like spilled soda. She’d been vaguely ill since they’d left Indianapolis, nauseated and weak. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything but saltines and ginger ale.

Pearl stayed still even after she opened her eyes, listening. She could tell what kind of mood Pop was in before he even opened his mouth, just by the way he breathed. He’d been in a bad place the last couple of days, quiet and moody, snappish. They were on the run. The Bridget thing.

“Did I ever tell you about my father?” he asked. He must have sensed that she was awake.

“Some,” she said. She shifted out of the awkward position she was in, head at a weird angle against the car door. Rubbing at her sore shoulders, she cracked her neck. Pop reached over and put a hand on her back.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About everything.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“The place we’re going now,” he said. “It’s ours. It’s home. And we’ll be safe there. We’ll settle down.”

They had been driving east to this promised place. A pretty house in the woods, not some ticky-tacky suburb home that they would have to leave again. It had been two years since she had become Anne and started calling Charlie Pop. She had graduated online high school. She was about to turn eighteen. What’s next for you? he wanted to know. What will you do now that you’re nearly of age? She thought maybe college. Pop thought that was the biggest con of all. You’re already smarter and have read more, know more, than most people with advanced degrees.

Stella was always big on college. It wasn’t a question of if Pearl would go, but where. Pearl had the grades, the brain, the work ethic, the test scores. She had some money, since Pop had split all of his scores with her. She wondered: Could you just show up at the bursar’s office with a big bag of cash?

They’d closed out all of their accounts. Pop was anxious about how much they were holding. All of it. All of their money was in two suitcases in the back seat.

“Tell me about your dad,” she said. “You said he was a drunk and a con. That he died in prison.”

Pearl had seen a picture. Pop had a single photo album among his few belongings. She’d flipped through it a couple of times. Her favorite was a picture of his parents on their wedding day running down the steps of a church, the air full of rose petals—everyone smiling. And there was a black and white of Pop in his father’s arms in front of a Brooklyn brownstone. Pop’s face looked the same—earnest with big blue eyes. His father, balding, with eyebrows like caterpillars, wiry in a wifebeater T-shirt, looked away. He wore a scowl, had a blurry tattoo on his arm that Pop said was a mermaid.

There were other pictures—women, some girls. All of the women had a particular look—a kind of forgotten starlet angst, big eyes, buxom, thick, wavy hair. Like Stella. And the girls, all willowy, fair—like Pearl had been, though these days she was sporting a jet-black fade, with long bangs that hung over her eyes.

“All true,” he said. “But he taught me a lot.”

“And beat you, right?” she said, though she knew it was borderline goading. Lately, as she approached her eighteenth birthday, there was an edge to him that there hadn’t been. They squabbled some. He got terse with her, and she had the urge to push at his boundaries. “I’ve seen the scars.”

“Maybe that’s the best lesson of all,” he said, staring at the road. “That you can’t trust anyone, even the people who are supposed to love you.”

They were on a dark, rural road that wound through thick forest. They hadn’t seen another car for—she wasn’t sure how long, since she’d been sleeping. But it seemed like they were someplace other, an enchanted wood, another planet. And it was only them forever, just the beam of their headlights, a blade splitting the night ahead.