We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 26
“Is this Liz Marsh dangerous?” Kayla asks.
I cock my head. “She’s a stalker type. A bit obsessive. Holds a grudge. She told Felicia to leave her alone and Felicia ignored her request and now look.” I cock my head. “Your turn.”
“The DNA from Will Harraway doesn’t match the DNA found on his wife.”
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved,” I point out. “Men hire other people to do it.”
“True,” Kayla says.
“You have Felicia’s phone,” I say. “She must’ve been texting Liz all this time.”
“She was. All numbers go to various burner phones, though.”
“Do those numbers to burner phones match the number of the anonymous tipper?”
Kayla doesn’t respond. Either she hadn’t thought of that, or she had and one of the numbers from the burner phones matches.
My hotel window rattles. Eventually, the dust will clear, but I’ll find myself in another dimension, just like the characters in The Tommyknockers.
“I should get back to work,” Kayla says. “Let me know if you learn anything else?”
“Sure,” I say, fingers crossed. “Be careful tonight.”
I’ll be watching.
51.
In just forty minutes, everything has been covered in fine, reddish-brown dust. The skies are blue again as though nothing happened. For the rest of the week, the county will sound like one giant vacuum cleaner. As I make my way home, pebbles on the road pop against my windshield and the body of my Jeep, threatening to crack the glass and continue their mission of ruining my paint job. My sinuses have swollen, and pressure is building around my eyes. I know this feeling: I’ll soon need more than an inhaler, but hopefully the sinus infection won’t fully hit me until Sunday.
My phone vibrates from the Jeep’s center console.
A text message from Elizabeth Marsh.
Yes! Maybe I can ask her—
What are you doing?? she texts.
You need to stop before I lose control!!!
I’ve worked hard to move on
You are forcing me to remember the worst time of my life
Are you selfish like your mother???
My heart drops with every whoosh of text that fills my phone.
I don’t mean to . . . I didn’t aim to . . .
If you want to ruin my life
I will be happy to ruin yours
and Bee’s
and Rob’s
I will fuck you up!!!!!
You people took everything from me!!!!!
My hands shake. After I pull into the driveway, I grab my phone.
I’m so sorry!! I text back.
I apologize for hurting you
Please don’t think my questions are out of disrespect
Felicia is dead
I’m just trying to make sense of everything
Breathless, I bite the cuticle around my thumb and stare at the screen.
The last thing I want is to—
LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
If you don’t
I know where you are
I know what car you drive
I know that you live in Santa Monica
My phone fills with pictures: the outside view of my apartment building, my IMDb page of writing credits, and a picture of me today with my jacket pressed against my face.
What have I done?
My face burns. I’ve opened the sarcophagus. I’ve said “Bloody Mary” three times in front of a bathroom mirror. I’ve whispered “Beetlejuice” and “Rumpelstiltskin” and now . . .
I text, I’m so sorry and sit in my Jeep, thinking about nothing and everything.
Why did I even reach out to this woman?
I’m warning you, Liz Marsh texts.
Lose my number TODAY!!!
No one’s home. The mounds of dust from the driveway to the porch are undisturbed.
I plod up the stairs to my bedroom, numb, heavy-headed, thick-chested. My bag is weighed down with items taken from the plastic tub, including the answering machine and mini cassettes as well as the key to Elizabeth Marsh’s post office box. I change into sweatpants and a tank top, and for a moment, I stand in the middle of my dull-colored bedroom, breathing in more polluted air, letting my eyes adjust to the weird-colored sunshine.
I climb into bed, wrap the comforter over my body, and listen to the rattle in my chest. I don’t think I’ll be able to sneak to the Red Roof Inn tonight.
Someone knocks on the door.
I shout, “Yeah?” from beneath the comforter.
Whoever it is peels the duvet from around my head.
The sudden light makes me blink.
Dominique stands over me. Her hair and makeup are flawless. “We need to sweep before Mom gets—wow. You look worse than you did yesterday.”
I frown at her. “Thanks.”
She holds up a large bag from the hobby store. “There was a sale on frames, and I got holders for all the little pieces of whatever you want people to look at. And I picked up the big picture of Mom and Dad since I was there.”
“Thanks.” I sit up in bed and nod toward the window. “I don’t miss this at all.”
She settles beside me. “Didn’t use to be this bad. If they keep ripping up all the vegetation to build houses, it’s gonna be just like the Dust Bowl out here.”
“You sounded so smart just then.”
“You must be proud.” She rests her chin on my shoulder, and we stare out at the hawk circling the now-clear sky.
“Lemme see the canvas print,” I ask.
She scrambles out of my room and through the bathroom. Seconds later, she returns with the large print of our parents wearing their wedding clothes. They’re holding hands and facing each other as that cloudy sky above them reflects across the pool.
Dominique’s face brightens as she traces their image in the water. “They look like two totally different people. They must’ve been totally happy once.”
I chuckle. “That one day in September 2007?”
“Christmas morning 2012?” Dominique scrunches her eyebrows. “Nice while it lasted.”
