The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (59 page)

S
HE’S COLD
. S
CARED
. E
MMA’S
been watching her father’s barn all night from her bedroom window. As soon as she saw him turn out the lights, she raced down to the Blazer and climbed into the backseat.

When Emma called Mel earlier to promise to get Suz’s journal tomorrow, Mel said, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe your dad’s got a girlfriend.”

Emma let out a snorting laugh.

“Think about it,” Mel said. “It would explain why your mom kicked him out of the house. And where he goes so late at night. Maybe he’s playing hide-the-salami with some other lady!”

“Eew!” Emma shrieked. “No way.”

But she needs to make sure. To prove it to herself.

And if it’s not a girlfriend (which she knows it isn’t, thank you very much, bigmouthed, smarty-pants Mel), what is it that he’s doing so late at night? Where does he go?

If she has any hope of getting her parents back together again, she has to do more than what she’s been doing. She needs to understand what they’re really up to.

The truth is, Emma’s worried that her plans are backfiring. Her mom and dad seemed oddly frightened by the message she and Mel painted on the trees. And the riddle! She’d read it in Suz’s journal when Danner convinced her to go back in and take another quick look. Hearing the riddle again would surely take her parents back, give them a little thrill; they’d share a look, a gesture, and be on their way to reconciliation. What really happened was that they both looked horrified. As if Emma had opened her mouth and spit out shards of glass.

Emma’s in her favorite pajamas, the ones with little red moose all over them. She’s crouched down behind the driver’s seat, the blanket from the backseat covering her. She’s a worm underground. Wriggling. Writhing. But worms are dirty things. Full of germs. Bacteria. Microbes. Some worms are parasites and there’s nothing more repulsive than a parasite. Emma knows that if she starts to really let herself think about parasites, she’ll get itchy all over and need to take a scalding bath, scrub her skin until it’s raw. It’s starting already—that creepy, wiggly feeling just under her skin.

“Hold still,” Danner says.

Emma hadn’t even realized Danner was with her. But at the same time, she knows that in some way, Danner is always with her. She wants to push away the blanket, look around and see where Danner is hiding, but instead, she holds still. Listens to her own breath.

Now she’s a worm asleep. A worm who has rolled over and is playing dead.

Stop the worm thoughts, already!
she tells herself.

She starts counting by nines. Nine. Eighteen. Twenty-seven.

She listens. Hears nothing.

“Danner?”

“Yeah?”

“Was that you earlier. At the bottom of the pool?”

The blanket is scratchy against Emma’s face and she wonders if it’s possible to suffocate under it. She hears a gurgling sound—a wet, rasping choke. She goes to lift the blanket, to peek and see if Danner is okay, but she’s afraid. What if it’s not Danner? Or what if it is and she looks like she did at the bottom of the pool, skin sloughing off?

Stop it,
she tells herself, then she goes back to counting.
Thirty-six. Forty-five. Fifty-four.

She feels as if she’s playing hide-and-seek, but what is it she’s hiding from?

Ready or not, here I come.

Through the blanket, she smells something wet and rottenan animal that’s fallen into a well; a fish left in a plastic bag in the sun.

“Danner?” she says, the word little more than a gasp caught in the back of her throat.

She covers her nose and mouth with her hand to protect herself from the smell that’s growing stronger each second. She hears the gurgling sound again, someone sucking air through a wet straw. But there are words behind it; voices piled on top of each other, straining, screaming, panicked. She thinks she hears her father’s voice among them, saying something about stones.

No stone unturned.

Sticks and stones can break your bones.

Emma reaches out from under the blanket and gropes for the door handle. At last, she’s got it and she’s about to pull it open, to throw herself out of the car, blanket still covering her, when she hears her father open the driver’s-side door, climb in, and start the engine.

All at once, the wet sucking noise stops. The smell disappears. She lets go of the door handle.

They ride a long time. Swerving, bumping along like maybe they’re in a boat, not a car. She smells cigarette smoke. She didn’t
know her father even smoked. Weird. Maybe it’s not him. Maybe someone has stolen his car. Maybe she’s been kidnapped.

She thinks of the face at the bottom of the pool.

I’ve got a secret.

Her feet are full of pins and needles. Gone to sleep. Or maybe it’s the parasites under her skin. She starts to scratch.

“Don’t move,” Danner whispers. “Stay where you are and don’t make a sound.” She sounds so serious. A lump forms in Emma’s throat.

