“She’s great! She’s in school, some fancy academy up in Highland.” She makes a face as if she’s openly disgusted by the place. “She calls me about once a week. But I got my baby.” She pushes up her glasses and nods.
“That’s great. And little Allison? She’s in school, too? I’m assuming back in Nevada? That is where you said you came from, right? The night I was on live with Gretchen MacAfee and you called in.” Damn liar. McCafferty said she was living in California, a stone’s throw from me right up until my sister tipped her off and helped shuttle her to Idaho. She’s been here for months. I want to shake her. Ask her what the hell she’s really up to. But Heather is far from brilliant. She shouldn’t be too hard to trip up.
“Nevada?” She purses her lower lip as if I’ve just made the whole state up. “It was just a cover-up. If my best friend can hide things from the world, so can I. Right?” She titters into her hand as if it were the funniest thing and my skin breaks out in goose pimples. Dear God, is she hiding Reagan?
“So where is little Allison?” My voice shakes and I do my best to iron out the rage building in me. “Do you have a picture? I’d love to see her.” Why do I get the feeling I’m about to stare into the face of Ota? I should have known. If that ridiculous pig Latin name didn’t tip me off, then that equally ridiculous pinafore and throwback clothing circa Heather Evans’ time traveling mind should have pointed straight to her insanity.
“Oh, hon”—Heather leans in with a curious look, her hair disheveled from the theatrics, her lipstick knifing into the hard lines around her upper lip, a cackle caught in her throat—“why would I need a picture? She’s sitting right there.” She points to the arid space behind her.
“She is?” I strain into the shadows to make out a human figure but come up empty. “Where? Is she hiding?” My body pulsates with a mixture of elation and fear. I’m going to catch her. I’m going to snatch that little devil and not let go until Heather surrenders my child.
“On the bed, silly! She’s sitting right there on the edge.” She points hard to a shadowed void, and I’m suddenly light headed, afraid I might faint. A bout of nausea rolls through my stomach as a paralyzing fear grips me. Heather hops up and wraps her arm around thin air as if it were a child. “Come here, pretty girl. Your favorite auntie finally wants to meet you! Oh, come now. Don’t you get shy on me.” She walks over with an arm still firmly secured to nothing. “Isn’t she pretty, Allison?” Heather takes a step toward me, her mouth squaring out in an elated, deformed smile. “Why, she looks just like you.”
My legs wobble as I struggle to rise. “I—I have to go.” I make a beeline for the door and Heather chases me down, snatching me by the wrist.
“What’s the matter, Allison?” Gone is the enthusiastic fervor that’s gripped her, replaced with a cutthroat rage. “Isn’t she pretty enough for you?”
I break free from her hold and open the door so fast I thump Heather in the face with it. The icy air welcomes me as my feet knife their way down the stairs.
“Is she being rude? I’ll punish her, Ally!” Her voice cries out into the sky as I bolt for the car. “Why! Why! Why!” she screams from the balcony in a choir of harrowing cries as I speed the hell out of the lot.
I glance in the rearview mirror just as she tosses that ball of nothing over the side of the railing—her face beet red with rage and fury.
Jane was right. I should have stayed the hell away.
And when I get home, James is going to wish he stayed the hell away from Hailey Preggers Oden.
* * *
The drive home is set with the white-hot embarrassment of ever trusting myself to be in the same air space as that woman. I’m calling McCafferty. I want Heather under full investigation. I demand she tell me what she did with her daughter and mine. Although, after that hallucinogenic display, it’s doubtful she’s competent enough to pull off something so well-orchestrated. God forbid, she even try. Poor Reagan might actually end up in a river no thanks to that loon.
The cul-de-sac is filled with bodies this afternoon, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to get my car through the crowd. News outlets that I haven’t seen in weeks have sprouted back up with their giant satellite dishes, an entire infantry of reports all butting one another in the shoulder for a glimpse of something near the house.
“Oh my God.” My adrenaline kicks in hard, fire burning through the tundra that has become my heart, and I stop the car and run out to the driveway, fully expecting to find James with Reagan in his arms.
I clear the wall of reporters, pushing and shoving, threading my way through a wall of limbs, only to find a thing of horror planted on my front lawn.
Standing next to James and Rich are Ann and Walden Greer, my parents. My mother has her hair cropped short around her jaw and she’s dressed in a baby blue wool dress with a matching pillbox hat pressed over her neat dark tresses, doing her very best to channel her inner Jackie O. My father, the retired teacher, looks every bit the part with that slouched suit jacket, that worn basset hound look on his face that mirrors my own. But it’s my mother who looks ready for war, pumped to tell the media and the world her two contentious cents on the subject. For all practical purposes, it would seem this is a good thing to sic my mother on the public at large—on the bastards that did this—however, that’s not how my mother operates.
My mother is a sopping wet towel of a human being, prone to use her devices to smother those around her. And now that she’s here, I will most certainly smother under her weight.
“Holy hell.” I run up the side and my mother stops the woman dusting powder over her face from continuing her task. “What are you doing here? What are all these people doing here?”
James starts to say something and my mother clips him as she pulls me in.
“Come here.” Her voice is stern, no nonsense, and this rattles me right down to that three-year-old inside of me who still very much fears her. “I’m going to straighten this whole mess out,” she gruffs while patting down my shirt, ironing it with her hands. “Just stand next to your husband like God intended, and we’ll have this taken care of like it should have been weeks ago.”
“What? No. I don’t want you to do this.”
“James?” she shrills like a drill sergeant and thrusts me into his arms. “Man your wife. This will only take a moment.” She stalks off, a few feet to the makeshift podium, and the crowd bleeding into the street quiets and stills.
My mother dips her head into the microphone like a seasoned pro. “Good afternoon.” She pulls the equipment closer and my father shoots me a quick wink.
“What’s going on?” I whisper to James, my philandering husband. After all, I seriously doubt Hailey Oden traveled across three state lines to show off the new figure Faulk gave her.
“She insisted. You know your mother. You can’t stop her. She had every media outlet here twenty minutes before she arrived.” He winces, looking disarmingly handsome, and seeing him this way makes me wish Hailey Oden had never existed. We could have been something great if his penis hadn’t intervened.
Rich comes over and lands a quick tap to my arm. “How do you think this is going to end?” He gives my mother a quick glance.
“Badly,” I say. It’s the only real answer.
My mother clears her throat. “I want to thank everyone who has thus far committed in the search for our precious little Reagan. I want to apologize for the lack of direction and organization on the part of the Concordia Police Department and that of my daughter and her husband.” A faint gasp circles the crowd, but the bigger news crews simply lean in as if the real story were about to unfold.
“Shit.” James looks to Rich. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think it would go this way.”