Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
I crossed the driveway with my small duffel bag and knocked on the splintered door.
A chair inside creaked, then I heard the clunk of a recliner folding shut.
The door opened and Gustus stood before me.
He had the type of body that could block out the sun.
He didn’t strike me as someone who had done the appropriate stretches in his youth to combat the inevitable breakdown of his super-long bones.
“Can I help you?” he asked, and I was relieved he didn’t recognize me. He could have been acting, lying, covering up his mastermind psychotic murder plot against my loved ones, but the waistband of his Fruit of the Looms was sticking out from his jean shorts and I really had to let this suspect go.
“Is Reanne home?” I asked.
“And who are you?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe.
“A friend. Carol Griffin.” Carol was a lady who’d worked with my mom at Kmart a million years ago.
She’d had a bunch of kids to feed and was always eager to take shifts from Reanne when my mother was sick or destroying evidence or being cleansed by my father.
When Abel was in one of his moods he would calmly tell my mother, “Better call Carol.” Reanne would understand the reference.
“Hold on,” Gustus said, and disappeared into the house.
I turned back toward the street. A neighbor was installing an air-conditioning unit in a downstairs window. Farther down I could hear a ball bouncing against the pavement. A car full of teenagers passed by. I didn’t see any stalkers.
The door reopened and I whipped back around to face my mother.
She took the appropriate seconds to register it was me and not hardworking Carol. She knew how to proceed. She was intuitive and prison-smart. “Carol,” she said. “It’s great to see you.”
“Sorry to drop in on you like this, but there’s a burst pipe in my apartment and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was hoping I could stay for a couple of days.”
“Of course.” Reanne smiled.
I lunged forward and threw my arms around my mother.
It was a manufactured display of affection, trumpeted on the doorstep for my stalker, but it didn’t make the physical contact any less real.
I was enveloped by the deep stench of cigarettes in her hair and she hesitated a fraction of a second before wrapping her arms around my waist.
I loosened my grip and she separated from me, backing up to allow me inside the house. I stepped through the doorway knowing exactly what I was doing.
I stood on the edge of the living room, designed out of necessity rather than taste—mismatched furniture, stained carpet, a television six or seven versions behind the latest model.
Gustus lowered himself back into a ragged recliner.
If he was suspicious of who Carol was or how she knew Reanne, he wasn’t going to say it.
“Baby,” my mother addressed her husband, “why don’t you go see your brother about the car so Carol and I can catch up?”
Gustus considered it, then leveraged himself against the armrests and back out of the chair.
“How about a compromise? I’ll go catch the end of the game at O’Brien’s.
” He walked toward her, stopping to lean down and kiss her on the top of the head.
It was kind of sweet. My mother’s superpower was clearly getting awful men to love her unconditionally.
The door slammed shut behind Gustus and we were alone.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Reanne offered.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I’m surprised to see you,” she said. “Is something the matter?”
“Yeah.” I rested my bag on the tattered couch. “There’s a burst pipe at my apartment.” I repeated it with a bit of attitude toward her for not believing it the first time…even though it was a lie.
“Damn shame. Well, you can stay here as long as you’d like. And you don’t have to worry about Gustus. He’ll keep out of your business.”
I took a seat, sinking into the couch. I was here, in the house, feigning a relationship with my mother. That was the plan; the rest was irrelevant. She sat down on the edge of Gustus’s recliner, resting her hands in front of her and waiting for me to say something.
“You seem happy,” I said.
She smiled in the affirmative. “I know it’s not going to be all butterflies and rainbows, but it’s good to be out.”
“I’m sure.”
“Tell me about you. I’ve missed everything.” She scooted toward me.
“Someone cut off James Calhoun’s arm,” I blurted out, and she ceased trying to enter my space. “Probably killed him. Do you remember him?”
“I heard that,” she said, shifting her body language back to what I was comfortable with.
“And the other guy, Oswald Shields. You knew him too.”
“What’s going on, Marin?”
She’d called me Marin again. Just like that. Out loud and so natural in conversation.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But be careful. Lock your doors and don’t be stupid.
