Don't Look for Me(69)

Apple seeds contain amygdalin.

Amygdalin can convert to cyanide.

Cyanide can make you sick. It can even kill you.

I have been back and forth to the hole in the window, studying the trees, counting the apples that have fallen to the ground.

Plotting how I can get to them.

I watch now as the car pulls around the driveway just enough for me to see.

It takes a moment for the image to settle in my brain. And then it explodes. A police car.

A police car!

I hear footsteps. Alice is coming. She is at the bars of my cell. She pushes the wood door open so she can see me. I look back at her, and I know I cannot change the look on my face.

Desperation.

She shakes her head sternly and raises her finger to her lips.

Shhhhhh! She makes this sound. I look back out through the hole.

I have to be careful. I will have one chance to call out before Dolly’s eyes see that I am being a bad mommy.

I don’t know how far away Mick is. He could still be in the house, though I thought I heard him leave. He may have returned.

Think, Molly! Think!

I wait for the officer to open the door and step outside. He walks around the back of the car and I lose sight of him. But then I see his back as he walks to the passenger side. A window rolls down. A head leans out. It’s a woman, I can see her blond hair. He kisses her and I think how strange this is.

Is he not here to save me? To look for me?

He stands up straight and steps away. I think that I will press my lips to the hole now and scream out for help.

Alice taps nervously on the metals bars.

“Stop!” she screams in a whisper.

I look back at her, then once more through the hole, ready to call out for help.

Alice leaves. I hear her feet running now toward the front of the house.

The officer turns. I am ready to do it, ready to look away and press my lips to the wood. But then I see the face of the woman. I think my eyes have gone crazy. But I stare long enough to know that what I am seeing is real.

I do not look away. I do not scream for help.

Because the woman in the car is my daughter.

And the man in the uniform is Mick.





34


Day sixteen





Nic stared at the house. There was no movement now. No sound. Apple trees lined the driveway, then woods. More woods, as far as the eye could see. Probably all the way to the edge of the fence.

She thought then that if no one was inside the house, they would track down the owners, those investors from New York. Maybe they had someone check on the place the night of the storm. They owned a black truck. Or a gray one. But a truck, like the one Edith Moore had seen her mother get into.

How this fit with Chief Watkins and his truck, his broken taillight, was still a question. But she would follow every lead until it brought her to her mother.

She looked back to the house and noticed a window to a room in the back. It was boarded up—from the storm, she imagined—only it was fortified with steel bars.

She stared at the one boarded window. It was odd. Out of place.

And for a second, she wondered what was behind it.





35


Day sixteen





I hear the doorbell and the knocking and the waiting. Then more ringing and knocking until finally the door opens and closes. I look out the hole and pray Nicole is still in that car. That she is still unaware.

Footsteps bound the hallway. Smaller ones scurry behind them.

Then the lock turns. The grate opens.

Mick walks in, wearing a police uniform. He is calm and steady.

He wears a face that is smug and laden with the power he has just acquired over me. Just like the moment when I heard his cell phone ring on the kitchen counter. The moment I knew I was his prisoner.

I have a flash of memory, provoked now, by the uniform. A traffic stop somewhere along Route 7. I don’t remember the name of the town. I only remember now how John hired a lawyer to make it go away because he was worried about our insurance. And how it was never submitted by the officer. It was as though it had never happened. I thought I’d gotten lucky.

I had been traveling twenty miles over the speed limit. I had been trying to get away from these dying towns, trying to get home. I hadn’t noticed how fast I’d been going.

I study his face and know it is the same man.

How long has he known me? How long has he been planning this? That stop was last spring.

Mick is a cop. Everything I have come to think about him now unravels. I try to put the pieces back in a way that fits with this new one.

Mick is a cop—a real cop. He has access to records. He can get people to pull over, the way I did. To give him their information.

What else? The cameras—at the Gas n’ Go. Mick watches people coming and going. He can see their license plates and credit cards. I think about how these pieces fit together—how perfect it is. How he can gather information, and then use it however he wants.

He knew I came every other Thursday in the afternoons from the cameras at the gas station. He got my driver’s license and car registration from the traffic stop. And how easy it was from there—one Google search and my whole life unfolded for him, like a nicely wrapped present.

I want to fight against it. I think that maybe my rage is finally big enough to overtake him, but that delusion is dispelled the moment his hands take hold of my wrists. His physical strength is undeniable.