Mary
It seems at long last that I have finally come unmoored, detached from arms and legs, hovering in some underwater twilight, my only awareness the dark slippery walls of my own mind. Is this death, then? The wispy shift between the world and what comes after? I think not. Hell wouldn’t be so quiet—or so cold. And there’s a pain slowly coming to life behind my left eye, a knife slicing through my skull that tells me I’m alive.
The restraints again, then, pinning my limbs to the bed. Yes, that must be it. They’ve sent me back, found out who I am and what I did. The smells are familiar, too, Pine-Sol and misery. I try to open my eyes, to see where they’ve put me, but my lids are so heavy, so gritty, that I can only lie here and force my brain to take inventory of my body, of its throbs and aches, and wonder what they plan to do with me.
And then I see it all, playing out on the backs of my lids, like a movie running the wrong way. A crushing pain as my head smacks the pavement. The crunch and give of something in my shoulder. A kind of lurching, disembodied tumbling as I sail, sail, sail through the air. Running with the rain in my eyes. Running from the truth, from the shame—from the name Hannah Rourke.
The memory grabs hold, dragging me toward some shiny surface I have no wish to break. I struggle against it, wanting only to sink back into the darkness, to linger in the blissful depths, where all is safe and unknown, where Hannah is still dead and no one knows the truth. But the pain is stronger now, nudging me toward awareness, until I have no choice but to open my eyes.
The room is dim: a window with curtains drawn, but not my window. Not my room. Not Hope House. There’s a railing on both sides of the bed, but no restraints, I realize now. My feet and legs are free, but one of my arms, the left one, will not move at all. It’s strapped against my body—and it hurts. I gaze about, bleary but comprehending, at the clear white tube snaking into my hand, the pole and bag hung beside the bed, at the steel panel of knobs and dials on the wall.
Yes, of course—the car.
But before the car there was Lane, standing with me at Peter’s grave, listening while I blathered about the night my poor boy died. We have no secrets now, she and I. She knows it all, my name and my sins. But then, it was foolish of me, wasn’t it, to ever think I could outrun them? I see now that when I buried Hannah Rourke I should have dug the hole much deeper.