Chapter 55
The Hospital in Seaside
ATTENTION LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: SOMEWHERE in between all the police interviews and doctor’s exams and conversations with the psychologist and support from the victims’ advocates and the growing swell of media and onlookers forming outside the hospital shouting their questions and taking photos, a reunion is about to take place.
Old Kylie would have filmed this for TikTok, of course. It’s such a great opportunity for content. The revenue this video alone could generate would be insane in the membrane.
New Kylie, on the other hand, can’t think of anything she’d rather do less, and is seriously considering deleting her social media altogether. And also, she doesn’t have a phone.
#differentnow
#survivor
Freddie will be arriving at the hospital any minute, having landed at the small airport in Seaside twenty minutes earlier in his private jet.
Through the windows of the glass entrance, Kylie watches for any sign of her husband, her fingers knotting and unknotting as she seeks to fidget with the ring that’s no longer there.
The ring she gave to Ingrid before she was murdered by Thing One, the man she now knows is Owen Stark.
He’ll always be Thing One to her, though.
He’s now somewhere in the basement of this very hospital, his body cold, and growing colder by the hour.
The thought him lying there—maybe on a steel table, maybe inside one of those coffin-like drawers she’s seen on TV—is both comforting and disturbing.
If it were up to Kylie, she’d go down to the morgue and set him on fire, just to be sure.
She can’t get in trouble for killing him twice, can she?
Although, according to the kind detective, she won’t get in trouble at all. They all agreed that what happened in the cabin will stay in the cabin, forever.
#thetruthdieswithme
“You okay?” a soft voice asks.
Startled, Kylie looks over at the woman she forgot is standing next to her.
The woman she’d always considered a friend, but whose life she was prepared to destroy, all for the sake of generating a dramatic storyline for a stupid TV show.
God, it all seems so absurd now. And not just the show itself, but Kylie’s desire to be on it, to be famous, to be seen.
She didn’t understand then that the hole she’d been trying to fill could never be filled with followers, or fame, or finances.
Maybe if she’d understood that, she would never have come to Seaside to dig up Cole’s dirty secrets.
Maybe if she’d understood that, she wouldn’t have lost six years of her life to a fucking psychopath.
“Whatever you’re thinking right now, it’s not your fault,” Cole says, as if sensing her thoughts.
“What happened to you is horrific, and you didn’t bring it on yourself.
I don’t care that you came to Seaside. I don’t care what you would or wouldn’t have found out about me.
I’m telling you this now, because I’ve spent a lifetime blaming myself for every single shitty thing that ever happened to me because of one stupid decision I made when I was fifteen. ”
“I was twenty-six.”
“Doesn’t matter. You didn’t choose this. It’s not your fault. You got kidnapped by a fucking lunatic and no person deserves that.”
Cole reaches for her hand, and a silence falls between them. They remain like this for a while until a flurry of activity outside the entrance cuts into their thoughts.
A dark-tinted SUV pulls up to the curb, and Kylie watches as a well-built man gets out of the front passenger seat to open the door behind him.
A few seconds later, Freddie Tan steps out.
Her husband, whom she hasn’t laid eyes on in six long years, somehow manages to look exactly the same as she remembers, right down to the dark blue jeans, white Nikes, and impeccable haircut.
A wave of panic comes over her. What will he think when he sees her?
She’s too thin, her hair is a mess, she’s wearing no makeup, and she knows the stress of what she’s been through has seeped into the face she used to work so hard to preserve.
Reflexively she runs a hand through her hair, her natural dark blond roots an inch long, the rest of it a stringy black mess from cheap hair dye and years of malnutrion.
“He won’t care,” Cole whispers beside her, somehow managing to read her mind yet again. “He’s your best friend, and your marriage was always the best of them all.”
Freddie, flanked by two of his private security guards, is pushing his way through the crowd clogging the front entrance. The doors slide open, and then suddenly, in a blizzard of flashing bulbs and questions shouted, there he is.
“Hi—” she says, but it’s all she gets out before she’s wrapped in his arms so tight she can barely take a breath.
“I’m sorry,” her husband gasps in her ear, and that’s when she realizes it’s not her that’s shaking, it’s him. “I’m so fucking sorry I couldn’t find you. I looked . . . oh god I looked . . .”
She collapses then, and they lean on each other, like they always have.
When they pull apart a minute later, she feels eyes on her, and turns around to look. There, a few feet away, is a worried face that looks so similar to her own. Same eyes, same natural hair color, nearly the same height.
“Hi, Ky-Ky,” Kaycie says, her voice tentative. “Are you . . . are you okay?”
Kylie stares at her little sister. She’s not sure how to answer.
After what she’s been through, how could she ever be okay?
She’s alive, yes. She can talk, she can walk, she’d scarfed down half a pizza earlier, she’d even traded a joke or two with Cole before the full weight of it all sunk in. She’s technically fine.
But whether she’s okay is something only time will be able to tell. Time, and love, and healing.
She can’t stand this look on her sister’s face, though. She needs to say something that makes that terrified, anxious look go away. The truth can wait for now. For now, for Kaycie, she will lie.
“I’m okay,” Kylie whispers. “I’m okay.”
They fall into each other, the crying full-on ugly for both of them, with the hiccups and the snot and everything.
She doesn’t feel it when someone—probably Cole—slips the ring onto her finger.
But a few minutes later, as Freddie’s security keeps the crowd back so the three of them can climb into the SUV, she finds it on her right hand, on the finger where it’s always supposed to be.
In the safety of the backseat, sandwiched between the two people she loves most in the world, she looks down at the ring, finally able to twist it in that familiar way that’s always brought comfort.
This is all that matters. This is why she hung on. To feel this again.
As the car pulls away, she takes one last look at the hospital where she knows Thing One’s body remains, rotting slowly.
Burn in hell, motherfucker. Burn in hell.