Read The One I Left Behind Online
Authors: Jennifer McMahon
It wasn’t just her mother’s story, but Reggie’s as well, wasn’t it?
Reggie turned the bird over in her hand, noticing the fine cross-hatching of feathers. She pictured George bent over his workbench, chisel in hand, paying careful attention to each detail.
But there, in the center of its chest, right over its nonexistent solid-wood heart, was something that didn’t belong.
Not feathers, not a name or initials an artist might leave.
No. There, buried in the pattern of its breast, was a hidden message. A warning. A confession.
A tiny, carved trident.
“Oh shit.” Reggie gulped, the jolt of adrenaline hitting her like a hundred shots of espresso, all her senses on overdrive.
Reggie ran her trembling fingers over the trident, thoughts exploding in her head, one message loud and clear above all others:
Run! Get of there, now!
“Ready?”
Reggie jumped. George was standing right behind her in the doorway, a smile on his face. His gaze fell on the swan in her hand and his smile seemed to change, just a bit.
“Sure!” Reggie said, overly chipper. Damn it, she had to get herself under control. “Remember this?” she asked, turning the swan and holding it out, not wanting to draw suspicion. “I think you gave it to Mom once. I just found it in a closet at Monique’s Wish. It’s quite lovely.” She kept her voice as steady as she could and dropped the swan back into her bag.
George nodded, eyes on the bag. “We’ll take the van,” he said calmly.
“I can drive,” Reggie offered, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.
George pulled the keys out of his pocket and opened the front door.
“Oh no,” he said. “I insist.”
“I think, in so many ways, that before the murders we were living in an age of innocence,” says Reverend Higgins of the Brighton Falls First Congregational Church. “We thought nothing bad could happen here. Neptune took something from us, beyond the lives of those poor women. He took away our sense of safety and showed us the true face of evil. It’s hard to imagine going back to the way things were before. I don’t think Brighton Falls, or any of its residents, will ever be the same.”
October 23, 2010
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
G
EORGE WHISTLED AS HE
drove, both hands clasped safely on the steering wheel of his van. Reggie studied his hands; they were small, dainty almost, with neatly trimmed nails. They looked smooth, nearly hairless, and Reggie was sure they’d be soft to the touch. She’d always pictured Neptune’s hands as being larger, rougher. These were the hands of an artist, a surgeon, and the fact that they looked so harmless disturbed her.
She was still spinning from the shock of it—George, the man who helped her with her algebra, taught her to ride a bike; meek little George with his Uncle Mouse face—he was Neptune. It just didn’t seem possible.
Reggie made herself say the words over in her mind, trying to get them to sink in:
George is my father.
George is Neptune.
Neptune is my father.
She thought back to her astrology chart, the tiny blue trident in the twelfth house, a piece of Neptune tucked away inside her, giving her bad dreams and artistic visions. Now she understood it was so much more than that: half her DNA—the building blocks that made Reggie the person she was—had come from him.
She studied his profile, searching for some familiar piece of herself. Did she have his forehead, his chin?
In addition to her love of plans and order, did she have some small piece of what it took to be a killer buried deep down in her cells?
Reggie rode in the passenger seat, bag on the floor, tucked between her calves. Her stomach cramped and she took in a deep breath, going over her plan. When they got to the police station, she’d go through the motions with George, tell the cops about Stu Berr. Then she’d find an opportunity to get one of them alone, to show them the swan and say that George was really Neptune. She’d be safe with the entire Brighton Falls Police Department there with her. And they’d have their guy, just like that. They’d hold him, question him until he confessed, told them where Tara was. It would work. It had to.
She just had to make sure that if he had any suspicions whatsoever after seeing her with the swan, they were laid to rest. She licked her lips, wished that some of her mother’s acting skills had been passed down to her.
“I still can’t believe it was Stu Berr all along,” Reggie said. “And to think he actually tried to convince me that my mother was Neptune.”
She glanced at George. He had an expression on his face she had never seen, a small smile with mirthless, determined eyes. And she knew he knew.
