The Burning Girl (7 page)

She put her hand on his chest, the gentlest push away, even as her other arm folded around his neck.

“Let me,” he whispered.

Something in her heart loosened and released, a balloon drifting up into the sky. Ray pressed his mouth against hers, warm and sweet, and she breathed him in. Unexpectedly, with the kitchen a terrible mess around them and Oliver mewing at her feet, Eloise felt herself finally, after so many years, let go.

• • •

Letting go. Why was it the hardest thing? It sounded so easy, as if all you had to do was open your palms and step away. And yet we cling, don’t we? To ideas of ourselves, hope, how things should be, how we wish they were. What we should be able to do, what we want, what we were supposed to want.

The Burning Girl kept holding on to Eloise. That afternoon, she came back, and this time she told Eloise her name, which was so odd. They almost never did that. But this one? She wanted to be known. Eloise told the girl that she must go away. Eloise was sorry, but she couldn’t help. A few days of raging fires ensued, the carpets and the drapes again. On the final day, the girl herself, engulfed in flames, wailing.

It was quite a display, with heat and smoke and all of it. But Eloise had no choice but to ignore it. She went about her business—cleaning, grocery shopping. She even got herself some new clothes.

The girl was trying to suck her in, wanted more than Eloise could give. It wasn’t help she wanted; rage and sorrow never want help. They want an audience. There was nothing for Eloise to do, not yet. But then the fires stopped, as if the tantrum, ignored, had fizzled out. And The Burning Girl was gone again. There was more to come, Eloise was quite certain.

Meanwhile, Eloise couldn’t
let go
of Miriam and her family, kept thinking about them. She attended Ella’s service, which was absolutely heartbreaking. The official cause of death was SIDS. But The Whispers told Eloise a different story. And, now, Miriam was in a mental hospital. What more should Eloise have done for them?

You can only help the people who want to be helped.

Another lesson that was so hard to learn.

Let it go,
the voice told her as she drove home from the church. The image of Nick sitting stoically beside his young son stayed with her.

• • •

Back at home, she dressed to go work in her garden. She needed the solace of her hands in the dirt, the smell of greenery in her nose, even the light sweat of mild exertion. But she was interrupted by a knock on her front door.

She moved through the house carefully. She didn’t answer the door unless she knew who was there. She didn’t answer the phone either. Ray was her agent, more or less. All requests went through him.

The knocking again—insistent, pushy. She knew who it was before she recognized the man she saw through the peephole. Tim Schaffer. He had been stalking Ray, inundating him with angry phone calls, insisting that he was hiding something. Ray wasn’t, not really. He’d simply dropped the case. He no longer wanted to find Stephanie Schaffer for her creepy husband.

Eloise went back to the kitchen and dialed Ray, who said he was on his way. Then she went back and opened the door for Mr. Schaffer.

The sadness came off of him in waves. Eloise had to step back, but she kept her hand on the door. She did not invite him in.

“Where is she, Ms. Montgomery?” She could see that he was driving himself mad, had a kind of wired, haunted look about him. “Where did she go? Is she alive?”

“I don’t know where she is, Tim,” said Eloise gently. “I believe she’s alive. But I have no way of being certain.”

“But you’re a psychic, right?” he said. It was a little whiny. She felt bad for him; he didn’t have any friends. “You
know
things. Or are you just a fraud like everyone else?”

She smiled. People were ignorant, some more than others. “I don’t know everything.”

His hands were raw and red: psoriasis. It was the disease of the perfectionist, the person who feared that unless he was perfect, he would be rejected. He had a patch of it on his face, on his arm. How much should she tell him?

She was surprised to see him tearing up.

“It’s time to let her go now, Tim,” said Eloise. She put on her gentle Agatha voice. Agatha called it her Obi-Wan Kenobi voice. “You’ve done enough.”

“Enough?” he said. His voice went shrill. He sank into the chair on her porch and put his head in his hands. “I’ve been looking for five years. Something’s happened to my wife. And I can’t help her.”

Now he was just sobbing. Eloise considered herself an evolved person, but there was something very uncomfortable about watching a grown man weep. Though she’d certainly seen it enough times, she never got used to it. She sighed and sat down in the chair beside his.

“The hardest thing to accept is that we can’t always help the people we love,” she said. She put her hand on his arm, but he drew it away quickly. He was the kind of person who didn’t want to be comforted. When he looked up from his hands, she saw that same petulant rage that she saw in The Burning Girl.

“Who are you to tell me
that
?” he asked. He stood, and Eloise was relieved to see Ray pulling into the driveway. “Handing out that kind of pop advice. You should be ashamed.”

