Second Verse (25 page)

Breathing isn’t easy.

After I look through the stack a few more times, I drop them on the table.

What’s going on? Has Mom been following me? Why would she do that if she trusts me?

But where my hand rests beside the photos, a different one catches my eye. It’s a picture of me and Vaughn, on my porch the first night he’d sang me our song. But there’s something different about this print. My stomach lurches as I pull the lamp toward the photo that shakes in my hand.

In it, me and Vaughn lounge on the porch swing, his guitar balanced comfortably on his knee, arm slung over the instrument’s body. But behind us are smudges, blurry images all around us. It’s not as strong as the effect in Sharon’s, but it seems like the same process. I can tell by the way our outlines waver as they lead into the transposed image.

Everything goes out of focus: the picture, the light, my hands. The floor beneath me swells like a tidal wave.

Breathe, Lange
.

Why did she take these pictures? Maybe all her crazy bullshit makes sense, after all. Maybe she is in tune with this stuff. Was she looking out for me? Does she know all the weird stuff I’ve been trying to hide from her?

But still. It’s weird. How would Mom know about Sharon’s development process? How involved is Mom in the very things I’ve been trying to figure out? And why hasn’t she told me?

Where is she? Where is he?

My focusing problem soon becomes my breathing problem and in the stuffy closet, I realize how dangerous the situation truly is. Someone tried to kill Kelly. Someone could be coming after me next.

I have to get out of here. I have to go where no one expects me to be and think this through. I can’t face her. I can’t face anyone. Not yet. I have way too much to figure out first.

A loud creak, like the house itself is screaming, comes from down the hall. I turn off the light and tiptoe from the closet as silently as I can, but even the knob clicking into place sounds like it’s over a PA system. Quietly, I rattle the knob, making sure I relocked it.

I listen again. Footsteps on the stairs.

My heart flips in my chest, a fish out of water. I move quickly, creeping down the hall. Somehow, I make it down the creaky stairs and my dark hallway. I head for my room.

Upstairs, her footsteps pause in the hall. “Lange? Is that you?”

“Yeah.” I try and hide the tremor in my voice.

“Everything okay?” She sounds so worried I actually feel bad lying to her, but I’m in no shape to talk about any of this.

“I’m fine,” I call upstairs. “Just tired.”

After a few seconds, her footsteps move again, into her room.
Please don’t let her notice I was in the studio
. I’m so not ready to talk about that yet. I’m creeped out by the pictures and the fact that she knows about Sharon’s development process. I don’t want to talk about my past life and all the things I’ve found out.

Besides, she’s been
following
me. Totally invading my privacy. No matter what reason she had, it feels wrong. It doesn’t make sense.

I feel like running, like just opening the back door and taking off, to somewhere very far away. And safe. I wonder what’s happened to Kelly and can still see the pale, scared look on her face when she uttered that word to me. His name.

Vaughn
.

What did he do to her?

I need a plan.

The clues on the floor stare up at me. If only they made sense!

Ginny’s last letter still lies where I left it, on the seat of my desk chair. My eyes scan it again and I’m chilled:

Oh that Hank. He will always surprise me, I think. That’s what I told him
.

“Every day of your life, Mrs. Griffin.” He whispered in my ear, tickling my lobes the way he does with his lips. Anyway, I’m going to hide them, where we’ve hidden everything else we’ll take with us, down in the root cellar where Mother will never look. He really finds the strangest things, not that any of us would ever bother with the barn the way he did
.

And then, it jumps out at me. Words that are familiar. Root cellar. Cellar.
Sell. Her
.

On the floor, written across the top of my scroll of clues are the words that started it all.
Sell. Her. Sweeney
.

Oh my God. Root cellar. Sell Her. Christ—it’s all making sense now. Root cellar. It wasn’t Edith
Sellers
. It was
the
cellar. Where they hid things. A place Hank found.

In the barn.

I
T TAKES FOREVER
to find it.

I use a broom, sweeping the hay to the back of the stalls, up against the walls. It’s not until I nearly give up, walking back into the grass, that I think about checking along the outside. When that turns up nothing, I’m sure it doesn’t exist. But then I remember. That old stack of wood and pallets in the far stall.

The pallets are heavier than they look and they tear into my fingers. But I’m numb and don’t care. After those, I drag heavy pieces of plywood out of the stall, one after another. Sweat burns my eyes and runs down my neck and back. I lean against the wall, breathing in the night air that wafts in from the stall’s broken window.

Back to work. It goes on and on until I finally reach the last piece of plywood. No amount of dragging or kicking helps to budge it. It simply won’t move.

“Shit.” I run my dirty hands through my hair, tilting my head sideways to consider it from another angle. I grab the right edge and with a loud groan, pull as hard as I can.

And like magic, it opens. As easily as if it were on hinges.

It’s a door.

I shine my light down the staircase. It’s dusty and narrow and exactly, I realize, sinking onto my knees right there in the hay, exactly where I saw Vaughn in my vision.

Find me. Before it’s too late
.

I’
M LIKE A
marionette puppet, my body limp and shaky as I walk down the crumbling stairs.

When I reach the bottom, I have to duck through a doorway into a tight space the size of a small room. I shine my light into the dusty, cobwebbed corners, and force myself to keep moving, trying not to think of what bugs are possibly lurking here.

Against the far wall, a cloth lies across a small mound on the floor.

Do I want to know?

I shine my light back the way I’ve come, up the stairs into air that’s cool and sweet. Breathable. The stars wink at me through the stall window, beckoning me.

But I’ve come this far. Right?

Squatting, I lift a corner of the cloth. A centipede, at least eight inches long, slides out from under it, squirming quickly away from the light.

