The Sitter (12 page)

27

T
eresa, I’m so terrified.”

I dropped breathlessly into my seat. I felt as if I were on the deck of a swaying ship, the floor tilting and shifting to a strange rhythm. The faces around the restaurant bobbed and swayed like stringed balloons. Why did I have the feeling they were all staring at me?

I blinked them away and, holding on to the edge of the table to steady myself, turned back to Teresa. “I’m just shaking. What a frightening week. A fucking nightmare. I really should get away from there. I should just pack up and—”

Teresa signaled to the waitress. “Let’s order some drinks. Then we can talk about it. What do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Rum and Coke, I guess.”

Teresa ordered two rum and Cokes. She turned back to me. “You look like total crap.”

I groaned. “You’re trying to make me feel better?”

“Ellie, you poor thing. I’ve never seen you so strung out. Those lines under your eyes—”

“I can’t sleep. You’d have lines under your eyes, too, if someone sent you a human hand!”

I didn’t mean to shout. People turned to stare. I ducked lower in the booth and held the menu in front of my face.

Teresa and I were at Bobby Van’s in Bridgehampton. It was Friday night, and the restaurant was jammed. We’d taken a booth at the back of the bar where we could hear each other.

I had spoken to Teresa for only a second on Monday. Now I knew she was eager for me to catch her up. But I wasn’t sure I could talk about it.

The waitress brought the drinks. “You ready to order?”

Teresa ordered soft-shell crabs. I decided to have them, too. I took a long swallow of my drink. The rum felt warm on my throat. “I’ll need a few more of these,” I said.

Teresa tsk-tsked. “You poor thing.”

“I can’t sleep at all,” I moaned, holding on to the glass with both hands. “When I close my eyes, I see that fucking hand. I see the fingers, crawling up my leg, crawling up my body. One night I—I—this is so awful—I dreamed the hand was around my neck, strangling me.”

“Oh, my God.” Teresa pulled nervously on her hair. “Oh, my God, Ellie.”

I took another long swallow of my rum and Coke. “The police haven’t left me alone for an hour. First it’s the town police, then the village police. They can’t decide which of them is in charge. So they ask the same questions over and over.

“And the TV reporters are even worse,” I said. “They hound me. They follow me. They ask the most horrible questions. I—I just hope my mother hasn’t seen any of this.”

“You haven’t told her?”

“Of course not. If my mother had any idea that someone had cut off a woman’s hand and sent it to me with a threatening note, she’d be here in two minutes, pulling me by the hair back to Wisconsin!”

Teresa nodded solemnly. “You’re probably right.” She pushed her hair off her face. “And the old woman? She’s alive?”

I nodded. “They found Mrs. Bricker in her living room in a pool of blood. She nearly bled to death, but somehow she hung on. She called 911 with the hand that was left. Do you believe that?”

Teresa downed her drink. “Wow. She is a strong old bird. Where is she? Is she home?”

“No. She’s still at the hospital in Southampton. She was in a coma for a couple of days. They didn’t think she’d pull through. I went to visit her there, but she was still out. Hooked up to a million tubes and wires. No one had any hope for her. But she woke up on Wednesday. She surprised everyone.”

“Why’d you go visit her?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s weird, you know. I mean, I guess I feel kinda responsible.”

“Huh? Responsible? Hel-lo.
You
didn’t cut off her hand. Some crazy bastard did!”

“But if I wasn’t here, she’d still have it. See what I mean? I mean, someone cut off her hand because they wanted to scare me.”

“Well, did the old woman tell the police anything? Could she help them? Did she know who did it to her?”

The waitress brought our food. I waited for her to leave. I stared down at the soft-shell crabs. I hadn’t eaten much all week. I just hadn’t felt like it. My stomach growled.

“Mrs. Bricker couldn’t remember much. She said she saw a flash of brown. Maybe the guy was wearing brown. But she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t remember seeing the knife or anything. I guess she went into some kind of shock.”

Teresa leaned over the table. “And have the police arrested Clay? It
was
Clay, right? That sick idiot.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t Clay.” I put down my fork. I couldn’t talk about this and eat at the same time.

“Of
course
it was Clay,” Teresa insisted. “Who else could it be?”

The question sent a chill down my back. Yes. Who
else
could it be? Who else hated me so much? Who wanted to terrify me so badly?

What
insane
person had reason to threaten me like that?

“Clay was in Philadelphia the whole weekend. He went to a Sixers game with one of his brothers and visited his other brother there. Both brothers swore to it. They even had the ticket stubs.”

Teresa swallowed a chunk of crab. “Bullshit. They’re lying, right?”

“No. A bunch of neighbors were at the brother’s barbecue Sunday afternoon, and they all said that Clay was there.”