” I was actively trying to put her in the crosshairs of my stalker, but I guess I did feel guilty about it.
Seeing her face, even though it looked like it had been soaked in a corrosive substance for the past eighteen years, I saw my childhood and I saw my family and I saw the last time I had belonged to anything.
Maybe if I warned her, she would be ready and hit the asshole in the throat with a shovel or something. That was really the best-case scenario.
“Do you know who did it?” she asked, the casual delivery of her question reminding me that my family was different.
I shook my head. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I shrugged. “It is what it is.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry that I’m your mother.” Her head dropped and she broke down a bit. “I should never have had you.”
I knew that, but I could have lived without hearing it. There was an uncomfortable silence as I saw her wheels turning, trying to make sense of her old life.
“I was in love with your father,” she continued. “So in love, and I did horrible things. I bought into it. I believed he saw something the rest of us couldn’t…and he wanted a child.”
“That must have been a relief, then, once you got to sign away your rights to me.” It was bratty of me to say, but c’mon.
“No, it wasn’t like that. It was very hard. But I was going away for a long time and…”
“And he told you to do it.”
She sighed. “Do you think you can ever forgive me?”
She was trying to be the better person I was sure she had told herself she would be once she got out. Living in the postprison honeymoon phase, she still believed she had changed; I didn’t buy it. “Probably not,” I said.
Her face contorted; she wasn’t expecting me to be so blunt. It wasn’t her fault. How could she have any idea who I had become over the past twenty years?
“Don’t get emotional,” I said. “We don’t need each other.
We never needed each other. You were Abel’s wife and I was his child, not yours, not really.
I know you think you’re supposed to feel guilty about everything, but I know you don’t feel that way and I’m telling you it’s okay.
Believing you’re supposed to feel a certain way is exhausting.
If Abel taught us anything good, it’s that. Just exist as you are until it’s over.”
She stared at me like I was a freak of nature. I counted the creases across her forehead as she processed how the hell to follow that up.
“Reanne,” I said. “Relax. Do you need a cigarette or something?”
“You look like him in the eyes,” she said.
Kind of a rude thing to say considering my father’s wonky eye.
“They move so fast and then they just stop when you get real into yourself. I’m not a great person and you can hate me, but you be careful.
If you have to take after one of us, maybe I ain’t so bad.
” She stood from the chair and grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table.
My newly righteous mother trudged into the kitchen to blow her smoke out the window. I picked up the remote and turned the game back on. My eyes stopped moving? That wasn’t even a thing. Maybe it was the contacts.
- - - - -
I stayed with Reanne and Gustus for two solid nights.
I did my best to not think of Reanne as my mother and it helped.
We didn’t have any more conversations like the first one.
She didn’t ask her husband to leave again.
Gustus was actually funny. He was definitely lazy, but his social commentary was spot-on.
So was his self-awareness. Every sick burn started with “I know I’m nobody worth sayin’ this, but…
” followed by something some person on TV shouldn’t have said or worn or done.
Fifty consecutive hours is a long time to spend with two people.
I had established my place on the couch and we had worked out our group pizza-topping dynamic, but after breakfast on Sunday, Dominic called and Carol had to go.
It had taken Dominic a long time to contact me again after our trip and I was starting to get offended and self-conscious.
I was less worried that something had happened to him and more worried that he had lost interest in me.
Marin was the object of his obsession, but if he was innocent in all this, he didn’t know I was Marin.
To him I was just Gwen. Was Gwen a party pooper?
Was managing all these secrets making me boring?
Why couldn’t he be interested in a different serial killer and then I could offer my own theories and give hilarious anecdotes instead of constantly negating him?
But if it were any other serial killer, would I still be interested in Dominic?
I was all right with this being a completely toxic relationship as long as the toxicity was reciprocal.
I called him back as soon as I got into my car.
“Hey,” he answered.
“Hi, yes, I missed a call from this number.”
“Funny,” he said. “You were the one who messaged me that you were going out of town.”