Andi
Knowing she’s out there, covered in painting cloth while everyone is looking for her—while my kids sit a few hundred yards away on the living room couch watchingCobra Kaiand eating pretzel sticks—is a surreal and indescribable feeling. This whole day has been like living in hell, waiting for darkness to fall and for the kids to go to bed so I can do something. I need to move her, but I’m trapped right now.
I sat on the porch most of the afternoon, watching, making sure nobody went past me into the back property. I think about George coming to trim the weeds and water the garden on the west side of the house like he does every week, and I imagine him going out to the back shed for supplies, but of course he doesn’t come on Saturdays. I know I’m letting myself get worked up into a state just thinking of any reason anyone might go back there today. Angela sometimes picksfresh flowers when she cleans the house, but that’s on Mondays, and it’s October, so there aren’t any flowers left to pick. I need to be rational. Nobody will go back there before I have a chance to.
I don’t leave the porch, though. I have Rox bring me tea and tell her she can go meet her friends at Blanc’s later if she brings home dinner for Dez, and he’s perfectly happy watching TV all day without being nagged to do something productive. Even though he’s missing his friends’ play, he seems just fine with the trade-off of junk food and video games. I told him it would look insensitive for us to be out to dinner and a play with the rest of them when his stepmom is missing. In reality, maybe it would look better to be there—less guilty—but I am not leaving my post for anything. So I sit, trying to make plans in my head about how the hell I’m going to do this. About what the fuck I’m actually doing.
Then, after a mercifully uneventful day, I get a text from Regan just as dusk is setting in. A photo from the play. I think it’s a joke at first, but of course, she’d never joke about her late husband. She wouldn’t do anything to appear less stable than people already think she is. No one blames her for being that way, they coddle and protect her, actually, but she is aware and tries hard to keep things buttoned up. There’s no way she’d send a joke about this, so I ask herWTF, Regan?and she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, and after I tell her, I hear nothing back. I can only assume it was a stranger who just looked like Jack or it was dim lighting or a fuzzy photo or a combination of all of that. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. It probably really upset her, which I only register after the fact.
But I let it go for now because I’m just a few hours frommaking a move—the most abhorrent, disgraceful move of my life—and it’s taking all my energy and focus to appear even halfway normal in front of the kids. I’ve avoided them most of the day but now it’s after seven and so I take a deep breath and go inside.
Roxie wants to go hang out with Drew at Blanc’s for a while before she brings sandwiches home—the Drew thing is... new, but a relief. The less I’m around the kids today, the less chance of them remembering how odd I was acting at this particular time in history. As hard as I try to hold it together, I know I’m not doing a great job. I give Roxie the keys and she leaves. I notice Dez is not in front of the TV where I expected him to be.
“Dez,” I call up the stairs, but he doesn’t answer. Then I hear the rumble of the automatic garage door lift. Holy shit. Is Carson back early? Why would he be back? I’m so screwed. I whip open the door off the kitchen that leads to the garage and see Dez with his helmet on, pushing his bike toward the driveway.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna ride dirt bikes with Jason,” he says with a confused look.
“No,” I snap.
“You said we could do whatever we want today. I’m not leaving the property.”
“No,” I repeat, even more harshly. “It’s almost dark. Back inside.”
“Mom, for real. He’s already coming. We’re meeting at the shed,” he says, and my heart lurches. I can feel a shooting pain in my head—a cluster headache beginning to form, tapping at my temples like an ice pick at the thought of what he justsaid.The shed.It’s not unusual for them to meet there and take the dirt trail around the woods, but I hadn’t even thought of that as another thing to worry about—another way someone might go out there before I have a chance to hide what I’ve done.
“Call him and tell him you can’t,” I say as calmly as I can possibly muster.
“Just till dinner, come on. So embarrassing. He’s already coming. Why?” he whines, and I try to think of a quick reason he can’t refute.
“Imagine what your dad is going through. If they find something—if he needs us or the police have more questions—I can’t be out in the woods looking for you. You need to stay here,” I say, my hands shaking, my breath shallow. All I can think of is Jason Hillier out in the woods, pulling the paint cloth off Tia’s body. It’s so overwhelming, I sit down on the garage step for a minute so I don’t pass out.
“Fine.” He drops his bike and starts to walk past me.
“Call him,” I say again, and he sighs, rolls his eyes, then pulls out his phone, holding it to his ear for a few moments.
“He’s not answering. Can’t I just—”
“No. Go inside and playHaloor something until Roxie’s back. And text him not to come,” I say, sitting on my trembling hands, waiting for him to stomp inside, and as soon as the door slams, I run.
I run barefoot across the cold, muddy grass over the dirt clearing and into the trees, as fast as I can. Jesus, this kid cannot get close to the shed. She’s right there. I stop and rest my hands on my knees, catching my breath once I reach the shed where they planned to meet. No Jason Hillier in sight, thank God. Okay, okay. Calm down.
I look over to the low wooden fence, which has cans and old beer bottles scattered beneath it and some shattered glass in the dirt from the times we hit the target over the years. And like a nightmare I can’t wake up from, she’s there, still there—a shape under a drop cloth that seems so unreal I can barely wrap my head around the reality of it all. I think about dragging her into the shed but then I think about DNA. I only know what I have seen in shows, but that is enough—they can trace anything.
I stand there, undecided, with my heart pounding, and then I decide to text Dez. He’ll think it’s weird, and I am trying hard to appear like I’m acting normal, but I can’t risk Jason fucking Hillier riding around on his bike and seeing her. I know exactly the path the kids take from the house into the woods, and they would go right past her. Probably they wouldn’t notice a blob of drop cloth. The property is huge. There are a couple sheds, woodpiles, a heap of limp pool floaties next to the shed, some tarps over the firepit. Why would they think twice about what was underneath a cloth? But I can’t take that chance. I have to know before I move a muscle.
Did you tell Jason not to come?I text Dez.
?? yeah. He went home. Why are you texting me?
A flood of relief washes over me, but I don’t respond. He’ll be lost back in a video game in a minute and forget all the rest of it until Roxie arrives with food. I wait a little longer until it’s fully dark and I’m convinced he’s not coming, and then before I walk back up to the house, I look over at where Tia lies on the ground and whisper, again, that I’m so sorry. Andnow the tears are coming and I have to work even harder to walk into that house looking like I have it together.
I sit at the dining table in dim light, nursing a cup of tea and thinking about how I get out of this, about what to do so I don’t get caught and destroy the lives of everyone around me. I hear the muffled sounds of the TV from the living room. The kids have eaten, Dez is asleep on the floor and Roxie is scrolling, mindlessly, on her phone from the sofa. I have to make my move once I know they are both in their rooms, asleep. I can’t make one wrong step.
The boat is the best way. I can use the tarps to wrap her so no DNA is spread around. I’ll wear gloves. Tia’s small, so I could easily drag the weight of her in the tarp down to the rowboat. It’s tied to the dock and we rarely use it—Ray used to use it to fish, but Carson is a devout animal lover and vegetarian who thinks fishing is barbaric, so the boat just sits there mostly unless Dez talks Carson into a trip across the lake for fun.
I could row out to the deepest part and just let her peacefully slip into the water. Jesus, God, I’m a monster. What am I doing? How is this my life? My phone rings and I shriek and hold my heart.
