Laurie turned back to Allyson. “I should go…”
“You could stay,” Allyson said. “Come to the house, if you want.”
“Probably better if I go,” Laurie said. “Right now I’m a basket case.” She smiled. “Think we all agree on that! Like your mother said, I should ‘reset.’ Start fresh next time.”
“Soon,” Allyson said. “Promise.”
“Promise,” Laurie said, squeezing Allyson’s hand between hers.
Allyson darted in for a quick kiss on Laurie’s cheek, then turned away, curled fist pressed to her trembling lips, and hurried to her mother. Laurie fought the urge to run after her, to try to comfort her, but realized the girl needed her mother for that. Her mother had always been in her life. Laurie had been too much of a stranger. While the family bonds were there, they felt frayed and tenuous.
Laurie had to work on herself. Even after watching him board that transport bus and ostensibly roll out of her life for good, she couldn’t let it go, the underlying threat of him. While he lived, even in solitary in a supermax facility, she couldn’t truly be free of the fear of him coming back to finish what he had started forty years ago. In her darkest moments she wondered if she could be free even after he died. Would the memory of that night haunt her until her own death, sabotaging her relationships for the rest of her days?
As Ray and Cameron approached, Cameron reached out to give Allyson her belongings, but she hurried past him into her mother’s arms.
Ray walked up to Laurie beside her pickup. Clearly he had something on his mind—and she probably deserved whatever he was about to say. She decided to preempt his attack with a mea culpa. “Yes, Ray,” she said. “I messed up. Won’t happen again. But it probably will. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying to be… better.”
Ray stared at her.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked, quirking a smile.
“Are you safe to drive?”
Cameron stood next to him.
“Cameron,” Laurie said. “Pleasure to meet you, however briefly. I hope we’ll have time to get to know each other—under better circumstances.”
“Sure,” Cameron said, nodding. “No problem.”
After that he drifted back a step or two, casually looking side to side, removing himself from the conversation.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Ray persisted.
“Of course I’m okay to drive,” Laurie said.
“You’ve had a few.”
“Not all my problems are alcohol-related,” Laurie said. “Today was more… more than I expected. But I’m better now—getting better.”
“That girl loves you, you know,” Ray said.
Laurie nodded. A fresh lump in her throat prevented her from speaking.
“Don’t let her down.”
Laurie inferred the unspoken “too” at the end of his statement. She appreciated the kindness of the omitted accusation. An olive branch of sorts, but a small one, because she also read the warning in his statement.
With the strength of conviction, she said, “I won’t.”
Ray waited while she climbed into the pickup and stood with Cameron as she pulled away from the curb and slipped into the flow of traffic. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she glanced in the rearview mirror, watching them recede from view. Without her in their orbit, they were normal. That’s what everyone wanted. A normal life. Something she could never have.
She never intended to disappoint her family. But she prioritized their lives and safety over having a normal existence. Laurie had raised Karen to face—to survive—the Boogeyman, an enemy Karen, fortunately, had never known and, because of that, she never understood Laurie’s extreme behavior. She only witnessed one side in the battle of wills: the preparation to battle an implacable evil.
“You can’t kill the Boogeyman.”
Laurie had never forgotten the frightened words of Tommy Doyle, her young babysitting charge from that dreadful night. If there was no end to the Boogeyman, how could Laurie lower her guard? As the “one that got away” from a madman, from evil, she would never be safe. Instead of hiding in fear, she had chosen to prepare herself for when the day came—not if, but when. And because of who she was, Karen and Allyson were at risk as well. She knew the danger they faced even if it was beyond their comprehension.
In Karen’s case, ignorance hadn’t been bliss. Instead, she’d been a child frightened by her own mother and her bizarre behavior. They’d taken Karen away from Laurie, and Karen’s life had improved because of it. So, Karen kept Allyson away from Laurie. And despite her best intentions, Laurie’s actions and behavior continued to reinforce her daughter’s belief that Allyson was better off without her.
Allyson, in typical teenage rebellion, fought against restrictions, which brought her closer to Laurie. But another incident or two like the aborted dinner celebration tonight and Laurie might just succeed in pushing away another generation of the Strode family.
No matter how much she tortured herself debating “what if” and “what could have been,” the inescapable truth for Laurie was that even knowing what she knew now, she would not have done anything differently. She believed, even to this day, that her difficult path had prepared her for what was to come. If he died and she was wrong, she might have regrets, but her conviction remained strong.
She hadn’t seen the last of him…
Karen hugged her daughter until she regained some control of her emotions following her grandmother’s outburst in Bellini’s and the near miss outside the restaurant. When Allyson calmed, Karen leaned back, holding her daughter by the shoulders, not letting go yet.
Ray and Cameron, who had talked briefly with Laurie, stepped away from the pickup truck as it pulled away from the curb.
“You needed to see this,” Karen said to Allyson. “You need to know. She’s a missionary one minute and a mercenary the next. I was raised to trust no one.” Discussing her childhood brought vivid images to Karen’s mind. Suddenly, she’s eight years old again, perched in a deer blind, her mother beside her as she sights down the barrel of a rifle and pulls the trigger—BLAM!
“Our house was a bunker. I lived on lockdown my entire childhood. We’d hide in the basement every time the paranoia set in. I still have nightmares about that room.” Karen paused, trying to shake off a visceral memory of the dank basement, the stale air, her mother’s anxious whispering in her ear, planting the seeds for a lifetime of nightmares. She’s eight again, mopping the basement floor when she looks up and sees her mother in silhouette above the staircase, staring down at her.
“She didn’t let me go to school. Instead she trained me to shoot and fight…” Ten-year-old Karen punches and kicks a homemade punching bag hanging from a tree as her mother shouts, “Again! Again!” Never a tire swing or hammock in their backyard. Only the heavy bag and various objects for target practice.
“Until social services came and took me away.” Young Karen, twelve years old now, sits in the back of a county sedan, tall enough to look out the window and see her mother on the porch, receding in the distance. At that moment, Karen feels completely alone in the world. Less than a year after that traumatic separation, Karen began to experience the freedom of a mostly normal childhood, absent of the claustrophobia and paranoia that ruled her mother’s world. “I’ve had to unlearn the neurosis she planted in my head.”
Ray approached mother and daughter, with Cameron trailing behind, carrying Allyson’s belongings. She took her coat from him and slipped it on to ward off the chill in the air. Looking from Allyson to Karen, Ray said, “I’ll never understand your mother.”