The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (125 page)

“Shit.” Reggie breathed. She’d expected it, but not this fast. But then again, she hadn’t expected the welcoming committee of firemen.

“No need for profanity,” Lorraine said.

“Okay,” Reggie said after taking another gulp of horrid coffee. “I’m going to run out and get some food and supplies. Stay here and lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone. Not even Detective Boy Wonder.”

The phone rang again.

“And don’t answer the phone,” Reggie advised, grabbing her bag and keys, hurrying from the kitchen.

R
EGGIE RETURNED TO
M
ONIQUE’S
Wish nearly three hours later, after a high-stress trip to the Super Stop & Shop (why, Reggie wondered, did everything have to be Super?), Starbucks, and Home Depot. She opened the back of the truck, and as she was grabbing several bags of groceries she heard tires crunching on the gravel behind her. She turned and saw a blond woman behind the wheel of white sedan. Reggie froze, bags in hands, as the woman jumped out of the car, a friendly grin on her face.

“Regina Dufrane? My God, is that really you?”

Reggie squinted at the woman with frosted blond hair. She was wearing a smart little business suit and pumps. Her face was heavily lined with wrinkles covered in pale foundation. There was something very familiar about her. A friend of Lorraine’s, maybe? Or a distant relative?

Reggie set the bags back down in her truck and walked around the car to study the woman face-to-face. “I’m sorry. You are—”

“Martha Paquette,” the frosted-haired woman answered with a smile that locked her face in a frightening grimace. She held out her hand to Reggie. “It’s so good to see you again, Regina.”

Reggie stepped back.

“How is she? Your mother? Has she said anything about her captivity?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reggie said, hating how her voice shook. “This is private property. I’d like you to leave.”

Neptune’s Hands
was Martha Paquette’s only big success. She’d written other books, but none of them worked. Reggie had seen the horrible reviews and couldn’t help but feel strangely satisfied.

Continuing to smile, Martha reached into her leather handbag and pulled out a photo. “I know she’s alive. And she’s here.” It was a picture of Reggie pulling her mother away from the group of firemen in the yard yesterday. Shit. The young firefighter with the cell phone must have snapped it. It was probably all over the Internet by now.

“You can’t just keep her hidden away,” Martha said. “There are questions that need answering. Now I know your mother turned up in a homeless shelter up in Worcester two years ago. And I also know that with her diagnosis, we don’t have much time. So what I think we need to focus on is—”

“Where did you hear that?” Reggie hissed, taking a menacing step toward Martha.

“If I could just talk to Vera, ask her a couple of questions, then I’m sure—”

“You’re not going anywhere near my mother! Now get the hell off our property before I call the police.”

Martha nodded, turned to open the door of her car. Then she looked back at Reggie. “He’s still out there, you know. I think we owe it to his victims, to Vera, to do all we can to bring him to justice.”

“And selling a few more books in the process wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

Martha ducked down and sat herself in the driver’s seat, shutting the door. She rolled down the window. “I’d invest in a security system. Some decent dead bolts at least.”

Reggie sighed deeply. “Why are you still here?” She pulled out her cell phone.

“You think that Neptune just let her go, Regina? You think that whoever he is, he’s going to just sit back and let her tell the world everything she knows?”

Chapter 16

June 18 and 19, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“I
’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR
you, Reg,” George announced when she came into the kitchen. “It’s there on the table.”

George was sprinkling cheese on the top of the lasagna he’d just made. Lorraine was in front of the sink, washing lettuce for a salad. Vera sat at the table, legs crossed, sipping a gin and tonic. George came over and ate with them once a week or so, and sometimes he’d cook. Lorraine’s meals were a consistent rotation of fish, cube steak, and scalloped potatoes from a box. Vera didn’t make anything at all beyond coffee and cocktails. Reggie wasn’t even sure Vera knew how to turn on the oven. When George cooked, it was usually something Italian: meatballs, manicotti, stuffed shells—he made sauce from scratch and claimed it was his Sicilian grandmother’s secret recipe.

The kitchen smelled amazing—garlic and tomatoes and fresh basil all mingling together and making Reggie’s mouth water. She went to the table and saw a paper bag with her name on it. She opened it up and found a headlight and taillight for her bike, along with a pack of batteries.

