Chapter 25
I’m released from the hospital a few hours later with a discharge packet thick enough to stop a bullet and a headache that feels like someone wedged a live grenade behind my left eye. The nurse tells me I “just need rest,” which is hospital speak for don’t die on our watch.
My left arm hangs helplessly in a sling, and a bandage sticks to a bald patch of stitched scalp that I’m worried may not grow hair back. I’m already planning ways to style my hair that would cover it up as Luca wheels me down to the lobby, then escorts me out into the parking lot.
“Remember, you’ve got to take it easy,” he instructs me for the sixth time in thirty steps.
“I will. I’m basically a sentient marshmallow right now,” I assure him.
He doesn’t smile, not even a twitch. “I’m worried about you. You could have died.”
“But I didn’t.” I inject a playfulness, but the undercurrent is dark. I’m lucky I’m not roadkill still stuck to the pavement. “And I’ll be more careful going forward.”
It’s a downpour all the way home, and my post-traumatic stress is acting up with every jarring turn Luca makes and zero visibility. When we safely arrive at Hemlock Drive, Luca shoots me a withered look.
“I have something to tell you, and you’re not going to be happy about it.”
“What?” I dare ask.
Not much is worse than a brush with death and an emergency room visit. He pulls up to the curb of my house, but there’s another car crookedly parked in the driveway, blocking us from pulling in.
“I asked Mamma to move in to help take care of you until you’re fully on your feet. That way you can relax.”
I stand corrected. Having my mother as my live-in nurse is way worse.
I’m already stretched thin having my brother invading my space, worried he’ll start questioning me about what’s behind my bookshelf door and decide to admit me to a psych ward.
Luca might be somewhat understanding, but my mother would have a meltdown.
Anyone who knows Rosetta Catalano would have to agree that being under her care is anything but relaxing.
As any Italian can attest, there is no such thing as a nurturing Italian woman.
My mamma doesn’t speak, she shouts. Then there’s the food.
You are guaranteed to gain at least half your body weight under her care.
Don’t bother turning down that second serving of pasta, because according to Mamma Rosetta, you are always looking too thin.
Her midnight cleaning rampages are enough to drive anyone to the insane asylum.
You don’t realize it at first that things are missing.
Linens here, cookware there… and soon you begin to wonder if you’re losing your mind.
It’s only when she drags you to go thrift store shopping for the tenth time in one day that you start to recognize all those missing items on the shelves and realize you’re not the crazy one—Rosetta is.
“Absolutely not. I’m fine taking care of myself.” I’m not convincing, though, as I struggle to open the car door on my own.
“How about for one week?” Luca negotiates.
“Two days,” I acquiesce.
“Deal.”
Hemlock Drive looks emptier than usual. With Luca’s help I ease myself out of the vehicle, spotting movement a couple doors down. It’s Wren, and she’s speed-walking toward me. How does she manage to always have the worst timing?
“I heard you died,” she says in her blunt Wren way.
“Nope. I’m still here and kickin’.”
“Want me to bring you over a healing smoothie?” she offers, but I know better than to accept it. I’ve learned firsthand that her food tastes as gross as it looks. “It’s packed with antioxidants. You’ll feel better in no time.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. Feeding me back to health is my mother’s jurisdiction. Interfere, and a man named Tony might come after your kneecaps,” I jest, though it probably holds more truth than I care to admit.
When I reach the front porch and see three suitcases neatly lined in my entryway, I sense Mamma is here to stay longer than the agreed-upon two days.
Zoomie barrels through the open door toward me so fast he nearly knocks me over.
After a couple laps splashing in puddles, he dashes back into the house, jumping and slobbering all over me.
“Zoomie, buddy,” I greet him, now sharing his wet dog smell. “I get it, you missed me. But can we avoid recreating the scene of the crime?”
The scent of porchetta roasting in butter drifts from the kitchen. Mamma is already cooking away her anxiety, while I feel mine spiking. Along with my cholesterol. She hovers so close I can smell the garlic on her breath from taste-testing every aspect of the meal.
“Shari, darling,” she gives my slinged arm a once-over, “maybe you should lie down. Or sit. Or Luca can carry you.”
“Mamma, I don’t need to be carried.”
My arm isn’t broken and casted, just wrapped to prevent further injury. I appear more broken than I actually am.
“I don’t want you overdoing it, honey,” she says, inspecting the bald patch on my head.
She makes me vow to go straight to bed, after brushing my teeth, once we eat.
Standing at the foot of the stairwell, I even point in my bedroom’s general direction on the second story as I agree.
But my feet betray me and take me through the living room and toward my photography studio, the way someone might autopilot toward the fridge after a traumatic breakup.
Since finding my Leica camera destroyed, I worry my intruder might have come back to do more damage.
“I just want to check something first.” It’s pathetic that I’m more worried about my cameras than I am my bones.
