All the questions she’d had about Laura might be answered by the time Andy got back into the Reliant.
The thought made her knees rubbery when she stepped out of the car. Talking had never been her forte. Amoebas didn’t have mouths. She threw her new messenger bag over her shoulder. She checked the contents to give her brain something else to concentrate on as she walked toward the house. There was some cash in there, the laptop, Laura’s make-up bag with the burner phone, hand lotion, eye drops, lip gloss—just enough to make her feel like a human woman again.
Andy searched the windows of the house. All of the lights were off inside, at least from what she could see. Maybe Paula wasn’t home. Andy had only guessed by the online schedule. The Prius could belong to a tenant. Or Mike could’ve changed out his truck.
The thought sent a shiver down her spine as she navigated the path to the front door. Leggy petunias draped over wooden planters. Dead patches in the otherwise neatly trimmed yard showed where the Texas sun had burned the ground. Andy glanced behind her as she climbed the porch stairs. She felt furtive, but wasn’t sure whether or not the feeling was justified.
I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to scare the shit out of you.
Maybe that’s why Mike had kissed Andy. He knew that threats had not worked against Laura, so he’d figured he would do something awful to Andy and use that for leverage.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Andy had been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the front door had opened.
Paula Kunde gripped an aluminum baseball bat between her hands. She was wearing dark sunglasses. A scarf was tied around her neck. “Hello?” She waited, the bat still reared back like she was ready to swing it. “What do you want, girl? Speak up.”
Andy had practiced this in the car, but the sight of the baseball bat had erased her mind. All she could get out was a stuttered, “I-I-I—”
“Jesus Christ.” Paula finally lowered the bat and leaned it inside the doorframe. She looked like her faculty photo, but older and much angrier. “Are you one of my students? Is this about a grade?” Her voice was scratchy as a cactus. “Trigger warning, dumbass, I’m not going to change your grade, so you can dry your snowflake tears all the way back to community college.”
“I—” Andy tried again. “I’m not—”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Paula tugged at the scarf around her neck. It was silk, too hot for the weather, and didn’t match her shorts and sleeveless shirt. She looked down her long nose at Andy. “Unless you’re going to talk, get your ass—”
“No!” Andy panicked when she started to shut the door. “I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
Andy stared at her. She felt her mouth trying to form words. The scarf. The glasses. The scratchy voice. The bat by the door. “About you getting suffocated. With a bag. A plastic bag.”
Paula’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“Your neck.” Andy touched her own neck. “You’re wearing the scarf to hide the scratch marks and your eyes probably have—”
Paula took off her sunglasses. “What about them?”
Andy tried not to gawk. One of the woman’s eyes was milky white. The other was streaked with red as if she had been crying, or strangled, or both.
Paula asked, “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“To talk—my mother. I mean, do you know her? My mother?”
“Who’s your mother?”
Good question.
Paula watched a car drive past her house. “Are you going to say something or stand there like a little fish with your mouth gaping open?”
Andy felt her resolve start to evaporate. She had to think of something. She couldn’t give up now. Suddenly, she remembered a game they used to play in drama, an improv exercise called Yes, And... You had to accept the other person’s statement and build on it in order to keep the conversation going.
She said, “Yes, and I’m confused because I’ve recently found out some things about my mother that I don’t understand.”
“I’m not going to be part of your bildungsroman. Now cheese it or I’ll call the police.”
“Yes.” Andy almost screamed. “I mean, yes, call the police. And then they’ll come.”
“That’s kind of the point of calling the police.”