Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Page 6

  What is she hiding? Is she in some kind of trouble?

  Outside Ashley Stanley’s freshly painted front door, Rosella was waiting on the stoop, looking up at Faith with her dark, seen-it-all eyes. The rest of the crew was buzzing around the news van and trailer, parked at the curb. Faith stole a quick glance at the trailer, where Ashley was getting her makeup done.

  “Maya’s teacher?” she said.

  Rosella nodded, handed her the phone.

  Faith took the phone and said her name into it.

  “Faith Gordon-Rappaport?” The voice confused her. It was either a man’s, soft and lilting, or a woman’s, deepened by years of smoking. Either way, she’d never heard it before. And Faith was sure she’d met all of Maya’s teachers. “We have to talk,” it said.

  Faith cleared her throat. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Maya. She’s a sweet girl.” A woman. Faith was ninety percent sure.

  “Which teacher are you? I don’t believe we’ve spoken before.”

  “You shouldn’t let her out.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She’ll ask to go out. She thinks she’s old enough. She’s not. Keep her home.”

  She looked at Rosella. “Did she say she was Maya’s teacher?”

  The girl nodded. “Math.”

  Maya’s math teacher was a man. And British. Faith glanced at the screen. It read “Restricted Call.” “Who is this?”

  “I see you with her. I know you love her. You’re a good mother.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I watch you, so I know.”

  Christ. Another stalker.

  “Don’t let her go out. It won’t be good for anyone if you do.”

  Faith said, “Listen. I don’t know how the hell you got this number . . .” but then she stopped. The line was dead, the call ended.

  For several seconds, Faith felt a dead weight in the pit of her stomach, chills up her back. The lingering feel of a stranger, saying her daughter’s name. She stood there, staring at the phone, letting the feeling pass. This stalker hadn’t been the first to know of Maya, and she wouldn’t be the last. Faith couldn’t help but feel a little shaken, but compared to some of the other calls she’d gotten, this one was kids’ stuff. Some old chain-smoking prude who’d seen pictures of Faith and Maya in one paper or another, asking her favorite TV host not to let her daughter go out in the world. I see you with her . . . You’re a good mother.

  Rosella said, “Are you okay?”

  Faith smiled at her. “Sure, honey.”

  “That wasn’t her teacher, was it?”

  She shrugged. “Nope,” she said. “Loyal viewer.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Faith held a hand up. Rosella had only been working for her for a few weeks. “No worries,” she said. “No more calls though, okay? If it’s the pope, take a message. Ashley needs my undivided attention.”

  She nodded.

  Almost as an afterthought, Faith stole a quick glance up and down the sidewalk. An older woman pushing a baby carriage, huddled against the cold. Three teenage boys in baggy clothes, talking to a friend in a parked car. No one of note. No one “watching.” Of course not. That caller was full of it. Talking about Maya as if they were best pals. Honestly, they read one Ladies’ Home Journal article, these creepy fans think they know everything about you.

  Including your cell phone number.

  Before she opened the door, Faith closed her eyes. Deep breath. Out with the bad, in with the good . . . She exhaled first, then inhaled very slowly. It was something a Pilates teacher had taught her years ago, and she could swear it lowered the blood pressure, increased the flow of serotonin and whatever other chemicals the body produced to make the brain relax enough to do its job. One more breath—a cleansing breath, the teacher had called it—and she was focused. Here, now. Faith couldn’t care less how the caller had gotten her number, and the only safety she feared for was that of Ashley, her interview subject.

  If they only knew how much power they had, Pilates teachers. Faith swore they could run the world.

  In her room at Dad and Faith’s, Maya made sure her door was locked before she went online and logged onto her chat room. Immediately, LIMatt61 said, Where the hell have you been? Because he was like that, always pouncing.

  Of course, Maya couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t been on in days.

  Sorry, she typed. I’ve been hanging out with a new group of kids.