Mamma silently shadows me, hands clasped like she’s praying. Knowing her, she probably is.
The moment I step into the studio, something inside me goes still.
The air feels the same, lingering with the scent of sulfur and ammonia from the developer and fixer stored in my darkroom.
But something is off, and I can’t tell what it is.
Like someone moved things a few inches to the left just to be annoying.
I glide toward my Wall of Exile display.
There’s a blank space where a framed photograph should be.
The picture of the cabin near Doomwood Falls is missing.
I drop to my knees, searching the floor for it, looking under furniture, because it must have fallen off the wall.
But it’s not on the floor, not under the furniture, not on the wall. It’s nowhere in the room.
A wave of terror sweeps over me, followed by the kind of dread you get when an oncologist says, Huh, that’s interesting.
Stewart had gifted me the frame days before he died, showing me its secret compartment and telling me to put something precious in it.
He meant the key to the safe deposit box where he stored the evidence he had on Ramsey’s embezzlement.
But I didn’t listen. Instead I placed the key in a metal chest in my hidden room.
After I nearly lost the safe deposit key the night Marshall showed up drunk at my house, I put it in the secret compartment hidden inside the frame…
a frame that has now been stolen. I suppose I can always get a replacement key for the safe deposit box, but what if whoever stole the frame gets to it first?
But the key isn’t the only thing I hid in the compartment. I also hid the SD card containing all of the trail cam video footage that would take Ramsey Shenk down for murder. And now that’s gone too.
This is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen short of someone finding my secret room. No one knew about that frame’s compartment but me and Stew, so who could have figured it out? It seems impossible…
“How?” I breathe. “How did they find it?”
Mom approaches behind me. “What’s wrong? Who found what?”
“My picture frame with the photo of the cabin. It’s gone.”
Mom squints at the wall, but it’s as clear as day that it’s missing. The subtle outline of a faded rectangle proves it was once there. “Gone as in… you moved it? Or gone as in… gone gone?”
“Gone as in someone stole it.”
It’s a strange thing to steal, but everything in the past week has been strange.
I mentally splice it all together, but I can’t connect the dots to who would be behind everything.
Marshall’s cruel review. Fred cheating. Ivory going missing.
Her strange text. The break-in to my darkroom and my missing photos.
Then the note and hit-and-run… and now this.
My chest tightens, like fingers are wrapping around my lungs and squeezing.
“Mamma, I need to tell you something.”
She visibly goes rigid. “Shari, what did you do?”
“Nothing! I mean, I didn’t do anything. Something was done to me.”
“What do you mean?” Her eyes widen.
“I found a note in my darkroom. The threatening kind. It basically said not to go to the police or I’ll be next. You know, your standard nightmare fuel.”
Mamma’s hand flies to her mouth. “Dear God.” She stares at me in disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Duh, because it said not to go to the police or I’d be next.”
My first stalker suspect would have been Gillian, but whoever this is knows me well enough to pick my most precious possession to destroy—my Leica.
And they know where my darkroom is, which means I probably gave lessons to this person.
And they stole my evidence proving Ramsey Shenk is a murderer, which means they have some kind of connection to him.
Or maybe they didn’t know the evidence was in the frame at all and only knew of the frame’s sentimental value.
I had announced it in class, after all, which means it’s probably someone from one of my classes.
If so, why am I so afraid of this person? I did time in prison! I can easily take on whoever’s after me—whether it’s Zala, Ali, Wren, Fred, or even Marshall. I just need to get one step ahead.
“Do you think this is a clue?” I point to the blank space. “They came in here and took that exact photo out of all of these.”
Mom steps closer, slow and careful. “But why that one? Why the cabin?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing particularly special about it other than that it’s near the Doomwood Falls waterfall.”
The waterfall is where I saw Fred cheating, though.
The only conclusion I’ve come up with so far is that maybe Ivory isn’t at the beach like the police think she is.
Maybe she’s in the cabin. Her and I used to hike there together all the time.
But then why draw attention to it by stealing my framed picture of it?
“It could be a warning,” Mamma suggests.
Warnings. Clues. Threats. Little breadcrumbs from the world’s most passive-aggressive stalker.
At the glass studio door that leads outside Zoomie starts growling.
His teeth are bared as he stares at a dark corner near my equipment shelf.
It’s the low rumble he makes during thunderstorms, or when a wild animal lingers on the edge of our yard at night, at things I can’t see. I definitely won’t be sleeping tonight.
I can almost sense someone else’s presence in the room.
Someone who stood in front of that wall, close enough to touch it.
Mamma watches at me, but she’s not really looking at me.
She’s searching for a truth she doesn’t want to see, that her daughter’s life is in peril.
Her hand finds mine, and it’s warm and dry.
“Mamma, I think they’re telling me they can get to me anytime they want.”
And for the first time, I feel like someone else is here with us. Just out of sight. Waiting to destroy me permanently.