Callie #3
“Where is she, Damien? Where is Sabrina? What did you do to her?”
His voice is calm, cool, the same tone he might use across the dinner table or in his living room, and it’s more frightening than if he were angry.
“This is where they used to meet. Wasn’t hard to get her out here again, when she thought he wanted to see her.
Well, at least it wasn’t once I got her in the truck. ”
The broken bracelet. She must have fought with everything she had. Had he hit her too, the way he did Callie? Was she bound? Is that why Damien’s movements feel so practiced, so sure? And all the while Sabrina must have been thinking about Annabelle waiting in the house, needing her.
He brings Callie to the water, stands her at the edge.
His hands are tight on her shoulders and she grimaces at the thought that he will be the last person to touch her.
She looks past him, into that unlikely, beautiful, depthless blue, and knows that’s where they’ll find Sabrina.
If anyone ever knows to search. How long does it take to drown, in water this cold, limbs bound?
She could hold her breath a minute at most. Then her burning lungs would be forced to inhale water.
Another minute before the airways would close up, the body trying to protect itself, a last-ditch instinct.
Then, nothing. The brain, heart, and lungs all going still.
Above them a pair of birds startles from a tree, the dark arrows of their bodies reflected across the surface of the sinkhole. Damien turns his head upward, follows their path.
She has one more chance. “Don’t do this. Don’t do it to your wife. To your daughter.”
She hears him swallow. She presses on. “Things can still be different, Damien,” she says, as softly as she can.
“There’s no other way. I told them about the notebook. Jane left it out one day. I recognized the charm, the tree, the water. I said there was nothing tying any of that to me, to Luke, but they said it was only a matter of time before you caught on.”
They meaning Frank and Luke. The family she thought she always wanted.
She’s getting woozier by the minute and her eyes are getting heavy. Each blink lasts a little longer, and she feels the pull of darkness, of rest. She lets her eyes sit closed for a second when a voice reaches her. Let her go.
She’s sure she’s imagining it in her delirium, summoned it from her mind: Jane’s voice coming through the trees.
But then she hears it again, closer. Real.
“Let her go.”
When she opens her eyes Jane is standing on the other side of the clearing.
Her face shimmers with sweat. The hands she holds up to her husband are dirty, bleeding.
She must have fallen on her way out. Still unsteady on her feet.
She’s got a rifle strapped to her chest. The one they kept in case of wolves, bears. Coyotes.
“Janie. Oh Christ. I’ll explain. Go back to the car. Go, and I’ll tell you everything later.” His voice is high and panicked. “Please, Janie. Now.”
Jane doesn’t waver. “I said let her go, Damien.” She raises the gun to her shoulder. Callie lets herself exhale. She had been holding her breath, preparing for the shock of the cold water.
“I can’t—I can’t do that, Janie. Now please, please, I’m begging you. Go back. Go back and I’ll explain. She’s going to ruin our lives.”
Jane’s voice is low, measured. “I know what you did. The charm. The picture in the notebook. It was all right there. And I called the state police to tell them. They’ll be here in a few minutes. For now, it’s just the three of us, and you need to let Callie go.”
Damien takes a step backward, bringing Callie with him.
Jane’s finger tightens on the trigger.
Jane’s a good shot.
Used to be.
Damien’s grip around her tightens. He’s going to do it—push her in the water and let her body sink.
Jane won’t be able to save her. Or—Callie nearly vomits at the thought—he’ll overpower Jane even with the gun.
And she’ll end up in the water too. Jane’s eyes meet Callie’s for a second, and Callie gives her the smallest of nods before closing her eyes.
I trust you.
The sound of gunfire cuts through the silence.
She falls to the ground and the second impact to her tender, aching skull makes everything go black.
She blinks her eyes open to the sound of screaming.
Damien is a foot away from her, grabbing at his leg.
Blood soaking his pants just above the knee.
She closes her eyes again until she hears Jane come closer, the ragged pull of air through her lungs.
Jane still has her gun trained on Damien, relents only to unhook the bungee cord around Callie’s wrists so Callie can release her bound knees and ankles.
