Money and the things he thought it could give him-not possessions necessarily, but freedom, ease of living, a certain power he’d lacked all his life-obsessed him. That’s how he could risk the small amount they had in the hope of making more, that’s how he could blackmail us not just for the money to pay off his gambling debts but a hundred thousand dollars besides. And Gray had paid it-paid it without a word, because he loved me that much, because he wanted to protect me.
“You need to make it right, Ray,” Sarah said.
“How? How do I make it right?” he asked. He reached for her, but she moved away from him. She shifted over to the corner of their modular unit and sat there with her arms wrapped around herself in a protective hug.
“You can start by paying him back everything you didn’t give the bookie and making a plan to pay back the rest,” she said gently.
The thought filled him with dread. He couldn’t stand the idea that their savings account would be empty, that they’d go back to living paycheck to paycheck. That he’d always be worried about the next time the car broke down or the refrigerator started to leak. He wasn’t sure he could do it.
“Sarah…” he started, but found he couldn’t finish.
“Find a way to make things right, Ray.” She didn’t issue any threats or ultimatums; she didn’t ask him to leave the house. But he heard in her tone what she never said: Find a way to make things right, Ray, or I won’t ever be able to look at you the same way again.
She must have seen the despair on his face, because she moved back over to him and placed a hand on his leg. He couldn’t even look at her.
“Everybody makes mistakes, Ray,” she said, her voice very low and gentle. He’d heard her talk to the baby in this tone. “Everybody stumbles. It’s what you do
He left the room then. She called after him quietly, but he kept walking. He walked out onto his back porch and gazed up at the sky. He didn’t want to be in the same room with her. He couldn’t stand for her to see him cry.
“What’s going on?” Harrison was snapped back to the present by Ella’s voice. She stood in the open doorway looking different somehow, a little angry maybe. She looked fit and strong dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. She didn’t seem primped and coiffed in the usual way. He found himself staring at her, trying to figure out why she looked so different. She frowned at him and then walked over to Esperanza.
“Where’s Gray?” Ella said, taking her by the shoulders.
“Gone,” Esperanza said, starting to weep again. Ella embraced her. “I don’t know where.”
Ella glanced back over at Harrison. “What’s he doing here?”
“This is none of your business, Mrs. Singer. Go home,” he said.
She gave him a dark look, released Esperanza, and walked over to him, got in his face. “Don’t tell me that. First Annie disappears. Then Drew and Vivian take off with Victory. There’s a memorial service-pretty premature, if you ask me. The woman’s only been missing two weeks. Now Gray’s gone. Someone needs to tell me what’s going on. It is my business. These people are my friends.”
“Go home, Mrs. Singer,” he said again, walking over toward the door and holding it open for her. He saw color rise on her neck and cheeks, but she didn’t move.
“I can get you into his office upstairs,” she said after a beat. “Maybe you’ll find some of the answers you’re looking for up there.”
He remembered the door with the keypad lock from his previous visits. “You know the code,” he said, not even bothering to keep the skepticism out of his voice.
She nodded. “Ophelia let it slip.”
“She let it slip?” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Seems unlikely.”
“Maybe she just got a little careless around her friends,” she said with a shrug.
He didn’t quite believe her, but he was out of luck and out of time.
“Okay, so what is it?”
“You tell me what’s happening and I’ll tell you the code.”
He released a sigh and rolled his eyes. “You’re not helping her by slowing me down. You know that.”
“Just tell me.”
He was desperate enough to do it. He told her everything he knew, starting with my fake identity and my history with Marlowe Geary and ending with Alan Parker and Grief Intervention Services.
“You think she’s alive?”
“I do. And I think she needs some help. I just don’t know how to give it to her.”
Ella gave him a nod; he thought she looked a little sad. “It’s VICTORY, with a five for the
He took the stairs to the office with Ella right behind him and punched in the code. The door unlocked, and he pushed it open. The room was dark, and when he stepped inside, he realized something that caused his stomach to bottom out.
“You called her Ophelia,” he said, turning around.
“Sorry, Detective Harrison, nothing personal. You should have taken your money and disappeared.”
She held something in her hand that he didn’t recognize until the prongs shot into his body and electricity started to rocket through him. A horrific scream escaped him; he barely recognized it as his own voice. The room around him spiraled as the pain seemed to ratchet higher and higher until he could hardly form a thought in his mind. Before everything went black, he remembered his wife coming up behind him on the porch and wrapping her arms around him as he wept. He remembered feeling a terrible mingling of deep shame in himself, gratitude for her love, and the fervent hope that he could be worthy of her again.
“You can fix this, Ray,” she said, squeezing hard. “I know you can.”
I drive up beside the old gate that blocks the drive to the horse farm. I am a wreck, sweating with fear and the urgency to do what Parker wants me to do-even though I’m not totally sure what that is. I pull the car over onto the shoulder near the thick tree cover. When I turn off the engine, I am swallowed by the sounds of the Florida night. The property is a huge yawning darkness, and for a second I don’t think I can bring myself to enter. But of course I have to go. My daughter needs me. It is that thought that impels me from the car and brings me to the locked gate.
The lock seems old and rusted through, as though it hasn’t been used in years. This can’t be so, I know that. I pick up a rock and start banging on it hard, hoping it will fall to pieces as it would in the movies. But I can’t get it open. I’ll have to leave my car on the road and go around the gate, which is suitable only to keep vehicles from moving up the drive and not really designed to keep out intruders.
The thought of walking that long, dark road alone is almost too much. I remember the gun then and return to the car for it. I open the glove box and find a.38 Special, just your standard revolver. It’ll do. With the gun heavy in my hand, I feel slightly better, not like a girl afraid of the dark. I feel like what I need to be: a woman intent on doing whatever it is she must to protect her child or die trying.
I walk around the gate and begin heading toward the horse farm. The last time I walked this road, I was seventeen years old with nothing to lose. What I wouldn’t give now for some of the empty numbness I felt that night, that ignorance of consequences.
I am washed over by memory as I make the trek. I remember Janet Parker’s car gliding past me in the dark. I remember the clicking of its cooling engine when I saw it a while later. I remember the smell of smoke, the percussion of the gunshot. I see the halo of blond hair soaked in blood, the first time I knew Marlowe was a killer. I hear his confessions beneath the New Mexico sky. Suddenly I am thinking of Gray.
I never saw Briggs again after he made his offer that night in the motel room-or if I did, I don’t remember. I don’t think there was time for me to do what he asked. I think it was just another night or maybe two before Gray caught up with us. All I recall is suddenly seeing this mammoth form in the doorway of yet another miserable motel. I’d seen him before, I knew that much. But for some reason a deep relief mingled with my fear when I saw him standing there. He strode into the room, and it was a second before I saw the needle in his hand.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, jabbing the needle into my arm. I don’t think I even struggled. “Your father sent me for you.”
