28. Nicola
Nicola
When I finally emerge, it’s Saturday morning.
I burst forth, sitting up with a shock. There’s a heavy thumping in my temple, the feeling of a vice across my skull.
Days without light, without pills, and I’m a walking migraine.
I scour the nightstand and find a single rogue pain pill, which I swallow hastily, then search the upstairs for more. Nothing to be found.
I hurl myself downstairs, the pounding heavy with each footstep, and find Emmy eating cold pizza in the kitchen with Scotch nestled at her feet, sleeping quietly. She stares outside at the rain-soaked courtyard and muddy patch of lawn.
Scotch wakes and comes to me, his ears down, tail tucked. He sniffs my hand once, then relaxes, his tail wagging happily as he leaps into my arms. I kiss his little head, and he licks my arm sweetly.
“What’s going on? What day is it?”
Emmy stares at me, her expression blank.
“If you mean ‘good morning,’ then it isn’t really. It’s been raining, and you were yelling all night in your sleep. I had to get up at, like, 3 a.m. and shut your door. I thought the neighbors were going to call the cops.”
My nose picks up a familiar scent. Coffee. Dark. Old. Who cares. I go to pour a cup. “I was yelling?”
“Yeah. Super loud. And I would not drink that if I were you. You made it like three days ago. You said our coffee was shit, and we should buy better beans from now on. You haven’t made any since.”
I plunk down the cup, my head still a pressure cooker. “I said that?”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” I throw open the cupboards. Empty shelves stare back at me. A thin layer of dust and grime has formed over everything. The fridge, too, is bare. Bills and pizza receipts cover the countertop.
“How many nights have you—we—had takeout?”
Emmy chews while scrolling on her phone, distracted. “What? Are you serious? I’ve had takeout every single night this week. You haven’t been home for dinner once.”
I rub my eyes. Shit. I’ve lost a whole week. Martha went in for the interview on Monday. It’s Saturday. I’ve lost all five days.
I grab a seat next to Emmy at the breakfast counter, and Scotch settles beneath us.
Our eyes find each other. “Em, this is really important. I need you to tell me what I’ve been doing this week. Since last weekend.”
“What the hell, Mom? You’re freaking me out right now.”
“I’m not kidding. I need your help.”
Emmy looks me over. “Are you having a nervous breakdown or something? Is this about your medication?” She grabs her phone. “Should I call Nubia?”
My hand jets out and grabs her wrist. I shake her, not hard, just enough. “Emmy, listen to me! This is serious. I’m not having a nervous breakdown. I just need to remember, and the only way I can do that is if you help me. Do you understand?”
Emmy nods slowly, a piece of pizza in her cheek.
“Good. Now tell me what has been happening.”
“Well, you leave early and come home late. I text you, usually at lunchtime and then again around five, but you don’t answer until eight. When you get home, we don’t really talk much or anything. Sometimes you go straight to bed.”
“I do?”
Emmy nods. “Do you seriously not remember anything? You said not to call Nubia because it was just a side effect of your medication. Remember?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh my God.” Emmy’s mouth falls open. “Oh my God. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“What? What are you saying?”
“That thing you said before about Martha. She’s real, isn’t she?”
This is not the plan. My skin begins to crawl, and the hairs on my arms stand up as I realize the dreaded truth.
Martha has been here, living with Emmy, for the past week of my life.
A thought enters my mind, loud and certain: If anyone finds out about this, they will take Emmy from me, and I will never see her again.
“It makes sense. You talking to yourself, acting so different. You can’t remember things, things that you say and do. She’s real, isn’t she?”
“No, Emmy. Listen. You don’t understand.”
Let her understand, Nicola. What’s the difference now?
“She can’t know.”
“Mom?”
She knows.
“Fuck you!”
Emmy leaps off the stool and backs away from me.
“Mom, what’s going on? Is she inside you? Mom!”
“Emmy, listen to me. It’s not what you think.”
Just tell her, Nicola. Or maybe I should just tell her myself.
“No. Be quiet!”
Emmy comes to my side and hugs me. “Mom. It’s okay. I get it. I know.”
My eyes well up. “What?”
“Something is wrong, and Martha is there. She’s inside, talking to you.”
I pull away from her, the tears pouring down my cheeks. I can’t stop them.
You coward. This is why I’m in charge.
“Be quiet, Martha!” I sob and pinch the sore at the back of my neck until she falls quiet.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Emmy says. “I know she’s real. I’ve met her. She’s not you.”
“No,” I sob. “I didn’t want you to find out.”
Emmy holds me. “It’s all right, Mom. I can handle it.” Her lips touch my skin, and I see her tiny toddler face in my mind, two full lips sticky with cereal, the roundness of her chin, her dimples.
I wipe my face. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to see this.”
