Shadow Creek (23 page)

“Who says I hate her?”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not. She’s my mother. I love her.”

“Then why are you so mean to her?”

“I’m not mean to her.”

“Are too,” James said.

“Am not,” Brianne insisted.

They both laughed.

“You’re such a cliché.”

“Ditto.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Brianne announced again.

“I’ll go with you.”

“What? Why?”

“Why?” James repeated.

“You went the last time I did,” Brianne said.

“Maybe you’re not the only one with a small bladder.”

“Does that mean you’re going to go to the bathroom every time I do?”

“It might.”

“That’s just ridiculous. Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I don’t trust you.” He sounded amazed she would even ask the question. Somehow, Brianne thought, he even managed to make his distrust sound endearing. “But it’s also dark out there, there are wild animals hovering, and I would think you’d be glad for the company.”

“Then you would think wrong.”

“I could protect you against anything … untoward,” James said.

“Untoward?”

“Unexpected. Unwanted. Unfavorable. Unfortunate.”

“Unbelievable,” Brianne said with a shake of her head.

“I know kung fu.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I had to learn it for a musical I did some years back.
High Jinks and High Kicks
, it was called. Unfortunately, it closed in previews. Too bad. I was really very good at it.”

“You’re going to high-kick a bear?” Brianne asked.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you.”

“What if I don’t need protecting?”

“Everyone needs protecting.”

“No,” Brianne argued. “What everyone needs is sleep. Now, climb inside that bag. I’ll be right back.”

“Is there some reason you don’t want me to accompany you?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“You think I’m going to sneak off and meet my boyfriend?” Brianne asked, growing bored with the conversation and beginning to get the uncomfortable feeling that this evening might not go exactly as planned.

“Are you?”

“How could I? Tyler doesn’t even know where I am.”

“Your mother’s right about him, you know,” James said.

“What do you mean? How could she be right about him when she doesn’t even know him? And neither do you.”

“I know he’s too old for you.”

“Maybe I’m more mature than you think.”

“You peed your pants until you were seven,” he reminded her.

“I told you that in confidence,” Brianne said, bristling. “Now you’re using it against me?”

“I’m sorry. I was just trying to be clever.”

“Well, you aren’t clever. You aren’t clever at all. Maybe Jennifer is right. Maybe you’re just … 
Toto
.” Brianne angrily pushed her way out of the sleeping bag that was gathered in folds around her waist, then opened the front flap in the tent
and breathed in a big gulp of night air. “When did you become so, so … uncool?” she said, spitting the words back at him as she crawled outside.

Seconds later, she was stomping toward the portable toilets at the far end of the camp.

She didn’t have to turn around to know that James was right behind her.

JENNIFER HEARD BRIANNE and James arguing in the tent next to hers and wondered if she should do anything to intervene. I think you’ve said quite enough, a little voice told her, advising her to stay where she was. The angry words grew louder, then came to a sudden halt. The ensuing seconds of silence were immediately followed by two sets of footsteps clomping past her tent toward the far end of the camp. She burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag and shivered, even though she’d put on an extra sweater. She wondered what Evan was doing, if his meetings had finally ended, and if he’d been successful, if he was at this very moment lying in their bed, missing her as much as she was missing him.

Or maybe it was Val he was missing, she wondered, too tired to push the troublesome thought away.

Truthfully, it wouldn’t come as all that big a shock to learn he still had feelings for his wife. He’d pretty much admitted as much already. “Of course I still have feelings for her,” he’d told her one night after too many drinks had made her both bold and stupid enough to ask. “We were together a long time. I wasn’t always the best husband,” he’d added, almost wistfully.

You were a lousy husband, Jennifer thought now, although she’d been quick to put all the blame on Val at the time.

It doesn’t bode well
, she heard her father say.

Go away, Daddy, she thought. This tent isn’t big enough for all of us.