“Thanks, Uncle George,” she said, and he gave her a you’re-welcome nod. She held the lights out for Vera to inspect. Vera gave an approving smile and lit a cigarette.

“We’re all a lot safer with George in the world, aren’t we?” Vera asked, hissing out a curl of smoke in his direction. He had his back to them, but Reggie could see his body stiffen.

“I brought some tools over, Reg. You and I can put the lights on after dinner,” George said, opening the oven and easing the heavy Pyrex dish of lasagna in. “I’ve got something for you too, Vera,” he said, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel.

“I’ve heard of Christmas in July, Georgie, but isn’t this still June?” she asked, smiling slyly. She held up her glass, rattled her ice cubes in his direction. “Be a love and fix me another drink, will you? Or is that against the AA code of conduct or something?”

George gave her a look Reggie couldn’t read—worry? Maybe even pity?

Lorraine was slicing tomatoes now but stopped and gave Vera an icy glare. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Never mind, I’ll get it myself,” she said, pushing herself up, doing a swaying stagger-walk to the counter, where she mixed herself another drink that was heavy on the gin, light on the tonic.

“The lights really are great, Uncle George,” Reggie said again, voice as chipper and bright as she could make it. She loaded the batteries in and turned on the red flashing taillight. It blinked like an ambulance.

“Ready for your gift?” George asked once Vera was settled back at the table, fresh drink in her hand. He crossed the kitchen and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. From the right pocket, he pulled out a small present wrapped in tissue paper.

“For you,” he said, handing it over to Vera.

She put down her cigarette and accepted the gift. George watched, expectant and nervous, while Vera unwrapped the tissue paper, revealing a tiny, beautiful carved wooden bird.

“This isn’t like any duck I’ve ever seen,” she told him, turning it in her hand. Reggie leaned in to see that it had a long, gracefully curved neck, the feathers of the wings carved in perfect detail.

“Yes it is,” he said, smiling and adjusting his glasses. “It’s the ugly duckling,” he told her. “All her life she compares herself to others, thinks she doesn’t fit in; then she grows up and realizes she’s really a beautiful swan.” He stared at Vera, who kept her eyes on the carved bird in her hand.

Reggie held her breath, expecting her mother to come out with some mocking comeback line—
Who are you calling an ugly duckling, Georgie
?—but Vera was silent as she studied the swan, her head dropped down. Only when she raised it, Reggie saw that Vera’s eyes didn’t look mischievous or even angry—only sad.

Lorraine made a disapproving clucking sound and went back to cutting the tomato. “Damn!” she yelped, dropping the knife and clutching at her finger. Blood dripped onto the cutting board, mingling with the tomato juice.

George jumped up and went to her. “Let me see,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” Lorraine snapped.

George gently unwrapped her fingers from the cut hand. “You got yourself good,” he said, grabbing a paper towel from the roll and folding it up. He held the towel against her hand, said, “Let’s go clean it up and get a bandage and ointment on. The last thing you want is an infection.” Together they moved down the hall toward the bathroom, George’s hand on Lorraine’s.

Reggie and her mother sat in silence, listening to the ticking of the oven, the water coming on in the bathroom sink. George said something and Lorraine laughed.

Vera turned the swan over, running her fingers over the feathers of its belly.

After a minute, she stood up, swaying, steadying herself on the table.

“You okay, Mom?”

Vera offered Reggie a forced smile and said, “I’ll be right back.” Her voice sounded shaky and strange.

Vera went across the kitchen and down the hall. Reggie heard the front door open, then close. In a minute, her mother’s car started.

Reggie leaned forward and put out her mother’s cigarette, which had burned down to the filter, giving off a poisonous chemical smell. The swan was perched at the edge of the table, like it was thinking about taking flight.

“Where’s your mother?” Lorraine asked when she reappeared in the kitchen, Band-Aid on her finger.

“She said she’d be back,” Reggie said, biting her lip.

“The last thing she should be doing in her state is getting behind the wheel of a car,” Lorraine announced, tugging at the bottom of her fishing vest. She went to the kitchen window and looked out at the driveway, eyes sweeping over the place where Vera’s Vega had been. “I have half a mind to call the police.”

