Dead Ringers (20 page)

If Kyrie had difficulty separating the idea of him rushing to comfort his daughter from the image of him doing the same for Tess, there was nothing Nick could do about it. He would navigate those waters later. Right now, the only thing that mattered was being Daddy.

He turned off the engine and climbed out of the car, reaching back in for the hot cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee he'd picked up along the way. As he slammed the door and clicked the locking mechanism on his key fob, he realized with a pang of regret that he ought to have brought hot chocolate for Maddie. Even coffee for Tess. He'd never been good about such things, spent too much time inside his own head, but he had been teaching himself to pay more attention to the needs of those around them. It wasn't always easy for him to read people, but he'd been making an effort.

His ex wouldn't expect him to have thought of her—might even be shocked if he had—but Maddie might be hurt. The thought was nearly enough to make him leave his own coffee on the roof of the car, but he shook his head and kept walking. If Maddie asked for hot chocolate, he'd take her out to get some.

Nick turned up his collar as he walked to the Victorian's front door. The second- and third-floor neighbors had their own entrance around the side of the building. Morning had come but the night's chill remained, as if winter hastened to claim its turn. He knocked, and saw his fist tremble. The coffee cup shook in his other hand and he bent forward, a momentary fog passing through his thoughts.

Frowning, he shook his head. With a deep breath, the sudden wavering passed.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered to himself.

Then the door opened and he saw what the intruder had done to Tess the night before. He screwed up his face in concern as he reached for her. She flinched backward as his fingers nearly grazed her cheek. For a second he thought she was afraid to be touched—afraid it would hurt—and he felt bad. Then he saw the confusion and distaste on her features and realized Tess had jerked away because she didn't want to be touched
by him
.

“Sorry,” he said, glancing at his hand, which hung uselessly in the air for a moment before he dropped it to his side, almost embarrassed to own such things as hands.

Tess gingerly traced the swollen, raging-red bruise that the left side of her face had become. “It's all right. I've seen me in the mirror. I know it's a shock.”

Nick studied her eyes. Bloody red lines shot through the left one. “You okay?”

She laughed softly, wincing from the pain it caused her. “Seriously?”

“You know what I mean.”

She exhaled, letting him off the hook. “I do. Okay as I can be, I guess.”

The past hung between them, an unwelcome companion whose presence would not allow them to speak freely. Nick still felt love for Tess, and believed the same must be true in reverse, but he couldn't take her in his arms and give her the kind of comfort a husband ought to. Nor would Tess welcome the attempt.

“I'm sorry,” Nick said, frown deepening. “This—”

Maddie appeared behind Tess in the doorway. “Daddy?” She had dressed for school and wore a bright pink backpack with cartoon monkeys all over it.

Nick grinned, but it felt like a lie. Tess stepped back to allow him inside, reminding him that she had kept him until then on the threshold. He knelt in front of his daughter and took her in his arms.

“Good morning, my love,” he said, voice muffled in the little girl's hair.

“What are you doing here?”

Nick pulled back and studied her querulous expression. “Mommy told me what happened last night, so I decided to come and check on you guys.”

Maddie glanced around, suspicious of the shadowed corners of the room. “The bad lady's gone, though. Mom said—”

“Of course she's gone,” Nick said quickly. “And she won't be back. Nothing to be afraid of, now. But it's like when you wake up from a nightmare and you want to be hugged for a little while. The bad dream's over but you still feel a little scared, right? You're safe, bug. I just thought I'd hug you for a little while before you left for school.”

Her smile bloomed slowly, but when it came it lit up the room. “I could use some hugs.”

Nick laughed and swept her into his embrace again. He saw Tess smile and the sick feeling that had been roiling in the pit of his stomach returned. The bruises would fade. The cuts would heal. But how could they ever recover from the unwelcome knowledge that had been inflicted upon them?

“Maddie, honey, give me and Daddy a minute to talk, okay?” Tess said.

