Scared to Death (7 page)

Why would I have saved this?

Then she spots the flaps in the bodice and realizes it's a nursing top. There are a dozen more; nursing bras, too, and nightgowns, even maternity dresses. She saved them all.

Didn't she realize, after the disastrous circumstances of Annie's birth, that there would be no more babies? Was she really holding out hope for another child?

She remembers being terrified that Caroline wasn't going to survive her illness; terrified that after bearing three children, she would be left with only one.

Tears fall freely as she sorts through the remnants of early motherhood, remembering the days of morn
ing sickness and labor pains and endless wee-hour feedings…

With Annie, anyway. She's such an easygoing kid now that Marin rarely remembers what a demanding, fussy, colicky baby she'd been.

After a few exhausting months, the pediatrician said she didn't need to nurse in the middle of the night. “She's not hungry, she just wants attention. She'll learn to comfort herself if you let her cry it out.”

Cry it out? Marin was aghast.

Not Garvey, though. He'd wanted to let her cry it out beginning when she came home from the hospital.

Garvey had his reasons, Marin knows, for resenting Annie from the moment she was born. No…even
before
she was born. When prenatal testing confirmed his worst fears, he was faced, for the second time in his life, with an unwanted child. And for the second time, he told Marin they weren't going to keep it.
It
, like some castoff object and not a person.

Bastard
.

Marin had learned the hard way not to let anyone rip her own flesh and blood from her arms. All that talk about what a great gift she'd bestow upon a perfect stranger…

This time, she ignored it, determined to keep her baby, to raise Annie with enough love to make up for everything.

And I have. I've done all that…

For Annie.

I've done for her what I didn't have the strength to do for Jeremy.

If I'd found the strength to do the same for Jeremy, would he be alive right now?

Marin wipes away her tears, dumps the heap of nursing clothes into a black garbage bag, and ties it shut.

There.

One bittersweet chapter of her past, closed forever.

 

Driving over to the Long Hill Road Sunoco in midday traffic, Brett found his imagination carrying him to some dark places.

Now, spotting Elsa's dark blue Volvo sitting at the edge of the gas station parking lot, he exhales for what feels like the first time since he spoke to her back at the office.

He pulls up alongside Elsa's car. Sitting behind the wheel, she raises a fingertip to her lips and gestures at the backseat.

Seeing Renny curled up back there, small and defenseless, sound asleep, Brett feels sick inside. If Elsa is right—and
she's
not the one who's imagining things—then someone, some monster, in the truest sense of the word, was in Renny's room last night as she slept.

God only knows what might have happened if she hadn't woken up and called for help.

It was Elsa who went in there, not you. You rolled over and went back to sleep. How could you?

If anything had happened to his little girl…

But nothing did.

And nothing will.

Because Brett knows, deep down inside, that his wife is sometimes frighteningly fragile; that her imagination can be vivid and powerful; that her mental health history includes episodes of delusion…

But he'd thought—hoped, prayed—all that was behind her now.

Brett turns off the car and climbs out. Elsa does the same, leaving the door open. Wordlessly, she shows him the Spider-Man action figure.

He stares down at it.

“Is that…?”

“Jeremy's?” Elsa swallows hard. “Maybe. I don't remember exactly what it looked like—the one that went missing with him—but—”

Her voice breaks, and Brett pulls her close, his thoughts whirling through the possibilities:

It might be a colossal coincidence. Maybe it didn't even fall out of the car. This is a public place. Maybe some little boy lost it…

Or maybe it was tucked somewhere among the Cavalons' possessions for all these years and Renny came across it and carried it with her…

Or maybe Elsa herself found it somewhere, or bought it somewhere, and—and she forgot about it, or she's delusional, or…

“Brett, say something.”

“Don't worry,” he says automatically. “It's going to be okay.”

“You don't know that.”

He opens his mouth to contradict her, but thinks better of it. She's right. He
doesn't
know that. Christ, right now he doesn't know anything.

“Did you discuss this with anyone?” he asks, releasing her.

“Not yet. I didn't want to make any calls until I'd talked to you.”

“We have to report the break-in now…don't you think?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “I mean, I think so.”

They stare at each other, and Brett is glad Elsa can't read his mind.

Just because she had some problems before, years ago—that doesn't mean she's unbalanced now. It doesn't mean she herself is responsible for the Spider-Man doll being here. It doesn't mean that, fueled by
Renny's nightmare, Elsa imagined the intruder, and there's a logical explanation for footprint and the broken branch—if they do exist.

He wants desperately to believe that they don't, even if it means accepting that his wife is still suffering the psychological fallout of Jeremy's kidnapping—or that learning of his death triggered a relapse into dissociative behavior.

Anything is better than believing that Renny is in danger.

“What's Roxanne going to say, Brett? If we call the police and she finds out?”

“She will find out, and what do
you
think she'll say? It's her job to make sure that Renny's in a safe environment.”

“That's
our
job, too.”

“And we're doing it.”

“Roxanne might not agree.” She shrugs, hugging herself, her thin arms bared by a simple, butter-colored dress.

Even now, Brett finds himself marveling at his wife's striking beauty: black hair and eyes offset her flawless complexion and delicate French features.

Before Jeremy came, and after he was gone, Brett had convinced himself that he could be happy if it were just the two of them for the rest of their lives. Yes, they longed for parenthood, but they had each other. Maybe that was enough.

Now he knows that it can't be; that their lives wouldn't be complete without Renny. Now that he's had a true taste of what it's like to love a child so completely…

He would never admit to Elsa that it was different with Jeremy. Maybe she knew, deep down, that try as he might, Brett couldn't quite connect with him, couldn't quite…

Love him?

