“She hurt, you know. We all hurt. But she really was dying on the inside. She kept at me. Telling me what needed to happen. There is only one way out of the dollhouse.” I look at Thomas. “We’d been there for so long,” I say softly. “The other girls, they passed through. But Vero and me, did you think your mother would, could, ever let us go?”
Thomas doesn’t say a word.
The wind is blowing. Or maybe it’s Vero’s breath, whispering across my cheek. She’s here. I know she is. Because Vero got it only half right. She died; but she still didn’t escape the dollhouse.
“I weaned myself off the drugs. I hoarded the stash. Then, after a particularly bad night . . . Vero took it. I watched her walk over to my mattress, dig into the box spring. I watched her take it all out. I watched her shoot it all up.
“Protest. Intervene. Take it away. Throw it out. So many things I could’ve done. But I didn’t. ‘Vero wants to fly.’ And so I watched her take flight.”
“None of the girls had OD’d before,” Thomas says softly. “Mother didn’t know what to do. She sent me in to check Vero again and again. I remember you sitting curled up in the corner. You’d been crying.”
Young Thomas, the mop-haired boy, bending over Vero’s body, checking her pulse. Young Thomas glancing over at me. Our eyes meeting. And for just one moment, I’m sure he knows what I did. But he never says a word.
He leaves the room. When he returns, a decision has clearly been made. He positions her body carefully on the old blue rug. He rolls it up, slowly, even gently. I have to look away because it hurts too much to stare.
“I’ll take her out later,” he tells me. “After dark. Will you be okay until then?”
I don’t speak, only nod. When I glance up, he’s staring right at me. He knows what I did, I think again. The question is, does he know what I’ll do next?
I wait most of the afternoon. Maybe something will change. Thomas will return early. Madame Sade will demand to see Vero’s body. There are only two other girls in the house; they are both eighteen, older than Vero and me. Maybe they will want to visit. But nothing happens.
All day long, the house is quiet. Just the sound of the rain against the glass.
November, the saddest month of the year.
When the sky starts to darken, I finally move off the floor. I unroll Vero’s body, not as slow, not as gentle. My heart is beating too fast. Her limbs flop and my limbs shake. I don’t think either of us can take it. Finally I have her out of the rug, onto the bed. Swapping out our clothes, pulling up the bedcovers.
Putting Vero to sleep in my bed. And placing myself inside death’s shroud.
It smells of her. Of vanilla lotion and almond soap. Of the smile she used to flash before the days grew too short and the nights too long. Of the stories she used to tell, when she still hoped to see her mother again.
I’d hated her. But then I’d loved her. She became the only family I ever had. The younger sister who was prettier and wiser and funnier, but I forgave her everything because she loved me more than I deserved and we both knew it.
I wonder if she’s already escaped. Up to some bright light in the sky. Or maybe back into her mother’s loving arms.
Then I cry, but I keep it silent because that’s how you learn to cry in a dollhouse; without ever making a sound.
Eventually, footsteps down the hall. The door opening. A long pause.
Thomas, I remember now. Returning to fetch the corpse, to do his mother’s bidding.
I feel myself tense. Force myself to relax. I can’t be afraid, I remind myself. I am already dead.
The sound of footsteps slowly approaching. I can hear his breathing as he leans down.
Don’t unwrap. Don’t check. And if he does?
I think of the way his eyes met mine just hours before. I think of the way I’ve seen him stare at this house. And I’m not frightened anymore.
As Thomas lifts me up into his arms. As Thomas carries me out of the room, down the stairs, into the hall.
“Wait!” Madame Sade’s imperious voice.
“What, Mother?”
“Surely she’s not still dressed. Clothes are not cheap, you know. Isn’t that a sock I see?”
“You don’t need these clothes.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Set her down. Losing a girl is bad enough. We might as well keep the clothes.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m not setting her down. I’m not stripping off some dead girl’s clothes. You told me to take care of her. That’s what I’m doing. Now, get out of my way or you can dig the grave yourself.”
