It Begins (3 page)

But I want to
, Lucy thought miserably,
and I want her to know me, too …

Right after she’d moved here, Lucy had made a habit of studying her aunt’s face whenever Irene wasn’t watching, longing for just a glimpse of the mother she’d lost. As if somehow her mother’s spirit would be reflected in Irene’s eyes or in her clothes or in the way she did things—living proof to Lucy that her mom was still with her.

But there’d been no similarities—no similarities whatsoever between the two women—and as the days passed, Lucy only felt more and more abandoned. No matter that Aunt Irene was her only living relative; Irene and Mom were as different as night and day.

Mom had been so … well … so
alive.
Fun and free-spirited, spontaneous and creative, with the wildest imagination and the most contagious laugh and the most stubborn determination when her mind was made up about something. Lucy had always admired her mother’s disregard for rules and routines; there’d always been new things to try and new adventures to share on the spur of the moment. And she’d always loved hearing how much alike the two of them looked—the same blue-gray eyes and long, thick lashes, the same silky blond hair.

Mom had been a source of pride to her. A role model, an ideal she’d always aspired to. She’d never known her father, but Mom had been the best of
both
parents, not to mention her very best friend. Her whole world, really.

But now there was Aunt Irene.

Just Irene, who didn’t seem anything like the sister she’d completely shut out of her life. Irene, who barely spoke to Lucy—barely even
looked
at her if she could help it. Who always acted tense and watchful and guarded, as though she expected something bad or dangerous to sneak up on her at any second. Irene and her high-profile job at the university … Irene and her endless very important meetings.

“She’s self-absorbed,” Mom had always told Lucy in those rare moments she ever mentioned Irene’s name. “She’s always been self-absorbed; she’s never thought about anyone but herself. The only thing that makes her happy is getting her own way.”

Lucy had never understood the estrangement between her mother and her aunt; Mom had always refused to talk about it. All she knew was that the women hadn’t spoken for years, but when Mom was dying, trapped in the last throes of cancer, she’d requested—finally—that Irene be told.

And Irene had come.

To Lucy’s shock, Irene had come and stayed—she’d doled out medications, stocked the
refrigerator with takeout food, obsessively cleaned and tidied, and remained aloof while Lucy kept constant vigil in Mom’s bedroom. And then something had happened one night. Something behind the closed door of Mom’s room, something between Mom and Irene alone, something never discussed with Lucy. All Lucy knew was that Mom had suddenly seemed calm and strangely resolved, and the next morning, while Lucy sat beside her holding both her hands, Mom had slipped peacefully away.

Lucy didn’t remember much after that.

Over the next few days the funeral had been arranged; over the next few weeks the apartment had been cleared out and rerented, her things had been systematically discarded, packed, or put into storage—all by Aunt Irene, she supposed, for she’d been too numb with grief even to function. And then Irene had brought her here.

“We’re your family now, Lucy,” Irene had announced in her cool, businesslike way. “This is your home.”

And
some home
, Lucy had thought in awe,
laying eyes on the house for the very first time. Compared to the size and comfortable shabbiness of her old apartment, this new place seemed like a mansion, with its white brick walls and tall front columns, its circular driveway, its swimming pool in back. Yet surrounded as it was by thick woods, and only a short walk to the lake, Lucy would have sworn they were in the middle of a vast, lonely wilderness if Irene hadn’t assured her that town was only a few blocks away.

Lucy had decided immediately that her life—and her happiness—were over …

“Looking for you is
not
how I planned to spend my evening.”

With a jolt, Lucy came back to herself. She had no idea how long she’d been buried in her thoughts or how long Angela had been talking. She glanced at her cousin, but those dark-ringed eyes were focused on the rhythmic movement of the windshield wipers.

“I talked her out of calling the police, you know,” Angela added.

