The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (95 page)

Franny scooped a small amount of the hot strawberry goo into a ceramic bowl, sliced off a thick piece of homemade bread, and spread the jam on top, passing it to Lisa.

“It’s still a little runny,” she said, “but I sort of think it’s best when it’s warm and runny, don’t you?”

Lisa nodded, diving in like she was starving. She smiled while she ate, jam leaving sticky stains around her mouth.

They visited a few minutes, making small talk about the office and the weather. Then Franny walked Phoebe to the door while Lisa spooned jam onto her third piece of bread and gulped strong tea with hot milk and honey.

“She’ll be fine here, Bee,” Franny promised. “I won’t let her out of my sight.”

Phoebe knew it was true. There was no safer place for Lisa than right here. But still, she hated to leave her.

“If she says anything . . . anything at all about where she’s been, or her past—”

“I know. I’ll pay close attention. You know me, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap. I’ll remember any detail she tells me and report straight back to you. If it seems important, I’ll call you right away. Promise.”

Phoebe thanked her and turned to go, but Franny grabbed her arm, drawing her back. “Did you tell him yet?” she asked, her voice low.

Phoebe shook her head. “Today,” she said. Franny scowled. “I promise.”

Phoebe left, casting one quick glance back at Lisa, who sat hunched over the kitchen table, mouth and face grotesquely red, reminding Phoebe a little too much of coagulated blood.

CHAPTER 29

Lisa

JUNE 13, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

“D
ave, you’re being unreasonable,” Hazel was saying. Da was lying on the couch, mouth firmly closed. Hazel was holding out a glass of water and two pills. “The medicine’s helping, Dave. Call it a blessing, call it a curse, but it’s doing its job. Do you want to end up back in the hospital?” Hazel asked. “Is that what you want?”

Lisa had just come in from the yard where she’d been drying out the sewing basket as best she could, thinking things over and coming up with a plan. The first thing she was sure of was that bringing her mom the still-damp basket and explaining where she’d found it would send the household into a tizzy, which was the last thing she wanted. So she snuck upstairs and stuck the sewing basket on the bottom shelf of the hall closet, behind a pile of towels, then headed back down to the kitchen.

The house was warm and bright and familiar. Lisa stood peering into the living room, where her mother and aunt were fussing over Da on the couch. Behind them, on the mantel, a photo of the two of them as young girls watched their backs, smiling out at them from another time. Lisa saw only the vaguest resemblance between the grinning girls and the grown women who stood hunched over and tired, worried lines on their faces.

“Dave, please,” Lisa’s mom said. She was hovering at the edge of the coffee table in her creamy silk pajamas.

Lisa stepped into the living room, and her mom caught sight of her and shooed her away.

“What are you kids still doing up?” she asked, her voice high and tight.

Lisa shrugged, moving back into the kitchen. “It’s summer, Ma. And it’s only nine o’clock.”

“Well, go on up to bed. And in the morning I want the three of you up early to make me a new pie.”

“Pie?”

“Yes, pie. Strawberry pie. To replace the one that mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen counter.”

“But we didn’t . . .”

“Up to bed. No arguments,” Lisa’s mom said.

“What’s going on?” Sammy whispered when he stepped into the kitchen.

“Mom’s upset about her missing pie.”

“I didn’t even know there was pie,” Sam said.

“Probably Evie. Or maybe there never even was a pie.”

“Huh?” Sammy said, scrunching up his face.

“Forget it. Look, I have something to tell you. Something important. You head out to the yard. I’m gonna go get Evie and we’ll meet you there. We have to be quiet and play it cool, though—Mom’s pretty wound up and she wants us all in bed.”

“What—you want me to face the wrath of Mom?” Sammy said. “No thanks. I’m going to bed.”

“It’s important, Sam,” she said. “Please.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but Lisa knew she’d won. He trudged out through the kitchen door into the yard.

Lisa peeked back into the living room. Hazel was shoving the pills at Da again. He pushed her hand away, then abruptly leaned forward, grabbed the corner of the coffee table, and flipped it. A stack of magazines, plates of toast crumbs, and cold tea went toppling onto the floor. It was the most Lisa had seen Da move since he got home from the hospital. Part of her cringed, but another part wanted to cheer him on.

“That’s it, I’m calling the doctor,” her mom announced, stalking toward the kitchen. Lisa bolted out of the room, down the front hall, and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, her pink and silver sneakers barely touching the carpeted treads. When she got to her room, she flung open the door and gasped, actually gasped, like a girl in one of those horror movies Sam and Evie loved.

What she saw was herself. Only not really her at all. This was a chunkier, Frankenstein-girl version of herself. Maybe it was a little like what the two little girls peering out of the photo might see in the living room now—themselves, only totally different.

