Imprisonment, losing custody… all risks I have to take. If I have the opportunity, right now, to stop him from getting to my daughter, or to any other child, I have to act.
I move aside five manuscripts before I find The Terrace. I rapidly flip through the pages, the first eighty percent of the book detailing the girl’s failed attempts. Skimming over the scenes, I realize exactly how screwed up my sixteen-year-old self was. Had I really hated my mother this much? Had I felt this detached? How many of these emotions had been fiction, and how much reality? I’d blamed my stiffness with my mother on her disapproval of my parenting, on her attempts to separate me from my child. But now, reading through my teenage thoughts, I am reminded of how different we have always been. In my upbringing, there had been no cuddly moments, no friendly lunches or the sharing of feelings. Any discussions had been examined through her psychiatrist magnifying glass, my emotions and motivations picked apart and analyzed to death. I learned, early on, to hide everything from her.
The plot progresses and I slow my reading, bending the page over at the section where Helen (such an original name) did her research. The detail, as in all of my early novels, borders on excessive—an insecure need to show my thorough research. And I remember the research well. The Internet hadn’t been as all-encompassing back then. I’d had to hunt down a local plumber and get my information from him. He’d found me strange, and had asked a lot of his own questions. What I planned to do with the information. If my parents were aware of my interest in killing someone via carbon monoxide. All of those suspicions had been overcome with a crisp hundred-dollar bill and a promise to mention him in the book’s acknowledgements. I hold my place with my finger and flip to the back, using a precious moment to verify that I had, in fact, acknowledged him. And sure enough, on the second to last page, on the book never published, there was his name. Spencer Wilton. I let out a sigh of relief, that debt paid. I return to the meat of the document, skimming over the content quickly, then a second time, my eyes darting occasionally to the tall metal tanks, as I verify the facts.
The good news is, water heaters haven’t changed in the last fifteen years.
The bad news is, I’m about to kill Simon.
I can do it. I can follow these instructions and pump our home full of deadly gas. In this airtight room, I will be protected. I could kill him and wait for rescue.
I scoot forward on my butt, toward the toolbox, and pick up the wrench.
I can do this.
I will do this.
I set down the manuscript and lean forward, toward the first hot water heater.
CHARLOTTE
Charlotte opens the manila folder, pulling out the printout and sliding it gently across the polished wood table. It is a front-page piece, four years old. In the photo, Janice Ross stares directly into the camera, despair radiating from the image. Above her picture, the title in big thick font: “IT WAS MY FAULT.”
The woman’s eyes are the only thing that moves. They dart to the page, to the photo, to Charlotte’s face, then back to the page. A bit of tongue peeks from her lips, then disappears. “That’s an old article.”
“Not that old,” Charlotte replies. “Do you still remember the day it happened?”
Her stare returns to Charlotte and she shakes her head minutely, a scornful sigh wheezing through her clenched mouth. “Of course I do. But like I told you before, I can’t—”
“I’m not asking about Helena or Simon.” Charlotte digs a fingernail into the eraser of her pencil and wills her voice to soften. “I’m just asking about you. About what happened that day.”
“Why? You want to make me feel guilty?” Her arms cross over her thin chest, and there is a sharpening of the features, a straightening of the back. Suddenly, she looks more like the woman of three weeks ago, the one who had stood in her office’s doorway and politely refused every one of Charlotte’s questions. Of course, those questions had all been about Simon and his behavior with Bethany. She had been barking up the wrong tree with a woman who had all but thrown the Psychiatrist’s Code of Ethics at her.
“I just want to understand the facts.” She carefully sets the pencil down, next to her notepad. “Can you walk me through the day?”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Janice Ross’s eyes drop to the article and she picks it up, her fingers tracing over the edges of the page. “I haven’t thought about that day in a long time. I mean—” she corrects herself. “I haven’t relived it in a long time.” She glances up at Charlotte. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes.” She nods, and her fingers itch for the pencil, for the recorder that sits in her bag. But reaching for either, right now, might scare the woman away, might stop the story she seems so reluctant to tell. “Please.” Maybe this will be the break that she needs. Maybe something in Janice’s story will give her some closure.
A long sigh tumbles out, the sort that carries more than just breath. Janice Ross wets her lips and then, her eyes returning to the photo, she speaks.
“Sometimes, as a parent, you just know when you are needed. That’s how it was that day. I was driving home and something just told me to stop by Helena’s. It was as clear as if God had pulled my steering wheel to the right.” She lifts her shoulders in a small shrug. “So I did. I swung by and came in. I made some excuse up about borrowing something—I can’t remember what—but I was really just checking on things. And Helena—” she stops herself and there is a moment of inner conflict, some secret that she wars over. “Helena was there,” she finally continues. “With Bethany.”
“Was everything alright?” Charlotte thinks of the police photos, the autopsy report, the diagram of the home and the path that the gas had taken.
“Everything was fine.” She gives a helpless laugh, her shoulders lifting. “I felt crazy, leaving the house. Bethany was fine, Helena was relatively fine…” Relatively fine. An odd choice of words. Charlotte mentally bookmarks the phrase.
“But you took Bethany with you.” She risks a look at her notepad, where the timeline of events was summarized. “What time was that?”
“Yes. I took Bethany with me.” She blinks, and her eyes glisten. “It—ah.” She wipes at her eyes and a line of moisture smears across her cheek. “I guess it was a little before four.”
Charlotte waits for more.
“Bethany was such a happy child. She was in the back, in her car seat. I remember her talking about her day, about a frog that they had found in the backyard. She wanted to keep him, but Helena had told her no.” She reaches out, to the edge of the round table, and pulls a napkin free from its holder. She swallows, and her voice is stronger when she continues. “The traffic was terrible and it took me twenty minutes just to get back to my part of town. We were passing the north plaza when Bethany asked for ice cream. There was a fudge shop there, in the shopping center, and it had a few flavors. I had taken Bethany there before. I guess she looked out the window and saw the sign.” She looks to the side, out the large dining room window, the light highlighting the tight lines of her throat. “I shouldn’t have stopped. But I did. I stopped, and I went around to her side of the car. I opened the door…” her face crumples, her hand trembling around the napkin. “That was when I noticed her shoes.”
“Her shoes?” Charlotte leans forward.
“She had been barefoot when I picked her up. Still in her pajamas, despite the time of day.” Janice straightens, and carefully spreads the napkin, folding it in half and then dabbing at the wet underside of each eye. “Helena had passed me her shoes before we left, but I hadn’t looked at them. I hadn’t realized,” she pauses, her lips pressed together for a moment. “I hadn’t realized that they were mis-matched. Both Converses—Bethany loved pink Converses—but they were both for the left foot.” She spreads her hands. “So I went back.” She looks up at Charlotte with a hopeless expression of defeat.
“I went ....” She almost chokes on the words. “Back.”