“The police?” Lucy’s tone was grim. “I
thought nothing unpleasant ever happened in Pine Ridge.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your mother,” Lucy mumbled, wishing they could just leave. She didn’t want to sit here any more, here where she could see the cemetery right across the street. She didn’t want to sit here knowing what she knew, and she didn’t want to remember anything that had happened tonight because she was cold and hungry and exhausted, and if her 911 call
had
been traced, then she
especially
didn’t want to be here when the police showed up.

But Angela took another long puff and glanced at Lucy with a tight smile. “How funny.”

“What?”

“Nothing unpleasant ever happening here. And Irene—of
all
people—saying so.”

Lucy frowned. “What do you—” she began, but Angela cut her off, gesturing vaguely toward the parking lot.

“So what were you doing just now? Trying to call somebody?”

Lucy stole a quick look at the phone box outside the car. How long did someone have to
stay on the line for a call to be traced? How long did it take the police to find someone in Pine Ridge?

“Yes.” Her mind was racing; the smoke was making her feel claustrophobic. “I was trying to call your house, but … but I couldn’t remember the number.”

“Well, I don’t know where you were walking,” Angela said matter-of-factly, “but you look like a zombie.”

Lucy cringed. She thought of the girl in the grave. A sick taste of guilt welled up inside her, and she swallowed hard, forcing it down. “Can we please go?”

“Oh, great. You’re not gonna get sick in my car, are you?”

“I hope not.”

To Lucy’s relief, Angela instantly buzzed down the driver’s window and flicked her half-smoked cigarette out into the rain. Then she rolled the window up again, sat back, and turned up the heater full blast.

“Thanks,” Lucy said. “I appreciate it.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for my car.”

Of course you did. What was I thinking?
Lucy
tensed, listening. Was that a siren she’d just heard in the distance? Or only a muted sound from the radio?
Please … please … let’s just leave …

“Look, let’s get this straight. If you came here expecting money, Irene’s not gonna change her will. You’re not gonna get one bit of the inheritance.” Angela’s voice was stony. “Just so you know.”

Lucy faced her in surprise. “I didn’t come here for your money. I didn’t come here for anything, Angela. I didn’t even
want
to come here—it wasn’t
my
idea. Your mother
made
me come here.” She hesitated, then said, “Just so
you
know.”

“She’s not my mother,” Angela muttered.

“What?”

“I said, she’s not my mother. She’s my stepmother.” Reaching over, Angela readjusted the heater again, then leaned back with an exasperated sigh. “My father married her when I was ten. And then he died two years later, and I was
stuck
with her. We’ve
never
gotten along, Irene and me—we’ve
always
hated each other. And I’m
leaving
here just as soon as—”

Abruptly Angela broke off. She reached for a
fresh cigarette, and Lucy could see how she trembled with anger.

“As soon as I turn eighteen,” Angela finished defiantly. She held a lighter to the tip of her cigarette, the tiny spark glowing orange in the dark. “As soon as I’m eighteen, I’m taking off for New Orleans,” she murmured again. “That’s when I inherit my money, and I can do what I want. Till then I’m a goddamn hostage.”

Lucy gave a distracted nod.
No …no … it’s not a siren. It’s going away now, in another direction …

Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus once more on the girl beside her.

“I didn’t know anything about you,” Lucy admitted, unsure what else to say. “Not about you
or
Irene. My mom barely mentioned Irene the whole time I was growing up. I’m really sorry.”

Angela’s eyes widened, almost mockingly. “Sorry? Don’t be sorry for me. Don’t
ever
be sorry for me—I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Angela, I didn’t mean—”

“Just forget it. Who the hell do you think you are?”

I don’t know anymore
, Lucy thought miserably.
I used to know, but everything’s different now …
I’m
different now …

She was beginning to feel sick again. She wanted to leave, wanted Angela to stop talking and start driving. She could feel the girl’s eyes upon her, and she could still see the eyes of that dead girl, and there was too
much
death, death in her past, and death tonight, she was drowning in it, drowning in all this death, and
if we don’t leave right this minute I’m going to totally lose it and start screaming—

“God, what’d you touch?” Angela asked suddenly.

“Touch?” A chill crawled up Lucy’s spine, though she managed to keep her voice steady. “What do you mean?”

