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Teresa hurried down the sloppy dirt road at a frantic pace. She stumbled up the front porch of Yaldabaoth’s house and went inside. The walls didn’t shift and transform. The cave didn’t melt into view.
She didn’t have the zoe. Yaldabaoth must be angry.
A figure emerged from the shadows down a hallway near the closet door.
“Who’s there?” Teresa asked, peering into the darkness.
“It’s me, Doctor Hart,” Louise said.
Teresa took a step toward her and paused. That’s why the cave didn’t appear. Louise was there. Yaldabaoth only came to Teresa. Only she was special enough to talk to him. To touch him.
“What are you doing here?” Teresa asked in a voice riding the edge of a nervous breakdown.
“Oh my—what happened to you? You killed again, didn’t you?”
Teresa took a shuddery breath and let out a soft wail. Tears blurred her vision, and she nodded.
“How many now?” Louise asked.
“F–Five.”
Louise’s eyes widened. “You have been busy.”
“I . . . I killed . . . my husband.” She met Louise’s eyes, shook her head, and looked away. “No. No I didn’t. It was an accident. A car accident. He . . . he swerved off the road and we crashed. I hit my head and passed out.” She looked at Louise. “When I woke up, the car was smoking. It had burned. Derrick—he didn’t make it. He was inside. He burned up.” Tears poured from her eyes now.
Louise came toward her with her arms out.
“There, there.” She pulled Teresa into a hug. “I’m sure it was all an accident like you said.”
“Yes . . . yes, an accident.” Her voice took on a measure more of hysteria. “I would never . . . I would never . . .” She bawled against Louise’s shoulder.
Teresa got herself under control and said, “I need to tell the police. I have to tell them. They’ll find the car, the body.”
You’ll be atoned. They’ll like you again. You’ll be the sad widow.
“Calm down. We need to think rationally here,” Louise said. “We need tea.” She gave one curt nod.
Louise led Teresa out the door and through the woods. The lost souls floated on the cool air, but they didn’t follow Teresa like they usually did.
Louise opened her front door and the two of them went inside. She put the kettle on while Teresa watched from the entry, her entire body trembling.
The room spun. Teresa stumbled toward the kitchen, tripped on a cat, and leaned against a chair before sliding onto it. Her face fell into her hands.
“My mom . . . my husband . . .”
Louise gave her a glass of cold water.
“Let it out, dear. Let it out.”
Teresa looked at the old woman and saw her mother’s smooth, angelic face in place of Louise’s.
She had to tell everything. From the start.
“My dad ruined our lives. My mother’s and mine. He cheated on her. The media got hold of the news. A successful politician caught in the act with a woman not his wife.” Teresa glanced at Louise, whose wrinkled old leather face had returned.
“She was so concerned with image. She couldn’t take the hit to her reputation.” Teresa’s eyes drifted to the far edge of the table and rested there, not really focusing on anything in particular.
“But . . . no . . . That’s not what happened. That’s what everyone assumed happened. They didn’t know. No one knew.”
“No one knew what, dear?” Louise asked. The kettle screamed. Teresa jumped. Louise got up and made tea. When she returned to the table, Teresa met her eyes. Now that she had started, she wanted it all out in the open.
“I killed her.” A sob erupted from Teresa’s throat. “I killed my mom. She’s been dead for decades . . . but . . . I talked to her on the phone this week as if she were still alive.” Renewed tears burst from Teresa’s eyes. All this crying would wreak havoc on her skin and makeup.
Derrick is gone. You have no one to look beautiful for.
“The authorities took me to the hospital. I was only fifteen.” Her voice softened as the snatches of memory drifted through her mind.
White walls, sterile rooms, over-starched sheets and gowns. The memories came to her as hazy reminders of a place she hated. Sessions with therapists, group therapy with people far worse off than her. People who didn’t know who they were or why they were there. People who were delusional or acted like someone different every day.
Back then she knew she wasn’t supposed to be there. She wasn’t crazy like them. She was just depressed. Every day she had to take drugs that kept her in a constant state of muddled happiness. She didn’t remember killing her mom until her therapist hypnotized her, a dangerous technique in therapy, and she spilled the whole thing.
“My mother was having an affair. I couldn’t handle the hypocrisy—she pounded lessons on how to be a good wife into me my entire life, then turned around and cheated on my father.” She had put an entire bottle of crushed lorazepam in her mother’s whiskey.
When they released her she had done enough equivalent studies within the hospital’s walls to graduate high school. Even though college wasn’t part of her mother’s plan, she went anyway, and when she met Derrick, life was back on track. Then Tiffany was born. Then Tiffany died.
To Mountain View. Only this time, she was committed for longer, and the drugs were so much stronger.
“I lost my identity and could never get it back even when the drugs were out of my system. I spent so many years in a fog, going through the motions of life but not feeling. I could only remember what my mother taught me. To keep my husband happy. To look beautiful for him. To do everything in my power to make sure he is taken care of. Meals prepared. Children washed and fed.”
She couldn’t let go, though. She knew they were happy once. Derrick seemed to dread spending time with her despite her upkeep of herself and the house. They weren’t happy. He had moved the baby’s furniture into the basement to store until he could figure out what to do with it.
“I went down there and I arranged it like the nursery. Just like it.” Teresa smiled. “The changing table over there, and the crib—the pink sheets. A rocking chair.” She looked at Louise, who had her chin resting on the backs of her clasped hands. “It was beautiful. But . . .” Teresa slumped back in the rigid kitchen chair. “He took it all away.” She twisted her cup on the Formica table but didn’t drink from it.
Louise cleared her throat. “Lovely story,” she said. “Where is the fifth zoe? Did you give it to Yaldabaoth?”
Teresa looked up at her. “Lovely? The zoe? I’m telling you all this personal history about myself and you’re concerned with where the zoe is?”
“Trying to keep you on track, dear,” Louise said.
“Well, there is no zoe. Derrick lost control of the car . . .”
“Because you took his zoe.”
“I would never!” She sat up straight again.
“You know what you did,” Louise said. “You know you took his zoe and that’s what caused the accident.”
Teresa crossed her arms and scowled. “Everything else I told you is true.” She pushed the cup away. Tea sloshed onto the table.
Louise didn’t say a word. She slurped from her cup.
Teresa sighed and leaned forward. She put her face in her hands. “It’s at the crash site.”
“You must retrieve it. You need to complete your duty to our cause.”
Teresa lifted her gaze. “Fine. I’ll give it to Yaldabaoth, but then I’m going to the police to report the crash. Otherwise people will wonder what happened to him.”
“That’s a girl. Now we’re thinking rationally.”
She would be the sad widow.
The town will love you again.