Fade to Black (20 page)

“L
ooking for someone?”

Elizabeth spins to see a stranger, a woman, whose painful grip on her arm tightens as they come face-to-face.

Too numb to speak, Elizabeth can only look at her. She sees the woman’s skeletal frame, her gaunt features, her lifeless hair that appears to have been hacked off without regard for consistent length, much less style. Her eyes are bottomless black, and filled with wrath.

“What are you doing here?” the woman asks, her question punctuated by a distant roll of thunder.

Elizabeth struggles to find her voice, to respond somehow, and all the while her mind is racing.

Who is this person?

Was this woman the masked attacker who shot her in her Malibu bedroom five years ago?

Is she the one who sent the flowers that maimed Gretchen Dodd …

And the card that just days ago had plunged Elizabeth right back into her nightmarish past?

Or is she just some deranged homeless person who’s going to demand Elizabeth’s wallet or rough her up?

“You know, he isn’t here.” The woman practically spits the words at her.

And all at once Elizabeth is carried back over the years to the Nebraska farmhouse, to a time when she had huddled on the floor as an angry, bitter woman stood over her, cursing her, hurting her with words and then with fists.

Could this woman be …

Her mother?

“He isn’t here,” she bites out again, her nails digging into Elizabeth’s flesh.

“Who isn’t here?” Elizabeth finally manages to ask, surprised that her question comes out coherent. Fear is screeching through her mind, drowning all reason.

It’s my mother. It’s her. She’s back. She’s going to hurt me again....

Please, please don’t hurt me
, begs the little-girl voice in her mind.

“Don’t play dumb with me, you bitch.”

“I’m not—”

“He
was
here, you know. Waiting for you. But then I came along, and do you know what he did?”

She shakes her head, trembling.

“He ran away. And it’s all your fault.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth says, trying desperately to keep her tone level, reasonable.

Trying to convince herself that this isn’t her mother. It can’t be. This woman is too young, too short....

But who is she, then?

And what is she talking about?

Elizabeth glances frantically around the deserted clearing.

If only someone would come along …

But no one is going to show up at the playground now, when it’s about to rain.

“I
said
, don’t play dumb with me. I know who you are. I know what you’re up to.”

I know who you are
.

What does she mean by that?

Elizabeth focuses on the woman’s face, searching her ravaged features, finding blatant animosity.

“You listen to me,” she says, tightening her hold on Elizabeth’s aching arm. There is surprising strength in her bony hand. “You stay away from my son. Do you hear me?”

“Your … your son?”

“He’s
mine
. Leave him alone. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. I mean it, bitch. You’ll be sorry.”

Slowly, the truth dawns on Elizabeth.

“Are you talking about Manny?” she asks the hostile stranger, and the glint in the woman’s eye answers her question before she speaks.

“What the hell is the matter with you? Of course I’m talking about Manny. You stay away from my kid! You can’t take him away from me, you got that?”

She nods, and, taking a chance, jerks her shoulder in an abrupt, twisting motion. To her surprise, the woman releases her grasp on Elizabeth, who impulsively, in that instant, decides against running away.

“I didn’t hear you say anything,” the woman says. “You understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand,” Elizabeth says, rubbing her throbbing arm. “But I’m not trying to take him away from you. I’m just his friend. That’s all.”

“Don’t you stand there and lie to me. You can’t fool me.”

“I’m not—”

“Shut up!” The bony hand reaches out again, this time cracking Elizabeth across the cheek.

“Remember what I said. If you don’t leave him alone, you’ll be sorry, and he’ll be sorry,” the woman snarls, then turns and starts to run, disappearing into the woods at the edge of the path.

M
anny steps over a gaping hole on the front steps on his way to the door. His earlier attempt to fix them had been futile. He simply had no idea how to go about it.

“Manny? Is that you?”

So they’re home.

He had been hoping they would still be at the doctor’s office so he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. He needs to be alone, to calm himself down after what happened at the playground.

“Hi, Grammy.” He pokes his head into the kitchen.

His grandmother is standing at the stove. She’s wearing a plaid sleeveless housedress that reveals her flabby white arms and her vein-covered legs clad in knee-highs and those shoes with the broken soles. She’s poking a spatula at something in her battered old cast-iron pan. More weeds, probably.

“Do you want some cardoon?” she asks, confirming his suspicions.

“No,” he says, though he’s so hungry, his stomach has been grumbling. He’s always hungry. Always.

He had been hoping to see Elizabeth in the park, hoping she would take him out for an ice cream cone the way she often does, urging him to get the triple scoop, asking if he wants anything else afterward. Sometimes, if she presses him enough, he’ll order a strawberry-banana milk shake to go, even when he’s so full, he’s bursting.

A milk shake, after all, can be stashed in his grandparents’ old frost-layered freezer to be finished later, or even the next day.

Today he hadn’t had the chance to see Elizabeth.

When he’d arrived at the playground,
she
had been there.

His mother.

Sitting in one of the swings, like she had been waiting for him to show up.

He turned and ran when he saw her, ignoring her hollers to stop, to
come back here, you little shit
.

