Present
Darkness surrounds me, filling every corner of the room. I haven’t opened the heavy blinds for days. The day my mother tried to do it, I snapped at her, and she didn’t do it again.
I want to hide from the evils of the world. As long as I’m inside my room, I feel safe.
It’s not true, though. I’m as unsafe in my childhood room as I am out there.
It’s been two weeks, and I still can’t get myself out of bed, even though the covers are starting to suffocate me. With each day that passes, the room seems to shrink in size, and it becomes harder and harder to leave it.
I’ve been depressed before, but this is the lowest I have ever felt. Something as small as brushing my teeth or taking a shower is so overwhelming that I need more time to prepare myself mentally before I can do it.
My mother has tried to talk me out of my depression, but what I feel is hard to put into words. She doesn’t really get it. She’s not the kind of person who lets herself experience grief or sadness for long.
After my father died, she locked herself in her room for three days. I heard her cry. I heard her throw things. And then she came out and never wanted to talk about him. I knew she was still grieving. I knew she was hurting, but she was so much stronger than I was. She ended up comforting me more than I comforted her.
I’m still trying to process everything that happened, still trying to digest both the information my mother gave me and what I heard from Alex and his mother. I keep replaying the day in the cabin over and over inside my mind. And I cannot forget the faces of those girls I saw in the photos that Alex kept as souvenirs.
My husband is a rapist and a murderer. I blame myself for not seeing it. Maybe if I had, I would have been able to stop it. But how could I have known that he had inherited the seed of evil from his mother?
The brief time I emerged from my fog was to thank Aunt Mayleen. If it weren’t for her, I would probably be dead. I’m still shaken by the fact that I came so close to death, to becoming another victim of the Watson family.
Sometimes my mother comes to my room and sits next to me on the bed. She talks to me, even when I don’t respond, and answers the questions I’d ask if I had the strength to speak.
Three days ago, she revealed to me that she was at the LaChris Hotel as well. Like Lavinia, she had seen Alex and his lawyer interviewed in front of the hotel and had figured he was staying there, so she pretended she was a housekeeper and bugged the rooms Alex and his mother were staying in. That’s how she found out that we were going to the ranch.
Aunt Mayleen came up with the idea of working as a housekeeper at the ranch to be close to me. She also wanted to search for evidence that would prove Alex was guilty. She simply made a cold call, pretending she heard they were looking for a maid. At first, Marcy said no, but before they hung up the phone, she agreed to interview her.
The night I returned to the ranch, Aunt Mayleen saw me leave my room. She followed me to the cabin. When Alex’s car showed up, she hid under the teacher’s desk, where she recorded our conversations. After shooting Marcy, she took the keys to Mr. Watson’s old pickup truck and drove me away from the ranch. On her way to Dallery, she called the cops and told them everything.
The police came to talk to me the day after I arrived in Dallery. They wanted to know if I knew Alex planned to rape and kill the girls, if I suspected anything. I told them I didn’t, that I was in the dark like everybody else. They came by again the next day to see if I had remembered something that might help. I had nothing for them. In the end, they stopped asking questions and told me to call if anything came up.
Sometimes I wish Alex and Marcy didn’t survive that night. After all the pain they caused, they do not deserve to live. On the other hand, maybe death is not punishment enough. After they’re gone, they’ll feel nothing. Having their freedom taken away would make them suffer that much more.
In the days after the escape from the ranch, I didn’t watch TV or read the newspapers, but even though I pretended not to listen, sometimes I heard the whispers between my mother and Aunt Mayleen. As far as I’m aware, Alex is still in the hospital. Since Marcy’s injury was not fatal, she was discharged after a week.
I turn to my side when I hear my mother and Aunt Mayleen outside my door, debating whether or not to come in.
“We need to get her out of that depression,” Aunt Mayleen suggests. “She doesn’t know how to do it herself.”
“But how can we do that?” my mother asks. “We can’t force her.”
“Maybe we should. She’s been in there for too long. We need to bring her back to life. I’m going in.”
Usually, when they enter my room, they open the door softly, like they’re about to enter a lion’s den. Not today. Aunt Mayleen is on a mission.
Before I can stop her, she opens the blinds. Bright light pours into the room. After too many days of no sunshine, my eyes have become accustomed to dim lighting. I blink and rub them awake, then take in the dusty rose satin wallpaper my father had helped me put up as a thirteenth birthday gift.
Ignoring my mom and Aunt Mayleen, I watch small particles of dust twirling around each other in the air as if celebrating the light.
The brightness gives me a headache, so I pull the covers over my head.
“No, darling.” My mother appears at my bedside. “It’s time for you to start living your life.”
For someone who took three days to grieve her husband properly, two weeks must feel like a lifetime.
I groan and pull the covers tighter around my body. “I don’t have a life.”
Even if I leave the room, I don’t know how to start picking up the broken pieces of my life, or how to put them back together. Alex has been a part of my life for fifteen years. Now it will be just me. It’s a thought I need to get used to. I don’t see the rush.
