Chapter Thirteen
Regan
I hear howling—the sobs and shrieks of my daughter, standing at the top of the stairs, too afraid to come down, afraid I’m
dead. It’s her screaming that wakes me up. I blink my eyes open and wonder how long I’ve been out. Hours? Or maybe only seconds;
maybe Hallie was already on her way down when she heard the noise. I see broken glass. The egress window is shattered from
where the person must have escaped. I’m dizzy, still piecing together what happened, but I have to console my baby. I push
myself up from the floor.
“It’s okay, honey. Hal. It’s okay. I just—I must have fallen. I’m okay,” I repeat, but I don’t feel okay. I’m lightheaded,
nauseated and fucking terrified. I slowly steady myself on the wall and hold the rail. She holds out her arms, still hiccupping
with sobs, and I carefully make my way up to the top of the stairs and hold her. She wraps her arms around me.
“I thought you died,” she cries. “I heard a noise. There was a man,” she says. I pull away, holding on to her shoulders, and look at her.
“What?” My fear turns into fury as I realize she saw this intruder who came to . . . look for something, it appears, or hurt
me, maybe? I don’t even know, but the fact that she witnessed this outrages me, and I’m feeling helpless to protect her from
all the crazy things that have been happening.
I should probably go to the hospital. I could have a hematoma and/or brain swelling. I’ve read about “talk and die syndrome,”
where a person seems totally fine after a blow to the head and then, in an instant, is gone. I try not to panic or show any
fear in front of Hallie. I think about calling my parents. I should. I talk to my mother almost every day, and not telling
her about the Jack thing or this feels very wrong, but somehow I just can’t drag them into it. As much as I want the unconditional
support they always give, I can’t burden them right now.
I settle Hallie down on the couch with a blanket and ParaNorman playing on the TV.
Then I go to the kitchen and call Andi. Maybe she can come and stay here awhile so I can go to the ER.
No answer. I call Sasha and she graciously arranges to have Hallie sleep at her house while she takes me to the hospital.
I hesitate. I feel bad for thinking it, but there is just something .
. . not quite right about her son, Drew.
I should give him the benefit of the doubt—he’s shy and standoffish, which is why he seems off-putting to me.
Maybe it’s all the school shooters who seem to look kind of like him, and although I am ashamed for making such assumptions, still a small part of me wonders what’s up with him.
I also can’t help wondering why Sasha acted strange when she saw the photo of Jack, but all in all, it’s likely just my frazzled nerves and paranoia creating problems where they don’t exist.
I go and sit next to Hal on the couch, and more calmly reiterate that I just fell and the guy was one of the caterers coming
back for some things. I tell her everything is fine but I should get checked out, so she can sleep at Chloe’s. I see a smile
tugging at the corner of her lips at the idea of a sleepover on a school night—even though she’s tired and probably at her
limit of fun in one day, she can’t help herself. She collects her things, and we wait for Sasha’s car at the front door.
The drive is quiet, as I know neither of us wants to say anything in front of Hallie, and after we drop her off and make our
way to the hospital, Sasha only asks if I’m okay and I tell her I am. She doesn’t push or make me talk about it, and I appreciate
the space because I’m still in shock. I haven’t fully processed what’s happened or why.
The ER waiting room is a bleak and haunting place.
Sasha brings over two Styrofoam cups of weak coffee and hands me one.
I touch the bump on my head. There’s no blood, just a giant raised knot and pounding headache.
I’ve already replayed what happened and thanked Sasha a million times over for her help, and now we wait.
The hollow feeling inside pokes at my ribs.
The grief. The emptiness that is only made worse by fluorescent lights and the smell of disinfectant.
I notice I’m trembling. I take a Xanax from my purse and slip it under my tongue; it works faster than Ativan.
I wrestle down the familiar thoughts—I don’t want to be here anymore.
I don’t want to live feeling like this. But then my love for Hallie pushes into the dark thoughts and they dissolve into guilt and that’s how I distract myself for a while until the cycle starts again, usually only minutes later.
I sigh and bury my head in my hands. Sasha puts a hand on my back and speaks softly.
“What did the police say? Why didn’t they call an ambulance?”
“I . . . haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say, sitting back up, trying to keep it together.
“Wait, what? You didn’t call the police?” she asks with her mouth hanging open in disbelief.
“I will. Of course. But I had to get Hallie somewhere safe first—I could not put her through that. Maybe that’s stupid of
me, but the guy is gone, and I haven’t touched or moved anything that could be evidence. It’s Hallie’s goddamn birthday, and
she’s been through enough. As soon as I find out I’m okay, I will call the police and meet them at the house. It was already
over—nothing they could do in the moment—so a few hours can’t hurt.”
“Yeah,” Sasha says, “makes sense.” But the look on her face tells me it makes little sense and I’m crazy. She changes the
subject.
“I heard they found Tia,” she says.
“I got that text, too. From Janey Beck . . . the town gossip, so I wasn’t sure what to think. I haven’t had a chance to respond
to her. Do you know if it’s true?” I say.
“All I was told,” Sasha says, “is that Tia called Ray. Like there was a call from her number to him that only rang twice and
ended. But the phone was untraceable before that, so he thinks she’s alive.”
“Oh, my God. But they still don’t actually know where she is?” I ask.
“I guess not, but it seems like good news. I think they can find where the phone pinged from,” she says.
“Man. I was starting to think she really was . . . dead, you know? With all the weird stuff going on, probably murdered by some lunatic. Andi must be relieved,” I say, placing my coffee on a metal side table.
“I can’t get ahold of her,” Sasha says.