She stands unsteadily, and she and Jane fall into one another. Callie presses her face into Jane’s shoulder.
In the distance, the long, mournful wail of sirens.
“I called the state police,” Jane says. “Before I started down the trail. But I knew I’d get here first. And I sure as hell didn’t want to call this into the station, to Frank’s cronies.”
As if on cue, from the edge of the woods there’s the squawk of radios.
Footsteps. Shouting. Uniforms swarm them.
She and Jane hold hands as they put Damien on a gurney while an officer reads him his rights.
An EMT eyes the wounds on Callie’s head, on Jane’s shins and palms, though she shakes them off.
“I just need help getting back to the car. Now. My daughter.”
Opal. Oh god. “I’ll go with you,” Callie says.
“We’re going to need statements. From both of you. When you can, the sooner the better.” The statey dips his head to Callie. “Well, you know the drill.”
The cop walks with them. He offers his arm to Jane but she shakes her head, reaches for Callie.
“I’m sorry,” Callie says. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Me too.”
“How did you know?”
“When you texted me this morning. I was telling the truth when I said we hadn’t been dealing.
I thought Frank was up to something. But then Damien had said he was doing a hike that wasn’t on the calendar, a private group he’d forgotten to tell me about.
He wouldn’t have forgotten that—in winter?
When we need the cash? He said his mom was coming over and that she’d help with Opal.
I left a few minutes later, strapped Opal in the car and gunned it out of there.
For all I know Lorraine is sitting in my living room, wondering where the hell everyone is. ”
Callie wonders how much Jane knows about the other stuff. About Sabrina Riley, Luke. And whatever happened that night, to Baby Doe.
“And I had been looking at the notebook. The picture of the star finally clicked.”
“What is it?” Callie asks.
“It’s a charm—Sabrina must have worn it to meet Damien. He must have taken it back from her.”
“Holy shit. Lorraine’s bracelet.” That first dinner. Callie had asked Lorraine about her charm bracelet, an attempt at making conversation. This one is from Damien, my sweet boy. He was just a teenager. I almost fell off my chair when he gave it to me. Gold fill!
The look between him and Luke across the table. And the tension outside.
It was all right there at the beginning.
Callie groans. “You knew he must have hurt Sabrina. You were trying to call me. You couldn’t talk with him around.”
“And he was always around. Or Frank, or Lorraine. You know how that family is. And he was watching me, God, like he knew something. I couldn’t find a minute.”
That family. Her family. “Jesus, Jane. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. I think Lorraine is the only one who doesn’t know. It’s going to kill her.”
“You think she’s oblivious?”
“I mean, I was. It’s really hard to see who your family is sometimes. Like standing too close to a painting.”
“Amen.”
They get to Jane’s car—only then does Callie notice that they’ve walked the opposite way she came.
“There’s an access road from one of the old cranberry bogs, so the trucks could get in. But most people don’t know about it. It’s not on the map. It’s why I figured I’d beat the cops here. Even a gimp like me.”
Opal is strapped in her car seat, her mouth open in sleep.
Her hand is wrapped around a magic wand, pink with a star at the top.
She knows without either of them having to say it that they are both struck by how tightly her fingers are curled around it.
For a moment Callie lets herself miss her own innocence.
The time when she believed the world was hers to put in order, by magic, or more recently, by the law, by her own arbitrary code of rules.
“What will I tell her, Callie? What am I going to tell my kid about this?” Jane’s face goes blotchy, the way it always does when she cries. Callie hugs her as close as she can. Jane’s ribs heave under her palms and Callie grips her tighter.
What would have happened had Jenna told Callie the hard truths of her life years ago? It would have hurt, and it would have spared them all so much more pain down the line.
But, if Callie had known the truth, or some of the truth, she would have warned Jane about the Caputos. There wouldn’t have been Opal. Callie lets her eyes settle on Opal’s cheeks, still curved with baby fat. And she’s never loved anyone like she loves that little girl.
Her cousin, she realizes, with a start.
“It’s going to be hard. Probably for a long time. But you’ll tell her the truth. And she’ll know that her mother is the strongest woman in the world.”