Almost Dead (8 page)

CHAPTER 17

Jenny Pickett looked around her old bedroom at her parents’ farmhouse. The yellow walls were faded and chipped. Every time she came home, the room appeared so much smaller than she remembered. The mirror her mother had made for her when she was little, framed with wood and feathers and lots of glue, still hung above a three-legged dresser.

The mirror had been purposely cracked because at the time her mother thought that would give it a unique, vintage look, but what it did instead was freakishly distort the reflection of anyone who looked into it. Jenny had always hated the thing, thought it was the ugliest gift any parent could bestow upon their only child, but looking at it now, with new eyes, she thought differently.

Turning, she viewed her profile. Her shoulders were no longer hunched over. When had that changed?

Facing her reflection straight on, she leaned forward, peered into the broken pieces of mirror, and smiled. Even the cracks couldn’t hide a straight white smile and killer eyes. Pun intended. She smiled at her own wittiness. The pitiful farm girl was transforming, growing more confident with every passing day.

You’re not the fairest of them all. You came here for a reason. Now get busy.

She made her way down the hallway, the wood floors creaking and shifting beneath her feet. In the kitchen, Mom stood at the stove, using a wooden spoon to stir all the leftovers from their meal in a giant banged-up pot. Leftover stew. Mom had been making it for as long as Jenny could remember. Only one burner on the stove worked, but somehow Mom had managed to cook a lot of meals.

The blue curtains framing the small window above the sink, the scarred trestle table, and the mismatched slat-back chairs—everything was the same. Nothing had changed.

A sigh escaped as she watched her parents for a moment longer. Mom had never been considered a good cook, but whatever she served up on any given day always did take care of the hunger pains.

Don’t forget how many times you got food poisoning. You’ll be sick by midnight, guaranteed.

Dad was sitting at the table, fiddling with his napkin. He wasn’t all there these days, but he still had random moments of clarity. Mom had been forty-five when she’d given birth to Jenny in the back room of this very house. Dad had been fifty. Now he was eighty and sliding downhill fast.

Usually she visited her parents once or twice a month, but for reasons that couldn’t be helped, she hadn’t been to the farm in nearly two months, not counting her midnight jaunt into the field to bury Brandon’s body. That was the reason she’d come tonight. After the recent rains, she couldn’t stop worrying about his body floating up to the top of his makeshift grave.

You better get moving. Brandon’s corpse could be resting in the neighbor’s yard.

“I’m going to take that bucket of scraps to the pigs,” Jenny told her mom.

“No need to do that, dear. Harry will be here to feed all the animals in the morning.”

“That’s OK—I
want
to do it. I want to see the pigs before I go.”

“You’ll get your nice clothes dirty,” Dad said.

“You both need to stop worrying about every little thing. I’ll go to the barn first and slide into one of Dad’s old painting garments before I head for the pen.” She looked at Mom. “Do you mind finishing up the dishes by yourself?”

“Not at all. You go have fun with the pigs. Rosa is about to have her litter any minute now. Oh,” she said before Jenny got to the door, “watch out for the new boar. He’s eight hundred pounds and mean as they come.”

“A boar? Why do we have a boar?”

“Mr. Higgins is moving away soon, and he knew how much your dad always liked the big boar, so he gave it to him. Maybe you should go say hello to Jack before he moves on to greener pastures. He’s always been fond of you, you know. Talks about you as if you were his own daughter. Such a sweet man.”

About as sweet as a bite of sour apple with a squirt of lemon juice
, Jenny thought but kept it to herself. The last person in the world she wanted to talk to or think about was the next-door neighbor. Mr. Jack Higgins was rotten to the core. Of course, Mom had no idea of the things he’d done to sabotage Jenny’s relationship with his eldest son, Bobby. As it turned out, Mr. Higgins had had big plans for Bobby, and those plans had not included Jenny Pickett.

Without another word, Jenny grabbed the bucket of slop and headed outside.

Inside the barn, she made quick work of stepping into overalls and a pair of rubber boots, grabbed a flashlight, and then headed out to the field. Figuring Mom might be watching from the kitchen window, she held the bucket of scraps high in one hand as she headed for the pigpen. As soon as she rounded the corner, though, she set the bucket down and ran toward the place where she’d buried Brandon.

After scouring the muddy fields for a while, she’d just decided she might be in the clear when she tripped over a half-eaten foot and nearly face-planted in the mud.

Damn.
Could have been coyotes or raccoons—or maybe her dad’s new prize boar. In fact, that was pretty damned likely. She passed the flashlight’s beam around the field. Its batteries were fading. She couldn’t help but wonder if the old boar was watching her.

She hurried back for the barn and tossed a shovel and an axe in the wheelbarrow. Before she got halfway across the twelve-hundred-square-foot barn, though, Mr. Higgins, stepped inside and even went to all the bother to slide the creaky metal door closed behind him. “Well, well. If it ain’t the one and only Jenny Pickett. How ya doin’, pretty gal?”

