Casey held her breath as she listened, and soon the car doors opened, and slammed shut. One. Two. The car eased out of the driveway, the lights flickering against the house and tree. It drove away.
“They’re gone, Casey,” Eric said quietly. “If you’re out there.”
He waited for several seconds, then closed the door with a quiet snick.
Casey dropped her head to her knees. They were gone now. But when would they be coming back?
It took them about forty minutes. The car pulled into the drive, and Casey heard one door open, and footsteps up the stairs. She waited. Whoever it was must have rung the doorbell and received no response, because he banged on the door. It opened.
“What?” Eric sounded sleepy, and irritated.
“Just checking in,” Reardon said. “To be sure she hasn’t come by.”
“She’s not here.” Was that pain in his voice? “Come in and look.”
“Oh, I don’t need to do that,” Reardon said. “I trust you.”
Eric laughed.
“Sorry,” Reardon said. “Go back to sleep.”
The door slammed, and Casey listened to Reardon’s footsteps, the car door opening and closing. In a few seconds, they were gone.
She waited an hour this time, and then five minutes more, before crab-walking down the roof. She made her way to the back of the house, where a first-story layer jutted out over the yard. Easing herself over the side, shingles scraping her stomach, she let herself down, dropping into the grass and rolling. She lay motionless for several seconds, waiting for movement in the surrounding yards, gritting her teeth and holding her shoulder. When she saw nothing, she crept to the back door. She was relieved to find the door unlocked.
She entered what looked to be a mudroom and closed the door quietly behind her. Tiptoeing her way through the space and into the kitchen, she went through the house, checking each room on the first floor. Eric was not there.
She climbed the stairs, sticking to the edges, where they were less likely to creak, and paused on the landing. Three rooms. All with wide open doors.
Eric was in the first one. He lay, fully clothed, diagonally across his bed, his mouth open, his face relaxed in sleep. She went in and placed her hand over his mouth. His eyes flew open, and he sat up, pushing her hand away.
“My God, Casey, where have you been?”
She sat on the bed, next to him, feeling the warmth of his sleep on the sheets. “I’m sorry. I just…I can’t get into this kind of thing with the police.”
“This kind of thing? Exactly what does that mean?”
She blanched.
“I’m sorry,” Eric said. “I’m sorry. It was self-defense. I know that. They know that.”
“Do they?”
He looked at her for a long moment before climbing out of the bed and going to the window, where he put a hand on the wall and peered out into the yard. He looked fragile in the moonlight seeping through the window. “You do realize you killed him.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“I didn’t think—”
“I didn’t mean to, Eric. He was just so strong, and coming at me so hard, and so fast.”
He turned back toward her. “I know. I told the police.”
“But Eric, you weren’t there.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was.” The look in his eyes brooked no argument.
“I can’t ask you to lie for me.”
“You didn’t. You haven’t. But I know what happened.”
“Do you?” She remembered his wild eyes, staring at her across the sidewalk. Across the bodies.
He was silent for a few moments. “I thought so.”
He came back to the bed and sat next to her. He took her hand, studying her fingers. She left her hand in his, feeling nothing from him but a childlike fascination as he ran his own fingers along hers.
“Leila knows who you are,” Eric said.
Casey froze.
“She wouldn’t let it be. She looked and looked until she found you.”
Casey pulled her hand from his. “Did she?”
“She used your first name, assuming that, at least, was true. She got the librarian to tell her the name on your driver’s license, and the issuing state.”
Oh, Stacy, you dumb man.
Eric turned toward her. “And now I know. I know, Casey Maldonado.”
Casey wrapped her arms around her stomach, hugging herself. She stood. “I have to go.”
“No!” He jumped up and got between Casey and the doorway. “You can’t run away just because I know.”
“Oh, really? And what exactly is it you know, Eric?”
“About your husband. Your…your son.”
Casey hiccupped. “You don’t…you can’t know.”
“You can’t keep running away, Casey. You’ve got to face it.”
She jabbed a finger in his chest, and he winced, holding his hands up to defend himself. “I have to face it? Do you even understand what it is I have to face? ”
“I thought—”
“They’re dead, Eric. Dead. They died in front of my eyes. Exploded into a million pieces, while I was thrown clear. Twenty feet away, into a clump of cattails. I should have been in there with them. I should have…”
She feinted toward the door, but he caught her elbow and spun her back, crushing her to him, his arms around her, pinning her own arms against her body. She fought at first, squirming, kicking, trying to take his feet out from under him, but he held fast, not allowing her leverage.
“Let me go!” she cried into his chest. “Let me go! ”
Eric lifted her off the ground and carried her, still fighting, to the bed, where he fell onto it, holding her beneath him, his height and weight enough to keep her captive, his legs on top of hers, not giving her a chance to get into a position to fight back. She screamed and cried, picturing Reuben, Omar, Ricky, her mother…Lillian and Rosemary, the woman with the bad hair…Eric, and Ellen…even the dead man she’d left on the sidewalk.
Eventually she shuddered, and stopped, her breaths coming in gasps, her face, and Eric’s, wet from tears.
Eric kept his weight on top of her, watching her face, until he dropped his forehead gently onto hers. “Can I let you go now?”
“No. No, don’t let me go.”
So he held her there, his warmth and body trapping her beneath him as she shivered and shook, until she finally, with one last shudder, tapped him on the hip with a finger, one of the few body parts she could move. “Eric.”
“Yes?”
“I can’t breathe.”
He lifted himself onto his elbows and rolled off of her, leaving her flat and deflated. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her, smoothing her tear- and blood-sticky hair from her face. “I’m sorry, Casey.”
“Yeah.” She closed her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.” She could hear him breathing, could hear her own breaths matching his. She rolled onto her side, away from him, hugging her sore wrist to her chest.
“I can’t do it,” Eric said.
She opened her eyes. “Do what?”
“Leave Ellen. I can’t let her disappear. I can’t let her death be what they want us to think. Chief Reardon never even questioned it. Just believed what the forensic people said.”
She rolled back toward him. “We don’t have to let her disappear, Eric.”
“But what can we do? We have nothing, except—”
“The DVD,” they said together.
“I can’t go back to get it from your mom,” Casey said. “There are…I can’t go back.”
He nodded, not asking her to explain. “Well, then, it’s good you don’t have to.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope. Because I’ve got it right here. I brought it home after that night at their house.”
“You did?” Casey sat up.
“Yes. Come on.”
“What about the cops? They’ll probably be back. They’ll see the light downstairs.”
He stopped. “Okay. Wait here.”
He was back in less than a minute, sliding the DVD into a player on top of his dresser. “This TV isn’t nearly as good as Rosemary and Lillian’s, but it should do.”
They fast-forwarded through Eric’s visit and the minutes of Yvonne typing, until they got to Todd’s arrival. They watched his entrance and exit, and fast-forwarded again, through the remaining office footage of Yvonne’s office work, all the way to the blue screen.