Savage Lane (15 page)

The sleepover was in Golden’s Bridge, the next town over from South Salem, at a nice, contemporary house. Andrew’s father, Tom, did something on Wall Street, and his wife Sarah used to work in the city, also in finance, but had been a stay-at-home mom the past several years and was active on the PTA at Meadow Pond, the school where Karen taught. Karen and Sarah had never been great friends, but they’d always been friendly whenever they ran into each other, usually at play dates, sleepovers, and other events for their boys. This evening, though, something seemed off. Sarah usually greeted Karen with a warm kiss on the cheek and had a short conversation with her, but today when she opened the door she barely smiled and said to Matthew, “The boys are upstairs.”

Matthew dashed up to his friends and Sarah said to Karen, “You can pick up any time tomorrow before noon,” but she wasn’t making eye contact, maybe distracted by something or someone to her left in the house’s living room. It was also unusual that Sarah hadn’t invited her in, as she usually asked her if she wanted coffee or something else to drink. Eh, Karen figured, maybe she was just overwhelmed, having to host a party for about ten prepubescent boys.

“I’ll get him by eleven,” Karen said.

“Great,” Sarah said, now looking beyond Karen, toward the street.

Karen turned and saw Mark approaching with Justin.

“Hey you,” Mark said, smiling widely at Karen.

Karen was surprised to see him, and she was also thinking,
Is he for real
? After everything that had happened today, and all the texts, was he really saying, “Hey you” to her? She wasn’t sure what to say, when he reached out and grabbed her hand and said, “Wait one sec, I wanna talk to you.”

Flustered, Karen didn’t react right away. Maybe a few seconds went by. Then it registered—Mark was holding her hand again.

Karen yanked her hand free, but it was too late. She looked at Sarah, who was still at the door, and it was obvious she had seen what had just happened. Great, this was all Karen needed, another misunderstanding, this time right in front of Sarah who had a reputation as a major gossiper.

While Mark dropped off Justin with Sarah, Karen lingered. She didn’t want to talk to Mark—not here anyway. She just wanted to get into her car and drive away, but she thought that could come off as too dramatic, and she didn’t want to make a bigger scene than she already had.

After Mark exchanged goodbyes with Sarah—she’d been very smiley and outgoing with him—Mark came over to Karen and, seeming excited, almost hyper, said, “Wow, it’s so great running into you here.”

“What the hell?” Karen sneered.

“What?” Mark was instantly defensive. “What did I do?”

“What is it with you lately? Seriously.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You can’t do things like this.”

“I was just excited to see you.”

“But you can’t be excited to see me. I’m not someone you should be excited about. And you can’t just—” Karen realized she was raising her voice, and the last thing she needed was Sarah overhearing and/or watching a dramatic conversation through a window. In a more controlled tone she said, “You grabbed my hand. Why did you grab my hand
again
?”

“I grabbed your hand?” He sounded lost.

Straining to maintain an even, non-agitated expression, Karen said, “I told you I’m not getting sucked into the middle of anything, and I meant it. Did you talk to her yet?”

“Yeah, don’t worry, sweetie, it’s all taken care of.”

“Please don’t call me sweetie, and what did you tell her?” Keeping a calm expression seemed to involve every muscle in her face.

“I told her what you wanted me to tell her, that nothing’s going on.”

Karen didn’t think he was lying.

“Fine,” she said. “That’s good.” She looked toward the house and thought she saw the blinds on the living room window rustle. She added, “Well, this isn’t the place to have this conversation, so I’ll talk to you later.”

But she wasn’t planning to talk to him later. She was angry and frustrated and just wanted him to leave her alone.

As she walked away toward where her car was parked, Mark came up behind her and said, “Wait, hold up.”

She didn’t stop, but he’d caught up to her and walked alongside her.

“I have to tell you something,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Can we go in your car?”

She didn’t want him in her car, and she had no idea why he wanted to get in with her. Well, she didn’t want to think about the reason why anyway.

“I’m in a rush, I have to meet someone,” she lied.

“A date?” he asked.

Did he sound jealous?

“Kind of,” she said, thinking
, Why not
make
him a little jealous
? Maybe it would help him realize that they were just friends, and that’s all they would ever be.

“How do you kind of have a date?”

Karen stopped in front of her car. “Seriously, what’s this about?” There was no one around so she felt freer to talk.

Now Mark had a weird, overly sincere expression. “It’s kind of about what we were talking about before,” he said. “As you know, my marriage has been, well, pretty stormy for a long time, and Deb’s drinking has been out of control.”

“Okay.” Karen was impatient.

“I’m just saying,” Mark said. “I mean maybe today, what happened, maybe it was a good thing. You know, I mean, for us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah, for our, you know… connection.”

“Connection?” Karen couldn’t believe she was actually hearing this. “What
connection
?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Mark said. “The thing we have going on.”

“The
thing
? What
thing
?”

“You know, the thing. I mean, I’m not sure where things are going with Deb so, you never know, me and you, maybe we’ll get a chance to spend more time together. You know, in the future.”

“Are you out of your fu—” Karen checked to make sure there wasn’t anyone around then continued, “You’re crazy, you’ve totally lost it. There’s nothing going on with us, nothing at all, and there never was anything going on with us. We’re friends, that’s it.
Friends
, F R I E N D S. I don’t know what this is about, I honestly don’t. I’m clueless.”