I peer at her. She’s not being snarky or flippant. She’s not even looking at me and expecting a response.
My phone rings.
“Is that your boyfriend?” Dominique teases.
“Ha. Yes, it is.” I answer with, “Hey, you.”
Dominique shouts, “Hi, Shane!”
He shouts back, “Hi, Dominique!” To me, he says, “I still have your inhaler.”
“I know. I’ll try to get one from the pharmacy here.”
“If not,” he says, “I’ll drive up.”
“An hour-and-a-half drive just for one inhaler?”
“I need you to breathe,” he says. “But I’m not calling about that.”
Dominique is slipping the print back into its protective sheet. She doesn’t seem to be listening, but she probably is.
“Remember when you said that you didn’t know if Elizabeth Marsh was still married to the guy she left, or if she’d had two more husbands after him?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“She was married only once,” he says.
My eyebrows lift. “Awesome.”
“Yara,” Dominique whispers.
I look over my shoulder. She’s saying something, pointing to something, but Shane’s still talking. I give her a thumbs-up and say to Shane, “I missed that. What?”
“I found their marriage license.”
I grab a pen and my notebook from the nightstand. “Okay.”
“Yara,” he says, “there’s one license for Elizabeth Marsh and . . . Robert Gibson.”
I’ve stopped writing.
“Your Robert Gibson,” he says. “Your dad.”
The pen cracks in my grip.
“So,” Shane continues, “I searched for Robert Louis Gibson and Barbara Nicole McGuire, and I found a marriage license for them, too.”
Dad married two women?
“Bigamy?” I ask.
“No,” Shane says. “He divorced Marsh, so your parents’ marriage is legal.”
Dominique is staring at me with question marks in her eyes.
I force myself to smile. “Work,” I whisper to her.
Shane says, “I’m sending you pictures of the licenses and certificates of marriage.”
My phone bings, and I say, “Thanks. I’ll call you back,” before hanging up.
There’s Elizabeth Marie Marsh, daughter of Sheldon Allen Marsh and Maryam Elizabeth Unger. There’s Robert Louis Gibson Jr., son of Robert Louis Gibson Sr. and Audrey Soares. Date of marriage: August 16, 1992, in Bel Air, County of Los Angeles, State of California.
Why didn’t Mom and Dad tell me this? Why didn’t Mom tell me that she and Liz had been more than frenemies? One had been a first wife and the other . . .
“And the divorce?” I can barely talk because my heart is skidding around my chest.
My phone bings a second time.
Petitioner: Robert L. Gibson Jr.
Respondent: Elizabeth M. Marsh
Notice of Entry of Judgment
You are notified that the following judgment was entered on October 12, 1998.
The “DISSOLUTION” option is checked.
October 12, 1998 . . .
I was born on April 25, 1995.
Dad cheated on Elizabeth Marsh.
And Mom, not Liz, was the other woman.
52.
Dad married Elizabeth Marsh.
Dad divorced Elizabeth Marsh.
Dad married Mom.
What the hell?
Dominique cocks an eyebrow at me, but once her phone rings, she forgets that I’m here. She smiles, says, “Thinking about you, too,” then slinks out of my bedroom to talk to Ransom.
I hide my face between my knees and squeeze my eyes shut. My heartbeat is like the roar and rumble of cannon fire.
Breathe . . . breathe . . . What would Cookie do?
I dare lift my head.
A good first step. She’d have a drink, go to the shooting range, call her ex and fall into bed with him, then slip into the darkness as he sleeps.
But I don’t drink like that. I don’t shoot guns. My boyfriend is a world away. This shit hurts, and no matter my talent with a pen, Cookie is not real.
Odd, mustard-colored light that always shines after dust storms glows across the carpet. The windows aren’t rattling. No, that noise comes from the mucus in my lungs and the trapped sludge pooling in my head. It’s just the manic pounding of my heart.
Mom and Dad lied to me.
He had a whole other wife?
They had a whole other life?
Did Dad and Liz divorce because of her desertion? Because of her illness? Or did all that happen because Mom and Dad were having an affair? Because Mom had me.
What did my mother have to do with their ending?
Now, Liz seems reasonable in her anger. Moving to the freaking Virgin Islands—as far away as you can get from Los Angeles while still being in the US—also seems reasonable.
I need a drink.
Wait.
I race out of my room and down the stairs to the mail basket near the front door. I flip through bills and grocery store circulars and . . .
This. The mailing label on this magazine. Beth Gibson.
We’re still getting mail for her? Did she live here in this house?
“Ohmigod.” The living room spins, and my knees give, and I land on the bottom step. My hands shake as I stare at Crochet World. Did she make blankets and teakettle cozies and . . . ?
Mom’s Louis Vuitton duffel bag. It’s back in the nook, collecting dust bunnies again and serving as a constant reminder to Dad. That Mom would leave him just like his first wife did.
I hide my face in my lap. “I can’t stay here right now.”
I wobble to the front door and step out to the porch.
