“They all want to forget, you know,” he called out. “This town. They want to pretend that nothing bad happened here. But I won’t let them forget. Because I remember. Don’t be afraid to remember, Mrs. Barlow.”
He stepped back, farther into the house.
“Thank you for stopping by,” he said in a cheery voice, as if she were any other customer exiting the store. “Please, come again.”
Hitch swung the door shut. He turned the sign in the window around from “Closed” to “Open” and offered the world an inviting smile.
Kris wanted to run. Her mind screamed at her to race down the front stairs and leave this awful place behind. Instead she took a breath, exhaled, and slowly walked down the steps one by one, refusing to give Hitch the satisfaction of knowing her fear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KRIS’S PULSE FINALLY steadied as she reached the second-floor door of Clear Water Counseling. She wiped her sweaty hands on the back of her shirt and knocked gently.
The moment the door opened, she could see that something was wrong. Despite Alice’s attempt to conjure up her usual friendly smile, the expression seemed, for the first time, completely forced.
“What happened?” Kris asked.
Dr. Baker looked over at Sadie, who was stretched out on the office floor, her hair falling down around her face as she sketched in a notebook with a colored pencil. She was lost in thought, oblivious to the fact that her mother was standing in the doorway.
“Sadie?” Dr. Baker called out, completely ignoring Kris’s question.
Sadie added the finishing touches to her picture and shut the notebook. She pushed herself up onto her knees, set the notebook on the nearby coffee table, and then rose to her feet.
Kris leaned in closer to Dr. Baker, anxious to get to the bottom of things before Sadie joined them.
“How did it go?”
“I think we made some progress,” Dr. Baker said. Her lips were tight over her perfectly straight teeth.
Stepping up beside her mother, Sadie glanced down at her hand and realized she was still clutching several colored pencils. She made a soft, apologetic sound and held the pencils out.
“Keep them,” Dr. Baker told her.
Kris shook her head in protest.
“We have plenty of markers and crayons already—”
Again, Dr. Baker pretended as though Kris had never spoken. She turned to Sadie. “You can color at home. Maybe bring me a picture next time.”
She gave Sadie’s shoulder a light squeeze, then stepped back, crossing her arms.
“Same time next Saturday?”
Kris stared dumbly at Dr. Baker as her mind tried to push away all other thoughts to comprehend the simple question.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “We’ll see you then.”
With a nod, Dr. Baker turned and walked away.
Careful not to poke herself or her mother with the fistful of sharpened pencils, Sadie slipped out onto the landing and started down the stairs.
“Sadie, wait,” Kris said, reaching for the doorknob and pulling the door shut. Just as it was about to close, she happened to glance back into the office.
Dr. Baker was standing beside the coffee table. She was little more than a silhouette against the warm sunlight shining in through the far windows. A glowing halo hovered over the top of her brown hair. She studied Sadie’s notebook, now open in her hands.
They rode in silence as the last few houses of Pacington’s residential streets disappeared behind them. As they neared Hope Church, she spotted a small playground consisting of a metal jungle gym and a row of swings. She slowed, scanning the area. She could stop, she realized. She could let Sadie play with children her age, maybe make some friends. But the playground was empty. From the weeds growing up around the equipment, it looked like it hadn’t been used in some time.
Inside Kris’s head, the voices began to chatter away like partygoers eager to spread gossip.
They were talking about you back there.
That’s right. That’s why Dr. Baker was acting so strangely.
She asked Sadie about you.
Yes, she did. And Sadie told her all about Mommy. She said that Mommy forced her come to this town.
She said that Mommy was too busy fixing up their shithole lake house to play.
She said that Mommy drank too much wine and swallowed pills when she thought Sadie wasn’t looking.
I bet Hitch is making a brand-new chapter right now all about you.
Kris hissed through clenched teeth. She wanted to scream at the voices, to tell them to go to hell.
But what if they were right? She had gone to Dr. Baker for help, but what if Sadie had convinced her that Kris was the problem?
What if you are the problem?
She was so lost in these feverish thoughts that she almost missed the turn onto River Road. At the last second, she braked and cranked the wheel to the left. The tires slipped a bit as they left the asphalt for the uneven terrain of the long-neglected road, but then they found their grip once again, and the Jeep rumbled past the trees speckled with sunlight.
In the rearview mirror, she could see Sadie sitting in her booster seat, the colored pencils still clutched in her hand. Her face was turned toward the window, her reflection flickering in and out as dappled sunshine played across the glass.
“What did you two talk about this morning?” Kris asked.
Sadie shrugged and mumbled, “Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Another shrug. “Just … stuff.”
Liar.
The word was so clear and present that at first Kris was sure Sadie had spoken it.
She glanced into the rearview mirror.
Sadie was staring back, her brow furrowed in fear and confusion as if—
She heard.
She heard the voice, just like you did.
She heard it call her a liar.
Suddenly Sadie’s gaze shifted. Her eyes went wide as she thrust a finger out toward the windshield.
“Mommy!”
Kris looked.
A girl was standing in the middle of the road.
There was no time to think. Her foot jammed down the brakes, her hands whipping the steering wheel wildly to the right. She felt the tires sliding again, except this time she feared they would never regain their hold.
In the back seat, Sadie screamed.
The blurry image of the girl flashed by, and then it was gone, and the Jeep was drifting straight toward the thick trunks of the trees that bordered River Road. They were going to hit them head-on.
Kris let up off the brake pedal long enough to give the steering wheel a sharp jerk in the opposite direction. There was a chorus of off-key screeches as the tips of outstretched branches scraped against the side of the car.
Then they were slowing, the Jeep arcing gently away from the wall of trees, back toward the center of the road. Finally, it came to a stop in a billowing cloud of dust.
Her fingers were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were as white as bone. Over the pounding of her heartbeat, she could barely hear the sound of herself panting as she tried to catch her breath.
In the back seat, Sadie was sobbing.
“We’re okay,” Kris said, her own voice seeming to come from somewhere far away. “We’re okay. We’re okay.”
The girl, she suddenly remembered.
There was a girl in the road.
Twisting around in her seat, Kris stared through the back window as the cloud of dust slowly settled.