“Okay, never mind, never mind,” Mark said, trying to calm her down. “I know this isn’t the best time to talk about this. Talk to ya later, okay?”

He moved in quickly and kissed her on the cheek. She reacted late, jerking her head back away, but the kiss had already ended.

When she got in the car she saw Mark outside in front of her. He was holding his hand up to his ear like a phone and, though she couldn’t hear him, she could read his lips:
I’ll call you
.

Ugh, Karen couldn’t take this anymore. As she drove away, she wiped her face where Mark had kissed her. There wasn’t any saliva there, but it felt like there was. It felt like her face was covered in his spit.

Then, a couple of minutes later, her phone chimed. Shit, it wasn’t Mark already, was it? On top of everything else she had to deal with in her life—taking care of her kids, her work, trying to meet the right man, worrying about finances and the future, now she had
this
? But no, the dashboard display showed that it was Steven calling.

“Fuck,” Karen said.

This day was out of control. This was, what, the third time Steven had contacted her today, and now he was
calling
? As his name continued to flash she couldn’t help feeling a little frightened. This behavior definitely didn’t seem normal. Jesus, this was all she needed now, to be
stalked
. Could this day possibly get any worse?

She was going to let voicemail pick up, but she didn’t want to be passive about it; she wanted to take control.

So she answered with the speaker, “Hello,” going for a severe, okay
bitchy
tone.

“Hey, it’s Steven,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Did you get my texts?”

“Yes, sorry, I’m in a hurry right now.”

“Oh, okay, I just wanted to talk about—”

“Look.” Her patience was officially gone. “I thought you were okay with everything yesterday. The relationship wasn’t working for me, we have to move on, and that’s that, okay?”

“No, I understand, it’s not that,” he said. “That’s totally cool. It’s about something else.”

“What?” Now she was clueless. Was this just bait, a ploy to try to suck her back into the relationship?

“Are you on speaker?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Are your kids in the car?”

“No.” She was definitely getting a weird, stalker vibe now. Maybe he couldn’t handle rejection after all; maybe he was a psycho. She flashed back to the trepidation she’d had on their first date when he’d mentioned an ex he’d had “a hard time letting go of.” Were there other red flags she’d missed? She said in her authoritative, no-bullshit tone, as if she were disciplining one of her kids, “What is this about, Steven?”

“Well, this morning, I… uh… saw something.”

“You saw something.”

“Yeah, well,
noticed
something, yeah. So… I… um… went to see somebody this afternoon, and… God, this is so hard.”

“What is? What’s hard, Steven?”

“Please don’t hate me for this.”

“Hate you for what?”

Shit, what was he getting at? Her pulse was pounding.

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You…”

“I? I what?”

A deep breath then, “You have to get tested for crabs, Karen.”

A
T FIRST
Owen didn’t know Deb was dead. He didn’t really know what he was doing or what the hell was happening. He was just angry—at Raymond, at his mother, at Deb, at everybody—and he wanted the whole world to shut up and leave him alone.

Then it was silent and that was when he knew. He removed his hands from her neck, was looking at her eyes, so totally still, like the eyes of a stuffed animal. He liked her eyes like this, how he could see nothing in them except his own reflections—a little pale Owen face in each pupil. He knew it should probably bother him that she was dead, but it didn’t. He was actually glad she was gone, that she couldn’t talk back anymore. Then he remembered how she’d said she wanted to be friends, how she told him he needed help. Friends? Yeah, right. She was not his fucking
friend
, and how the hell did she know what he needed? He felt the anger, the rage, wanted to kill her all over again, and then he was doing it, squeezing her throat so hard he could feel her neck bone between his clenched hands. Telling him he needed help after he told her that Raymond had been fucking him? Actually he’d been lying, Raymond was a prick but there had never been any real abuse—no ass-fucking anyway—but this didn’t matter because Deb hadn’t known that. As far as she knew he’d been getting ass-fucked for years, and she still didn’t care. She was such a bitch; he wanted to kill her again and again forever.

He stopped, not because he was through being angry, but because he was scared—not of how she looked or what he’d done, but of what might happen next. He was in a high school parking lot with a body in the back of his car—well, his mom’s car, but that made it even worse. There was no way he was going to jail because of her, because of
this
—that just wasn’t happening. He needed a plan, some way out, but he wasn’t panicking. Coming up with plans,
acting
, was what he did best.

At least no one was around. The rain had stopped and the only sounds were cars going by on North Salem Road, way at the other end of the lot. If it was during the day and they were somewhere else, like in that classroom, this could have been a lot worse so he had to keep thinking about the bright side, or at least the not so dark side. But he had to be smart about this—think through everything every which way before he made any moves. He knew what cops were like, what kinds of questions they asked, and he’d seen enough CSI to know his hair fibers, or spit, or whatever, were probably all over her body. Even if he got her out of his car and put her somewhere else, like in her own car, and even if he cleaned his car ten times and took ten showers he’d be fucked. He had sex with her before, at the school, with no condom because she had one of those IUD things, so tons of his sperm were probably swimming around inside her, and if they found one sperm, one fucking sperm, he’d be fucked.