Dont forget me a thrille.., p.21
Don't Forget Me: A Thriller, page 21
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
“What do you think?” She straightened, clearly out of breath. “I’m crackersmp. I figured out your little riddle.”
My blood turned cold. “You?”
She lifted her hands, as if in surrender. “It’s not what you think.”
I snorted. “When, in the history of the world, has that sentence ever been true?”
“I’m here to help you figure out the truth, Ruby, not kill you.”
I didn’t want her to twist words or distract me. Before I could think about it, I took the gun from my pocket and aimed it at her. “Get in the boat.”
“Come on, Ruby. We need to talk privately. We need—” Her eyes fell to the gun. “Really? You know me. Think about it.”
“I’m not listening to anything you say. Get in your boat.”
She grumbled but obeyed. I didn’t want to leave my boat here, but I wanted to get off this island and back to where people could see us.
“Now row.”
“Are you serious? It about killed me getting out here to meet you. I’m not a freaking Olympic athlete.”
“Row!” My voice thundered between us, and she closed her mouth, took the oars, and began to row. Her form was sloppy, and she was so out of breath I almost thought about taking over, but instead, I kept the gun trained on her.
“I’m not the killer, Ruby.”
“Spoken like every killer in history.” As we rowed closer to shore, it all came together in my head. “Of course it’s you. Your job. Your special skills. You’re obsessed with murder.”
She huffed. “Obsession is different from being a psychopath. I didn’t kill anyone.”
I pointed the gun right between her eyes. “How could I possibly know that?”
Daisy stopped for a moment, still gasping for breath. “Because I like to research murder, not actually murder people.”
“You hated Tom.”
She gave me a pointed look. “So did you.”
I didn’t want to talk more until I could record our conversation. The dock came into view, and I coached her on how to bring the boat in safely. “When we get out, do not make a run for it, or I will shoot you. Do you understand? We are going to my house, where we are going to talk, and you are going to tell me the truth.”
“Understood.” She stood on wobbly legs, and I worried for a moment that she was going to pass out. I stuck the gun in my pocket, still aimed at her back as she walked a few paces ahead.
We stayed silent until we reached my house. I gave her the keys and then told her to sit on my couch. I sat on the sofa across from her, placed my phone on the end table, and aimed the gun at her chest.
“It isn’t me, Ruby. Think about it.”
I thought about it. She was the only person who was obsessed with murder, who could hack into phones, who seemed to know everything about everyone.
“You pretended to be my friend.”
“I am your friend.” She sighed again, blowing her bangs into the air. “What would be my motive?”
That I couldn’t answer. “Ratings?”
She opened her mouth but then shrugged. “Well, yeah, actually. That would be one way to get them, but it’s not me. I swear.”
“Fine. It’s not you.” I rummaged in my duffel with my free hand and tossed the book with Tom’s notes onto the coffee table. “Then help me find out who.”
“By reading Steven Pressfield?”
“Tom kept notes in there that aren’t about the book and most definitely aren’t about work. I found the book at Cassie’s, so maybe there’s a connection. Maybe Cassie figured out who was after him. Or Ryan did. If there are any clues or answers in there, I haven’t had time to figure them out.”
She nodded, always up for a task, even with her life in danger. I threw her my pad of paper and a pen and watched her work. As she did, I wondered if I did have it wrong, if it wasn’t Daisy after all.
After a while, she looked up at me. “Does ‘wasn’t innocent hit-and-run’ and ‘failed Glencoe psych eval’ mean anything to you? They’re lumped together, but I’m not sure what goes where.”
I opened my mouth to say no, then froze. Every hair on my neck stood up as a few of the puzzle pieces shifted together. I lowered the gun. “Oh my God,” I said.
She offered me a pained smile. “Are you getting it now?”
“Wait, you know who it is?”
“I have a very strong hunch.”
“Well, well, look who finally figured it out.”
We were sitting in the shadows, but Daisy and I both jumped in surprise as a figure emerged from the hallway, a butcher knife poised in the air like a sword. “Are you surprised?”
I looked straight into my daughter’s eyes and nodded. “Yes, Lily. I am very surprised.”
40
THEN
Lily came into my life when she was only six.
I was petrified of becoming a mother for so many reasons. I didn’t trust any parents, and I most certainly didn’t trust myself to become one. I didn’t know how to tell Tom that I shouldn’t be his first choice to take care of his daughter, but I loved him, which meant loving her too. I was overwhelmed by his faith in me, that he’d want me to step in as a mother figure for his child.
There were so many things I wanted to tell him before we got serious: about my own childhood, about what had happened once my mom had gone to prison and then died by suicide. I’d seen things and blocked things and sometimes scared myself as I mixed up reality with what happened in my head.
The first day I met Lily, I went to Tom’s house. I brought her a stuffed penguin because Tom told me that was her favorite animal. When I arrived, she was on her swing set out back. My heart kicked. She had unruly red curls and was wearing a purple dress. She was barefoot, and as I approached, I could see a smear of dirt across her cheek.
“Hello,” she said. Her eyes were bright and curious. “I found a dead bird. Do you want to see?”
