Crash & Burn

  And I broke. I know of no other way of saying it. I looked at myself, I saw Vero. I remembered Vero, I saw myself, and I couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t.

  Thomas came home. I greeted him with the news that I was gone, leaving, out of there. I had died, and now it was time to be dead. No more Chelsea. No more Vero. I would move, new name, new town, new experience. It was the only way for me.

  And he said yes.

  I didn’t even understand at first. Then he walked to the dresser, tossed his few items of clothing in a bag, and declared he was ready. If I needed to leave, then we would go. If I needed a new name, he’d get one, too. If I needed a fresh start, he’d take it with me.

  He loved me. He would go wherever, do whatever, be whomever, as long as he was with me.

  And that’s what we did. Have been doing for twenty-two years.

  “How did you do it?” I ask him now. Because this is what I don’t understand. How that night could break me completely, while making my husband so strong.

  “You were what I wanted, Nicky. I’d been watching you, waiting for you, I don’t even know for how long. I failed Vero. I know that. I failed all of us by not acting sooner, by not turning on my own mother. Trust me, in the beginning I replayed it in my mind over and over again. All the coulda, woulda, shouldas. But in the end, I couldn’t go back. So I resolved to move forward. I vowed to make you happy if it took the rest of my life. And that’s what I’ve been doing. Loving you. If only for you, that was enough.”

  “I miss her.”

  “I know.”

  “I should’ve gotten us both out,” I exclaim in a rush. “I should’ve been smarter. She was lost by then, so sad. She wouldn’t even tell her stories anymore. But maybe, if I could’ve gotten her out. Returned her to the secret realm, the magical queen. She was just a little girl who missed her mother.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked.”

  “It might have—”

  “No. It wouldn’t have. Nicky, turn around.”

  The tone of his voice is sharp. It catches me off guard, like a slap to the face.

  The wind is not blowing anymore, I realize. The night has gone totally still. Totally quiet.

  I turn. Very slowly. To discover Marlene Bilek standing in the beam of Thomas’s flashlight.

  Her hard-worn face is stamped with a grim expression I’ve never seen before. And she is holding a gun.

  Chapter 41

  WE GOT A problem.” It was Kevin, reaching them via the radio as they bounced up the steep, rutted drive.

  “What kind of problem?” Wyatt shouted over the noise of the SUV’s engine straining.

  “Marlene Bilek has disappeared. Sent a uniform to pick her up, per your request. House is dark, vehicle not in the drive. She’s gone off the range.”

  Wyatt turned to Tessa. “Maybe wanting a private chat with the last person who saw her daughter alive.”

  “Circled back to the hotel, spotted Nicky with Thomas and decided to follow?” Tessa frowned at him. “But why? She already knows Nicky isn’t Vero.”

  “No, Nicky is something more powerful. She’s Vero’s memory, a walking legacy of Vero’s young life.”

  “You think Marlene’s worried that Nicky might know about the money she received after Vero’s kidnapping? But why not pry a little more earlier in the evening?”

  “She couldn’t. Not with both of us sitting there. But I can imagine her attempting to return later to ask more questions. Maybe she spotted Nicky meeting with Thomas and decided to follow.”

  Tessa shook her head, still not buying it. “But she couldn’t have followed right behind them without them noticing . . .”

  “Nope. Which proves my earlier point. If she’s the one driving the second vehicle, Marlene Bilek has definitely been here before.”

  * * *

  “YOU KILLED MY daughter.” Marlene stands back from the foundation, closer to the circular drive. Her face is illuminated by the beam of Thomas’s flashlight, but the night is too thick to reveal much more. Her car. Where she might have come from. If she’s here alone.

  Clearly, she’s been listening to our trip down memory lane.

  “It was an accident,” I hear myself say. Is it strange to be apologizing to a woman holding a gun? Or maybe, the most natural response?

  “She burned. Here. Where the fancy house used to be.”

  I don’t say anything. Vaguely, I’m aware of Thomas trying to ease closer without capturing Marlene’s attention.

  No such luck. “Stop. One more step, I’ll shoot her first. Trust me, this gun isn’t for show. First thing Hank taught me was to use a firearm. Good exercise for a woman, he said, who’d already spent too much of her life as a punching bag.”

  “Vero loved you.”

  I offer the words in comfort, but if anything, Marlene recoils, appears struck.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did she know? Did she ever figure it out? After everything you said, hearing about her life. Sweet Lord. The woman said it was a good home. How was I supposed to know any different? She had fancy clothes, a nice car. I never imagined. I never imagined!”

  For the first time, I think I get it. Or maybe it’s simply because the wind has finally picked up again. And it’s cold now. Icy shivers fingering up my spine.

  It’s Thomas who does the honors. He’s halted eight feet back, but his grip on the flashlight is now steady. “You sold your daughter.”

  The wind whisking more briskly. Rustling our hair.

  I stare at Marlene as if seeing her for the first time. She doesn’t deny it. But of course, Madame Sade was a businesswoman. And what kind of woman risked kidnapping children, when buying them was so much easier?

