His mouth moved again. “Ev— Ev—”
“Evi,” Nikki said. “I know. I’ll make you a deal, Fireman. You take care of you. I’ll take care of Evi. I’ll take care of her now, and you can take care of her later. Right?”
She could see him losing the focus in his good eye. She bumped him in the side with a knee to jostle him back, to make the synapses fire in another part of his brain.
“Eric, do you know who did this to you?”
No response.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Eric, is he still here? Is he in the house?”
He stared up at her. She was losing him.
She leaned harder against the wound. Her hand was slick with his blood; it seeped between her fingers.
“Damn it, Eric! Stay with me! You’ve got a pretty wife and a beautiful little girl to live for. Fight!”
*
HIS WORDS TRIED TO penetrate Evi’s brain at the same time as her brain tried to reject them.
You gave me life.
Jeager, Evangeline Grace. Her name, as if read from a legal document.
It couldn’t be.
“You don’t recognize me?” he asked with sarcasm and a bitter little smile. “I’m Baby Boy Jeager. Father: Unknown.”
Oh my God . . .
Down the hall, Mia called for her again.
“I’m the one you didn’t want,” her tormentor said.
Evi thought she might faint. She pressed herself hard against the wall to keep from falling as the floor seemed to sway beneath her feet.
Baby Boy Jeager. Father unknown.
Son of Ted Duffy, come to avenge a father he didn’t even know. The father who had died because of him.
She had gone to great lengths to bury those truths so deep inside she would never find them again. She had lost herself on the streets, and had been plunged into a terrible purgatory of degradation, drugs, sex, and despair. It had somehow seemed fitting to try to forget one nightmare by living in another, losing herself in the process. But here she was, all these years later, with that past staring her in the eye, ready to cut her throat.
You can’t escape who you are, he’d said. You can’t escape what you did.
She said the first thing that made any sense to say: “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re sorry I’m here now. It all worked out for you. Here you are with your nice little life and your nice little family. It all worked out for you.”
She wanted to ask him his name, but she didn’t dare. She hadn’t given him a name when he was born. If she’d given the baby a name, it would have been harder to try to forget. She saw him once after giving birth, then he had been whisked away to a better life than she could have given him, to parents who had no memory of his conception or of what had transpired because of it.
Even as she remembered, the smell of whiskey and smoke and man filled her head. Her mother had died. She felt so alone, so empty. She wanted comfort. She needed connection. He came to her room to check on her. He held her while she cried. It was late. The house was quiet. He’d had too much to drink. The job was draining the humanity from him. He refilled himself with whiskey to dull the pain.
She didn’t understand what she shouldn’t want. She knew what she felt, and she knew what she didn’t want to feel: alone, abandoned. He kissed her. He touched her. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to. Was this what it had been like for her mother giving herself over to a man? A welcome escape from the pain and emptiness of her life?
He didn’t force her. She didn’t fight him.
He cried afterward. He sat on the edge of her bed with his head in his hands and sobbed, ashamed, apologetic. She looked past him to see Jennifer’s small face, wide-eyed as she peered out of her hiding place in the closet. And then the shame was Evi’s . . .
She couldn’t tell this man any of that. This man, her own child, who had come here to kill her.
“I couldn’t keep you,” she said. “I was seventeen. I didn’t have a home. I didn’t have a family. I couldn’t give you anything but a better chance.”
“You don’t know anything about what you gave me,” he said.
“I gave you more than I had.”
She hadn’t hated the baby she carried. She’d hated the circumstances that had created him, and the tragedy that followed. She blamed herself for needing things that had never been meant for her—comfort, safety, love—but she gave the child a chance to have those things. It never occurred to her that he might grow up to hate her for it. Not in her worst nightmares did she ever foresee this.
“You gave me to a nightmare!” he shouted, lunging at her, pressing the sword to her throat.
Evi swallowed hard. She felt the blade scrape against her skin. Tears blurred her vision and spilled down her cheeks.
“I’m here to give it back,” he said. “I’m done with it. It’s time to close the circle.”
46