The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (126 page)

Vera left the room and closed the door gently behind her. Reggie could hear them arguing in the hall. She crept out of bed, padded across the floor, and pressed her good ear to the door.

“How dare you belittle me in front of my daughter?” her mom said.

“I’ve made it clear that I will not tolerate this,” Lorraine said. “This is not some flophouse where you come and go as you please. What do you think it does to Regina, seeing you like this? Having a drunk for a mother?”

“You have no right,” Vera hissed.

The floor creaked with the sound of footsteps.

Then a third voice, low and gentle, chimed in. “Let’s all calm down.” It sounded like George, but what would he be doing there in the middle of the night?

Lorraine said something Reggie didn’t catch. Then “My decision is firm. I want you to leave. Now.”

This was followed by more whispers, then footsteps.

Soon it was quiet, but Reggie stayed, her real ear pressed against the door until she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 17

October 17, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

R
EGGIE STORMED BACK INTO
the house after her confrontation with Martha in the yard.

“Who did you tell about Mom?” Reggie snapped at her aunt as she dropped the plastic grocery bags on the kitchen counter. One of them fell over and a plastic tub of lemon-scented disinfecting wipes rolled out.

“No one.” Lorraine turned from the sink where she’d been rinsing out the coffeepot.

“You called me. And Tara. Who else?”

“No one.” Lorraine straightened up, bracing herself against the counter.

“No one else?”

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Regina.” She reached for a dish towel and dabbed at her soapy hands.

“Martha Paquette was just here. She had a picture of Mom taken by one of those goddamn volunteer firefighters.”

“I’ll call the chief,” Lorraine said. “That’s got to be against the code of conduct. Surely he’ll be reprimanded.”

“The picture is really the least of our problems. Martha knows that Mom had been in a homeless shelter in Worcester. And she knows about the cancer.”

Lorraine’s mouth fell open, giving her the appearance of one of her much-loved trout. “How?”

“Someone
told her, I’d imagine.” She stared at her aunt, waiting.

Lorraine’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t think it was
me
?” She touched a hand to her chest and kept it there, fumbling with one of the pockets on her ancient, stained fishing vest.

“Not directly, no. But I need to know who else knew about the shelter.”

“I told you,” Lorraine said, clenching her jaw. “You and Tara. I’m not an idiot, Regina. Don’t you think I have some concept of what’s at stake here? I haven’t breathed a word to anyone else and I resent the implication that I’m a dotty old lady who can’t keep her mouth shut. You should know I have only the best intentions as far as your mother is concerned.”

“Oh, really?” Reggie said. “That’s a switch, isn’t it? Do you think I’ve forgotten what you did? You threw her out of her own house, Lorraine!” Reggie bit her tongue before she finished the thought out loud:
right into the arms of a killer.

Lorraine’s whole body went rigid. She turned away from Reggie and ran hot water into the sink. The steam came up, and Lorraine leaned into it, holding on to the counter like her legs alone could not support her; she looked like a woman being enveloped by fog.

“T
HERE ARE ANGELS WALKING
among us,” Vera said. “They’re disguised like humans. Sometimes they’re wearing rags. Sometimes business suits. You never know when you might meet one. That’s what Sister Dolores says.”

“Sister Dolores sounds like a smart woman,” Tara said. She had a plastic tub of warm water and was giving Vera a sponge bath. Vera was half naked, her hips and legs covered with a blanket, a towel draped over her shoulders. Her breasts sagged like empty sacks onto her protruding rib cage. Every bone seemed visible through paper-thin skin.

Reggie had hurriedly pushed open her mother’s door and now stood frozen in the doorway. She looked away from her mother and down at the floor, feeling like an intruder.

Tara glanced up, apparently unsurprised by the interruption. “I’m just getting your mother cleaned up. We’ll be through in a minute.” She’d dropped the washcloth into the tub and had started to gently blot Vera’s skin with a towel.

“We need to talk,” Reggie stammered, reminding herself what she’d come for as she backed up into the hallway.

