Читать книгу Emma in the Night: The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten - Wendy Walker, Wendy Walker - Страница 9

Ilay in the bed with my mother’s arms around me. My hair was wet and I could feel water bleed into the pillowcase and turn cold against my cheek. She was crying. Sobbing.

“Oh, Cassandra! My baby! My baby!”

I have already said that I had imagined this moment for three years. And after all the time I had to prepare, I was, still, shockingly unprepared.

Her body felt frail to me, and I tried to remember the last time I’d felt it. She had withdrawn much of her physical affection after the custody fight, but not all of it. There were hugs on special occasions, her birthday and Mother’s Day especially because our father gave us money to buy her gifts. I did not remember it feeling like this. Hard bones.

“My baby! Thank you, God! Thank you!”

What I had not been prepared for, and what I had not imagined even one time during my years of imagining the moment of my return, was the expression on her face when she first saw me again on her front porch less than an hour before.

I had stood there for ninety seconds before ringing the doorbell. I was counting them in my head, which is something I have done for as long as I can remember. I can count seconds perfectly, and from there, minutes and even hours. I had to ring the bell four times before I heard feet bounding down the hard wood stairs from the second floor. It is an above-average-sized house where we live, but where we live, the average house costs over a million dollars. It was built in the 1950s, a traditional white colonial, with three additions, including the porch, and multiple renovations. Mrs. Martin did more work after we were gone. I could see a sunroom and study where there had once been a small garden. We also have nearly five acres of property, a pool house, a tennis court and lots of woods to get lost in. Land is very expensive here. So while the house was small enough that I could hear my mother coming down the stairs, she was coming down stairs of a very costly estate. She would want me to make that clear.

As I heard the lock turn, I felt the ground give way beneath my feet. I had been through the same door thousands of times, behind Emma, looking for Emma, calling for Emma. Every face my sister ever wore, changed by mood and growth and the weathering of time, came before my eyes as though they were warning me while the door slowly opened. I almost said her name. I could feel it in my mouth. Emma. I wanted to fall to my knees, bury my eyes into my hands and hide behind my sister as I had done as a child. I did not feel capable of doing what had to be done without her.

But then I saw the first strand of my mother’s hair from behind that door, and the faces of my sister vanished and I became calm.

Mrs. Martin was wrapped in a silk robe. Her hair was tangled from restless sleep, and a thick line of eye makeup was caked under her lower lashes.

“Can I help you?” She asked the question with a sprinkle of politeness on top of a mountain of annoyance. It was six in the morning on a Sunday.

She was looking at me, studying my face, my eyes, my body. I did not think I had changed much. I wore the same size clothing. The same size pants and shirts, even the same for my bra. My hair was still light brown and long past my shoulders. My face was still angular, my eyebrows thick with big arches. When I looked in the mirror, I still saw me. But I guess that’s the thing—we all change so gradually, a little every day, that we don’t notice it. Like the frog that stays in the water until the water is boiling and the frog is dead.

The moment I had not been prepared for—the one thing I had not ever imagined in all those years—was that my mother would not recognize me.

“It’s me,” I said. “It’s Cass.”

She said nothing, but her head jolted back as though my words had just punched her in the face.

“Cass?”

She looked harder, her eyes now bulging and moving frantically from place to place, head to toe. Her right hand covered her mouth. Her left hand grabbed hold of the doorframe, catching her body as she stumbled toward me.

“Cass!”

I had to force my feet to stand still as she lunged at me, hands, arms, face, all touching me, pawing at me.

A guttural moan left her body. “Uhhhhhh!”

Then she started screaming for Mr. Martin.

I had prepared for this part and I did what I thought I would do, which was to let her feel what she was feeling and just stand there and do nothing. Say nothing. You probably think she was ecstatic, elated, filled with joy. But Mrs. Martin had reinvented herself as the grieving mother with the missing daughters, so adjusting to my return would involve a painful unraveling.

“Jon! Jon!”

The tears started then as more footsteps sounded from the second floor.

Mr. Martin called out. “What the hell is going on?”

My mother didn’t answer him. Instead, she grabbed my face with her hands, pressed her nose right up against mine and said my name with that same guttural sound. “Caaaaaaass!”

