Scared to Death (3 page)

Now she's irritated, setting down her coffee cup. “New kid?”

“Sorry, I didn't mean it that way.”

New kid.
As in replacement for old kid.

God. Brett rakes a hand through his hair. That's not what he meant at all. What's wrong with him? He knows how fragile she is when it comes to this—when it comes to everything. For years now.

“If you honestly think there's a reason to call the police,” he tells his wife, “go ahead. You know I would never take a chance with Renny.”

“I know that.” She toys with a dry pink petal that dropped from the vase of rhododendron blooms in the center of the table.

“Don't make yourself nuts with this.” Brett reaches out and pats her thin shoulder. “Everything is fine. Renny is fine. There's nothing to worry about.”

“There's always something to worry about when you have a child.”

“Yes, but not…not like that. Not what you're thinking.”

Elsa just looks at him. She can be so damned stubborn…

So can I.

“Look, there's no reason to call the police just because a window was open.”

“How did it get open?”

“Maybe Renny sleepwalked and did it herself.”

Elsa tilts her head. Clearly, she hadn't thought of that.

Brett hadn't, either, until it popped out, but who knows? Maybe it's true. And if it's not, there are countless other explanations for the open window. Explanations that don't involve a monster creeping around their little girl's bedroom—or his wife going crazy. The simplest answer is usually the right one.

Brett presses on. “Think about it. The adoption isn't even finalized. You don't want to risk it, do you? How do you think Roxanne is going to react?”

Something else she hadn't thought of, obviously. Sharp-eyed Roxanne Shields, Renny's latest social worker, makes Elsa nervous.

“She's just not what I expected,” Elsa said the first time they met the young woman, with her multiple piercings—including her nose and tongue—and black-everything, from her clothes and dyed hair to her eyeliner and the ankh tattoo on her forearm.

Brett was also taken aback by her appearance, though he didn't admit it to his wife.

As always, Elsa has enough to worry about.

For that matter, so does he. They've been laying off employees at work again, and rumor has it another round is coming. If he loses his job, his family loses their sole source of income, aside from the fostering stipend—which would certainly make the agency think twice about allowing the adoption to go through.

Yeah. So would a police report.

“Look, if we bring the cops in, it's going to go on the records,” he reminds Elsa. “Roxanne will have to become involved.”

“I know.”

Brett glimpses a spark of uncertainty in Elsa's beautiful dark eyes. They've both heard the horror stories about would-be adoptees being removed from their prospective parents over the slightest incident.

Just last month, Todd and Zoe Walden, a couple who had gone through the training program with the Cavalons, lost their foster daughter after their biological son was suspended from school for fighting. Never mind that he was defending himself from a bully. Apparently it doesn't take much to trigger the beleaguered foster agency staff to decide that it's not in the child's best interest to remain in the home.

“I'm scared, Brett. I just don't know whether I'm more scared of the agency taking Renny away, or of something happening to her like it did to Jeremy.”

“Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice.”

“Is that a scientific fact, or just a meaningless old saying?”

He shrugs. “Elsa, we can't take a chance and call the police about this. Absolutely not. That would pretty much guarantee that we'd lose her.”

“But if we explain—”

“They're still going to err on the side of caution, and you know it.”

“You're right. We can't call.”

He nods, relieved.

And yet, what if…?

No
, he tells himself firmly.
Just like you told Elsa—and Renny, too—there's nothing to worry about. Nothing at all
.

 

Ah, there's the rental car: conveniently parked on a quiet waterside street several blocks from the Cavalon home—a perfect spot, near the marina. Fishermen, rising in the early hours to pursue the day's catch, often leave their vehicles here.

It would probably have been a good idea to have some poles and a tackle box in the backseat. Just in case someone came along.

Oh well. Next time.

The engine turns over with a quiet rumble.

Mission accomplished.

For tonight, anyway.

With a crunching sound, the tires begin to roll along the gravel lane that leads back to the main road.

There's no other traffic at this hour, not out here. It might pick up in a few miles, closer to the southbound interstate, but it's still pretty early for that. Without rush hour congestion, it's only about two hours' drive from Groton to New York. With traffic, it can be considerably longer. That's okay. There's no hurry.

