Chapter Forty-Three
Roland stepped into the narrow, darkened hallway behind the diminutive man.
He grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him backward.
The man’s sheet-white face was contorted with fear.
Roland grabbed the front of his shirt before he could run.
He pulled the man to within inches of his face, the urge to punch him evident in the pulsating veins in his neck and fisted hands.
“Please!” cried the man. “Please, don’t hurt me. I have a wife. Please!”
The man’s breath stunk of coffee. Roland stared into his beady eyes. The building breathed around them with each crash of thunder. Roland lifted him off the floor and pushed his back against the wall; his chest was heaving, and his eyes locked on the man’s trembling body.
The man turned his face to the side and squeezed his eyes closed. “Please,” he whispered.
Roland’s breath came in fast, hard spurts.
His fingers were clasped tightly around the man’s shirt, his fist pressed against his small, heaving chest. He could kill him, smack his head against the wall and toss him like a rag doll.
Roland pushed his fist harder against the man’s chest. He could feel his heart beat against his knuckles.
A weeping sound came from the man’s pinched lips. Tears streaked his aged, hollowed cheeks.
Roland pushed him harder against the wall.
The man held his breath. Roland cocked his fist. Thunder boomed outside the walls.
Roland tilted his head, listening to the voice in his head.
He squinted, feeling the man’s shaking body beneath his fist. You’re so stupid!
His father’s voice rang in his mind—or was it Mr. Lowrey’s?
He couldn’t be sure. Confusion tangled his thoughts.
He blinked away the voice and clenched his teeth.
“Shut up!” he said, spittle flying with each labored breath.
The man’s eyes flew open. He closed his mouth, pursing his lips together, his eyes begging for mercy.
Roland held his breath. Go ahead, kill me. I’ll never tell you. His father’s voice was clear. Roland’s eyes glazed over. “Shut the hell up!” He pushed the man’s chest until the bones began to give. A low, painful groan escaped through the man’s closed mouth, his legs dangled beneath him.
Marissa doesn’t love you. Stay away from her! The voice wouldn’t stop. “She loves me. You’re a liar!”
“I didn’t say anything. Wait! Please!” The little man clawed at Roland’s arm, pleading through sobs. “Please! I have a wife. I…please!”
Roland’s arm shook from the weight of the struggling man. His stringy hair stuck to his sweaty forehead. She’ll never love you. Goose bumps climbed up his arms and chest. He closed his eyes and let out a long, low wail.
The man tucked his chin into his chest, mumbling a prayer.
The man’s weight traveled up Roland’s arm and to his chest, pulling at him.
His neck muscles throbbed. His breath caught in his throat as panic clenched his heart.
He gasped for breath, releasing his grip on the man, who tumbled to the floor, cowering.
“Get up,” Roland demanded. Was he the maniac the police thought he was?
No. He’d done what he had to do to be with Marissa.
He thrust his hand into his pocket, wrapping his palm around the picture. He slowed his breathing. Not long now.
The man pushed himself up against the wall, his trembling hands blocking his face, his shoulders and back hunched away from Roland.
“Move it.” Roland pushed away from the wall and deeper into the plant, away from the secret exit.
The man scurried before him like a frightened mouse.
Roland knew the man who sat before him was not Al. Al was dead. He wasn’t stupid, despite what the voices told him. The voices. What was happening to him? Was he losing his mind? Was it the mixture of antifreeze and alcohol? He weighed these thoughts as he secured the ropes around his victim.
The man begged for release, but Roland didn’t pay him any attention. If he was losing his mind, would he make it until the hour of their birth? His planning may have been thrown off course, but his goal remained the same. He’d die with Marissa that night, never to be separated from her again.
Roland stumbled away from the man and surveyed the room.
Antifreeze pooled on the floor. Pieces of metal and glass scattered all about.
He ran into the back room, his eyes taking in the emptiness.
A low groan began in his chest and made its way out of his lips.
He kicked the remaining cake and sole bottle of alcohol, sending it crashing.
Shards of glass clanked down through the grate in the floor.
Roland stomped back toward his victim, who stared at him with wide, terror-filled eyes.
He picked up a bottle of antifreeze. “You!” he yelled.