He’d seen her notice the trident. There was no doubt. And now, she was in deep, deep trouble.
“Your mother,” George said reflectively, “is an extraordinary woman.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Reggie nodded. Her palms were sweating, her heart was beating all the way up into her throat.
She looked around in a panic. He’d turned the other way. They weren’t going downtown at all. He was taking her the long way around, the back way to Airport Road.
“Shouldn’t you have turned left?” She tried to sound calm and matter-of-fact.
Silly George, you missed the turn.
“I have a little errand I need to run first.” He gave her a wolfish grin, all teeth. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Reggie swallowed hard. “Actually, I was kind of hoping we could get there soon. I think the sooner they see the note from Tara, the sooner they’ll be on Stu’s trail. The better the chances at rescuing Tara.”
“This won’t take long,” George promised.
“My friend, Len,” she said, grasping at straws, “he’ll be arriving in town any minute. He’ll wonder where I am.”
“Mmm,” George said, eyes on the road ahead, completely uninterested.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Reggie contemplated opening the door and jumping, but all the lights were green and George was driving at a steady clip. The last thing she wanted to do was land wrong and crack open her skull or get pulverized under the wheels of an oncoming truck. She needed air and pushed the button to lower the window, but nothing happened. He’d locked them. Had he locked the doors, too? Shit.
“Are you too warm, Reggie?”
“A little.”
“I’ll turn on some cool air.”
They were passing the old tobacco barns. Not many actually grew tobacco these days. One had been turned into a Christmas tree farm. Another sold chrysanthemums. But most were just abandoned, the empty barns leaning, the tattered shade cloth flapping on posts, like the handkerchiefs of ghosts.
George cranked up the AC and the fear sweat on Reggie’s body was now giving her chills. She bent forward a little, picturing the cell phone in her bag, wondering how she could get to it without him noticing. She leaned farther forward, scratching an imaginary itch on her leg.
“Everything all right, Reggie?” he asked, staring at her.
“Fine,” she said, sitting upright.
She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, out the windshield, but watched George in her peripheral vision. He wasn’t a large man—about as tall as Reggie, as a matter of fact. His shoulders slumped and a little belly hung over his pants. She doubted he could overtake her using strength alone, and Reggie had seen no weapons in the van. Surely she stood a good fighting chance.
“I was saying,” George said as he pulled into the passing lane to go around an airport shuttle van, “your mother is an extraordinary woman. Think of it—everything she’s been through, all the lives she’s changed.”
Reggie bent down to scratch her leg again, hand brushing the top of her bag. George glared at her and she sat back up.
“And do you know the most amazing part—the part that had always confounded me?” George’s voice was getting louder, faster. She watched a little vein on his forehead bulge and pulse.
Reggie shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “What?”
“That she’s never had any idea of the power she wields over other people. This unique ability to crush and destroy.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
There was that hungry-animal grin again. “Oh, I think you do.”
They’d turned onto Airport Road and were going by the Silver Spoon Diner, once-upon-a-time employer of the late Candace Jacques. Reggie stared at the art deco building, saw the reflection of George’s white van on the side of the polished silver diner.
“Look at what she did to you,” George said.
Reggie winced. “She did the best she could.”
“A dog would have been a better mother to you than Vera,” he said. The vein on the side of his head stood out more. Sweat formed on his brow. He was spitting out the words now. “Abandoning you to go off drinking with her boyfriends. Always up for a fuck if it meant a few free drinks, a dinner out now and then.”
“I don’t think—”
“And then,” George interrupted, “they’d always leave her in the end. They’d see her for what she was and know they could do better.”
They passed Reuben’s, which had a big for sale sign in front. The windows were boarded up and the parking lot was empty. Reggie remembered Sid lying on the pavement in a puddle of blood, heard Tara’s voice,
Run!