“It’s time to let Stephanie go,” she said. “Past time. The trail is cold.”

“I’ll never give up on her,” he said. Really, he was more yelling. “If she’s out there, I’ll find her.”

Eloise hoped that he was wrong. Ray walked up the path.

“Tim,” he said, “I refunded your money, gave you all the information I have found. There’s nothing else to discuss. If you don’t leave, I’m going to have to call the police.”

“Call the police?” he said. “
On me?
You two are the criminals. You promise to help people who no one else has been able to help. But you don’t help
anyone
.”

He raged all the way back to his car, through her flower bed, across the yard.
Goddamn con artists, charlatans, posers
. Then he slammed the door and sped off up the dirt road.

“How’d he find you?” Ray wondered aloud.

“He’s resourceful,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

“Hmm,” said Ray. She could feel his tension. People like Tim Schaffer—you never could tell what they’d do next. But Eloise suspected they’d seen the last of him. She hoped Stephanie had, too.

“I’m getting sick of this job,” said Ray. He heaved a heavy sigh and dropped his arm around her shoulders.

“Me, too,” said Eloise.

Then she looked up at Ray, and for some reason they both started to laugh.

• • •

Letting go. If you let go, did you then fall to your death? Did you simply drift away? Or was it the other things that floated away, leaving you alone onshore? Weren’t you
supposed
to hold on to some things—to your loved ones, your sanity, the life you had built for yourself? Maybe
that
was true wisdom, knowing when to hold on and when to let go.

Ray insisted on making lunch, so Eloise went to work in the garden. The Whispers were loud today, a million voices telling their million stories. Eloise tried not to listen as she pulled weeds, popped off dead heads, watered, and pruned.

Since their midnight conversation, Amanda and Finley were very much on Eloise’s mind. Even though they’d talked a number of times since then, Eloise still hadn’t told Amanda what she’d learned in her research about their family history. There was no reason to frighten her. Amanda had shown none of the early signs that Eloise now understood from her own childhood—the strange nightmares, the knowledge of other people, seeing things that other people didn’t see. But Finley was a prodigy, according to Agatha. When they came to visit, Eloise would have to make them aware of everything. She had tried to protect Amanda. And Amanda had tried to protect Finley. The sad fact was, you didn’t get to protect your children. Not forever. Not from everything. Eloise had an especially hard time letting go of wishing that she could.

When Ray called to say that lunch was ready, Eloise rose and took off her gloves. She surveyed her work and was pleased. She wanted the garden to be perfect for Finley and Alfie when they came. Amanda hadn’t called to tell her they were coming next month, but Eloise woke up knowing that it was so. Amanda would have other big news, too. Eloise wasn’t quite sure what it was. But Eloise tingled with happy anticipation at the thought of seeing her family. She took a deep breath. The air smelled like new beginnings.

That afternoon, Agatha invited Eloise and Ray over for a swim.

“I sense,” said her friend, “that you two need to do something just for the fun of it. And guess what? I do, too.”

Eloise gratefully accepted. And the cool blue water was every bit as wonderful as she’d imagined it.

Turn the page for a preview of Lisa Unger’s next thriller,
coming soon from Touchstone . . .

CRAZY LOVE YOU

prologue

As I pulled up the long drive, deep potholes and crunching gravel beneath my wheels, towering pines above me, I was neither moved by the natural beauty nor stilled inside by the quietude. I did not marvel at the fingers of light spearing through the canopy, dappling the ground. I did not admire the frolicking larks or the scampering squirrels for their carefree existence. No. In fact, it all made me sick. There was a scream of protest lodged at the base of my throat, and it had been sitting there for the better part of a year. When it finally escaped—and I wasn’t sure when that might be—I knew it would be a roar to shake the world to its core.

It was supposed to have been an auspicious year for me. According to all the astrological predictions—if you believe in that kind of thing—I was to have found security at home, success at work—rewards for all my labors. Megan, the sweet and willowy girl of my dreams—the kind of girl who asked the universe for what we needed, and who dwelled “in a place of gratitude,” and who regularly walked around burning sage and whispering her good thoughts—was no match for the tide of shit that was headed our way.

I should have told her not to bother. Part of me knew that I was only keeping it all at bay—the darkness, the bad luck, the ugly turn of circumstance, the destroyer waiting in the shadows. But I
wanted
to believe in her, in us. And for a time I did. Maybe it was all worth it, everything that followed, for the moment in which I was able to live in the sun with her. But now that moment makes the dark seem so much deeper, so much less penetrable by any kind of light.