“Maybe they’re all lying.”

The waitress brought two more rum and Cokes. I took a long sip. “All the neighbors?”

“But, Ellie, you told me the hand—you said it came with a birthday card. From Clay. And the card had hands on it. And—”

I sighed again. “Looks like a coincidence. A stupid coincidence. Clay told the police he bought the card a long time ago and had it in a drawer. Besides, Clay hasn’t been out to the Hamptons. And he’s never heard of Mrs. Bricker.”

I realized I was tapping my fork on the table. I let it drop. “The police questioned Clay for hours. They say he isn’t a suspect. Besides, it doesn’t make sense for it to be Clay. Clay is in love with me, right? He says he wants us to get back together. So why would he chop off that poor woman’s hand? He wouldn’t—”

“Because he’s crazy. He’s totally whacked, Ellie. He’s been stalking you. He’s been calling you day and night, hounding you, threatening you—”

“It isn’t Clay. Let me finish. There was another card with the hand. In the box. We—we didn’t see it till later.”

Teresa gasped. “Another card? Oh, my God. What did it say? Was it signed or anything? Where is it? Do you have it?”

“No. The police took it. For evidence. It was handwritten. I—I remember every word. It’s—so horrible, Teresa.”

I felt my eyes brim with tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of everyone in the restaurant. I’d cried enough all week.

I rubbed the tears away with my napkin. “It was a little card. You know. A white card. The handwriting was kinda scrawled, big letters, very sloppy. And—”

“And what did it say?”

“It said, ‘Guess what? I’d give my
right arm
to see you dead. So, this is a start.’ ”

Teresa tugged her hair with both hands. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

After dinner, we drove around aimlessly. We ended up at a beach called Sag Main in Sagaponack. We walked barefoot in the sand along the dark, tossing ocean—high waves tonight, rising up like fingers over the beach, and no stars in the sky—and we tried to talk about other things.

But how could I think about anything else? I was so frightened, I kept turning back to make sure no one was following us.

“Ellie, are you going to stay?” Teresa asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to do. Abby and Chip are begging me not to leave. They say the kids are upset. They know something weird is going on. Abby says they need me now. Chip offered me a raise to stay, a really good raise. They both promised to watch out for me, to protect me.”

“So you’re staying here?”

“I guess. It’s so hard to think straight. I really don’t want to go back to Wisconsin. And . . . if someone wants to kill me—” I swallowed. My throat suddenly felt so dry. “—if someone wants to kill me, they’ll follow me to Madison, right?”

“Who would want to kill you, Ellie? Who?”

I tossed a stone into the dark water. “That’s what the police asked me over and over. Do I have a clue? No.”

Teresa invited me to her share house the next Saturday for a barbecue party. I started to say no, but then changed my mind. I needed something to take my mind off what had happened, something to help erase that pale, bony hand from my thoughts.

“Maybe I’ll invite this guy I met,” I told her.

“Guy?” Her eyes flashed. She tossed her cigarette onto the sand.

I told her about Jackson, how nice he seemed, so solid, so laid back, not like the other guys I’d been with. I didn’t tell her I ran away from him, chasing after a ghost.

“Yes, tell him to come by,” Teresa said. She laughed her throaty laugh. “Tell him to bring a friend for me.”

She dropped me back at the Harpers’ a little after one. The house was silent and dark and smelled of popcorn. I stepped into the kitchen to see if any of it was left. But the bowl on the counter was empty except for a few unpopped kernels.

Yawning, I made my way upstairs. I started to get undressed, then heard a sound outside my bedroom window. A voice. A man’s voice.

Who was out there at this time of night? I hurried to the window.

The backyard was dark. A thick haze curtained the sky. No moon or stars. I heard the crash of the tall ocean waves beyond the dunes. And over that sound, a man’s voice. Coming from where? From the guest house?

I poked my head farther out the window. I gazed over the backyard. Shadowy black shapes against black. Nothing moving. No one there.

Had I imagined the voice?

No. I heard it again. A murmur of words. I couldn’t make them out. And then a woman’s voice. I didn’t recognize either of them.

The ghosts of the guest house? I thought of Mrs. Bricker, of the crazy story she was so desperate to tell me.

Sorry, no way. I don’t believe in ghosts, Mrs. B. It wasn’t a ghost who cut off your hand and wrapped it so nicely in a box for me.

The voices again, both speaking at once. Voices from an empty, abandoned house?

I pulled my jeans back on and crept down the stairs. Out the kitchen door, onto the deck.

I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The backyard lay perfectly still.

But wait.

A dark form, moving fast, slithering across the sandy ground. A chipmunk. I watched it dive into a hole.

A loud crash of an ocean wave, loud as thunder. And then, in the stillness that followed, I heard the man’s voice, low and gentle, clearer now, although I still couldn’t make out the words.