But this was not some future Lisa she’d glimpsed through time and space—this was an impostor.

Evie was standing in front of the mirror dressed in Lisa’s hooded red sweatshirt. She had on the black witch wig Lisa’s mom used last Halloween, and the hair hung down over her face, the red hood pulled up snug over the top of her head. She was wearing a stretchy black pair of leggings of Lisa’s that were too small and made Evie’s legs look all sausage-y. Evie’s feet were bare and her toenails were painted with blue glitter polish, just like Lisa’s.

“Um . . . what are you doing?” Lisa asked, noticing that over the strange Lisa costume, Evie had on her thick leather belt, the hunting knife in its sheath strapped against her right hip.

“Nothing.” Beneath the curtain of fake polyester hair, Evie’s face turned lobster red and her breath got whistley.

“Okay,” Lisa said, though nothing was okay at all. She took a step backward, feeling dizzy. “Okay,” she said again, trying to convince herself everything was A-OK. Perfectly normal. The world wasn’t going crazy around her. “Sammy’s waiting for us outside,” she said at last, turning away. “Oh and my mom’s all upset about the pie.”

“What pie?” Evie asked as Lisa backed out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Downstairs, as she walked through the kitchen, she heard her mom on the phone. “Yes, noncompliant,” she was saying. “But it’s not only that. He believes we’re trying to poison him.”

CHAPTER 30

Phoebe

JUNE 12, PRESENT DAY

T
hey were in Sam’s pickup, heading toward home. Phoebe had her little notebook out and stared down in disbelief at what she’d just written:

She snapped the book closed. She wasn’t even sure they’d be keeping the baby, and here she was naming it. Totally delusional. Not so different from her own mom after all. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And sometimes the apple is just as fucked up—all bruised, full of worms, scarred with blight.

She knew that’s what she was most afraid of, deep down. Not Sam’s rejection of the idea of parenthood but her own fear of being as shitty a mom as her own mother had been.

We’re diamonds in the rough, you and me.

She thought of her last conversation with her mother, two days before she died.

“Come home,” her ma begged. “I need you.
He
needs you.”

“He?” Phoebe had asked, wondering what scumbag her mother was shacking up with now.

“Your Dark Man, lovie. He’s here. He’s waiting for you.”

“You’re drunk,” Phoebe said. “Call me when you sober up. If you sober up.” Then she’d hung up and never heard from her mother again. Two days later, the police called.

“Did your mother often do dishes in the bathtub?” the detective had asked.

“Dishes?” Phoebe said.

“There were some pots and pans in the tub with her. Knives and flatware, too.”

Your Dark Man, lovie. He’s here. He’s waiting for you.

“S
am,” Phoebe said, looking up. “You don’t think all this fairy stuff could be real, do you?”

Sam nodded, downshifted, gears grinding. “Of course not,” he said, face in a tight grimace.

She wanted so badly to tell Sam that she’d found the backpack in the closet, ask him if really believed any of it. But she didn’t want to be accused of snooping, prying, meddling. Sam obviously wanted to keep his research a secret, so be it. He’d tell her when he was ready. Wouldn’t he?

Just like she was going to tell him about the baby. Damn.

“Franny mentioned something earlier this week,” Phoebe said. “That you and Lisa were friends with a couple of kids who lived nearby. She said one of them, the girl, believed the fairies were real. Even went around saying she’d met the King of the Fairies.”

Sam nodded robotically. “Gerald and Pinkie.”

“Pinkie?”

“It was a nickname. Her real name was Becca, but she was always dressed in pink—it seemed like she didn’t own anything in any other color.”

He looked back out the windshield.

Pinkie.

Phoebe remembered the little girl in pink who had led her into the woods that afternoon.
Are you here to see the fairies?
The girl who’d shown her the paper bag with the strange six-fingered glove inside it. Pinkie. It must have been.

“So you were friends? You, Lisa, Gerald, and Pinkie?”

“Honestly, we were kind of at war with them that summer. Gerald had a big crush on Lisa, but he hated Evie. He called her Stevie. Humiliated her.”

“And Evie put up with all that?”

Sam laughed harshly. “Not exactly. She broke his arm.”

Phoebe was silent.

“You think you know Evie. That you’re doing this good deed, trying to help her. But I’m telling you, Bee, she can’t be trusted. You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

O
ver a dinner of wonderfully starchy white-flour pasta topped with sweet sauce from a jar, Sam went over the plan.

“We’ll go pick up Lisa tomorrow. Then we’ll drive over to Barre with her, see if anything there sparks any memories. We’ll take her into the library, see if they can tell us anything about this Mary Stevens person. It’s not much of a clue, but it’s all we’ve got.”

