My mouth was dry and my tongue was swollen. My face felt as if I’d been beaten. I wanted to open my eyes but my lids were glued together. I lay in the same spot for the longest time without moving. I couldn’t remember what happened. Bits and pieces of it floated in front of me but I couldn’t grab them and put them together.
I reached my hand out for something familiar but only felt a hard surface around me. When my eyes did open, they met with nothingness. The thought passed briefly through my mind that I was blind. There were no shadows or flickers of light. Suddenly it came to me. I had been in the woods. Walking back from the cemetery when I hit something, or something hit me. It wasn’t likely that I was still there. There was cement under me. Or something hard. It was cold but there was no breeze. It was actually damp and stagnant. I panicked. My mind raced. What the hell had happened?
Before I could ponder it, the door opened and light spilled in. My eyes were open a crack but it was enough to see that I was in the old gardening room I’d stumbled on before.
“What’s she doing?” It was Cora’s voice.
“She’s still out. She probably doesn’t remember what happened in the woods.” A male voice. “I can give her another shot that’ll put her out for another couple hours at least.” They were close to me.
“No. Leave her be.”
“But what’s the plan, Cora?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Her voice had gone up into a strident squeaky range.
I hadn’t ever heard her speak this way before. She was always so contained around me. She was coming undone.
“It’s not too late to fix this Cora. We can always take her back to her room and leave her there. Tell her we found her in the woods.”
“No.” Then silence. “How can I?”
“How long do you plan on keeping her here? And don’t you think if you let her go she’ll run to the police? This is insane and I warned you….”
Cora took so long to answer, I thought they might have left. “I don’t know what I want to do with her. If she dies, she dies. She’s going to know why before it happens. She’s going to know what she’s done to my life and she’s going to sign those papers to move Nick’s body. That’s all I care about.”
“I helped you get her down here and I gave her that shot but if I’d have known this is what was…”
“Oh Please. If I had only known…that’s the story of your life, Harrison.”
“She has friends that will come looking for her.” I heard footsteps near my right ear and I tried not to flinch. “That train ticket to Harrisburg that I put on her credit card yesterday will only stall them for so long.”
“No, Bradford’s family was from Harrisburg so it makes sense that she might go there looking for something. The train left at ten-thirty last night. As far as anyone will know she was on that train. It will take them a while to chase that lead.” There was silence. “Her jeep is at the train station and her room is cleaned out? Right?”
The male voice was closer. “She has friends here, they’re not going to just go away because you say she got on a train. She would have told them if she were leaving. They’ll call the police and everything is going to be dragged up again. Do you hear me?” There was no response. “Do you want tomorrows headline to drudge up old business? It would make a good story. James’s disappearance, then Nick’s, then his accident. Now this. What are you thinking?”
“She killed my son.” Cora’s voice was loud and close. I had to concentrate not to cringe. “Then she comes here snooping around…”
“Cora…”
“I wanted to watch her. To try and figure out how much he told her. See what he saw in her.” Her foot made contact with my side. She kicked me right under my ribs and it took everything in me not to utter a sound. I’d relaxed my body like a rag doll.
“We can’t afford to make any more mistakes. We’ve made enough.”
“That was your fault.” She spat. “You said you were going to take care of it. You didn’t think that maybe she’d be driving?”
My heart started dancing.
“She never drove his car, Cora. Not in the whole time they were watched. Just that one time…”
“And you couldn’t have planned it when she was driving alone…”
“You know the answer to that. It would have been much more effective for Nick to be with his wife…”
“Effective? It didn’t occur to you or that stupid truck driver that you might kill both of them? Or the wrong one?” She was screaming.
“Nobody was supposed to die. It was supposed to be a little more than a bad fender-bender. I never meant to kill either of them. You know that…It was just a message to him. The truck driver knew that, he knew what to do, what to say. ”
“I could have brought Nick back here, Harrison. He would have come if things had been handled right.”
That’s what they had been talking about when the maid from the cleaning service came upon them. They were planning the accident.
“I know.”
“Everything that I did in my life was for him and now he’s gone. And I’m not letting her go. I don’t care what you say.” She was screeching. It seemed like she was about to lose control. “You’re in this with me just like you were twenty-five years ago. You’re in this and that’s it.”
“God knows, you won’t let me forget it. But you can’t just let her die down here. Don’t you see it’s going to bring everything down on your head? Our heads?”
“It’s always been you and me.” Her voice had softened.
“And I’ve spent a lifetime paying for it.”
“Everything was for you and Nick.” She’d gone almost to the other extreme and seemed like she might cry.
“Let’s not go over this again.”
I could tell he had moved over to her. I heard nothing for a few minutes and I assumed that he was hugging her or kissing her. If I weren’t so afraid I might have been repulsed.
“She was talking to Ginny in the cemetery and she knows too much. She’s not stupid, she’ll put the pieces together, if she hasn’t already, and she’ll go back there. We have to just stick together one more time, Harrison. Just one more time.” She was almost pleading.
“At least bring her water. Then we’ll figure this out.”
They were moving away and I could hear the door close and lock into place. I counted to five hundred before I dared to sit up. My side hurt where she’d kicked me. I probed it gingerly with my fingers. Cora and Harrison were obviously involved and had been for a long time. I rubbed my fingers over my face. She was crazy. She must have planned the accident to get rid of me or at least hurt me and instead her son died.
I had no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t come to her she would’ve come to me. She would have come and lured me here somehow. My inquisitiveness had just sped up the process. I looked at the walls around me. Is this where my life would end? Then they’d dump my body somewhere in the woods to rot and go on like nothing had happened? Just like James? No guilt, no remorse. I meant no more to her than that. A nuisance. I swore to myself that no matter what she did to me I wouldn’t sign papers to move Nick’s body. And it didn’t seem that Harrison would stand by and let her torture me to death. That was the best I could hope for.