What a sordid, ugly, twisted mess. He’s glad to be out of the house, will be glad to turn Leah Addington over to the ER staff and walk away. But he knows he won’t shake this case off easily. He feels the restless itch of his own trauma heating up.
When his chief calls to say somebody has phoned in sick and asks if Tony can work a double shift, he’s more than happy to volunteer. Anything is better than the nightmares that are waiting for him if he tries to sleep tonight.
Chapter Four
On Elle’s advice, I wait to call Greg until we’re at the airport. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, she says. Since we’re already through TSA and waiting at our gate, there’s not much he can do besides layer on the guilt.
Linda answers, sounding frazzled. I can hear the baby crying into the receiver and find myself wondering how Greg is adapting to this unexpected interloper in his perfectly ordered life.
“Maisey,” Linda says, “everything okay with Elle?”
“Elle is great. I just need to talk to Greg.”
“Are you sure? He had a hard day. I don’t like to bother him.”
“It’s kind of important, Linda. Please.”
I hear the sigh, can almost feel her fatigue through the phone line. “All right. I’ll get him. Greg? Greg! It’s Maisey. No, I have no idea what she wants.”
“You’re where?” Greg demands, predictably, when I tell him.
Elle grins at me, a momentary flash of conspiratorial mischief that lightens my heart.
“Elle and I are flying out to see my parents. We’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes, so I need to keep this short.”
I can hear him breathing, and I know he is pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes the way he does when he’s frustrated.
When he speaks it’s with an exaggerated calm. “Would you care to explain why you are flying out to Washington State, with our daughter, on a school night?”
No, I wouldn’t care to explain. As it turns out, I don’t have to. Elle grabs my phone.
“Hi, Daddy.”
His voice might as well be on speakerphone. “I’m talking to your mother.”
“Grandma’s dying and Grandpa needs us. Don’t worry about school. We’ve got it covered.”
A silence. “Elle. Give the phone back to your mother.”
“Whatever, Daddy. Love you. Kiss baby Jay for me.”
She hands me back the phone. I take it reluctantly, bracing for the lecture I probably deserve. It’s Greg’s unexpected kindness that undoes me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and those three words melt the shield of ice that’s carried me from my kitchen into the airport.
No, I am not okay. I may never be okay again. If I answer, my voice will break. The tears will flow. I’ll be a sobbing lunatic in the middle of this overcrowded gate, and everybody will stare.
“Right,” he says, on the other end. “Stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. Oh my God. You could have called me, Maisey. If you’d only let me, I . . .” His voice trails off, but not before those words dump me into a memory so vivid I can taste the rancid bitterness of the stale gas station coffee rapidly cooling in a paper cup.
The first big decision I ever made for myself was on a summer night twelve years ago. The night I told Greg I wouldn’t marry him, despite the baby growing in my belly.
“God,” he says. “Your mom. Is she even allowed to be sick? You must feel like the universe is turned inside out.”
“I’m okay. Just in shock. We’ll let you know when we get there.”
“All right,” he says. “Keep me informed. Give your mother my love, will you?”
If I had made a different choice way back then, Greg would be flying with us. Him, me, and Elle, the three of us, a traditional family. I try the idea on for size and shrug it off, like a coat that doesn’t fit. Elle is all the family I need.
My old hometown looks dark and deserted when we roll in halfway between midnight and dawn. No lights. No cars. Even the gas station by the traffic circle is deserted. A slow, bleak drizzle of rain intensifies the effect.
My brain, short-circuited by fatigue, anxiety, and the energy drink I bought to help me navigate the seventy miles of dark, deer-infested highway between Spokane and Colville, goes straight to apocalypse. I imagine the entire population sizzled into nothing by an electronic pulse or sucked up into a spaceship, the buildings left standing.
Plague.
Zombies.
Maybe I’m driving Elle into a trap. I could let this traffic circle swing me right back around, let it fling the rental car free back onto the highway, back toward Spokane.
Small towns sleep at night, I remind myself. It is two a.m., and we are not in Kansas City anymore. I’ve got enough to worry about without adding imaginary dangers into the mix.
Dad, for example. He hasn’t responded to any of my calls since our brief and disturbing conversation. At least the hospital has people to answer the phone to tell me my mother is still alive and breathing. They also can tell me that they have not seen my dad, that he hasn’t come up to visit her, and that in itself is the most ominous news of all.
I try to blink some moisture into my eyes, but the lids grate like sandpaper. My face feels like it might crack if I dare yawn or smile or do anything other than stare at the road. My hands are fused to the steering wheel, and my whole body thrums with the vibration of tires on pavement.
All the way through town, I entertain the hope that everything is a huge misunderstanding. Dad and I will laugh about Mrs. Carlton, the wicked witch next door, the way we did when I was a child. Every one of her stinging remarks to me, about me, were softened by the stories Dad would tell.
Me, the fairy-tale princess. Her, the spiteful but powerless witch, bound by a magic spell that kept her from inflicting any true harm.
I tell myself that the real fairy stories are the ones the cop was spinning on the phone. Dad was in shock, that’s all. Who wouldn’t be? And there’s no way he let Mom lie unconscious for three days without calling for help.
But then I turn onto our street and all my make-believe falls into ashes.
The house is lit up like a carnival, every window glowing. Smoke pours out of the chimney—black, copious, and all kinds of wrong.
My parents, for as long as I can remember, have been in bed every night by ten. All the lights off, except the dim one over the kitchen sink. And the fireplace is used only for ceremonial purposes. Small, decorative fires at Christmas. An occasional blaze on a Saturday night to go with hot cocoa and whipped cream.
I skid into the driveway far too fast and slam on the brakes just in time to avoid crashing into the garage door. Elle bolts upright, eyes wide but glassy with sleep and confusion.
She follows me out of the car and up to the front door, which is locked.
I beat on it with my fists, shouting, “Dad! It’s Maisey. Let me in!”
Nobody comes to the door. Acrid smoke drifts down from the chimney and into my nose. Panic freezes my brain, and it takes me way too long to lift the fake rock sitting right beside the door for any would-be thief to see. My hands are shaking, and I drop the key not once but twice before I manage to turn it in the lock and open the door.
The entryway is blue with smoke.
“Get back in the car,” I order Elle. “Call 911. If the house explodes, run for it.”
“If you’re exploding, so am I,” she protests. “But I’ll call.”
No time to argue. I dash through the entryway, down a short hall, into the living room.
“Dad!”
A haze of smoke drifts along the ceiling, but the only flames I can see are in the fireplace. Dad is on his knees in front of it, the poker in his hands. A sheaf of half-burned paper, some black and smoldering, some flaming, spills out onto the hearth. He pokes more paper into the fireplace, and with a whoosh it ignites. Hot paper ash floats out into the room, sucked by the current of air from the open door. Some lands on the carpet. A spark lands in Dad’s hair, and he drops the poker and swats at his head.
A wad of flaming paper stuck to the poker continues to burn perilously close to his pant leg. He’s as oblivious to the danger as he is to our arrival.