Don't Look for Me(73)

But was she fine? Drinking and sleeping with strangers again. Infusing her reckless actions with meaning that might be pure fiction?

We are the same …

How could he say that when they’d just met? How could she have believed it. And yet it had felt so real. She wanted it to be real, even now, as the doubt crept in.

She sat in her mother’s car. Smelled her smell, which was fading more every day. She turned on the ignition and closed her eyes. The list of loose ends—what was on it now? Edith Moore—or Bickman—and her plot with Kurt Kent, her father’s PI was looking into that. But what about the lie she’d told about getting Nic’s cell phone number from Mrs. Urbansky? It had been Reyes who’d put those words in her mouth. She remembered that now. Maybe he’d assumed it, and then she jumped on board, not having a better answer.

Her mother had not been at that house. No one had, and it was a long shot anyone had been there the night of the storm. Next, Watkins and the truck—but Reyes said he was going back to find him. Her father and his affair, and the stop he’d made at the gas station in West Cornwall. She should call him, ask him for the truth, for once. But he had already lied to her about the handwriting analysis.

And then, Daisy Hollander—the woman Chief Watkins helped get a scholarship to a fancy summer camp in Woodstock, whom he’d supposedly driven out of town when she’d needed to escape the fate of becoming Mrs. Roger Booth. Watkins and his truck. Watkins and Daisy Hollander.

Daisy Hollander. She remembered the way. The names of the roads, and even the road with no name.

Down Laguna Drive to the end. Then right on Route 7. She was a mile from the Gas n’ Go when she saw the dark gray truck—the Silverado—with Chief Watkins in the driver’s seat. She turned her head and sat low as he drove by. Then she picked up speed, turning onto Hastings Pass. She drove through town, past the police station, until she got to the end—to River Road. Then right onto Pond, left onto Jeliff. Then the road with no name. She remembered the way.

As she made the final turn into the dense woods, those words were still ringing in her head. Making her stomach turn now.

We are the same.





41


Day sixteen





Alice has been such a good girl.

“Can we play Hannah and Suzannah?” she asks me.

Of course we can, you good, good girl.

“Of course we can,” I say, hiding my excitement.

She runs off to get the dolls and I return to the bathtub to check on the rotting apples Alice has collected from the yard.

There are forty-five of them. And they all have seeds.

Alice went to the kitchen like I told her. She went to make us lunch. Peanut butter sandwiches and milk. Yes, milk today, because she wants to make me suffer a little. She wants me to suffer because somewhere inside her little brain is the knowledge that I am lying to her about the surprise for Mick.

Still, she climbed out the back window of the kitchen. The back window near the sink, where Dolly’s eyes can’t see.

She wore her mask and carried two brown grocery bags. She scurried like a little bunny rabbit, picking up the apples and filling the bags. She had to make two trips to bring them back to the window. They were heavy.

She did all of these things. And she did them fast. She brought the apples to me in the bags, along with some groceries she placed on top. I emptied the groceries, bread and milk and peanut butter, then pulled the bags with the apples through the bars and brought them to the bathroom. I put the apples in the bathtub, then threw the bags in the garbage.

I try not to think about where he is. And when I do, like I am now, I look at the apples and think about his cells suffocating. I think about his lungs closing. I think about his heart stopping.

“Hey!” Alice calls out now. “Come out and play!”

I have been too long in the bathroom with my apples.

“Sorry,” I tell her, resuming my spot on the floor.

We make lunch and eat. Then she hands me Suzannah and I straighten the doll’s hair.

Half an hour passes slowly. It is late afternoon and there is no sign of Mick. Flashes of him kissing my daughter in the police car come and go. But mostly come and stay.

Hannah and Suzannah have been discussing their mothers again. Alice likes this and I need this. Yes, I have my apples, but I will not waste one opportunity to gather information. To make inroads into my little prison guard. Into her head. Into her heart.

What she did today was extraordinary. Not because of the logistics of getting the apples. But because she knows I am planning something devious. Wrong. Hurtful. She knows, and she helped me anyway.

Then she served me my milk and I drank it down.

Oh, the games we play, Alice and I.

“It makes me so sad,” Suzannah says. She has been telling Hannah a terrible story about a fight her parents had and how her mommy still won’t be happy. Now she’s run away and Suzannah is afraid she will never come back.

“I know,” Hannah says, and she reaches through the bars to give Suzannah a plastic doll hug.

“Thank you, Hannah. You always make me feel better.” Suzannah pauses long enough for the sweet moment to pass. Then—

“Do yours ever fight?” Suzannah asks.

I swear I can see Coy Face run all the way down from Alice’s face, through her arm and fingers and onto the stupid plastic doll.