Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15
I t was the cold that woke me. Glacial numbness overwhelmed every cell of my body. I could see nothing. I must be dead.
But no, I was moving, my arms and legs flailing in terrifying slow motion, my eyes and lungs stinging. I gulped for air and my mouth filled with arctic liquid, freezing my gums and teeth as air heaved involuntarily out of me. Water. I was submerged in it. Panic reared up inside of me, my brain swinging between the wildly unthinking reactions of survival and one petrifying thought.
Where is Emmy?
I thrust my head instinctively upward, pain slicing through my skull as my mouth breached the water’s surface and I swallowed a huge lungful of air. My insides seized as my toes found footing, followed immediately by a coughing fit that made me lose purchase, dipping my chin once more into the inky liquid. Treading water as I tried frantically to right myself, I held my breath and felt my feet once more scrape solid earth. I pushed off with all my might, feeling my soggy sneakers resisting even as I shot upward. Impossible underwater images from years earlier collided with my current predicament, legs kicking and hands grasping, disorienting me. I called out to my father for help, my voice terror-stricken.
But Daddy was dead.
Get a grip, Caroline. You’re no longer a child. You have a child of your own. My mother’s admonishing tone.
Emmy. Where was she? I hauled myself out of the water, squinting through darkness as thick as fur as I crawled onto the loamy grass. My drenched clothes clung to me like weights, making movement clumsy and sluggish, yet my heart was racing like I’d just completed a fifty-yard dash.
A mechanical hum assaulted the quiet as halogen lights cut through the night, spotlighting me. My hands shot up to shield my eyes as the car engine abruptly cut off. A door clicked open, and a figure emerged. Fear battled relief as I decided it must be Tim on his way to me. I had a vague memory of his car being parked nearby. I peered through my fingers to see a man’s tall, fit frame silhouetted against the car’s lights as he ran toward me, but the halogens timed out before he reached me, casting us both into utter darkness.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice breathy from exertion after closing the distance between us in seconds. Before I could answer, he was pulling me to my feet. “Jesus, you’re soaked. Did you fall in?”
I blinked at the voice that was not Tim’s, unable to speak.
“I saw the carriage beside the road, which made me slow down. It was so odd to see a baby carriage all by itself?—”
“Where is it?” I looked from his shadowy face to the surrounding darkness.
“Over there.” He reached out, pointing to a spot in the direction he had just come from.
I ran, my stiff, heavy clothes turning my gait into a novelty, an action I’d not fully mastered, but I didn’t care. I pushed my leaden legs forward faster. When the babyzen materialized out of the shadows, the taste of vomit filled my mouth. Ignoring the dizzying spin that threatened to topple me, I rushed toward the carriage, grasping the handle and peering under the bassinet hood. The baby was shadowy. I blinked water out of my eyes and waited a few seconds for my pupils to adjust to the lack of light. I could just make out Emmy’s face and tiny body; her eyes were closed in sleep, but her limbs moved restlessly. She looked perfectly healthy.
I started to smile, but the effort hurt my head so badly that it felt split open. Worrying my skull was crushed, I straightened and gingerly touched the source of pain at the back of my head, a few inches above the nape, fingers probing a tangle of hair and a substantial bump.
“What happened?” came the man’s voice from beside my right ear. I jumped at his nearness. In my panic, I’d momentarily forgotten about him.
“I... I don’t—” I began. Trying to focus my thoughts, I continued, but the sounds making it out of my mouth made no sense. I babbled like Emmy. Nonsensical words, as the man before me morphed into my dad. I stared through the shadows, unable to process my father’s sudden appearance. He was dressed in the same white T-shirt and blue jeans he’d worn the last time we were together. Where have you been all this time? I reached out to him, overjoyed to be reunited. I’d missed him so much, for so long... but the hands meeting mine were Tim’s. Clawing fingers digging into the tender flesh of my palms. I screamed, pushing him away.
“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice urgent. “How did this happen?”
