Lies That Bind (28 page)

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, her home number coming up. “Mom, it’s me.” Rebecca. “Do we have any milk?”

“Rebecca, I can’t talk right now,” she said, thinking that in her elder daughter’s case, that was a good thing. She had a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it, so the conversation was better put off for another day when Maeve didn’t feel like killing someone, anyone. “And if there isn’t any milk, you can walk to the deli and get some.”

Her sigh let Maeve know just how put out she was. Rather than get into a battle royale over Maeve’s absence and the lack of dairy products in the house, Maeve hung up.

Seconds later, the phone buzzed with a text. Chris Larsson.
I miss you.
She didn’t take the time to text back immediately, hoping she wasn’t breaking some code of dating etiquette in the twenty-first century.

She continued through the house, stepping gingerly. To her right, and behind a fireplace, was a small room with a window that faced the woods that encircled the premises, neater than the rest of the house, with a small desk and filing cabinet in it, a cushy desk chair. This room had been untouched by Mrs. Hartwell and her hoarding tendencies; it was clearly the domain of someone who was far more organized and who abided by stricter rules of cleanliness than the home’s main resident, the only person who Maeve knew lived there. Maeve looked at the desk and through some of the papers on its surface. A home insurance policy. Term life information. A renewal for the Rambler’s registration, a vehicle that had been on the road since 1967, a testament to American car-making in the last millennium.

Maeve opened the drawers of the desk, finding a collection of pens and pencils. Ah, so this is where Mrs. Hartwell’s junk collecting came to roost, she thought. Maeve pocketed a couple of Sharpies; they always went missing from the store. She suspected if she checked Jo’s desk drawers at the cottage, she’d find a stash of fresh pens in there, all purloined from The Comfort Zone. One desk drawer was stuck and Maeve yanked on it to pull it out completely, finding that a box with a hinged lid was the reason it wouldn’t open.

She pulled out the box. In the distance, she heard the rumble of a car with a faulty muffler. The Rambler. Mrs. Hartwell was on her way back.

Maeve opened the box and looked inside. Underneath a holy card, one that had been taken from Martin Haggerty’s wake, was a stack of social security cards. Maeve riffled through them quickly even though the one on the top, bearing the name Winston Alderson, made her gasp.

She counted them quickly. There were ten social security cards, all bearing different names.

But none bore the name of Aibhlinn Conlon.

CHAPTER 49

Above her, Maeve heard floorboards creak, but rather than stay to find out who was there and what they might do to an intruder, she shoved Winston Alderson’s social security card into her back pocket, pushing the box back into the desk and slamming the drawer shut before she tore out of the house through the back door, knocking over a canister of oxygen before she hit the porch. Outside, she wondered why she only grabbed his card, why she panicked and didn’t keep them all. His was the only name that was familiar to her, in her quick glance through the stack; his was the only one she really cared about, she decided. She steeled herself for the loud bang that would accompany the explosion that was sure to come if the oxygen canister was full, but none came. She ran across the backyard and took cover in the dense woods, hearing the car drive up to the parking pad out front and coming to a stop.

She rested behind a large fallen oak, the trunk providing cover for her shaking body. She lay down on the ground, flat, sure she couldn’t be seen, and tried to slow her breath. She folded her hands on her chest and looked up at the sky. After she heard the back door slam again, Mrs. Hartwell using the kitchen entrance, there was no sound that came from the house, nothing to indicate that the woman was going to pick up her gun and stalk Maeve until she found her, shot her, and killed her. Maeve wondered if the oxygen canisters tipped over often, especially when they were empty, if that occurrence was her cover. She had waited too long inside the house, her curiosity at what was in the box and then what those social security cards might mean causing her to take a chance that she couldn’t afford to take.

She murmured the names she could remember but found she could only come up with one additional name, the rest of the names, the letters that formed them, swimming in front of her eyes. Eileen Mackin. Damn it. There had been one more familiar name. She had to be the sister of Lorraine, the woman at the support group who Maeve liked but who had told her that her hunt was fruitless. Fruitless, huh? Maeve thought. Well, look at what I found, she thought, putting her hand to her pocket. She wished she had thought to take every card in the box, but she had panicked, which, given the circumstances, she had to believe was the appropriate response.