Everything you have is mine.

In movies sometimes people jump out of moving cars. The trick is to roll. She thinks maybe she should do this. But where would she be? And how would she find her way home with a broken arm or leg? And what if she landed in something gross like a pile of dog poop or a swamp full of skunk cabbage?

The Blazer is going up a steep hill now. Rough and bumpy. They’ve slowed to a crawl. Emma feels as if she’s on a carnival ride. It’s that the-ground-is-not-the-way-it-should-be, sick-to-her-stomach feeling she gets. Then, all at once, it’s over. The Blazer stops. Her father (or whoever the driver is) gets out.

Then he shouts something. He’s calling a name that sounds like
Give me
.
Give me
.

A woman calls back.

Give you what?
Emma imagines her saying back.

Emma pulls the blanket off and sits up, looking out the windshield. The Blazer’s headlights are on and focused on the building in front of them: an old cabin. On the steps is Winnie and she’s still wearing Emma’s mother’s clothes. Her father is standing in the yard, talking to Winnie. Emma can’t make out the words, but her father looks sheepish, worried. His hands are dug deep into his pockets and he’s scuffing at the pine-needle-covered ground with the toe of his boot.

And there, just to the left of her father, stands a figure Emma
recognizes at once. There he is, real and life size, just like she always imagined. Like she’s always wished for. And if this wish has come true, doesn’t that mean others might as well?

“Francis!” Emma cries, slamming open the car door and rushing to him. “Francis! Nine! Nine! Nine!”

T
ESS HEARS
H
ENRY DRIVE
off, and slips out of the house and across the yard in her pajamas and robe.

She can’t picture Henry having an affair at all. He’s just not the type for clandestine meetings in the middle of the night.

She slides open the door to Henry’s workshop and flicks on the tiny Maglite she brought. She doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone. (Maybe he just ran out to an all-night supermarket for something; maybe he’s off for another moonlight swim. Ha! Right.) Wherever he’s gone, she may not have much time.

Tess makes her way across the concrete floor, past the enormous dugout canoe, which sits in the dark like some giant, pale monster lurking. Trotting now, she goes straight for the toolbox.

After drawing the flower with Suz’s face this afternoon, Tess filled page after page with images she recalled from the summer of the Dismantlers. She drew the wooden moose, Winnie and her gun, Henry with a beard and wistful expression, and sketch after sketch of Suz. Suz writing in her journal. Suz holding a bottle of tequila. And the final drawing: Suz in the lake.

But no matter how hard she worked on Suz’s face, she felt she
wasn’t getting it quite right. The rigid jaw. The crooked teeth. Little, sharp nose. Stormy, amber eyes.

Then she remembered the photos stashed in Henry’s studio and thought maybe they’d help. She’ll just borrow them for a few days. He’ll never notice they’re missing.

Tess opens the toolbox, the rusty hinges letting out a little squeal of alarm. Removing the top tray full of tools, she reaches in and grabs the photos: Suz, Winnie, Henry, and a younger, smoother, surer version of herself smile up at her. There’s the moose. Henry and Suz clowning around on the beach. The photos are just what Tess needs to give her sketches new life, accurate detail. She looks down at an image of Winnie with the gun pulled up against her shoulder, her finger on the trigger, left eye closed, right eye sighting her target down the barrel.

“I
KNOW WHAT YOU
did to the condoms,” Tess said. They were alone, outside the cabin. Suz and Henry had gone on a beer and cigarette run. Winnie was polishing her gun.

“What’d I do?”

“You can’t play with people’s lives like that,” Tess said. This got no reaction from Winnie, who just kept polishing the metal barrel of her gun with an old bandanna. “You think it’ll help you hold on to Suz, but it won’t. Just like it won’t help me hold on to Henry. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, Winnie. Baby or no baby.”

Winnie continued polishing the gun, a little harder and faster now.

“Maybe I should tell Suz about it,” Tess said.

Winnie looked up. “Tell her what, Tess? That you were so desperate to hold on to Henry you poked holes in the condoms, then tried to blame someone else for it?” She smiled with amusement and went back to polishing her gun.

Tess clenched her hand into a fist, then opened it again. She
stood up and climbed the steps up to the front door of the cabin.

“So it worked then?” Winnie called after her.

“What?”

“You’re pregnant?”

“Fuck you!” Tess said, slamming the door behind her.

T
ESS TUCKS THE PICTURES
into the pocket of her robe, then lifts out the journal, flipping through it until she comes to a place near the middle.