Except he was already before her, food stains dotting his wrinkled clothes, his thinning hair uncombed and in need of a wash, visible scabs forming on his too-pink scalp, staring accusingly in her direction. She wondered if Cameron had bothered checking in on him, and if she had, if she’d stayed more than a few minutes. Had her sister made sure he’d had something to eat? Had she taken him for a drive in her new car? Or had she just sat with him and commiserated about his younger daughter’s selfishness?

Shit, Jennifer thought, hearing Brianne and James return to their tent and thinking she should probably go out there and apologize to James again. None of this was his fault after all. But then, absolutely nothing about this weekend was the way it was supposed to be.

Was it possible Val actually enjoyed this type of thing? Or had she just gone along with it because it was something Evan enjoyed? And wouldn’t she be doing exactly that, if Evan were here?

Except he wasn’t here, Jennifer thought, sparing herself the danger of further self-examination. If Evan were here, everything would be completely different. None of this would be happening.

Damn it, she thought, feeling the walls of the tent closing in on her as her father’s disapproving gaze fell across her face like a suffocating pillow. It doesn’t bode well.

AN HOUR LATER, emboldened by the sound of James’s steady breathing, Brianne climbed out of her sleeping bag and crept through the front flap of the tent.

“Hi,” Jennifer’s voice greeted her as she emerged.

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Brianne, dropping to her knees, her heart beating so fast it threatened to burst from her chest. What the hell was Jennifer doing out here at this hour? Now what was she supposed to do?

“Sorry. Did I frighten you?”

“What do you think?” Brianne asked, her brain going,
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
“What are you doing out here?”

“I couldn’t sleep. The tent’s very claustrophobic, don’t you find?”

Brianne shrugged. She’d never had a problem with tight spaces.

“I don’t like anywhere where I can’t stand up,” Jennifer said, continuing. “I’m pretty good in places where I don’t have to crouch. Like elevators. I don’t have a problem with elevators. I even got stuck in one once. In New York. Between the thirty-second and thirty-third floor of William Morris Endeavor on Avenue of the Americas. You know the building?” she asked, plowing right on before Brianne could answer, tell Jennifer that not only did she not know the building, but that she wasn’t the least bit interested in either it or Jennifer’s story. “Well, I had a meeting there one day. It was just after the merger, and they were thinking of launching a campaign … anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

It certainly doesn’t, Brianne thought.

“And so I’m in this elevator with about half a dozen other people, and everything’s fine. Three people get off. A few others get on. And suddenly the damn thing lurches and comes to a stop. And there we are … stuck. Four of us. In this old elevator. And we’re there for almost an hour. And this one guy is freaking out. I mean, he’s sweating and hollering and carrying on. ‘Let me out of here. Let me out of here.’ And we manage
to get him calmed down, but it’s hot in there, because it’s summer, and the air-conditioning isn’t working now, either, and the other people in the elevator are starting to get a little upset. And I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.”

“Amazing,” Brianne deadpanned.

Jennifer nodded her agreement. “And yet, put me somewhere where I can’t stand up, like a cave or something. Or like this stupid tent,” she said, slapping at it with her hand, her voice trailing off. “I didn’t realize tents were so confining. Did you?”

“It’s a tent,” Brianne said, as if this were explanation enough.

“I saw this movie once. It was about some girl who was being held prisoner in an underground cave, and in order to escape, she had to crawl through this long tunnel. And every so often, she’d come to a little space where she could just manage to sit up, but that was all, she couldn’t stand up straight, and then she’d have to start crawling some more, and I just freaked. I had to leave the theater. Just shoot me now, I said to myself.”

With pleasure, Brianne thought, glancing at her watch. In twenty more minutes, it would be midnight.

“Or like in the days of the Roman Empire …”

“Whoa!” Brianne said, stopping her. “I get it. You don’t like places where you can’t stand up.”

“When my mother was sick,” Jennifer said, either oblivious to Brianne’s indifference or ignoring it, “she had to have an MRI. You know what that is?”

Brianne nodded. She’d seen enough reruns of
ER
and
House
to be able to operate the damn machines herself.

“Well, my mother had to have one. And, you know, they put you through this tube …”

“I know.”

