Strange but True (40 page)

Something about this thought causes Holly to get out of bed and go to her closet. It takes a few minutes of digging before she locates the shoe box in the very back, behind an old down comforter and a small mountain of heels she never wears anymore. She pulls off the top and sorts through the cassettes inside. When she spots the tape she is looking for, Holly stands and goes to the living room, where she puts it in the stereo. The instant she presses Play, a crackly recording of her voice fills the room. It is of her in Vegas at a medical convention, telling jokes about male gynecologists and their lack of proper “vagina-side manner.” Each time she blurts out a punch line, the audience erupts with laughter. But there is one laugh that rises above the others. It is an odd sound—heavy and reckless—the sort of laugh that sounds close to tears. It is Richard's laugh. Holly still remembers how sad that sound had seemed to her then, because it sounded like a man in pain, which is what he was when they first met.

Who he was then, she thinks. Who he is now.

She presses Rewind and plays that same section of the tape again, listening to Richard's uncontrolled bellow rise above the other voices in the crowd. And she begins to wonder if she should have been more sympathetic about his sudden need to return to Pennsylvania. Finally, Holly presses Stop and steps out onto the terrace, where she gazes up at the moon above the ocean. She is not one to pray, but she finds herself saying a silent prayer just then, not just for Richard's happiness, but for Philip's too. And then, despite herself, she even says a few words for Charlene.

Back again—past all those state lines and exit signs and along those miles of highway and beyond those rest stops, where still more weak coffee is being made and bathrooms are being scrubbed, off one exit ramp, then another, then another, past the rows of suburban homes—to the tangle of wooded streets on the far side of town in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Back again to the three small houses on Monk's Hill Road. Inside the largest of the three, Bill Erwin is pacing the rotting floor in his dimly lit living room.

Over and over, he mumbles the question to himself, “What do I do now? What do I do now? What do I do now?”

He has been asking this question for hours, though no answer has come. Beneath him, the basement is quiet. There are no more noises down there tonight. He made sure of it. What's more, he made sure to get the keys to that old Mercedes then pull it down a nearby dead end and off into the woods so the vehicle is hidden from view. While taking care of this necessary precaution, he found a yellow registration slip on the passenger seat, which indicated that the car belonged to Charlene Chase of 12 Turnber Lane. He knows the last name from his many conversations with Melissa about the boy who died in the accident. So he can only assume that the young man who'd been visiting her earlier, the one he dragged down into the basement when he caught him outside, must be the boy's brother. This detail makes him realize yet again that there is no turning back from what he has done. This is not like the other times. Those girls were all anonymous—a hitchhiker he picked up on I-95, a woman he met on a fishing trip, a teenage runaway outside of a bar in Philly.

This time is different, because he has harmed his wife and a friend of Melissa's.

This time is different, because they can be traced back to him.

Sooner or later, Bill knows that someone will begin to wonder what happened to Gail and that young man. When that happens, all signs will point to him, and eventually to that third house in the back. That's why he needs to figure out what to do next. For the time being, though, all he can do is pace and mumble. He walks from one window to another, checking and rechecking to make sure no one else is out there. And when he goes to the bedroom window and peers out at Melissa's house, Bill sees a dull light shining through her plaid curtains. He wonders what she is doing up at this time of night.

What he cannot see, of course, is that behind those flimsy curtains, Melissa is wiping up the sudden rush of water that burst forth from her body. Ever since Philip left the house tonight, her contractions have grown stronger and more frequent. Almost all of the psychics Melissa visited these past nine months told her that she would not have the baby until after the full moon. So she did nothing more than lie on the sofa and wait for them to pass. But now that it has come to this, Melissa knows there is no more waiting. She must get herself to a hospital. First, she goes to the bookshelf and pulls out the book on pregnancy that Gail bought for her as a gift. Her hands flip the pages until she finds the section on labor. She reads that contractions can last up to an average of twelve hours for a first pregnancy, but once the water breaks, things begin to move more quickly. If she thinks back, Melissa suspects that she felt her very first contraction last night while driving home from the Chases' house. She also felt them while she slept on the sofa, and this morning when she woke to find that horrible letter.

