After the Woods (27 page)

“There.” I lean wildly around Alice. “Did you see the parlor curtain move?”

“You asked me that before. The house is empty,” Alice says. “Isn't it possible Liv's car is in the driveway because they're out shopping in Mrs. Lapin's car for their trip?”

The curtains are drawn, and the lights are out, and Liv hasn't answered my calls, which means we haven't spoken since Early Christmas. It's impossible to explain to Alice, but I swear Liv is hiding from me inside.

“Liv is home. Don't ask me how I know. I just know.”

“She's not. Look, I'll prove it to you.” Alice swings open the car door and leaps out, shrugging her coat around her ears.

“Alice!” I hiss. “Come back!”

Alice bops up the walk and straight up the porch stairs, cupping her hands against the stained glass flanking the front door. The threshold falls away creating a gap, and underneath I see a thin line of light.

Alice gives me a thumbs-down.

I roll down the window and call in a whisper that hurts my throat. “Get back here!”

Alice mimes “I can't hear you!” and hops off the porch, navigating depressions in the lawn and disappearing into Liv's narrow side yard.

I grumble, unbuckling my seat belt and sliding out of the car. I follow her path between the holes. She stares down at the foundation, where fat paint flakes like butter shavings litter the lawn.

“See?” Alice points through the dining room window, which provides a direct sight line into the kitchen. “It's almost noon. There's no way her mom wouldn't be in there making lunch for the two of them.”

“This is not a household where lunch is eaten together or served on time,” I say, quietly deadpan.

“I haven't been inside Liv's house since her ninth birthday party,” Alice says, too loudly, peering in.

“I remember that birthday,” I admit.

“I was dying to see the inside of the Gingerbread House,” Alice recalls.

I'd forgotten they called Liv's house the Gingerbread House, and the glamour that went along with it. With its salmon-colored boards that divided the house into bright yellow puzzle-pieces with dark green trim, it was conspicuously cheerful.

“I totally forgot people called it that,” I say.

“My mother didn't. She called it the Painted Lady. Said it was garish,” she says.

“It's actually a stick-style Victorian.”

“Sticks because of the boards?”

“Yeah.” I rise on my toes to see plates in the sink and the coffeepot on its burner, half full. “You can read the inside from the outside. The boards are just decoration to symbolize where the supports are.”

“You know a lot about architecture.” Alice looks at me, with her lack of filter, and that absolute sincerity that is somehow endearing. “You know a lot about everything. I kind of forgot that about you.”

I look down at the brown lawn, embarrassed. “Someone told me that.”

Alice gazes up at the house for a minute, considering. “If that's where the supports really were, the house would fall right down.” I'm still staring at the sticks and lost in the wonder that is Alice when she points at the foundation. “Check out that crack. It goes right up the side of the house.”

A zigzag fissure runs from the bottom center to the top right, just under the gutter, in the shape of a staircase.

“What do you think it is?” asks Alice.

“I don't know. Something's wrong with the foundation. All the rain, maybe.” As I say it, a wind picks up and a slant of rain falls from the trees, pelting us.

Alice shivers. “It's like the Gingerbread House is about to crack in half.” Alice suddenly looks at me. “What would it take to do one of those well-check things?”

“You mean like they do for old people and shut-ins who don't answer their door? Proof that something is wrong, I suppose. Unless you had a friend in the police department. And I don't think I do, at least not these days.”

“Maybe you could do it anonymously.”

I bite my lip.

“Or we could ring the doorbell.”

“I really just want to make sure she's okay,” I say. Because I'm furious with her. But I also need to know she's alive.

“Then ring the doorbell and say that.”

I stand there for a minute, shifting around in my coat, shoulders shoved around my ears.

“If you're not going to ring the doorbell, can we go? I've kind of got the creeps.”

I laugh lamely. “Worse than when we visited Yvonne Jessup?”

Alice nods seriously. “Actually, yeah.”

