Folks stayed away for a reason.
She sat and hummed tunelessly to herself and listened to the night chorus for the longest time. The girls were quiet, and when she looked in the rearview mirror, she saw their angelic little faces relaxed and calm in sleep.
I should just turn around and forget, she thought. But the truth was, if she did, if she drove on home, she’d be out here again—tomorrow, next week, next month. She knew herself too well to think she was going to change that much. The flutter in her stomach, the itch to move on . . . that was so strong now it was just unbearable. Only the driving had helped these past few weeks.
It wouldn’t help much longer.
The flash of headlights in the distance caught her by surprise, and she almost gasped. Then she sighed in relief, because it meant the waiting was done. Now she felt an upswell of excitement, of promise, of morning on the horizon.
“It’s going to be all right,” she sang to her babies. They barely shifted in their sleep. “Momma’s going to take care of everything.”
She just had to choose to be strong.
1
GWEN
It all starts so sweetly, because on Friday night, the adoption papers come through.
Sam Cade, my lover, my partner, is now officially the father of my two children, Lanny and Connor Proctor. And when the court documents arrive, we sit down with the kids, and we all eat cake and cry and hug, and there is so much love, so much, that it fills me to bursting. And the whole weekend seems wonderful. Better than ever.
But I wake up in the dark predawn hours of Monday with a pounding heart and the instant, heavy conviction that something is wrong. There’s a faint, bloody taste in the back of my throat, the residue of a nightmare that slips into fog before I can remember it.
Except for the whisper, the last soft word. Gina. My old name, dead to me now because Gina Royal, the ex of a serial killer, is a memory, a ghost. And I know that dream voice so well that I feel a rush of adrenaline flood my veins. I have to tell myself that it isn’t real, can’t be real, that my ex-husband, Melvin Royal, is dead and gone and rotting in the ground. But my body doesn’t care about logic. It just reacts to him in ways that I can’t control . . . even if he’s just a product of my haunted imagination.
I know why he’s haunting me. He doesn’t like being replaced in the lives of his children. But Melvin Royal, monster, doesn’t deserve to be remembered at all.
Burn in hell, Melvin.
I breathe until my pulse slows, the taste goes away, the adrenaline shakes subside.
Finally, I glance at the clock. It’s 4:00 a.m. I turn slightly and feel Sam’s warmth next to me; my lover isn’t getting up yet, and he’s gently snoring. Undisturbed. I try curling into him, our bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces. It ought to bring me some kind of peace, take me back to dreamland.
But I feel a restless prickle of hair at the back of my neck. The nightmare is gone, but something’s still not right. I’ve learned to pay attention to primal instincts. They’ve saved my life more than once.
I slide out of bed without waking him—or so I think, until I’m reaching for the closed bedroom door. Sam’s voice, when it comes, is completely alert. “Is it the kids?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’m just checking. Probably nothing.” I don’t want to tell him about the dream. Melvin’s a shadow that always lies between us, for good reason. And the dream has nothing to do with my current anxiety.
“Well, I probably could use a glass of water anyway,” he says in a no-big-deal tone. He’s already up, shoving feet into shoes. I’ve done it, too—reflex, always be ready to run. It’s spring, but early morning’s still chilly; I feel the cool air on my bare legs as I swing open the bedroom door.
I’m instantly disoriented. This isn’t my hallway. It’s too wide, and the carpet’s the wrong color. I feel wildly out of time and place, and then it all steadies around me. I’m remembering the old house, the one on Stillhouse Lake. We’ve moved. The lake house, currently rented out, is on the market but hopefully will sell in the next couple of months. We’re in Knoxville now. A new house. New, friendly neighbors. Good schools. Everything is fine.
Except the insistent pull at the back of my neck tells me it’s not.
Gina, Melvin’s whisper says from the back of my mind. You can run all you want. But you can never run far enough.
You’re dead, I tell him. That’s far enough.
The hallway’s dark, just night-lights along the baseboard to illuminate the way. Connor’s room is first on the right from ours; I ease his door open a crack and see that my son is not asleep. He’s sitting up, staring into the darkness. He turns, and his face is pale. “Did you hear it?” he asks me in a low whisper. He’s not my little boy anymore, except in moments like this; he’s got the growth of fifteen. I still want to take him in my arms and rock him, but I don’t. I’m starting to realize how difficult it is that even my youngest isn’t a baby anymore. That I have to let him grow up.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. Sam’s behind me in the doorway. “We’ve got this. You know the plan?”
He nods. He does. Everybody in this house knows the plan.
I close his door, and I hear him get up and throw the interior deadbolt I installed for safety. Good. Step one: delay an intruder from getting into his room. Step two: if the all clear doesn’t come within a few
