It’s been a decade since I sat behind the wheel of a car.
I wonder if I’d have to learn all over again, or if it’d be like riding a bicycle.
“I know it seems like a lot of steps, but we’ll take it one day at a time, one thing at a time,” Delphine says. “It’s all we can do, really. Just know you’re not alone.”
I lean against the counter, watching Delphine flit about the kitchen, talking nonstop. She fills the cat food. Waters five plants by the kitchen sink and two by the living room window.
Plants are simple, requiring only water and sunlight and a little bit of air.
These plants live a better life than I ever did.
I wonder how it would work—getting a copy of a birth certificate or any government ID for that matter—after a person’s been legally dead for years.
I haven’t tried—in fact, I didn’t know I was “dead” until shortly after I escaped last year. I’d been aimlessly wandering around some hole-in-the-wall township up the coast when it started pouring. Heading into a library for shelter, I came across someone’s abandoned library card next to a bay of computers. Scanning the badge, I signed on under a stranger’s account and proceeded to google myself with quivering fingers.
The timer on the computer was set for sixty minutes. A nearby sign stated users had to request additional time from the checkout desk—obviously not an option for me given the fact that the woman on the forgotten card was easily three times my age.
But for sixty minutes, I hoovered article after article about that fateful night, the days that passed, then the months, and finally, the years. Beyond the article announcing I’d been officially declared dead after a suspicious disappearance and dried-up leads, there was nothing.
It all stopped.
I was a local sensation—and then I was a dead woman.
“Are you anxious, angel?” Delphine asks. “You keep cracking your knuckles.”
I hadn’t realized.
The Monster used to hate when I’d crack them, so I’d hold off in his presence, counting down the minutes until he would leave so I could release the pressure. It was the closest thing I ever had to physical pleasure.
I can’t do any of this until I talk to Luca. If Delphine’s friend at the vital records office catches wind of my return, it could get back to him before I have a chance to see him first.
“Do you like tea?” Delphine plucks two mugs off a rack before I answer, and then she fills a black-and-white checkered kettle with ionized bottled water. “Have a seat at the table, we can have a little chat while we wait for dinner to finish.”
I hesitate, though she doesn’t notice.
Being told what to do—specifically when I can sit, when I can stand, and when I can eat—takes me back to my time with The Monster. But I remind myself Delphine is not a monster . . . not even close.
My throat is tight and my shoulders are tense, but I gather a deep breath and take a seat while she prepares our tea.
“Oolong or herbal blend?” she asks. “I have a lovely berry and hibiscus you might like?”
Choice. The Monster never gave me a choice. Yet another way Delphine is nothing like him.
“Berry and hibiscus sounds perfect.” I wait for my tea.
Tonight I’ll have to think of ways to stall the birth certificate. In the meantime, I’ll steer the conversation and keep her talking about herself. Most people love to talk about themselves. The Monster did. It was his favorite topic. He’d wax on for hours about how intelligent he was, how he was the only person in his family line worth a damn. How he was going to “be someone” someday.
I learned early on that if I kept him talking about himself, he’d forget to make my life a living hell. Or it’d delay it until later, when he was too tired to be brutal, too preoccupied with his delusions of grandeur to stay hard long enough to finish.
“So you grew up in Utah?” I ask when she places a jade-green cup in front of me. I turn the handle to find the image of a woman in some kind of meditative pose on the other side. Eyes closed. Smiling. Blissfully unaware. Reminds me of Merritt in her seaside abode. I bet she meditates.
“Cottonwood Heights.” She takes the chair across from me, which creaks as she settles in. “Ever heard of it?”
“Sounds familiar,” I lie. We never traveled when I was a kid, so I never bothered taking an interest in maps outside of school.
“Pretty town.” Delphine takes a careful sip. “Mountains everywhere you look. Not far from the city if you wanted some good shopping or restaurants. Great place to raise a family if that’s your priority. Wonderful schools. Plenty to do.”
I studied Amber’s picture earlier, the one in the frame in my room. She seemed like the sort of person who skirted the edge of normal. Not quite pretty enough to run around with the cheerleaders and jocks, too scrawny and awkward looking to hang out with the cool kids. Overplucked, mismatched brows. An abundance of dark eye makeup. Hair colored an unnatural shade of box-dye blonde. In a single photograph, I could tell she was dying to be anyone but herself.
Maybe in another life, we could’ve been friends.
For the hour that follows, Delphine tells me everything I could ever need to know about her hometown—and then some. And when we finish our dinner, I excuse myself to my room with a “headache.” I hate to lie, but I need to be alone with my thoughts, and I can take only so much Cottonwood Heights.
Cracking the window a few more inches, I gather a lungful of the crisp air before climbing under a pile of covers. And while Delphine tinkers around in the kitchen, I think only of my husband.
Eyes closed, a hundred reunion scenarios fill my mind, playing like movies on my lids.
The life I was always meant to live is finally within reach.
And it’s going to be glorious.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MERRITT
I place a sleeping Elsie in her bed and find myself in the kitchen, staring at the jar of almonds on my counter. I’d grabbed them for myself on a whim, in passing. But I remember now, those early years of our marriage when Luca would eat cold, unsalted Marcona almonds like there was no tomorrow—and then one day he just . . . stopped. No explanation.
Only someone from his past could’ve known something so nuanced and mundane.
I place the almonds in the pantry before pulling up the internet browser on my phone and googling Lydia Coletto.
I get 243,000 results.
Burying my face in my hands, I collect myself enough to brew a cup of chamomile and get settled on the family room sofa. Confined in the dark, throw blanket over my legs and my tea cooling on a coaster beside me, I nosedive down a rabbit hole I never thought I’d visit again in my lifetime.
The first several pages are fruitless, nonsensical, or irrelevant.
Narrowing my search to Lydia Coletto missing woman chops the results into a more manageable list, but it still takes me a solid half hour to find an archived article from a now-defunct website and a decade-old write-up from a local news station.
I don’t waste precious time reading the articles—I already know what happened, and I know it directly from the horse’s mouth. What I’m interested in are the photos. A small gallery of images fills the page halfway through the article. All of them are lower quality, clearly taken on a cheap cell phone from that era, many of them taken at the seaside diner where she and Luca first met.