A long pause. I try not to breathe, not to hear the thunder of my own heart. Because I can feel the tremors in Thomas’s arms. I understand what this conversation is costing him. What it might yet cost me.
Then . . .
Thomas advances forward. Out the front door, down the steps, into the rain, though I don’t feel it right away. I am protected by the rug, lost in a dark world of muffled sound.
He walks forever. At least it feels that way. Wet leaves, tree limbs, smack against my foot, and I realize he has carried me into the woods. Of course, where else to dig the grave?
It comes to me slowly, and with growing horror. If he’s carrying me with both arms, then by definition, he can’t be carrying a shovel. Meaning he’s already been out in the woods. He’s already dug the trench.
Now he’ll drop me straight into it. No more time for me to prepare. No more somedays, maybes, eventually. This is it.
Sure enough.
He stops. His breathing hard and heavy. Then.
I fall down. Down, down, down, into the deep, dark earth.
Do I scream? I can’t scream. I’m already dead, I’m already dead, I’m already dead.
But I am screaming. Deep inside my mind, I’m screaming Vero, Vero, Vero. I’m so sorry, Vero.
The first heavy thump of wet earth. Followed by another, then another.
I close my eyes, even though I can’t see. I fist my hands, even though I can’t move. I am dead, I am dead, I am dead. I am Vero, tucked in the back of the closet, willing myself not be afraid of the dark.
Shovelful after shovelful of earth.
How long does it take to bury a body? I don’t know. I’m too lost in the blackness of my mind. Vero. Vero. Vero.
But the sound stops. The weight of earth settles, remains the same.
Then . . .
I panic. I can’t take it one second more. I wiggle and twist and thrash to and fro. And I scream. Out loud. Full throttle. Long and frantic and high-pitched and wailing.
I was dead, but now I am alive. And my lungs are bursting, crying out frantically for air.
Suddenly, the night sky is above me. I don’t know how I’ve done it, but I’m free. I can feel the rain on my cheeks. I can taste the mud on my lips. I open my mouth and inhale greedily.
Just in time to hear the gasp. As Thomas stumbles back, his hands still clutching the edge of the death-shroud rug.
“You!” he exclaims. “Oh my God! You. I knew it!”
Thomas does not run away.
Instead, he listens to my story. Then he threads his fingers into my own.
And he says, “This is what we’re going to do next.”
* * *
“OUCH . . . YIKES, DAMMIT! IS this road over yet?”
Wyatt’s SUV hit another rut; Tessa’s body bounced up, her head banging off the window.
“I don’t think this is a road,” he said. “More like a washed-out drive.”
“Which clearly hasn’t been used in years.”
“Not true. Look at that.” They jounced by another low-hanging tree, its limbs screeching across the vehicle’s roof overhead. “Freshly broken branch.”
“Nicky and Thomas?”
> “That would be my first guess.”
“Wyatt, there’s no way another car followed them all the way out here without them noticing. The road is too deserted, this driveway too difficult to find.”
“The second vehicle would have to be right on their tail,” Wyatt agreed.
“In which case, they’d know they had company.”
“Third partner in crime?” Wyatt asked.
Tessa shrugged. “Gotta be someone who already knew how to find this place.”
“So either a third partner in crime, or a less welcoming blast from the past.” He glanced over at her as the vehicle hit another massive rut. “Which’ll make this very interesting, very fast.”
Chapter 40
YOU SAVED ME.” I stare at my husband, the memory so real, so vibrantly alive, I feel as if I should be able to reach out and touch it.
“Did you just hear something?” he asks me sharply. Thomas turns, the beam of his flashlight bouncing along the ruins, but I can’t focus.
I’m breathing hard. My whole body is trembling, which I don’t understand. I’m safe. I’m out of the grave. Thomas pulled me out. Thomas saved me.
Twenty-two years ago, we found each other in the dark.