We trudge across the yard together, feet sinking in the loam. I feel eyes on my back, but maybe it's just the Amityville windows, or the rain that has started again, harder this time. Alice wants to go to the new coffee shop on the outskirts of town where everyone hangs after getting kicked out of the downtown coffee shop for overcrowding it. Alice, with her outsider's curiosity of things insiders do. Socializing is the last thing I'm in the mood for, but she begs, and I'm afraid she's starting to feel like the girl I secretly hook up with when no one else is around. It shouldn't take long to get there, but it does, because miserable cops in yellow slickers are redirecting cars around holes in the street.

Alice slips into the past. I half listen. The skies have opened and my wipers can barely keep up. It's hard not to fixate on the streaming rivulets instead of watching the road.

“I remember Liv's third-grade birthday party so clearly. I thought Mrs. Lapin was the prettiest mom I'd ever seen.”

I snort.

“You're not a fan. But all things considered, she is an attractive woman,” Alice insists.

I raise my eyebrows.

“Okay, whatever. I was eight. Anyway, I kept wishing I could sneak upstairs to Liv's bedroom to see the carousel horse her father gave her,” Alice says.

I laugh. “She never had a carousel horse in her bedroom. That was a rumor.”

“You remember it though,” she says.

“I remember the rumor,” I say.

“Was the canopy bed in the shape of a pumpkin carriage true?”

“She had a canopy bed. It was not in the shape of a pumpkin.”

“The slide from the hole in her bedroom floor that led to the playroom?”

“Liv's house doesn't even have a playroom.”

“What about the secret eaves through her closet? A whole room where you could play, and no one could find you. Like Narnia.”

“All part of the mythology,” I lie, a little. I can't deal with Alice's imagination going wild right now, when I'm convinced that Liv is mysteriously holed up in her house.

“Well, her dad is a billionaire, right?” Alice continues. “Royalty, too?”

“More like a millionaire. Maybe a thousandaire. Honestly, I have no idea. He's rich, I guess. I doubt he's royal. Liv never talks about him. In fact, she hates him.”

“I guess on some level I knew all that. Still”—Alice pulls down the vanity mirror and adjusts her headband—“why do you think some people inspire so much speculation?”

I pull into a spot in front of the coffee shop and sigh. “You take a little personal attractiveness and add some mystery. Just enough to keep people wondering. Voilà. Instant Fantasy GIRL.”

“You know what's funny? I preferred thinking all those stories about Liv's house and her family were real.”

“Alice.” I turn off the car and shift to face her. “That house might look like a gingerbread house from the outside. But I gotta tell you, there ain't nothing about Liv Lapin's life that's anything close to a fairy tale.”

“I guess that depends on the fairy tale,” Alice says. She frowns, thinking hard. “It's a shame that Mrs. Lapin doesn't do anything to make the house pretty anymore. It's really dilapidated. Mom said they might even have to have a talk with her, because it's on the historic register and people get mad about those things.”

I throw my hood over my head and get ready to run. Alice aims her Hello Kitty umbrella out the door. “I don't get how you suddenly abandon a project you were obsessed with,” she yells, fixated, her train of thought unstoppable as we bolt under the rain into the cozy shop, where Christmas music plays prematurely and pretend presents are wrapped near a fireplace.

Looking directly at me is Kellan, standing at a high table with a group of kids, one of whom is the Apple Face girl, perched on a stool. He looks to Apple Face, then to me, and his mouth falls open.

Alice fusses with her umbrella loudly, shaking it out and closing it at her side. “Now that the house is in such disrepair, I guess Mrs. Lapin's more likely to leave it alone.”

I spin and face Alice, flipping back my hood. “What was that you said?”

“I said, now that it's not so pretty”—Alice closes her umbrella with a
whoosh
—“Mrs. Lapin will leave it alone.”

I grip the back of a wire newsstand. The Christmas carols sound like demented fun-house music, and the warmth is suddenly stifling. I fumble for my bag, soaked, the notebook inside probably soaked too. It doesn't matter, because I've run out of white space. Alice jams her umbrella maniacally into an overfull umbrella stand, nattering about squirrels in danger of mistaking the chipped paint around Liv's house for butter. I squeeze my eyes tight, and think of

Things Liv has:

- A knife

- A boyfriend with a temper

- A mother who won't leave her alone

When I open my eyes, Alice is staring at me.

