You Can't Catch Me(86)

“It’s an expression—”

“I know the expression. What about when Tanya took me shopping for the dress? Did you arrange that too?”

“Did you think she didn’t notice that you’d left the store?”

My mother was calling me a moron, but she was right. I should’ve noticed, but I was so indoctrinated that I didn’t. I thought I was getting away with something. I was proud of myself for being so brave. Instead, it was my mother, and my father, the whole time, letting me go. The whole narrative of my life since I was seventeen was unraveling right there in the cornfield.

“I did think that, yes.”

“And you thought I didn’t care, or didn’t know, what Todd was planning?”

“Either. Both.”

She shook her head slowly from side to side. “I failed you.”

“You got me out.”

“Yes, but not Kiki.”

I felt a stab of pain. “Todd wasn’t interested in her, though.”

“Not while you were there.”

The consequence of what she was saying hit me all at once. I dropped to my knees on the hard ground and threw up. My mother crouched down behind me, rubbing my back, holding my hair away from my face.

I retched again, and then again, tasting bile. There was nothing left inside me, but my stomach wouldn’t give up.

Finally, it subsided. I spat and rocked back on my heels, away from the mess I’d made.

“Come into the house,” my mother said.

“No. Finish it.”

“Are you sure?”

I looked her in the eye. My own face was buried in hers. “Please.”

“Todd was so angry when you left. He suspected us of helping you. He brought all the children down from the hill, and we had to stay in the Gathering Place for weeks. He wouldn’t let us sleep. He’d take us away one by one, interrogating us, even the little kids. He left your aunt and uncle, and Kiki, and your father and me for last. Tanya and Tom didn’t know anything. I’d told Tanya to let you use the phone because your father had gotten a message that his mother was dying. And that if she got caught, she was to say that you had escaped, briefly, but since you came back, she didn’t want to get you in trouble. That’s the story she told Todd. She came out of that meeting with a welt across her cheek.

“I was shaking so hard in my meeting with him, I almost passed out. Todd knew I was keeping something from him, but I stuck to my story, that your dad was worried about his mother, so I’d arranged to have you call them. You hadn’t been able to get through because they must’ve changed their number. I told him over and over that I had no idea how to communicate with anyone outside of the LOT other than by making a phone call, which was true. And he knew from the phone logs, which he checked carefully each month, that no calls had been made. And then . . . and then I told him I was disappointed that he couldn’t complete the ritual with you. He got this horrible look on his face and said that it didn’t matter. Your replacement had been there all along.”

“Kiki,” I said.

“Kiki.”

“You should have killed him then.”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t see how I could. Everyone was so paranoid. He broke all the couples up and matched us with someone else so there wouldn’t be any loyalties. I had to share a house with one of the other men for months. And he isolated Tanya and Tom, sent them up the hill, and then . . . and then it all seemed to return back to normal.”

“Normal?”

“Three months after you left, Todd let us out of the lodge, and life went on.”

I struggled to get to my feet. “Not for Kiki, though, right, Mother?”

She looked very sad, but it wasn’t enough for me. “No, she wasn’t the same after that.”

“We all killed her, each and every one of us.”

“Yes.”

“So that’s why you killed Todd? Because of what he did to Kiki?”

“In part.”

“Why, then?”

“Kiki didn’t tell you?”

It was a mean thing to say, though I don’t think she meant it that way. She was as surprised as I was at the secrets Kiki had kept from me.

“She didn’t tell me any of this.”

“I would’ve thought . . . but maybe she blocked it out. That’s what Tanya always thought, because she never took any interest after . . . That’s why we raised her instead of Tanya, so it would be easier for—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I grabbed her by the arm and shook her. She seemed surprised by my touch. Was she reliving the experience of killing him? What the hell was going on?

“It was because of Serene. Todd started paying too much attention to her, even though she was only four. And it might have been fatherly, but I couldn’t take that chance, not after Aaron and . . .”

“But what’s Serene got to do with Kiki?”

She looked at me, and I could see the truth in her eyes before she spoke it. “Because she’s Kiki’s daughter. Hers and Todd’s.”

“How did she do it?” Liam asks when I’ve paused for more than a minute. He’s kept his word and let me tell it without asking any questions.

“There were all kinds of mushrooms growing in the woods, some good, some bad. She got herself put on kitchen duty and made Todd a special omelet for breakfast one morning.”