I snaked along the winding, narrow path in my banged-up old Scout, steeling myself for the sight of the house, which waited just around the next bend. It shouldn’t have even been there. I’d finally scheduled it for demolition; should have done so long ago.

Megan and I talked about building our dream home in its place. Or rather
she
talked about it, and I made noncommittal noises. I might have known the house wouldn’t allow itself to be destroyed. In fact, maybe that was where I’d gone too far into my new life. It was one thing to move on. It was quite another to try to level the past, to pave it over and build it back as you would like it. That wasn’t allowed. Not for me.

And then there it was, as rickety as it was defiant. As fragile as it was indestructible—shutters askew, siding faded and slipping, yard overgrown, porch sagging. As I turned a hard corner with the mean winter sun setting behind me, it rose into view, looked bigger than it had a right to be. The sky behind it was orange and black, the trees dark slashes against the gloaming.

Oh, Meg had plans for this place—our country home, just a few short hours from the city. It was to be our retreat, a place where I would write far from the distractions and temptations of our urban life. No, we wouldn’t have wireless up here. It would have been our place to unplug. But those were
her
plans, not mine. As far as I was concerned, self-immolation was a more desirable option.

As I came to a stop, the whole place seemed to vibrate with malicious glee. The scream dropped into my belly and became a hard ache in my gut as I climbed out of the truck.
How is it possible that I am back here?
I asked myself. A place I fled, vowing never to return. Now it’s the only place I have left. Megan would have something to say, like:
It’s the universe forcing you to confront the thing you dreaded most.
It’s taken everything from you because that’s how important this is. What lesson is it asking you to learn?
In fact, that’s precisely what she had said.

Man, I ached to hear that bright and positive voice, to hear that vibration of love and confidence. But now, when I called her, I only got the clipped and professional tone she’d used for her voice mail.
I’m not available at the moment. Please leave a message.
She wasn’t answering my calls. I left long rambling messages; I wasn’t even sure she listened to them. Her last words to me:

We don’t have anything left to discuss, Ian. Don’t call me until something changes.

I don’t know what that means
, I pleaded.

But there was an expression she wore when she looked at me now—sad, disappointed, and angry. And that look was the only answer she gave me before she left me on our bench in Central Park by the
Alice in Wonderland
statue. It was the first place we’d kissed, and the last place I’d seen her. I watched her walk away, huddled into herself against the cold. She moved quickly past a little girl who was chasing a boy around the circle. The boy was crying but the girl was laughing, oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the game was frightening him.

I think I called Megan’s name, because the children stopped and looked at me, both of them staring with mouths formed in perfect O’s of surprise. Their nanny hurried over and shuttled them away from me, casting a disapproving look in my direction. But maybe I didn’t say her name. Maybe I said something else. Whatever it was I said, or yelled, Megan hadn’t stopped. She moved faster as if she was afraid, as if she couldn’t wait to be away from me. Why was she afraid of me? How could she be? I had watched until she was absorbed into the throbbing crowd of New Yorkers shuttling through the park on their various ways to various important things.

Now the thud of the hatch closing reverberated like a gunshot in the silence. I had one large black duffel bag, my leather art portfolio, my supply box. I slung the bag over my shoulder and left the portfolio and art supplies for later. The air was frigid, my bare hands raw and painful from just a few moments of exposure.

Then I turned to face the house. For the first time I noticed that lights were burning inside—one upstairs in my old bedroom and one downstairs in the small living room. Outside, darkness had fallen completely and suddenly like a shroud. There was movement inside and I wasn’t in the least surprised. I wasn’t angry or afraid, though I should have been both.

This was it. Rock bottom. The way I saw it, I could lie down, a pile of shattered bones, until I slowly bled out, fading into a blissful, delicious nothingness. Or I could pull myself up, one broken limb at a time, and fight my way back to Megan, to the life we were trying to build, to the child that was growing inside her. The decision wasn’t as easy as you might think. When the darkness calls, it’s a siren song—magical, hypnotic, and nearly impossible to resist. You
want
to go. It’s so easy to do the wrong thing, the bad thing. All you have to do is give in.

On the front step, I could smell her, that mingling of perfume and cigarette smoke and something else. A helix of fury and desire twisted in my belly as I pushed through the door. And she stood there, as wild and beautiful as she had always been—her hair a riot of white and gold and copper, her linen skin, her eyes the moonstone blue of terrible secrets.
Priss
. She took the stance of victory, legs apart, arms akimbo, a slight smile turning up the corners of her mouth. I almost laughed. I let the door slam behind me.

“Hello, Priss.” My voice didn’t sound right. It sounded weak, had the tenor of defeat. She heard it. Of course she did. And her smile deepened.

“Welcome home, asshole.”