So why is my heart already constricting painfully in my chest?
“You told me to stay in the woods,” I murmur now. I’m talking to air. Thomas has left me, walking closer to the jumble of granite blocks. He still holds the shovel. Why did he bring a shovel? “You told me to stay out of sight. And that’s what I did.”
It comes to me. Slowly. Like a whisper. The wind against my cheek.
“Smoke.” I turn toward my husband. “There’s smoke in the air.”
The smell of smoke. The heat of fire.
Screams in the air.
Smoke.
I reach out my hand, but once again my husband isn’t there to take it. He stands too far away, the flashlight trembling in his grip.
“When I returned to the house, my mom was waiting for me in the foyer,” he says. His voice sounds funny. Strained. “She started with her usual snapping demands. Don’t track in mud. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Is the body taken care of? Well, is it?
“And . . . I saw her. I finally saw her. She wasn’t my mother. She wasn’t even a person. She was a monster. Like something out of an old horror movie. She would devour all of us. And it would mean nothing to her in the end.
“I told her I was done. I told her I was leaving, taking the car. That was it.
“She laughed at me. Where would I go? What would I do? I was just a kid. I knew nothing of the real world. Now, upstairs.
“But I didn’t. I stood there. I didn’t move a muscle. So she walked up and slapped me. ‘Go to your room!’ she screamed. Like I really was a little kid, and not the son she’d turned into a drug dealer and a gravedigger and God knows what else. I still didn’t move. She slapped me again, then again.
“‘Enough,’ I said, finally blocking her hand. ‘We’re done.’ I pushed past her, up the stairs to my third-floor room. I would grab my clothes and, of course, my stash of cash. Then I planned on doing exactly what I’d said. I’d throw everything in the car and take off down the drive. Then, once I was safely out of sight, I’d pull over and double-back through the woods to grab you. It would be perfect, I thought. She wouldn’t chase me; I was her son. And nor would she chase after you, as she couldn’t afford any more trouble, especially with Vero’s death to still handle.
“But she wouldn’t let me go. Instead, she followed me the whole way up the stairs. Enraged, shouting, screaming. The older two girls came out to see what was going on. On the second-story landing, Mother caught up with me. She smacked the side of my head; then when I still refused to stop, she threw herself at me. Literally tackled me. It was as if she’d gone crazy. Guess that’s what happens when nobody has ever told you no before. We struggled. And then . . .”
Thomas pauses. He stands six, seven feet away. Too far for me to see his face in the dark.
“She fell down the stairs,” he says flatly. “Landed on her neck. We all heard the crack. She was dead.”
I open my mouth. I close my mouth. I don’t know what to say.
“I told the girls to leave. They were the only people left in the house, and it’s not like they were sorry she was gone. I gave them the keys to the car. On their own, they ransacked the china, silver, crystal. Why not? It was the least they deserved.
“Then . . .” Thomas hesitates, seems to be composing himself. “If I just took off, left the body, of course there would be a major investigation. So I figured I needed to do something. It had been an accident; her neck was broken. Maybe if it looked like she’d been rushing out of the house. You know, because she was escaping from a fire.”
“No.” The second he says the words, my hands close over my ears again. I can’t hear this. My heart, rapid before, is now beating triple, quadruple time. The smell of smoke. The heat of fire. Her screams. “Please stop, please stop, please stop.”
The wind is blowing harder, feeding off my agitation. Battering both of us.
But Thomas doesn’t stop.
“I didn’t know, Nicky. Trust me. I never imagined . . . I grabbed the cans of gasoline from the garage. I poured them all over the second-floor bedrooms, landing, beginning with one of the fireplaces so it would look like, I don’t know, a log had rolled out, starting the fire. Four cans of gasoline I used, because it was raining out, and I needed the place to burn. You pulled yourself from a grave. Well, now I was helping us get a fresh start.