“I’m busy right now, Mr. Higgins, and I really don’t have time for small talk.”

His eyes opened wide. “Jenny Pickett has gone and grown a voice. Ain’t that a kicker?”

His scrutiny of her felt heavy as a wet blanket on her shoulders, just as it used to feel when she was younger and he stared at her like he was doing now. His gaze rested somewhere close to her thighs before working upward to her bosom.

She felt exposed.

She didn’t like it.

Leaving the wheelbarrow, Jenny walked to the back of the barn, grabbed an empty bucket, and started to fill it with grain, anything to get his prying, ugly eyes off her.

“I’m sure you saw it in the paper,” Mr. Higgins began. “My Bobby went and married himself a pretty girl named Jenny. Ain’t that a coincidence? You remember her. Jenny Rowe. Voted most popular girl in your class. Then she won all sorts of awards in college.”

Jenny gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted was to make a scene at her parents’ house. “I can’t imagine why you would think I would care, other than to thank my lucky stars I didn’t get stuck with Bobby myself,” she told him, unable to stop herself. “Everybody knows about poor Jenny Rowe, and I mean
everyone
. For years after college, she couldn’t get a job and she had to give massages to men she’d never met just to keep a roof over her head and food on the table. And I’m not talking about foot massages, Mr. Higgins. I’m talking about the kind of massages that include a happy ending. Poor sad Jenny must have been pretty desperate to go and marry big ol’ Bobby.”

Jack Higgins’s round, droopy-jowled face paled. “You, you—”

“Jesus Christ, Mr. Higgins. Get a clue. Your son weighs at least four hundred pounds and he can’t lift a fork to his mouth without sweating. Does he have a job? A house? How the hell is he going to fuck that new wife of his if he can’t find his penis?”

Higgins pointed a fat, stubby finger at her. “You better watch that mouth of yours. Your father is lucky he has dementia because he would not be happy to know what’s become of his only daughter.”

Jenny dropped the bag of grain and walked toward Mr. Higgins, grabbing the axe from the wheelbarrow as she passed by. She marched through sawdust and shavings until she stood directly in front of him. Her hands shook as she stared him down, holding the axe in front of her chest, ready to raise the sharpened edge and strike him down if she felt the need.

Do it. Do it.

Jenny’s voice trembled as she spoke. “You think I don’t remember spending the night with your daughter, Jill, only to have you creep into the bedroom in the middle of the night so you could slide your dirty, filthy hands beneath my shirt and touch me?”

His bloated lips hung open. One of his big hands rose to them, then slowly fell to his giant barrel of a stomach. His wiry gray chest hairs curled around the buttons of his plaid shirt like the kind of weedy vines that were impossible to eradicate.

“I’m not the only one who knows what you did,” she continued. “Jill knows it, too. Why do you think your daughter moved away before she turned eighteen? She hated you. She was disgusted by her own father. I bet Bobby knows what you did, too. Probably the reason why he eats so much, anything to mask the pain . . . So he just eats and eats and eats.”

Mr. Higgins turned away and headed for the exit. His steps were slower than before and his shoulders hung low.

If you’re not going to kill him right now, at least add him to the list.

No. I’m not going to add him to the list. Sometimes living with the truth is worse than dying.
“That’s right,” she called out to Mr. Higgins. “Run along now. And don’t you ever come back here again, or I
will
call the police and fill out a long-overdue report. I wonder what would happen if word got out? How many little girls in the neighborhood would come forth?” Jenny let the heavy end of the axe drop to her side and used her free hand to rub her chin. “I really do wonder.”

Even after Higgins left the barn, the putrid smell of him remained. She tossed the axe back into the wheelbarrow, ignored the deafening clang, and then headed through the barn door back toward the field.

She had a body to take care of and pigs to feed.

CHAPTER 18

“What’s wrong with Lizzy?” Kitally asked. “Is she going to be all right?”

Hayley followed the direction of Kitally’s gaze. Lizzy sat on the edge of a cushioned chair in the darkened living room, leaning forward as she stared out one of the many floor-to-ceiling windows. It was dark out. A couple of spotlights dotted the landscaping, shedding light on countless oak trees with crooked, outstretched branches. Beyond the oaks, grass, and mossy rocks was a creek. If you stood anywhere near the property line, you could hear the steady trickle of water.

Hayley stepped into the room with her.

“Somebody’s out there,” Lizzy said as she approached.

Hayley walked past Lizzy and stood inches from the window, peering into the night, trying to see what Lizzy saw, figuring it was most likely Lizzy’s imagination getting the best of her again. This wasn’t the first time she’d caught Lizzy staring into the darkness. And it wouldn’t be the last.

“I don’t see anything.”

“To the right of the biggest rock. I can see the faint outline of his head and shoulders.”

Kitally joined them. “What are you guys looking at?”

“Lizzy thinks she sees someone out there.”

