“Can I call you Daddy?” A giggle erupts from her as she takes him by the hand and skips in that direction.
“You sure can. I do love the sound.” I’m glad he didn’t say miss. For as much as I want her to spill everything she knows about Reagan, I don’t want to shake her up just yet.
The two of them settle at the counter while I pull out the peanut butter, the blood red jelly, and a package of quickly dwindling English muffins.
“I have something for you.” She holds up a neatly folded piece of paper, the size of the palm of her hand, and I take it from her, still very amazed that she’s spilling words so easily. Why do I feel a threat coming? Why can’t any of this be easy?
It’s wrapped tight, still warm from her flesh, and it makes me miss Reagan all the more. Reagan loved to slip me notes. I love you Mama Pie! It’s still taped to my mirror. She helped me place it there after I opened it. Reagan was a beautiful child and she gave beautiful gifts.
I stop midflight. Was? No. I won’t accept that. Is. She is all of those things, and more.
I unfurl the crisp white page, only to find I can’t make out the drawing. I turn it once again every which way before the image strikes me. A head, X’s for eyes, a stick embedded in its forehead—a pool of blood washed over the bottom.
“What’s this?” My chest seizes as I try to get the words out.
“Is that what it looked like?” Her voice hikes with mild curiosity, but I don’t look at her to see if she’s mocking me. Instead, I marvel at how she got the profile right. Heather’s freckles, that raggedy hair.
James cranes his neck. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” I shudder, making it apparent that I do. “Here.” I hand it over to him and do my best to create an assembly line of bread.
James studies the picture, and his features darken as he slides the picture back to Ota. “Is that her?” His voice breaks. “Is that Reagan?”
My stomach bottoms out because the thought hadn’t even occurred to me.
“That’s not my sister.” She smiles up at him, huge puppy dog eyes with a perfect cartoon smile. “This is Mommy’s very best friend.”
The world freezes. My heart stops beating. The knife slips from my fingertips and lands sharp side down over my foot. That one hard pinch stirs me back to life.
“That’s who you are.” I bend over to pick the knife back up again and hold it low to my thigh. “James.” I shake my head at him. “This is Heather’s daughter. She must be.” A horrible numbness takes over as I absorb the cruel facts. “Oh my God. You saw her,” I whimper. “You saw your mother lying there in a pool of blood, and that’s why you came here.” I shake my head, incredibly sorry for her. “Your mother was sick,” I plead for her to understand as if it had to be this way.
She gives a quick tug to James’ shirt. “What’s wrong with Mommy?”
“Allison?” James cocks his head my way, concerned, frightened.
“Someone killed Heather.” That image of the girl crossing in front of me this morning comes to mind. “Do you have a twin?”
Her lips curl up at the tips. She offers an icy gaze my way as if answering the question with every ounce of her haunted being.
“Shit.” James pulls the picture forward and examines it again. “Ota, tell me right now if my father—Reagan’s grandfather, has anything to do with this.”
My heart slaps heavy against my chest, and I suddenly feel very sorry for my poor husband. I’ve left him in the dark for so long he doesn’t even know which way is up.
Ota raises her wicked face to him, sober, not a smile in sight. “Why would Grandpa Charles have anything to do with this?”
“How do you know Grandpa Charles, Ota?” I practically pant out the words.
“Reagan talked about him all the time.” Her miniature pink lips purse as if it were no big deal. “I like mine with extra jelly, please.”
“Have you ever met Grandpa Charles?” I ask nonchalantly as I pile the peanut butter high. I know for a fact Charles had never been over once during any of those demented playdates she had with my daughter.
“I’ve seen him plenty of times. I know all of his ways, all of his stories.” She looks to James with a marked insistence. “He’s a good storyteller, isn’t he?”
I shake my head at James as if affirming what he has to be thinking. Ota hasn’t met Charles on our watch. Either she’s fabricating the whole thing or she has very much met Charles—and according to her knowledge of his bullshitting ways, I’d bet on the latter.
“Ota”—James takes up her hand—“we’re going to go on a little trip.” And she pulls her hand right back.
“I’m not going anywhere.” She flattens her palms over the granite and leans in, bearing her fangs like a lion. “Now give me my food!” An unnerving echo booms from her voice.
James paws at her as if he’s trying to charm her. “I’m going to hide you in my coat.”
Her hand glides up and slices a line across the left side of his face. A seam of blood erupts in a jag like a snake.
“Grab her!” I say as both James and I start in on a cartoon-like maneuver around the island.
He snaps her up, and as soon as she begins to wail, he clamps a hand over her mouth, muffling her cries.
