Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Page 9

  “Yes.”

  “Well apparently, you’re not going to be e-mailing for a while because you’re in the midst of a family crisis.”

  The rain came out of nowhere, soaking Maya’s hair, her jeans, her stupid pink sweater. She’d started crying again, she wasn’t sure when, but her tears were hot on her face and the rain was freezing and in Maya’s whole life, she’d never felt this wet before.

  She was scared she might catch pneumonia. Would they care? Would those bitches care if I wound up dying on the street?

  She’d left her new coat with them. She’d left her overnight bag, too. After spending so much time trying to figure out the best clothes to pack. God, I’m such an idiot. Right now, Lindsay, Nikki, and Annalee were probably going through her bag and laughing—probably still had the webcam on.

  A couple rushed past her, a coat held up over both their heads like an umbrella. Maya wasn’t sure how it was warm enough to rain, but she didn’t care. It fell in line with everything else, the whole world punishing her—and for what? What had she done?

  Maya thought of her dad—the way he’d looked up at her and smiled as she left. Do I need to speak to Lindsay’s parents? Firm everything up?

  No, Dad. All taken care of.

  Was that what she was being punished for? Telling her dad that Lindsay’s parents would be there?

  Dad, Zoe . . . She’d lied to a few people. Mom, too. Not about this, of course. But about the shrink. Why she’d wanted to see him. Maya promised herself she wouldn’t lie to anyone again, ever.

  I’m so sorry . . .

  Her stomach still felt terrible—hollow and weak from the blackberry brandy. She hated those girls so much. Why had she ever wanted to be friends with them? That seemed the really punishable thing—bad judgment.

  And Miles. Especially Miles.

  She remembered the way he had looked at her, so solemn. She remembered how he’d said, It will be our secret, Maya, our secret always . . .

  And he’d been in on it. He’d been in on it the whole time, even as he touched her face, even as he . . .

  Maya was breathing in cold water now. Her sweater stuck to her and her whole body was shivering, numb . . . and she hadn’t been watching where she was going. She’d missed her block and now she was practically at the West Side Highway, cold wind pushing into her wet face, burning her wet eyes. Why? The word was loud inside her. She wanted to scream it. Wanted to fall down on the sidewalk and sob.

  They were going to post that video on YouTube. Maya had heard Nikki say it. They would post it and everyone at school would see it and her teachers and her parents and . . .

  “Maya.”

  My life is over.

  “Maya!”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder, and saw him coming toward her in a windbreaker, the hood up. She saw his feet pounding the sidewalk, splashing in the puddles, his stride quickening, becoming a jog. He said her name again and yelled at her to wait and that’s when she knew this was real, not in her head.

  Over.

  Maya turned away from him. She ran and ran, fast as she could.

  Part Two

  Today I left my family forever. I put City Island in the rearview and drove off with my Great Love. We’re heading West, because that’s where people always go to make their lives better. Bill says that. He writes poetry, too. He has a big, leather-bound book of the most beautiful poems I’ve ever seen. Someday, all of his poems will be about me.

  I know I’ve never mentioned Bill in here before, which is WEIRD. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. He’s all I think about, and still this is the first time I’ve written his name on one of these pages. But it’s like Bill says: Life works in strange ways. Sometimes you don’t see your future until you’re heading straight into it. Sometimes you don’t know you’re in love until it swallows you whole.

  From the diary of Clea Spector

  August 21, 1981

  7

  Evelyn Spector woke up with her heart in her mouth. She could have sworn she heard the phone ringing, but it must have been a dream. Evelyn’s brain playing tricks on her again. She looked at her digital alarm clock: 3 A.M. Every single night for the past week she’d woken up at 3 A.M. sharp. It was almost as though she had a ghost in her house, jolting her awake. And in a way she did, didn’t she?

  Jack Spector. Grady Carlson. Evelyn had more than one ghost. Clea.

  Two weeks ago, her younger daughter’s boyfriend had called her. Evelyn had been pleased to hear his voice. She’d heard about Brenna on the news, of course. That woman breaking into her home, that man killing himself, right in front of her . . . Such a dangerous job she’d chosen for herself, and these days it seemed more dangerous than ever.

