After the Woods (24 page)

I scramble onto my knees. “Make me get it.”

“When the abduction happened, I knew it was a terrible story in a vague way, because you and Liv went to Shiverton, and we were in the same grade, and the dude was from Shiverton, which was scary. It kept my father from coming home at night, and that sucked, but it wasn't the first case that's consumed him. Still, I didn't get what the big deal was until my father explained to me that you weren't an ordinary girl. You threw yourself in front of danger to save your friend's life. Then you outwitted the guy, came back, and got him arrested. Dad called you the bravest human being he'd ever met.”

I hold my hand on my belly, like there's something there I need to protect, something the woods created that I don't want to let go. Not yet.

“I fell for you without knowing you. And then, when I finally talked to you, I found out you were sarcastic and funny, and dark and dry. Tough. Not just physically, but your mind, too. It's like this terrifying, shiny thing that can take anyone down. I told my father Donald Jessup never stood a chance.”

I start to smile, but the sadness in his eyes makes me stop.

“And now, it's like you're an instrument of the enemy. I have to ask myself: Were you playing me?” he says.

My stomach drops. “I wasn't playing you. Not ever.”

“Five minutes ago, you said the police let Donald Jessup slip through the cracks. That sounds vengeful to me.”

“The reason I'm working with Paula has nothing to do with vengeance.” I hold my head in my hands. “Donald Jessup and Liv are connected, but I can't prove how. Is that enough to make you understand?”

“So this is all about Liv.”

“Actually, yes.”

He takes my chin in his hand. “I can't share your heart with Liv. Half of Julia isn't enough for me.” He rises, throwing out his hands, and paces. “I haven't stopped thinking about you since that day I grabbed your waist and threw you in my car. I'm insane about you. The crap you say. The way you look at the world. The fact that you're utterly unafraid of anything. Being with you is like injecting this rush that makes me feel alive. When I'm not with you, you're all I want. I can barely breathe.”

I want to take his jaw in my hand and drag his mouth to mine, consume him whole, I ache for his mouth on mine so much, and what the heck, what difference does it make? I don't care if he throws me off of him, tells me to go to hell, that I'm a father-wrecking, home-wrecking career-wrecker. I've had worse.

He is far away now, far enough away that he might leave. He calls to me.

“In the woods, when you said ‘come with me'? You meant to the place where Ana Alvarez died, but in my mind, you were asking me to fall for you. And it was already too late. I was all in.” He turns and walks toward the alley.

I leap up and run toward him. He spins around just before I tackle him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him toward me. His lips are cool and the tops of his cheeks feel wet, and he holds back at first, the muscles in his chest and shoulders unyielding, and I let go a little, but then he comes in fast, and I fall to my knees and then the ground, and he crawls on top of me.

“In case you were wondering, this is not one of those surreal moments,” Kellan says.

“So no audience?” I say, breathless.

“No audience. But we can pretend, if you're into that.” He nuzzles my neck, and the vibration is delicious.

Long, scraping noises. A bright beam swoops and bobbles over us like a spastic searchlight. Kellan follows my stare toward the source, a half-pipe over the ridge of the bowl.

“Kids on skateboards wearing headlamps,” Kellan says.

“So we
are
being punked,” I say. “This is probably not the best idea.”

“The idea is excellent. It's the execution,” he says. “Next time, indoors.”

I laugh. He rolls to his side, and the loss of his warmth and weight feels like it might kill me. I peel myself from the ground and brush off, every inch of my body screaming, the air around us throbbing with frustration. He pulls me to his chest and holds me there for a second, the two of us standing in the middle of a big empty cement bowl against a psychedelic backdrop of light beams swooping and dancing as if to music.

He tips my chin to see him, a trick appealing to us tall girls, I expect. His eyes are soft and sad. “Seeing Yvonne Jessup wasn't safe. She could have been as sick as her monster son. She could've hurt you.”

“I brought Alice.”

“Of course. The famous Alice. I'm starting to think Alice is your imaginary friend.”