“We're already late,” the girl said.

“I called the school. You won't be in trouble,” Tess promised, caressing Maddie's hair. “Go on in and watch TV for a minute.”

Nick kissed his daughter's head and she poked him in the nose before running down the hall and into the living room, ponytail bouncing behind her. Rising to his feet, Nick turned to Tess.

“You need help cleaning up?”

Tess shook her head. “Already took care of the broken mirror and I've got a locksmith coming at one o'clock. I'll give you a copy of the new key.”

“You don't have to do that. It's your house—”

“She's your daughter,” Tess interrupted. “Like it or not, part of your life is here.”

Nick winced.

She waved the moment away. “I'm sorry. That's not fair. I know how much she means to you. I'm just … you haven't seen your double yet. It's the strangest thing, like someone's tearing down the walls around you and showing you what's really been there all along.”

“Not to mention what she did to you.”

Tess visibly shuddered. “I don't care what she did to me,” she whispered. “She had Maddie in her arms, Nick. And Maddie … she didn't know it wasn't me.”

Nick covered his mouth, trying to hear these words in his head and make them sound like something other than batshit crazy. He ran his palm over the stubble on his face, wishing very hard that he could make himself not believe in any of this. If Tess had lost her mind, that would create a hundred difficult complications, but it would be easier to process than any of this.

“Shit,” he rasped, shaking his head.

“I know how it sounds.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. But I'm here. I'm on your side, Tessa. We're meeting up with the others tonight. Audrey will be there. So will Frank.”

They both took a minute to let that sink in, giving each other a few seconds to bring up the elephant in the room. When Tess said nothing about seeing Frank again, Nick realized he had no interest in bringing it up either. That battle had already been fought, and as far as he was concerned all three members of what had once been the Devlin family had lost.

“We're going to figure out who these people are, how the hell they're pulling this off, and then we're going to the police,” he went on. “The woman who did this to you? She's got to be in cuffs after this.”

Tess smiled thinly. Painfully.

“What?” Nick demanded.

“Nothing. Go visit with Maddie. How much time do you have?”

“I'm going into the office later, but I have as much time as you need.”

“How does Kyrie feel about that?”

A barb hidden inside a seemingly innocent question. The past would never really be past. The blades might grow dull, but they'd still be stabbing each other with them for as long as they lived. Nick forced himself not to bring up a defensive shield, not to jab back.

“She's fine.”

Tess hesitated, perhaps deciding whether to stab at him again. “I need a shower and a few minutes to breathe and deal with this. Do you think you could run her to school for me?”

“Of course,” Nick said, turning toward the living room.

“First, though, maybe you can tell me what you're hiding.”

Nick glanced at her, saw the glint of half knowledge and full-on suspicion in her eyes, and guilt flooded through him. Frustrated, he pushed it away. Now was not the time to have this conversation—not even close to the right moment—but the part of him that still loved Tess looked at her bruised face and knew that she'd been beaten up body and soul in the past couple of days. He couldn't lie to her now.

So he told her about the plans he and Kyrie had for London.

The revelation was not well received.

 

FOUR

Tess let the water run so hot that it seared away much of her hurt and anger. As she soaped and shampooed, wincing at the pain in her face and ribs, she fantasized about ways she might kill her ex-husband and get away with it. Running him down in her car gave her a certain grim satisfaction. Then she reminded herself that Maddie would have to suffer through the tragic murder of her father and it seemed less palatable.

Stop,
she told herself.
You love him.

And she did, even still. Not that she yearned for him—that ship had sailed—but she did care deeply for her former mister. Enough to forgive him, even though she wanted to strangle him. Enough to recognize that, no matter how inconvenient his plans to move to London for a couple of years with his too-smart and too-adorable girlfriend might be, he had a right to his own life. To his pursuit of happiness.

Truth was, if Tess could get out of the way and help her daughter over the feelings of abandonment that would certainly arise from Nick's decision, Maddie would get to see London and beyond, to really experience another part of the world. It might be good for her, in the end.