Melissa closes the book and takes one last look around her cottage before going to the door. When she pulls it open and steps into the night, the chilly winter air pours over her burning skin. Halfway to the car, another contraction seizes her. Melissa stops to grip her stomach. After the feeling passes, she turns to look at the Erwins' place. For a brief moment, she considers asking Gail and Bill to drive her, as they had offered to do so many times. But the confusion she feels over that eviction letter this morning makes her decide against it. She continues walking to the car and gets inside.

As Melissa navigates the windy roads toward Bryn Mawr Hospital, she tries to calm herself by conjuring the memory of Ronnie's face, though her thoughts keep drifting to Mr. Erwin instead. She thinks of the way he came to her house tonight after he heard Philip yelling.
No matter what miracle you think has happened with this pregnancy, the fact is he is dead. Ronnie is dead
… The memory seems to bring on another contraction, sharper and more painful than any of the previous. Melissa takes her foot off the gas and pulls to the side of the road. She pauses there, unable to think about anything but the pain, as she waits for the feeling to subside. When it does, her mind gravitates back to the memory of Mr. Erwin standing inside her small house earlier this evening. She thinks of his gold Timex watch ticking on his thick wrist. She thinks of the way his John Deere cap caused a dark shadow to fall over his eyes. She thinks of his gaze roaming the room. None of this was so terribly unusual, but Melissa's mind stays locked on the memory anyway.

Finally, Melissa takes a few deep breaths before continuing on. Traveling this way takes longer than it normally would. With all her starting and stopping, thirty minutes pass before she turns into the parking lot of the hospital. Rather than search for a spot, Melissa pulls in front of the Emergency Room, swings open the door, and gets out.

“Ma'am, you can't leave your car there,” a parking attendant shouts at her.

Melissa ignores him and keeps walking. The double doors open automatically and she makes her way to the front desk, one hand pressed to her stomach, the other on her lower back, where she feels most of the pain now. When the petite woman with razor-thin lips and teardrop glasses looks up from behind the desk, her eyes go wide at the sight of Melissa's disfigured face. Then she looks away the way everyone does—everyone but Ronnie's father. And Bill Erwin, Melissa thinks as another contraction comes over her.

“Help me,” she says, wincing from the pain. “I'm about to have a baby.”

As the nurses gather around Melissa, the sky outside the hospital turns from black to gray to blue. The moon and the stars fade away. Very soon, sunlight breaks over the bare treetops. Exactly fourteen miles from the same hospital where Richard Chase once spent most of his days, he is waking to the sound of Charlene calling his name. He squints his eyes and sees her standing at the foot of the sofa bed, wearing a threadbare nightgown with a terry cloth robe pulled over the front to keep it from being completely obscene. “What is it?” he asks.

Charlene holds her cell phone in the air. “I finally figured this out.”

“Figured what out?”

“How to retrieve my messages.”

He rolls over on his side and rubs his neck, wondering how he managed to sleep through the night fully dressed and in such an uncomfortable position. “So?”

“So Philip left me two messages yesterday afternoon.” She presses a button, then thrusts the phone out to him. Richard puts it to his ear and hears Philip's voice say, “M. It's me. I don't know how you even found out where Melissa lives. But please don't drive over there and rail on her about last night. Call me back when you get this. Or better yet, just come home.”

“Who is M?” Richard asks when the message is through.

“That's what Philip calls me now.”

“Why?”

Charlene shrugs. “I guess it's short for
Mother.”
She tells him that there's another message as well saying basically the same thing—that she shouldn't go to Melissa's house. “It made me realize that he might have gone there to get me, not knowing that I was at her parents' house instead.”

