All the Dark Places(54)
Sadie and I cross the street and head home. Snow starts to fall, and I try to concentrate on the white flakes falling through the light of the lampposts. I love snow. I love how it deadens sound and covers up all the gray. It’s the opposite of the oppressive summer sun that burns and smothers.
I stop at our mailbox before going in and grab a handful of envelopes and sales flyers and tuck the bundle under my arm.
Inside, I fill Sadie’s bowl and refresh her water. The mail lies splayed on the countertop, and I weed through it. An envelope catches my eye. The return address is marked OSSINING, NEW YORK. SING SING CORRECTIONAL FACILITY. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. The letter is addressed to Dr. Jay Bradley.
I sink into a kitchen chair and tear it open.
I’m trembling. I can’t breathe. Sadie whimpers as she nudges me with her nose. This can’t be real. It can’t be right. I drop the letter as though it’s on fire. I don’t want to touch anything that he touched. Why can’t this ever be over? How can he still, all these years later, intrude on my life?
Then it dawns on me. Jay had written to him. That can’t be. Even if he wanted to interview prisoners for his book. Why would he reach out to Keith Russell? How could he do that to me?
I pace through the house, wrapping my arms around my stomach to try to still my shaking, but I can’t.
*
When I couldn’t settle down, I called Corrine, and she came over.
“What’s going on, Molly?” she asks. I hadn’t told her anything on the phone, just that I needed her.
I drop the letter in front of her. She reads quickly. “Oh my God.” Her eyes meet mine. “Why would Jay want to talk to Keith Russell?” She spits out his name like it’s poison. “Couldn’t he find enough demented killers for his fucking book without talking to that asshole?”
I shake my head. How could my husband have betrayed me this way? “What if . . .” I can’t bring myself to meet Corrine’s gaze, and my breath catches in my throat as I try to speak. “What if Jay only wanted to marry me because of who I am? Maybe I was just an interesting study for him. Maybe he just wanted to write a book about me and my sorry life . . .”
Corrine wraps me in her arms. “No. Molly. Jay loved you. He just made a huge mistake. Huge. But he loved you.”
I cry in her arms, and she cries too. I agree to go back to her place for the night. Somehow my house has lost its luster, so Sadie and I pack up and leave.
On the drive, I tell Corrine about the phone calls I’ve gotten.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“They’re just crank calls, don’t you think?” I don’t want her to think I’m paranoid, hysterical.
She slams her hand on the steering wheel. “After all this time? I don’t like it, Moll. Why now, all these years later?”
“I don’t know.” I lean my head against the passenger window, pick at my sleeve.
Corrine drives quickly, making sharp turns until we get on the highway headed downtown. She cruises along in the fast lane, her brow furled.
“We’re going to the police station tomorrow morning and telling Detective Myers about those phone calls,” she says.
“I’ll have to tell her about me, Corrine.”
“Well, you’ll just have to. It’s not like she’s going to tell anybody or call the newspaper. Maybe they can find out who’s harassing you and why. Maybe they can talk to somebody at the prison. Check that that bastard isn’t causing any trouble.”
I’ve always been haunted by the possibility. Could he still hurt me somehow? Would a prison cell really hold him?
By the time we reach the apartment, it’s snowing again, not the big fluffy flakes that have fallen lately, but small, hard pellets. I curl up on the guest room bed and listen to the sleet ping against the window. Too much has happened in recent days for me to process, one disaster after another, and I’m too weak, too beaten down to keep the nightmares at bay. Despite my best efforts, my mind goes back to that day.
On July third, a day after my sixth birthday, the sun blazed unimpeded in a blue sky. I was playing in the neighbors’ backyard with their four-year-old, Indie. Short for India. She was a little young for me, but we were the only two kids in the neighborhood under ten, so we made the best of it. Her mom was watching us or was supposed to be. She’d walk out on the patio every so often, but quickly retreat into the house to watch her soaps and sip vodka from a coffee cup.
My mom was at the college, working on a paper in the media center before it closed for the holiday. Corrine had gone to the mall with a friend, and my dad was at work, so I was left with the neighbors.
Summers in upstate New York can be cool or mercilessly hot. That summer was the latter. So hot your hair stuck to your neck where sweat bees menacingly buzzed by your ears, where your skin sizzled if you forgot your sunscreen. Indie and I had been on the swing set, pumping our plump legs and soaring to the metallic music of the chains as we swung back and forth. Tiring of that, we moved to the back of the yard, where a faded plastic playhouse sat among tall weeds that Indie’s dad’s mower couldn’t reach. Something my mother often grumbled about. “He needs to get in there with a weed whacker,” she’d say. “He’s drawing ticks.”
Indie and I knew less than nothing about ticks and tromped through the thick overgrowth, picking the wildflowers that fought their way through the tangle of vegetation, looking for the sun. With a sticky handful of Queen Anne’s lace and blue daisies, I saw someone moving through the thin line of trees that ran behind the houses. At first, I stood still like a rabbit who’d spotted a hawk, but relaxed when he came from behind an oak tree.