I was shocked by her discovery, but I nodded, forgetting about the stuffed animal in my bag. Tom stood behind us, hands thrust in his pockets, as he observed the two of us. I was nervous about him judging me. I wanted to be what he wanted me to be, and I was afraid if I spoke, I might say the wrong thing. She brought me over to a little play table where a bird lay, one of its wings snapped like a twig. I tried to keep my face passive as she started telling me facts about birds.
“What happened to its wing, I wonder?” I finally asked, my first words to my boyfriend’s daughter. What happened, what happened, what happened. Something in me burned hot as an ember, but I focused on what Lily had to say.
She shrugged her tiny shoulders and squinted into the summer sun. “I don’t know,” was all she said.
I rummaged in my oversize bag for the gift. “I’m Ruby, by the way.”
She scratched her freckled nose. “I know.”
“Close your eyes,” I said. “I have a surprise for you.”
Her little lips quivered as she held out her dirt-streaked palms. I set the penguin softly in her hands and told her to open her eyes.
She bounced up and down and smiled, revealing a missing front tooth. “I love penguins! Daddy, look!” She wagged the stuffed bird back and forth and then set off with imaginary banter between the dead bird and the penguin. I took that as my cue to let her play.
Tom slung an arm around my shoulders as I joined him. “See? A natural,” he said, kissing my temple.
But I wasn’t a natural. I couldn’t fill his dead wife’s shoes, and I certainly didn’t have a role model for what a perfect parent should be. The only good parents I knew were ones I saw on TV, ones I pretended were mine. I’d seen so many horrible things during my own childhood, things I’d buried deep inside. So instead, I pretended. I pretended I’d had a happy childhood; I pretended I was a stable adult; I pretended, now, that I could handle becoming a mother seemingly overnight. But this was all too awesome of a responsibility, I realized, and every part of me wanted to run.
That night, Tom cooked us all dinner, and I struggled to make conversation with Lily. But she was eager to show me her room after and invited me to play Legos. “Not dolls,” she said. “Dolls are for babies.” I couldn’t believe how sure of herself she was, even so young. I knew that trait would carry her far, and I almost told her so, but something stopped me. She’d just met me. She didn’t need life lessons from a stranger. We talked about books and friends, and as I stood up to leave, I noticed the stuffed animal I’d given her on her bed, but its head was missing.
“Lily,” I said, scooping up the black-and-white body. “What happened?”
Her eyes lit up. “I did surgery!” She reached under her bed and produced the stuffed-animal head, the cotton oozing out of its neck like blood. “See?”
“But why?” I asked. “Didn’t you like the penguin?”
She smiled at me with her whole face, the space of her missing tooth an inky block. “I like it like this,” she said, tossing the head up and down in her small palm. “Don’t you?”
I offered her a smile and told her good night, something traveling up my spine like a ghost.
Tom stopped me on the way out, his eyes warm, the skin around them crinkled and tan. “You did great today,” he said, almost as if I’d passed a test. “Maybe we can try a sleepover next?”
I kissed him in response, but inside, I was itching to get back to the safety of my house, away from the little girl who had looked at me with something dark in her eyes.
I recognized that darkness because I’d felt it too . . . I’d been running from it my whole life.
41
NOW
Lily tapped the edge of the butcher knife against her open palm.
Her eyes were wild and unfocused, and I knew immediately she was having an episode.
“What are you doing, Lily? Put down the knife. You’re not a killer.”
“Aren’t I?” Her tone was sharp and biting, her face twisted into a disgusted scowl. “Like mother, like daughter—isn’t that right?”
“You hit a boy by accident. That doesn’t make you a murderer.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
I opened my mouth to protest, then hesitated. Did I believe that? I’d always wanted to assume that she’d hit Andrew by accident. When she’d come to me, she had been hysterical. She’d left Andrew at the scene, and I’d taken her account of the story at face value.
We’d ditched her car and made sure she was nowhere to be found when the news broke that he’d been part of a hit-and-run. I knew that boy had hurt her, but I didn’t know the extent of the circumstances, did I? Instead, I’d just been willing to cover up what she’d done and lock her away for her own protection, just as my mother had. I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, tried not to look at Daisy. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
She sighed and lowered the knife briefly. “I did hit him,” she said. “But at Leonard’s party, he . . .” She swallowed and shook her head, her eyes finally landing on mine. “He tried to rape me. I got away, ran to my car, but he came after me. He was enraged. He was banging on the glass so hard I thought he’d break it. I backed up, and he was just standing there, so I . . . I hit him. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”
My heart broke for her, and even though she was holding a knife, I almost wrapped her in a hug. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
“Because I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe it was an accident.”
Didn’t I know that story all too well.
“What I didn’t know was that afterward, it’s all I could think about. I just kept seeing his face, how shocked he was at that exact moment of impact, the sound his body made under the tires.” She knocked a few tears away. The blade glinted under the artificial light. “When Dad came to get me and I got off my meds again, I just . . . I had that urge. I wanted everyone who’d hurt you or me to pay. And he sensed it. He was finally seeing who I was. And he wrote everything down in that little book.” She motioned to the book on Daisy’s lap.