Not Chip. I could hear that it wasn’t Chip.

Besides, Chip was in the city. He had driven off in the Porsche right before Teresa picked me up tonight.

Squinting into the darkness, I stepped off the deck, into the yard. The sandy ground felt cold under my bare feet. Patches of long grass tickled me as I crossed the yard, climbing the dune.

I stopped halfway to the line of pine trees. I could see the dark outline of the guest house behind them. The voices had vanished.

Ellie, why are you out here?

Curiosity?

Some kind of force, pulling me here? An invisible force pulling me against my will to the guest house?

Oh, Christ, Ellie. That’s such bullshit.

And then a chilling thought: Is it the killer?

Is it the man who wants to kill me?

Is he waiting for me up there? Luring me to the guest house, luring me, pulling me . . .

Why am I out here?

I hugged myself to stop my shivers. My teeth chattered. The ocean wind suddenly felt damp and chilling.

So silent. No voices now. Everything still, as if the earth had frozen.

I started to turn back to the house.

“Oh—” I gasped as I saw something move behind the trees at the top of the hill.

A flash of color.

Someone stepped out, walking fast down the dune.

I saw dark hair, a slender body. A woman in white shorts and a white midriff top, swinging her arms as she walked.

Abby!

“Ellie?” she shouted. Seeing me, she started to run. “Ellie? Did you hear it, too?”

I still had my arms wrapped around my chest. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.

Abby ran up to me, her sandals kicking up sand behind her. “Did you hear the voices, too?” she asked breathlessly.

I nodded. “Y-yes.”

Abby put her arm around my shoulder. “You’re shivering. Are you okay? It isn’t that cold out. Let’s get you inside.”

“I—I’m totally freaked,” I confessed.

We started back to the house. “I was sound asleep,” Abby said, still breathing hard. “I heard voices. A man and a woman, coming from the guest house.”

“Yeah, so did I,” I said.

“I pulled on my clothes and went running up there,” she said. “I could hear the voices so clearly.”

I stopped and turned to her. “And? Did you see anyone in there? Did you see who it was?”

“Ellie, it was empty. No one there. No one.”

I stared hard at her, my mind whirring. Finally, I whispered, “Abby—do you believe in ghosts?”

She didn’t answer. I saw her chin tremble. Then she turned and strode quickly into the house.

28

T
he next Friday morning, I met Maggie at the Lewises’ house. We packed her two girls and my two kids into her Suburban, along with the usual gear—blankets, coolers, sand toys, and so forth. Then she drove us to a freshwater lake—about a ten-minute ride—for a picnic and a swim.

The Lewis girls sat with Heather in the middle seat. The three of them had fun tickling each other, throwing each other’s hats on the floor, singing songs at the top of their lungs. Brandon sat in the back by himself, gazing blankly out the window.

It was still morning, but the parking lot was already crowded. I could see kids playing and running in the gentle blue-green water.

“It’s very shallow for a good bit,” Maggie said. “So it’s safe for the kids to swim. But then it drops off suddenly, to about twenty feet deep.”

The sun burned the back of my neck as we unpacked the kids and all the equipment. It was a humid day, hot for June, a taste of the summer days to come.

“You look tired, girl,” Maggie said as we lugged everything across the asphalt parking lot to the narrow beach. “You’ve been partying too much?”

I laughed. “Partying? I wish.”

I guessed she hadn’t seen the TV or newspapers. Well, good. I wasn’t going to bring it up. Why spoil her day, too?

The beach was rocky, covered with large, round pebbles and washed-up shells. Heather complained it hurt her feet, so I picked her up and carried her along with all the other stuff.

“Do you have lakes where you come from?” Maggie asked.

I nodded. “Dozens of them. This looks just like a Wisconsin lake. Especially with all the tall trees around it. The Hamptons are amazing, aren’t they? The ocean, the bay, and even a lake.”

“Swim! Swim! I want swim!” Heather began the chant, and the Lewis girls picked it up. Brandon tagged along behind us, picking up stones and tossing them into the water.

“You can’t swim until I get your floaties on,” I told Heather. I turned. “Brandon, are you going to swim today?”

He nodded.

“Well, I need you to take good care of your sister. Will you help me watch Heather?”

He stared at me blankly.

Yes, I confess. Sometimes I just wanted to pick Brandon up and shake him and shout, “Talk, damn it! Just
talk
!” It was so frustrating. If only there were some way I could reach him.

And then, as if reading my mind, he came up and took my hand, and I instantly felt sorry for thinking my violent thoughts. The poor guy. What could be troubling him so badly?