“But why wouldn't he come back?”

“I don't know,” Charlene says. “But I never asked her parents where she lives, and she's not listed with Information. I just tried again. I also tried the police to make sure there were no accidents reported last night.”

“And?”

“None.”

Richard thinks back to the day Melissa took him to see the cottage where she wanted to live. He kept telling her that she could find something bigger and nicer, but she liked the place. She also liked the old couple who owned it. “Thirty-two Monk's Hill Road,” he says to Charlene.

“What?”

“That's where Melissa lives.”

“How do you—” She stops, and Richard figures that she is remembering the detail of the money he had given Melissa. Her parents may not have told Charlene the address, but he can only assume they shared that detail. “Never mind,” is all she says. “I'm going over there.”

He stares at the clock, still stopped at five-thirty, then looks at his watch. “It is barely seven. Don't you think it's a little early?”

She pulls her robe tighter around the front of her body, then ties the floppy belt attached to the sides. “I don't care how early it is. I want to find out if he was there. Who knows? Maybe he still is.”

“But you said yourself that last time he left without any warning. Maybe that's the case again. It seems more likely that he's in New York right now instead of sleeping over at Melissa Moody's house.”

Charlene looks down at that Anne Sexton book on the bed, then at Philip's unzipped duffel bag. Richard's eyes follow, and he sees that she is staring at the stack of papers inside. “No,” she says in a quiet voice. “I don't think he would have left his things behind this time. Now tell me where Monkey Hill Road is. I've never heard of it.”

“That's because it's
Monk's
Hill Road,” Richard says as he gets out of bed, rubbing his stiff neck again. “And I may as well go with you.”

Much to his surprise, Charlene agrees without a word of protest. She even goes so far as to retrieve an old suede coat of his from the hall closet. It is one he'd forgotten about until now, and the material reeks of mothballs. Since his windbreaker is useless in this weather, it will have to do.

“I'm surprised you didn't burn it,” Richard says.

“Me too,” Charlene tells him as she goes upstairs to change.

After he uses the bathroom and she comes back down bundled in a baggy wool sweater and thick black pants, they make their way to the garage, where Charlene's car juts outside, a detail he noticed when he arrived last night, though he was too preoccupied to focus on it. When he inquires about it now, Charlene tells him that she left the car there when she saw that Philip had taken Ronnie's Mercedes.

“You let Philip drive with his leg in a cast?” Richard asks, then he blurts another question before she has time to answer the first. “And you still have that car?”

“I didn't
let
Philip do anything,” she says. “And of course I still have that car. What, you expected me to get rid of all my memories of Ronnie?”

“That's not what I was suggesting,” Richard says and opens the passenger door, letting the conversation die because he doesn't want to argue.

He is about to sit down when he spots a strip of tangled film beside a book of Robert Frost's poetry. Charlene reaches over and makes room for him, then starts the engine as he gets inside. Out on the road, Richard tells her the most direct route to Melissa's house. Then he takes to staring out the window, remembering so many of the winter mornings like this one that he spent driving the short distance to the hospital. As they pass a stretch of land that was once woods but is now a development of homes even larger than the ones on Turnber Lane, Richard takes a stab at normal conversation. “When did they put up those monstrosities?”

Charlene keeps her eyes on the upcoming intersection. “A few years ago. Tell me again. Do I turn right or left here?”

“Right,” Richard says. “Build. Build. Build. They won't stop until there's nothing left.”

“I guess not,” is all she says.

That seems to be the end of the discussion, and Richard decides to leave it at that. He should be grateful, after all, seeing as it is probably the most civil one they've had in years. But then Charlene surprises him by speaking up again. “Remember when we first came to Radnor to look for a house?”

“I remember.”

“This town was so different back then.” She looks briefly out her side window, as though seeing what it once was, which was more woods and far fewer homes, instead of the overdeveloped area it has become. “The place used to seem so much more quaint.”