George went and stood behind her, put a hand on her back. She leaned back into him, then, as if thinking better of it, swayed forward, resting her hands on the counter.

“Who’s up for a game of rummy?” George asked, turning away from her, opening the drawer the cards were kept in.

Reggie, Lorraine, and George sat around the kitchen table, playing cards while they waited for the lasagna to cook. Vera did not return. They ate in uncomfortable silence, all of them listening for the tires on the gravel driveway, the wooden swan in the center of the table abandoned.

When Reggie got to her room, she went to the desk, found her X-Acto knife, and drew the blade slowly, tentatively, across her forearm. The pain was bright and beautiful, driving all the darkness away.

N
EPTUNE’S HANDS WERE AROUND
her throat, tightening. She was someplace deep and cold—the underground chamber of a cave, the bottom of a well. She was tied up, held down, unable to move.

She heard Tara’s voice:
The whole universe is there in your hands.

Reggie opened her eyes, focusing on the clock radio beside her twin bed.

Red fingers, reaching for her.

No, she told herself, blinking, only red numbers: 2:20
A.M.

Her heart was pounding, her skin damp. The fresh cut on her arm stung.

She felt her mother’s hot gin breath on the back of her neck. Vera was curled around Reggie under the twin-size Space Invaders sheets, pressing her ruined hand against Reggie’s chest and holding her tight, so tight Reggie could barely breathe. Vera put her lips against Reggie’s good ear and whispered, “Wake up.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have news.”

“Jesus, Mom! Can’t it wait until morning?” She was getting tired of these middle-of-the-night, after-the-bars-closed confessions. And she was pissed off that her mother had just walked out on them at dinner, leaving behind George’s gift like it meant nothing.

Maybe Lorraine had been right—maybe it was time to start locking her door.

“It’s important,” Vera hissed, squeezing Reggie tighter.

And Reggie felt a little dark stab of fear, starting as a flutter in her rib cage.

Her mother moved her lips to Reggie’s one remaining ear again and sighed into it, her breath sharp with the piney gin smell that reminded Reggie of Christmas trees. “I’m getting
married.
”

Reggie felt a fist close inside her chest.

“Did you hear me, Regina? Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Great. Great.”
Liar
. “Is it the new guy? The one you met at the bowling alley?”

Vera laughed. “No, silly. It’s not him.”

“Well, who is it, then?”

“It’s a surprise. But you’ll see soon. I want you to come and meet him.”

“Now?” Reggie asked. She tried to shift around to face her mother, but Vera held Reggie in place. Her mother’s strength often surprised her. But then again, this was the woman who had twirled a gigantic dog through the air to save her. Reggie reached up from under the covers and touched her mother’s scarred hand, remembering.

“No, silly. Tomorrow. Meet me at the bowling alley. Seven o’clock. Will you come, Regina? Please say you will.” Her voice sounded hopeful, pleading. The words buzzed the back of Reggie’s neck like worried bees.

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“Good girl,” she said, kissing Reggie’s cheek. “Oh, and do me a favor, huh? Don’t say anything about my news to Lorraine. I want to tell her myself. But I want you to meet him first.”

“Whatever you say,” Reggie told her.

“Good girl,” she said, kissing Reggie’s ear. “We’re going to live in a real house. Maybe get some cats. Have a flower garden. A nice, normal life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, love?” She sounded so strangely wistful it was as if she were reciting lines from one of her plays.

“I
WANT YOU OUT
of this house!” Lorraine stood in the doorway of Reggie’s room, the light from the hallway coming in all around her. Her face was in shadow, but the outline of her silhouette seemed to glow. Reggie looked at the clock. It was a little after three. They had fallen asleep.

Vera slid out from under the covers and stood without a word.

“Mom, wait!” Reggie started to get out of bed. “Aunt Lorraine, what’re you talking about?” Reggie stammered. “It’s the middle of the night—”

“Shhh, don’t worry, baby,” Vera said. “Everything’s going to be okay. You just go back to bed.”

“But— ” Reggie began.

“Everything’s under control,” Vera promised. “You get some sleep now.”