And Angela was leaning closer now, staring harder, her eyes like big black hollows in the shadows of the car.

“There,” Angela told her. “There on your hand.”

Startled, Lucy looked down.

She stared at the narrow black welts on the back of her right hand and between her fingers,
at the misshapen black stain on the skin of her palm. In one more quicksilver flash, she saw the girl in the open grave, remembered the girl’s hand closing around her own …

“I … I don’t know,” she heard herself whisper. “When I fell, maybe. That’s what happened … I tripped … and I must have bruised myself when I fell.”

For an endless moment there was silence.

“That’s no bruise,” Angela said at last.

She pulled the Corvette back onto the street and peeled away, but Lucy scarcely noticed.

Because the thing on her hand really
didn’t
look like a bruise.

It looked like a burn.

Like something had burned itself right into her skin.

He’d come back one last time.

Just to make sure she was dead.

Some killers didn’t like to come back, he realized, for fear of being seen, being connected in some way, being caught—these dangers, of course, were of no concern to him.

But after he’d done what he had to do, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He’d stood at his window watching the rain, replaying her voice over and over again in his head—her pleas for mercy, her screams of pain. And suddenly he’d begun to grow restless. Restless in a way he couldn’t understand, a strange uneasiness in his veins that made him pace in the dark and jump at small sounds and warily watch the shadows.

And so he’d come back.

One last time.

She was just as he’d left her, naturally, and this soothed him a little. He’d stood over the crumbling grave and he’d stared down at her, and he’d stood for such a long, long time, waiting to see if she’d speak, if she’d move, if her eyes would open, if she’d look at him in the old familiar way he’d so loved being looked at.

But she didn’t move.

And she didn’t say his name.

The water and the mud were over her face, from the walls of the grave caving in, and if he hadn’t put her there himself, he’d never have known she was there at all, he’d have thought she was just a pathetic mound of soggy earth at the bottom of the yawning hole.

He really was so amazingly clever.

The old graveyard. A violent storm. No one in Pine Ridge would even consider venturing into this place tonight.

So he’d thrown his arms wide to the rain, and his hair had blown wild in the wind, and he’d sucked in the darkness, until it filled him and sated him and consumed him and—

And then that restlessness again.

That vague, creeping uneasiness, gnawing in the pit of his soul.

He’d actually felt a moment of doubt.

And so he’d lowered himself into her grave.

He’d knelt down beside her and wiped the mud from her face, and he’d studied her in death, all the while wondering about her final moments of life.

She would have lingered awhile. Been aware of the warm blood pumping from her throat, leaking out between the torn chunks of her flesh, spurting with every heartbeat, then growing weaker … weaker … until it became merely a thin trickle, melting into the soggy earth.

The thought made him smile.

She was no threat to him now.

She was dead, and he was free.

And so he’d leaned over, oh so gently, and he’d put his mouth upon hers … cold lips together …

And then he’d kissed her.

One last time.

God, it was freezing in here.

It must be me
, Lucy thought, as she slid lower in the claw-footed tub, closing her eyes, trying to relax beneath the bubbles. The bathroom was large and luxurious just like the rest of the house, but even with central heating, and even with the water as hot as she could stand it, she couldn’t seem to get warm.

What am I going to do?

She could smell takeout pizza wafting up from the kitchen, and her stomach gave a queasy lurch. She could hear the muffled sound of the TV downstairs, and Angela’s rock music blaring from the next room. And though Aunt Irene was now en route to yet another very important meeting, Lucy could still picture that formidable frown waiting for them when she
and Angela had gotten home. Lucy had been relieved when Irene ordered her straight upstairs and into a hot bath. She hadn’t felt like explaining any more details about her evening.

So what am I going to do?

She felt drained and bone-tired. Like her whole body had gone comatose and her brain had fizzled out. The cemetery … the girl … the warning … everything seemed like a distant dream now, or something she’d seen in a horror movie. An out-of-body experience that had happened to someone else’s body …