Janeal sat in the blue Kia behind a tree at the end of the lane, where she could see the cabin’s driveway. She was surprised when Robert climbed into his truck and pulled out within an hour of her arrival. A part of her had wondered if Robert would leave Katie at all, even for Sanso.
But he was gone now, and provided that Katie died before he returned, Robert would be safe.
He might be going into town for food. Janeal followed him to the highway, and when he turned south and passed Taos’s major shopping areas, she decided to hope that he’d be gone awhile. Katie would know.
Janeal drove back to the cabin and parked on an adjacent street to make the car less noticeable if Robert returned. It was time to sort out the lies from the truth, retrieve her mother’s ring, and ensure that Robert would not be present in this cabin when Sanso arrived tomorrow night.
Then Janeal could get on with her life.
She walked in without knocking and followed a narrow entry hall into a long living room area. Floor-to-ceiling picture windows lined the wall that overlooked the sloping hillside.
Katie sat on the sofa, her back to Janeal.
“I was hoping you would come,” Katie said.
Not the conversation starter Janeal had anticipated. She rounded the sofa and took a seat on the other side of the coffee table, her back to the window.
“Do you want to start or shall I?” Katie asked. A beam of light from the afternoon sun cut right across her face. She stared through it without squinting. Her eyes looked bloodshot and her nose was red; otherwise, Katie was eerily composed.
“I don’t know what Robert has told you,” Janeal started.
“I didn’t realize you two knew each other, Janice.”
Janeal could not be sure, but she believed there was something close to sarcasm in Katie’s tone, only less biting. “From a long time ago.”
Katie nodded. “We go way back too. You still sound a bit hoarse. Feeling okay?”
Janeal shifted in her chair. “As well as can be expected. Things haven’t been good for sleeping lately.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry about what happened at the house last night.” Janeal thought she didn’t sound sorry at all. She cleared her throat.
“Do you know who broke in?”
“Almost as well as he knew you,” Katie said. She rose and went to the tall window and rested her hand on the pane.
Janeal wiped her hands on her pant legs. There was no point in pretending anymore.
“How about we start telling each other the truth, Janeal?”
Janeal stared at this reflection of herself, this reflection with flesh on, wondering if she should be frightened. She was talking to herself in a way she was sure few people had ever experienced.
Not even hallucinating people.
“How long did it take you to find out?” Janeal asked.
“Robert told me. But I knew something was off the moment you walked into Lucille’s office. Most of what’s happened has become clear to me in the last few hours, including why Salazar Sanso would show up there on the same day you did, trying to kill me.”
Janeal was unprepared for Katie’s awareness, and she took too long to formulate an answer.
“We are the same person, and you would like to see me dead.” She turned her head toward Janeal. “Isn’t that right?”
“No! No! I don’t know what you mean. When I found out you were alive— Katie, I had to come back. I had to see you. I am so sorry that I failed you that night. If there was anything I could have done differently . . .”
“Let’s not do this dance. We can’t explain what happened, but we can try to sort out what it all means.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“You understand me.”
“Prove it. Prove that you’re who you say you are.”
“Katie told you she knew you took the money.”
“You’re Katie. You’d know that.”
“I’m you, Janeal. I know where you found it.”
Janeal blanched.
“You found it in the medicine cabinet. After you looked for it in Dad’s room—in the safe, the light fixture, the floorboards.”
“I might have told someone about that.”
“No, you didn’t. Did you also tell them you took the bowie knife, the wedding ring, the stones, the seeds—”
“Stop!” Janeal took a long, slow breath. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to tell me about your life since the fire.” She leaned back and put her feet on the coffee table as if Janeal had already agreed to launch into an entertaining story. “I want to hear about everything that’s happened to you since that night. Every relationship you’ve had. Every choice you’ve made. Every moment you’ve ever felt happy. Or sad.”
Janeal might have imagined it, but she believed the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees. She felt sick—not with the sickness of a pending migraine but with a sinking realization: whatever she had envisioned about the direction this conversation would take, she had failed to anticipate what it might be to duel with someone of an equal mind.
Of the same mind.
She needed time to gain control over what was happening. Janeal stood to go.
“Sit down,” Katie said. “Robert doesn’t know about what you did yet, how you betrayed him and Katie all for a little drug money that you most certainly never returned—”
“You don’t know what I—”
“I do know!” Katie shouted. “So if you don’t want me to expose you to a man who will have your hide faster than he ever had any criminal’s, sit down and start talking.”