  “I needed out! Ronnie, the beatings . . . I just couldn’t take it anymore. You don’t understand what it’s like to be that helpless—”

  I laugh bitterly.

  Marlene flushes. “I had no money. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone Vero. Not to mention, the way Ronnie had taken to looking at her. It was for her own good. You don’t have to believe me. But one day, through a friend of a friend, I heard of a woman who sometimes took in young girls. Lived in a fancy house, not enough kids of her own. Would even kick a little money your way. She took pity on single moms; that’s what I heard.”

  I can’t help myself. “You mean from other addicts, alcoholics? Women willing to sell their own kids for their next fix?”

  “Vero would be better off. I could leave Ronnie, get on my own two feet. Except, that day at the park . . . One of the other women noticed Vero wasn’t with me anymore. I didn’t have any choice. I had to cry kidnapping. Otherwise the police would’ve figured it out.”

  “I remember that,” Thomas spoke up abruptly. “My mother was furious that afternoon. Muttering the whole evening if you wanted something done right you just had to do it yourself.”

  “It wasn’t my fault! Worked out, though. The police investigated, found no leads; it all went away. She still got Vero, and eventually, when the dust settled, I got my money.”

  All of a sudden, it comes to me: “I know you!”

  Marlene frowned at me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “That’s how I recognized you at the liquor store. The second I saw you, I knew you. Memory, I thought. I was half right. Except it wasn’t Vero’s memory, it wasn’t the vision of you hiding your little girl in the closet. It was here. Right here. You came to the house to collect the money in person. Madame Sade yelled at you.”

  “I came to get what I was owed!”

  The wind, sharper now. Colder.

  “Did you see her?” I hear myself whisper. “Back then, she would’ve been standing at the tower window. She could’ve peered straight down the circular drive. Seeing the taxi pull up. Watching her mom
step out, walk up the stairs. After all her nights of crying and begging. Finally, you came to rescue her.”

  My hair whips around my cheeks. Goose bumps up and down my arms.

  As I see things I’ve never seen before. As I know things I have no way of knowing. “She beats the glass with her little fists,” I hear myself whisper. “She calls your name, excited, hopeful. Vero is six years old. Vero is found. Vero will go home again.

  “Except no one ever unlocks her door. Eventually, you come out of the house. Down the steps. Back into the waiting cab. You leave without her.

  “Vero wants to fly. She wants to open the window and fly right over the sill. Because nothing matters anymore. Her mother has come. Her mother has gone. She loved you with all her heart. And you broke it.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “You sold your own daughter!”

  “And I paid the price. I returned to Ronnie. I spent another year getting the shit beat out of me. Doesn’t that count? I screwed up and I paid for it.”

  “Not as much as she did! What about after you left Ronnie? Why not go to the police then? Why not rescue your daughter then?”

  Marlene doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. We all know. Because she would’ve been arrested, too. And what kind of woman wanted to go to jail, when she could start over with a new man, five thousand dollars richer and no one else the wiser?

  I step toward her. The gun wavers in her hand. I don’t care. I take another step, then another. I don’t have a gun, a flashlight, any kind of weapon. I have only my outrage, and it’s enough.

  “What will they think of you, your new and improved family? Once they realize what you really did to your first child? You’re not the victim at all. You’re the monster Vero feared in the dark.”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t plan on finding out.”

  Marlene raises her gun. She stares me straight in the eye.

  Just as Thomas yells, “Run!”

  He hurls the flashlight. I feel it rush by my ear, the second before it connects with Marlene’s face.

  She cries out, reaching up instinctively with her left hand, even as her right pulls the trigger.

  A bullet. I swear I can see it. I can watch it spiral through the night, homing in on my chest. For a fraction of an instant of time, I don’t care. I throw open my arms. I embrace my own death.

  Because this was how it was always meant to be. I knew it from the first moment I set foot on this property. I would die here.

  Such is life in the dollhouse.

  And then . . .

  I fall down. I don’t know how or why. Then I don’t have time to consider it. Another shot is fired. Thomas yells, at me, at her, I can’t tell. He rushes by, shovel overhead, a man on the attack.

  “Run,” he screams at me. “Run!”

  And I find myself racing across the rolling hills I used to contemplate from the tower bedroom, cutting a path straight for the woods.

  Another scream of frustration from Marlene. Another explosion from the gun. Followed by a heavy grunt, distinctly male. Thomas, I think; she’s shot Thomas.

  But I can’t go back. The wind is carrying me now, cold and determined. Into the woods I go.

  “Vero!” I cry out.

  And I know she is here with me. We run together, two little girls finally escaping. I hold out my hand, and she is there.

  * * *

  “SHOTS FIRED, SHOTS fired!”

  Wyatt’s SUV had just crested the hill when he heard the first exchange. He grabbed the radio; Tessa was already unclipping her seat belt.

  “There,” she reported, pointing through his window. “Lights. Near that mound of vegetation.”

  He careened his own vehicle to a stop, identifying Marlene Bilek’s car, dead ahead. A quick request for backup while unholstering his sidearm; then he and Tessa had both doors open, using them for momentary cover. Whatever was happening was playing out beyond the beam of the headlights. They couldn’t see as much as hear the action.

