We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 29
“As much as I want to live in paradise with you . . . ,” Shane says. “Tomorrow, though? You sound worse than when we talked yesterday.”
“It’s weird. I don’t even remember talking to you yesterday.”
“Yeah. See?” He clucks his tongue. “I’m gonna be an asshole and say that I don’t find it funny that your family friend has been low-key trying to kill you.”
I search the nightstand for my rubber band. No luck. “Guess you had to be there.”
Now he laughs.
“You can take care of me when you fly down today,” I say, searching the hospital bag full of my belongings. No rubber band.
“Ah. So you’re not calling it off.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my teeth to keep from crying. “I can’t tell my mother that and live to see another day. And that reporter from the paper is coming. And I spent a lot of money on this. Am I a coward?”
“Nope,” he says. “You’re doing the best you can, and that’s why I love you.”
“I love you, too. After we search for Liz Marsh, will you feed me pineapple on the island? I hear rum is therapeutic.”
“Yeah.”
“But?”
“I wanna make sure we’re not running down blind alleys,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“Not you and me. I meant running down blind alleys with this Liz Marsh thing. We should call Winston Rhymes first.”
“Let’s.” I sit up in bed.
Today, I was scheduled for a final walkthrough with Megan at the golf club. Yeah, I’m good. I’m not throwing any more time, effort, or money into this farce. It’s past noon in the Virgin Islands, and so I call Winston Rhymes’s number and merge that line with Shane’s.
The phone rings . . . rings . . .
“Allo, Schooner Bay.” The man sounds raspy, like he’s been shouting all day. In this episode of Queen of Palmdale, he resembles Yaphet Kotto with his wide, dark, generous face.
“May I speak with Winston Rhymes, please?” I ask.
“This is him.” In his world, a printer is spitting out pages. Beyond that spitting printer, a ship horn honks.
“My name’s Yara Gibson, and I’m looking for my ex-stepmother.” My cheeks warm at the wackiness of those words. “Her family owns a condo there, and no one’s answering. Her best friend died, and I’m trying to reach her.” I pause. “Not the dead woman, my ex-stepmother—”
“I understand,” Winston Rhymes says. “She a Yankee or bahnya?”
Born here?
“Yankee,” I say. “Originally from Los Angeles.”
“What’s your muddah’s name?”
“Stepmother, and it’s Elizabeth Marsh Gibson.” That last name—Gibson—sticks in my throat and tastes how skunks smell.
“Lemme look.”
In the background, the ship horn signals with another short honk. I type the condo’s address into Google again. The results include images of cruise ships sitting in the harbor as puffy white clouds bumble in the sky. Lots of green hills and crystal-blue water.
“So,” Winston Rhymes says, “whatcha asking me?”
“Does she still live there?” I ask.
“The unit is still owned by Marsh but rented by a tenant.”
“For how long?”
“Oh . . .” He clicks his teeth. “Off and on since . . . 2001.”
Eighteen years?
“Muddah and Fahdah Marsh passed a long time ago, and they had one girl, your stepmother. She don’t come hyah since ’98. She a beauty—my boy fall in love with her just like that. But the girl was vexed, yuh check? Another woman come here a few years after that. Didn’t like her much. A lyah, that one. She have me rent the place out. We’ve rented out ever since.”
“What’s the woman’s name?”
“I’d have to find that and call you back.”
I thank Winston Rhymes and end the call.
“So if she isn’t living in Saint Croix . . . ?” Shane says.
“Where is she living?”
“And who was renting the condo?”
I shrug. “Felicia?”
After Shane and I end our call, I wonder . . . Maybe Dad had another girlfriend. Irina! Where the hell is she? I’d forgotten all about that chick.
Maybe there’s something in one of those other boxes in the cabin, something that points me to the subletter’s current address. Maybe this question—where is Liz Marsh—is exactly how Felicia’s investigation started.
So where is Liz?
Dead and now chilling beside Felicia Campbell in the morgue?