“Let me finish this up and I’m all yours.” She carefully dried Vera off, lifting her legs and arms gently, artfully using the blankets and towels to cover up whatever part of Vera she wasn’t working on, toweling off the stump where her right hand had been as if it were no different from her other arm. There was no look of repulsion or horror. She hummed a little tune while she worked, uttered reassurances—“Almost done, Vera.” “Am I freezing you to death? Sorry, my dear, nearly there.”

Vera smiled up at Tara. “I think you’re one,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m one what?” Tara asked, sprinkling baby powder on Vera’s torso.

“An angel.”

“Perfect, because I think you’re one, too,” Tara said, smiling down at her, carefully easing Vera into her pajama top.

Vera closed her eyes and sank back into the pillow with a look of complete tranquility on her face. Tara grabbed the bath supplies and carried them past Reggie, down the hall to the bathroom. She washed her hands, carefully soaping up each finger, while Reggie stood hovering in the bathroom doorway. Tara’s sleeves were pushed up and Reggie stared at her arms, remembering the scars, thinking she could see the faint outlines of them. Tara caught her looking and Reggie glanced away, embarrassed. Then her eyes met Tara’s in the medicine cabinet mirror.

“You didn’t talk to Martha Paquette by any chance, did you?”

“Who?”

“The woman who wrote
Neptune’s Hands
.”

Tara gave her a quizzical look. “No. I don’t know why she would have come to me. I didn’t know any more than you did about the killings. She was busy talking to cops and stuff. Why would she have bothered with a thirteen-year-old kid?”

“I’m not talking about back then. I mean
now
. Did you talk to her yesterday or today?”

Tara turned off the faucet, shook off her hands. “What the hell is this, Reggie?”

“She was just here. She knows my mom is alive and in this house. And that she showed up in a homeless shelter in Worcester. She even knows about the cancer.”

Tara began drying her hands. “And you think
I
told her?”

“Someone did. And the only people who knew were me, Lorraine, and you.”

Tara gripped the towel as if she was trying to throttle it. Reggie remembered the way Tara had once choked her, pretending to be Neptune. For days after, Reggie had walked around with the faint yellow bruises from Tara’s fingers.

When Tara spoke, her voice crackled and popped as it worked its way up to a roar. “Yeah, you, me, Lorraine—
and
all the people she met in the hospital in Worcester: nurses, doctors, aides, transport people, Christ, even the people who came in to mop the floor! Then there are all the cops who went in to interview her. You think someone like Martha Paquette doesn’t still have some police connections? What about the shelter workers or other homeless people? Any fucking
one
of them could have tipped her off.
”

Reggie took a step back. “Of course. You’re right. I hadn’t thought of all that, I’m sorr—”

“No. You didn’t bother to think, you just went right for the one person you trust the least, didn’t you?” Tara’s eyes blazed.

“That’s not true,” Reggie said, moving toward Tara, wanting to reach out and touch her, to find a way to show her she was wrong. She felt like a kid again, at the mercy of Tara and her moods, wanting desperately to make things right.

Tara shook her head and stepped back. “You know, as much as I want to be here for your mom, I’m not sure I’m the right person.”

“No. You
are
the right person. My mother trusts you. She just called you an angel!”

Tara twisted the towel in her hands.

Reggie gave Tara a pleading look. “Please say you’ll stay.”

There was total silence for a beat, as if they were both holding their breath.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Tara asked. “The way life works. You don’t even try to look me up in twenty-five years and now here you are, begging me to stay. Did you even think of me, Reggie? Even once in all those years?”

“Tara—”

“Did you?” Tara interrupted, the same burning look in her eyes she’d had all those years ago when she’d talk about Neptune.

Reggie reached inside her shirt and pulled out the hourglass necklace, holding it out so Tara could see it.

Tara’s eyes widened. “Oh my God! You kept it? All this time?”

“Of course.” The pink sand was running out. “Do you want it back?” Reggie started to take the necklace off, but Tara shook her head.

“No. You should keep it. It takes me back, though. Seeing it again. Total time warp, you know?”