“And there she was, lying on that skinny table, about to be swallowed up by that awful thing, and I’d think …”

“… Just shoot me,” Brianne said.

“I’d think, she must be so scared.” Tears suddenly spilled from Jennifer’s eyes and down her cheeks. “Being so trapped, being so helpless, knowing she was going to die, knowing there was nothing she could do about it.”

Brianne sat very still for several more seconds, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now. She had less than twenty minutes to meet Tyler at the camp’s entrance and here she was, stuck with Little Miss Doom and Gloom. “Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed our little talk,” she said, reaching back and reopening the flap to her tent, “I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep now.”

“I’m sorry. Weren’t you on your way to the johns?”

“Lost the urge.” Brianne was already halfway back inside the tent. “It’s getting pretty chilly out here. Don’t you think you should at least try to get some sleep?”

“Don’t think I can.”

“I think you should try. Maybe if you closed your eyes, you’d forget about your phobias.”

Jennifer didn’t move. “I read somewhere that all phobias are really just a fear of death.”

“Sounds logical.” Brianne crawled back inside her tent and into her sleeping bag, then lay in the dark with her eyes wide open. Just shoot me, she thought.

T
HE GIRL SAT UP in the too-soft bed and looked toward the window. Okay, so where is he? she wondered, checking the clock on the end table beside the bed, and noting that it was almost 2
A.M
. She was starting to worry. He should have been back by now. How long did it take to dispose of a body?

Her mind raced through the night’s events: the lateness of his arrival; the look of relief on his face when he saw that she wasn’t mad—“I got interrupted,” was all the explanation he’d offered; the unfamiliar clothes he was wearing, and how he’d kept them on even as he was pulling off her jeans and pushing his way into her, first on a blanket of cold, damp leaves, then back here in the Laufers’ cottage, in their unwitting hosts’ too-soft bed. Lovingly, she retraced the bloody imprint his hand
had left on her breast and smiled at the memory of the taste of fresh blood on his lips.

Whose blood? she’d wondered. But she hadn’t asked.

He’d killed again, she knew that for certain, and she felt a stab of jealousy that she hadn’t been there with him, a flash of anger that he hadn’t waited for her, but she also knew better than to call him on it or question him. He didn’t like to be questioned.

There was a reason for everything. He’d tell her all about it when the time was right. “Later,” was all he’d said to the question mark in her eyes. That single word—overflowing with promise and intrigue—had excited her all the more. And then, after he’d taken her a third time—this time from behind, riding her as if she were a bucking bronco—he’d announced that he had to go out again.

“I’ll go with you,” she’d said immediately.

“No. Stay here,” he’d told her. “I have some cleaning up to do. You hate that. I’ll be back soon.”

So where was he? What was taking him so long? Had something happened to him?

She climbed out of bed, pushing the uncomfortable thought from her mind. She would simply not entertain such a horrifying possibility. If anything
had
happened to him, if he’d been captured by the police or, God forbid, injured in any way, she didn’t know what she would do. She loved him so much, she simply wouldn’t want to live without him. “There is no me without you,” she said out loud. Catherine … Veronica … Nikki—they would all cease to exist.

Did he feel the same way about her?

She wasn’t sure.

Which was when she was seized by another uncomfortable thought: that he might be with someone else.

The very idea of him with another girl made her feel sick to her stomach and she flipped on the overhead light to wipe out the image, watching the bedroom come into sharp focus. “Ugh,” she said, her eyes skipping across the yellowing lace doily on top of the dark oak dresser, then continuing over to the matching lace curtains draping the large, rectangular window. Old people’s stuff. Although she’d rather enjoyed the Percodan she’d found in their medicine cabinet, she thought, popping another one into her mouth in an effort to still her growing anxiety.

On top of the doily sat an ornate, silver-framed photograph of the people she’d helped slaughter. The Laufers smiled back at her pleasantly, innocent to the fate that awaited them at her hands, as she lifted their picture closer to her eyes. Why is it that all old people look alike? she found herself wondering, without pity or remorse. Interchangeable faces. Interchangeable lives.