Tess closes the journal, places it back in the toolbox and shuts the lid. Then she hurries past the great hulking monster of a canoe, out of Henry’s barn, and into the garden.

She never told Henry about the condoms. About Winnie. It felt pointless. It would have clouded the real issue, which was that she was pregnant, and they needed to hurry up and make some decisions.

Tess’s heart is pounding as she crosses the yard, making the motion-detecting floodlights click on. Taking the photos has given her a little thrill, reminded her of what their Dismantling missions had been like. Things were always tinged with danger, acrid as the smell of gunpowder when Winnie fired the rifle. The fear they might be caught was a living, breathing, palpable thing.
It filled their bellies, left them feeling buzzed and satisfied, but always wanting more.

The moon is just a thin sliver in the sky. The stars, millions of tiny pinpricks.

Which makes her think of the condoms again.

Winnie’s casual act of treachery had brought Emma into the world and changed the course of Tess’s life, given it color and shape. For a moment Tess tries to imagine an alternative reality, one in which Winnie thought better of sabotaging the condoms, and therefore one in which Emma—her beautiful, bright, and quirky girl—had never come to be. Tess is sure she would feel the ache of her missing child, like a phantom limb.

H
ENRY TAKES A STEP
toward her, staggers a little. He’s been drinking again. Winnie imagines him getting through the sad repetition of his days—running the painting company, paying the bills, shuttling his daughter around—by getting good and smashed every evening. We all need something to look forward to. Something to take the edge off. Winnie rubs her fingers over the scars on her arms.

“I’m glad you came,” she says to him. She’s standing on the steps, still in Tess’s clothes.

“I brought your things,” he says, handing over a plastic grocery bag. She peers inside. Her Suz outfit is there, dry now. Mud brown tunic, black leggings.

But something’s missing.

“Where’s the wig?”

Henry shrugs. “I figured you must have grabbed it. It wasn’t with the clothes in the bathroom.”

Winnie feels a moment of panic. It doesn’t make sense. She left it to dry with the clothes in the bathroom. How can the wig be gone?

“Francis!” a little voice calls in the darkness beyond Henry. Winnie squints and sees the girl leaping out of the Blazer. Emma—the girl she pulled squirming and choking from the pool this afternoon.

But who the hell is Francis?

Emma runs to Suz’s moose, which Winnie is close to finishing. She throws her arms around the creature’s neck. “Francis! Nine, nine, nine!”

Henry turns, stares at the girl, blinking. “Emma?”

Winnie watches as his whole demeanor changes. He goes into a slouch. His voice becomes tender.

“Look, Daddy—kitties!”

Henry stares at his daughter, who is down on her knees in a growing sea of cats.

“How did you get here?” he asks.

“I stole away. In the backseat.”

“Stowed away? Jesus, Em. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

Emma’s face, beaming with amazement just seconds ago, darkens. Her chin starts to quiver.

Winnie puts her hand on Henry’s arm. He flinches a little, but doesn’t pull away. “I’m sure she won’t do it again, right, Emma?” she says.

Emma nods.

“The cats are hungry,” Winnie says. “Would you like to feed them, Emma?”

Emma’s face cracks into an excited grin as her head bobs. Winnie goes inside, gets three cans of tuna and some bowls.

“How can the cats still be here?” Henry asks Winnie when she comes back out.

“I guess they didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she says.

“But how could they have survived all this time?”

“Instinct,” she tells him, passing a bowl of tuna to Emma.

“Can we take one home, Dad? Please?” Emma pleads as she places the bowl down in the sea of hungry, screaming cats.

“They’re strays, honey. They probably have fleas. They might bite.”

A little orange cat is purring while she strokes its ears.

“Let her have a cat, Henry. Hell, take two. One for Danner.”

He gives her a furious glance and she laughs. Poor Henry. He still takes everything so seriously. He needs to lighten up. Learn to play a little.

“Emma?” Winnie calls. “Do you know the moose has a secret?”

Emma shakes her head.

Henry’s shaking his, too.
NO
, he mouths the word to Winnie, but she pretends not to see.

“He’s hollow inside. There’s a little door on his chest. You can climb in if you want.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Henry says.

Winnie stands and opens the door on the side of the moose. The new hinges she picked up at the hardware store work perfectly.

“Please, Dad,” Emma says.

Defeated, Henry boosts Emma up so she can climb in.