I stared at the man, wondering if he was real. Maybe I was dreaming. Caught with shapeshifters in a nightmare. My gut gurgled painfully, and I swallowed hard, the image of a neck running with blood invading my brain... oh God. My armpits broke out in sweat despite the icy dampness clinging to me. The pain, the instant blackness. And now I was here, with a stranger. Wide eyes, a dark staircase, and bright orange fingernails spun like a kaleidoscope of colors in my mind, hitting me with patterns my brain was unable to sort through. I started to shake.
“We need to dry you off,” the man said. “I have a blanket in my trunk.” He turned and ran to the dark box of his car, barely discernible against the night sky.
The sound of gushing water spewed in time to my throbbing head. I whipped my chin to my right and glanced over my shoulder, instantly regretting it. Not only did pain arrow through my brain, but the hated pond between Muzzy’s house and the street bordering Matt and Melanie’s lot came into view, its center fountain surging. The pond I just climbed out of. Breathing erratically as nausea reared up inside me, my stomach heaved. I dropped onto all fours, vomiting violently onto the black earth beneath me.
Warm softness engulfed me, and the man’s voice was beside me once again, murmuring reassurances and helping me gently to my feet.
“This blanket will warm you. Do you want me to bring you to the hospital?”
“No,” I barked. I had nobody to tend to Emmy. “I’m fine.” I said the second part much softer.
“I’ll bring you home. We can put the carriage in the trunk of my Jeep. Does it fold up?”
“Yes,” I said, my mind clearing with the need to get Emmy back to her nursery. “Let me just wrap up the baby so I don’t get her wet. The latch is below.” I pointed to a spot at the apex of the metal legs, above the wheels and just under the carriage bed, while plucking the baby’s blanket out of the storage bin under the handle.
As the man kneeled and peered at the latch, I scooped up Emmy and swaddled her.
“My name’s Jeffrey,” he said, looking up and around the carriage like he was hiding underneath it. I heard a click and watched him stand.
“I’m Caroline. Caroline Case.” I stepped back as the carriage collapsed between our feet. “I can’t thank you enough for your help.” I wrapped the blanket over Emmy’s face to keep my wet hair from dripping into her eyes and waking her.
“Climb into the front seat and I’ll get this thing in my trunk,” said Jeffrey.
As we drove along the extended stretch of darkened streets between Deer Crossing and my house, Jeffrey glanced at me clutching Emmy. “How did you end up outside in the middle of the night with your baby?”
“She’s colicky. Walking settles her.” I looked down at my arms. “This swaddling should keep her from screaming her head off.”
“My little sister had colic as a baby,” said Jeffrey. “My parents used to drive her around town in our car. The steady motion soothed her.”
I nodded. “It does, especially since she doesn’t sleep well. I don’t either.”
“I see,” he said, his voice turning hesitant. “But aren’t you kinda far from home?”
I studied his profile in the glow emanating from the Jeep’s dashboard. He sounded just like Tim. Another clueless man adept at judging. I looked forward and squeezed my eyes shut against the blinding pain shooting from nape to forehead.
“As I said, I have a hard time sleeping,” I said tightly. “The more we walk, the easier it eventually becomes to fall asleep.” I opened my eyes and studied the road. “Take a right up ahead.”
“But you don’t know how you ended up in the pond?” He rotated the steering wheel toward me, taking the corner smoothly.
Something unbidden fluttered in my chest. Focus , Caroline . Picturing myself in the pond turned my mouth dry. “I was in the neighborhood, walking, and I saw something...” I croaked from a suddenly tight throat.
“Was it in the pond?”
“No, I’m not sure...” I tried to picture it, but the image was just out of reach. “My driveway’s there, on the left.”
“Okay.” Jeffrey pulled in and turned the engine off. “So what was it that you saw?”
I stared at the dashboard, a flash of something sparking in my brain: my flashlight beam revealing the tidy interior of a car. Tim’s car. Tim’s car parked by the pond, next to Muzzy’s house.
“Oh God,” I mumbled. “Her lights turned on and I ran.” I looked at Jeffrey.
“Who? Whose lights?”
“I stopped at the corner of Pine Hill, and I saw...” What did I see? “I couldn’t remember with all the water around me—so much water—but now I... I need to concentrate.”