She let out a feral roar in the shower and felt much better.

Turning off the shower, she squeezed excess water from her hair and slid open the door. With Maddie off to school, she had left the bathroom door open, and now the chilly air made her shiver as she reached for her towel. The beating she had taken had distracted her body from the daily pains left over from her car accident, but whenever she dried herself off after a shower, her shoulder and spine reminded her.

She glanced into the half-steamed mirror and saw that the near-scalding water had turned her brown skin into a pinkish copper, which had already begun to fade. Hot and cold both felt good, balancing out the deep ache in the places where her double had punched or kicked her, but she felt another ache that persisted. Ever since she had seen her double in Maddie's bedroom, she had felt an awful absence at her core. A loss not unlike grief. But now, at last, she sensed herself recovering. The pit remained in the center of her, but it didn't seem so deep now.

As she did after any shower, she studied the vivid pink scar tissue that stretched across the top of her left breast and curved up toward her shoulder. The tree limb that had impaled her had done a savage job of it. She knew that plastic surgeons could do wonders for her—not make the scar vanish entirely but near enough—yet somehow she wasn't ready yet. The scar felt like an outward expression of inner pain, like evidence, and she wasn't ready to erase it.

Tess lifted her eyes to confront herself in the mirror, and recoiled at the sight of her dead face. She cried out, jerked back, and whipped her head around, heart thumping hard, primal fear crashing through her.

No, no, no. This can't be.

She forced herself to look back. In her mind, she saw the death's head again. The wisps of hair and parchment skin. The empty eye socket and too-sharp, heinous yellow teeth. But now she blinked and realized the image lingered only in her mind. Steadying her breath, trying to calm her heart, she put her hands on the sink and leaned over, doing her best not to throw up. She ran cold water and splashed her face.

“Jesus,” she whispered, thinking about how deeply the fear had been planted in her mind last night.
That's all it was,
she thought. But it felt like a lie.

Tess dressed quickly, pulling on dark green pants and her favorite old sweater, a cable-knit burgundy turtleneck that had seen better days. The clothes made her feel better, and she dried and brushed her hair out into a mass of curls while she forced her thoughts away from the death mask she'd seen on her double, and thought she'd seen in the mirror. Instead, she turned her ruminations back to her ex-husband. Her marriage had died a long time ago. So why was she mourning it now?

Barefoot, feet chilly on the hardwood, she moved carefully across her bedroom, wary of mirror shards that her broom and vacuum job might have missed.
Shoes would be nice,
she chided herself, but by then she had reached her bed and she lay down and stared at the ceiling. Her ribs throbbed, but the EMT who had prodded her side during the night had not thought anything was broken, so she endured it.

Tess breathed, listening to the autumn wind outside and the rattle of the windows in their frames. She and the rest of the crew from the Otis Harrison House weren't gathering until six o'clock, which meant she had all day to do nothing but fume or be afraid or both. If she'd gone into the office, her bruised and swollen face would have elicited more questions than she felt like answering, but the others were working.

Read a book,
she thought. She did her stretching routine, relieving some of the pain in her joints but doing nothing for the bruises she'd incurred last night. It occurred to her that she should get out of the house, maybe go to the gym, but on the heels of the realization came a second one—she'd already put on very comfortable clothes. Her subconscious had no intention of going to the gym.

Instead, still trying to flush the nightmare imagery from her mind, she took her phone from the nightstand and slid under her covers. Head on her pillow, she texted Lili with the same intensity her fifteen-year-old self had used to write emo poetry in her journal back in high school.

Dickhead moving to London with spunky GF,
she tapped.
Oh and btw, intruder in the house last night. Beat the shit out of me.
Tess considered elaborating, but didn't want to put the truth in a text, didn't want to talk about doppelgängers or mention that the intruder had her face in a communication that the police might read someday. Lili would call her as soon as she saw the text and then Tess could elaborate.