Now I’m walking toward the foothills and the endless dirt and the round rocks, sage, and chapparal. It’s so hot out here that my tears dry as soon as they fall down my cheeks. As I walk I taste salt and grit, and I cough because my feet kick up dirt, because out here in the untamed, uncultivated wasteland, there’s still wind and dust devils and danger.
I trudge toward those foothills, not sure what I will do once I reach the first hill or the fourth. There are so many hills stacked one behind another that I could walk forever.
A scorpion scrambles across my path.
I stop in my step and watch as it slips beneath a boulder.
I don’t wanna turn around and look behind me. Because then, I’ll have to see our house of lies, this city of dirt, everything that I hate and have always fought against believing to be true. In my heart of hearts, in my darkest imaginations, though . . . I knew that our house was haunted.
That’s why I never slept well there.
That’s why I escaped (and hid those times I couldn’t escape) by writing stories about heroines like Cookie who fought against boogeymen, real and imagined, heroines who constantly struggled to understand people’s motivations and potential for evil.
The dark terrifies me. Being abandoned terrifies me. These fears didn’t randomly spring from the earth. They were planted and cultivated by the people who were supposed to protect me and love me the most.
All this time, we were a lie.
My head falls back, and I scream, “Damn it!” to the sky.
The sun dips behind the western hills, and the sky turns persimmon and puce. Soon, coyotes and mountain lions will leave their dens and start the hunt for food. The desert is the last place I should be alone at night. I don’t know what to do next except—
I yelp.
A stranger wearing a hoodie—the same black hoodie from the break-in—stands just a few feet away from me. A black gaiter covers the lower half of the stranger’s face. Sunglasses hide their eyes.
I take a step back. “Please, don’t—”
The stalker lunges at me.
I scream and run toward the setting sun. I wheeze as fire zigzags through my lungs, and although I slow down, I don’t stop moving.
The stalker grabs my hair and pulls.
I fall back.
Crack.
My head hits the desert floor. Dust finds its way into my mouth, eyes, and nose. My right hand slaps at the intruder’s face, neck, and gaiter as my left hand claws at the ground in search of a broken piece of glass, a rock, or this!
Jagged slate.
The stalker’s hands press at my mouth and against my throat.
Not breathing for a short period of time?
I do this too many times a year.
In my head, I’m screaming, but there’s no sound coming from my mouth.
The world around me grows dimmer . . . darker . . .
I swing my left hand across my attacker’s face.
“Shit!” That voice . . . could be male, female, brown bear, I can’t hear anything over the frantic chaos happening between my ears. The attacker rears back and clutches their face, then gapes at the glistening blood there.
I lunge at this monster, aiming that piece of slate at the eyes just how Shane showed all the Tough Cookie writers as we beat out a fight scene.
The stranger blocks my jab and kicks my thigh.
I fall but scramble to my feet. My hands shine with slick blood, but I don’t drop my weapon. No, I carry it as I run the most raggedy run I’ve ever run. All of me hurts until none of me hurts. My home is a mirage, and even as I run toward it, the house doesn’t get any closer.
I cry out. “Help!” maybe, or “Stop!” or . . .
Yes. I wanna stop.
Yes. I’m gonna stop.
And I stop.
And I fall.
Way up in heaven, Sirius burns in the sky, bright and blue.
My lungs are deflated accordions, and soon, I will suffocate.
Okay. I’m okay. Let whatever happens . . . happen. None of this is real anyway.
We lie here.
The rest of this . . .
It’s just a mirage.
HOW TO LI(V)E
53.
Western Mojave Desert
9:33 p.m.
I’ve failed.
The cheek gashes sting from the free-falling teardrops.
Maybe one day, Yara will suffocate to death out there in the desert.
Maybe one day, a coyote or bobcat will find her, and she’ll die that way.
“Maybe.” That’s another word for failure.
Only losers are uncertain.
I’m a loser. Just like they always said.
Time to bail, to switch teams—for real, this time.
It’s not too late.
Snitches get stitches.
But I won’t be around long enough to get jumped.
Fuck Palmdale and everybody who lives in this dump.
54.
One eye opens.
The world . . . just a blur . . . can’t see . . .
My second eye . . . stuck . . . dark, still dark . . .
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
What is that . . . ?
My second eye pulls apart slightly . . . Something sticky holds my eyelashes together.
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
No pain.
Light. Almost floaty.
Life’s a blur.
“She’s awake.”
I know that voice.
I try to move my head, but sharp pain pushes at me, no more floaty feeling . . .
“Yaya, it’s Dom.”
My sister.
My lips crack open. In my head, I hear my question, but after those words travel from my brain to reach my mouth, all that I’m left with is: “Where . . . ?”
“Hospital.” She inches closer to me, and her maroon-colored lips lift into a smile.
Another question forms in my head, but I can only say, “Why?”
“You were attacked.” Her words wobble on the air.
I squint against the brightness of her tears. My head hurts, and I think about . . . about . . .
Palmdale did it.
This city killed me.
Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
Mom stands over me, frowning. “There she is.” She forces herself to smile.
Dad’s eyes flare with fear. “Yaya, we’re here.”