He shudders at the memory of her shrill voice.

He had been certain she would chase after him, but she hadn’t.

Now he wonders why.

She had said she was going to get him, to take him away with her.

Well, maybe she’s changed her mind.

Or maybe she’s not ready yet.

Maybe she’s waiting …

Waiting for what?

Has she asked his grandparents for their permission to take him?

Are they thinking it over?

Manny glances at his grandmother, who has her back to him as she fries the greens at the stove.

“Grammy?” he asks tentatively.

“What?” She reaches for the plastic salt shaker she keeps on the ledge above the stove, shaking it over the pan.

He watches as she takes a fork, spears a wilted, oil-slicked green stem, and pops it into her mouth.

She chews, swallows, and reaches for the salt again, then turns toward him and asks impatiently, “What is it, Manny? What do you want?”

I want to know if you care enough about me to keep me even though you and Grampa can’t afford me
.

I want to know if you’ll make sure my mother doesn’t come and take me away with her
.

I want to know if she’s asked you if she can take me, and if you told her “no way.”

I want to know …

Do you love me?

“What do you want?” his grandmother repeats.

“Nothing,” Manny says, and leaves the room.

“
…
another hot, sunny day with temperatures climbing into the mid-nineties. Yesterday’s potential for rain may have passed us by, but the long-range forecast shows that there may be a chance of thunderstorms closer to the weekend.”

Elizabeth turns off the clock radio and sits up in bed, rubbing her eyes.

It’s seven-thirty on the nose.

She had set the alarm in the middle of the night, after tossing and turning for hours. She figured that if she did manage to drift off to sleep, she might not wake up in time to catch Manny on his way to day camp.

She really needs to talk to the child.

She gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom, stretching before reaching for her toothbrush.

She sees in the mirror that her eyes, not surprisingly, are underscored by dark trenches.

Well, at least she slept a few hours.

And she must have been so exhausted that she didn’t even dream, for a change. No nightmares about being back in L.A., no sinister letters or threatening phone calls, no bullets flying or flower arrangements exploding.

Yesterday’s confrontation with Manny’s mother had left her feeling unsettled....

Yet, on some level, almost …

Relieved?

The woman has obviously been watching her; most likely, she was the one who broke into Elizabeth’s house.

It could mean that she’s safe, after all …

Safe, that is, from the stalker who had terrorized her in Los Angeles.

Safe.

And still anonymous.

Manny’s mother doesn’t seem to know that the object of her jealousy is the supposedly dead Mallory Eden.

Nor, Elizabeth suspects, would that knowledge make a difference.

The woman is apparently furious with her because she thinks Elizabeth is trying to “steal” her son.

Elizabeth squeezes a glob of toothpaste onto her brush.

This isn’t something that she intends to take lightly.

Yet she can’t help feeling as though a good portion of her recent troubles have been alleviated.

Manny’s mother, she can deal with.

She has no idea how, but she’s certain the situation is manageable.

It certainly isn’t life-threatening, even if the woman is a crack addict.

Regardless of her threats, Elizabeth knows she isn’t in the kind of danger she would be in if the shadowy stranger who had driven her into hiding had suddenly resurfaced here in New England, aware of her true identity and intending to make her life miserable once again—before ending it.

So the stalker is no longer an issue.

Although …

There is the card.

The card she received in her post office box last week, the one with the Windmere Cove postmark.

The one that reads, “I know who you are.”

Could Manny’s mother have sent it?

Why?

It doesn’t make sense for her to have done it....

Although, the woman is a drug addict, and drug addicts can be delusional. Drug addicts do a lot of things that don’t seem to make sense, don’t they?

But why, assuming that she doesn’t know who Elizabeth really is, would she have sent that particular card? What significance would that message have for someone who isn’t trying to escape her past?

It could simply be a threat, meaning that she knows that Elizabeth has been spending time with her son.

It could simply mean that she’s been watching her, following her—which, apparently, she has.

So Manny’s mother
could
have sent the card, and the message
could
have nothing to do with Elizabeth’s past as Mallory Eden.

But what if Manny’s mother isn’t responsible?

What if her menacing involvement in Elizabeth’s life is simply a coincidence?

What if someone else really did send it?

Who?

Elizabeth had lain awake for hours the previous night, trying to come up with a likely scenario, one that would make the message—
I know who you are
—seem innocuous rather than ominous.

She had done her best to convince herself that the card was some sort of marketing gimmick, just junk mail.

That the same unsigned card was sent out to hundreds of thousands of people in the area.

But …

What does it mean?

There was no enclosure advertising a product, no return address, no follow-up.

Unless …

She never had checked her post office box yesterday.

Maybe her post office box holds the key to the mystery. Maybe the card was some sort of teaser, like a newspaper ad that reads
Watch this space
.

Maybe whoever had sent it—a local printing company, perhaps, since it was a greeting card?—had mailed her another card since, containing information that would explain the product they were selling.

Maybe—if the card was a fluke and Manny’s mother is behind the break-in and the stalker hasn’t found her after all—then, maybe Elizabeth will be able to have some semblance of a normal life.