“When I was done, I returned the empty gas jugs to the garage. Then starting in the rear second-story bedroom and working backward toward the door, I tossed matches. Lots and lots of matches. Next thing I knew . . . whoosh! I had no idea. The exterior of the house might have been wet from the rain, but apparently, over the course of a hundred years, the wood on the inside had dried to kindling. I seared the hair off the back of my hands stumbling my way across the foyer and out the front door.
“It was magnificent. It was terrifying. Then I heard her scream.”
“No. No. Please, stop.” I doubled over, hands still covering my ears. Tears streaming down my face.
But Thomas doesn’t. He walks closer and closer. He won’t stop talking. And now, after all these years, I finally can’t stop remembering.
“She must not have been dead,” he whispers. “I mean, I was just a kid, checking a kid, and we’d never had an OD. Maybe she’d been unconscious, like in a coma. I don’t know. But the fire started and she woke up.”
I’m in the woods. I smell the smoke. It makes me crinkle my nose. Who would light a fire in a rainstorm?
Then I hear the first scream. Vero’s scream.
“She couldn’t go down. The second-floor landing was already completely engulfed. So she must’ve headed up. To escape the flames.”
I’m running now. Through the woods, wet branches smacking against my face. I don’t care anymore about Madame Sade’s wrath or Thomas’s pretty promise. I have to get to Vero. She’s screaming my name.
“I could see her,” Thomas says, the flashlight shaking uncontrollably in one hand, the shovel in the other. “Up in the tower bedroom, beating one of the windows with her fists. I tried, Nicky. I rushed back toward the front door, but already the heat was too much. Then I bolted for the garage, to where we kept the work ladder.”
From a distance, I spot her. Vero in the princess bedroom. She’s looking down at me. Already I can see orange flames dancing behind her head.
Vero doesn’t scream anymore. Vero presses her hand against the glass. Vero reaches out to me, as surely as I reach my hand toward her. Running still. So hard, so fast. Trying to . . . I don’t know what to do.
I simply race my way toward her, calling her name.
Now I’m the one screaming her nam
e.
She disappears. The next instant, glass shatters. A chair comes flying through. One of the small ones from the child-size table. The fire roars its approval, inhaling fresh air, reaching hungrily for it.
Another chair; now both panes are broken. Then Vero is back, standing in the opening of jagged glass. She is bleeding. Her hands, her feet, her face.
She doesn’t care.
The smell of smoke. The heat of fire.
As she raises her arms above her head. Closes her eyes. Lifts her face to the night sky.
Vero wants to fly.
I scream once.
She makes no sound at all.
As she launches herself into the air. Away from the heat. Away from the flames.
Her dark hair ripples behind her. Her flowery nightgown sprouts like wings.
Vero wants to fly.
Another shout. Thomas, running up behind me. But it’s too late. Nothing either of us can do.
It’s the landing that’s the hard part.
As Vero comes down, down, down. Plowing into the earth. A pale, crumpled heap that moves no more.
“By the time I returned, it was too late. I didn’t know a house could go up like that,” Thomas murmurs. “I didn’t . . . We were just kids, Nicky. There were so many things we didn’t know.”
I can’t look at him. My heart is breaking. Like it broke that day. Because he’s right. It was all our fault. It wasn’t our fault at all. We were just trying to survive what we never should’ve had to survive in the first place.
Thomas took me away that day. He loaded me in his mother’s personal car, where I curled into a wet, shivering ball in the passenger’s seat. The house burned. Vero died. Thomas drove us to New Orleans.
In the days and weeks that followed, I could barely function. If I slept, I woke up screaming. If I was awake, I spent it crying.
Thomas found a place. Thomas purchased food. Thomas got a job on a movie set during the day, then held me in his arms at night. As I tried to put myself back together, but failed over and over again.
Until, four weeks later, attempting to do laundry, I found a picture in Thomas’s pocket. One he must’ve taken when no one was looking. Of a ten-year-old girl in a flowered dress. Of me.