Even now, acknowledging it only to himself, shame sweeps through him.

He'd cared for his son, had tried to protect him, had thought he was doing everything in his power to help Jeremy overcome all his problems. Even after what happened that day at Harbor Hills Country Club…

Brett rarely allows himself to think about that particular incident. But whenever the memory rears its ugly head anyway, he's swept by the same sense of helpless foreboding he experienced when he saw what his son had done to the sweet, innocent little girl with the big blue eyes and blond braids.

“I didn't mean it,” Jeremy had said, standing there with a red-streaked seven-iron in his hand. “She laughed at me, and I got mad.”

Mad
.

Violently so. All that blood…

He'll never forget those terrified blue eyes, dilated with shock, staring up at him as he stood over her holding his son's shoulders—holding him back.

The child survived, thank God. Miraculously, her wealthy parents didn't press charges, reportedly wanting to avoid a messy lawsuit.

Even after what Jeremy had done that day, Brett would have given anything to find him after he vanished.

But maybe you didn't really love him. Not enough. Not like you love Renny.

“Sometimes I think it's a miracle that we were even approved as foster parents after what happened.”

Brett looks up, startled, wondering if Elsa really has read his mind, or if she's known all along about Brett's secret failure as a father.

“That wasn't our fault,” he tells her. “Jeremy.”

Elsa says nothing to that; of course she disagrees.
She was the one who was home the day he was abducted, not Brett. She was in the kitchen making dinner as Jeremy played in the fenced backyard, same as every sunny afternoon. She kept an eye on him, same as always—but not every second.

And in a split second, a child can disappear forever.

Brett always wondered if Jeremy had run away. He was a troubled child. It wouldn't be all that far-fetched.

Intuitive Elsa never bought into the runaway theory. She was certain he'd been kidnapped, and she blamed herself. But when she finally found out why Jeremy had been taken, and by whom…

It wasn't her fault, can't she see that? No parent spends every moment of every day standing guard over a seven-year-old. Every mother has to turn her back at some point. And someone was there, watching, waiting for Elsa to do just that.

Jeremy never had a chance.

“This is unbelievable, Brett. Spider-Man…” Elsa clutches his arm, and he can feel her body quaking. “Spider-Man just appearing out of the blue on the day after someone broke into our house, and was in Renny's room—”

“That was probably—”

Your imagination.

“—just a burglar,” he says instead. “I'm sure it has nothing to do with what happened to Jeremy.”

“Just
a burglar? You're
sure
? Come on, Brett, you're not sure of anything.” She keeps her voice low, but he has a feeling that if Renny weren't sleeping a few feet away, she'd be shouting at him.

“So you think that it
does
have something to do with Jeremy?”

“Or with Renny. Who knows? Her birth mother is a lunatic, and her birth father might be out of jail again. What if—”

“Elsa, come on. They signed away their rights without batting an eye. Do you really think they're going to track us down and—and do you really think they know about
Spider-Man
?”

“I don't know. I'm not saying it's them. It could be anyone. It's no secret around here who we are. Maybe someone saw the coverage on TV or in the paper about Garvey Quinn and Jeremy, and decided to look us up.”

She might have a point. Sensational stories like theirs must bring all kinds of kooks out of the woodwork.

Still, he shakes his head, unable to grasp—or maybe, accept—that one tragedy could possibly beget another.

“So what do we do?” he asks her. “Call the police? Even though Roxanne will have to know, and something like this…”

He doesn't have to finish the sentence. She knows.

Something like this could destroy their fragile new family. If the agency decides it's in Renny's best interest to remove her from their custody, they'll lose her forever.

It happened to Todd and Zoe Walden, for a far less compelling perception of threat. The agency zoomed in and snatched away their daughter without warning, almost as if…

She'd been kidnapped. Or had died. One moment she was there, a part of Todd and Zoe's lives; the next, she was gone.

Brett can't let that happen to his own family. It's absolutely in Renny's best interest to stay with him and Elsa; her parents. They would never let anyone harm her.
Ever
.

But if Elsa is right, then what is he supposed to do to keep Renny safe? Hire a private, armed bodyguard until they figure out what the hell is going on?

Yeah, right. Like that would escape Roxanne's atten
tion the next time she pays one of her unscheduled visits—which, come to think of it, is long overdue. She's going to pop up any second now.

So, no bodyguard, no police. No proof, even, that this is real. But Brett will be damned if he's going to take a chance with his kid's life.

“I know what we can do,” Elsa tells him. “We can go see Mike, and tell him about what's going on.”

“Elsa, that's—”

“If you don't come with me, then I'm going myself. With Renny.”

“You're going to just show up there? Why can't you call?”

“I'll call and tell him we're coming, but we need to go in person.” She holds out the Spider-Man figure. “We have to show him this. Maybe there are fingerprints or something.”

“I don't know…”

“Brett, if we don't do anything, and something terrible happens, I couldn't live with myself.”

Looking at her, he realizes she means it. He managed to keep her from taking her own life once before. Next time, he might be too late—for her, and for Renny.

“Okay,” he tells her. “Let's go.”

 

Caroline Quinn's bloodcurdling scream seems to reverberate even after she's been hustled off to a back room by the mortified Starbucks manager.

Amid the chaotic mass exodus of rodent-fearing customers, a skittish employee quickly gathers Caroline's scattered belongings and expensive leather shoulder bag and disappears into the back room as well.

God only knows what's going on back there. Is she crying hysterically? Threatening a lawsuit?

How I'd love to slip back there to see what's going on. Do I dare?

A quick glance around reveals that the hipster baristas behind the counter are probably too caught up in rehashing the rat event to notice the lingering customer who's reluctant to trail out the door after the others.