Afterward, she felt weak and shaky. She wrapped herself in a towel and sat on the edge of the tub, trying to pull herself together. She wished Eric were there, and at the same time was glad that he wasn’t. She didn’t like to burden him with the aftereffects of her past. He knew a lot about her life, and the things she had been through, but there were memories she had chosen not to share with him. Things that haunted her. Things she regretted even all these years later that, as much as he loved her, she feared he wouldn’t be able to understand or forgive. The prospect of losing him for the mistakes she made all those years ago was more than she could stand.
And yet, she knew there was no escape. Her past was part of who she was and who she had become. The past was like a stone thrown in a lake, the ripples going on and on and on. It was the ominous Other Shoe, and she felt the weight of it hovering over her, ready to crush her and all she held dear. And all she wanted to do was ignore it and hope that it would go away.
Detective Liska had called again and left a message saying she had a couple of additional questions. Evi hadn’t called her back.
She thought of Jennifer Duffy, who had been like a little sister to her for that brief time. She had wondered for a long time after leaving the Duffys what would become of Jennifer. How much did she know? How much had she understood? Detective Liska had said Jennifer struggled for years after, another casualty of the past. Evi’s heart ached for her.
My fault, she thought. She had only wanted what every child did, to be loved, and in the end she caused nothing but death. The death of a man, the death of innocence, the death of what might have grown into real love.
Needing to move, she got up, discarded her towel, and put on a fresh pair of pajamas. She left her room and went in to check on Mia. She always felt calmer looking at her daughter, her assurance that life went on and renewed itself with innocence. Evi felt a desperate need to keep her child that way: innocent and pure. Her mother hadn’t been strong enough to do that for her.
Mia slept the sleep of a much-loved child, sound and happy, snuggled with a favorite stuffed toy.
I can do this for you, Evi thought. She couldn’t go back and change the past, but she could ensure her daughter’s present and work for her future, and hope that that would make up for the choices she’d made so many years ago.
She went to the dormered window at the end of the room to look out at the night. The rain had subsided to a pea soup mix of mist and fog hanging low to the ground. The waxing moon played hide-and-seek behind black clouds scudding across the night sky.
She saw their faces in the moon, the face and expression changing every time a cloud slipped by—Ted Duffy, broken and defeated; Barbie Duffy, cold and bitter; Jeremy, tormented and brooding; Donald Nilsen, angry and full of hate . . .
The motion sensor security light above the back door clicked on, and Evi flinched, her heart jumping in her chest. She told herself it was probably a stray cat cutting through the yard. Once, over the summer, they had a family of raccoons visit. She scanned the yard from side to side. One of the swings on the swing set was moving. The wind?
Only one seat was moving. The other was still.
A big oak tree took up one corner of the yard. Most of its leaves were gone, but the thick trunk still offered a hiding place. Near the tree was Mia’s playhouse, which Eric had built for her birthday this year. They kept it locked. No one could get inside . . . but they could hide behind it.
Funny how something so sweet and pretty in the daylight could become so dark and sinister at night. Was that the shadow of a figure in the window? She held her breath and waited for it to move.
Her mind went back to the conversation she had had with the detectives, to the questions they had asked about why someone would be stalking her. She had assumed it might have to do with Hope Anders, but as Detective Liska had pointed out, Evi was no one of any real consequence in that case. She was a liaison. She gave the girls her counsel once a week. She had nothing to do with any of the investigations. She wasn’t the figurehead of Chrysalis. She was a social worker. Why would anyone stalk a social worker?
Why would anyone stalk her at all?
Had someone seen her picture in the newspaper article and become fixated on her for reasons only a sick mind could know?
The sensations from her nightmares came back to her—the panic, the darkness, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe or move. The shadows from her past stalked her every night. Had one of them come calling in person?
Liska had asked her if she’d kept in touch with Jeremy. She had not. She had been removed from the Duffy house and taken to a group home that seemed to have existed in another world. She never tried to contact him, did her best to put him out of her mind. Eventually, she succeeded. Years later. Just as she put his father out of her mind, and Ted Duffy, and the rest of them.
The ringing of the telephone tore through the silence, and Evi jumped and ran to answer it. A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good thing to a firefighter’s wife. Her heart was hammering as she picked up the handset from the nightstand in her room.
“Hello?”
Her mind was already racing. Eric was hurt. She would throw on clothes and scoop up Mia. Would she remember how to get to whatever hospital he had been taken to?
“Hello?” she said again, realizing no one had spoken on the other end of the line.
“Hello? Who is this?” she asked, trying not to sound as frightened as she was.