| |
Teresa dropped her cross and pressed her hand against her throat, as if touching it would help her swallow what felt like a sand-covered cotton ball that had lodged there.
“What is he doing down here?”
“He’s paying for his sins,” Louise said. She took Teresa’s elbow and guided her to the stairs.
Teresa ascended on numb legs. She should tell someone about this. Ann deserved to know her father was here.
Or did she?
Teresa stepped through the warmth of Louise’s hallway and to the front door.
“Wait.” Louise turned the music back on, closed the door, and bolted it shut. “Where does this leave us, Doctor?”
Teresa didn’t understand what Louise meant. Her eyebrows furrowed.
“You have secrets, I have secrets.” Louise held up her hands and shifted them up and down like the scales of Lady Justice.
Teresa sucked in a gasp. “Are you suggesting blackmail?”
Louise smiled with half of her mouth. “Not blackmail, per se. We have dirt on each other. You tell anyone what I have in my basement, the entire town will learn all your secrets, and I don’t just mean your part in the disappearance of Ruthie Gill.” Louise smiled and moved toward the door. “I know about your sordid past, Doctor Hart, and I’m not talking about your dead child this time.”
“What do you mean, my past?”
Louise only gave her a smug, close-lipped smile and shrugged. She ushered Teresa out the door and onto the porch.
“You spill my secrets, I spill yours.” Louise closed the door.
Teresa tugged her coat tighter. She stepped down the porch stairs and glanced over her shoulder at Louise’s old house, at the crumbly stone foundation. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what information, what secrets, what rumors Louise had on her.
Teresa wandered toward town. What if Louise knew nothing? What if she knew everything? The whole town would learn . . . something. Rumors ruined her family, her mother’s and her father’s lives. Her life.
When Teresa reached the town square, she walked directly to the sheriff’s department and paused outside the door. She considered going in, but passed on by, head down, eyes on the sidewalk. At the end of the block, she looked up.
Across the street Tiffany hopped from side to side. Teresa hurried toward her. What if someone saw her?
A milky-red, pulsing cluster of zoe strands shifted on the sidewalk. Teresa stopped and raised a hand to her mouth. Tiffany jumped over them. Back and forth, back and forth, giggling as if it were an extra fun game. The strands shifted again, and Tiffany squealed and hopped out of their reach. Teresa gagged, composed herself, and finished her trek across the road.
“What are you doing here? Someone will see you!” Teresa threw glances all around. What would people think, Teresa running through town with a little girl who obviously wasn’t Maggie? Word would get to Derrick. “And what are those doing here?”
Tiffany motioned for Teresa to follow her and ducked down the alley between the pawn shop and a real estate office.
“First of all, Mommy”—Tiffany held up a finger—“no one can see me but you, because you love me so much.” She grinned.
Teresa crouched down and pulled her daughter into a hug. “Thank goodness.”
“Second of all, those are here because it’s time.”
“Time?” Teresa pulled back and peered up at the overcast sky. “In the daylight?”
Tiffany pressed her hands against Teresa’s cheeks.
“Isn’t this exciting?”
Teresa didn’t think it was exciting at all. Without the cover of night, it seemed dangerous. She wondered if Tiffany would come again later that night to take another. The thought of taking two lives in less than twelve hours sent chills through her body. Chills both sickening and pleasurable. They frightened her.
The zoe lines had followed them into the alley, writhing and slapping like fat sausages on pavement.
“Pick one,” Tiffany said.
Teresa scowled at the mess of coiled ropes. They inched closer to her, and her stomach lurched. She’d never seen them move like that before. She touched one with her toe, and the rest slithered away as if they’d been burned. She didn’t like this. It didn’t seem right.
“Where’s Ruthie?”
“She doesn’t come out during the day.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Teresa asked.
Tiffany nodded. “She scares me.” Her daughter hugged her around the waist and buried her beautiful face into Teresa’s hip.
“I thought Yaldabaoth rested during the day.”
“He does. But you woke him, so he thought he’d put you to work since you seemed so eager to be with me.”
Teresa looked down at Tiffany. She would do this. She had to.
She followed the zoe down Forest Parkway toward the square. The line veered again into the residential district. She strolled with her hands in her pockets. Tiffany held her arm and followed. The zoe line veered again, and they followed it to a ranch-style house at the end of Evergreen Avenue. No cars were in the driveway. Teresa swallowed hard. She didn’t think the zoe would lead her to an empty house.
The front door was locked. Ruthie missing would definitely be enough in a small town like this to cause alarm. Teresa scanned the neighborhood. It was quiet. Not a soul stirred. Except the zoe line leading into the house. It twitched, like a hose when the water is first turned on.
She crept around to a side window and peered in. A living room. No people. Next window. No one in the exercise room. A fence blocked her from entering the back yard. She went around to the other side where a string ran down through an eye-screw in the wood. She tugged the string, and a gate opened.
Teresa slipped through and closed it behind her. She stood, silent and still, and listened. There had been no Beware of Dog signs, so she hoped there were no dogs.
A window toward the end of the house was cracked open. Skunky smoke, the same scent from the kids at the cemetery, wafted out.
She crept to the window and peered inside. A young man sat in a recliner. The zoe line disappeared into his chest. He wore a headset and had a video game controller in his hands. He took a drag off a joint and held the smoke. On the exhale, he emitted a series of shallow coughs before setting the joint in an ashtray.
Teresa ducked when he leaned over to grab a bottle off the same table. Beer. This kid, who couldn’t be a day over nineteen, was home alone drinking beer and smoking pot.
“My parents moved to fucking Florida and left me here,” he said into the headset, as if responding to Teresa’s thought. Perhaps he was older than nineteen then. “Living in their house rent free, bitches.” He pushed buttons on his controller.
Teresa went around to the back and tried the sliding glass door. It opened smooth and quiet. The screen, however, rattled and screeched along the track.
A big dog’s booming bark came from somewhere inside.