Plenty of time for a detour along Thames Street. Not a soul to witness the car pulling up in front of the tiny post office, or its driver hurrying over to drop a stamped manila envelope into the curbside mailbox. Local delivery; the package should arrive the day after tomorrow. No—it's well past midnight. Make that
tomorrow
.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

What the heck was the rest of it?

Not even a mouse…

Not even a mouse…

Oh, the next line is:
The children are nestled all snug in their beds…

Ha. Isn't that fitting. Renny Cavalon certainly was nestled all snug in her bed just a short time ago.

Then she opened her eyes and screamed.

No wonder.

That hideous rubber mask—now tucked safely into the glove compartment—would scare anyone to death, looming in the dead of night.

Night…

Night…

'Twas the Night Before Christmas…

That's it!

It wasn't a nursery rhyme after all; it was a storybook, one Mother loved to read aloud, years ago, in the soft glow of Christmas tree lights.

Is Elsa Cavalon planning to read it to Renny when the holidays roll around?

Ha. Come December, Renny will be long gone.

Just like Jeremy.

P
eeking into her daughter's room for what must be the hundredth time this morning, Elsa finds Renny awake at last.

Ordinarily, the little girl bounds noisily out of bed the second she opens her eyes. Today she's just lying there, staring at the faint outline of the plastic stars overhead.

Maternal anxiety, like the phosphorescent Milky Way on the ceiling, had all but faded in the bright morning light. Now, with one look at Renny, Elsa feels it flare again.

“Good
mor
-ning.” She forces her usual cheerful singsong as she walks over to the nearest window, lifting the shade with a snap.

Sunshine spills into the room. There—that's better.

She turns to the other window—the one that was open in the night.

“Wait—don't!”

She turns to see Renny sitting up behind her, watching warily. “What's wrong, honey?”

Her daughter starts to say something, then seems to think better of it.

“Renny? What is it?”

“Nothing. It's okay.”

Elsa hesitates, then raises the shade. Blinking into the glare, she surveys the heavily landscaped backyard.

Lush shrubs and blooming perennial beds surround the ranch home's foundation, courtesy of a vegetation-loving previous owner. The property's perimeter is a dense natural border of hedges, vines, and trees. Last year, Elsa took it upon herself to keep everything pruned. This spring, with Renny here, she hasn't had time.

Now everything is overgrown. There are plenty of places where someone could hide.

Fifteen years ago, in a backyard a hundred miles away from this one, a stranger was watching her son as he played in the sun with his new superhero action figures. Watching, waiting to pounce—

Oh, Jeremy.

If only I had suspected…

And now…she does suspect. There's no evidence of an intruder, yet Elsa can almost sense a lingering presence in the dappled shadows.

Her instinct is to grab Renny and flee. But that's crazy, isn't it?

Even for a woman whose child was kidnapped and murdered?

Who could blame her for reacting—or overreacting—to an open window in her daughter's room in the dead of night?

But it's not nighttime anymore; the window itself is closed and locked.

“Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice,” Brett told her earlier, and in that particular moment, she'd found it as comforting as his sleepwalking theory.

Yet it's not impossible, is it? Lightning striking twice in the same place?

Maybe she should look it up.

Maybe that's a bad idea.

She crosses to Renny's bed and gives her a hug.

“I've been waiting for you to wake up.” Enveloped in the comforting scents of strawberry shampoo and fabric softener, she smooths her daughter's tousled hair and adjusts the sleeve of her pink nightgown. “I've got a fun day planned for us. I thought we'd go to the aquarium and walk around the seaport.”

Mystic, just a few miles away, is one of Renny's favorite places in the world. Ordinarily, she'd jump at the chance to visit, but not today.

“No thanks.”

“No? Um, how about if we go to Teppanyaki for lunch, then?”

Once again Renny, who loves to sit at the Japanese restaurant's grill-side table and watch the hibachi chef's flaming antics, shakes her head.

“Okay, well…We can go to the mall to get you some new summer clothes, and have our nails done…”

Did you really just say that? Shopping and manicures?