Mr. Martin was in his pajamas. He had put on weight since I saw him last and he looked even older than I remembered. I should have expected that. But when you’re young, you see people over a certain age as just old, and there does not seem a need to imagine them any older. He was very tall and very dark—hair, skin, eyes. I had never been able to read him well. He was adept at hiding his feelings. Or maybe he just didn’t have many of them. Few things made him angry. Fewer things made him laugh. On this day, though, I saw something I had not seen before on his face—utter bewilderment.

“Cass? Cassandra? Is that you?”

There were more hugs. Mr. Martin called the police. He called my father next, but there was no answer. I heard him leave a message, saying only that it was important and he should call back right away. I thought that was very considerate of him, not giving my father the details of this shocking news in a voice mail. It made me wonder if he had changed.

They asked me the questions you would expect. Where had I been? What had happened to me? When I didn’t answer them, I heard them whisper to each other. They concluded that I was traumatized. Mr. Martin said they should keep asking questions until I answered. My mother agreed.

“Cass—tell us what happened!”

I did not answer them. “We need the police!” I cried instead. “They have to find Emma! They have to find her!”

Time froze for what seemed like forever, but was only eight seconds. Mr. Martin shot a look at my mother. My mother calmed down and started to stroke my hair as though I were a fragile doll she didn’t want to break—and that she didn’t want to move or speak.

“Okay, sweetheart. Just calm down.”

She stopped asking me questions but my hands were shaking. I told her I was cold and she let me take a hot shower. I told her I was hungry and she made me some food. I told her I was tired and she let me lie down. My mother stayed by my side and I pretended to sleep while I secretly soaked in the Chanel No. 5 that lingered on her neck.

When the cars started to appear, Mr. Martin went downstairs. He did not come back up. I could see each car as it entered the property because the window from my mother’s room has a view of the top part of the driveway. First came the state police in three marked SUVs. Next were the paramedics in an ambulance. It took another forty minutes for the specialists to arrive in all sorts of cars. The FBI agents would be among them. And some kind of evidence evaluator. And, of course, a psychologist.

Some people took samples from my nails and skin. They combed through my hair. They drew some blood. They checked my heart and pulse and they asked me questions to make sure I wasn’t insane. Then we waited again, for the people who would ask me the questions about where I’d been, and where Emma was.

I had not been in my mother’s bed since I was a little girl, since well before the divorce. We were not forbidden. It was just not a place either of us, Emma or I, wanted to be after we learned about sex. Our parents’ bed was the place they “did it,” and we found that disgusting. We used to talk about it when we played with our Barbie dolls.

They get naked and Daddy puts his dick inside her.

Emma would say things like that with complete nonchalance, as if it didn’t faze her at all. But I could sense her anger from the words she chose and because I knew her so well.

She took off Ken’s clothes and Barbie’s clothes and mashed their androgynous crotches together. Ken was on top. Emma made oohs and aahs.

That’s what they do in their bed. I’m never going in there again.

Emma had learned the truth about sex from our half brother, Witt Tanner. Emma was eleven. I was nine. Witt was sixteen. Emma had come home from school upset. We usually took the bus because our mother didn’t like to interrupt her nap. Sometimes we walked. We attended a private school, so we were on the same campus no matter what grades we were in, and Emma always let me walk with her even though I was annoying. It was on these walks she would tell me things she had come to know, usually about boys. On this day, though, she had been quiet the whole way, telling me to “shut the hell up” every time I tried to talk to her. When we got to the house, she ran to her room and slammed the door.

Witt lived with us every other weekend before the divorce of our father and mother. He spent the rest of his time at his mother’s house. That added up to 96 hours out of 672 hours each month. It was not a lot. It was not enough.

But the day Emma learned about sex was a Friday that Witt was at our house. He was playing a video game in our family room when we came inside.

What’s wrong with her?

I went into the family room and sat down as close to Witt as possible without being in his lap. He leaned into me, bumping shoulders. He didn’t say anything except to ask about Emma and why she’d run upstairs. Usually on every other Friday, we both would find Witt and cling to him like plastic wrap until he went back to his mother Sunday night. He was soft-spoken and easy to be around. But he was also strong and he always knew what to say and how to say it.

