“So you’re telling me that you are, indeed, able to connect with another person?”
“If it’s the right person, yes. If I think there’s something more beneath the hair and the makeup and the clothes. But I can only truly know if I’m able to get to that place—”
“What place?”
“The place beyond the hurt. When the hurt finally opens the door—I only know then whether a true connection is possible—”
Something on the TV across the room catches my eye. A local news alert. MISSING, in a red banner, crawls across the bottom of the screen. HOLLY ELAINE IDLEWINE, it reads. Along with a picture.
It’s the picture that stops my heart.
She is dressed for a night of club hopping in a tight black dress. She has long honey-colored, flat-ironed hair, beige lipstick on her pursed lips, and a fringe of blue around her eyes.
Blue eyelash extensions.
At that exact moment, there’s a flash just outside the door of the police station. A green Toyota Tacoma truck driving past with Luca at the wheel.
Chapter Thirty Friday, October 19
Afternoon
I stopped in the doorway of the dining room. Cerny lay on the floor, one arm flung behind him, legs splayed. A lake of blood pooled under him, already congealing into the cracks of the floorboards and around the slivers of glass from the broken mirror. The side of his head was a caved-in mess of blood and white bone. I even thought I could see his brain.
But I didn’t have time to get sick or panic. I had to figure out how to get away from the man who had his hand resting protectively at my waist like he owned me. I could feel him monitoring my reaction. And the truth was, I knew I should be reacting—just standing here had to look suspicious, so I buried my face in my hands. My eyes were dry, though, and my mind raced.
What was I going to do? Stab Heath with a kitchen knife and make a run for it? The idea of it was ridiculous. He was taller than me, stronger and faster as well. I’d never overpower him. Never outrun him.
Stay calm. The answer will come.
Heath cleared his throat. “It’s terrible, I know.”
I nodded. He reached out for me, and I let him catch my hand.
“We have to go back,” I finally said. “To the woods where Cecelia is. We should be there when the police arrive.”
He didn’t answer, and then I knew.
“You didn’t call, did you? The police aren’t coming?”
“No.”
I thought fast. “Well, they will, eventually. Two people are dead. Luca’s going to come back and find them. Or maybe Reggie Teague.”
“We need to make a plan,” he said. “Figure out how we’re going to explain what happened here and why we left.”
“We could throw them off the mountain,” I said.
He blinked at me. “What?”
“No one would find them for months, if ever.”
I had the sensation that time was speeding up. Like I’d jumped off a cliff, into a rushing river that was sucking me down, pulling me toward a destination I couldn’t see, but that was inevitable.
“That’s what we’ll do,” Heath said, and that cemented it.
In Dr. Cerny’s room, we found a down coverlet to wrap him in and I snagged one of the doctor’s big canvas barn coats. Heath hefted Cerny over his shoulder and carried him down the back stairs. I darted back into the observation room long enough to scoop up the iPad and tuck it in the waistband of my pants, then hurried down the stairs too.
I caught up to Heath in the kitchen. “Maybe I should stay behind? Keep an eye out?”
“I don’t know if I can make it all the way up the mountain alone with him,” Heath said. “I might need your help.”
Desperation threatened to smother me, but I nodded my assent. I’d have to figure something else out. Something once we reached the top of the mountain. We headed out of the house toward the trail.
I ran after Omega until my stockinged feet burned and the green sweaterdress was heavy with sweat. Thick gray clouds had rolled in and banked, and a cold wind whipped across the soybean fields along the road. I was a fast runner, faster than I knew, because even without shoes, I’d caught up to her.
She had slowed at one of the town’s newer municipal parks nestled among the fast-food places, office complexes, and car dealerships, then cut down the hill toward the blue tennis courts. There was no one playing, of course—it was freezing and overcast, and I could feel raindrops pelting me.
On the rise above the courts, I saw her sitting on a white bench against the chain-link fence. She slumped, hands jammed in her jacket, her legs stretched out in front of her. I’d been down here a couple of times, on school picnics. Seen the tanned ladies who played there—ladies from nearby neighborhoods who wore flippy skirts and visors and always had the picnic tables covered with food and wine during their matches. They didn’t seem to have kids. Probably they were in school or with nannies. I thought suddenly how out of place Omega looked. She would probably never be the kind of person who played tennis here.
I sat at the top of the hill and watched her for a while, until a rust-edged, dented-up silver car pulled in behind me. It sat idling, and after a minute or two, Omega stood and made her way across the tennis court in its direction—and mine.
I stood, my nerves jangling. When she neared me, she stopped. I bit my chapped lip, feeling tears swimming to my eyes.
“Hey, Doodle-Do.” She smiled down at me, but her eyes looked flat and tired.
“Hey, Omega.”
She looked past me. At the car, I guessed. I wondered who was sitting in it. How had they known to meet her here? Had she called them? I hadn’t seen her stop at a pay phone. But Omega’s ways were sophisticated and mysterious. I couldn’t begin to know them. Or maybe, in the warrens of memory, I’d forgotten how things had really happened.
“I know what you did,” she said to me.
I turned cold.
“I saw you put the pills under the dresser.”
I started to stammer out an excuse. “I didn’t—”
“Shush,” she cut me off. “Whatever you do, don’t you ever fucking tell them, okay? It won’t bring Chantal back, and it won’t bring me back either. It doesn’t matter, what you did, Daphne. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, not now.”
I didn’t understand everything she was saying, except the most important part. The part about keeping quiet.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She cast a dark glance at the idling car. “Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“Tell me. Say it.”
“Don’t tell them,” I said.
“Not for any reason.”
“Not for any reason,” I echoed.
“Good girl.” She bent down and gently, tenderly pressed her perfect, pillowy lips against mine, and I felt a thrill roll through me, all the way down to the tips of my toes.
“Don’t go,” I said.
She just looked at me, her face congealed in sadness.
“Don’t go,” I wailed and started to cry.
Then she left me and went to the silver car and climbed in. There was a man driving. He looked almost as old as Mr. Al, but he didn’t look near as friendly. His hair was shaved down to nothing, and he had a bushy red mustache. The man with the red mustache drove Omega away in the silver car, and I ran after them.
I kept up for a while because the car was old and the man drove slowly. But then, after a few blocks, the silver car accelerated, blew through a couple of yellow lights, then turned down a street that led toward town. It was raining steadily now, and my feet made slapping sounds on the cold pavement. They hurt too. My left toe was poking through a hole in Chantal’s maroon tights, and I watched it, counting my strides, letting my breath synch up. I felt like I could do this forever.
Run and run and run and run.