She began to tremble and couldn’t speak, realizing he had a black gun pointed at her.
“I’ll say the dog attacked me,” he said, still with that calm voice, the voice she used to take so much comfort in as she sat in his office, telling him all her hopes for her future. “I’m a great shot. If you let it off the leash, it’s dead.”
Mack stretched the leash to its full length and began a low, steady growl. It was a growl she’d never heard from him before, a growl that clearly indicated he was prepared to tear out Avery’s throat. If she let Mack off the leash and he got shot, which she had little doubt he would, that would doom her as well. No, she couldn’t let Mack die. She’d gotten him into this mess.
“I can’t control him with a gun in my face!” she managed to splutter, her voice quaking so much that she was ashamed.
“Into the house, then put him in a room, or he’s got a bullet in his dumb head,” Avery said.
She pulled the leash and pressed on the door handle but her hand was violently shaking, her mind tumbling this way and that. She clung to the idea of Patrick. Hadn’t he said he would come over? Or had he said he might come over? Her insides were quivering so badly she thought she might lose control of her bladder.
“Mack! Come!” she snapped, her voice with more authority. He stopped straining at the leash and she somehow got the door open.
Avery followed her inside, the gun still gripped tight in his hand. She had never seen any guns except a few antique rifles her grandmother kept in a cupboard in the basement. Is there any way she could get to them? Would they even work?
“Put him in a room and close the door,” Avery said. “I’m not going to hurt you, Romy. I only want to talk.”
“With a gun?” In her mind, the question had been a forceful holler but it came out as nothing more than a puny-sounding whimper.
She pushed Mack into the spare bedroom and shut the door. He began furiously barking. Maybe one of the neighbors would hear him but it seemed impossible, given how far away they were and that she’d made sure to close all the windows.
Avery waved the gun, indicating she should return to the living room. How was it in the movies people could do karate chops and disarm villains? She could barely hear what he was saying, the rush of cold fear was thrumming loud in her ears.
“I just want to talk to you,” he said. “I saw you give the finger to the camera. I saw your car leave this morning and come back in the late afternoon. Did you go see Alicia?”
“So the camera is working.”
“For me, yes. For you, no. I put you on a different channel and ran the same tape.”
“Okay, she told me about Katya,” Romy said, her voice still tremulous. “I have no idea why she’s coming around. And I don’t care. I just want to go home. What you two do is your business.”
Humiliatingly, she sounded on the verge of tears. Where was her strength? There is no strength with a gun on you.
“But that can’t happen. I think you know why.”
“I don’t fucking know why!”
Hearing her voice rise, Mack’s barks exploded to a furious crescendo. Then he quieted and she heard a deep, intermittent thumping on the door. She realized with awe that he was throwing his body against the door.
“Let’s go on the porch,” she said, calmly as she could manage. “Mack is going to hurt himself. I don’t know what this is all about. I don’t give a shit if you have a girlfriend!”
He shook his head, looking amused. Now she absorbed his cat burglar attire—all black. Black long-sleeved shirt, black hoodie, black pants. No wonder he’d been able to emerge from the dark with no warning. And she knew that he’d disabled the Volvo.
On the side table, her gaze rested on the knife she’d been clutching only minutes earlier and she considered trying to grab it. But the thought swiftly fled into the realm of impossible. She’d never be able to grab a knife, rush forward, and stab him faster than he’d be able to pull a trigger.
“Alright then, let’s go,” he said. “Watch your moves.”
As she walked onto the porch, she had the ludicrous impulse to offer him a drink. Maybe she could talk him down, get on his good side. He couldn’t possibly have known she’d cracked into Misty’s old email account. Why was he here? What did he want?
On the dark porch, she flipped on the light. She couldn’t see anything outside and knew the porch door was locked. Was there any way she could make a run for it? Could she get the damn door unlocked before a bullet drilled into her back?
Could she get across the long yard and down into the woods? She could run, and run fast. And she knew the woods; he didn’t know them. She could easily get in those trees and hide.
But then he’d shoot Mack. She couldn’t have that.
“I don’t understand what you want, Mr. Sands,” she said, deliberately saying his name the way she used to say it in hopes of jarring him back to a time when Romy was a child, no threat to him.