  Dark bobbing shapes as two people struggled. Then a woman’s shriek of frustration, followed by a fresh crack of gunfire. A muffled grunt; then the second shape dropped to the ground.

  Thomas Frank, Wyatt guessed, given the larger size.

  “Marlene Bilek!” Wyatt called out. “This is the police. Drop your weapon!”

  He leveled his own weapon, but at this distance, in the dark . . .

  Apparently, Marlene Bilek figured the same. Because in the next instant, she scooped up a flashlight. Then, as they watched, she took off across the grass.

  “She’s running away,” Tessa exclaimed.

  “Or giving chase. Where’s Nicky?”

  “Shit!”

  They both took off into the night.

  * * *

  LEAVES SLAP MY face. I twist around one tree only to become briefly entangled in a bush. The woods are thick, heavily overgrown, and I have no light to guide my way. Already I’m thrashing and heaving, whacking my way through the vegetation like an enraged bear.

  She will find me. She has a flashlight. She has a gun.

  She’s already taken out Thomas, and now it’s my turn.

  I will die in these woods, just like I did twenty-two years before.

  Now, with my heart heaving in my chest and tears pouring down my cheeks, it amazes me all the pictures popping into my mind. They are not of the dollhouse. They aren’t of Vero. They are of Thomas.

  I am running for my life. Approaching the precipice of my third death, and mostly, I’m remembering the man who loved me.

  Days and weeks and months in the dollhouse. Exchanges of looks but never words. Coconspirators before either of us was ever brave enough to verbalize the crime. But he knew, and I knew that he knew, and it was enough to give both of us hope.

  Because what is love, if not an exercise in faith?

  The nights he never left me. I cried and cried. I railed at him; I hit him. I blamed him; I begged him. And he took it. He held me and stroked my hair and whispered it would be all right. Because what is love, if not perseverance?

  I forgive you, I think, though until this moment, I didn’t realize just how much I blamed him for the fire. But he was right; we were just kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. And none of us should’ve been there anyway.

  Vero knows that. If I could stop right now, sit and have a cup of tea, Vero would be wearing her finest dress. She’d hug me, and I would hug her back, and we’d hold each other tight.

  Because what is love, if not forgiveness?

  More crashing. From behind me. Coming closer.

  I’m running blind. Maybe even in circles. There’s no place to go. Just trees growing steadily larger, bushes filling out thicker and thicker. I come to a small clearing, and that’s that. I spin around and around. But I’m trapped.

  This is it. What I’ve spent twenty-two years waiting for.

  Deep breath. I stop, turn, prepare for the worst.

  Shouts in the distance. The police, I realize. Here and in pursuit. Meaning if I can just find a way to buy time. Two minutes? Three, four, five?

  I should climb a tree. But just as I try to figure something out, I hear a fresh snap right behind me. I whirl around, and Marlene Bilek is standing there.

  The woods haven’t been any kinder to her than to me. Her face is scratched and bleeding, her short Brillo hair now a rat’s nest of leaves. Her chest is heaving from her exertions and it’s clear the chase has only increased her rage. She fumbles slightly with the gun; then she’s got it up.

  “Don’t move,” I hear myself say.

  She frowns at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s here. Can’t you feel her? She’s here. Right here. With us.”

  “Girl, you’ve taken one too many hits to the head.”

  “S
he would’ve gone anywhere with you, you know. A homeless shelter, a women’s home. She loved you so much. You were her world. The one person who kept her safe.”

  “Stop it!”

  “She remembered that night. Ronnie beating her so savagely. Felt like it would never end. But then he was gone and there you were, holding her in your arms. You whispered to her all night long. You begged her to live. She heard every word. For you, she came back again.”

  Marlene’s arm is trembling. She thins her lips; I can see her willing her finger to move on the trigger. I wonder if she knows she has tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Five thousand dollars. That kind of love, and you sold it for a measly five grand?”

  “Stop!”

  But I don’t. I can’t. “Tell her you love her. Now. Say the words. She’s been waiting thirty years! Thirty years for you to return to her. Thirty years for you to remember how much you love her.”

  “No—”

  “You have to!”

  “I can’t! Don’t you understand? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I really did tell myself it was for the best. Then, when she was gone, when I realized what I had done . . . There was no going back. Don’t you understand? I ripped my own heart out of my chest, and there was no putting it back again!”

  “Did you miss her?”

  “Yes! Every day!”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”

  “She loves you, too. She loves you and she hates you, and there is nothing I can do to save you from what’s going to happen next.”

  Marlene frowns at me.

  “Girl, you’re crazy!” She takes a determined step forward, as if to end this once and for all . . .

  She doesn’t see what I already know. The jumble of objects all these years later, still sticking out of the earth. Because the night had been dark then, too, and time compressed and my vision blurred by the thickness of my tears. As I’d dragged her body through the woods, away from the flames. As I found the half-filled grave dug just hours before. As I sat back on my heels and used my bare hands to further excavate the heavy, wet earth.