I pretend to sucker punch him and in the process kick over my messenger bag. The junk inside spills on the asphalt, along with my notebook and the gifted sketch. He deserves to understand. I kneel down and lift the sketch. The girl's strange broad forehead catches the light, and Kellan's eye.

I hand it to him, and he tilts it, trying to see, head cocked. I expect him to make a guy face, a pure, unfiltered reaction to a picture of a girl who isn't the prettiest. But his eyes flutter all over it. Deep in my chest something plinks—jealousy?

“Cool,” he says, crouching next to me and handing it back. “Who's the artist?”

“Donald Jessup.”

His head jerks back, like I've slapped him. “How—”

“Yvonne Jessup. She gave it to me,” I say. “Aren't you going to ask who the girl is?” Because that's the important part.

“Who's the girl?” he says slowly.

“You know her,” I say. A dusting of snow smudges the charcoal. I blow the sketch with a soft puff, adding, “Just not as well as I do.”

 

FOURTEEN

367 Days After the Woods

“Mother prefers the green foil paper with the Spirograph snowflakes.”

Liv only calls Deborah “Mother” around Deborah. We are wrapping gifts under Deborah's surveillance, gifts for Leland's family, which will be mailed well ahead of Christmas to France; a gift for Father Carl, who is expected any minute; and Liv's gift for Shane, which she is in charge of because it's heavy and the corners may tear. Tonight has been declared Early Christmas by Deborah, who has the power to schedule holidays prematurely in her own house, since the Lapin girls will be in Bolivia for actual Christmas. Besides the calendar-warping, the evening is made weirder by the fact that I have been dropped into a scene straight out of
Barbie and Skipper's Holiday
, with Deborah in full makeup and a red rabbit-collared suit, and Liv in a matching red dress. I am apparently styled after little green plastic army men, in jeans, a camo Henley, a puffy vest, and the black military boots I've taken to wearing every day.

Deborah's surveillance extends to our conversation, so I cannot ask Liv about the charcoal sketches, or how she feels about my publicly outed visit with Yvonne Jessup, or how she will manage missing a month of school. We speak nothing of my interview on
Dateline
; I can only assume that its national nature has piqued Deborah's annoyance. As much as she supposedly hates the media attention, she hates me getting media attention even more. So the subject is closed, which suits me fine.

Even my pointed looks at Deborah's outfit get censored. “Pretty makes her happy, and her happy makes everything easier,” Liv explains quietly.

Christmas music sung by an aging pop star screeches out of the Bose radio. Rolls of paper are spread across the dining room table—too many, since the gift count is low. I finish wrapping Father Carl's gift and set it aside. Father Carl is coming to talk to Liv and me, a “check-in” following our recent exploitation by the media. But giving him a present deflects the attention back to Deborah, and he deserves a present, she insists. What you buy a priest I cannot imagine, and I don't ask what's in the generic box, although she wants me to.

Deborah scrapes the length of a red ribbon with the edge of her scissors until it snaps into a tight curl. She steals a look at Shane's gift box in Liv's hands. “Should I guess what you've got in that box?”

“Oh, I don't think you can guess,” Liv says, folding the corners into careful triangles. “It's a toughie.”

“There's nothing you can give me that would equal the love and care I give you,” Deborah says, arranging a pile of curlicue ribbons on top of her wrapped box for one of Leland's other children. “Besides, what can you afford?”

“It's not for you, Mother. It's for Shane.” She tapes an oversized gold bow to the middle of the tie box, a tie being an excellent guess if it was for anyone but Shane Cuthbert. “What did you get Father Carl? I thought priests weren't supposed to want anything.”

“This isn't for Father Carl, it's for Crystal,” she says.

“Who's Crystal?” I say, stupidly. The only place I ever sound stupid is in this house, mainly because I have such a hard time following their insides and references. Though Liv is forever in opposition to Deborah, they are always on the same plane, like two comets racing to earth on the same path, scorching each other on the way down. I'm so caught up in this image that I don't realize they are both laughing at me.

“Crystal is my new little sister,” Liv says with a wicked smile.

I nearly choke. “One of Leland's children?” I look at Deborah in horror.
Or is she pregnant?