“I guess we wait for the whole story,” I say. “From what Janey texted, Ray was a sobbing mess in their living room when this
call came in—he’s close with her husband, Darren—and then when he didn’t answer her call in time, he was even more of a mess.
But apparently they’re with the cops now,” I say, and then a nurse comes out through the metal doors across the room and calls
my name.
After some imaging and other tests, I’m released with pain meds and instructions to rest and not drive for a day or two. Sasha
is really a saint for staying with me the whole time—the ER is the last place anyone wants to be, especially late at night
when we’re exhausted already. She drives me back to her place and says I should take the guest room so Hallie can sleep.
“Oh, heya, Regan,” Tom says when we come in through the front door, sitting up from where he was clearly asleep on the couch
in front of the TV. He stands.
“You should sit. God, are you all right? What did they say?” He motions to the couch, and I sit.
“I’ll make some tea if you want,” Sasha says.
“Jeez, you probably want something stronger than that after what you’ve been through.” Tom pours a glass of port from a little
dry bar in the corner of the living room and holds it out as a question.
“Sure,” I say. I’ve never had port before. It’s really sweet, but I pretend to like it because I would indeed like something
strong right now.
“It’s a Quinta das Carvalhas,” Tom says.
“She doesn’t care, sweetheart,” Sasha says, kissing him on the cheek. She’s already told him I’ll be staying, and he brought
fresh towels and things into the guest room for me, she said. Their kindness is touching, and I know I’m not showing enough
gratitude right now.
“You hungry?” he asks. Tom’s dad brought barbecue.
“Tom was an Italian grandmother in another life. Always pushing food on everyone,” Sasha says, perching on the arm of the
couch.
“Or brisket. You know we always have brisket,” he says, switching off the TV and picking up his phone from the coffee table.
“She probably wants rest,” Sasha says, giving him a gentle “get lost” look if I’m reading it right, and so I smile in quiet
agreement.
“Night.” He kisses Sasha on the head. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Reg,” he says before climbing the stairs up to their room.
“Will you be okay?” Sasha asks. “I can stay up with you.”
“I’m fine. Thank you, God, so much, for everything. I think I just need a little time for my nerves to settle.”
“I’m right up there if you need anything,” she says, giving me a hug. “Night.”
“Night,” I repeat. And then the house is silent besides the sound of the ticking clock on the wall, which unnerves me because the sound of time passing always feels wrong.
I sip my port and stare around the dim room.
I click off the lamp and lie back, covering my legs with a fuzzy throw, and stare up at the ceiling, cupping my port.
I need to calm my mind. The police will take a report, but with the assailant long gone, it will do nothing to alleviate my fear.
The security alarm wasn’t armed yet because people had just left.
The person must have known that, because the alarm is always on otherwise.
Should I feel safe knowing I have an alarm on every door and window moving forward?
Or should I just burn the goddamn place down? Because that’s tempting right now.
Suddenly, I hear something in the quiet house. A soft tapping. Then I see that it’s a figure coming down the stairs. When
he walks past a sliver of moonlight coming through the front window, I see it’s Drew. He doesn’t see me; he must not know
I’m here. He very quietly opens the front door, expertly slips out, and closes and locks it with silent precision. And then
he’s gone.
I sit up and stare at the door a moment and wonder if I should tell Sasha, but something makes me . . . hesitate. I don’t
need one more thing right now, and I decide not to involve myself. Instead, I rinse my glass out in the sink, then quietly
make my way upstairs to the guest room. Second door on the right. But before I go into my room, I see Drew’s door across the
hall cracked open. It’s so, so very none of my business, but what other chance in a thousand years would I have access to
this strange kid’s room? I know he’s gone and know he has to be hiding something, because he snuck out wearing a hoodie, looking
guilty as sin as he disarmed the house alarm. That’s not normal. I push the door in with one finger and look up and down the
hall.
His room looks pretty unremarkable. The glow of the computer screen is the only light, and I poke around at Drew’s desk in the semidarkness.
It’s nothing other than textbooks and crumpled notebook papers.
I open his bedside drawer and see some chargers, earbuds, a single sock—nothing.
I feel under his mattress, and nothing. He seems relatively normal if you only have his room to go on.
I can’t see well enough to dig into the recesses of his closet, and so I decide to try one last place—a backpack slumped on a chair in the corner.
It’s unzipped, so I quickly rifle through the folder inside but it’s just math homework.
I’m about to give up when I feel the corner of something thicker and smaller than the rest of the papers.
I pull it out to see what it is, but before I can even squint in the dim light to look closer, I hear a door down the hall open.
A light is turned on. I panic. I should hide—I can’t be caught in here like some sort of unstable, I don’t even know, pervert—because why would I have reason to be in this kid’s f-ing room?
Oh, my God. I decide in a split second to leap out into the hall.
I shove the object under my shirt and in one quick motion, slip out the door and close it behind me, and when I turn, there is Sasha, directly in front of me.
My heart is hammering in my chest. She looks confused but doesn’t say anything right away.
“I thought it was the guest room, I’m so sorry. I didn’t wake him up. Sorry. Definitely not the guest room, then,” I blather
nervously, and it’s not totally a lie because I did not, in fact, wake him up. I see her face soften. She laughs.
“It’s okay. Across the hall.” She points. “There’s an extra blanket in the chest, and you can turn the fireplace on if you’re
cold.” She squeezes my shoulder. “I just came out to turn up the heat.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I can feel my cheeks burning red and hot with embarrassment. I quickly slip into the guest room, close
the door behind me and lock it. I sit at the edge of the cold bed and pull the square of paper out from under my shirt, but
it’s not paper. It’s a photo. A photo of . . . Jack.