“On the porch?” I repeated more to myself than to her. The blood that had been pounding my eardrums now drained from my face.
“You and your father,” she muttered. “Never did have any common sense when it came to things. Acting like money grows on bushes.”
I felt as if a weight were clamping down on my chest and cutting off the oxygen supply. The world was in Technicolor. Just then the weather vane emitted a rusty shriek from above us so loud that it seemed to come up the pipes and echo through the kitchen. Mom slapped her spatula on the counter, rattling her half-empty cup of coffee. “I thought I told you to do something about that weather vane, Tor!” But I was hardly listening. My chair squealed across the floor, and I staggered upright, leaving my untouched egg on the table. “Where do you think you’re going? Tor, I’m talking to you.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll … try to be more careful or something.” I pushed past another kitchen chair that was in my way and brushed by my mother, who was shouting my full name like a voodoo curse.
“You’ve got to work on your priorities, Victoria. You hear me?”
The screen door sounded like a mousetrap snapping shut behind me. The air outside was swampy with puddled rain and early-morning sun. The day’s first mosquitoes darted in and out of potted shrubs, and the weather vane creaked in short, spastic increments with the breeze. There was nothing left of my phone on the porch. I scanned the empty road that ran perpendicular to our driveway. In the dirt outside, I could only just make out the faded traces of that third set of tire marks. I felt feverish. Sick.
Somebody knew. If not about Adam, they knew what I’d done. They knew it and they hadn’t called the police. Worry slid its way up my veins and through my heart. A thin trickle of sweat dribbled from my temple. They were toying with me. They wanted me to know that they knew. But why? Panic raked my insides. I scanned the horizon, but the yards around our home were empty.
I knew only that I had to destroy as much of the evidence as I could. As long as I could conceal the truth about Adam, it would only be my word against theirs. There was my car, but that could have easily been a deer, just like I’d said, and there was a body, but if that body wasn’t dead anymore, then was it really a body?
I imagined my mom watching me from the window. I straightened my back and, trying to act normal, followed the familiar path to the cellar door and descended into the ground.
“Adam?” It was pitch-black. I felt my way down wooden steps that creaked beneath my weight. “Adam?” I counted the stairs. Four. Five. Six … On the seventh stair, I found the cord hanging from the ceiling and pulled. A single lightbulb switched on. Several feet in front lit up, but beyond the light’s edges was darkness too thick to see through.
“Victoria.” I couldn’t tell from which direction Adam’s voice came. Goose bumps shot up my arm. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t have any idea what my creation might be capable of. In the cool darkness of the underground, the laboratory suddenly felt like his domain more so than mine.
At the bottom of the stairs, I found the switch, and the overhead lamps flickered, then settled into an electric buzz.
“Good morning.”
I yelped and my hand flew to my chest. Adam was standing inches away, rail straight and still. I held out my finger while I waited to catch my breath for the second time this morning. “Good lord,” I panted. “You scared me half to death.” Then I quickly added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a little bit dead, of course. The scaring thing, though, that seems to be one of your talents.”
“I got you these.” A stiff arm held out a flimsy bouquet of five white and yellow daisies. Their pitiful roots dangled from the bottom of his fist. He puffed his chest out and grinned.
I instinctively brought them to my nose. They smelled like fertilizer and lawn mower clippings. “Where did you get these?” I said slowly.
“In the field.” He pointed up. “How did you sleep, Victoria? You looked very peaceful.”
I set the flowers down gently on a counter. I ignored how creepy his last statement had sounded. “Did you see anyone? Did anyone see you?” I thought of the phone on the porch and the tire marks and—“Adam, you have to listen to me,” I hissed, staring up at the ceiling to regain my composure. “You can’t go wandering around up there without me. Someone might see you.”
His chest deflated. “You don’t like them.”
My glance flitted to the wilted cluster. As a girl, I was pretty sure the female handbook required me to go gaga over handpicked flowers, but my idea of romance was more a Bunsen burner, an open flame, and highly combustible chemicals than candlelight and walks on the beach. “I do.” I leveled my chin at him. “They’re nice, but even still, you can’t go wandering around.”