Jencey hadn’t meant to stay outside Lance’s house as long as she had. She’d intended to just drive by, to see if his car was in the driveway. The irony wasn’t lost on her: the stalked somehow becoming the stalker. But the music on the radio had been perfect, one song lapsing into the next, the night air like a caress on her bare arms through the open window. Her parents had taken the girls out to a movie, and she had nowhere else to be. She’d stopped frequenting the hideout when Lance came into her life.
It had been a normal night in the neighborhood, one like any other, except on this night she’d given in to the urge to venture over to the last place she’d been truly happy in a long time. She didn’t blame Debra for returning; she just wished she’d come back sooner, preferably before she’d had the chance to fall in love with the woman’s husband. She wondered if this summer had just been a step out of time, if Sycamore Glen had simply been their own version of Camelot. She thought of Lance’s stupid joke about being named after Lancelot, how she’d believed him for a moment, how gullible she’d been. She pounded her palm into the steering wheel a few times. She’d been so stupid.
She thought she heard something—a disturbance of some sort—and turned down the radio to listen closer. She needed to get out of there and was about to pull away when the sound of four feet thundering across the road stopped her. She looked toward the noise to see two girls running as fast as their little feet could carry them. Curious, she emerged from her car. “Girls?” she called out, looking back to see where they’d come from. Someone came out of Mr. Doyle’s house, a dark figure on the porch. Danger crackled in the air; Jencey started to follow the girls up the driveway. They disappeared into Zell’s house, and she looked back to see that the figure was gone.
Lance’s car pulled into his driveway, and she stepped into the shadows, hiding uselessly. She knew he’d seen her car parked in front of his house, but the last thing she wanted to do was face him. She didn’t want to see the happy, reunited family emerge from the car. She turned away and cursed herself for ending up here in this place she no longer belonged. She would take the job in Virginia. She would start over . . . again. She heard three car doors slam and looked over, waiting for the sound of the fourth door. But only three people stood in the driveway, their eyes turned toward Zell’s house. They didn’t see Jencey because they were looking at Zell on her stoop, yelling for them to come and help.
ZELL
When Cailey came bursting through the back door, she wasn’t alone. Zell looked up from her conversation with Bryte, her mind struggling to process what was happening. She’d been so wrapped up in Bryte’s story she’d—and she was ashamed of this—forgotten all about the girl in her care. Now there were two girls in her kitchen, one of them as familiar as her own reflection, the other vaguely so. She rose from her chair and gripped the table, blinking at them, her mouth working to find words as a million questions came to mind. She was trying to place the dirty, disheveled child with Cailey. She’d seen her somewhere before.
The child spoke, her breathing heavy, her eyes confused and darting. “I’m . . . I’m Hannah.” She paused. “Sumner. I’ve been kept in that house for”—she looked to Cailey, who nodded—“ninety-four days.” She turned and pointed at James’s house, her hand quivering as she lifted it. Zell took in the snarled, matted hair, the hollowed-out eyes, the skinny frame underneath a dirty man’s undershirt. Blood dripped from a gash in her arm. Improbably, her nails were painted a garish purple that stood out against her pale, pale skin.
Cailey rushed forward and grabbed Zell’s phone from the charger, thrusting it into her hand. “Call the police, Zell!” she hollered. “Call them now before he comes over here!” Next door a car pulled up in the driveway, scaring them all half to death. Bryte leaped up, tugged the girls farther into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind them, twisting the lock. She turned to Zell, panic on her face, the story she’d been telling all but forgotten. There were some things more important than the mess of their own lives.
Zell looked at the house next door, as had been her habit for so long. She saw Lance and his two children standing there, but not Debra. She walked over and unlocked the door, stuck her head out, and waved Lance over. “Hurry!” she yelled. “We need your help!” Then she dialed 911, amazed at how steady her fingers were as she pressed the numbers.
When Zell spotted Lance in the yard after Cailey and Hannah went whizzing away in the ambulance, she figured she should be a few minutes late getting over to the hospital. It’d be best to let Cailey’s mom be the first one to arrive, leaving her with a good time to speak to Lance. She walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to her, his eyes still wide with shock. “Thank you,” she said. “For your help in there.”
Lance shrugged. “I don’t know what I did. You were the hero.”
“No, Cailey’s the hero.”
He nodded. “That she is.” His eyes strayed back to the scene across the street. “I asked Debra to leave,” he said, addressing Debra’s absence without provocation. “I tried to make it work, but there was just something . . .” He waved his hand in the air, dismissing it.
“What do you mean? There was something?” she pressed, easing the conversation in the direction she needed it to go.
He gave a little laugh. “Nothing. It’s not worth going into.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe it is.”
Now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Like how?”
She crossed her arms. “Why’d she tell you she left?”
He hung his head, ashamed. “She said that I wasn’t supportive. That she lost all this weight and I didn’t appreciate it. That she was depressed and I didn’t even notice. She said I did emotional damage, and I’m sure I did. She had to go away to work out her feelings about it all, to decide if she wanted to continue in the marriage.”
He was a good guy—probably one of the best—and that bitch had convinced him he’d done this. She wanted to wring Debra’s neck. Zell shook her head. “She was lying.”
His eyes widened, telling her she should press on. She was eager to be done with her confession, to finally get off her chest the weight she’d been carrying for far too long. “Well, you know she and I became running partners.” He nodded. “And we ended up becoming . . .” She weighed the next word before saying it. “Friends.” She took a deep breath and noticed he’d turned his face away again, watching the house across the street as it became a crime scene.
“She started telling me things, and mostly because she knew I was right next door and would see him coming and going, she told me when she started having an affair. At first I was just looking out for them. And then I just . . . started watching them. Together.” His neck jerked as he whipped his head back in her direction. “I’m not proud of it.” She made herself meet his eyes when all she wanted to do was look at the ground.
“Wait. You’re telling me you . . . spied on my wife and her . . . lover?” She saw the disgust on his face, knew he was thinking about what Ty had done, how maybe voyeurism ran in the family. It was nothing she hadn’t thought of herself.
Shame colored her face as she answered him. “I would sneak into your backyard and watch them have lunch at your kitchen table, sit and talk on your couch.” She sniffed. “I watched it go from innocent to not so innocent, and I should’ve walked away, but it became a . . . a compulsion. I was lonely and bored and . . . nosy.”