“Ewww.” Holding my breath, I lift the cloth completely.

At first, it looks mostly like junk. But then I see it’s not. It’s pieces of who they were. Ginny and Beau.

A small box filled with toiletries; a cracked hairbrush, a crumbling toothbrush, its bristles dirty and splayed. A bottle of perfume. I bring my nose to it, not surprised at all when it’s the same scent I smelled in the attic. A leather bag bursts with clothes, folded shirts and skirts, musty and soured with time. Under that are two record albums, vinyl with the labels scratched off, their paper sleeves disintegrating when I touch them. I bring them to my nose, inhaling their dusty scent, wondering what songs were special to them. A checkered linen tablecloth sits on top of four stacked plates, each painted with a pale pink floral design. Beneath it all, I find a framed eight by ten photo. It’s Ginny and Hank, smiling into the camera, shielding their eyes from the sun. They lean into each other, looking half at the photographer and half at one another.

Tears prick my eyes as I look through her collection, the things she planned to bring into her married life. The things that mattered so much to her.

Find me
.

I hold the picture to my chest.
I have found you, Hank. But, what have you done? How could you have killed her?

With my eyes squeezed shut, I listen to the sound of blood in my ears, the heavy breathing I can barely manage in the thick air.

“Lange?”

I switch off my flashlight. Sweat drips down my neck.
Think fast, Lange. What excuse do you have to be down here?
But this is Mom. Hopefully, she won’t question the craziness.

“Yeah, Mom?” As if it’s normal to be in the root cellar,
underneath
the barn.

“Are you okay? What
are
you doing down there?”

Footsteps on the stairs. Mom’s concerned face. Warmth floods me, comfort trying to make its way into the situation. Mom’s here. It’s going to be okay.

Then more footsteps. Behind her.

It’s like seeing a ghost.

Breath gone.

Picture tumbles to the ground.

A new light shines on the wall in front of me, a bright, wide beam like a train is running me down. I don’t turn around. I just bite my lip and taste my salty tears.

“Look at you! All holed up down here.” Her voice sounds normal, but if she’s with
him
, nothing is normal. “Can you believe this?”

“Hell no, I can’t,” he says. It’s a voice I know well. A voice I didn’t expect to hear again. Not tonight. Not ever.

Bodies shift behind me, coming closer. I can’t move, can’t look. All I can do is stand and tremble.

What is she doing? How is this even happening?

And then an arm hooks around my neck, pulling me backward. I tumble, falling with a thud against the ground. My head cracks against something hard. Sharp pain explodes in my skull, warmth oozing in my hair. But I don’t think about that, because I’m staring, making out the details of the serpent tattoo I’d forgotten, the way it curves around his forearm, the snake’s head against his wrist, mouth open beneath his thumb.

And I blink, staring up at my parents’ faces.

M
Y EYES ARE
barely open when I realize there’re no longer stars up the narrow shaft of stairs. No hay or barn stall visible. Just the bare, unfinished underside of the wood door. My parents sit on the bottom step, looking at me fondly, as a pair of lions would their newborn cub.

“What the hell?” Sitting only brings on a wave of dizziness. I bring my fingers to the tender spot on the back of my scalp and feel the stickiness there.

“Yeah, honey, you hit yourself real good.” His voice is just as I remember it, like gravel and whiskey. I close my eyes.

Behind me, something moves, making me turn with a start.

Vaughn’s against the wall, passed out and wrists bound. His hands hang limply at his side. But he’s here. Beat up and bruised, but here.

And they’re over there. My mom. And my
dad
. And he’s grinning now, elbowing Mom. “The moment we’ve been waiting for, huh?” he says. His hair glints, much grayer than it used to be, almost platinum white in the dim light. The man from the barber shop window. Same build. Light hair.

Mom keeps her eyes on the ground but a strange smile creeps across her face. Distant, and … utterly demented. Like her dazed and brainwashed look, but a million times worse.

“Miss me honey?” Dad asks, grinning as he drops to crawl across the floor toward me.

Recoiling from his presence, I scoot as far away from him as I can, inching toward Vaughn, willing him to wake up.

“Damn, it always is the same, ain’t it? People just never like us for some reason.” He looks over his shoulder at Mom.

Vaughn stirs beside me. I nudge him with the slightest lean, to let him know where I am.

And then I realize something.
My
arms aren’t tied.
I’m
not the threat.

I make my hands shake even more. If I’m scared, they may discount me doing anything at all.

“What is this?” I motion around the room.

“This,” Mom says in a condescending voice. “Is where old Ginny stashed the things she and her loving Hank planned to take with them when they eloped.” A soft laugh floats from her. Her eyes are blank, almost looking through me. Sweat darkens the hair at her temples.

I shiver uncontrollably. Who
is
she?

“Unfortunately for them, Hank had a real interest in investigating murders,” she says.

“All murders,” Dad adds, cracking his knuckles.

“Right. All murders. He was quite nosy,” she slides into an easy routine with my father, their banter natural as if they’re discussing dinner plans, not past lives and murders. They look at each other knowingly. I use the second their attention is away from me to inch in front of Vaughn, partially blocking him from their view.

“It was convenient though,” Dad says. “When it was time to blame someone. Plenty of people knew about Hank’s obsession with the murders. It was easy to say he’d gone a bit mad.”

“Wait, what?”

“Lange.” Mom shakes her head. “I always gave you credit for being smarter than you are.”

Dad smirks. “Your poor, poor Hank. He couldn’t live without his Ginny. Especially when he knew they should have reported what was going on. He totally blamed himself. And so, he very willingly, very efficiently, hung himself in her barn, just feet from where his true love lay in bloody pieces.” He sticks out his bottom lip in mock sadness.