  But outside of a brief phone call (with Evelyn calling Brenna, no less) they’d barely spoken since. She’d had to get almost all the information about the break-in from her granddaughter—the only one in Evelyn’s family who could be bothered to tell her anything. Perhaps Brenna and her boyfriend are inviting me for dinner, Evelyn had thought when she’d heard his voice on the phone. After all, it is their turn.

  But Brenna’s boyfriend hadn’t been calling for social reasons. Quite the opposite, actually. “I thought you should know that Grady Carlson is dead,” he had said. “He told me what really happened to your husband. He left me the police papers. I gave them to Brenna.”

  Who does that? Who calls a lonely seventy-five-year-old woman past suppertime and smashes her whole life to pieces without warning? Who does that, without even having enough sensitivity to say, “I’m sorry”?

  Evelyn had wanted to say so many things to him. She’d wanted to shatter that righteous tone of his, to teach him a lesson about minding his own business, to tell him, Some secrets are secrets for good reason. But her own politeness forbade it. “Thank you for calling,” Evelyn had said.

  Would it have killed him, this young man she’d invited into her house and served a dinner she’d spent the whole day preparing? Would it have killed him to offer a seventy-five-year-old woman a few words of apology before destroying what was left of her family, all in the ridiculous name of “honesty”?

  Evelyn had never liked Brenna’s ex-husband, Jim, very much. He had a sarcastic streak, plus she’d long suspected he’d been seeing that anchorwoman before he and Brenna got divorced. But even Jim Rappaport would’ve had the social skills to say, “I’m sorry to have to do this, Evelyn . . .”

  The one thing Evelyn did know: Brenna and her boyfriend—Nick, that was his name—were perfectly matched. Both of them so young but not knowing it, both so convinced they were right about everything when they still had so much to learn.

  Brenna had always been like that, even when she was a little girl. Forever arguing her case until she wore you down, until it was easier to just give in and say, You know what? You’re right. So convinced of her own correctness, Brenna was, even before coming down with that memory disease. After, of course, she’d become insufferable.

  If you only knew, Brenna. If you only knew the real truth about your father. If you only knew, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge.

  The young these days were far too confident. Evelyn couldn’t recall a time in her life when she thought herself so above it all, so damn moral and perfect that she’d do what Nick had done. I thought you should know, indeed.

  And don’t even get Evelyn started on Detective Carlson. Because of him and his deathbed confession, she’d spent the last two weeks trapped in this slow boil of a panic. A woman her age who probably should be on high blood pressure medication—an artist too exhausted to create, a slab of granite in her studio, untouched for two weeks because she’d been waking up every morning at three, her daughter shrieking at her in her mind: How could you, Mother? How could you lie to me? Detective Carlson had shortened Evelyn’s lifespan by years, she was sure. Detect
ive Grady Carlson, who couldn’t even die without causing her trouble.

  What drove this selfish desire to confess? Evelyn didn’t understand it. She could keep a secret until her very last breath if she had to, if she knew that things would be better that way . . . Envision a small, metal safe in a windowless room. Place the secret inside. Lock it up. Close the door to the windowless room. Never open that door again. Was Evelyn that much stronger than everyone else?

  Don’t forget to say good-bye first.

  The phone rang.

  Evelyn realized that it had been ringing all along; it hadn’t been a dream. Her heart beat hard enough to shake her whole body. My God . . . It’s time.

  She picked the phone up fast. “Brenna?”

  But she heard only static.

  “I think we have a bad connection,” Evelyn said. “I can’t hear you.”

  More static, then, for a half second, a break in it . . . a peal of a woman’s voice, a girl’s . . . “Please . . .”

  “Brenna?”

  The line went silent.

  “Hello?” Evelyn said. “Hello? Brenna? I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I can explain.”

  No answer. The connection was dead.

  “Brenna. I did it to protect you.”