  LIMatt61 typed: And, that makes a difference because????? Five question marks? Really, LIMatt61?

  NYCJulie cut in with: What did your mom’s shrink say?

  Maya typed: I couldn’t figure out how to ask. She knew she should say more before they all started giving her advice, or, worse yet, scolding her. (One of the biggest drawbacks to being the youngest person in a chat room. Everybody treated you like a kid.)

  Sure enough, Matt typed in: You would have been more prepared if you weren’t spending so much time goofing off with your friends.

  Maya sighed. She typed: Sorry. She started to type that she wanted to get to know the psychiatrist first before she started asking him probing questions about her own mother, but then her phone burped. She cringed.

  Maya had picked out the burp text tone when she’d gotten the phone—her then-best friend Zoe had discovered it and played it for her, the two of them laughing hysterically for probably ten minutes straight. She’d downloaded it on the spot, but for the past week, Maya had been torn between not wanting to hurt Zoe by changing it, and living in fear of getting texted in front of Lindsay.

  She switched the phone to vibrate, then checked her screen.

  A text from Lindsay. Want to sleep over tonite?

  Maya stared at the words. Lindsay Segal. Asking her to sleep over. She read it three more times, just to make sure she hadn’t gotten it wrong.

  The problem was, she already had plans to stay at Zoe’s. Zoe had invited her two weeks ago.

  Maya texted Lindsay: Don’t know if I can.

  On her computer screen, another text: Come on pleaseeeeeee? No parents! Just us girls!

  Whoa. Maya thought of Lindsay, typing in all those Es. And just us girls? Why didn’t she have a date with Miles? Maya almost texted her that question, but she quickly thought better of it. Lindsay seemed like the jealous type—not that she would ever think to be jealous of someone like Maya.

  Maya’s computer beeped. She glanced at it, to see a private message from NYCJulie: Don’t listen to Matt. You’re young. You deserve to have fun. Spend time with your friends while you still have them. Maya smiled. She liked NYCJulie so much.

  She wrote her back: Lindsay wants me to stay over tonight.

  The popular girl? Awesome! And don’t worry. We’ll still be here when you get back.

  Maya thought for a few moments, then texted Zoe: I can’t come tonite. Dad making me go to family thing. :(

  Zoe replied right away: Srsly?

  Yep.

  No answer.

  For good measure, Maya sent another sad face.

  Still no answer.

  Maya got a third text from Lindsay: Three question marks.

  She typed: I’ll be there.

  Yay! Get over here nowwwww

  Maya’s heart pounded. She had a bag all packed for Zoe’s, but she emptied it out, going over each item of clothing individually—the boring pajamas, the boring jeans . . . Maya grabbed the pink sweater she’d bought at Forever 21—the one Nikki had said looked cute on her—and changed into it, along with her tightest pair of skinny jeans. Then she started going through everything else in her closet, looking for something, anything that was remotely Lindsay-worthy.

  Nothing. But she did have some clothes that at least weren’t embarrassing. As she searched for them and threw them in the bag, Maya forgot about everyth
ing else in the room, in her life. She didn’t notice the computer beeping, her chat room friends asking where the hell she’d gone off to, NYCJulie explaining, LIMatt61 more irritated than ever, but ClaudetteBrooklyn20 defending her: Give her a break, Matt. She’s only a kid.

  And, once she was fully packed and she’d logged out of the chat room, once she’d shoved the phone in her pocket and grabbed her bag and her favorite blue coat with the brass buttons that her mom had bought her at Urban Outfitters three weeks ago after so much begging, once she’d gone through the obligatory exchange of hugs and explanations and phone number with Dad (who really didn’t seem to care who Lindsay Segal was, deep as he was into some newspaper story he was writing), once she’d rushed out of the apartment, down the elevator, through the lobby, and up Seventh Avenue toward Lindsay’s apartment, the sun already starting to set . . . Once Maya had done all of that, only then did she stop in the middle of the sidewalk and take a few moments to think about what was going on in her suddenly, weirdly, out-of-the-blue exciting life.