Reggie nodded. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

Tara bit her lip. “Do you really want me to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. But no more weird shit, okay? We’ve got to stick together here. Things with your mom, they’re going to get really intense in about a million different ways. If you can’t trust me, I need to know now.”

“I do trust you,” Reggie said, remembering years ago, when she’d sat next to Tara in Lorraine’s dank, fishy-smelling garage and Tara had handed her a razor blade and said,
Trust me
.

Tara nodded.

“Thank you,” Reggie said. “For agreeing to stay. I’m sorry for accusing you like that—it was fucked up.”

Reggie started to tuck the necklace back under her shirt, then pulled it back out, turned it over, thought, for just a second, of saying the words that would start one of their old games:

You have one minute . . .

Instead, she did the grown-up thing and turned and walked away.

Chapter 18

June 19, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

R
EGGIE WOKE UP AT
ten, stiff and cold, curled up on her bedroom floor. She remembered Lorraine’s shadow filling her doorway as she bellowed, “I want you out of this house!” Trying to shake the memory from her head, Reggie went downstairs to the kitchen and found Lorraine with a bowl of soggy cornflakes.

She wanted to start screaming at her aunt, to say,
How could you kick her out? What gives you the right?
But she just stood there, speechless, half afraid Lorraine might decide to throw her out, too. And unlike Vera, she really didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Yesterday’s paper was laid out in front of Lorraine, and she was studying the crossword puzzle, pencil in hand. The radio was playing low in the background, a murmur of voices. Reggie heard the words:
Body. Charter Oak. Neptune.

“Did they find her?” Reggie asked as she poured herself a glass of orange juice.

“Who?” Lorraine bit down lightly on the pencil’s eraser as she contemplated the puzzle.

“Neptune’s next victim. It’s the fifth morning.”

“Yes,” Lorraine said, not looking up from the paper.

“Well, who is she? Where did they find her?”

“I don’t really know,” Lorraine said. “I haven’t been paying attention.” She filled in one of the words in the puzzle:
gratitude
.

Reggie slammed her juice glass down. “How could you not pay attention? The guy is killing women in our town! One of them was a friend of Mom’s. Did you even know that?”

“No,” Lorraine said, finally looking up from her puzzle. “I didn’t.”

“It was the waitress. Mom introduced us once. She was a really nice person.”

Lorraine pursed her lips and nodded. “I’m sure she was.”

Reggie stared at her, anger bubbling inside her.

“It wasn’t right, what you did,” Reggie said. “Kicking Mom out in the middle of the night like that.”

Lorraine stood and dumped her ruined cereal down the sink, turning on the garbage disposal. She kept her back to Reggie, making it clear that she had nothing to say on the subject.

Reggie saw the little wooden swan in the center of the table, where it had been all night.

“Was there someone else here last night?” Reggie said. “When you and Mom were fighting, I thought I heard another voice.”

Lorraine narrowed her eyes, shook her head. “No. Of course not.”

Reggie grabbed the carved swan, stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts, then marched out of the kitchen.

“Regina,” Lorraine called after her, “if you go into town today, just make sure you’re not alone. Have Charlie go with you.”

Reggie didn’t acknowledge her, she just kept right on walking.

T
HE FLAT HAPPENED BEFORE
Airport Road turned from two lanes to four. Out in the tobacco fields. The workers had gone home for the day and there was no one around but passing cars. Reggie didn’t have any tools with her. No repair kit with patches and glue. George had taught her how to repair a bicycle tire and had bought her all the tools she needed. But she always forgot to bring them with her when she rode.

The headlight they’d put on last night after dinner was there, front and center on the handlebars. George had chastised Reggie for using the wrong size Allen wrench—it was a little too small.

“You’ll strip the inside of the bolt,” he’d told her. “Take the time to find the right tool.” She looked through the little set of wrenches until she found one that was the perfect fit, then tightened the clamp that held the headlight on.

Reggie wished George and his toolbox were here now.

“Shit,” she mumbled, inspecting the ruined tire. She hid her bike with the torn rear tire in the bushes beside a drainage ditch and set out walking.

One car after another passed her by.