The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (127 page)

And what if a guy in a tan car slows down and offers me a ride
? she wondered. She’d find some excuse not to hop in. But it was a moot point anyway, because no one was slowing down, much less stopping.

She checked her watch. She had fifteen minutes to get there. She started running.

Then, as she was just getting into her rhythm, imagining she was half running, half flying, the second disaster of the night happened.

She was running at top speed, going along on autopilot, when she saw, glued to the side of a faded red tobacco-drying barn, a huge billboard-size blowup of Candy Jacques’s face, earrings like whale hooks, pouting red lips.

have you seen me? printed in letters two feet high.

Reggie lost track of her own feet somehow, and suddenly she was off balance, landing hard on her right arch. Her ankle folded and she went down in a comic-book-style roll, limbs flailing. KA-PLUNK!

She landed in such a way that when she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Candy’s immense face staring down at her.

“Shii-t!” Reggie moaned, rolling away from her.

Her ankle was screaming in pain. It began to swell immediately, and by the time she’d dragged herself up from the ground and hobbled the half mile to where the road changed from two lanes to four, she was beginning to wonder if perhaps she’d broken it. She found she could move forward only by doing a hopping sort of shuffle, her face a grimace of pain and the words
shit, double-shit, god-DAMN
spitting out each time she put any weight at all on her right ankle. Then it started to rain. Not little happy “I’m Singing in the Rain” kinds of drops, but water by the bucketful fell from the sky.

A
T LONG LAST—SOAKED TO
the marrow, her stomach sick and head swimming with pain—the red, white, and blue sign of Airport Lanes came into view. It was half past seven. Reggie hop-shuffled toward the giant glowing pin, mouthing
shit, shit, shit
in steady rhythm each time her right foot hit the ground. Cars roared past her, slowing, but none stopped, no one even rolled down the window to ask if she needed any help.

As she got to the edge of the parking lot, she saw her mother.

Vera stood smoking under the red-and-white-striped awning, well protected from the rain. Her blond hair was perfectly sculpted, her green dress undulating in the breeze. Reggie raised her arms to flag her down, but her mother was looking away from her, out past the giant bowling pin, down toward the airport, where a plane had just taken off.

“Mom!” Reggie yelled, imagining her mother would turn, see the shape she was in and come running. She was, after all, Reggie’s rescuer in times of great need. She didn’t need the heroics of Vera twirling a dog in her underclothes this time, only a shoulder to lean on and a promise to take her home, picking up the bike with its flat tire on the way.

Vera’s head was still turned, and now Reggie saw what it was she was looking at: a car had just pulled into the parking lot and was making its way to the front of the building, headlights on, windshield wipers slapping. The driver slowed. Vera waved, put out her cigarette.

“Mom!” Reggie screamed, hobbling as fast as she could across the parking lot.

Maybe it was the pouring rain, the jet overhead, the engine of the car in the lot, or the combination—but her mother didn’t hear her.

The car pulled up right next to the awning and Reggie noticed the left taillight was broken. The driver leaned across the seat and the passenger door popped open. The only detail Reggie could pick out was that he was wearing a baseball cap. Vera slid in. She never glanced in Reggie’s direction.

“Mom!” Reggie cried out once more, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Don’t!”

Too late.

The tan sedan pulled away.

Chapter 19

October 17, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

A
FTER HER TRUCE WITH
Tara, Reggie headed back down to the smoke-scented kitchen. Lorraine was sitting at the table, sniffling. George was beside her, holding her hand and rubbing her back. He glanced up when Reggie walked in. He looked nearly the same as Reggie remembered, with his pointy, Uncle Mouse features, but there were tiny creases around his eyes, his hair was flecked with gray, and his hairline had receded farther. He wore round glasses with silver metal rims. He was dressed in khaki pants and a neatly ironed blue button-down shirt.

“Reggie,” George said, rising for what Reggie assumed would be a hug. He was shorter than Reggie remembered, or maybe he’d developed a stooped posture, shoulders hunched forward like a man who’d suffered countless defeats.

