“I’m sorry.” I swallow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” he says, taking a step closer. Still clutching the drill. “You’re Chloe Davis. Your fiancé gave me your name when he called. He’s on his way to Lafayette, and he said you’d let me in.”
My eyes grow wide as I register what he just admitted—he knows who I am. He has this whole time. And he knows I’m here alone.
He takes another step closer.
“And the fact that you lied about your name on the order form tells me that you know who I am, too, so I really don’t know what you’re playin’ at, askin’ me these questions.”
My phone is hot in my back pocket. I could pull it out, call 9-1-1. But he’s right in front of me now, and I’m terrified that any movement on my part will send him hurtling in my direction.
“You wanna know what brought me to Baton Rouge?” he asks. He’s getting angry now; I can see his skin reddening, his eyes getting darker. Little bubbles of spit multiplying on his tongue. “I’ve been here for a while, Chloe. After Annabelle and I got divorced, I needed a change of scenery. A fresh start. I was in a dark place for a while there, so I picked up and moved, got the fuck out of that town and all the memories that come with it. And I was doin’ okay, all things considered, until a few years ago, I opened the Sunday paper, and guess who I saw starin’ right back at me.”
He waits for a second, his lip curling into a smile.
“It was a picture of you,” he says, pointing the drill in my direction. “A picture of you beneath some cheeky little headline about you channeling your childhood trauma or some bullshit like that right here in Baton Rouge.”
I remember that article—that interview I had granted the paper when I started working at Baton Rouge General. I thought that article would be a redemption piece, of sorts. A chance to redefine myself, to write my own narrative. But of course, it wasn’t. It was just another exploration of my father, another gaudy glorification of violence masquerading under the fa?ade of journalism.
“I read that article,” he continues. “Every fuckin’ word. And you know what? It just pissed me off all over again. You makin’ excuses about your dad, capitalizin’ on what he did, for the good of your own career. And then I read about your mom, tryin’ to take the cowardly way out after the role she played in all of this. So she didn’t have to live with herself no more.”
I’m silent as his words settle over me, as I take in the way he’s staring at me with pure hatred in his eyes. The way his hands are clutching the drill so hard I can see the whites of his knuckles, threatening to tear straight through his skin.
“Your entire family makes me sick,” he says. “And no matter what I do, I can’t seem to escape you.”
“I never made excuses for my father,” I say. “I never tried to capitalize on anything. What he did … it’s, it’s inexcusable. It makes me sick.”
“Oh, is that right? It makes you sick?” he asks, tilting his head. “Tell me, does owning your own practice make you sick, too? That nice little office you got downtown? Does your six-figure paycheck make you sick? Your fuckin’ Garden District, two-story home and picture-perfect fiancé? Do they make you sick?”
I swallow hard. I underestimated Bert Rhodes. Inviting him inside was a mistake. Trying to play detective and interrogate him was a mistake. Not only does he know me—he knows everything about me. He’s been researching me the same way I’ve been researching him—but for much, much longer. He knows about my practice, my office. Maybe that means he knows that Lacey was a patient—and he was there, waiting, the day she stepped outside and disappeared.
“Now, tell me,” he growls. “Why is it fair that Dick Davis’s daughter gets to grow up and live a perfect life while mine is rotting in the ground wherever that fucker dumped her body?”
“I am not living a perfect life,” I say. Suddenly, I’m angry, too. “You have no idea what I’ve been through, how fucked up I am after what my father did.”
“What you’ve been through?” he yells, pointing the drill at me again. “You want to talk about what you’ve been through? How fucked up you are? What about my daughter? What about what she went through?”
“Lena was my friend. Mr. Rhodes, she was my friend. You are not the only one who lost someone that summer.”
His expression shifts slightly—a softening of the eyes, a loosening of the forehead—and suddenly, he’s looking at me like I’m twelve again. Maybe it was the way I said his name, Mr. Rhodes, the same way I said it when my mother introduced us in our kitchen one evening after I burst in from camp, sweating and dirty and confused as to who this man was, standing so close to my mother. Or maybe it was the mention of her name—Lena. I wonder how long it’s been since he’s heard it spoken out loud, a name so sweet it tastes like sap dripping down a piece of bark on the tongue. I try to take advantage of this momentary shift and keep talking.
“I am so sorry about what happened to your daughter,” I say, taking a step back, putting some distance between us. “Truly, I am. I think about her every day.”
He sighs, lowering the drill to his legs. He turns to the side, gazing at something outside through the blinds, a faraway look in his eyes.
“You ever think about what it feels like?” he finally asks. “I used to keep myself up at night, wondering. Imagining. Obsessing over it.”
“All the time. I can’t imagine what she went through.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not talking about her. Not Lena. I never wondered what it was like to lose my life. Honestly, if I did, I wouldn’t care.”
He turns toward me now. His eyes have morphed back into two inky black voids, any trace of softness now gone completely. He’s wearing that expression again, that same expression of flat, emotionless indifference. He almost looks inhuman, like an empty mask hanging against a pitch-black wall.
“I’m talking about your father,” he says. “I’m talking about taking one.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I don’t move until I hear the roar of the engine and the thud of his truck reversing over the curb and peeling out of my driveway. I stand completely still, listening to the sound of his retreating vehicle growing fainter in the distance, until finally, I’m met with silence.
You really think I don’t know who you are, Chloe?
His words had trapped me, rendered me immobile the second he turned around and looked me in the eye. I was paralyzed the same way I was paralyzed as I watched my father slink through the backyard at night, shovel in hand. I knew I was witnessing something wrong, something terrible. Something dangerous. I knew I should run, screaming. I knew I should sprint out the open door, flailing my arms. But just as my father’s slow, lumbering steps had held me captive, Bert Rhodes’s eyes had entranced me, bolted my feet to the floor. His voice had coiled around my body like a snake, refusing to let go. It was dense like salt water; trying to run from it, from him, felt like trying to run through the swamp, the mud heavy and thick and sticking to your ankles. The harder you try to push through, the more exhausted you feel, the weaker you become. The deeper you sink.
I wait another minute, until I’m sure he’s gone, and take a slow step forward, the weight of my heel forcing the wood beneath my feet to creak.
I’m not talking about her. Not Lena. I never wondered what it was like to lose my life.
I take another step—slow, cautionary, as if he’s lurking behind the still-open front door, waiting to strike.