I used to think that Witt was a gift our father had given us to make up for the mother he had given us. I know that’s stupid, because we wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t our mother and because Witt was born before we were, before our father had even met our mother. And anyone looking at Emma could see Mrs. Martin—in her eyes, her jaw, the way she spoke. Still, that’s what I used to think.

Witt finished the round of his game. He cursed at having been killed or out of lives or coins or whatever. He looked me in the eye and asked me how my week had been. He kissed my forehead and messed up my hair, and I smiled so hard, I could feel water in my eyes. Then he said he was going to check on Emma, which he did. She let him in her room and he came out soon after, shaking his head and laughing. No one told me anything then. But when we were playing with our Barbies a few days later, Emma couldn’t resist shattering my ignorance. She was over the shock of it, and this thing that men did to women was now part of the fabric of her.

That day I was upset, do you remember it? And Witt came in to talk to me, do you remember? Well . . . I was upset because some jerk told me that sex is when a boy pees on a girl and then she has a baby.

I remember wanting to cry myself when she said this. I remember thinking that life could not possibly be that humiliating. And I remember thinking that I would never, ever let a boy pee on me even if it meant I could not have babies. The moment didn’t last long, but still—I remember the reaction I had and that I understood why it had made my sister run to her room and slam the door shut.

Witt told me what really happens. Boys don’t pee on you.

Emma explained about penises and vaginas and sperm. Then she took off the clothes of our Barbie dolls.

I suppose it’s strange that our brother was the one to tell us about sex. But that wasn’t the only parental duty he took on.

Our mother didn’t like being our mother. She said she wanted to be our friend. She said she was waiting for us to grow up so we could all do fun things together like shopping and going to get our nails done. She used to tell us about her plans to take us on vacations where we would get spa treatments and sit on the beach reading magazines and sipping drinks that tasted like coconut and had little umbrellas. She made them for us sometimes during the summer. She said when we were older, we could have ones that tasted even better and made you feel relaxed and happy. I would fall asleep dreaming that dream our mother put in our heads, the dream where we were all three like sisters.

There were lots of dreams back then, before our mother started her affair with Mr. Martin. Witt talked of college and wanting to be a lawyer like his mother. He sometimes had girlfriends and they would kiss in the basement. He learned to drive and got his own car. It was like he was paving the path for us to become grown-ups, and he did it with such glee that he made it seem like something worth doing.

This place feels big now, like it’s the whole world, like what happens here matters. But it’s not. And it doesn’t.

Witt said things like that after he went to Europe one summer.

This place is small. Very small. And you can leave here one day. You can become something else. Anything you want. And when you come back, this place won’t feel big anymore. It will appear the way it really is, which is very little and small. Almost nothing.

This gave me comfort, this thought of our home, our family, our mother being very small. So small that maybe the bad things I thought would happen would not happen after all.

I did not see my father’s car enter the driveway. It turned out that he had slept through the phone ringing. My father could sleep through an earthquake. They eventually sent a squad car to tell him his daughter was alive.

My father suffered, and I found his suffering unbearable to witness. I have had a lot of time to reflect on our story inside this house. And I’ve been through things that have shattered the prism through which I see our story, through which I now see everything, so very differently. He kept a nice house for us. It had four bedrooms so Witt could always be there when we were, even after he went to college. And it was close to town so we could come and go to meet our friends. Emma liked that because she had a lot of friends. For me, it was always a reminder that I did not.

Our father’s house after the divorce was bright with sunshine but dark with sadness. His sadness. He told us that ever since the divorce, he struggled to remind himself that happiness is a state of mind. The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. It’s pouring rain. The flowers will grow. I am going to die one day. I am alive on this day. He said that after the divorce and losing my girls, he could see that everything he had, everything he loved, everything that made his life feel like a life could disappear at any moment. He said we, his three children, felt like drops of water in his hands, moving toward the cracks between his fingers, where we could slip through and leave him, one at a time or all at once until his hands were empty and his life became an empty space, an empty heart, I think he said until his life was nothing more than air going in and out of his lungs. These were the things he would talk about at dinner, and it was dreadful.