Instead of embracing Reggie, George stepped past her and said, “Let’s go out for some air,” and headed down the hall. Lorraine stayed in place at the table, head down, dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled tissue.

“What did you say to Lorraine?” George asked once they were in the yard, the shadow of the house surrounding them, darkening everything. They stood facing Reggie’s old tree house. The roof was still in good shape, but the windows had never been finished. The rope ladder swayed, wooden steps rotted through in places, but still, she half expected to see Charlie’s face appear in the doorway, beckoning her up, asking where she’d been.

“Do you think she deserved it, is that it?” George asked. His voice was quiet, controlled, but he was obviously furious. “Do you think there’s a day that goes by that she doesn’t think about what might have happened if she had done things differently that night?”

“Look,” Reggie began, “George, I—”

“It isn’t right to blame her for what happened to your mother.”

“I don’t!”

“Yes, you do. You always have. Isn’t that why you left home and never so much as called? You couldn’t stand even looking at her. I remember how it was those last four years of high school. You just stopped speaking to her. You broke her heart, Reggie.”

Reggie shook her head. This was insane. Lorraine had shut Reggie out of her heart the day she was born, just because she was Vera’s daughter.

George ambled across the driveway and into the old wooden garage, Reggie following. Lorraine’s fly-tying bench was still there, covered with an assortment of pliers, hooks, thread, and feathers. Tucked underneath was the dusty box of taxidermy supplies: little eyes on wire, sawdust, knives, and chemicals. Beside the bench stood the oak fishing cabinet George had made Lorraine. George caressed the front door, then opened it, revealing four fishing rods, a net, and Lorraine’s worn fishing vest on a hanger. It reminded Reggie of a box a magician might put a woman in, then saw her in half. Or maybe he’d wave his wand, close the door, and make her disappear completely.

“Losing Vera, that was hard enough,” George said, closing the cabinet. “That tore us all to pieces. But then we lost you, too.”

This was too goddamn much.

“I’m sorry,” Reggie said, standing up straight. “But I refuse to be made to feel guilty. I was only a kid, and I did the best I could. Lorraine treated me like crap my whole life, because I was my mother’s daughter. She hated Vera, George! Don’t you remember?”

George nodded. “They had their differences, yes, but—”

“Differences? Lorraine was always awful to her,” Reggie interrupted. “She used to warn me to stay away from Mom, to lock my door at night.”

“She was only trying to protect you!” George snapped.

“I didn’t need protecting,” Reggie hissed, the anger coming through. “Not from my own mother.”

She turned away from him and saw Lorraine’s mounted trout watching from the wall, dust covered and deformed, the rough black stitches on its belly showing. Franken-fish.

George was silent a minute, biting the inside of his cheek. “Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if you remember things the way they really were.”

Reggie’s head was pounding.

“Then maybe you’d be more appreciative for the sacrifices your aunt has made,” George said.

“Oh give me a break,” Reggie snarled, turning from the trout to stare at George. “What sacrifices?”

“Do you have any idea what it took to send you to the Brooker School for four years? And then there was college. You got to the place you are today because of Lorraine. She gave up a great deal for you.”

“Is that what she told you?” Reggie said. “Yes, she paid for Brooker, but that was her choice, and I honestly think she sent me there because she was so ashamed of the way my mother had soiled the Dufrane name. And she never paid a dime for college, George. I worked my ass off for grants and scholarships, did shitty work-study jobs all through school, and still graduated with a shit-ton of debt, all of which I paid off
on my own
.” She felt her anger spiraling up and out of control, and it felt good. She took a step toward George and pointed at him fiercely. “I did whatever it took to get as far away from this place as I could, this place where I was a stranger in my own home, where pain and loss were everywhere. So don’t you dare stand there and try to make me feel guilty. I am where I am because of
me
. No one else.”

Reggie turned away, breathing hard. She looked through the small window toward Monique’s Wish. It seemed crooked from this angle, the afternoon sun hitting the worn and broken shingles on the roof, the stone walls seeming to list left, then right.

George muttered something, but her false ear was toward him and she didn’t catch it. All she heard was one word:
ungrateful
.

