‘Who says it was a lie?’ Her voice was cold.
A child’s natural desire to please struggled to the surface, and it was an effort for Erin not to back down. After her father died, she’d had little choice but to seek comfort from her sole remaining parent, despite Vivien’s deficiencies in that regard. When Aunt Olivia rescued her from Danfield, she used to say that children were wasted on her sister, that Vivien didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.
But a clingy, anxious child must have been suffocating for someone with Vivien’s restless nature. Ever seeking opportunities to display her charms, she liked to go out on the town at night. But rather than pay for a sitter, Vivien chose the more expedient solution of spiking Erin’s bedtime glass of milk. What harm could it do? Curled up on the mattress, fighting sleep, Erin would tremble with fear in the empty house, with its dark rooms and strange noises.
But Vivien rarely stayed out past midnight. How would it look if the neighbours saw her, sneaking home at dawn. A woman raising two children on her own. As a widow, grieving the loss of her husband, she had her reputation to protect. But any relief Erin felt when she heard Vivien coming through the kitchen door was swiftly replaced by a mounting dread. Terrified of falling foul of Vivien’s moods, when anything might happen. A cigarette burn on the arm. Her head snapped back by a swift yank of hair. The glint of the sewing shears. Snip, snip. Easy to commit, easy to deny.
Vivien stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Twenty years without a word, and you’ve come here to ask me about an old lover?’
‘I heard you come into the house that night,’ Erin said. ‘Just before two.’
‘So?’
‘Why lie to the police about spending all night in Portland. After Tim was arrested, Stern was no longer a suspect.’
‘He asked me to,’ Vivien replied, fiddling with her rings. She lit another cigarette. ‘It’s always the husband, isn’t it? Until they found Tim’s son, he was the prime suspect. I was in love with him, or thought I was. So it was only natural for me to protect him. And what of it? It’s ancient history now.’ Her voice had gone flat. ‘After they found the son, covered in blood, it didn’t matter what I told the police.’
Erin fixed her eyes on Vivien’s face, hoping to unsettle her by refusing to back down. ‘If it didn’t matter, then why the need, two years later, to have me locked up?’
Vivien’s mouth was a thin line.
‘You were afraid I’d give you away,’ she continued. ‘When you came home so late that night, I pretended to be asleep, but you weren’t fooled. And it must have worried you that I might mention it to someone, a teacher or a friend. Or Aunt Olivia.’ She studied the grim mouth. ‘That could have been dangerous for you, or your lover, if it ever came out.’
Vivien’s eyes were like slits. ‘Why all the questions? Or is this an excuse to come crawling back to your family.’ She looked pointedly at Erin’s left hand. ‘No husband, I see. Poor Mimi, all alone.’ She stood and turned to the fireplace, where she straightened a picture on the mantel. ‘You think you know everything, but it wasn’t easy for me, after your father died, raising two children on my own.’ She checked her face in the mirror. ‘Such a wild imagination you always had, but sending you to Danfield was for your own good. What else could I do? You were crazy as a loon.’
Her eyes had grown misty, but Erin wasn’t fooled. She was no stranger to crocodile tears.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ Vivien said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘You were babbling to yourself and sleepwalking at night. And those strange incantations you used to chant before entering the house. Holding funerals for the dead birds in the yard. Communing with spiders, for heaven’s sake. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be living under a bridge now. If not dead.’
Communing with spiders? Erin bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. ‘There was nothing wrong with me,’ she said, looking Vivien in the eye. ‘The truth is, you sacrificed your child to save your own skin.’
They stared at each other across the distance. In spite of what Erin had endured, it was worse for Vivien, she supposed, who had to live with what she’d done. And to find new ways, as the years passed, to paper over the cracks in her life. But let her live with her delusions. Whatever Vivien told herself, she had been incapable of giving Erin the love and nurturing she needed. Blood from a stone.
It was time to go. Erin stood and walked to the door. In the hall, a floorboard creaked, the old house settling around its sole remaining occupant, living out her days alone.
Before stepping into her car, she glanced back at the house to see Vivien standing at the window, motionless as a department store mannequin.
Lucky for you, Erin mused, that we’re not bound forever to the orbit of the earth. Perhaps in her next life, Vivien would have the chance to try again.
As Erin drove away, the weight pressing on her chest faded to nothing. Not only had she faced Vivien and survived, she’d got the information she came for. One more piece of the puzzle slotted into place. With Vivien’s confession about lying to the police, another detail had come into focus. Stern not only lied about his alibi, but there were eight hours he couldn’t account for. And if he wasn’t with Vivien in Portland, he could have been anywhere. Even Belle River.
43
New York–Vermont Border
August 1977
He opens his eyes to a shaft of sunlight, stabbing through the canopy of trees. The ground under his cheek smells of leaf litter, mouldy and damp. Pine needles
