The Deepest Secret (40 page)

Ten o’clock comes and goes, and ten-thirty. At eleven, they’re working on their laptops when his mom gets up to look out the living room window. She stiffens, and he knows. He’s always liked Sophie. He doesn’t understand why she would do this to him. He feels trapped, a fly banging against the glass.

“Tyler,” she begins, and he shakes his head.

“No.” He won’t wear that fucking mask. She might as well hang a neon sign over his head:
FREAK
. He closes his laptop and stomps upstairs. He doesn’t open the door when his mom knocks.

EVE

S
he paces from window to window.

She’d been pregnant with Tyler when she and David and Melissa drove into this pretty little street with its sloping lawns and mature trees. The moment she’d spotted the white house with the gray roof nestled at the bottom of the street, she had felt a spark of interest. The realtor had unlocked the front door, and she’d stepped inside to gleaming wooden floors and sunshine streaming through the windows. She had thought,
Here’s where I want to raise my family
.

Around 2:00 am, she thinks about borrowing Albert’s shotgun and taking aim. She almost laughs at the thought. She’s already a felon. In for a penny, in for a pound. It was the glass of wine she’d had, though not the first one, which had only left her longing for more. The third one—that was the one she really felt. She’d have to hide the empty wine bottle before David came home. He’d be sure
to ask her about it. He’d look at her with judging eyes. How would he look at her when he got home? Would he look at her at all? She wishes she could call him, but she doesn’t trust herself to keep the pretense going. What if he saw through her?

At 5:00 am, the lights flare off.

There has to be something she can do. There has to be. Could they move to the country? They’d have to buy a property and make it safe for Tyler before they risked moving him. Which meant they’d have to pay two mortgages. Was that even possible? Melissa has told her that David’s talked to her about moving to DC.
I don’t want to go
, Melissa had said, crying, and Eve had reassured her. She had hoped that this was the beginning of a return to the way things used to be between them, but the confession’s had the opposite effect on Melissa. Her daughter has retreated. She’s licking her wounds.
She’s just like you
, her mother had said, with a sigh of resignation, as if she were saying,
See what you put me through?

She’s walking across the basement floor, laundry heaped in her arms, when she stubs her toe against a sharp, hard corner. She curses, drops the jeans and towels in a heap. It’s that dollhouse she’d been making for Amy. Somehow, it’s been dragged away from the wall to stand directly in her path. A hammer and wrench lie nearby—so David had been down here working. She looks at the delicate wooden structure. That tall pointed tower, the curved bay window, all the cheerful gingerbread molding that had taken forever to tack into place. The tiny iridescent pink tiles painstakingly glued to form a kitchen backsplash, the hours spent cutting out and fitting pink-and-white-flocked wallpaper against each wall. Amy had clapped her hands with joy.
When will it be done?

Now the dollhouse glares at her. It squats on her floor, angled precisely to draw blood. The gold wire and pink beads for the chandelier sit inside their glistening plastic pouches; the carpet she hadn’t yet installed lies curled inside one room like a tongue. She reaches down and grasps the house by both sides, pushing her fingers
through the windows she’d sliced open with a mat knife. It’s heavy and rises slowly, resisting. She raises it up, stretches to stand on her tiptoes, and opens her hands.

It crashes down. The bay window crumples and floor tiles pop loose. She snatches up the hammer and swings. The chimney snaps off; the roof caves in. She pounds at the hole she’s created, driving the metal head of the hammer into the floor below. There goes the master bedroom. There sinks the charming nursery.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The rooms for the twins lie in splintered pieces.

She kicks the house onto its side so she can reach inside. Those shiny pink tiles dissolve into dust; the balsa banister shreds. If only she can reach the fireplace. She’ll have to come at it from the other side, after she’s smashed through the living room wall—

“Mom?”

Eve wheels around, panting, to see Melissa standing on the bottom step, staring at her, frightened.