Mimi brushed the hair from Kara’s forehead.
Kara had been unconscious for far too long.
Mimi debated trying again to wake her, relinquishing the thought as she considered what may be yet to come.
If they were to die at Roland’s hands, she would rather Kara was not conscious.
Guilt stretched its way across Mimi’s thoughts.
She should have moved further away. She should have let the community know about her past, about Roland.
She should have made Kara aware of her twin.
All those years of pretending he didn’t exist while living on edge because he did, losing the man she loved, all to save Roland from being institutionalized.
She bit back the urge to sob. She had thought they were safe.
He’d stayed away for so many years. And Al—oh God, poor Al. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to Kara. She had been playing a dangerous game and Kara was the pawn.
She hoped Roland had believed it was his real mother who had burned him.
She’d had to take the onus off herself in order to get Kara out of there.
If nothing else, she hoped she’d confused him enough to doubt his own thoughts.
She thought about that awful day so long ago.
Marissa had been a pixie of a child, always happy, and striving to please everyone.
She’d been stirring a bowl of Jell-O sugar crystals, giggling about something or other.
A surly and obsessive Roland was telling Marissa about something that happened with the cat, only Marissa wasn’t listening.
At that young age, Roland’s obsessive behavior included a dire need to tell stories start to finish without being interrupted, and with the full attention of the listener.
He continually started the story over, trying to get her to listen from beginning to end.
Mimi stood beside the stove, waiting for the pot of water to boil.
“Marissa, listen to me,” he demanded.
Marissa continued to hum her little tune, oblivious to her brother’s need for her full attention.
Roland fisted his little hands and his face grew tight. Mimi, familiar with the ways in which his frustration grew, first to raising his voice, then to his body becoming rigid as a board, then—it had become more and more terrifying where he’d go from there.
“She’s busy, Ro. Let her be.” Mimi tried to quell his growing angst.
Roland moved from one foot to the other, breathing faster through his nose, his eyes glazing over. “Marissa, the cat just—”
“The cat?” Marissa giggled. “We don’t have a cat. Mrs. Johnson’s cat?” She licked her finger and stuck it in the crystals.
Roland made a groaning noise. His arms hung stiff by his sides. “Marissa,” he said through his clenched jaw, “the cat just ate—”
“What cat?” Marissa’s voice piped up.
Roland closed his eyes tight, his fingernails digging into his palms.
Mimi put a hand on Marissa’s shoulder. “Marissa, honey, let’s listen to your brother.” Her nerves tingled. The water boiled, and Mimi turned her back for just a second to move it from the burner.
The next instance was a blur—and the beginning of the end of Roland living with them—a flash of Roland with a steak knife in his hand, lunging at Marissa, who screamed and fell off the chair she’d been standing on.
Mimi swung around, pot in hand. The boiling water spilled over the top—and then, as if it was all happening in slow motion, Mimi watched as it arced, then splashed onto Roland’s tiny, angry face.
Mimi closed her eyes. It had been an accident, hadn’t it?
She’d slipped. Or had she meant to do it?
Was it a sick, hopeful, subconscious way of getting him out of the house?
Social Services had believed it was an accident, as had Al.
It was only a few months later when Al had moved into the Lowrey Home For Children to keep an eye on Roland.
As a father, he’d been stretched to the limit.
He’d lost his first wife to insanity, and he didn’t want to see his son follow the same path, but at the same time, he couldn’t put his daughter or Mimi at risk.
That’s what he’d told her. Had he been lying?
Fear prickled her arms—not fear of Roland, but fear that her husband had not believed her at all.
Was that why he’d declared they should not be in touch with each other?
Had it all been a ruse? Had he used Roland as a scapegoat for his own disgust of his wife?
Mimi listened to the muffled sounds of the storm, ruing the taste of her thoughts.
If that had been the case, he never would have allowed her to keep sweet Marissa.
The pains in Mimi’s stomach eased, but she was beginning to feel a bit lightheaded from all the alcohol.
She leaned back against the wall, waiting for Roland to burst through the door, and for her life to be over.
If it had to end, she prayed it would end quickly.
Maybe this was her penance for lying to her daughter.