“I have to go,” I whisper.

“What? You can't leave me! Hey, there's Kellan. Hi, Kellan!” She waves frenetically at Kellan heading toward us.

My heart feels like it's been fitted in a vise compressing slowly. “I have to go see Liv. Right now.”

“She's not even home. You can't leave! I don't know anyone here. I'll come with you.” Alice fights to release her umbrella from the stand.

I put my hand on Alice's arm. “I have to go alone. Stay here and make new friends.”

Her lip quivers.

“You're a true friend, Alice. Anyone would be lucky to have you in their corner.” I dash out the front and make it inside my car, slamming the door.

Kellan bangs at my window with the side of his fist. I jump.

“Wait!” he mouths, forearm protecting his eyes from the forming sleet.

“I can't! I have to go!” I yell, already pulling out. Kellan does an awkward jig to get away from my squealing tires.

I take the back roads that wrap around the high school. I can speed this way; the streets are long and straight with no lights or stop signs. Wind gusts sway my car, all 2,750 pounds. Black branches weakened by the rain hang low and lean ominously on power lines. It takes until the first stoplight for me to realize Kellan is in pursuit. When the light turns green I peel out, my tires spinning in slush. I tell myself it doesn't matter if Kellan shows up in Liv's driveway right behind me, he can help set things straight. Shane is skinny but he's still a guy, and a guy Kellan can take, if it comes to that.

Though if Kellan got hurt, I couldn't forgive myself.

Ice pellets fly at my windshield. My wipers can't keep up. Fog makes it impossible to see the next traffic light until I'm on top of it. Yellow turning red. I can make it, but that's a cop on the side opposite, and I have to stop or I'll get pulled over. I slam on the brakes, and Kellan hits his too, missing my bumper by a hair. The cop is a good thing, because now Kellan can't try to run up to my car. He has to stay put; no shenanigans will be attempted by the son of Detective Joe MacDougall.

My phone rings next to me. Kellan. Whoops, can't answer it, the car won't let me, safety feature. I meet Kellan's eyes in the mirror and shrug. His eyes narrow, and he mouths something that is most certainly not romantic. When the light changes, I pull out slowly past the cop, then start to speed again as he shrinks in my mirror.

How couldn't I have known this before?

Donald's purpose. Shane's purpose. What would it take for Deborah to leave Liv alone? Her words haunt me.

I know exactly what I'm doing with Shane.

I take the sharp corner before Liv's street too fast. I am in flight, in this car, super-safe, they say this car is, but that telephone pole is right in front of me; it's taking up my whole windshield.

The crash is harder and louder than I imagined a car hitting a pole could be. The airbag explodes into my wrists and arms, and I choke on white dust and fumes. The pole is inside my car, about four inches from my face, the smell of outside in.

What would Alice do? Pray, probably. How to pray, again?

A
click-click-click
at the door, Kellan yanking the handle. Muffled screams, his.

This goes on forever, or minutes. The sleet runs fast down my windshield and puddles, resting on the wiper blades until they lift and drag the slurry away. It is mesmerizing.

“Shut the car off!” Kellen screams through the glass.

Time moves thick and slow. Too slow. I have somewhere to be.

Sirens. Faint, now loud.

“The ignition! Push the ignition or the door won't unlock!” Kellan's voice, drowned out at the tail end of a siren whine.

The car is still running. I try to press the starter button, but my right wrist feels loose, unattached and unusable. I reach over the deflated airbag with my left hand and shut off the car, and for a second there is only the patter on my roof. Kellan rips open the door and drags me out, but already the EMTs are here, and they are scolding Kellan for moving me.

“I have to go,” I whisper, sinking to the ground, the sleet striking my head and shoulders like rubber bullets.

A paramedic kneels in front of me. He is tan and dark-eyed, slender with high cheekbones, wet beads where the rain hit them, more like an actor playing a paramedic than a paramedic. He puts his arm under my back and guides me gently to the ground. “My name is Charlie. What's your name?”