The Girl from Widow Hills, page 24
“How could you not remember? You were six, almost seven. Of course you’d remember. It was this huge thing. How could you not?”
“Trauma,” I said, repeating what others had said after. How the mind dissociates, goes to its most primitive form, where the only goal is survival. I felt the keys in my grip, biting into my fist.
“I was going to tell you,” he said. “That I knew who you were. But you confessed it first, and I didn’t know what to do. I went about it all wrong, I can see that now. You saw the articles in my luggage, didn’t you. And you freaked. I get it.” Like he was forgiving me, instead of the other way around, when he’d been stalking me for years.
I shifted in tiny steps, so as not to make him spook. “I don’t care,” I said, even though that wasn’t true. But all I knew right then was the thing I’d always known, that singular focus: survival.
Sean Coleman was dead. Elyse was dead. And this man, he was big enough to do it.
“You should care,” he said. “There are so many holes in that story, it’s ridiculous. And nobody else seems to notice. The 911 calls don’t add up. The sleepwalking doesn’t add up. The shoes.”
He was unhinged—ten years, building up. Ten years, about to boil over.
I put my hand out, to stop him, to slow him down. I’d heard it all from Emma Lyons. “You’re seeing what you want to see, Nathan.” Trying to reason him back with me. To see the marvel of it all: that there was a literal hole in the earth here—this spot that I’d been found inside. It was miraculous, and he wanted it to be something else. “No one else backs up these claims.”
His eyes darkened as if he didn’t like the conclusion. Then the side of his mouth quirked. “Well, that’s not true at all,” he said.
I had shifted another step closer to the way I’d come, but now I froze. The desire for the truth. For my own past, for who I was—“What?” The word so quiet, I might not have spoken it at all.
“The media brushed it off, but you know who didn’t?” He paused, making me wait. “Your mother.”
I stepped back like he’d moved closer, which he hadn’t. “You knew my mother?”
“Not in so many words. But I wrote to her, told her what I knew, told her the evidence I had. She thought I was my father, the only other person who would know the truth, right? I didn’t need him to confirm it when your mother reacted the way she did.” I didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know. But he took a step closer, and there was no escaping it now. “She thought I was Sean, and she asked me how much it would take to keep me silent, make it all go away. And then she gave it.”
“You? You were blackmailing us?” Those letters that had been returned to sender—he’d been threatening my mother, warning her.
“Blackmail?” he spat. “Is that what you call it? She’s a liar. That money did not belong to her. To either of you.”
Everything shifted, my understanding of the past; my understanding of just how far he’d go. This was the truth, then: that Nathan Coleman had been blackmailing my mother. That our money had disappeared, not to her addiction but to him. He had taken it from us—everything she’d made from our story. She’d had to sell everything to make him stop.
“You don’t know what it was like to be so close to a story, to see you on the other side of it, getting everything. That should’ve been ours, too. If my father would seize a fucking opportunity, do one of those talk shows, something, anything. If he would just tell his story, it wouldn’t have come to that. But at the ten-year anniversary, after all that new press? Your mother sure did pay up.” He licked his lips. “Are you sure you don’t remember?”
He was so close, and I couldn’t see how to get by him, get to safety, get through this moment. My skin itched, and I scratched at my neck. I couldn’t breathe, like the walls were closing in. “My shoulder, my arm, they were hurt. The injuries, they were left untreated for days.” Proof of what had happened. Proof that I’d survived something.
His eyes followed my hand at my neck, then drifted to my arm. “Did you ever wonder what someone might do to cover up something else?”
I shook my head. Heard Emma’s words echoing, what that doctor had said: The injury was weird. And Bennett’s comment—that the pain must’ve been terrible.
Nathan could see it in me, the doubt setting in, though I tried to fight it. “They take kids away from homes like that.”
“I used to sleepwalk,” I said, clinging to the facts.
He shrugged. “Then what a convenient story, right? Something to say instead? She was a nurse. She would know what to do, what to say…”
But I was shaking my head. Could not fathom the idea. Because we were survivors.
We have to seize the opportunities, she’d told me.
The 911 call, when she’d told the dispatcher that I was gone. That I would sleepwalk. That I was missing. That she’d already checked outside.
And then, minutes later, running outside and screaming for me while Stuart Goss was on his own call.
Like a cause and effect. Like she had an excuse and now had to put on a show.
“They searched for three days!” I said. “I was trapped under here. They had to drill a hole to get to me.” A sharp intake of breath as I fought to keep control, but he could see it, so close to the surface, the unraveling of everything I’d known to be true.
“Sure, you were under there on day three. That doesn’t mean you were there the whole time.”
This was my mother’s fault. Perpetuating the story of what she wanted to believe. Of course I hadn’t been hanging on the whole time I was down there. I’d been trapped, and I’d made my way to the grate. It wasn’t a secret. It didn’t change what had happened to me.
I was shaking my head, eyes closed, clinging to the memory—of the cold and the dark, the four walls closing in.