Never in a million years would Elsa have thought she'd hear herself suggest such a thing. As the only child of Sylvie Durand, one of the world's first supermodels—who became famous for creating an aura of mystery with the vintage blusher-veiled hats she always wore in public—Elsa had been force-fed girly pursuits. Groomed to follow in Maman's glamorous footsteps, she'd done just that—sans chapeau, of course—until she was twenty-one. Then she met her unlikely soul mate: a preppy nautical engineering student from New Rochelle, who'd never heard of her mother and didn't know haute couture from prêt-à-porter.

Head over heels for Brett, Elsa gladly traded her promising modeling career for family life.

That was the plan, anyway. Through years of heartbreaking infertility, Elsa could do little more than fantasize about what kind of mother she'd be. Unlike Sylvie, she'd
never
impose upon an impressionable daughter the rigid standards of fashion and beauty…

Yet here you are, grasping at straws, trying to lure Renny to the mall and salon. Nice going. While you're at it, why don't you just invite Maman over to pluck Renny's eyebrows and parade her around with a book on her head?

The very idea makes her shudder.

It isn't that Maman is a horrible grandparent. Quite the contrary. When Jeremy went missing, Maman was bereft and supportive—in her own self-centered way, of course.

The alluringly tragic Sylvie Durand was all over the airwaves, tearful behind her black veil, pleading for the return of her missing grandson. Elsa and Brett figured it could only help bring attention to the case. It did—and also revitalized Sylvie's career, landing her a multimillion-dollar cosmetics contract. In Paris for a shoot, she reconnected with a childhood sweetheart, fell passionately in love—a frequent habit of hers—and decided to stay.

Elsa fully expected her to return to New York when the affair fizzled, but so far, it hasn't. Maman keeps her Manhattan apartment just in case. She has a lavish wardrobe there and another in Elsa's guestroom closet, as she refuses to travel with luggage. But she remains happily settled into Jean Paul's countryside chateau.

Once in a while, Elsa misses her. But Maman flies home every couple of months—for holidays, and Fashion Week. And for the most part, Elsa's glad to keep her at a healthy distance—particularly from impressionable Renny, who's fascinated by her charming and
glamorous “Mémé,” as Sylvie prefers her granddaughter to call her.

“Can we just stay home today, Mommy?”

Pushing aside the bitter memory of her own past, Elsa looks at her daughter. “Sure, we can stay home. Are you feeling all right?”

“No. The monster…” The child casts a fearful look at the window, and a chill slithers down Elsa's spine. “He's out there.”

“No, Renny, he's not. He's in
here
.” She gently presses her index fingertip against her daughter's temple. “You dreamed him. He isn't real.”

Renny says nothing.

“Look around.” Elsa sweeps a hand around the sun-splashed room, with its lavender ruffles and Disney princess theme. “There's nothing to be afraid of here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Promise?”

Elsa hesitates.

Before he left for the office earlier, Brett kissed her on the cheek and said, “I promise you everything is fine.”

She wanted desperately to believe him. And when she realized that he'd never made any such promise before, about Jeremy, she did believe him—until now.

Now, when she knows just how easy it is to let the right words roll off your tongue to reassure someone you love.

She turns away, not looking Renny in the eye. “I promise.”

 

Things are different here.

In Manhattan, unlike the Connecticut shore towns,
people live in towering, guarded fortresses. You have to be creative here; you can't just climb in a window.

Well, maybe if you're Spider-Man.

Spider-Man
…

Now
there's
an ironic thought.

Park Avenue is bustling on this cool June morning. People scurry or sometimes even push past, late for work, talking on their cell phones, trying to beat the light. No one casts a second glance in this direction, and even if someone did…

I'd never be recognized. Not here. Not in Groton, either—not even by the Cavalons.

One last look at the tall apartment building with its rows of windows high above the street…

Somewhere up there, does Marin Quinn really believe her children are safe in a concrete fortress, protected by locks and alarms and uniformed doormen?

She'll learn.

She'll find out what it's like to feel your skin ooze with cold sweat as your heart seems to splinter your fragile ribs with every violent beat. She'll know what it's like to cower, helpless, aware that your darkest fears are going to come to fruition. Most importantly, she'll know that it isn't Jeremy's fault that he did what he did.

No, it's her own fault, and Elsa Cavalon's, for failing the child they were both, in turn, supposed to protect.