They came up to a yellow light, and Reggie fiddled with the lock as surreptitiously as she could, her heart leaping when she heard a tiny click. George gunned it through the yellow light. They passed the airport and headed out into the no-man’s-land of warehouses, abandoned factories, and pay-by-the-hour motels. Airport Efficiencies was on the left, still painted Pepto-Bismol pink.
“Choices,” George said. “That’s what life comes down to, isn’t it? The choices we make. We’re each in charge of our own destinies, Reggie, whether we realize it or not.”
“I agree,” said Reggie, looking frantically around as the buildings got farther and farther apart. They crossed railroad tracks. Empty lots full of knee-high scrub brush and dead grass.
“You may think that Vera was the victim here, but the truth is, she got to where she is by the choices she made along the way. One bad choice after another. When it would have been so easy to stop, to choose another way. A decent life. That’s what I offered her. And she turned me down, again and again. Mocked me.”
He grimaced. Licked his lips. The van slowed as they approached a bend in the road. Reggie yanked the door handle, praying it would open. The door swung out and she jumped, hitting the pavement, rolling like a sack of potatoes, her elbows and hips skidding on the asphalt. She heard the screech of brakes, and not looking back, heaved her body up and started to run. If she could just get into the overgrown brush, she’d have a chance. She was a fast runner, used to long distances. George was a good twenty years older. If she could just get enough distance between them at the start, she’d be okay.
She was facedown on the ground before she even realized he was close. She lay stunned for a second, felt George’s weight shift on top of her. She bucked up, trying to throw him off, but he held steady. She’d underestimated his strength. He flipped her over onto her back. She kicked up at his groin but didn’t make contact.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said, lifting her up by the shoulders, then slamming her down against the ground. The sky behind him darkened, the whole world dimming, turning into one narrow tunnel, and all she could see was his face there at the end of it, grinning down at her like a sinister moon. Then he too was gone.
June 24, 1985
Brighton Falls, Connecticut
R
EGGIE CRANKED THE PEDALS
of her Peugeot as she rode through town. The sun was just coming up, making the sky in the east, over toward the airport, glow Martian red. Reggie felt like she must be on some other planet. There were hardly any cars on the roads, just the occasional delivery truck bringing fresh bread, milk, and gasoline into town. A few commuters were off to an early start, heading into offices in Hartford before the traffic got too bad. There were lights on in some houses, and Reggie could see movement through the uncurtained windows: a woman making breakfast, a man in boxer shorts turning on the television. Lawn sprinklers were running, keeping the grass a perfect sea of green. The streetlights were still on, and when she got downtown, it was a little like being in one of those zombie movies where you’re one of the last survivors. The stores were all empty, windows dark like closed eyes. There was this sense that the town was holding its breath, waiting.
She looked at the sunrise again, the pinks and reds spilling out across the horizon, and remembered Sid’s blood on the pavement last night. She squeezed her eyes shut tight a second, pushing it all away.
She circled the downtown streets, checking every grassy area, every storefront. She passed a police cruiser, knowing the cops were doing the same. She pedaled harder, faster. She didn’t want some uniformed cop, a total stranger with a gun and radio strapped to his belt, to be the one who found Vera. Reggie needed to be the first; she’d take her jacket off to cover her mother’s naked body before the hordes of onlookers came—snapping pictures, scraping under Vera’s nails, combing through her hair looking for shreds of evidence. Mostly, what Reggie would do—what she needed to do—was to say she was sorry. She’d failed her mother. If she’d been more clever, had paid more attention and been a better daughter, then maybe she might have found her in time.
Now, not only would she be the daughter of a murder victim, but also a murderer herself. An accomplice, at least. If she hadn’t screwed things up so badly last night, let her own selfish feelings take control, then maybe things would have turned out differently.
Unable to find any sign of her mother’s body downtown, Reggie crossed Main Street and headed out toward Airport Road. As she rode, images of last night popped into her head: Sid falling like that, hitting the pavement with a crack, Tara telling them all to run. Her stomach churned as she remembered the three of them running, not speaking, then all turning their separate ways as Tara shouted, “Remember, it never happened.”