Pam just smiled. It was a facade, no comfort in it. Pure mask. The thought crossed Theresa’s mind, and not for the first time—who is this woman I’m spilling all my secrets to? To some extent, the exposure was terrifying. But the compulsion to actually connect with another human being tipped the scales.
Theresa said, “I guess I just see Pines as a new phase of my life.”
“What’s the hardest thing about it?”
“About what? Living here?”
“Yeah.”
“Hope.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why am I continuing to breathe in and out? I would think that’s the hardest question for everyone stuck in this place to answer.”
“And how do you answer it, Theresa?”
“My son. Ethan. Finding a great book. Snowstorms. But it’s not like my old life. There’s no dream house to live for. No lottery. I used to fantasize about going to law school and starting my own practice. Becoming fulfilled and rich. Retiring with Ethan somewhere warm with a clear blue sea and white sand. Where it never rains.”
“And your son?”
Theresa hadn’t seen it coming. Those three little words hit her with the sneaky power of a surprise right.
The ceiling she’d been staring at disappeared behind a sheet of tears.
“Ben’s future was your biggest hope, right?” Pam asked.
Theresa nodded, and when she blinked, two lines of saltwater ran out of the corners of her eyes and down her face.
“His wedding?” Pam asked.
“Yeah.”
“An illustrious career that made him happy and you proud?”
“It’s more than that.”
“What?”
“It’s what I was just talking about. Hope. I want it so badly for him, but he’ll never know it. What can the children of Pines aspire to be? What foreign lands do they dream of visiting?”
“Have you considered that maybe this idea of hope, at least the way that you conceive of it, is a holdover from your past life, that serves no purpose?”
“You’re saying abandon hope all ye who enter here?”
“No, I’m saying live in the moment. That maybe in Pines there’s joy to be had in just surviving. That you continue to breathe in and out because you can breathe in and out. Love the simple things you experience every day. All this natural beauty. The sound of your son’s voice. Ben will grow up to live a happy life here.”
“How?”
“Has it occurred to you that your son may no longer share your old-world concept of happiness? That he’s growing up in a town that cultivates exactly the sort of in-the-moment living I just described?”
“It’s just so insular.”
“So take him and leave.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“We’d be killed.”
“But you might escape. Some have left, though they’ve never returned. Do you secretly fear that, as bad as you think it is in Pines, it could be a million times worse on the outside?”
Theresa wiped her eyes. “Yes.”
“One last thing,” Pam said. “Have you opened up to Ethan about what happened prior to his arrival? Your, um… living situation… I mean.”
“Of course not. It’s only been two weeks.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“What’s the point?”
“You don’t think your husband deserves to know?”
“It would only cause hurt.”
“Your son might tell him.”
“Ben won’t. We already talked about it.”
“Last time you were here, you rated your depression on a scale of one to ten as a seven. How about today? Are you feeling better, worse, or the same?”
“The same.”
Pam opened a drawer and took out a small white bottle that rattled with pills.
“You’ve been taking your medication?”
“Yes,” Theresa lied.
Pam set the bottle on the desktop. “One a day, at bedtime, just like before. It’ll last you until our next appointment.”
Theresa sat up.
She felt like she always did after these things finished—emotionally ragged.
“Can I ask you something?” Theresa said.
“Sure.”
“I assume you talk to a lot of people. Hear everyone’s private fears. Will this place ever feel like home?”
“I don’t know,” Pam said as she stood. “That’s entirely up to you.”
5
The morgue was in the basement of the hospital through a pair of windowless doors.
Far end of the east wing.
Pilcher’s men had arrived ahead of Ethan with the body, and they stood in jeans and flannel shirts outside the entrance. The taller of the two, a man with Nordic features and head of Pilcher’s security team, looked visibly upset.
“Thanks for bringing her down,” Ethan said as he moved past and shouldered through one of the doors. “You don’t have to wait.”
“We were told to wait,” the blond said.
Ethan shoved the door closed after him.
The morgue smelled like a morgue. Antiseptic not quite masking the embedded musk of death.
The flooring was white tile, badly stained, and slightly concave with a large drain in the center.
Alyssa lay naked on the stainless-steel autopsy table.
The sink behind the table was leaking, the sound of dripping water echoing off the walls.
Ethan had only been inside the morgue once before. He hadn’t liked it then, and he found it infinitely less charming with a corpse in situ.
There were no windows, no other source of light but the examination lamp.
Standing next to the autopsy table, everything beyond was lost to darkness.
Over the drip-drip-drip came the hum of the refrigerated morgue drawers—a stack of six stationed against the wall beside the sink.
The truth was he didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t a coroner by a long shot. But Pilcher had insisted he examine the body and produce a report.
Ethan set his Stetson on the organ scale above the sink.
Reaching up, he took hold of the lamp.
In the hard light, the wounds looked clean. Neat. Impeccable. No ragged skin. Just dozens and dozens of black windows into devastation.
The woman’s skin was the color of primer under the burn.
He went appendage by appendage studying the punctures.
It grew harder with her lying dead on a table under this cruel clinical light to think of her as Alyssa.
He raised her left arm into the light and studied her hand. There was dirt under her fingernails. Or blood. He imagined her hands desperately pushing into the fresh wounds, fighting to stanch the blood that must have been pouring out of her.
So why, aside from the oak leaf fragments in her hair, was she otherwise clean? Without a trace of blood or bloodstain on her skin? He hadn’t seen any blood where he’d found her in the road. She’d obviously been killed elsewhere and moved to that place. Why had they drained her blood? To transport her without leaving a trail? Or something more sinister?
Ethan studied her other arm.
Her legs.
He didn’t want to, but he shined the light briefly between her thighs.