He called her Tess.
I remind myself that Henry investigated Andrew. I remind myself that I trust him. He’s been my lover for over a year. He isn’t a killer.
He isn’t the Creeper.
My lover is not the killer.
Why did he call her Tess?
For the first time since I went to bed with Andrew, I doubt my own judgment. I don’t call him. I don’t call Henry either. What does Henry know that he’s not told me? I try to think about his attitude to Andrew. Is he colder toward Andrew? Does he know a secret that I ought to know, too? Surely, if they had any reason to think Andrew was a suspect, Henry would tell me.
No, I can’t call Henry or Andrew. I’d have to tell them how I know where Theresa is. This is on me.
I have enough money to fly to New Orleans. I don’t know what I’ll say to her when I find her. As much as I want the answers she probably has, I don’t know what to do. I’m used to talking to detectives or employees at various medical examiners’ offices. Mostly, I deal with mourners, and there’s a vast gap between mourning a loss and surviving horrors.
I’m not prepared for this. Maybe the logical thing to do is to tell Henry. How do I tell him without sharing my suspicions that Andrew knows more than I realized before now? How do I explain why I found Teresa? Do I tell him that Andrew called her Tess? That Sharon found her?
I look at flights. It’s often expensive to fly last minute, but New Orleans isn’t that far from North Carolina by air. There are a few cheap options, airlines selling off last minute tickets. It’s a short, easy trip. I could do it, go there right now. It’s not like she’s somewhere in Europe or Canada or even somewhere remote in the U.S. like Montana or Idaho or those other states that seem like they’re surely all wilderness I don’t know how to handle. She’s in a fairly busy city, one filled with tourists.
I flit between the flights and hotels. I look at my schedule and my budget. I can maybe swing going for a week. Uncle Micky can handle the work here, and I doubt that he’d object to me getting away to clear my head.
Dealing with Andrew and Henry . . . that’s a bit more complicated.
I don’t know if I can find her, but I don’t know if I can afford not to try. I stare at Teresa’s face. She doesn’t look like the girl in the pictures I have of her. The only pictures we had were when she was in her early twenties, and she looked like a lot of young women with money. This woman doesn’t look like that. She has the appearance of someone who could be homeless or five minutes from it. There’s something hard about her.
She’s sleeping in one of the pictures Sharon sent. Tattoos spiral down her arms, across her shoulders, along her calves and ankles. It’s the one on her wrist that I keep looking at. It’s nearly identical to the one I saw on what remained of Ana Menendez. The next picture is different. Teresa is standing in the same park that shows up in most of the tourist brochure pictures of New Orleans. It’s shot from farther away. She looks like a wraith, a junkie, starving. It could’ve been in any number of cities, in any number of years. She’s a woman lost.
And she isn’t aware that her picture is being taken.
Unlike the vulnerability of the one of her sleeping, this is a different kind of invasive. I have no doubt she was unaware of both photos. And I have no doubt that whatever has happened to Teresa Morris, it wasn’t good.
She’s alive.
I save the photos to my phone. Copy and re-save them, edit them slightly—adjust the lighting only—and then email them to myself and re-save again. Then, I call Andrew.
“I have to go out of town,” I tell him as I start throwing clothes into my bag. “I’m on my way to the airport, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He’s quiet.
“Andrew?”
“You didn’t mention a trip.”
I force a laugh. “Yeah? And you didn’t mention who gave you a black eye. We had other stuff to talk about, right? We always do.”
“Right.” His laugh sounds no more genuine than mine probably did. “Where are you headed?”
“Oh. Just New York,” I lie. I have to until I’m sure I can trust him. “A friend’s getting married. I can call you when I’m back . . . ”
“Good. That’s good. Alone?”
“Yes," I snap. "Okay . . . I’m going to—”
“I love you, Jules. I know you don’t want to hear it, or maybe you don’t even want me to feel it, but I do.”
I notice that I’m shaking. I can tell myself that it’s simply because I want to do this alone, or because I don’t want to go away with him, or even that I don’t owe him the whole truth. The reality is that whatever he’s hiding unsettles me.
“I’ll call you when I’m back,” I say.
It’s the most I can add without further lies.
20
A Girl with No Past
Once Edward and I were married, his brothers came by whenever they wanted. Before that, he’d apparently told them to stay away.
“Is he good to you?”
I looked at Edward’s younger brother. The oldest one, William, barely spoke to me. The younger brother, Buddy, watched me carefully. He catalogued my bruises, my cuts. He knew that Edward had to send me to the shed twice now.
“Edward loves me.” I looked down as I said it.
Earlier that day was the first time Edward hit me repeatedly. I wasn’t sure what to do. I would learn over the next few months, but the first time was a surprise. I hadn’t been completely sheltered as a child. My family was affluent, and if not for the choice to walk away from them, I suspect my life would be completely unfamiliar to me now. I’d left though, walked away without a backward glance when my mother’s latest husband made a pass at me—and my mother blamed me for it.
I was nineteen then.
At the time, it seemed like the worst thing that had ever happened, could ever happen. Then, years later, I learned about real violence.
It was before I’d learned how much he needed to hurt women.
There would be things that hurt worse, but that day I hadn’t even spoken before his fist connected with my face. There was no warning, nothing.
I stumbled backwards. “What—”
He closed the distance between us and hit me a second time. “I thought you were better than the rest of them.”
I didn’t reply. I might not know why he was angry, but I understood that speaking had led to a second strike. I didn’t want a third one.
“What am I to do, Tess? How am I to be okay when I have to worry about you? Do you want to upset me?”
I reached up to touch the blood I could feel on my chin. I touched my teeth with my tongue to see if any were loose. Doing so revealed that my tongue was bleeding.
“Were you with someone else, Tessie?”
“No, Edward! I just went for a walk—”
He had my throat in his hand then, and I knew that there would be fingerprints.
“I thought you were special, that you could be trusted.” He shoved me backwards, and I stumbled.
“I can be!”
He stared at me. “Where were you? Were you with someone else?”