The Woods, page 15
I wonder if the police know that Jack Lewis was in town when Nicole was murdered. I wonder if they know his dad lied about him being away the whole time.
“We didn’t invite her, you know. It was as big a shock to me and Bella as it must have been to you and Jack. We had no idea.” That’s not strictly true, though, is it? I was worrying about it for weeks before Julia actually moved in.
Sean laughs softly. “It wasn’t your fault, though we blamed you—you, your sister, your dad. We made you the villains so we didn’t have to blame our mother for choosing you over us.”
“I’m so sorry about Ellie. She was such a lovely little girl.”
He smiles. “She was such an adorable little pain. We were teenagers. The last thing we wanted was a toddler to babysit, filling the house with pink and dolls.”
I go downstairs and he follows me. Jack and Lena are laughing in the living room, the door closed. I resist the urge to open the front door and start running in case Sean chooses to follow me. The thought makes my heart beat faster in a peculiar mix of fear and…something else. Perhaps I’m not as immune to the Lewis boys as I thought. Instead, I go to the kitchen, fill the kettle, put teabags in the pot.
“We never…” I hesitate. “We never thought we wanted a stepmother, never thought we needed one. The shock of her moving in with us…of her getting together with Dad…I’m sorry. We were teenagers, obsessed with our own problems. We should have spent more time thinking about the family she left behind when she came to us.” I make a face. “Julia became ours whether we wanted her or not, and you and Jack were being so awful to her, I cast you both in the roles of the enemy.”
He sighs and takes the mug of tea I hand him. “She did try and sort things out with us. She was always trying to get us here. But we were too angry. We took Dad’s side and refused to have anything to do with her.”
I assumed, when he arrived, that he would still be full of all the burning anger that scared me when I met him first. But I don’t think it’s there anymore. I stand a couple of feet away and I don’t feel the same edginess, the needle-like prickle of uneasiness that used to make me think just his presence could give me a static shock.
It’s muted now, dampened by sadness. I don’t know if it makes me any easier in his company. I watch him, leaning back against the counter, shoulders curved, head bowed, hands gripping tea made in a flowery mug.
The split-second urge to lean over and push his hair out of his face, though, that’s new.
He looks up and my cheeks burn as I wonder if I blanked out for a second and actually did it.
I think of the bones at Dean House and wonder how long they’ve been there. Bella’s voice from my dreams is still whispering, always whispering the same words: It wasn’t an accident. It makes me clench my hand into a fist. Feeling a bond with Sean—feeling sympathy—isn’t why I’m here.
“So what have the police said to you—about the body they found in your garden?” It comes out too loud, my tone harsh. I want to be angry with him. “Have they linked it to the old murders?”
He frowns. “They haven’t told us anything. They just wanted to know how long it is since we lived there, if anyone else has lived there since.” He stops. “And they wanted to know if Dad had been in contact.”
“What’s this—filling Tess in on the fiasco that is the police investigation?” Jack says, walking into the kitchen. He goes to the fridge and pulls out a beer. I want to snap at him for making himself so much at home. He laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, of course now they’re interested in finding Dad, but when he went missing? They did not give a shit.”
“But…did he really go missing?” I ask. “I thought he packed a bag and contacted you and…”
“A couple of texts to say he had to get away. And then we never heard from him again. Fuck knows what happened to him—he said he was off to Germany to work with a mate, but there was never any sign of him leaving the country, no activity on his bank account. We told the police all that back then and they did a half-assed search, but they were basically—he’s a grown man, no risk to himself or others, who left of his own volition. In other words, fuck off and stop bothering us.”
“I never…I’m sorry. I assumed he’d kept in touch.”
“Oh, don’t pretend you ever gave a shit,” Jack says, striding out of the room, beer in hand.
I recoil. “So he’s changed, has he?” I say to Sean.
“Tess…”
“Maybe you should mention to the police that he was lurking around spying right around the time Nicole Wallace got murdered.”
Sean steps back, face pale.
“Oops,” I say. “Did you forget what you just told me screws up his alibi?”
Pushing past him, I step out into the night.
Chapter 16
A few days later and I still haven’t slept properly through the night. My legs are heavy as I climb the stairs and the thought of a full night’s sleep makes me cry with longing. I haven’t taken any of the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed yet, but maybe I should. I hate the thought of medication, but it would only be while I’m here.
Lena’s already in the bedroom, standing at the window in the dark, looking out at the night. She doesn’t turn when I go in.
“Are you okay?”
She glances back at me, her face solemn. “Not really. It’s really getting to me—the body in the woods.”
I shiver. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“Do you think they’ll ever be able to figure out who it is? If it’s just bones that are left?”
“I don’t know. They can work miracles these days with DNA, can’t they?” I join her at the window. “Do you think it’s that girl? The one that went missing?”
She’s quiet for a long time. “It’s got to be, hasn’t it?” She shakes her head. “The whole world thought it had stopped—poor Nic. No one ever found out who killed her and no more bodies were found and everyone forgot about her, didn’t they?”