I grab my phone and shoot off a text to Kayla. You identify the body found in the car yet?
No ellipsis—she’s not answering. I grab my purse from the dresser. I haven’t visited the cabin at Lake Paz since Tuesday, when I was momentarily trapped in the basement.
Where are the keys?
I dump the contents of my bag onto the bed.
My car keys are here, but the cabin key . . .
Not here. Not on the nightstand nor on the dresser.
Wait . . .
Where is my IDEAS journal for Queen of Palmdale?
Downstairs, the front door creaks open and slams so hard the entire house quakes.
It’s almost nine o’clock. Everyone is supposed to be running last-minute errands for tonight’s dinner.
Who’s here?
60.
I creep down the hallway and down the stairs.
Mom’s red handbag hangs from the staircase banister like a whale’s heart. A pit craters my stomach. I’ve avoided her for almost forty-eight hours now, but we need to talk. After taking several deep breaths, I clomp down one step at a time as the shrill voice in my head whispers, Don’t! and Turn back! and There be monsters here!
By the time I reach the bottom landing, I still don’t know what I’m gonna say to her. I stand in the foyer, dumb and mute.
“I’m in here.” Her voice drifts from the living room. Calm. Measured. Neither state of mind comforts me.
Mom, wearing a blue tracksuit, sits on the couch as upright as a steel rod. Her chin rests against the manila folder now clutched to her chest. Her eyes are cast to the Nikes on her feet.
I take tiny steps until I’m standing before her.
The cramped space smells like perfume and cigarettes. Too much light. Not enough air.
She looks at me with bloodshot eyes. Dried salt has left white trails down her cheeks.
The only sounds in the room are the wheezing from my lungs and the clattering breath from my mouth. I feel naked in my boxer shorts and tank top.
“You’ve been busy,” she says. “Not just planning the anniversary celebration but also with . . .” She swallows and her chin quivers. “Yara . . .” My name crumples in her mouth.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say, rescuing her, rescuing us from everything she’s about to say.
“I’m so sorry.” She swipes at new tears rolling down her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have kept these big secrets from you, and believe me, I didn’t want to.”
She tries to smile and offers a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m many things, but most of all, I’m a mama bear when it comes to my girl.”
“I know, Mom,” I say, reaching for my rubber band but not finding it. “And I know you didn’t plan . . .” I don’t know what else to say.
“No one wants to be alone in life,” she says. “We all have to compromise. We all have to tamp down those parts of ourselves that are raging monsters wanting to eat, burn, and destroy the people who invade our space.” She sets the manila folder thick with papers flat against her lap. She smiles and her eyes shine. “Did you know that I’ve kept almost everything you and Dom wrote and gave me?”
I nod.
She opens the folder, then holds up a turkey made from brown construction paper. A Valentine’s Day heart made from a painted paper plate. She finds a sheet of gray paper. No paint, glitter, or multicolored string on this piece. Mom’s mouth tightens as she holds it out to me.
I don’t move from my spot. Like my feet, my arms are frozen solid.
Her eyes meet mine. “Read this.”
The paper—a pulpy lined sheet that children use to practice handwriting—flutters beneath the whoosh of the air conditioner.
The writing . . . It’s my writing, although I haven’t written like this in over fifteen years. But this writing . . . it’s my writing.
And the words here terrify me.
“Read it aloud, please,” Mom asks.
She wants me to read?
I don’t know how to read, not anymore. I don’t know how to breathe, not anymore. My lungs have died in my chest, and my brain swims from the lack of oxygen. I can only blink as the paper rattles in my hands.
Mom plucks the sheet from me and reads: “Dear Mommy . . .”
I saw something very bad and I don’t know what to do. I am scared that I am going to Hell and that I won’t be with you in Heaven. I saw something very bad and I did not say nothing and I am sorry. Daddy said she was a very bad lady. He did not want her to hurt me and you anymore. Mommy I am scared. I do not want to go to jail. Please do not tell Daddy that I told you. Please do not let me go to jail. Please do not let Daddy hurt me.