The phone rang and they all jumped. “I’ll get it,” said Sam, heading for the living room.

Phoebe listened to Sam say, “Yeah? What? Uh huh. Uh huh.” Then he mumbled something she didn’t catch.

“Something’s still bothering me,” Evie confessed, voice low. “I can’t believe Sam’s had that bracelet all these years.” Evie sucked in her bottom lip. “We all figured she must have been wearing it when she went missing. She had it on that night at dinner. She never took the thing off.”

Why would she? Phoebe wondered. If it was her most treasured possession, why leave it behind?

Two ideas came to mind: that Lisa suspected something bad might happen to her and she wanted to leave behind a clue; or she had it on the night she went into the woods for the last time, and Sam somehow got hold of it. Which would mean he was involved. Evie was looking right at her, and Phoebe sensed the other woman was somehow reading her mind. Phoebe felt her throat tighten. “You don’t think—” she started to say.

Sam burst into the kitchen and Phoebe jumped a little, hating herself for it. This was her boyfriend. Her great love. The father of her child.

“She has a baby,” Sam blurted out.

“What?” Evie said. “Who?”

He knows
, Phoebe thought. He learned about the pregnancy. Maybe the fake Evie had just called him on the phone and given her up.

“Lisa,” Sam said. “That was Franny. She noticed the front of Lisa’s shirt was all wet, then realized her breasts were leaking milk. Lisa told her there was a baby. Just a few weeks old. When Franny asked where it was, she said it was back with his father—in the fairy world.”

“Holy shit,” Evie muttered, eyes huge.

“If the people who have been after us have that baby, we need to go to the police,” said Phoebe, shuddering.

“Okay,” Sam said, nodding.

“Not so fast,” Evie said. “Let’s think this through.”

“What is there to think through?” Phoebe asked. “We’ve got some psychopaths who’ve kidnapped a baby. If this is really Lisa, then we’re talking about your niece or nephew, Sam. We’ve gotta find that baby.”

“Exactly,” Evie agreed. “But I think we have a better chance doing it on our own. If Teilo gets wind that the cops are involved—and he will find out—he’ll take that baby where we’ll never find it. Or worse.”

“But I—” Phoebe said.

Evie cut her off. “Think about what happened with the police back at the cabin. You two turned out looking like the criminals, remember? He’s clever. He’ll always be two steps ahead of us.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Sam asked.

“Follow your original plan,” Evie said. “Take Lisa to Barre. See what you can find out. Lisa is the key here. She’s carrying clues around in that jumbled head of hers. We just have to make sense of them. Cops are going to scare her to death. And trust me, they hear the first
whisper
from her about the fairy world, and bam, social work and psych are involved, and she’s hospitalized and drugged to the gills, no good to anyone, least of all the baby. We’re Lisa’s
family
, Sam. We can get through to her.”

Sam bit his lip. “Okay,” he agreed. “But if we don’t turn up anything on our little field trip to Barre, we call the police.”

“D
o you think we should tell your mom?” Phoebe asked. “Maybe even bring Lisa by?”

It was nearly eleven and they were back in their bedroom. Phoebe was changing the sheets, taking off the ones Lisa had slept on and putting on a pale blue set. Sam shook his head as he kicked off the old hiking boots he wore everywhere.

“Not yet, Bee.” He took off his watch and set it on the little table next to his side of the bed. The book he’d been reading was there, too—some horribly depressing book on global warming his mom had given him for his birthday.

Sam stood shirtless, his curly hair disheveled and slightly sweaty. Phoebe studied the scar on his chest, wondered if she’d ever learn the truth about it.

He turned his back to her, pulled off his jeans, letting them drop to the floor. “Not until we know for sure. And I’m still not convinced. Something just doesn’t feel right about all this.”

“Maybe your mother would know. Some people say mothers have a kind of intuition, a connection to their kids that never goes away.”

Sam grunted.

“That’s what I’ve always heard, anyway,” she said. “I was reading somewhere recently that mothers and babies can identify each other just by smell. Isn’t that amazing?”

“So what are you suggesting?” he asked. “You want my mother to give this girl a great big sniff all over to see if she’s Lisa? Christ, Bee, we’re not a pack of wolves.” He climbed into the freshly made bed and turned off the light on his table. Phoebe’s own bedside light had been smashed to pieces during Lisa’s struggle with Teilo. She’d replaced it with an old metal gooseneck lamp from the office.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all! Lisa was her baby. Her only daughter. They must have had a strong connection. Just like you would if it were your kid we were talking about.”