“Little sister, like Big Brothers Big Sisters. My community service hours for confirmation. She's darling,” Liv says.

“We got a good one. She's a stunning girl,” Deborah says.

“Crystal is eleven. Eleven is cute, not ‘stunning.'” Liv bites off the word.

“I had to get her something. It's a lava lamp. Silver and purple, with glitter inside. She'll love it. It's the gaudiest thing, but she loves anything sparkly, little magpie that she is. I ought to make an inventory of my jewelry drawer at some point,” Deborah says.

“So what did you get Carl?” Liv asks sharply.

Deborah looks at Liv with an icy glare, hands holding ribbon above the gift. “I believe you meant to say Father Carl. I got him a Lenox figurine of two hands joined in prayer. It's lovely; someone was selling it at a steep discount on eBay. That's why it's not in its original packaging,” she says to me, as though I was wondering. “White bisque porcelain. I just think a little luxury in his life can't be a sin, not if the gift goes beyond the recipient. He can place it on his mantle in the rectory lobby, where everyone can enjoy it.”

“That sounds nice,” I say.

Liv grunts softly.

“I might as well reveal what I got you, Olivia. You're not a little girl who needs surprises. It's an SPF long-sleeve shirt and pants. It will help protect your skin from the sun on our vacation,” Deborah says.

I force myself to listen.

“Once the sun damages your derma, there's no turning back. More than one esthetician has told me that my skin is in such great shape because I wore foundation for so many years and it shielded my skin from the sun. You know, most girls would start acting excited right about now if their mother was whisking them away from miserable, gray New England,” Deborah says, adding as an afterthought: “Oh, and I got you those colored pencils. The Swiss ones from the Dick Blick art store.”

Liv's hands freeze, a curlicue of tape dangling off one finger. “The Caran D'Ache Supracolor Soft Aquarelle Pencils? In the hinge-lid wooden box?”

“I asked the guy. I suppose so.” Deborah sniffs. “This place smells like a hospital. The cleaners must have used their own supplies. Cheap and harsh.” She bustles away in search of one of Leland's candles.

“So tell me about your vacation.” I try hard to say it casually, but it comes out sounding pointed.

The childlike smile that formed when Deborah mentioned the pencils fades. “It's what Deborah wants,” Liv says.

It sounds simple. A simple vacation to someplace warm, for a month. What's the big deal? I smile, too. “So what did you get Shane?”

“A new knife.”

I drop Father's Carl's present on the table. It lands hard and rattles, like those two hands might no longer be joined. Liv carries Shane's gift—Shane's knife—with its incongruous, gorgeous fat bow into the dark parlor, setting it under the lopped-off top quarter of a skinny Christmas tree. I set the broken gift aside and follow.

The tree takes up too much room in a space already jammed with three chairs and a coffee table, on which sits a crèche stuffed with straw and porcelain figurines. I can't imagine where Deborah and Liv will sit on Christmas morning to open presents without their knees bonking. Then I remember: they won't be in this country. Two very old stockings are hung from weighted pewter angels that could be weapons in your standard murder mystery. The stockings are unnamed, which makes sense if there are only two people in the house, but makes my job harder if I'm going to give Liv the present I plan to surprise her with. Yvonne's sketch is rolled and tied with ribbon in the inside pocket of the puffy vest I will not take off, and my note, telling Liv everything I know—

You used him.

You used me.

You sacrificed me.

Merry Early Christmas.

—is under the ribbon too. But I need to make sure it lands in the right stocking.

The doorbell rings.

Liv kneels in front of the crèche and lifts ceramic Baby Jesus from his cradle. Winking Christmas tree bulbs cast her in a wash of light, then shadow.

“Do you think it was a good idea to get Shane a knife?” I ask, one eye on the hall. Deborah throws open the door and steps back to let Father Carl enter. He hands Deborah the door handle.

“You heard Deborah's theory on presents. It was an excellent idea to give Shane a knife.”

“How is a knife enjoyed by all? Liv, he's not”—how do I say this without admitting I've overheard things?—“the most stable person. You used to know this.”