Valerie’d never thought Tully had anything to do with Lily’s disappearance; she’d never thought he might be covering up for someone; she just thought him incompetent and spiteful, and she’d never kept that opinion to herself. Now, she leans against the door, feels the wood solid at her back as a wave of nausea washes over her.
In her dreams, Lily calls for her, Lily in her black, sequined prom dress and the pretty red high heels, Lily with her dark hair swept up in a stylish chignon because the girl always had her very own tastes. Lily who disappeared the day before her prom on her way home from the shoe store on Main Street where she’d gone to get those gel pads to stop her feet slipping out of those red silk shoes.
In reality, Lily’d never got a chance to wear that dress or shoes for real, so the memory Valerie has is of the test run at home when she and Lily experimented with makeup and hair. When Lily perfected her stride in those high heels, pacing along the hallway upstairs until she got the sway just right.
But still, that’s the Lily who haunts Valerie’s dreams, although sometimes it’s Valerie’s own face she sees in place of her daughter’s.
Back in the kitchen Valerie sits at the table before her knees give way. In front of her are the now-cold coffee and that envelope. Lucius Anderson had told her one afternoon as they lay side by side, naked and sweat-covered, that he’d been taught penmanship by his strict grandfather, that other kids laughed at him because no one else made their letters just-so.
Valerie thinks Lucius must have mailed the letter just before he was killed. She wonders if Obadiah Tully suspected something of the sort. She tears open the envelope, slides the single white sheet of paper out and unfolds it.
In the same elaborate handwriting are the words “Security camera, Anderson’s Drugstore”, then: “I’m sorry”. That’s all, just those words in the middle of the page and she draws a blank as to the meaning. Then her brain kicks along and she turns the thing over; the breath falls out of her.
In black and white print, ink jet because her sweating fingers smudge the edge of the image: there’s a familiar black Mercedes C-300 Coupe heading down Main Street. The date stamp is the same day Lily Wynne disappeared, and the time shows a good hour after everything closed and the strip was deserted because folk had homes to get to and meals to prepare.
And Valerie leans closer and closer because the photo’s been taken on an angle that means she can see straight through the windscreen, can see clearly the driver’s head and the passenger’s.
It could mean nothing, she tells herself, and that car might not have had anything to do with Lily’s disappearance. It would mean nothing, she tells herself, if she didn’t know the vehicle and driver all too well. If it wasn’t Lily in the passenger seat, laughing. Valerie throws up all over the kitchen table.
* * *
John Wick is on the screen, deadpanning his way through a myriad of killings. Carrie’s in Alek’s lap, their soundtrack is a series of gunshots, of the gasps of dying men until from elsewhere in the house there’s the sound of a door closing, then voices, a female and children. He’s very gentle as he moves Carrie onto the sofa next to him, then shuffles a few inches to his left, adjusting himself slightly. On the coffee table is a half-empty box of chocolates, the kind she likes, that Carrie’d presented to him as a birthday present.
Carrie pouts, but laughs, reaches for another chocolate. She smells like vanilla. It’s nice. This is nice, thinks Alek.
“Don’t worry: Mom will be supervising homework for a while yet.” The girl settles into the corner of the sofa, kneads her toes against his thigh. “Hey, when did your dad get back?”
“He’s not home.”
“No,” she says. “I saw him this morning.”
“You must have made a mistake.” Alek sits up straighter. “I was out jogging on the Mason Road. He slowed down and waved at me.” She purses her lips. “You know, I do know your dad when I see him.”
Carrie smiles around her snippy tone, and Alek feels a tingling down his spine, not fast, but creeping, like there’s a spider with eight cold feet trying not to be noticed.
Reid had paid attention to Alek’s girlfriends in the past and some he’d taken as easily as picking an apple. He didn’t do it for a relationship – none of them lasted longer than a single night, dinner and bed – Reid did it because he could. Alek thought about Annie and Ellie, Elaine and Sukie, scholarship girls he’d met at Addison U. All smart and ambitious, but disadvantaged in one way or another, orphans or fostered, poor, from the small towns in the more remote parts of the state. The towns that had boomed in the early days but through which even the Greyhounds now roared without stopping.
Sometimes his father was one of the reasons Alek didn’t stick with a girl, but he’d never told Valerie that because how pathetic was it? Having your dad steal your girlfriends? Besides, Valerie and Reid, they’d been friends at school, and if Alek told Valerie something that made her not want to hang around any longer, then where would he be? It’s not just the threat of having to feed himself, it’s the idea of no voice but his own, no face but his own in that big house. Valerie had made him feel not so alone; she saw something in him that was worthwhile, and he saw himself reflected better in her than the hallway mirrors.
His mobile vibrates in his pocket, and he plucks it out to read the text.
“I better go,” he says to Carrie’s surprised displeasure. Alek has to admit his interest in her has lessened in a very short space of time. He’d seen the look on Carrie’s face when she mentioned his father, noticed the way she’d blushed and smiled, was flattered at unwarranted attention from a silver fox, and a rich silver fox at that.
“Why?” Carrie pouts.
“Valerie needs me at home.”
“Well.” And her mouth twists, turns sour where it had been so sweet and full mere minutes ago. “Wouldn’t want to let Valerie down.”
“No,” he says, rising. And because it’s the truth, he doesn’t blush or feel ashamed. “I wouldn’t.”
* * *
New wine in old bottles...
The keypad is blinking slowly at her, an arrogant stare. She doesn’t know the code. Six digits. If she inputs the wrong numbers, what happens? An alarm goes off somewhere? The private security firm will call the house and she’ll answer, tell them it was an accident. Still and all, better no one knows she’s snooping.
At first she’d thought about the garage – it was only natural, given sight of the Mercedes – but she’d been in there before. She’s been in all the rooms of the house; it holds no secrets for her except for one spot, one spot about which she’d had no curiosity. This one room.
She puts her face against the dull silver of the door, feels it cool as death on her skin, sees her own reflection as a strange blurred shadow. Valerie presses her ear to the metal and listens as hard as she can, although she’s not sure what she might hear. Whether it’s with hope or fear, she doesn’t know, but she still does it.
Nothing. There’s nothing.
Valerie thinks about how she’s never questioned this room’s purpose. She thinks about how smart he was as he gave her the tour of the house the day she moved in. She recalls him walking her down the stairs to the basement, and along the stone corridor; he’d made sure they stopped outside the door, pointed it out. He’d even poked a finger at the keypad like an uncoordinated child, making beep-boop noises. He smiled.