I frown. “I doubt her family did.”
“No. And Bella never would have, if she was still alive.”
We both stand in silence.
“Do you think there are more?”
“More what?”
“Bodies. Remains, whatever. In the woods. They’re going to look, aren’t they? They’re going to tear this village apart.” She sighs. “Do you ever wonder about Greg?”
“What?”
“His behavior toward teenage girls. It was…creepy. And the timing. They move to the area and suddenly teenage girls start going missing and getting murdered.”
All the hairs rise on my arms and I tense up. She turns from the window to look at me. “You should tell them, Tess.”
“Tell who what?”
“You should tell the police. Tell them what Greg was like. What he was like with you.”
I back away from her, shaking my head. “What are you talking about?”
She sighs. “Bella told me. I’m sorry—I’ve never said a word to anyone else, ever.” She pauses. “But you should tell the police.”
I back away farther and the room retreats. My head is full of a roaring storm, me screaming at Bella, her shouting back. “What exactly did Bella tell you?” I ask, too loudly.
She looks at me with her eyebrows raised. “Like I said—how creepy he was with you both. What did you think I meant?” She pauses. “But you should tell them. And if you won’t, I definitely will.”
I’m not going to even try to sleep with Lena’s words whizzing around my head. No one ever understood the friendship I had with Greg. Isn’t that why I kept it secret? Because people would see the girl I was then, fifteen going on sixteen, and Greg nearly forty, and they’d see it as wrong. What I always saw, though, before I messed things up so spectacularly, was a lonely man who’d lost his daughter, whose wife had left him. At first, wasn’t that what I was to him—a surrogate daughter? My fault, everything that went wrong, not his. I don’t believe, never did believe all that crap Lena was spouting about him. It wasn’t my experience, so how can I go to the police and implicate him? Without knowing who is buried in the woods?
I trudge downstairs, frowning when I see the front door is ajar. I hear a cough and take a step outside. Jack steps out of a patch of darkness, cigarette glowing in his hand.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Obeying the no-smoking-inside rule,” he says, flicking the cigarette away.
“In the middle of the night?”
“One for the road before I tuck myself up in beddy-byes.”
I stand on the step, wishing I hadn’t come out. I have nothing to say to Jack and I can’t hover here awkwardly forever. I’m about to turn away and go back inside when he speaks again. “I was out here, all maudlin in the dark, thinking about families.”
I fold my arms and take a step closer to him. “Understandable, with Julia…”
“None of us have the conventional family setup, do we? You and Leo, Max and Lena with their parents jetting off without a look back. And me and Sean.” He stops and laughs.
I raise my eyebrows. “I guess out of all of us, you’re the only one with anything approaching a conventional family—wife and child, house in the suburbs.”
His laughter stops. “Yeah, that’s not going so great.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” He sounds amused. “You probably think it serves me right, don’t you, Tess?”
“No. No, of course not.” I’m glad it’s too dark for him to see my face properly.
“Did you know our respective dads had a fight once?”
“What are you talking about?”
Jack shrugs. “Not long before the wedding.”
I shake my head. “No, he never…”
“I followed Dad over here and pulled the two of them apart. It was such a shit time—Mum living with you, Dad was a mess, Nic had been murdered.”
My heart skips a beat, catches up in a sick gallop. I remember Bella telling me how uncaring Jack had been over Nicole’s murder. And Sean has revealed that Jack was around when the murder happened. But in the moonlight, he doesn’t look uncaring, he looks haunted.
“I used to dream about her, after she died. I’d dream we were out together and then I’d look over and she’d be dead, a corpse walking and laughing next to me.”
My throat feels tight—the description of his dreams is so close to my recent ones of Bella.
“You were here, though, weren’t you? When she was killed,” I say. “Sean told me. Well, he let it slip.”
He’s looking blankly at me. “No—Sean’s got that wrong. I was abroad. Working with one of Dad’s crews. I didn’t find out about it until I got back in the country.”
“But Sean said…”
“He got it wrong. Or he was lying.”
“Why would he lie?”
Jack shrugs. “Ask him, not me.”
I shake my head. “No, I think it’s you who’s lying.”
He leans toward me and grabs my arm. “What the fuck are you accusing me of? I can prove I wasn’t here, but I won’t have you going around saying shit like that, jeopardizing my marriage. My son is barely more than a baby and I have a good job, a reputation. I will not let you fuck with that.”
There’s no hint of sadness or softness left in his face. He’s all fierce rage and all my old fears are back, screaming at me to run.
I don’t expect to sleep after my confrontation with Jack, but I drift off and slip right into a dream. What’s different is this time I know I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming because I’m in the woods and Bella is sitting on the fallen tree by the stream where we carved our names. I know it’s a dream but it feels so real—Bella looks like she did back then but I’m not sixteen, reliving a memory. I’m me as I am now, in my pajamas, feet bare, the taste of toothpaste still in my mouth. I can smell the dankness of the stream and wet leaves, feel sharp twigs and damp mud under my feet. I can hear the trees rustling, whispering, feel the breeze on my cheeks. It doesn’t feel like a dream; I feel like I’m really here, in the woods. In the dark. I can hear Bella breathing. But I don’t know how I got here. It’s like I blinked and when my eyes opened, I was here, standing next to a fallen tree with my dead sister.