“What did you do, Lily?” My voice was hushed. Part of me wanted to know, and part of me didn’t.
“When I called Ralph and came back, Cassie had Dad’s book. He’d told her his fears about me, so she confronted me about what I’d done to Andrew. Dad knew it wasn’t an accident, and he knew you covered it up. Cassie said she was going to go to the cops. I couldn’t let her get you into trouble . . . or me. She had a copy of the file about your case, so I took it. But she must have ripped away that mug shot of your mom at the last second to leave as some sort of clue for the detective.” She blinked her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t mean to.”
I studied Lily. She didn’t look remorseful; she looked unhinged. I glanced at the book still clutched in Daisy’s fist. So Tom had figured it out, had seen straight through to what Lily had actually done. Why hadn’t I? “And Ryan?”
She clenched her jaw and sighed. “If he was in the picture, it could never just be the two of us. It should have always just been the two of us, right?” She tightened her grip on the knife, and Daisy flinched on the couch.
I thought about Lily’s genuine shock when she had seen Ryan in the bathtub. How had she done all that alone? When had she become such a good actor?
“Mom, I know how hard you tried to make me better. The meds worked for a while, but the moment I came off them, I felt like myself again. I felt . . .” She glanced up and searched for the perfect word. “Powerful. Did you feel powerful when you killed your father?”
I knew I shouldn’t buy into her tricks, but I played along. “I didn’t kill my father, Lily.”
“Yes, you did!” she shrieked. “It’s all in the details!” She bounced excitedly from foot to foot, manic. Daisy shifted uncomfortably again with Lily at her back, scooting to the edge of the couch to create some distance. “That night at the Murderlings when we did that case. It was your case. I started to look into it after and put it all together. I just couldn’t believe you were the kid of a murderer, and you’d never told me. I found some of the reports. The angle of the knife suggested someone taller than your father. Your mother was much shorter. She could have never overpowered him, and even if she’d snuck up behind him, the angle of the knife would have been tilted up, not down. The angle of your blade was from above, which made me think you climbed up on a chair—am I right?”
My mouth went dry. How could she possibly know that? No one did. Not even Daisy. “Your mother must have really loved you to turn herself in. I should know. You basically did the same thing for me.” Her eyes were full of love and pain. “When Dad found out what I’d done and what you’d done to keep me safe, he started seeing what you’ve seen all these years.” She leaned forward. “Deep down, he knew. He knew what I was.” She rolled her shoulders and sighed. “He brought me home, you know, but you weren’t here. I thought if we could all just talk and finally be honest, then everything would be fine.” She sniffed and looked at her shoes.
I racked my brain to think about where I would have been and then remembered that I’d checked myself into a hotel after our fight. Was that when he’d come back? Or later?
“When we got here, he rushed to his office and hid something in his closet,” she continued. “He went to make some calls, and I found the loose floorboard. I realized he’d been lying to me about my mother for my whole life.” Her eyes teared up again as she looked at me.
“Did you know about Trish?”
“No.” Her voice wobbled as she answered. “I didn’t.”
“Why did you kill your father, Lily?”
“Why?” Her voice ricocheted off the walls. “Because he was horrible! I slit his throat for doing to you what your father did to your mother. We’re the same, you and me. I did it for you.”
I tried to keep my face passive as I calculated her every move. She kept pacing behind Daisy, who was now sitting as still as a statue. The gun twitched in my fingers, but I would not shoot my child. “So where have you been all this time if you killed Tom? And why did you come back if you got away with it?”
“I knew the combination to his safe, so I grabbed all his cash, packed a bag to make it look like he took off on his own. But once I was low on money and found out the body had resurfaced thanks to the forum, I called Ralph. I was tired of being a ghost, tired of sleeping on couches. I don’t know how his body floated to the surface, and I was worried it would be traced back to me. Or you. But then Cassie and Ryan happened, and Beth pissed me off the other night, so . . .”
Something clicked. “You’re @dahmernotjeffrey,” I said. “On the forum.”
“Ding, ding, ding!” She scratched her head with the blade. “You know, I really think Jeffrey was misunderstood. All he wanted was for someone to love him, someone to stay with him. I know just how that feels.”
“I never left you, Lily. I was always there for you.”
She shook her head until it was bobbing obsessively. “I know. You’ve always been there for me, which is why you’re still alive.”
She braced her hands on the couch, the blade coming within inches of Daisy’s throat. “Don’t you see, Mom? I’m just like you. We’re the same.”
“Why did you kill them all the same way?”
She stabbed the knife my way as a few tears fell down her cheeks. “I wanted to make you remember.”
A vision surfaced of my tiny body on a chair, holding a razor. Something so horrific that had, in fact, been so easy. And I had gotten away with it too.
“But why?”
“Because you’re not honest about who you are and what you’ve done, Mom. You saved your mother’s life by slaying a monster, and you hid that? Why? You let Dad abuse you and kept all your emotions inside? Why? Aren’t you stronger than that?”
My heart felt like it was being ripped in two. I’d tried so hard not to be like my mother, to numb myself, to ignore what was going on, and now here I was, setting the same exact example for Lily. I’d failed in every possible way, but I still had a chance to make things right.