“Listen,” he said, and he was so close now there was nothing else to do but comply, his body dwarfing mine. “It’s the twenty-year anniversary. Do you know how big a story this could be? All you have to do is remember. All you have to do is say you remember.”
And there it was, what he wanted still. I was a commodity. Something to cash in. A piece of someone else’s story to be used for their benefit.
“It could be a good story. A big story. You and me, twenty-year anniversary. Revealing the truth about what really happened. All I need is for you to say it’s true.”
But I would not. I could not.
“The one thing I remember is being trapped. I remember that.” An instinct in place of a memory. The fear and the emptiness. And now it mattered. It proved my past was real.
“I’ll make you a deal, Arden.” He’d switched to my first name, probably how he’d thought about me for years. He looked somewhere over my head, made a noise with his tongue. “Go take a tour of your old house. Knock on the door, introduce yourself, I’m sure they’ll let you in.”
I could barely remember the house at all; even the outside was mostly unfamiliar. Had he been inside? Had he sneaked in, looked around on his own?
“And then,” he said, standing closer, “take those wooden stairs into the unfinished basement. Look behind the furnace for a low hidden door. Go ahead and peek inside that cinder-block room with the dripping water pipe. And then you tell me if that looks familiar.”
“Stop,” I said. Because I could feel my hands tracing over the cold rocks, the stagnant water, the darkness and no way out.
“And if you’re still sure then, I’ll leave it alone. What do you say?”
My stomach plummeted, the images fracturing and shifting. “It won’t. No.”
“Arden, I need you to fucking remember,” he said, grabbing my wrist. The hidden anger. “And if you can’t, remember something else. Something your mom said. Or did. Do you know what a talk show would pay? What a book could get us? This is the moment, Arden.”
I’d heard that before, from my mother. When she’d tried to convince me of the same on the ten-year anniversary.
But look what it had gotten us. A man stalking me. Demanding money. He didn’t know the type of attention we got, what he was trying to throw himself into so quickly. How they would pick apart his life, literally, piece by piece.
“It’s a thing that happened to me, and it hasn’t been a story that’s belonged to me in a long time,” I said.
“It happened to all of us,” he hissed, hands on my upper arms. “You’re just too selfish to see that. People made it happen—the search and rescue, all the money that poured into it. You owe me this.” He shook me once, and I felt my bones rattle.
I raised my arms to dislodge his grip. His eyes caught on the keys in my fist. “Are you going to hurt me, Arden? With your keys?” A twinkle in his eye, and I knew right then: There would be no reasoning, no escape.
Nathan Coleman was a man who got what he wanted. I was right from the start.
“Did you kill your father?” I asked, looking at his hands gripped on my arms.
He stared at me hard. “I’m not a monster,” he said. Then he released me, as if he realized his mistake. The line he’d just crossed and was in danger of plummeting over. “I wanted his help, but he didn’t want to give it. I never needed him for this, though.” A deep breath. “I didn’t even know he was there.”
But he was a liar.
“I really do like you,” he said. “I didn’t think I would. You surprised me.”
I knew that he wanted what I represented, wanted the life I had. There was a fine line between envy and hatred, between intimidation and aggression, a line you can slide across so easily—from omissions to lies.
“I have a second story, and it’s a good one, too, Arden,” he said slowly. “The story of how my father came to you, wanting you to share the truth. And you killed him.”
“I didn’t.” Box cutter in my drawer; blood on my hands.
“Really, now. You can tell me.”
I could see then that he was not only angry but desperate. Desperate people did terrible things. I could feel myself on the verge. When I was cornered, when I felt trapped.
I closed my eyes, pictured a box cutter in my hand, the thing I could get to the quickest.
What if Sean had asked me for help; what if he’d kept talking, kept moving, and I couldn’t see a way out?
What if I’d run outside and he’d chased me? What if he’d grabbed me by the wrist? What if I’d caught him off guard, in one quick motion?
“Jesus, Arden. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come on.” He grabbed me by the elbow, drew me close to his side, pulling me along as we walked.
But we were walking farther into the woods. Away from civilization, away from escape. “Where—”
“The river. I’m gonna show you the other access points. I’m gonna show you what really happened to you.”
I wrenched myself back, planted my feet. I could not go with him. There would be no coming back. Not from the woods, not from the river. This was how people were lost. This was how things were disappeared. “Get the fuck away from me,” I said, hands held out. I didn’t care if he told, if he screamed what he thought was true. If he claimed my whole life was a fraud, a lie.
He’d come this far, after watching and waiting for a decade. There would be no coming back the same after this, for either of us.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” he said.
There was a noise in the distance—someone moving or an animal pouncing—and when Nathan’s head turned for a fraction of a second, I ran.
I heard him cursing under his breath, his footsteps keeping time with my own. “I’m not going to chase you,” he called, though he was; “I’m not going to hurt you, dammit,” but he was a liar. He had to be.
I kept moving because there was something I knew that he didn’t. That, for reasons beyond physics, no one could catch me. The reason I’d always been able to win when I went out fast enough: I was always running scared.