“I don’t want to be here,” I whisper, and she sighs.
“You need to remember.”
I shake my head. I’m not sure I want to, not anymore. Not now that they’ve found that body. It’s brought everything home: the summer of death, the summer Bella died. If I remember now, I’ll never be able to unsee it and I’ll never be able to sleep again.
“We came here that night. Once upon a time, two girls went into the woods and only one came out…”
I shake my head again. No. No, we didn’t. That’s not how I want the story to end.
“We came here that night and you have to remember.”
“No, I don’t.” It comes out as a shout. “Why? What’s the point now? It won’t bring you back, will it? You’re dead. You’re fucking dead, rotting in the ground. You’re not here. We’re not here. If I remember, it’ll…”
“It’ll what, Tess?”
“It’ll change how I see you,” I whisper.
The blood is back on her forehead. Mud on her top, leaves in her hair. If I remember, what will I see?
I hear a noise, something coming toward us through the woods, something big, crashing through the trees. Bella looks behind her then back at me, her eyes wide.
“You have to remember, Tess, but for now you have to run.”
I wake up with a gasp and I know it was a dream—I’m back in my bed at Dad’s house. But my legs are burning like I’ve been running and I’m sweating and in the dark there are shadows on the bedcovers that look like mud.
I get out of bed, my legs trembling. Lena’s asleep in the bed next to me. My door is open, but I remember closing it before I went to sleep. When I look, my feet are muddy and there’s blood on the bottom of one of them, a stinging cut that could have come from a sharp stone. Oh God, I’ve done it again, but this time I got out of the house, went sleepwalking through the woods, talking to my dead sister. Bella keeps telling me to wake up, but I can’t because I don’t know the difference between asleep and awake anymore. Am I awake now or still in the dream?
There are no other lights on. No sounds coming from any of the other rooms. There was something off in the dream I had, something off that nags in my memory. Lights. There were lights. Not in the woods—coming from behind us, from up at Dean House. A flickering light in the windows, like someone was in there with a flashlight. Did I dream all this? Did I?
Chapter 17
There’s a strange car outside when I go downstairs next morning and Lena’s hovering outside the closed kitchen door.
“What’s going on?”
Lena turns, looking pale and shaken. “The police are here,” she whispers. “They wanted to speak to Jack and Sean.”
I go over—I can hear muffled voices but can’t make out what they’re saying.
“Have you heard anything?”
Lena takes my arm and leads me away from the kitchen door. “Not really. Jack raised his voice, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying properly. It’s got to be about the body they found, though, right?”
She paces the hall, all nervous energy, but I just feel cold. Have they found out who it is?
Jack comes storming out of the kitchen, shoving past me and Lena, almost sending me sprawling, but Lena still has hold of my arm and she steadies me. Jack goes outside, slamming the front door behind him. I hear his car start, hear gravel flying as he drives away.
Two men follow Jack out of the kitchen. The one in front wears a suit. I get a sickening lurch of recognition as I look at his tired face and balding head.
“Tess.” He nods at me, doesn’t smile.
It’s the detective who came to see me in the hospital after Bella’s death.
He doesn’t say anything else, just walks out with his colleague.
Lena and I both turn back to look into the kitchen. The door is open now and Sean is sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.
“It’s Dad,” he says, when he looks up and sees us there.
“Greg?” I say, looking around stupidly, like I’m expecting him to pop out from behind the door. “He’s back?”
He shakes his head. “No…the body. The bones. It’s Dad. He’s dead.”
Max breezes in as Lena and I stare at Sean in shock. He looks happy—he’s whistling as he walks through the front door. His hair is damp and he smells of shower gel. Where has he been?
“What’s up?” he says. “Jack just almost ran me over out there.”
Sean gets up and walks past us without a word, going upstairs.
“The body they found,” I say through numb lips. “It’s Greg.”
“What? How can they know?” Max says, dragging his hands through his hair. “It’s only been a couple of weeks—they found bones, not a body. How can they possibly know?”
“A DNA match,” Dad says, coming downstairs. He looks ill. “They wanted to speak to Julia, but she can’t…she’s in no state to deal with this.”
I sink down onto a chair on shaking legs.
I don’t understand what this means. I was so sure it was going to turn out to be another teenage girl. Another lost victim of the summer of death.
I don’t know how long we sit there, me, Max, and Lena. Dad excuses himself and goes back up to Julia. Lena’s drumming her fingers on the table, Max just looks in shock. And I’m…I’m remembering every conversation I had with Greg Lewis. I flinch at the thought of sharing that with the police. But they won’t want to speak to me, will they? Jack and Sean, of course, even Max and Lena as friends of the family. My heart rate speeds up. But we, Dad and I, were pretty much his closest neighbors. And he and Dad were friends before Julia…
