Here we were, the kidnappers in reverse. We were becoming the very people we hated.
My flesh stings with a slap of shock as nightfall threatens to entomb us heavy and final as the lid of a casket. “Should we take the truck?” I pull the junk drawer open and pull out Heather’s phone.
Sixteen missed calls from an unknown number.
I fondle the phone in my hand. Same model I had before I switched to an Android. A dull huff thumps through me. Heather always did like to mimic me. My thumb glides over the screen. No password. Heather has always been an open book. The rumbling of hooves has stopped momentarily and I take a moment to look at the missed calls. Sixteen calls, eight new messages. I hit play and gingerly bring it to my ear.
“Mrs. Evans? I’m sorry to interfere, but I know something is wrong. I called your friend, Allison, for you. Hopefully, she’ll get to you soon. I’ve got something very important I think the two of you will be interested to know. I look forward to speaking with—” a murmur of voices takes over, and it sounds as if the phone has been swallowed up by an elevator shaft.
James stomps his way down the hall, and I quickly shove the phone to the back and slam the drawer shut.
“You ready?” I pant, looking at the small duffle bag in his hand, a small face peering out from the corner, frightened bulging eyes, duct tape secured over her mouth. “Close your eyes, little Allison,” I whisper, zipping the bag shut. “This will all be over soon.”
Or at least that’s what I’m hoping.
* * *
James tossed her on the floor of the back seat and I carefully unzipped it enough for her nose to peer through. The last thing I want is to suffocate a child. It’s not her fault her mother was insane and that her favorite aunt in the world just morphed into a psychopath. Thankfully, it’s less than a ten-minute drive to the Price family home. The first time James brought me out here I thought how nice, he comes from a long line of farmers, what a beautiful conventional life we’ll have. But his father, the judge, his mother, the socialite, quickly dispelled any Farmer John theories I was tossing around.
The house comes up quick. And as James speeds down the impossibly long driveway, a thought comes to me.
“You said Monica picked up your belongings at the curb. Your father doesn’t really have a curb.” Monica would have had to willfully make the grueling trek down to the house. I doubt Charles was depositing his belongings out on the highway.
His dimples depress as he comes to this realization himself. “He doesn’t, does he? I don’t know. Maybe he called Monica?”
“Maybe Monica has a thing for all the Price men.” That felt like a particularly low blow, considering there are only two Price men left.
A small moan comes from the back and we both glance over our shoulders in unison.
James parks next to the porch and we get out, me with my nerves jangled and him with his new fidgety gym bag.
“Dad?” His voice booms as he bursts through the door. In all honesty, I don’t know if it was unlocked or if James just kicked his way in, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all I can do to keep from shouting Reagan’s name.
“Jumpin’ Mary and Joseph!” Charles staggers out of the kitchen armed with a spatula in his hand. “What the hell? You scared the living daylights out of me!” He warms a quick smile. “Whatcha got there?”
I unzip the bag a few good inches and Ota pops her head just enough to evoke a dull groan from Charles.
“My God, is that Reagan?” The spatula slips from his hand, and with that one genuine moment of concern the thought of finding my daughter here slips as well.
“No, Dad, it’s not.” James heads to the sofa and unzips the bag fully so that Charles can take in the full horror of it all, her hands and feet sloppily bound with duct tape, her eyes the size of bloody golf balls.
I’d tell her everything will be okay once again, but I can no more believe my lies than spew them.
“What have you done?” Charles lifts a brow as he examines the two of us. His body is hunched over the duffle bag, twitching, unsure if he should bolt. His gaze shifts from James to me, his cheek rising as if betraying him on some level.
It’s as if all of time stands still. My heart stops beating, my next breath elusive to my lungs. Everything that’s transpired these past few weeks, all of the swirling rumors, the conjectures, the doubts about what really happened to the Price children, his wife, it all comes crashing to my feet as I look into his stunned eyes. Charles doesn’t look as if he’s being confronted about Ota. Those milky blue eyes of his look as if they’re veiled in guilt—with the realization that James and I are hovering over him, ready to detonate another of his necrotic secrets right out of the water.
My eyes flit to the stack of pancakes towering on a plate behind him—far too many for one person to consume. Reagan’s favorite breakfast. You could pacify her to do just about anything with those. My heart thumps into my throat, drumming right through my ears until all I hear is the staccato wallop.
“My God, it was you,” it comes out breathy, less than a whisper. “You have her. Don’t you?” My voice shakes as I stare down this older, grumpier, far less stable version of my husband. “Where’s Reagan?”
A moment of silence bumps by as he looks to the two of us once again. Ota lets out a muffled wail and breaks the spell.
Charles staggers forward. “This isn’t going well. We could have ended this another way.” He reaches in to free her and James flings him into the wall with a horrific thud that shakes the paltry frame of the house.
“You bastard!” James thunders so loud, Ota jerks and I think she’s having a seizure. “Why did you do it? Why did you take my baby?”
Charles narrows those bushy brows my way, his affect suddenly fierce and cold as steel. “Is she your baby? Or are you simply raising the bastard of another man?” He tips his chin at me. “Tell him, Allison. Tell him you were a loose woman who couldn’t keep her legs shut, and then you used another man’s child to trap my son into marriage.”
“No.” I shake my head, stunned. “No, that’s not true.” A knot builds in my stomach so intense the urge to vomit bucks through me.
“Allison?” James staggers back, the rife look of pain already on his face.
“It’s a long story, James. But he’s dead. He was a flash in the pan for that brief window we weren’t together and he was dead before I ever knew Reagan was in my belly.” I bow my head in horror, in relief. “I’m so very sorry.”
A dull whimper comes from the duffle bag. The room stills as James steadies his steely blue eyes over me. It was his eyes I fell in love with first. My sister told me to run. She said the good-looking ones always broke your heart, and it’s true. James and I have taken turns ripping out one another’s vital organs.
Here it is, the moment of my reckoning. A part of me feels as if the ground were just cut out beneath me—and yet, I’ve never felt so light, such a great relief, a release like the unbuckling of an impossibly tight corset and I can breathe for the first time in six long years. The pressure, the weight, of holding a secret the size of another man’s body had slowly eroded the state of my marriage long before Hailey Oden. It was the noose that I had fashioned for us—the one that ultimately strangled the life out of what we had. James didn’t know why we were suffocating but it was me holding us under water.
A breath expires from his lungs as if it were the last one. His eyes widen just a notch as if he could see how far back this malfeasance had smeared itself over our existence.