Jeffrey’s brows furrowed over his narrowed eyes in the ambient light from his radio display. “You ran from lights, and you saw something?”
Memories flashed in my mind: a bright fingernail, wide eyes, blood. Melanie .
“The woman in the house, the upstairs window. She was bleeding.” I patted my pockets. Where was my cell phone? I must have left it at home. “We have to call the police.”
“What?” Jeffrey’s voice boomed in the confined space.
“Do you have a cell phone?” When he produced it from his pocket, I added, “Call 911.”
His hand shook. “What am I telling them?”
“There’s a woman, she’s hurt.”
“By the pond? Where exactly?—”
“I don’t have time to explain. Just do it.”
He nodded and pressed the phone’s surface, connecting immediately to a woman’s voice warbling through the speaker.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Jeffrey told her his name and identified himself as a resident of Woodmint Lane in Deer Crossing. He explained he worked at the local newspaper and had just gotten off shift when he noticed me and my baby outside in the dark. When he stopped to check on me, he discovered I’d witnessed something disturbing. A bleeding woman. I listened to him patiently answer the dispatcher’s questions, my panic mounting.
“She needs to send out the police quickly,” I said. “The address is...” I closed my eyes, trying to recall the number of the house, but desperation turned my mind into an endless array of floating Post-it notes full of useless messages. “It’s on the corner of Pine Hill and Lakeside. Maybe number twenty-one? The house with a slim, dark-haired woman.”
Jeffrey relayed my information. He sounded scared. As he clicked off and looked at me, his features etched with worry. “They’re on their way.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after two.”
I gaped at him. I’d been unconscious for hours. “They’re too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?” Panic crossed his features.
“We need to go over there, now.”
“I’ll go and meet the police,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ll send them here afterward.”
“Okay,” I said, realizing I had to tend to Emmy. I released my seat belt and held the baby close as I opened the door and stepped out, every inch of me aching. “Thanks again for your help.”
I was already walking toward my house as Jeffrey removed the carriage from his trunk. I was dying to get inside and find my painkiller from months earlier—the Percocet I should have tossed after my C-section. “Just leave the carriage by the front door, please,” I said. “You can keep it folded up.” I decided I’d take Xanax too.
After Jeffrey had pulled away and I’d gotten Emmy settled in her crib, I went directly to the bathroom medicine cabinet. Unlike the postpartum depression pill I took every day, I only took Xanax when needed. If the day’s events didn’t justify a hefty dose, I didn’t know what did. The leftover Percocet would be a last resort. Clutching all the prescription bottles with one hand, I turned on the tap with the other. In one swift move, I removed a water glass, also residing in the cabinet, and angled it under the water stream.
I settled on the couch, letting the medication flow through my bloodstream, dulling the aches and softening my thoughts to a dreamlike state even as I sat, fully awake.
I didn’t know how long I sat in my self-induced trance, thankful to focus my thoughts on anything but the woman in the window on Pine Hill Road. Sharp rapping on my front door startled me, making me sit forward and look around. Outside, the new day was dawning, turning the dusky sky pink and orange. Strobe lights streaked down my street, too uniform and jarring to be sunlight. I struggled to my feet and, leaning over the sofa, peered out. A police car with flashing lights was parked at the end of the driveway. As promised, Jeffrey had given the cops my address. Good. I could share with them everything I saw. But my chest tightened, my pulse jumping. What if the woman had died? I paused, biting the inside of my cheek.
The banging resumed, more insistent than before. I walked on shaky legs, reached out, and opened the door just enough to peer into the gloom.
“Hello, ma’am,” said one of the two tall, blue-uniformed police officers standing on the stoop. The thin one on the left. I nodded and the other one, stocky, introduced them. Their names made no impact. I couldn’t hear more than a murmur above the sound of blood rushing through my ears. I opened the door wider, and the two officers stepped inside.
We stood awkwardly in the tiny vestibule. I looked at the skinny officer, then the chubby one.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” asked Skinny.
“Caroline Case.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Well, I have the baby, but my husband isn’t here.” I looked down, feeling shame wash through me, causing my face to flush. Then I remembered I had nothing to be ashamed of. I raised my head, looked the officer in the eye. “He left me.”