“It’s okay. Now tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”
“Being here, in the kitchen with you.”
Emmy tries to think. “What were we doing?”
“Nubia was here. She made us breakfast. You called her because you were afraid.”
“Yeah, I remember. You—she—got really upset at me.”
My throat tightens, and I instantly feel the urge to break something. “Damn you, Martha!”
“Calm down, Mom. She didn’t hurt me or anything. She’s just a little … intense.” Emmy looks at her phone. She scrolls and lands on a picture of waffles and huevos rancheros. It was last Sunday morning.
“I still can’t believe I’ve been gone all week.”
“I know. I guess it makes sense now. All the pizza. The late nights. You collapsing on the bed at night. You—she, I mean—hardly said two words to me.”
“Well, where have I been going?”
“I don’t know what you do. I just know you got a new job. You come in, you go to bed. You get up, and you leave.”
“That can’t be it.”
Emmy looks blankly at me. “Mom, I swear. This past week has really sucked.”
“Okay, so walk me through. I get up, and then?”
“I hear you come downstairs.”
“What time is that?”
Emmy rolls her eyes. “Like, 6:30.”
“Then?”
“Then you do some random stuff in the kitchen. You make noise in here. Sometimes I hear you on the phone.”
“Do I come home for lunch?”
Emmy shakes her head. “Nope.”
“What time do I get home?”
“Around 8 or 9 p.m. Sometimes later, I guess. Usually, I’m starving, so I text you, and you tell me to order in. So, I get pizza or whatever.”
“What do I eat?”
Emmy shrugs. “I have no idea, but it’s not anything here. I mean, there’s literally no food in the house.”
I feel myself nodding. “Yeah, I saw. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. I sort of had a feeling something was wrong with you anyway.”
“You did?”
“Well, yeah. You’ve been acting so weird lately.”
“Emmy, there’s a way I can fix this. I’ve done it before. I can get rid of her.”
Emmy’s eyes look worried. “What do you mean? How?”
What are you going to tell her? You know there’s no way to get rid of me.
“There’s a way to put her back. I just need to get a handle on things and figure out exactly what Martha is up to.”
Emmy sighs, an expression of doubt hanging over her eyes. There’s a dark, sleepless quality about them I hadn’t noticed before. My stomach rolls with guilt.
“I think I know what Martha is doing. I’m going to put a stop to this.”
“What is she doing?”
I think for half a second about not telling her, but the impulse to keep Emmy safe is strong. She has to know. “She’s working for Bambi Redfern.”
Emmy’s eyes grow large. “Bambi Redfern? As in Jason Redfern’s wife?”
I nod. “I think so. I’m pretty sure that’s where we’ve been each day, but I can’t say for certain.”
Emmy laughs, cackles really. It’s a hollowed-out, feral sound. “Are you kidding me? That’s unreal. Do you know who they are? Who she is? They’re the definition of rich and famous.”
“Of course.”
“Mom. You have to admit. You’re—she’s—brilliant.”
Martha flicks a hair that tickles deep inside, near my eardrum, and I can hear her laughing. I cringe.
“Listen to me, Em. Martha is not brilliant. She’s crazy. And dangerous. No one can know about this, okay? You can’t tell Nubia, your friends, no one. Do you understand?”
Emmy smiles a little. I can see she’s doubting me already. “Sure I do. But dangerous might not be a bad thing. Dangerous might be just what we need.”
The day is a blur of organizing the house, cleaning, getting things back in order that Martha left awry.
I wash Emmy’s clothes and mine, tidy the downstairs, change the sheets upstairs.
The work feels easy and quick, and I’m grateful for the distraction from the flashes that keep coming to me from Martha’s week of my life.
Broken fragments of thoughts, sounds, scents that belong to her, not me.
After I’m finished, I find Emmy sitting outside the apartment letting the sun hit the side of her head where the scar is still pinkish mocha. I sit down next to her and kiss it gently. Emmy winces.
“I still see the car,” she says. “Even now, the whole accident just keeps replaying in my mind.”
“I know,” I tell her. “It’s the same for me.”
She looks up at me, her golden-brown curls falling to one side in the sunlight. “How long is it supposed to be like that?”
“A while. Maybe longer. I don’t really know.”
Emmy rubs the toe of her shoe with her thumb. She squints and looks at me, the sun catching her brown pupils, making them honeycomb gold. “We’re out of money, aren’t we? That’s why she’s doing this.”
Oddly enough, it’s a relief that this is what she thinks. “Money is tight,” I tell her.
“So maybe what Martha is doing is good, right?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, collapsing the world into gray light. “No, I don’t think so.”
Emmy gives me a skeptical look. “Well, she got you a job with Bambi and Jason Redfern, and she’s making money. Isn’t that a good thing?”