  Before she hung up the phone, Evelyn checked the caller ID. I’ll call her back, she thought. I’ll tell her the whole story. But the name and number on the screen didn’t belong to Brenna. They belonged to Maya.

  Brenna dreamed of thick, bristly ropes tied around her—one pressing against her neck, the other coiled around her waist. Brenna tried to break free, but then the ropes turned into venomous snakes. The one at her neck—a cobra—reared back, fangs bared and gleaming, dripping deep red poison. It lunged at her face. She forced herself awake before the bite . . . to find Nick sleeping with his arms curled around her—one at her neck, the other at her waist.

  Probably shouldn’t tell him about that dream.

  She slipped from his grasp and looked at the clock: 7 A.M. Early to wake up on a Sunday, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The fact was, Brenna hadn’t done anything on the Debbie Minton case yesterday. She could use some of the morning for online research . . .

  Or maybe she was just making excuses to get out of bed. Brenna felt cold. She grabbed her bathrobe from the hook on the bedroom door and threw it over her naked body, then stole another glance at Morasco, sleeping, his chest rising and falling with his slow breath, his arms still stretched around the lack of her.

  Last night, while they were making love, she’d fallen into a memory. The first time that had happened since she’d started sleeping with Nick, and it hadn’t been a good memory, either . . .

  Brenna shut her eyes tight. Clea’s journal was in the other room, out of reach, and so she recited the Pledge of Allegiance in her head until the memory of the memory went away.

  Too much stress, that’s what it was. Too much of the past, shoving its way into the present. Brenna’s sister’s thoughts, fresh and alive in the journal, her father’s decades-old suicide a new thing—new to her, anyway. The man in the blue car, named at last. Bill. Clea’s earthly possessions in the next room—souvenirs from a twenty-eight-year-old road trip and an OD that may or may not have been fatal, which had somehow made their way into the hands of a trucker, now deceased, unable to answer any questions, a part of the past as well.

  And someone, pretending to be Brenna, exchanging e-mails with the trucker’s son.

  She’ll be out of touch for a little while, Alan Dufresne had said last night, paraphrasing that final e-mail. She hopes she can drop a line eventually about where to send the bag, but for now, just hang on to it. And don’t tell anyone . . .

  Why the sudden stop to the correspondence? Why, unless . . .

  Brenna cracked open the door, her mind traveling back to her living room last night, the phone in her hand, Dufresne’s voice in her ear, her eyes trained on the floor, avoiding Morasco’s face. “Well apparently, you’re not going to be e-mailing for a while because you’re in the midst of a family crisis.”

  “Alan?”

  “Yes?”

  “What time was that e-mail sent?”

  “Hmmm . . . Let me see . . . It says 5:56 P.M.”

  Brenna feels Morasco’s gaze on her. She glances over at him, she can’t help it. He mouths a word: Anything?

  She shakes her head. Heat creeps into her face, so she looks down again. He can’t see her getting flushed. He’d notice it. He’d ask why.

  Why can’t she trust Nick? Timing doesn’t prove anything. She’s been an investigator long enough to know that.

  But in this case, it also doesn’t disprove anything. BrennaNSpector sent the e-mail to Dufresne at 5:56 P.M.—ten minutes after Brenna texted Nick, telling him they need to talk.

  Alan says, “Brenna, are you still there?”

  Brenna raked her fingernails against the inside of her arm, bringing herself back and punishing herself at the same time.

  She wanted to believe that Nick hadn’t lied to her, wanted so to believe that it wasn’t he who had written to Dufresne. Last night, she’d wanted it more than anything in the world. But the truth was, wanting and trusting were too different things. And both were a lot harder to do in the morning.

  She drew the robe against her body, shivering. Was it really that cold in here, or was it her mind, edging into January 8, 1996. The worst blizzard in 128 years, the newscaster on NPR had called it. Brenna could feel the cold creeping in, the announcer’s voice buzzing out of the kitchen radio as she stood at the big window of their apartment on Fourteenth Street, snow coming down in bucketfuls, Jim’s arms wrapped around her . . .