 

“Mom! She took my—”

“Don't listen to her, Mom, I did not!”

Standing at the kitchen counter listing to the commotion from down the hall, Marin closes her eyes for a long moment. Then she wearily resumes what she was doing: pouring the last dredges from the coffeepot into her cup.

The girls have been up for less than an hour, and at each other's throats the entire time. At first, Marin attempted to referee. Now, she's doing her best to ignore.

Is this what it's going to be like every day, all summer long?

“Give it back! Mom!”

“Mom!”

Marin sips the coffee.

Bitter.

Just like me.

She sips again, makes a face, and dumps the cup into the sink.

Maybe she should brew a fresh pot. But so much caffeine isn't good for her. Maybe that's why her nerves have been acting up so much lately.

“Mom!
”

“Mom!
”

Her shoulders are tense. Stress. Not good.

I need something stronger than coffee.

But not now, in the middle of the day, with the kids home.

God help me.

God? Yeah, right.

She never believed in God before the ultra-conservative, religious Garvey came into her life, nor during most of the forced churchgoing years they were together. She
certainly
doesn't believe now. Not after the merciless ordeal she and her family—and the Walshes, and the Cavalons—have endured.

On the first Sunday morning after Garvey's arrest, the girls dressed in their church clothes, as always. Marin told them to go change.

Caroline was thrilled; Annie dismayed. “Why aren't we going to church?”

Marin blamed the media. “The press knows our
routine. They'll be there waiting for us. I can't subject you girls to that circus.”

She got a lot of mileage out of that reasoning for—quite literally—a month of Sundays. After all, it was true: the stretch of Fifth Avenue in front of the Church of Heavenly Rest swarmed with reporters intent on snapping photos of Garvey Quinn's family and slapping them all over the tabloids with captions that ridiculed their phony piety.

In the months since, Annie has occasionally asked when they're going back to church, and Marin is running out of excuses—conflicting plans, headaches, the weather. She hates herself for not having the strength to admit her own hypocrisy to her daughters; hates herself more for having gone along with something in which she had absolutely no sense of conviction.

But as she told her dubious, agnostic parents back when she was first falling in love with Garvey, she believed in her future husband more than she
didn't
believe in God.

And then, for a while there, she even found fleeting comfort in both. Maybe there really
was
something to this God stuff. Maybe that was why Marin Hartwell had been handed a chance at happily-ever-after with a hero who could have had anyone, but miraculously wanted
her
.

Concealing her first pregnancy and giving up her newborn son for adoption soon shattered her fledgling religious faith—yet, curiously, not her faith in Garvey, who coerced her into making those decisions. She convinced herself, somehow, that if there was a God, he had betrayed her; even that she had betrayed herself. But not Garvey. No, never Garvey. She never realized the truth about him until last August, when it was too late.

Down the hall, Caroline and Annie continue to
squabble. As usual, Caroline is accusing her sister of snooping through something—her room, or her laptop, or her phone…

Marin closes her eyes and presses her thumb and fingertips into her throbbing temples, wondering when the ibuprofen she'd taken earlier is going to kick in.

“I told you not to…”

“Why do you always have to…”

“I'm telling Mom!”

When the ringing telephone chimes into the melee, the girls don't miss a beat. They never bother to answer anything but their own cell phones.

Normally Marin doesn't, either, because you never know whether it's going to be a reporter or Garvey calling from jail. Both tend to register—as this call does—as “private number” on the caller ID.

But anything is better than listening to World War III.

She picks up the receiver.

“Marin! There you are!”

Heather Cottington—the one old friend who's stuck by her in the wake of Garvey's scandal. Countless rounds of “I told you so” have been a relatively small price to pay for an adult confidante who, despite a high-profile allegiance with the opposing political party, wouldn't dream of capitalizing on her proximity to the notorious Quinns.

Plus Heather—who is married to a doctor and whose home medicine cabinet is a veritable pharmacy—is always happy to share her Ambien and Xanax with Marin, who, as Heather often says, needs it more than she does.

“I've tried your cell twice this morning. I was getting worried.”

“Sorry. I didn't hear the phone.”

“Really?
”

“Really
. Maybe I accidentally silenced the ringer. Or maybe the battery's dead.”