Don't Look for Me(89)

No, Nic thought. That’s not what it was for, and the three of them in that room knew it. Daisy had been long gone. Reyes had dug that hole to bury her mother after he got his hands on Nic.

She heard her mother draw a long breath, but it stopped short and left her chest. She had just seen her own grave.

“And this one,” Watkins said, “this note was in the house. In the basement where they found his research—papers and recordings and pictures. It looks like he was starting to forge a note—does this mean anything to you?”

Nic looked at the first two lines. “That’s my handwriting,” she said. She read the words out loud. “‘I’m so sorry, Daddy and Evan. I just can’t live knowing what I’ve done to Annie and now Mom. I have thought about the bridge for a long time.’”

“Nic?” her mother stared at her now. “Did you write that?”

“No, but I said those things to him. I told him how I felt guilty about the day Annie died, and about the things I said to you that morning.”

“What about this bridge?” Watkins asked.

Nic hesitated. She didn’t want to say these things in front of her mother. She said them anyway. “I told him how I sometimes thought about jumping from the bridge downtown—he asked me if I had ever told anyone else, and I told him that I had. That I’d told the counselor.”

Watkins nodded, leaned forward. “He was planning to stage your suicide. Plant this note somewhere. Maybe leave your purse on the bridge.”

“And no one would wonder why my body wasn’t found because of the currents.”

“He was going to keep you there. In that house.”

Her mother took her hand and held it tight.

“I think we know enough. I think that’s enough. Thank you, Charles,” her mother said. She was smiling politely, even as a shiver ran through her body.

Nic shoved the pictures back into the folder and slid it toward Watkins.

“Is that everything?” Nic asked him.

Watkins nodded. “For now.” He took a breath, let it out. Placed his palms on the desk.

“Do you still want to go, Molly? To see her?”



* * *



They drove the short distance to the Hastings Inn.

Nic parked. Turned off the ignition. Chief Watkins’s truck was right behind them.

“Are you coming in with me?” her mother asked.

“I can’t, Mom. I can’t look at that girl.”

Her mother nodded.

“I don’t get it,” Nic said. She couldn’t hold back. “Why don’t you hate her? After what she did to you in that house, and how she’s lying now to help her mother?”

There was a long pause, and then, suddenly, a relenting that washed over her mother’s entire body. Her eyes were looking out at the diner, and the little girl whose face was now pressed up against the large glass window.

“She’s just a child, Nicole.”

Nic leaned over and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“You don’t know, do you?” Nic asked her.

Her mother kissed Nic’s forehead. “What don’t I know?”

“What a great mother you are.”





57


Seven months later





I kiss my daughter on the forehead. I smile and watch her leave me. She walks across the street to a bar—not for a drink, but to meet a man. A nice man for a change. And I don’t just hope there will be more nice men. I know there will be.

I leave the car and walk into the diner. Chief Watkins walks right behind me.

I have never been here before. My only memory is driving past it that night. The night of the storm.

Inside, they are waiting for us. Roger Booth. The social worker who’s been looking in on the family.

And Alice.

Oh, how I have dreamed of this day. How I have dreaded this day. I have had nightmares about Alice, her hands petting my skin. Her fake tears. Her faces. And I have longed for her. For the child in her.

She has no ambivalence toward me. I see that now, as she jumps down from the bench of the booth and runs into my arms. I hold her tight. I kiss her forehead, the way I kissed Nicole moments before.

I don’t know what I feel. I don’t think I will know for a long time.

I walk to the booth. Everyone stands to greet me warmly. Roger is grateful because I found his daughter and saved her life. Chief Watkins is grateful because I didn’t leave him to die like a dog in the street. I could have taken his car and driven us away from there. But I stayed, and now they say that he lived because I stopped the bleeding.

I stopped the bleeding. That is something, I suppose.

Somehow I do not feel worthy of their gratitude.

We sit down, tears in all of our eyes, as we talk of the resolutions that have occurred. Alice has started school with other children and she is doing nicely. She is ahead in every level and that is something that those twisted people gave her.

Still, I wonder what remains.

“How have you been?” I ask.

Alice has Happy Face. “Great!” she says. “I love my new school and my new friends. And it turns out I don’t have any allergies, except to cats, but I can have dogs. And I can go outside anytime I want.”