Thursday, October 22
We drive in silence, which suits me fine. Charles seems lost inside himself, and I try to wonder what it must be like to see his daughters for the first time in a decade. My wondering doesn’t last long, as I have my own host of emotions to manage.
It’s a two-hour drive, and we rumble along the M2 in Charles’s silver Fiat. The shades of gray in the clouds number nearly as many as the shades of green in the patchwork of the landscape. It’s so unmistakably English, that contrast of green to gray at the horizon. I find myself almost hypnotized by it as we drive, and for a little while, I’m happy. Nostalgic, perhaps, for the innocence of my childhood, but behind the melancholy is nervous excitement. As if maybe I can get another try at all of this. A new life waiting ahead of me, where there are no memories of anything horrible chewing at me every day. I don’t want to end up sixty years old with bare walls.
That positive feeling is fleeting, as it always is, and I shift my gaze out the front window and think about what I’m going to say to the twins. I get as far as hello in my mind, then visualize myself grabbing one of their heads and twisting her neck until the vertebrae offer a satisfying crack.
So I distract myself with my phone, which is freshly equipped with a local SIM card I picked up this morning. Now I can get data, plus I’m unreachable at my normal phone number. No more texts from Mr. Interested. I thumb through the news, focusing especially on New Hampshire happenings. Still no stories about a body in the White Mountains. I check in with Thomas, wording my email carefully. No red flags there either. Even my mother’s Facebook account has been blessedly free of pleas for attention. Brenda tells me all is well at the Rose, and I even send Richard a light How are you? email, though I don’t expect an answer.
In this moment, everything is quiet. Everything is still. It’s the kind of silence I imagine two opposing battalions experience as they fix their bayonets and eye one another across a long, grassy expanse. It’s a wonder I haven’t had a panic attack since Starks’s murder. Perhaps attacking real threats rather than memories is doing wonders for my psyche.
Sometime later, Charles speaks. “Almost there,” he says. We’ve just passed the first sign for Dover, and the clouds, fittingly, have darkened. “Do you want to stop for lunch first?” he asks.
“I don’t think I could hold anything down.”
He nods. “Me neither.”
He fiddles with the GPS on his phone as he slows upon entering city limits. “Just up ahead.”
“What time are they expecting us?” I ask.
“They’re not.”
“What?”
He shoots me a sidelong glance.
“I figured it might be best not to announce ahead of time I’m coming, since I’m bringing you along.”
“Why?”
His hands seem to grip the steering wheel a little tighter. “I don’t know. Don’t suppose there’s a real reason to it. Maybe I felt like had I called and told Melinda we were coming, I wouldn’t have the ability to change my mind.”
“Do you feel like changing your mind, Charles?”
He thinks on this for a moment. “Not really sure what I think,” he says. “But…this sounds crazy. I feel a little scared.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy at all,” I say. I know exactly what he means. Then something occurs to me. “Am I even allowed to see them? I mean, would this be a violation of their parole or anything?”
“Huh,” he says. “Guess I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose if you’re the one who wants to see them, should be okay. But I suppose they’ll tell us if it’s a problem.”
The British voice of the GPS tells us to make a right turn, and then a left. Finally, she commands us to make another left turn on Noah’s Ark Road and that our destination will be ahead on the left.
“Noah’s Ark Road,” I say. “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.”
Charles pulls the car over to the curb and looks up at the clouds, which struggle to hold back a heavy, powerful storm.
“This is it,” he says, and though I know he’s referring to the address in front of us, he may as well be talking about some point of no return in my life. This is it, Alice. No going back now.
I look at the row of flats outside my window.
“Which number?” I ask.
“Two twelve. They share the same flat.”
“We don’t even know they’re there.”
“They’re not allowed many freedoms outside of going to work, which they don’t do on Thursdays. I expect they’re there.”
“Only one way to find out.”
I open the car door and step out. As I do, I feel the first of a billion rain drops.
Charles gets out, and we walk to the door together, slowly, as if marching in a funeral procession. A few feet from the door, we both stop, as if allowing the other person to take the final step forward. After a long moment, Charles moves first.
He rings the doorbell.
I don’t hear the footsteps. There’s no warning. Just the sudden rattle of a lock being unlatched. The doorknob turns, then the door opens.
The woman looks first at Charles, and then her gaze locks directly on me.
I stare directly back at Melinda Glassin.
“Praise Jesus Christ,” she says.