My mother’s voice breaks, and she can’t read the last sentences.
But I already know those last sentences.
Liz is gone. Daddy made her go away with his gun.
All of me has turned cold and sharp as cut glass. My mouth moves, but no words . . .
“You wrote this confession,” Mom says. “You thought you’d done something wrong, and I knew it had been an accident. Rob bought that gun for protection against those rednecks at Lake Paz, and Liz was unbalanced and lost control and . . .” She clamps her hand over her mouth.
I shake my head. “No. Daddy couldn’t have.”
“But he did, Yara. Elizabeth Marsh is dead. She’s been dead for a while now, and you were there when it happened.”
“No. I don’t remember.”
“Of course you don’t remember,” Mom says, clutching her bare neck. “You broke that night. All of you just unraveled. You couldn’t sleep. Your health took a serious dive. You stopped talking. I didn’t know how Liz died, not until you wrote this. And then it all made sense.”
“But . . . when? When did I . . . ?”
The mail slot opens, letting in more light. Envelopes and catalogs whoosh to the floor.
Mom pushes back her hair. “Liz was staying up at the cabin and Rob invited you and me to stay at their house in LA for the week. Ratchet behavior, I know, but . . .
“Late that night, I’d gone out to pick up Burger King. You stayed at the house with Daddy. Liz drove down from Lake Paz and showed up at the house in LA. When I came back with dinner, you were crying. It was late at night, and so I figured you were just cranky. Your father was acting strange, but I thought that he’d just talked to—and had lied to—Liz over the phone. I didn’t think anything else had happened. Just regular ‘husband almost getting caught cheating on his wife’ bullshit. But he told me that Liz came to the house, and that they argued but that she left alive and drove back up to Lake Paz.
“He told me that he’d demanded a divorce, and that he’d soon be free of her, but Liz . . . That wasn’t her plan, and she wouldn’t let go. She started sending me all the letters, postcards, AOL messages . . . I was terrified. How many messages did I need to get threatening my life before someone got hurt? And so, once we were a little family, for real, this time, we left Los Angeles and moved here.”
She shakes her head and stares at the carpet. “It was bizarre to think that someone you thought you knew was sneaking around and doing all this stalker shit. She wrote Rob once and told him exactly what he was wearing. One time, she asked if he liked his beer—because she’d . . . I can’t believe I’m about to say this. She said that she urinated in it. But that was a lie because it was a can, and the tab hadn’t been pulled.
“Your dad thought that if he left us, that she’d leave us alone. We were willing to destroy our relationship to make her stop.” Mom searches my eyes. “Yara, I’ve never been that scared in my life. For real, you know me. I’m not scared of nothing or no one. Except Liz.”
Mom swallows, takes a deep breath, then pushes it out. “And then she sent you this.” A postcard of butterflies dancing in the light.
Hey, sweetie pie! How are you?
“What did Daddy do?” I whisper, staring at the card.
“He lost it and said if she came within one hundred feet of you that he’d kill her.”
A horrified, confused smile twists my lips. “He didn’t actually mean that, did he?”
She sighs, shrugs. “But then you wrote this”—she holds up the confession—“years later when you knew how to use your words. You’d kept it bottled up all that time. That’s when I knew it couldn’t have been Liz who’d sent you that butterfly postcard. The timing was off—according to your confession, she was already dead before we left LA for Palmdale.
“As much as I was horrified that you’d experienced this bullshit, this tragedy, I was also so proud of you. But I needed to protect you from the police. I needed to protect us. They would’ve broken our family apart. The world would’ve found out, and I didn’t want to traumatize you.”
She takes a deep breath and releases it through clenched teeth. “Robert doesn’t know that you wrote this confession. He doesn’t think I know what he did to Liz.”
“Who’s been pretending to be Liz?” I whisper.
She cocks her head. “The same person who wants us to think she’s alive.”