Eve picks Albert up from the hospital around noon. He looks small and defeated as the nurse pushes him in a wheelchair out to Eve’s car. “I got it,” he says irritably as the nurse tries to help him up. He’s not himself, either. Driving out of the cul-de-sac that morning, she had felt the change. Charlotte’s curtains were closed. Neil’s newspaper lay on the driveway, well past the time Neil usually carried it inside.

Eve helps Albert into his house. The emergency room doctor had pulled Eve aside the night before and confided that broken bones in the elderly were serious. All sorts of complications could set in. It had taken a lot of persuasion on Eve’s part to convince Albert to listen to the doctor and stay overnight. He’d wanted to go home; he’d wanted to sleep in his own bed, surrounded by Rosemary’s things.

“How about some soup?” she suggests.

“I’m fine. You don’t need to mother me.”

“You sound like my kids. Let me mother you, okay?” She goes into the kitchen and opens the pantry door. Her heart sinks at the sight of the few cans and boxes. “Pea soup or chicken noodle?” she calls into the family room, where he’s in his recliner, a pillow propped beneath his arm.

“You choose.”

“Chicken noodle it is.” She pours some kibble into Sugar’s bowl and checks the water level. When the soup’s heated, she brings in a bowl on a tray. Her toe’s throbbing; she’ll have to change the bandage when she gets home. “I’m going to the store later,” she says, though she hadn’t planned on it. “You should make a list.”

“It’s not your fault, Eve.”

She’s in the process of setting down the tray. Her heart squeezes, and she looks at him, afraid to see the accusation she knows is there. But he reaches out and pats her hand. “I shouldn’t have turned to Charlotte’s boy for help. I should have known better. I could have gotten him in real trouble.”

A shiver of relief, followed by dismay. He’s admitting he gave the pills to Rosemary. Did Rosemary know, or did he hide them in her food? Did he have a chance to say good-bye the way he wanted to? “I think David’s going to leave me,” she hears herself blurting out.

“He say that?”

“No, but all we do is argue about every little thing. And all the big things, too.”
He thinks I’m a murderer and he’s right
. “I don’t know what to do.” Those early years, she slept beside Tyler, stretched out on a mattress on the floor, her days reversed to match his, to keep him from getting up and wandering out into the daylight. She and Melissa made a magical world, just the three of them. David would go to work and come home right as they were getting up. He would join them on their picnics and their little field trips, but then he would have to go to bed and it would be just the three of them again. Was that when she started to lose David? She didn’t notice it.
She was too focused on Tyler and keeping him safe, on Melissa and giving her as happy a childhood as possible. And now she wonders if she’s been kidding herself about how much time she’d truly given Melissa. Something had to give, in either case, and it had ended up being her marriage.

“Talk to him.”

I can’t
. “I want to.”

He’s staring at her. “You’ve never been afraid to say what’s in your heart. What’s going on, Evie?”

Her mother calls her Evie. She feels disoriented. She doesn’t think Albert’s ever called her that. Is she imagining things? Is she losing her mind? She’d been on the verge of confiding everything. She pushes herself up. “I forgot to get you a napkin.”

In the kitchen, she opens drawer after drawer. Silverware, cooking utensils. She can’t remember where Rosemary kept the napkins. Here’s the junk drawer, filled with rubber bands, takeout menus, batteries, pencils. She’s about to push it closed, too, when she catches sight of the slim black flashlight, zipped into a plastic bag.

“Albert?” she says, going back into the family room. “Where did you get this?”

He pauses, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “That fellow dropped it, the one I caught snooping in Farnham’s window.”

It’s an ordinary flashlight, sold everywhere. There’s nothing the least bit special about it, except for the green duct tape she’d wrapped around the handle so that Tyler could grip it with his gloved hands.