Janeal lowered herself back onto the cushion. She considered killing Katie now, here, with her own hands and quick thinking. She hated this woman in front of her, hated with an energy not even Milan or Sanso had tapped within her.
Janeal started talking, if only to give her time to sort this out. Katie closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the cushion. Janeal repeated the story she had told Robert, then told about going to New York, enrolling in school, working as a pastry chef, dating various men, and eventually entering a long-term relationship with Milan. As she spoke about working her way up the corporate ladder at All Angles, Janeal was surprised to find the truth-telling a comfort, a catharsis. As if she was talking with an old friend.
A true friend. How easy it became, almost without her realizing what words spilled out of her mouth, to talk about the abuse. She confessed to her own use of Milan to achieve her ends.
Even more surprising to Janeal was the heartache she felt in telling these stories. It had been a long time since she considered the pain and solitude she’d felt through each step of her journey. It was something she consciously buried.
At the very least, this conversation was better than any therapy session she’d invested in.
For an hour Katie listened without interrupting, and Janeal wondered if she’d fallen asleep. But when Janeal reached the night of Milan’s final beating, Katie raised her head and opened her eyes.
“I don’t envy you a single minute of your life,” Katie said.
The condescension of that remark, the smug superiority of Katie’s tone, shut off Janeal’s storytelling tap. She stood and looked down on Katie.
“Of course you don’t. You couldn’t wish up a life for yourself as successful as mine. I’ve seen and done things you could only dream of, Katie Morgon.”
“What I meant was, you don’t sound happy. Successful, but never happy.”
“Success is happiness.”
“Not always.”
“What would you know about it? Look at you. You hide here in the mountains acting like your suffering has made you noble and good, when in reality you’re a cop-out.”
“I pity you, Janeal.”
That four-letter word pity stirred Janeal’s anger with such vigor that she couldn’t contain it anymore.
“You disgust me. Is that what you wanted out of this story, Katie? To make yourself feel better about your own small life?”
“If that’s what I wanted, I would have arranged a public venue for this event.”
“You’re sick.”
“No, you’re the sick one.”
Janeal fumed over the sugary-sweet, calm voice Katie used.
“And you’ve been sick ever since the day you made your decision that a few bucks is more valuable than a human life. The reason I wanted you to tell your story was because I wanted you to hear it for yourself. I wanted you to think through this way of life that you seem to think is so valuable.”
“You have no right!” Janeal shouted. “I’m not one of your addicted residents.”
“No, you’re me. Which gives me every right. You’ve turned your back on the truth and your life is miserable because of it. Face it, Janeal. Face what you’ve done and what you’ve become.”
“Why? So I can be like you? I don’t want what you have! There is nothing about you that I would ever envy! I hate you!”
“You hate yourself.”
Janeal yelled a note of frustration. She didn’t have to listen to this. This was not why she had come here. She could walk away. Should walk away.
Her feet wouldn’t move.
Katie stood and leveled her blank eyes at Janeal. Janeal turned and Katie followed her. “You’re addicted to a far more powerful drug than anything any of our residents have ever used.”
“And what is that?”
“Yourself. You live for yourself and no one else, and you don’t recognize how it’s reduced you to a shell of the person you were.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I care about you.”
“You can’t. You want me to be like you.”
“I do. Janeal, I want you to know the peace I’ve known.”
Janeal put her hands at the sides of her head. “Stop it! I wish you’d died in that fire! Both of you!”
“Listen to me, Janeal. Don’t hate me. I am you, and I am the better version of you. I am the person you wish you had become. I’m the person you can become.”
The claim cut Janeal to the core. “How dare you? How dare you?”
Janeal’s back hit a wall and Katie reached out to her. She placed her hand in the center of Janeal’s chest, right over her heart. Janeal shrank down into a squatting position and Katie matched her movements.
“You don’t have to stay on the path you chose that night. You could pick a different course.”
“Why should I? I’m happy. I’ve made my own life!” Janeal threw up her hands to knock Katie’s palm off her chest, to break this connection that was killing Janeal’s very soul.
Was that what Katie wanted? To kill Janeal? Fear flared in Janeal’s chest. Why had it not occurred to her that she had endangered her very life by coming here, that her alter ego had as strong a desire for Janeal to die? She had been a fool. A stupid, stupid fool.
“Get away from me,” Janeal spat. “Get away.”