Still, she was disappointed in herself.

She sat there for so long, she might have fallen asleep; she wasn’t sure. Time had a way of bending itself here, making it seem like hours had ticked by when it had only been a few minutes. She willed herself to move.

It seemed straightforward: head south in a straight line toward the car. But it turned out to be harder than she thought it would be, the light playing tricks, coming through the trees at odd angles, making it seem like she was walking the right way but instead taking her deeper into the woods. A cloud covered the sun and the nervousness started to form a tight band in her gut, forcing her to sit down and take stock of the situation.

She looked up at the sky. “There’s the sun,” she whispered to herself. She looked behind her but couldn’t see the house anymore. “So that’s west.” She looked at her phone; even though there was no service out here in the woods, she knew the girls had downloaded a bunch of apps—many that she didn’t need and were related to beauty and grooming—and wondered if there was a compass on there. She scrolled through the screens on her phone. There wasn’t. But there was a flashlight app and she turned that on, surprised at how much light it threw on the ground in front of her. That would be far more helpful than the eyebrow-plucking chart that Rebecca had downloaded in a not-so-subtle hint to her mother about her wayward brows.

She walked for what seemed like an hour but was really fifteen minutes, according to her phone. And she was getting closer, she thought, because she could hear a door slam in the distance, not too far away. Her heart went from a dull pound to a racy pitter-patter but that was better; she was getting her sense of direction back and felt confident that she would be out before it got completely dark.

She was nearly in line with the house; she could tell by the break in the trees in the distance and the sound of the back door opening and closing. She trudged in what she hoped was the right direction.

“I’m almost there,” she said, turning to make sure that her inner compass was correct. In the distance, like a mirage, she spied a row of crudely cut pieces of wood planted in the dirt and, abandoning her plan, she walked toward them even though she knew she was going in the wrong direction, the dread at this discovery like a delicate web descending over her from above.

She stopped and surveyed the line of what she now saw were crosses, all white, all roughly hewn and hammered together at one midpoint on each. Some had initials; others didn’t. They were spaced apart, not unlike headstones at a cemetery.

It took her a minute to comprehend what she was looking at and to realize that she was backing away from them, not walking toward them. She backed into a large tree trunk, falling over and landing hard on her butt, wet seeping through her jeans and onto her underwear, reigniting the dull pain in her hip. Momentarily stunned, she sat there, staring at the crosses, finally getting up slowly and testing her legs.

She buried them here, she thought, unhooking the shovel from the carabiner at her waist. She started with the freshest grave, the one with the initials “E.M.,” and started digging, fueled by the adrenaline streaming through her blood like a thick, energetic ocean of power. It had been warmer than usual, some days even reaching the high forties, and the ground was hard but not impossible to break. She pushed the little shovel into the packed dirt, knowing that this would take a long time and that it would eventually get dark, but she wanted proof of what had happened here so that she could tell everyone what she knew to be true: this would explain what had happened to those people all those years ago.

She dug until her back ached, and her stomach roiled, muffled cries coming out from behind her clenched teeth. She stopped when she got to a hand, white and frozen solid, polish on its nails, not a foot below the cold surface.

She took off, running out of the woods.

CHAPTER 50

Maeve knew that Mrs. Hartwell was in the house because she knew that the old woman relied solely on the Rambler for transportation. She went into the barn and found an old gas can, one with just enough gas to light a fire, along with some fireplace matches, the same brand as the ones that had been in Devon’s mouth on Christmas Day. These, fortunately, weren’t soaked in toddler saliva and worked just fine, Maeve found, as she doused the front seat of the car with gas, threw a match in, and watched from a distance as it started to burn.