Sometimes Witt would get mad at him, tell him he should find some friends to tell this stuff to, not us, because we were his children and not his friends. He would tell him to see a shrink, and that all his bad moods were not because of the divorce. Our father would say he didn’t need a shrink. Then Witt would say, Fine, then why don’t you just shake it off? But our father said he couldn’t shake off the problem of knowing that the more you have, the more you have to lose.

And then we were gone, proving him right.

A woman with short blond hair walked from her car toward the house until she was out of my view. After seventy-four seconds, I heard the door open and close in the foyer, then the sound of feet coming up the stairs.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep again. My mother slipped her arm out from under my neck and quietly crept from the bed to answer the knock at her door. She pulled a blanket up around my shoulders so gently, it made me shudder. This was what had plagued my father. In spite of everything she did that she shouldn’t have done, and everything she didn’t do that she should have, something that felt like love was in her and she would take it out at times like this and show it to us and make us hunger for more. All of us, each in our own way.

Emma would sometimes dress Barbie in an evening gown. Ken, still buck naked, would chase after her.

Please, Barbie, please . . . let me put my dick inside you. Please, I’ll do anything!

Her voice was derisive and full of anger. We were young, but we still understood why our father was driven mad by our mother’s indifference, and how his madness had taken over every part of his brain and his heart so there was nothing left for us.

One day Emma took Barbie and threw her against the wall. She said nothing. We both sat on the floor, silently, looking at the doll. She had landed on her back, her dress flowing around her, white teeth shining through smiling red lips. This memory was now before my eyes—so vivid, my heart was pounding in my ears. Emma was the one brave enough to throw a doll against a wall while I gasped and then covered my mouth. She was the one brave enough to bargain for our mother’s love, even though she risked losing it every time. She was the one brave enough to challenge our mother’s beauty by wearing red lipstick and short skirts. Every day of our lives here, Emma fought for what she wanted, for what we should have had, while I hid in the shadows she was willing to cast for me.

Emma shielded me from our mother’s storm, and whether she did it for my benefit or just because that was who she was and that was what she needed to do, it served the same purpose. She kept me safe.

Doubt filled me up top to bottom when I thought about those storms. Why had I come back here? I was free! I could have gone anywhere! Then I told myself why. For Emma. For Emma! And to make all the wrong things done to us right again. It was my turn now, to be the lightning rod. Still, conviction is not the same thing as strength, and I was terrified.

I heard some whispering at the door. My mother sighed with disapproval but ultimately relinquished her control over me. Three sets of feet walked across the carpet to the edge of the bed. My mother sat down beside me and stroked my hair.

“Cass? Cass—these people are from the FBI. They want to talk to you. Cass?”

I let my sister enter my mind. I let her push aside the vision of that indestructible doll, taunting us from the floor. I opened my eyes and sat up. The woman with the short blond hair was standing by the edge of the bed, and I knew this was the gatekeeper to finding my sister.

“Cassandra? My name is Dr. Abigail Winter. I’m a psychologist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The man with me is Special Agent Leo Strauss. We’re here to see how you are, and maybe just talk a little bit if you feel up to it.”

I nodded my head. The words were in my mouth—words that I had carefully crafted and rehearsed. But they were trampled by a stampede of emotions.

I started to sob. My mother pulled me close and rocked me back and forth.

On the other side of my mother was the woman with the short blond hair. Dr. Abigail Winter. Through my watery eyes and the breath that was heaving in and out of me, I could still see her clearly, and how she was looking at my mother.

I fixed my sight on her and her alone, over and in spite of my mother’s body that was enveloping me.

“Find Emma!” I said through my gasping and crying.

My mother let me go and pulled back far enough to see my face. “She said that before . . .” She was still looking at me as she spoke to them. “But she doesn’t say anything else. I think something’s wrong with her!”

Agent Strauss spoke then, his voice calm. “Cassandra . . . where is Emma? Where can we find her?”

The words I said were not the words I had rehearsed.

I was not being a very good artist to my story.