We found a spot and set down our stuff and spread some blankets and put up a beach umbrella. I slid the plastic floaties onto the kids’ arms and inflated them, not easy with Brandon and Heather squirming and pulling away, eager to get to the water.

I was eager to get in the water, too. The sun beat down. I was dripping with sweat. Maggie and I led the kids to the edge of the shore. We passed a little red-haired boy dragging a big, black inner tube across the pebbles to the water. Ahead of us, two kids were fighting over a red Styrofoam pool noodle. Their tug-of-war ended in tears when they snapped the pool noodle in half.

I saw Brandon snicker as we passed the crying kids. Why did he enjoy seeing them cry?

The four kids had fun splashing and jumping about in the flat, warm water. Even Brandon joined in.

But, of course he had to frighten me. He kept floating facedown, doing the dead man’s float, holding his breath until my heart started to pound. Then he’d raise his head and stare at me, a strange grin on his face, as if he knew he had scared me and was pleased about it.

Maggie and I took turns watching them. First, she did lifeguard duty so I could go out to the deep water and have a good swim. Then I relieved her.

“I like your swimsuit,” Maggie said, as we were toweling off later. “Very bold.”

I laughed. “Bold? Do you think so?”

I was wearing a bright red bikini. Of course, Chip had complimented me on it as I was leaving the house.

Okay. He had backed off a bit since the severed hand incident. And he kept telling me he would do everything he could to protect me from whoever was threatening me. But I could still feel his eyes on me all the time, see him watching me while pretending to read the newspaper or a magazine.

I wondered if he would make a real move. Would he corner me sometime when Abby was away and tell me again how lonely he is? Tell me how his marriage is falling apart, how he desperately wants me, how he has to have me? . . .

And then what would I do?

I’d have to quit.

I’d have to push him away and tell him I’m outta there and let
him
explain to Abby.

And then what?

I go back to New York with a few hundred dollars to my name and try to find an apartment and a job.

Or . . . back to good old Madison with Mom and Dad.

Uh—no.

Maybe Chip will lay off. Maybe he feels sorry for me, knowing that someone out there hates me—hates me enough to cut off an old woman’s hand and send it to me—hates me enough to want me dead.

Maybe Chip won’t make a move. He says he wants to protect me, after all. Wow, he’s such a loser. He’s probably just a watcher, a daydreamer.

And why isn’t Abby enough for him? They’re both so young. They couldn’t have been married very long. How can he be so horny? Is he just a total slut?

A ringing sound interrupted my thoughts. My phone. I rummaged through the beach bag searching for it. Finally, I found it. I checked the caller ID, then raised it to my ear.

“Hi, Teresa.”

“What’s up, Ellie? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Not bad. I’m at a lake with the kids, so I can’t really talk.”

“We still on for Saturday afternoon? Party at my house?”

“Yeah. I called Jackson. He said he’d stop by.”

“Cool. Wait till you see the house, Ellie. Thirty people jammed into five bedrooms. It’s insane!”

“I’d better go, Teresa. Can I call you later?”

“Yeah. No problem. Everything okay? Nothing weird going on?”

“Okay so far,” I said. “The police were back yesterday. They asked a bunch of questions, but they don’t have a clue. And Clay has called me every day. But I see his number on my caller ID, so I don’t pick up.”

“Good. Maybe he’ll get the message in a year or two.”

“Let’s hope. Later,” I said. I clicked off the phone and tossed it back into the beach bag. Then I turned toward the water.

Deirdre and Courtney were piling up stones a few yards in front of the blanket, building some kind of stone house. And Heather and Brandon—

Heather and Brandon?

Oh, no. I turned to Maggie. She was bent over the cooler, pulling out wrapped sandwiches for our picnic. “Maggie? Do you see Brandon and Heather?”

She jumped to her feet and, sheltering her eyes with her hand, squinted down the beach. “They were just here, building rocks with the girls. They couldn’t have gone far.”

I stepped over the beach blanket and hurried up to the girls. “Have you two seen Heather and Brandon?”

They looked up from their rock pile, blond hair gleaming in the sunlight, blue eyes looking up at me so blankly, as if they’d never heard of Heather and Brandon.

“They went away,” Deirdre said finally, in her tiny voice.

The words sent a chill down my back.
Went away?

“Where? Went away
where
?”

They both shrugged their little shoulders.

I stepped away from them, slipping on some rocks. Squinting hard behind my sunglasses, I searched up and down the beach. I saw dozens of children that could have been them—but weren’t.

My heart racing now, my throat achingly dry, I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted. “Brandon? Heather? Where are you? Brandon? Heather?”

I turned to the water. No sign of them. I spun around slowly, surveying the whole beach.

Finally, trembling, my stomach knotted in fear, I turned to Maggie. “Maggie,” I choked out. “They’re gone.”