Don't Look for Me(44)

I smile at her. “Just this one time it will be done after lunch. It can be our little secret.”

Alice moves closer to the metal bars.

“There are no secrets here,” she says quietly. In a whisper.

“What do you mean?” I ask. A chill runs through me even before she answers.

She glances up to the ceiling, then back at me. I follow with my own eyes and try to find what has just drawn her attention.

I see painted molding, simple, running along the crease between the ceiling and the wall. It runs all the way down the hallway that leads to the kitchen and living room and the little room where Alice keeps her toys. It is coated with a thin line of dust, just like the floor, though not as thick.

I let my eyes follow the molding until it reaches the corner where the hallway ends. It is less than ten feet away. It is there that I see a small monitor.

“What do you mean, Alice? Why were you looking at the ceiling?”

“They’re everywhere,” she answers.

“What are everywhere?” I ask.

She glances again. “The eyes.”

A second chill comes and goes.

“What eyes?” I look again at the monitor. It looks like a motion detector for an alarm system. But I know there is no alarm that he sets. I study his movements when he comes and goes. The panel would be by the front door. He never stops there. I never hear the sound they make when they are about to be armed. We’ve had an alarm in our house for years.

But then I see something in the small box. A red light.

Alice lets my brain process what I’ve just seen. She can tell by my face that I have seen it.

“Dolly’s eyes,” she says.

“Dolly?” I ask. Then I remember. “The doll in your toy room? The old doll that sits on the shelf?”

She nods slowly. “Dolly has eyes all over the house. She sees everything and hears everything and she tells him everything.”

I hold my breath to keep from crying out.

The red light. I think where else I have seen one. I don’t turn away, but I count the places in my head.

The playroom next to Dolly.

The living room in the corner that faces the front door.

The dark room.

This hallway.

The corner of my bedroom.

I ease the air out of my lungs, then take more in to slow my pulse.

“I see.” This is all I can manage to say.

So he is watching us, always. I think about the day I went for a walk. It was not a coincidence that he came home in time to stop me. He knew I had left because he saw me leave.

The cameras are everywhere.

And the cameras are feeding to him live. There is internet here, somewhere.

“Go get your schoolwork, then. We don’t want to break any more rules.”

Alice leaves and I turn my face from the camera in my room. I feel tears wanting to come but they will cause my body to tremble and he will know. He will see.

He watches me sleep. He watches me sleep with Alice. That is why he leaves us alone in this house together.

He sees everything.

Alice returns. She lays out her work and gets started. She can see that I am upset.

“Oh, don’t be scared!” she says. “You don’t need to worry.”

I regain my composure.

“Why is that, Alice?” I ask her.

“Because Dolly can see that you’re being a very good mommy.”

I smile. And inside, the defiance grows tenfold.

I will use this. I will use the cameras. I don’t know how.

But I will find a way.





18


Day fourteen





It was an accident.

Those words had never left Nic’s mouth. She’d heard them used by everyone in her life. Her father. The grief counselor. Teachers, before she got expelled.

She’d thought of it the way she’d thought of the words died unexpectedly when someone committed suicide. Or overdosed.

No sense adding to the pain of the survivors by saying what really happened.

But now, for the very first time, she felt the words differently. It was an accident. Her mother hadn’t killed Annie. Nic hadn’t killed Annie. Annie had run into the road. Nic had called after her, tried to stop her. Her mother had been coming around a blind corner, she’d slowed down, ready to turn into the driveway. It was a confluence of circumstances, of small decisions and actions that on any other occasion would have left their minds. They were devoid of moral underpinnings, no matter how desperately anyone wanted to believe otherwise.

And when a series of actions come together to create a tragedy, that’s what it’s called—an accident.

She wondered how her mother thought of it. If she still said those words inside her head.

I killed my child.

She wondered if all those conversations with her support group had fueled the fire. No matter how hard people pretended, it would have been difficult to hide their judgment of her. Nic had felt it sprinkled over their kind words in the emails. Even her father—the way he spoke of it, of his wife behind the wheel of that car. It was so much easier to believe that it could never happen to them.



* * *



The casino was half an hour from Hastings. Back onto Route 7. Fifteen miles south. Left on Laguna Drive, then another five miles into the alternating woods and fields. Her father had not wanted her to come here when they’d done the canvas. He’d wanted her to go home.