  “Amazing,” she whispered.

  But Maya didn’t let herself think for too long. After all, she had a sleepover to get to.

  Just us girls.

  She took off fast toward Lindsay’s, determined not to be late. So determined, in fact, that she didn’t notice the blue car tailing her up Seventh Avenue and then left at Twenty-sixth, the cold wind blowing in her face as she wove around slow walkers, her breath quickening, her face easing into a smile. She didn’t notice the driver, watching. Watching it all.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Faith said. She heard Nicolai let out an exasperated sigh and somehow managed to restrain herself from getting up, walking over to the camera, and slapping him across the face. If he was ever going to form a relationship with something that didn’t have a lens cap, this child needed to work on his empathy skills. Big-time.

  Ashley Stanley trailed a hand across her eyes. A tear trickled down her scarred cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. So strange. Ashley was a grown woman, but she still had the high, frail voice of a little girl—as though the Lemaires had trapped her voice inside her, stunted its growth. “I didn’t know it would be this hard.”

  “Of course it’s hard, honey,” Faith said. “You take as long as you need.”

  Ashley breathed, the breath filling and leaving her chest in halted gasps.

  Faith wanted to look away. How horrible it felt, to watch another person cry like this, a fragile young girl, and not be able to hold her.

  “At night, I keep seeing their faces. I can’t sleep without dreaming about them. It’s like they’re still with me. Just like they said they’d be.”

  “The Lemaires.”

  “Yes. They said no one ever leaves them. Not really.”

  Faith swallowed hard. “No one.”

  The girl nodded.

  “So there were others? Before you?”

  “I think so.”

  “With you?”

  “Can we do the interview again?”

  Faith nodded. She handed Ashley a Kleenex and waited till she gave her the signal, and glanced over at Nicolai. Her own hands were trembling now. Her stomach felt weak. The way Ashley’s voice sounded, the lilt of it . . . at certain times, she sounded so much like . . .

  “Rolling,” Nicolai said.

  Ashley said, “You can ask me that question again.”

  “Are you sure? We can skip it if you like. Move on.”

  “No. Please. Ask it. I need to answer it.”

  Faith placed her hand over Ashley’s. She looked into the blue eyes and felt tears coming. Faith, the complete professional, the planner. Faith, who had never cried, not even when she won Miss Georgia. Not even on her wedding day to Jim, or when the doctor told her she’d never be able to have children of her own . . . Faith, who didn’t cry, not ever, because crying was for the weak.

  Faith shut her eyes. She took a few Pilates breaths and told herself that when she opened them, she’d be looking at Ashley Stanley, a grown woman and a stranger. Not a child. Not her little girl.

  Not Maya.

  Ask her the damn question.

  “Ashley,” Faith said. “What made you get into the Lemaires’ car?”

  “I was lost.”

  “I know,” Faith pushed on. “Let’s retrace that day, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You’d gone to the movies with your friend and her boyfriend, but you felt like a third wheel.”

  “Yes.”

  “You snuck out of the theater, and you figured you’d walk home, but once you were into the mall parking lot, you realized home was a lot farther away than you thought it would be.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was getting dark.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, out of the blue, Mrs. Lemaire pulled up.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was the only one in the car.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, tell me, honey. You’re a smart girl. When she rolled down the window and asked if you needed a ride, what was it about this woman—this stranger you’d never seen before—that made you get into the car with her?”

  Ashley shook her head. “I had seen her.”

  Faith looked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “I’d seen her before, at the same movie theater. I’d seen Notting Hill and my friends were teasing me because I cried. She told me not to listen to them. She was crying, too. She was . . . she’d gone with her . . . her husband. Date night, she said . . . First date night since their baby was born . . .”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yep,” Ashley managed a weak smile. “She lied about having a baby. Wish I could say that was the worst thing she’d done. But when she pulled up in the car . . .”

