And what did the answer have to do with Ted Duffy’s death?
Nikki’s follow-up call to Evi Burke had also gone unanswered. Evi Burke, who had been through two or three kinds of hell growing up but had managed to come out the other side and build a nice life, a meaningful life. It was no wonder she would rather pass on the opportunity to go back and dig up unhappy times.
“Sorry, Evi,” Nikki murmured as she stared at the time line of Ted Duffy’s death. “I’m taking you back there whether you like it or not. I think you might be my lynchpin in this.”
31
The dream took her back to a place she didn’t want to go, to a time she didn’t want to remember. Even in the memory, she felt so empty and so alone, the emotions creating a physical pain inside her.
She was alone in the world. She had no one. Her mother was gone. Gone for good, not gone to a rehab or gone to a hospital or gone on a bender. She was dead. She was gone and never coming back. As damaged as she had always been, as inadequate as her capabilities as a parent had been, she had been Evi’s only relative, the only person to which she truly belonged—and vice versa.
It had come as a surprise, how hard it was to lose her. Evi had seen her sporadically as a teenager in and out of foster care. In many ways they had been little more than acquaintances and occasional roommates. Evi had done as much caretaking of her mother over the years as her mother had of her—probably more. Yet the loss felt as if a giant hole had been torn open inside her, and there was nothing to fill it. That emptiness had terrified her.
She had a roof over her head at the Duffys’. She had people around her, and she had school. But Barbie Duffy was not a mother to her, and Evi had no real friends. She was shy by nature, and ashamed of being in foster care. People looked at her differently, treated her differently, like there must be something wrong with her, something contagious that made her unlovable, or something intrinsically broken and dirty that attracted the darkness in the souls of men.
None of them reached out to touch her heart. All of them reached out to touch her body—young or old; in anger, as if it was her fault they wanted her; or in the guise of something kinder, as if it was their duty. She took what was offered because anything was better than the emptiness inside her.
She hadn’t meant for bad things to happen. She had only wanted to be loved. She had only wanted to break the sense of feeling separate from everyone around her. She longed to feel she was a part of something, connected to someone. How could that be so wrong?
In the dream, everything was dark, all moonlit shapes and forms. Comfort came in secret. She grabbed it with both hands and held on. Hands and mouths and tangled legs, beating hearts and hot breath. But even in the attempt to connect to someone, she felt detached from her body, as if the essence of her being was just a tiny ball of energy trapped inside an empty shell. Frightened and confused, she held on tighter. She wanted something more, needed something she couldn’t name because she had never known it.
She had never meant to hurt anyone, but in the end she had destroyed everyone she cared about most. As if her heart were Pandora’s box: She had opened it and chaos had tumbled out like an avalanche, crushing everything in its path.
She had spent years in purgatory trying to pay for the damages. She was still paying on nights like this one, when she dreamed of sex and violence, and what her past could do to her present.
She woke up gasping for air, drenched in sweat, shaking, crying, dizzy, nauseated. She stumbled out of bed, tripping on the covers, and hurried into the bathroom to be sick. When her stomach was empty, she brushed her teeth and turned the shower on. Stripping her nightgown off and dropping it on the floor, she stepped under the water, gasping because it was still cold. She didn’t care. She needed to wash the sensation of the dream away, the sensation of being dirty and defiled and disgusted with herself. She lathered herself with soap and scrubbed her skin with a loofah until it hurt.