How could she be such a coward? It wasn’t just her baby; it was Sam’s too. He had to know the truth. Especially now. If Teilo had taken Lisa’s baby, wouldn’t he come for theirs too?

It’s now or never, she told herself. “Sam, I—”

“But I don’t have any kids,” he told her. “I’ll never have kids.” His eyes were closed, his face calm.

Phoebe clenched her hands into tight fists. “Never?” The word came out high and tight.

“It’s never been anything I’ve wanted.” Sam’s voice was sleepy, drifting. “It’s just not in the cards, Bee.”

And just then, she thought she felt the tiny baby move inside her, give a kick in protest, pound on the walls of her uterus, to say,
Like it or not, I’m here.

“C
an’t sleep?” Evie asked. She was in the kitchen, warming milk on the stove, spooning honey into it.

Phoebe shook her head, sure that if she spoke, she’d burst into tears.

“Me neither,” Evie said, smiling. “No worries, though. It’s my personal belief that all the best people are insomniacs.” She sprinkled cinnamon into the milk, then reached for two mugs. “Try this.” Evie filled a mug with steaming milk and passed it to her. “It’s what my mother always gave me when I couldn’t sleep.”

Phoebe took a sip. It was warm and sweet and perfect. She took another long gulp, feeling it warm her. Had her mother ever made her warm milk? She’d given Phoebe NyQuil to help her sleep (and poured herself a slug for good measure). Half a Valium now and then. An ounce of brandy, which tasted like poison, but her mother promised it would chase the nightmares away. Her mother, who spent her last years in some hideous public housing unit, trading disability checks for frozen dinners, generic cigarettes, and booze.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta live, sweetheart. Feel the wind in your hair.

For the millionth time that day, Phoebe wondered what kind of mother she’d be and if she was genetically programmed to be lousy at it. She imagined some hidden switch flipping somewhere in the back of her brain the day her baby was born, the fucked-up-mommy switch inherited from her mother and grandmother, along with her curly hair and narrow hips.

Jesus. A tear ran down her nose, dripped into her mug of warm milk.

How could she have even considered keeping the baby?

Little Willa or Jasper didn’t stand a chance.

“Phoebe?” Evie said, placing a hand gently on her arm.

“Do you think you could drive?” Phoebe asked.

“I—I don’t know. I remember how. But it’s been a long time. And there’s the little detail that in order to drive, I’d have to leave the house. Go out there.” Evie gestured toward the door, her hand trembling a little as if the devil himself was waiting for her there.

“Forget it,” Phoebe said, touching her forehead, then pressing hard, massaging it in little circles. She was so shitty at this—asking people for help. She’d spent her whole life trying not to need anyone’s help, prided herself on her independence. “It’s just that I need a ride. I can get myself there, but someone else has to drive me home and there’s no one I can ask. No one I want to ask. There’s Franny, but she can be so judgmental.”

“Phoebe, I—”

“I’m pregnant.” She spit the words out like bits of metal, sharp against her tongue.

Evie took in a breath, then nodded, her face calm.

“Sam doesn’t want a baby,” Phoebe continued. “And besides, it doesn’t matter. I’d be a lousy mother anyway. And it’s not like Sam and I have any chance at all of making it. I don’t know what we’re doing even trying.” The tears were coming hard and fast and she was gulping for air.

“Oh, Phoebe,” Evie said, pulling Phoebe to her. Evie held her tight, and she cried harder, her tears soaking the shoulder of Evie’s T-shirt.

“Bee?”

Sam was at the edge of the kitchen in his boxers, squinting at them, his face one big sad question mark. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

So this was how it was going to be. No romantic dinner with candlelight and wine. She could practically hear Franny scolding her, saying,
This is why you should have told him the minute you found out.

“Oh God, I’m sorry, I tried,” Phoebe sobbed, stepping away from Evie. “I was waiting for the right time, but Franny was right—there’s no such thing as the right time.”

His face grew more puzzled. “Franny knows?”

Phoebe tried to calm down, took a few ragged breaths.

“I should have come to you first, I know. But things have been so hectic. So complicated. I’m scared, Sam. I’m scared that whoever took Lisa’s baby will want ours too.”

Sam stared at her, his eyes glassy.

“Sam? Say something.”

“You remember, don’t you,” Evie said, looking at Sam, her own eyes wide and panicked. “What we all promised Teilo?”

Sam said nothing.

“What?” Phoebe asked.

Evie cleared her throat. “All of us—Sammy, Lisa, and I—we each promised to give our firstborn child to Teilo.”

Phoebe felt the air in her lungs escape. She felt light-headed. The baby inside her, the size of a lima bean, she imagined.