“I’m not saying ‘Please don’t move’ to you, kid. ‘Please’ is a patriarchal construct designed to make women apologize for their vaginas.” She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “I was talking about what your mother said before she murdered that boy. It’s all over the news.”
Andy looked at the muted television on the wall. The diner video was showing again. Laura was holding up her hands in that strange way, four fingers raised on her left, one on her right, to show Jonah Helsinger how many bullets he had left. The closed captioning scrolled, but Andy was incapable of processing the information.
“The experts have weighed in,” Paula said. “They claim to know what your mother said to Helsinger—Please don’t move, as in Please don’t move or the inside of your throat will splat onto the floor.”
Andy put her hand to her own neck. Her pulse tapped furiously against her fingers. She should be relieved that her mother was in the clear, but every bone in her body was telling her to leave this house. No one knew she was here. Paula could gut her like a pig and no one would be the wiser.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Paula leaned her elbows on the counter. She pinned Andy with her one good eye. “Your sweet little ol’ mother kills a kid in cold blood, but walks because she thought to say Please don’t move instead of Hasta la vista. Lucky Laura Oliver.” Paula seemed to roll the phrase around on her tongue. “Did you see the look on her face when she did it? Gal didn’t look bothered to me. Looked like she knew exactly what she was doing, right? And that she was a-okay with it. Just like always.”
Andy was frozen again, but not from fear. She wanted to hear what Paula had to say.
“Cool as a cucumber. Never cries over spilled milk. Trouble rolls off her like water off a duck’s back. That’s what we used to say about her. I mean, those of us who said anything. You know Laura Oliver, but you don’t know her. There’s only the surface. Still waters don’t run deep. Have you noticed?”
Andy wanted to shake her head, but she was paralyzed.
“I hate to say it kid, but your mother is full of the worst type of bullshit. That dumb bitch has always been an actress playing the role of her life. Haven’t you noticed?”
Andy finally managed to shake her head, but she was thinking—
Mom Mode. Healing Dr. Oliver Mode. Gordon’s Wife Mode.
“Stay here.” Paula left the room.
Andy could not have followed if she’d wanted to. She felt like her bare feet were glued to the tiled floor. Nothing this scary stranger had said about Laura was new information, but Paula had framed it in such a way that Andy was beginning to understand that the different facets of her mother weren’t pieces of a whole; they were camouflage.
You have no idea who I am. You never have and you never will.
“Are you still there?” Paula called from the other side of the house.
Andy rubbed her face. She had to forget what Paula had said for now and get the hell out of here. The woman was still dangerous. She was clearly working some kind of angle. Andy should never have come here.
She opened the desk drawer. She ripped the drawings of Hoodie and Mike out of the pad, shoved them into her back pocket, then pushed open the kitchen door.
She was met by Paula Kunde pointing a shotgun at her chest.
“Jesus Christ!” Andy fell back against the swinging door.
“Hold up your hands, you dimwit.”
Andy’s hands went up.
“Are you wired?”
“What?”
“Bugged. Mic’d.” Paula patted the front of Andy’s shirt first, then her pockets, down her legs and back up. “Did she send you here to trap me?”
“What?”
“Come on.” Paula pressed the muzzle into Andy’s sternum. “Speak, you little monkey. Who sent you?”
“N-n-body.”
“Nobody.” Paula snorted. “Tell your mother your stupid deer in the headlights act almost got me. But if I ever see you again, I’ll pull the trigger on this thing until it’s empty. And then I’ll reload and come after her.”
Andy almost lost control of her bladder. Every part of her body was shaking. She kept her hands up, her eyes on Paula, and walked backward down the hallway. She stumbled on the stair down into the sunken living room.
Paula rested the shotgun on her shoulder. She glared at Andy for another few seconds, then walked back into the kitchen.
Andy choked back bile as she turned to run. She sprinted past the couch, up the single stair to the foyer, and stumbled again on the tile floor. Pain shot into her knee, but she caught herself on the side table. Change spilled out of the glass bowl and tapped against the floor. Every nerve in her body was trapped inside the teeth of a bear trap. She could barely wedge her foot into her shoe. Then she realized the fucking socks were wadded up inside. She checked over her shoulder as she jammed the socks into her messenger bag and shoved her feet into the sneakers. Her hand was so sweaty she almost couldn’t turn the knob to open the front door.
Fuck.
Mike was standing on the front porch.
He grinned at Andy the same way he’d grinned at her when they were outside the bar in Muscle Shoals.
He said, “What a strange coinci—”
Andy grabbed the baseball bat.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa!” Mike’s hands shot into the air as she cocked the bat over her shoulder. “Come on, beautiful. Let’s talk this—”
“You shut the fuck up, you fucking psycho.” Andy gripped the bat so tight that her fingers were cramping. “How did you find me?”
“Well, that’s a funny story.”
Andy jerked the bat higher.
“Wait!” he said, his voice raking up. “Hit me here”—he pointed down at his side—“you can fracture a rib, easy. I’ll probably drop like a flaming sack of shit. Or punch it into the center of my chest. There’s no such thing as the solar plexus but—”
Andy swung the bat, but not hard, because she wasn’t trying to hit him.
Mike easily caught the end of the bat with his hand. He had to step back to do it. His legs were about a shoulder-width apart. Or a foot’s width, which Andy soon found out when she kicked him in the nuts as hard as she could.
He dropped to the ground like a flaming sack of shit.
“Fuh—” He coughed, then coughed again. He was squeezing his hands between his legs, rolling on the front porch. Foam came out of his mouth, the same as Hoodie, but this time was different because he wasn’t going to die, he was just going to suffer.
“Well done.”
Andy jumped.
Paula Kunde was standing behind her. The shotgun was still resting against her shoulder. She said, “That’s the guy from the second drawing, right?”
Andy’s fear of Paula was overridden by her rage at Mike. She was sick of people treating her like a crash-test dummy. She patted his pockets. She found his wallet, his stupid rabbit’s foot keychain. He put up absolutely no resistance. He was too busy clutching his balls.
“Wait,” Paula said. “Your mother didn’t send you here, did she?”
Andy shoved the wallet and keys into her messenger bag. She stepped over Mike’s writhing body.
“I said wait!”
Andy stopped. She turned around and gave Paula the most hateful look she could muster.
“You’ll need this.” Paula dug around to the bottom of the change bowl and found a folded dollar bill. She handed it to Andy. “Clara Bellamy. Illinois.”
“What?”
Paula slammed the door so hard that the house shook.
Who the hell was Clara Bellamy?
Why was Andy listening to a fucking lunatic?
She crammed the dollar bill into her pocket as she walked down the steps. Mike was still huffing like a broken muffler. Andy did not want to feel guilty for hurting him, but she felt guilty. She felt guilty as she got into the Reliant. She felt guilty as she pulled away from the house. She felt guilty as she turned onto the next street. She felt guilty right up until she saw Mike’s white truck parked around the corner.
Motherfucker.
He had changed the magnetic sign on the side of the door.
LAWN CARE BY GEORGE
Andy jerked the Reliant to a stop in front of the truck. She popped the hatch. She found the box of Slim Jims and ripped it open. Nothing but Slim Jims. She opened the little cooler, something she hadn’t done since she’d found it back at Laura’s storage unit.