“Sit,” he said, indicating a chair with his gun hand.
The last thing she wanted to do was sit but she had no choice and shakily lowered into the chair.
“For years, Romy, I’ve kept my eye on you, wondering what your game was. Were you a child frightened into silence? If so, what would happen when you grew up?”
She said nothing but began to get the queasy, dizzying feeling he’d lost his mind. If so, that meant there would be no reasoning with him, no talking her way out of this situation.
“I—I don’t understand.”
“No, I’m the one who doesn’t understand. Did you truly… did you really forget, Romy? Just completely forget? I’ve read about things like that but didn’t think they were real.”
She sat with her mouth hanging open, her fear intensifying as his words grew more baffling. “I—I don’t know,” was all she could stammer.
“In case you hadn’t forgotten, I was as nice as nice could be to you. Helped you get into college. Helped you fill out all those damn forms for a loan. Helped you secure the scholarship. Gave you a glowing recommendation, beyond what you deserved, if I’m honest. You’re not the talent I was telling everyone.”
Easy to say with a gun on me, shithead, streaked through her mind.
“But I felt you’d somehow forgotten… blocked it out. The first day back at school, I was scared. I was prepared to tell you that you were imagining things, prepared to deny, deny, deny. After all, you were a troubled kid. Your parents had abandoned you…”
Again, she fought off the desire to talk back to him.
“But when I saw you again, I saw no evidence, no trace of it in your face, in your eyes. Heard nothing of it in your voice. Quite fascinating. Then years went by with no indication that you remembered. I started to let go. Truly, I did. You live your life, and I live mine.”
“Yes,” she nodded. She’d say whatever it took to keep him from killing her. “Yes, exactly. No hard feelings.”
His eyes darkened and she had the sickening feeling that she’d said the wrong thing.
“What do you mean no hard feelings?”
Her head shook, at a loss. “I don’t know. I—Mr. Sands, you’re scaring the shit out of me and I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“Misty!” It came out a hiss.
Oh God. He knew that she knew about their affair. How, how? Had he somehow planted spyware on her laptop?
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“Not that long. Twelve years. Every day hell for me, if you want to know the truth.”
She remained silent.
“You know a man in his thirties, with a wife and two kids, a teacher of all things, isn’t supposed to fall in love with a sixteen-year-old. But I did. Then what? I’m a monster. A predator. They’d put me in the news. I’d never work in education again, and that’s the only thing I’m qualified to do. I would have treated her a hell of a lot better than any boys her age would have treated her but I’m the monster. What’s a pimply-faced, binge-drinking asshole going to do with a girl like Misty? Give her bad sex and toss her aside, that’s what. I would have treated her like a queen her entire life. But I’m the predator. I’m the monster.”
Sounded like you were going to keep her knocked up in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska, is what Romy wanted to say but didn’t dare. Whatever Avery had felt for Misty wasn’t love. More like an obsession with a beautiful but inanimate object—a master painting or classical figurine. If he’d loved her, he would have let her grow up before doing what he did.
“So, we came up with a plan. Had to. No choice.”
Mack was quiet. She hoped he hadn’t rammed himself against the door so much that he’d passed out.
“I understand,” she said. “It’s unfair.”
He squinted suspiciously at her. “Don’t think you’ll fool me by pretending you get it. Because you don’t. Now you show up in town with that loser who was the last one to be with my Misty. The last one to kiss her, caress her, see her face. You show up here and want to play happy family in front of me?”
“No.” She put her palms up in a calming gesture. “That’s not what we were doing. We left because of the virus, that’s it.”
“I don’t know, Romy,” he smiled, eerily. “I think you came here to torture me. Rub my nose in it. Misty gone. Our baby gone. All because of you.”
Her heart lurched into her throat, beating erratically. She couldn’t speak. How did he—
“I don’t know if you don’t remember or if you’re only pretending not to remember. That’s the thing. I don’t know.” He raised the gun, pointing it right at her face. “What kind of game are you playing with me?” he shouted.
As he raised the gun, it all flooded back. The gun right in her face, pressed up against her mouth so she could swear she tasted metal.