  She leans her head into Jim’s broad chest, her eyes closed.

  “You remembering something?” he says, his voice so soft it’s a thing she feels more than hears.

  “No. I’m thinking about something new.”

  “Yeah? What? The weather?”

  She shakes her head, feeling herself smiling. “Newer.”

  Jim says, “How can it be newer than something happening right now?”

  She tilts her head up, gazes into his deep brown eyes, the gold flecks in them. She thinks, I hope the baby gets those . . .

  “Newer? Brenna . . . are you telling me . . .”

  Brenna dug her fingernails into her palms. “Four score and seven years ago,” she whispered, coming back . . .

  “ . . . oh my God, Bren . . .”

  “Our forefathers brought forth on this continent . . .”

  Funny, most people believed life was so much simpler for the young. But that wasn’t really true—it was just the soft-focus, selective way that most people remembered their youths. When every single day is clear in your mind, you know how many of them are difficult, how confusing it really is to be young, how the best times are almost always fraught with dark shadows.

  Almost always.

  There are some rare moments that are so pure they shine—moments like that one at the window during the blizzard of ’96. Moments so simple you can sum them up in one small word: Joy. Love.

  They made Brenna glad for her memory, those moments, but they also made her sad for it. Fourteen years ago, while watching the falling snow from the window of her old apartment on Fourteenth Street, she’d told Jim she was pregnant, and yet it felt like . . . Well, of course Brenna’s memories always felt like they were happening now. But still. Fourteen years. So long ago, for everyone but her . . .

  Brenna sighed. She’d found her way into Maya’s room, and through the open door to her own bedroom, she could hear Nick Morasco, sighing in his sleep. She closed Maya’s door.

  It wasn’t Brenna’s habit to go into her daughter’s room when she wasn’t around. Nights Maya was here, though, Brenna would sometimes stand in the doorway, listening to her heavy sleep-b
reathing. Proof of life, and something more. To her, there was no sound more comforting. It sometimes made her worry about what would happen once Maya left home. Would Brenna still stand in her doorway when she felt stressed and fearful? Would the memory of her daughter’s breathing be enough to sustain her?

  Brenna looked around. Maya kept her room unusually neat for a young teen. It wasn’t spotless, but her bed was always made, clothes folded and placed into drawers or hung in her closet without Brenna ever having to ask.

  Brenna could of course recall in perfect detail the mix of dirty and clean laundry that littered the floor of her own room when she was Maya’s age, the unmade bed, the Nestlé Crunch wrappers and empty Chee-tos bags on the nightstand. And so she thought about it a lot, her daughter’s neatness. She suspected it was the transient nature of her life that made her so orderly; the idea of having two furnished bedrooms in two different apartments, neither of which she could fully call her own. Maybe that was one of the things Maya had wanted to talk to Dr. Lieberman about. Had she let crazy DeeDee Walsh into Brenna’s apartment because on some level, she figured it wasn’t her door to keep locked?

  Brenna sighed heavily. Overthinking things, as usual . . . But it was easier than dealing with the man sleeping in her bed, trying to figure out whether he was telling her the truth.

  Brenna sat on Maya’s bed, gazed at the squat bookshelf braced against the wall. There were a few new things on top—a folded up bag from Forever 21, a pair of striped thigh-high socks, still in the package, a bottle of perfume called Citrus Splash. When did Maya start wearing perfume?

  The shelves were packed, mostly with Maya’s manga books and sketch pads, though there was traditional literature thrown in for good measure—Treasure Island, Little Women, the Hunger Games trilogy, the Harry Potter series . . . and in the back of the shelf that housed the Harry Potter books, Maya’s carefully guarded secret.

  Brenna slipped her hand behind the books, felt for the thin spine . . . There it was. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Rescued from a library donation box on November 19, 2004, without Brenna’s knowledge, the book Maya had learned to read with, swiped from the box by her daughter and stashed away at the back of these shelves for years—a cherished souvenir that Brenna hadn’t discovered till December 12, 2009, when she’d caught sight of it while dusting.