  “She wasn’t a stranger.”

  A tear trickled down Ashley’s cheek. She brushed it away.

  “You felt safe with her.”

  “Later . . . at her home . . . she said they chose me that night. When she saw me at Notting Hill, when she saw my friends making fun of me, she told Charles . . . She said she told him, ‘She’s the one.’ She said, ‘We chose you, and you’re happy now.’ ”

  Faith’s mouth felt dry. She needed to move on to life in the Lemaires’ house of horrors—she only had fifteen minutes with Ashley, and had to give her viewers what they wanted. But all she could think of was that young girl, a girl Maya’s age, shedding a few tears over a romantic film. A girl in a movie theater with her friends, a normal child, completely unaware that her life was about to be destroyed by that nice lady on her date night—that lady who told her it was okay to cry.

  Faith made herself say, “I’m gonna ask you a few questions about the house.” But she couldn’t wait until her fifteen minutes with Ashley were up, and she could escape. I’m so lucky, Faith thought. I need to be more grateful. And she wanted to show it. She wanted to take off this thick TV makeup and hurry home to her apartment and to her beautiful little family. She wanted to feel her husband’s arms around her—have a date night of her own. But first she wanted to catch Maya before she went to Zoe’s for her sleepover. She just had to hug that sweet girl for all she was worth.

  5

  Alan Dufresne wasn’t lying about his father. On one of the computers in the Plaza Garden Suites business center, he logged into his e-mail and showed Brenna the correspondence he’d exchanged four months after his father’s July death with the credit department of WeKeep Storage in Provo, Utah, the representative informing him that Roland Dufresne had indeed maintained a space there since October 2, 1981.

  “My mother had no idea he’d even been to Provo,” Alan told Brenna. “She asked me to go there and open it. I have two other brothers but out of all of us, I was closest to my dad.”

  “So you did.”

  Alan gave
Brenna a look, as though traveling from his home in Sacramento, California, to Provo on a moment’s notice to check out the contents of a storage space was a no-brainer, which, of course when Brenna thought about it, it was.

  “What was your mom afraid she’d find in it?”

  He shrugged. “Gifts from some secret girlfriend probably.”

  “Nothing worse?”

  Alan turned to Brenna, the saucer eyes deep and sad. “My dad was a truck driver. He was gone a lot of the time, and you know what they say about truckers on the road. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone. My mom knew that and so did . . . I still know that. My dad was a great father and a good man.”

  He’d already said that—not to Brenna but to the person who’d been writing him for the past two weeks, claiming to be her. I know it sounds bad, Brenna. But my dad wouldn’t hurt anyone. He was a great father and a good man.

  He’d shown Brenna those e-mails first—a steady exchange of them, increasingly friendly and confidential, between himself and BrennaNSpector@hotmail.com. It was not Brenna’s e-mail address—she’d never had a Hotmail account. But her middle name did begin with the letter N. And sitting there behind the closed glass door of the hotel business center, reading the e-mails one by one, the real Brenna Nicole Spector had felt as though the floor beneath her had dropped away, and she was sinking into something thick and deep and inhospitable. A quicksand of confusion. It had become hard for her to breathe. It was hard still.

  This person knew things about Brenna. Personal things. I know you’ve never met my assistant, Trent, she’d said in one e-mail, but trust me. He’s a real character. In another, she noted that she had “a very close friend” on the police force in Tarry Ridge. In several she mentioned Maya. Most of the information, of course, could have been gleaned from the media over the past couple of months.

  But not all of it.

  Brenna’s eyes were focused on the credit department e-mail, but her mind was scrolling back, into a memory from just fifteen minutes ago, of reading the sixth and final e-mail from BrennaNSpector, sent just yesterday . . .

  Alan, I know how hard that must have been for you—discovering that your father kept secrets. My father kept secrets, too. He tried to be a good father, and I remember him that way. But I’ve since found out he was deeply disturbed. A sad, sick man . . .