“But when?”
“I don’t know, Margaret.” I bite down on the inside of my cheek, hard, to keep myself from saying something mean. Something I’ll regret. “I’m sorry, though, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
She looks at me, considering my words, before nodding her head.
“Now let’s go,” I say, flinging back the covers.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, ready to get up, when something stops me: a catch in my throat, fear lodged somewhere deep and out of reach. There are footprints on my carpet—faint, but there—a little dirt trail leading from my bedroom door to the side of my bed. I swallow, my eyes darting over to the window next. To the half acre of grass that butts up against the marsh; a gentle, muddy slope.
I rub my foot against one of the prints, hard, trying to make it disappear.
“Come on,” I say at last, hoping Margaret won’t see. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
CHAPTER FIVE
NOW
The midday news whispers in the background as I shuffle through the house, making my third cup of coffee. I’ve showered and changed since last night, peeling myself from the couch at the first trickle of light through the windows before making my way into the bathroom, turning on the showerhead, and craning my neck, letting the spray pelt my skin.
Then I had closed my eyes, held my breath. Imagined, as I have so many times, what it might feel like to drown.
Exhaustion does strange things to the brain, things that are hard to reason with. Hard to explain. I’ve been thinking a lot about torture ever since I’ve stopped sleeping—and not the overtly violent kind, either, like taking a rusted blade to the skin or a pair of old pliers to an outstretched finger. I’ve been thinking about the painstakingly normal kind. The kind that uses simple necessities like sleep or sustenance to turn us into the worst versions of ourselves: isolation, sensory deprivation, waterboarding.
I understand what it’s like now, how maddening, lying awake in the middle of the night with nothing but your thoughts for company.
Of course, I have gottensomesleep over the past year. I’d be dead if I hadn’t. I’ve found myself nodding off in waiting rooms or taxicabs, blinking my eyes and looking at the clock, realizing that I couldn’t account for the last hour. All of those little microsleeps throughout the day: mere seconds of intense, deep, bewildering unconsciousness that seem to come out of nowhere and evaporate just as fast. Restless catnaps on my couch, waking up every fifteen minutes before dropping off again. Dr. Harris prescribed me sleeping pills in the early days, instructing me to take one every night as the sun went down. I tried them a few times, but the dosage was never strong enough, so I’d started hoarding them. Taking three or four until my eyelids finally started to feel heavy, but even then, I’d pop back awake after a couple of hours, feeling groggy and slow, unable to think. Unable to do anything.
Sometimes, the mind is just stronger than our attempts to override it.
I sit at the kitchen table now, mug between my hands, and stare at the envelope sealed before me. I had snatched it last night from the man with the clipboard with the same embarrassment I imagine hookers might feel when they collect their cash—after all, I had exposed myself to those people for pay.
Maybe not my body, but my soul, and somehow, that feels worse.
I take a sip of coffee now and flip the envelope over, loosening the clasp and sliding its contents out on the table. This is my fee: the full attendee list, complete with names and email addresses of every single person who purchased a ticket. The lead detective on Mason’s case once told me that criminals often show up at public events like press conferences and memorials as a way of reliving the rush, pushing their luck just alittlebit further—or to try and stay informed of the latest breaks in the case. By that logic, I started demanding the attendee list at every conference I’ve spoken at, hoping that someone in the audience might stand out. The organizers always balk when I request it—they claim it’s an invasion of privacy, until I point out theattendees already agreed to the dissemination of their information in the Terms and Agreements.
It was in the fine print. It’s always in the fine print.
In the end, they always agree. After all, a speaker like me could get away with charging thousands of dollars per appearance—a high-profile case, cold but not yet discarded. But instead, all I ask for is this: information. Access to something,anything,that I could potentially use.
My eyes scan the grid of names, listed alphabetically.
Aaron Pierce, Abigail Fisher, Abraham Clark, Adam Shrader.
It’s always the same: searching for them on Facebook, sifting through profiles and trying to determine where they might live. I look for childless women, maybe. Lonely souls with too many cats and too much free time, or maybe men who set off the alarm bells that are somehow hardwired into our brains. The ones with eyes like ice cubes, cold and hard, that raise the little hairs on the backs of our necks, though we can’t even put a finger on why.
Alexander Woodward, Alicia Bryan, Allan Byers, Bailey Deane.
I toggle over to the sex offender registry next, to see if they’re there. Then I highlight their name if anything unusual pops up and move on to the next one, repeating the process all over again.
It’s tedious, mind-numbing work, but with no suspects and no leads, this is where I am right now. This is all that’s left.
Some of these names seem vaguely familiar, and I know I’ve searched them before. After a while, you start running into the same people over and over again. There are regulars at these things, and they always find me, somehow, introducing themselves again or just assuming I should remember them. Expecting me to engage with their questions and their small talk, as if I am nothing more than an author at their book club.
As if I should be asking them how theyfeelabout my story, about the unresolved ending. About their opinions of it all.
It’s the little things that bother me the most: The way their fingers rest gently on my arm, like they’re afraid I might break. Theway their heads cock to the side like curious puppies and how their murmurs always dip a few octaves too low so I have to lean in close, strain to hear. The floral perfume dabbed beneath their ears and their warm, stale breath making my stomach churn.
“I can’t even imagine,” they’d say at last, “the pain you’ve endured.”