He nodded, my declaration not appearing to have an impact on him. “Ms. Case, did you go into a house on Pine Hill Road this evening?”
“Yes, I had to, you see?—”
“And did you ask a...” Skinny took out a notepad and leafed through it. “Jeffrey Trembly to call in a murder at the house?”
“I wasn’t sure if it was a...” I couldn’t say the word murder . “It could have been a suicide attempt.”
“Why don’t you tell us about it,” said Chubby, placing his hands on his hips.
I relayed the story, leaving out the part about hearing voices. No reason for them to know that.
“Is that everything, Ms. Case?” asked Skinny after I’d finished. His voice bounced loudly around the room.
I nodded. “Did you find Mel—the woman I saw in the upstairs window?” I stifled the urge to drag my top teeth across my lower lip.
The officers exchanged a look that fell somewhere between wary and disbelieving, then both looked back at me.
“The house was empty, ma’am,” said Chubby.
“Then she must have been taken to the hospital.” I sighed. “Thank God.”
“No one was in the house because nobody lives there,” said one of them. I didn’t know which one. I was too focused on the words floating in the air between us. “We searched through our database and discovered the couple who resided at 21 Pine Hill Road recently sold the property.”
I thought about the interior of the place. I didn’t recall seeing furniture. But then why was someone in an empty house...? I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we,” said Skinny, moving nearer to my left elbow. “The place was dark and tightly locked. We had to use special tools to get inside. There was nothing in any of the rooms—no furniture or personal effects. In fact, the place looked as clean and empty as a newly constructed house.”
Chubby puffed up his chest, stared me down. “We have some questions for you.”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Have you ever filed a false police report, Ms. Case?”
“Filed a... what?” I studied the officer’s features, but they blurred before my eyes. “Surely you saw the blood. It was trailing down her neck. Some must have dripped?—”
“We saw no blood, and it’s a crime to file a false report,” he said, his face looming in front of mine but blurrier than before.
I shook my head. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“Mr. Trembly reported a crime at your behest, Ms. Case. A crime that did not occur.”
“I didn’t say it was a crime, just that I saw her. She was in the room in the upper?—”
“We walked through the entire house, Ms. Case. No evidence of a fatal accident, a murder, or anyone residing there.”
“It can’t be. I’m telling you; I know she was there.”
“There is no evidence of that,” said Chubby. He stepped closer, as if his nearness would help him make his point. “If you ever file a false report with our office again, we will arrest you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Ms. Case?”
I shrank back, horrified, too afraid to speak.
Skinny looked around my shadowy living room, his gaze resting on the prescription bottles on my coffee table.
“Whose medication is that, ma’am?”
“Mine.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “My name is on the bottles.”
He walked closer to the coffee table. “May I look?” When I nodded, he lifted one bottle, read, then examined the label on the second before putting both where he found them, next to the third bottle he didn’t bother to pick up. “These are potent drugs, Ms. Case. Have you taken any of these pills this evening?”
“Only after I was hit on the head.” I turned and pointed at the back of my skull. “Someone clubbed me in that house. Knocked me out. I woke up in the p-pond with this big knot on my head and?—”
“Ms. Case,” he interrupted. “We have no way of verifying this information.”
“B-but it happened,” I sputtered.
“I suggest you come to the police department later, after the effects of the drugs wear off. You can tell us about your injury and anything else you recall about your night.”
I nodded, too shocked to say anything else. They don’t believe me . I watched them turn and walk out my front door. I had no intention of going to police headquarters. It was my word against theirs—cops in the department convinced I was some sort of lunatic who wandered the streets at night and concocted stories about what I saw inside the houses I passed.
Only a crazy person would ... I caught my breath. I did walk the streets at night, nearly every night. And I peered into people’s houses. I was everything I appeared to be, wasn’t I? Had I imagined the woman in the window? The postpartum pills were strong, and I took them every morning. Were they messing with my brain? Making me imagine things that weren’t there?
I thought of the woman I called Melanie. Her eyes, large and dark, searching mine frantically. She was real, I knew she was. And whether they found her or not, now I suspected something else about her: she was certainly dead.