“I’ll call your dad and tell him to come right over.” I move toward the phone and he blocks my path.
“No. It’s going to get ugly, and I don’t want any more drama here than need be. We’re going to drop by and pay him a little visit. I want to see his face once we do a little show-and-tell.” James tosses the girl over his shoulder and disappears into the spare room down the hall. “I’ll find a bag to put her in.”
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.” Mo
nica 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.
“Come here.” He pulls me in with one arm, strong and commanding as he lands a warm kiss to my cheek. “It changes nothing. Reagan is mine in every way that counts.” His gaze stills over my features a moment, reassuring me he means it before he turns back to his father. “Now, if you have Reagan, give her up so we can go home and piece our family back together. What the hell are you doing with her, anyway?”
My heart thumps wild. My God I hope we’re right. Charles could potentially end this nightmare in a microsecond if indeed he has her.
Charles moves slowly over to the sofa and falls exhausted into the cushions. “So the two of you have ironed everything out I see.”
“What does it matter?” I take a step toward him, my every instinct says kill. It’s in the Greer blood. So help me God, don’t test me, old man.
“Because it does!” he roars back so loud, Ota lets out a painful cry. “Come here, darling.” He plucks her out of the bag, and this time James doesn’t lunge for him to stop. I think we’re both exhausted. We want this over more than anything else. “The two of you have a marriage to uphold. You took vows before God and man. Divorce is a sin and the—”
“Wages of sin is death,” James finishes for him before closing his eyes. “Oh God, that’s why you did it. You killed them all because they had sinned.” His head arches back in pain. “They were people. Newsflash, people are not perfect. We are not robots programed to receive. We are humans. We are fallible. God knows that. And if you’re so damn smart, you should, too.”
The room spins as I try to keep up with the conversation. “Oh my God.” My chest heaves in deep ragged breaths as I take in this frail old demented man before me. “Did you kill Reagan?”
“No.” He strokes Ota’s hair and she leans into him like a kitten. “If she’s dead, you’ll only have yourselves to blame.”
14
James
My father has held human life in his hand as if it were an apple. His to contend with. His to destroy if need be. The wages of sin is death. And Wilson, Rachel, and my mother never had the chance to seek forgiveness. He had injected us with his poison, made himself out to be like God, the Grim Reaper all in one. My father was a necrosis, rotting away our family from the inside out and I had stepped into the bear trap, drove my family right into his waiting demented arms.
“It’s time you take us to her,” I say, helping Ota up from his lap.
He growls at the sight as he swipes haphazardly to remove the tape from her mouth. “For God’s sake, free the child.”
Allison leans in and helps carefully unravel the layers of adhesion I’ve bound her with. “You can’t scream,” she says sternly and the little girl nods in obedience, most likely a false one.
It takes a painful five minutes to yank the
silver paper chains off her body and Ota holds out her hands for my father to pick her up.
“It’s time?” He looks down at her with his towering frame and her dark eyes sparkle as she gives a slight nod.
“The time is here.” Her voice comes out far too calm for a girl who’s just had her body bound and gagged, and both Allison and I exchange a wary glance.
“Follow me,” he says, picking up Ota in his arms as if she belonged to him all along and I don’t have any doubt she didn’t. I walk next to him, close, in the event he thinks bolting is a good idea. He heads out the front door and nods to the truck. The four of us pile in like some dysfunctional family out for an evening ride as my father gives soft directions from the back seat. We bypass the countryside, trade it in for the business district, then quickly glide into the impoverished bowels of downtown.
Allison claps her hand over her chest. “The homeless shelter?”
“Heaven’s no.” My psychopath of a father decries the notion. “Make a left once you pass it.”
The truck rolls by the Concordia County Homeless Shelter and I steal a glance at the people that populate the mouth of the entrance, tired looking faces, but clean and hygienic enough to the point you wouldn’t realize the fact they didn’t live down the street from you.
I make the left and it becomes apparent where he’s leading us to. “Shit.”
“Oh my shit,” Allison repeats the sentiment.
The Concordia Storage Facility stares us in the face, a series of boxy bone white buildings with industrial garage doors that close the world off to their contents.
“Which way?” My heart picks up pace. The reunion is imminent I can feel it.
“Four twenty-one.” He leans between Allison and me, pointing hard with a crooked finger. “I lucked out with an end unit.”
My head inches back with the blow. “Lucked out.” The words take the air right from my lungs. “You got the keys?” I speed the hell down the last few yards and stop the truck with a jerk as Allison and I spill out the sides.