THE BEAST

T
he message pops up on the corner of his computer screen. Someone’s chatted him on Skype. Tyler minimizes his teacher’s talking face and mouses over to the icon and taps it. It’s from Dante:
Get on the Forum
. There’s only one thing it could be. Tyler’s hand is shaking as he clicks on the tab. The Forum opens and he sees the thread that Yoshi’s mom posted just a few minutes before.

“Tyler?” His math teacher’s looking at him from the classroom, her hands on her hips.

He taps on the Skype icon, makes the image full-screen. “Here,” he says automatically.

“That’s not what I asked. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

Some of the kids are turning around to look at him. What do they see? He clicks the video button and the screen goes blank. Now he can’t hear or see any of them.

A sharp knock on the door. “Tyler?”

He hadn’t even heard his mom come up the stairs. She never interrupts while he’s in class. She must have heard the news about Yoshi, but her voice doesn’t sound weepy. “Hold on.” He goes into his bathroom. “Okay.” When he comes back out, his mom’s there, holding up a plastic sandwich bag. Inside is a black flashlight. Where did it come from? How much does she know?

She gives the bag a shake. “What were you thinking? Why would you do something so dangerous?”

“I’m fine.”

“You can’t know that.” She drops the bag and comes over, lifts up his shirt to see his back. “Let me check.”

He squirms away. “I’m fine, I said.”

“Did their lights go off? Were you anywhere near them?” She’s got him by his elbow, holding fast. “Stand still. I have to check your head, too.”

He yanks free. “Will you leave me alone?”

“I would love to, believe me, young man. Take off your shirt.”

“I won’t.”

“This is serious, Tyler. I need to check you over.”

“No.”

She stands back. He’s taller than she is. She can’t make him take off his shirt, not if he doesn’t want to. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“It had to be something. Why would you go out in the middle of the night? What on earth were you doing? The Farnhams’, of all places!”

“It’s no big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal. How can you say that?”

“I was careful.”

“You can never be careful enough. Never. You know that. Look what happened when you and Dad went to the park that night.”

“It’s my life.”

“Yes, and I want you to live a long one.”

“Stop it! Stop saying that. It’s not going to happen.”

“What’s gotten into you? What’s upset you? Is it Amy? Is it Yoshi?” Her expression changes. “Oh, honey. I didn’t know.”

She moves toward him, but he stumbles back. “You
don’t
know. You just don’t know.”

“Tell me. Let me help you.”

“You can’t. No one can.”

“What happened to Yoshi isn’t going to happen to you.”

“That is such a lie. All you do is lie.” He’s yelling. He can’t help it. He’s exactly like Yoshi.

“Tyler, listen to me. Remember that scientist I told you about?”

He wants to know. Does it hurt? Is there a place after, or is this it? Is this all he’ll ever have? “I don’t want to hear about your stupid scientists.” His hands open and close. He wants to hit something. “Fuck your stupid scientists.”

Her face is soft with sympathy. “Oh, sweetheart.”

He doesn’t feel anything anymore. Maybe this is what it’s like to be dead.

He crouches in the darkness of his old fort littered with dead leaves and beetle carcasses, the planks soft and splintery, and watches his mom through the bright kitchen windows. She’s talking on the phone, moving from stove to refrigerator to cabinet to pantry. She’s called the doctor and asked if she could bring Tyler,
immediately
, on an
emergency basis
. She’s made an appointment for him on Monday. Now she’s talking to his dad. Every so often, she’ll stop and look outside. She can’t see him, though. To her, it’s all blackness.

Next door, Holly’s windows glow with light. Shadowy figures move around inside. They’re talking, their voices coming out through the opened window. Holly’s voice is low. It’s Mark’s voice that’s loud. “You have to stop.”

He remembers when this fortress smelled new, and the nailheads shone. He and Zach used to play war in it, hunkering down below the windows and pretending there were enemy soldiers approaching from all corners. Amy had whined about playing with them, so they made her their scout. She’d go off and come running back to report all sorts of lame things. After a while, they stopped listening to her, and then they’d stopped playing in the fortress altogether.