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Beth remained seated with her panties and jeans binding her ankles. She mentally calculated, remembered them making love on at least three occasions during their getaway in Gîte Saint-Roch, the last one being their final night, just before they’d got into the car and she’d driven them to the restaurant.
The stresses of the mugging and the move had meant it had been more or less off the cards for a good few months leading up to that. She’d instigated it each time, tried to get Luc to let go of what had been preoccupying him. He thought she was still taking the pill. Beth hadn’t been since the previous July. She’d prepared a part of herself, girded it to have the confrontation with him should it ever lead where she wanted. But months had passed and she’d begun to believe it never would.
It looked as if the life inside her had been conceived in their most significant place. But the notion of Luc’s ending in the crash there and the beginnings of someone else leaving with her was too poignant to contemplate.
How would she have felt about this news if Luc were still alive? She imagined his reaction. When he was confronted with the reality of what they’d created, would he really have been as unyielding as he’d been in the past? She imagined the embrace they would have shared. It was something they would have faced together. Now she had to alone.
She knew Jody would be supportive. He seemed to be making it his mission to look after her following the years they’d spent out of each other’s company. But nobody could make the decision for her. If she had the baby, could she really live with the heartbreak of seeing Luc’s likeness? Was that meant to be her recompense? Beth still hadn’t begun to deal with the trauma of his death. How could she possibly be expected to face such another intensely emotional ordeal so quickly afterwards?
Perhaps it would be her redemption, but she wouldn’t be respecting Luc’s wishes. But if he’d known what lay ahead for him, would he have thought differently about bringing a part of himself into the world?
It was a hard truth, but what Luc wanted was no longer relevant. This was what she hadn’t expected to be in possession of. She thought about all his old clothes and his digital legacy and realised it was inconsequential. A new life seemed like something she’d been gifted, however, but she still couldn’t summon any emotion above her own flat assessment of the situation.
She had to be pragmatic, though. How could she possibly bring up a child if she didn’t have a roof over her head? She’d already had an awkward conversation with her employer. They’d had to fill her position while she’d been out of commission. There was no guarantee the house would be sold anytime soon, and even before she could think about that, there was the long process of probate to endure. She’d barely considered how Luc’s stake in his company would be disbursed. He’d invested everything in it and his wealth was tied up in its fluctuating performance. Nothing would be straightforward.
She looked down at the dirty carpet of Jody’s bathroom. Again, she thought of herself lying in a coma in her hospital bed while they cremated Luc – both of them unaware of the new life that had started in their absence.
*
Mimic touched the boy’s face and then smelt the adolescent sweat on the tips of the blue surgical gloves he’d snapped on in the garden. Fifteen year-old Kevin slept obliviously to his presence, breath hissing from his body. The room’s smell was comforting, cookies and Vaseline. It reminded Mimic of sleeping in the top bunk when he was a kid, older brother below and both sneakily watching the creature feature with the sound turned low while Mom and Dad were in bed.
The boy’s eyes darted under their lids and Mimic wondered what innocent dream he was enjoying. Then his breath snagged in his throat and his head shook once, quickly. Mimic gripped the ketchup bottle tighter and waited. The boy’s dried lips parted, air found exit and his frown vanished.
Mimic knew it was the sort of sleep that would make it easy to lift the boy from the bed, arm under the neck and the other behind the knees. He could be carried out to his waiting car and still not wake. No swab of ether necessary. It was something he’d done effortlessly in the past but he couldn’t now, not with all his extra pounds.
Mimic turned from the boy and grimaced at the plastic-framed mirror on the drawers. The deposits at the corners of his mouth looked vivid yellow in the night light. There was no halting the incursion of age. That was something that didn’t sit well. It brought Mimic back into the domain of ordinary people.
He left Kevin’s room and cocked an ear to the mother’s. Even under the chatter from the TV, he could hear her breathing escaping her like a hog. Mimic cracked the door with one rubber finger.
Padding to the end of the bed there was a distinct difference in aroma compared to the kid’s room – perfume, body cream and halitosis. There was a spilt bowl of tortilla chips on the floor beside her Kindle. One blow to the centre of her forehead with the bottle would ensure she wouldn’t even open her eyes. Mimic watched her sleeping on her back for a while, willing her to wake. Marcia didn’t, not even when he rolled her onto her side to stifle the noise grazing the backs of her nostrils.
After he’d stunned and strangled them, he’d have to smash the ketchup bottle if the blows didn’t break it. The Bigfork crime necessitated him defacing the bodies with the jagged glass. What a sick fuck. And he was still evading the police as well. Probably sitting at home right now, not realising the precedent he’d set.
There were plenty of crimes he could have chosen, but the perp had attempted to burn down Virginia Greenspan’s apartment, and that was ideal for Mimic’s needs; the less of a multiple murder scene remained, the better.
Mimic closed the door quietly and moved to the eldest child’s room. Wearing only shorts, his tanned body was tangled up in the duvet. The masculine scents here were significantly more mature than Kevin’s – sour sweat and cheap deodorant.
Mimic seated himself gently on the mattress next to Tyler and watched the Windows logo of the screensaver bouncing on the flat-screen monitor. He was just reaching over to cover his mouth when Mimic’s lower teeth tightened against his top ones.
His rubber palm hovered where it was. The sensation intensified. He’d never experienced anything like this. Wasn’t lockjaw something to do with tetanus? It got tighter, as if screws were being firmly turned. He couldn’t open his mouth. Mimic realised he was forgetting to breathe and hissed air in through his nose. He looked at the kid to check it hadn’t stirred him.
Now he felt uncomfortable about his waist and stood, shifting his paunch so it was hanging over his leather belt. Jesus, his forehead and the nape of his neck were burning cold. He needed to get some air. He lurched towards the door and tried not to stumble into the exercise bike on the way out.
This wasn’t his ulcer. He was having a fucking heart attack. Of all the times to happen; he fumbled his cell out of his pocket and dialled 911.
“What is your emergency?” the female operator wearily asked.
He was standing on the landing. Didn’t want to wake Mom and the kids up. Couldn’t speak too loudly. Couldn’t speak at all. He grunted instead.
“Sir? Are you hurt?”
Mimic managed to activate the muscles in his jaw and opened his teeth half an inch. But the action seemed to displace the pain to his stomach and his legs didn’t want to be in the same neighbourhood. They started trembling at the knees and felt like they were about to give. He rigidly put one in front of the other until he reached the top of the stairs.
“Sir? You have to speak to me.”
Mimic headed down the stairs, and it suddenly seemed as if moving his body was like trying to operate a faulty pedal boat. The bottom step didn’t seem to get any closer. He jammed the phone closer to his ear as he tried to speak to the operator. He had to strip his gloves off, get out of the house and back to the car.
“Sir?” She hung up.