You’re trapped now, she thought as she watched a kaleidoscope of beautiful colors embed in the black smoke that rose from the car. She smiled at the beauty of the carnage, thinking that this might help subdue the buzzing, the impending murderous rage that was sure to come when she saw Regina Hartwell. Maybe this will help, she thought, as she stepped back.

Maybe this will be enough. Maybe this will make me feel better about what you’ve done and I won’t feel like I have to go further.

She went around back and entered through the kitchen again, crossing through the trash-filled mudroom and across the threshold into the kitchen. Behind her, the car blew up with a satisfying crack, making Maeve smile. Her hand was thrust in her jacket pocket, Heather’s old pink down coat from the eighth grade; the thought of her grazing her gun with her fingers while looking like a little snow queen was ludicrous and incongruous. She kept her hand there, ready to strike when necessary.

The time was coming. She could feel it.

She hadn’t knocked, preferring the element of surprise, but she figured that the sound of the Rambler exploding announced her arrival just fine. The woman was sitting in the overloaded kitchen, her chair jammed between the table and the stove, a gas appliance, which she had lit so she could have a cigarette. Maeve wished she remembered even one thing about her junior-year chemistry class and if oxygen was flammable; if the woman’s complete disregard for smoking in the room with two canisters—empty or not—of pure oxygen was an indication, the answer was probably no.

Mrs. Hartwell regarded her coolly. “You’re that little snot that lived down the street. You’re the one who wouldn’t let my niece ride your precious pink bike,” she said. “You lived by my brother and his wife. It took me a while, and some digging, but I finally figured it out. You were the one whose father spoiled you rotten.”

Maeve stood by the door to the mudroom, her hands in her pockets.

“Conlon, right?”

She nodded.

“I remember you. Your parents, too.” The old woman sneered at her, the sight of Maeve angering her in a way that Maeve didn’t understand.

“You took my sister.”

Regina Hartwell took a long drag off the cigarette, which precipitated a prolonged bout of coughing. One elbow on the table, one on the counter next to the stove, her legs were splayed, making her look relaxed and uninterested in their conversation. There was a stack of magazines, yellowed and old, by her elbow. Rock Hudson, young, tan, and fit, was on one, a testament to its age. “Took her where?”

“To Mansfield.”

She started laughing, which only served to start the coughing again. “Yep. You got me. Took her to Mansfield. Best place for her at the time.” The cigarette hung from her lips; Maeve noticed that around her neck was the tubing that she likely used when she was hooked up to the oxygen. “Your parents didn’t know what to do. They begged me for help.”

Maeve now knew why she thought of Dolores the first time she had seen this woman; Regina Hartwell was Dolores in thirty years, right down to the dead, beady eyes. Now that they were talking, Maeve heard a hint of a brogue.

“Where is she?” Maeve took her left hand out of her pocket and pointed to the woods. “Is she out there? In one of those graves?” she asked, the last words coming out in a hoarse whisper.

“Could be. Maybe not. How much is it worth to you?” the woman said, smiling. Her teeth were large and even, tobacco-stained, the eyeteeth a little longer than the front ones. An animal’s teeth.

“You’re playing this all wrong,” Maeve said. “It’s what it’s worth to
you
. Because now that I’m here and I see what’s going on, I’m going straight to the police.”

“Go ahead,” Regina said. “My son’s on the local force. He knows a lot of Staties, too,” she said, making Maeve wonder if that was how Regina had stayed under the radar all these years. “Probably best not to tell him that you blew up his mother’s car.”

Maeve wondered if he had already been called and was on his way.

The woman looked at her, waiting for Maeve to crack. You’ll be waiting a long time, Maeve thought.

“You want to find your sister, though. You think I know something,” Regina Hartwell said, her gaze something that Maeve didn’t want to engage but had to.

“Of course you know something. Why else would Margie have sent me here?”

She shrugged, the ash from her cigarette falling onto the floor. “Good question. She is really messing up a good thing. Wish she had less of a conscience, hadn’t taken Catholic school so seriously.”

“If she had taken Catholic school seriously, she wouldn’t have stolen my house key. Slashed the tires on my bike. Been involved here.”