“I don’t
think
I see anything. He’s right there, mocking me.”

“Who is it?” Kitally asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ve had enough. I’m going to find out.” Lizzy pushed herself from the chair.

Kitally followed her to the French doors leading to the backyard. She glanced back at Hayley, who merely shrugged.

Hayley watched the two of them walk outside and make their way across the grass toward the back of the property until they separated and slipped into the trees and she could no longer see them at all.

The moonlight against the trees tricked her, making shadows out of air.

And then she saw it—an undeniable flash of movement in the trees between the points at which Lizzy and Kitally had entered the woods.

She stood still, unblinking, daring whatever it was to move again. Somebody or something was out there.

And then it did move. It was a man, openly skirting the edge of the trees for a moment and then taking off into them.

She ran for the open door.

She was halfway across the grass when Kitally burst from the woods.

“Did you see him?” Kitally asked. “I thought he went this way.”

“Where’s Lizzy?”

They looked at one another. They both knew: she’d gone off after him on her own.

Shit.
Hayley charged into the woods with Kitally on her heels. They weren’t as impenetrably dark as they’d seemed from the house, but they were plenty dark enough. She tripped over something, caught herself, then nearly fell again before finding a trail that weaved through the trees along the creek. Then, after maybe half a minute, the two of them popped out of the woods and there was Lizzy, standing in the middle of the street with her hands on her knees, breathing hard.

“Which way did he go?” Hayley asked.

Lizzy pointed into the utter blackness of the denser wooded area across the street.

“What was he doing out there?” Kitally panted.

“He was watching me.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since I moved in. He was watching me at Cathy’s house, too.”

“What about before?” Hayley didn’t elaborate. Everyone in their little circle knew what that meant—
before
the shooting or
after
the shooting. It was all still too raw for there to be anything else.

Unsure if Lizzy had heard her, she reworded the question, “How long has he been watching you?”

“I think forever.”

Lizzy didn’t want to call the police, and she didn’t want to talk about it. But she damn well refused to put Kitally and Hayley in danger, too.
Packing my things is becoming an all too familiar event
, she thought as she scrambled around the bedroom, gathering her belongings into one big pile in the middle of the bed.

“Please don’t leave,” Kitally said for the tenth time.

Lizzy shoved everything into the suitcase and zipped it shut. “Don’t you get it, Kitally?”

“No, I guess I don’t. Everything has been so much better since you’ve been staying with us. It feels like a family, living here with you guys. I like it.”

Lizzy walked into the bathroom, gathered her toiletries into a pile on the sink, and then came back into the bedroom and looked around for something to put it all in. “I never said I was going to be staying indefinitely. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” she muttered as she searched through the closet for her backpack.

Once that was done, Lizzy exited the closet and found one very dejected young woman standing marooned in the middle of the room. She walked over to Kitally and placed her hands on her shoulders. “Kitally, listen to me. You don’t understand. I can’t put your life in danger. I just can’t do it. If something happened to you because of my living here . . . how am I supposed to live with that?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Kitally said. “We need each other. All three of us need each other. God forbid, not forever, but now. Right now.” She took a deep breath, then released it. “You could leave,” she went on. “Hayley could leave, too. I could get hit by a car tomorrow and die. We all know shit happens. But what good would your leaving have done me then?”

Lizzy dropped her hands from Kitally’s shoulders.

“And what about Hayley?” Kitally asked. “She’s been out trolling the streets of Sacramento every night since Jared was kill—” She stopped herself midsentence.

Lizzy moved to the window. “His sister believes he’s going to make it,” Lizzy said.

“What about you? What do you believe?”

“I know what needs to be done. At least I thought I did. His sister and his parents are hanging on tight to the belief that Jared will make it . . . They still have hope.” Lizzy put a hand to her chest. “What if they’re right? Maybe I just haven’t hung on to enough hope to bring him back.”

“Hopes and prayers are important, but they don’t bring people back to life.”

Lizzy peered out into a vast expanse of nothingness. And that’s exactly what she felt. Nothing. She felt nothing. Not scared. Not sad. Not anything. Her therapist was right. Something was wrong with her.

She was defective. Broken.

She was surprised when she realized Kitally was still talking.

“And then you moved in,” Kitally was saying, trying to sound cheerful. “Since then, Hayley’s been sticking around more. I think it’s because she’s worried about you.” Kitally laughed. “Imagine that? Hayley Hansen worried about another human being? It defies logic and understanding. And yet it’s true. I’ve seen it, and I know you’ve seen it. You can’t leave us. Not yet. Certainly not tonight.”

Lizzy expelled a breath as she turned back toward Kitally.

“If we split up,” Kitally went on, “we’re all more vulnerable. If you’re really concerned about my well-being, you’ll stay. I’m not saying that you need to protect me, but we’re all better off with each other.”

“I’ll stay for now,” Lizzy told her. “But you, young lady, better watch your back, because if something happens to you under my watch, I’m gonna be pissed.”