“I’m done,” she said, and stalked out of the garage.

Reggie moved across the driveway toward the house, slowly at first, then with determination. Before she knew it, she was jogging, only one thing sure in her mind: she was wrong to have come back. George and Lorraine obviously had their own version of history, in which Reggie was the nasty, ungrateful villain, responsible for all the pain in their fucked-up little family unit. To hell with all of them.

“Regina?” George called after her, but she didn’t turn back.

She went inside, passing the kitchen, where she could hear her aunt making tea. She went hurriedly upstairs and into her room, where she shut the door tight and rested for a second with her back against it. She heard George come in downstairs. There was the scraping of chairs on the kitchen floor, the low murmur of voices. She turned, pressed her good ear against the door, trying to make out what they were saying.

“Did our best,” George said. And then Lorraine began to cry again.

“Oh, give me a break,” Reggie hissed.

In the room next door, she heard Vera say, “Have you ever been to Argentina, dear?”

“No,” Tara told her. “No, I haven’t.”

Reggie looked up at the water stains on the ceiling, the circles like crooked yellow bull’s-eyes. The stone wall on the north side of her room was like the wall of a prison—dark, thick, and impenetrable. And like the wall of a prison, she imagined that over the years it had picked up pieces of the lives it surrounded. The stones in the wall, like hundreds of dull eyes, had watched Reggie grow, knew all her secrets.

Heart hammering furiously, stones in the wall watching, she packed her things quickly—pulling the neat stacks of clothing from the bureau and tucking them into her rolling case. Reggie zipped her suitcase, shouldered her messenger bag, and went back down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door. Just like that, she was seventeen again, sneaking out at dawn to the taxi that waited in the driveway to take her to the Greyhound station, where she’d board a bus for Providence without even saying good-bye. It was that easy.

Reggie jumped in her truck, cranked the ignition. Tara’s face appeared in the upstairs window of Vera’s room, pulling back the curtain. Tara pressed her hand flat against the pane of glass, her palm pale and ghostly.

Reggie slammed the truck into reverse, turning around, tires spitting gravel. She turned on the GPS and pushed the button that said go home.

Chapter 20

June 20, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

R
EGGIE’S CLOCK RADIO SAID
8:58
A.M.
The phone was ringing. Reggie put a pillow over her head, waited for Lorraine to answer it. The pain in her ankle was down to a dull throb. The bag of frozen peas Lorraine had sent her to bed with lay clammily on her toes.

After Reggie had called home from the pay phone outside the bowling alley, Lorraine had come to pick her up, retrieved the bicycle, and taken Reggie to the emergency room. It was only a sprain, but she was supposed to stay off it as much as possible until it healed. Reggie had told Lorraine about her mother getting into a tan car driven by a man whose face she didn’t see. Lorraine said the color of the car didn’t mean a thing, that Reggie had an overly active imagination, and that there was far too much nonsense and hysteria in Brighton Falls for her liking. Reggie was quiet after that.

In Reggie’s dreams her mother got into the car with the broken taillight over and over again. Sometimes the driver was the devil. Sometimes it was Lorraine. The last time it was Reggie herself behind the wheel, and there was a big knife with a jagged blade on the seat between her and Vera.

The ringing stopped, then started again.

Reggie sat up, damp with cold sweat, shaking off the dreams, and grabbed the phone on her nightstand.

“Hullo?” she said in a groggy voice.

“Reg!” Tara shrieked. “Are you okay? Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Oh shit! Listen, turn on the news, okay. I’m coming right over.” Tara hung up before Reggie could respond.

Reggie lay back in bed, flipped on her clock radio. She dozed through the national news—something about President Reagan—but bolted upright when she heard the top local story.

A fourth hand in a milk carton had appeared at the police station. This one, the police spokesman said, bore a distinguishing mark: it was badly scarred from an old injury.

Severely disfigured,
was how the policeman described it.

Reggie knew instantly that the hand was not only thick with scars, but was also stuck pointing, as it had done for eight years now, toward some unnameable place off in the distance.