I started calculating: Time to run to my car.
Time to unlock it and start the ignition.
Time to get to safety.
But the stitches on the outside of my leg slowed my stride.
It was a good story that I told myself: that he couldn’t catch me, that I’d make it out. But he caught up to me before I was even halfway back to the road. Grabbing me by the arm, jerking me back—something twisting, snapping in my shoulder. A sudden jolt of pain, and I cried out, bent over, legs giving way beneath me.
A flash of light, a jolt of pain, a dark room. Hold on, just hold on—
“What the fuck,” he said, pulling me back upright. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I was breathing into his chest, holding on to my other arm, frantic to orient myself—
And then we both heard it at the same time. “Hello?” A voice through the trees. Coming from the direction of the road and my car.
Nathan’s hand went quickly to cover my mouth, stifle my noise. His other arm around my chest, holding me to him. Holding me tight, my neck tipped back.
And I could see how he did it—how he could do it. A box cutter in his grip. One quick motion of his hand across my exposed throat. Dropping me back to the ground, waiting for someone else to find me.
I could see him arguing with his father, stopping him. Begging him. And then—
“Do not make a noise,” he said, whispering in my ear.
Footsteps coming closer, while Nathan held me perfectly still, his hand so tight across my mouth and nose, I felt light-headed, like I couldn’t breathe.
“You don’t want to do that, son.” Another voice now, to our left. “Let go of the girl, keep your hands where we can see them.” I strained to see the speaker, could just make out the police officer in my peripheral vision.
“Just a minute,” Nathan said, but he raised his arms, and I fell forward, sucking in a huge gulp of air in the process. “We were just having a conversation here. You scared us, is all.”
But I was scrambling away from him, toward the officer on my left, who had a gun drawn and was gesturing for me with his free arm.
“This is all a misunderstanding,” Nathan said. “Arden, tell them. Tell them who you are. What we’re doing here.”
“Hands behind your back,” called the other officer, now visible, approaching him with handcuffs. He patted Nathan down, pulled something out of his pocket. “You been tracking this lady’s car?” the second officer asked.
And only then did Nathan stop protesting. The officer beside me called for backup, and we all moved silently out of the woods.
* * *
I SAW MY CAR through the trees, Nathan’s parked directly behind it. There was a police cruiser parked behind Nathan’s car. And another pulled up just as we arrived.
I wanted to feel relief, like I’d escaped something. But I could only see Nathan, hear his words in the woods, feel his conviction in his story.
And all the while, even as they questioned him and searched through his car, he kept staring at me—like he was merely choosing not to break free of their grip on him. As if he was only doing me the favor of not taking me down with him.
I sat in the passenger seat of my car, legs out the door, and couldn’t hear what any of them were saying until Nathan raised his voice. “Tell them, Arden. Tell them the truth.”
The newest officer on the scene stepped in front of me, squatted down so he was on my level. “Arden?” he asked.
“Olivia,” I said.
He nodded, held out a hand. “All right, Olivia. Come with me and tell us what happened.”
* * *
IT WAS LATE BY the time they let me go, taking my statement, contacting Detective Rigby. Dusk was settling, and they offered a nearby motel. But I just wanted to get moving.
They knew who I was at the station, of course: The girl from their town. The mechanism that had put them on the map.
The officers were my age or a little older, had grown up with their own claim to the story. Their parents had searched. Their aunts and uncles had been interviewed. Their neighbors had drawn search grids. Their schools had lent lights and equipment.
They’d told the stories that only they knew, passed down from the generation before.
It was a rite of passage during high school to trek out in the night to that grate beside the plaque, find your way in the dark, make your own stories, and leave them there. Fade to black.
They remembered the name Sean Coleman. They did not remember his son.
* * *
“I’M COMING HOME,” I told Detective Rigby on the phone, desperate to get as far away from Nathan Coleman, and all that had happened here, as possible.
“I’ll meet you there as soon as you get back,” she said. “I’ll send a cruiser by your place in the meantime, just to be safe. Okay?”
I hoped that would at least scare off any of the remaining attention around my place. But the danger had followed me here.
It was time to get the past contained again, keep it where it belonged—underground, in the dark. There was no good that could come of it now.
Everyone claimed to know things here.
I knew she was gone before I woke. The first line of my mother’s book.
The words seemed flat now. Deadened; wrong.
Of course she knew. She knew, because she had done it.
TRANSCRIPT OF 911 CALL FOR SERVICE
DATE: AUGUST 27, 2020
TIME STAMP: 6:17 P.M.
DISPATCH: 911. What’s your emergency?
CALLER, UNKNOWN FEMALE: I’m on Devereaux Lane in Widow Hills, and I just saw a man follow a woman into the woods.
D: Can I get your name and location, please?
C: Devereaux Lane, about halfway down, you’ll see the spot. There are two cars. The woman’s was here first, and he just pulled in and took something from the bottom of her car.
D: What did he take?
C: I don’t know. He followed her in. I wonder if he was tracking her car.
D: Is it a hiking trail?