“Why on earth did you rebuild this thing?” Henry asks.

“I can’t say exactly,” Winnie says. “I guess I just wanted to see if I could.”

She’s proud of the job she’s done, glad someone can finally appreciate it. Someone who knew the moose in another life, who knew the work that went into it. She couldn’t find all the original pieces and had to make some new ones out of branches. She’s not done gluing the canvas over him yet, but it’s getting there.

“I’m standing where his heart would go!” Emma cries with delight, her voice muffled.

“When I began the moose, Henry, things got weird.” Winnie has lowered her voice so that Emma won’t hear.

“What things?”

“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Try me,” he says. “I know a thing or two about crazy.”

Winnie smiles.

I just bet you do.

“Okay,” she begins. “When I got here, I took all of Suz’s clothes, sealed them up in a big trash bag and sank it out in the middle of the lake. Getting rid of evidence, you know?”

Henry nods.

“The morning after I started working on the moose, I woke up and found one of the outfits I’d sunk laid out beside me. Silk tunic, leggings, boots. Like Suz had been there in the night, and evaporated, leaving just her clothes.”

“Jesus!” Henry yelps.

“Dad,” Emma calls from inside the moose, “I can see through his eyes.”

Winnie continues, whispering hurriedly. “I was pretty freaked. I balled the clothes up and put them at the bottom of the trash barrel outside. Then, the next morning, I woke up and there they were again, right beside me. This time there was a blond wig on top.”

Henry shivers.

“So I go downstairs with the stuff, thinking maybe I’ll burn it this time, then I see my journal laying open on the table. There’s writing in it that I didn’t do. Handwriting I recognize. Suz’s writing.”

Henry shakes his head in a this-can’t-be-happening kind of way. “What did it say?”

“It said:
Put the clothes on, Winnie
.”

“And you did?”

Winnie nods. “I was terrified at first. But then, I slipped on the wig and looked in the mirror. Something happened. I felt her presence, Henry. It was as if she was right there with me, filling
me with confidence, whispering in my ear. It was as if I actually
became
her.”

Henry is quiet, looking away from her now. She’s gone too far. She shouldn’t have confessed so much, not all at once like this.

Take it slow, babycakes.

“It’s been so hard,” Winnie says. “Even after all these years, I think of her every day. I miss her so much. She was the one person who got me. The one who told me I could be anyone, anything I wanted. But all I ever wanted was to be with her, to be what she wanted me to be. So yeah, I put the clothes on. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe—” She doesn’t let herself finish. Henry reaches out, puts a hand on her arm and gives it a gentle squeeze.

“I can hear what the moose thinks!” shouts Emma.

“She’s an amazing kid, Henry,” Winnie whispers. “You’re a lucky man.”

“I know,” he tells her, but she can tell he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel lucky at all. She smiles. This is the Henry she thought she might find, dismantled as the moose. He fumbles in his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

“Still smoking, huh?” she asks.

“I gave it up. Quit the day we left the cabin that summer. But I picked up a pack last week.”

“Mind if I have one?” He shakes a cigarette out and lights it for her. They stand smoking a minute, listening to Emma commune with Francis the moose.

Winnie thinks about how Suz was right—everything is a prop, really: the cigarette, the lost wig, the reconstructed moose. All just little pieces to set the scene, to help us move from one act to the next. Things to hide behind, to give us courage, propel us along.

“So you don’t have any plans for it?” Henry asks.

“For what?”

“The moose.”

She laughs. “Like am I going to use it to kidnap some poor
lovesick boy or some other crazy Suz scheme? No way. I was thinking of putting it in the lake.”

“The lake?”

“You know? Have a sort of Viking funeral for it. A final tribute. I’d like to float him out there and set him on fire. I thought it would be…cathartic or something.”

She looks straight at Henry, sure she sees him start to smile, then stop himself.

From inside the moose, a small voice yells, “I can see what Francis sees! I know what he knows!”

And Henry shares a panicked sort of look with Winnie, a look that says,
I sure as hell hope not.
They’re coconspirators now—bound.

“Come on out of there, sweetie,” Henry calls.

“Now I just have to figure out how to get him out on the lake. I’ll have to build a raft or something,” Winnie says, dropping the cigarette butt and grinding it out with her boot.

Henry smiles as he helps Emma out of the moose. “I have a canoe,” he tells her.

Winnie laughs out loud. She can’t help herself. It’s all too perfect for words.