Daddy.
HERE WE LIE
61.
My father killed Elizabeth Marsh Gibson.
He shot her to death.
I was there, but I don’t remember.
Wait . . .
My mind drifts until something pulls and tugs at my belly button.
I do remember.
All this time, my nightmares have suggested that I experienced something a long time ago, that I was connected to something traumatic. The crying . . . the croaking frogs . . . the sensation of drowning . . . the screaming . . . the blast of a gunshot. All of this also explains my anxiety, the medication, going to therapy that sometimes worked but never stuck.
And now, there’s my confession, written in careful loops . . .
I whisper, “I need a moment,” to Mom. With my senses banging into each other, I shamble out of the house and sit on the porch. Saturday morning continues to happen all around me—from the drone of cars on the highway to the songs of desert birds. Sprinklers tchecht-tchecht-tchecht while down the block, car-stereo Toby Keith sings about the red, white, and blue.
How old was I when he killed her?
The case reports I found in the boxes from the cabin documented that Elizabeth Marsh went missing on June 25, 1998. I was three years old.
Birdie Sumner’s witness statement said that she’d heard a fight that evening.
Was that what I heard on the answering machine tape?
Had that been Mom talking to Felicia? Liz confronting her? And then, afterward, Dad killed her to protect Mom and me?
On weak legs, I return to the foyer. Mom hasn’t moved from her spot on the living room couch. Face hidden in her lap, her shoulders shudder as she cries. Her back should hurt—she’s been carrying our family’s secrets for so long. We’ve painted her as the villain, as the one ready to desert us on a whim. Little did I know. She’d been swallowing all of it to keep us together, to keep us from the law.
And then there’s Dad. I knew there’d been something else out there. He’s lied to me about his life with Elizabeth Marsh, with his other family. He’s done something so extreme that my mind snags and tangles around the thought of him being someone else.
This isn’t right.
I dash up the stairs and pull on sweats and a hoodie. I grit my teeth as I slip contact lenses into my eyes. They sting, but I can see clearly now, better than I have in days.
Mom, red-nosed and scratchy, haunts the foyer. “Are you okay?”
I run out the door without answering.
The stiff breeze moves the trees and bushes, but it isn’t the hot and swollen wind that brings sandstorms. The sudden sunshine, so clear now with my contacts, makes me want to vomit. The rest of me . . . I’m too numb to feel the rest of me.
“Where are you going?” Mom shouts from the doorway. “Yara, stop! Wait!”
I climb into the Jeep’s driver’s seat. Somehow, the car turns on by itself and somehow, the Jeep navigates onto Lake Paz Road.
What am I doing?
Mom also texts me asking that same question.
To talk to Kayla, I text back.
About what? I don’t know.
Cookie Monster house shoes.
Cookie Monster nightgown . . .
That answering machine tape—there’s a child crying in the background.
Insurance policies . . . Music royalties . . .
I pull into the sheriff’s station, a cream building with ceramic roof tiles and drop boxes on the sidewalk that can easily be mistaken for book drops. But this is no library, and those drop boxes hold needles and illegal drugs deposited by Joe and Jane Public.
Kayla’s white Honda sits in the employee parking lot.
An older woman wearing raggedy sandals, her stringy blonde hair pulled into an updo, argues with a younger woman with the same meth face. I can do what I want and You ain’t had to come down here and I ain’t bailing you out no more.
Bile burns my throat. My life is about to change, I know it. Right now it’s changing because I’m grabbing my cigarette case from the glove box. Three months since I last smoked. Three months wearing my rubber band, but that band is now missing. I roll down the windows, then pluck a Newport from the three left. I push in the Jeep’s cigarette lighter and wait.
How long will Dad have to stay in jail?
Will Mom also be charged for the cover-up?
I stick the cigarette between my lips.
The unsmoked cigarette flies from my hand, hits the steering wheel, and lands on the passenger-side seat.
I shout, “Hey!”
