There was more, so I waited.
“Luke struggled even more after his father went away,” she said. “The older he got, I’ve told you, the worse he was. We went from school to school, from doctor to doctor. He’d been diagnosed and dosed for several different disorders. Nothing ever helped. You know the drill; you’ve lived it. I was literally at the end of my rope when I got a call from Langdon Hewes.”
She leaned back a little, looked up at the ceiling. Then she wiped the tears from her face.
“He said he’d met your father when you were boarding at the school in Florida. They’d maintained a correspondence, he said, and he’d been keeping an eye on you at Sacred Heart College-unbeknownst to you, of course. He told me what you’d done, how you were hiding from the events of your past. He asked me to bring Luke to Fieldcrest. Langdon thought it could help Luke.”
“But Luke is beyond helping,” I said.
And Rachel nodded. “It wasn’t long, I don’t think, before Langdon was in his thrall. Luke sniffed out his obsession with you almost immediately.”
It was true that Langdon had an ongoing correspondence with my father. Detective Ferrigno had told me as much. But he’d said it seemed fairly benign. He said the notes from my father simply asked about my progress, expressed his hope that Langdon would look out for me and for Luke, if he could. It was a normal correspondence between a concerned parent and his child’s college adviser, someone who is a recognized expert in cases like Luke’s and mine.
Except that it wasn’t normal at all, was it? Langdon had used my father’s disconnection from Luke and me to worm his way into our lives. He had sought to bring us together, for reasons I didn’t quite understand. Maybe he did, in some twisted way, think he was trying to help us. But only so far as it served his desire to be “there for me,” to get me to “let him in”-what he said he wanted in the woods. And Rachel, probably also acting out of desperation, had let him use us all. But I didn’t feel the need to say any of this. I was just there to listen.
“Over the years, Luke had grown to hate you,” said Rachel. “He blamed you for your father going to jail. Of course, I tried to shield him from all of it. But as he grew older, he found things out on his own.
“We thought-Langdon and I-if he could get to know you, we could work through that. I thought it would be good for both of you to get to know each other. I thought it might help him and you. Hence the ad and Langdon’s putting it in your hands.”
She made it all sound so innocent and benign. It was anything but that. Langdon never had Luke’s best interest or mine at heart, just the fulfillment of his own desires. Why didn’t she seem to realize that, even now? And was she underplaying her part in all of this? She couldn’t have thought any of this was good or right or healthy.
“It was Langdon’s idea,” I said. Of course, it was. He was the one pulling the strings-at first.
“I don’t know how quickly Luke figured it all out. I didn’t realize how complicated things had gotten. They were running a whole other agenda that I had nothing to do with. Luke was raging all the time; I had no idea why. I was locking him in his room every night just because I had no idea what he would do after I fell asleep. It wasn’t until that night that I realized he’d been sneaking out.”
“And what about Beck? Why did they take her?” I asked because it was something I’d been puzzling over. I was really just thinking aloud, not imagining she had an answer. But what she said was surprisingly insightful.
“I think Luke would have done anything to hurt you. And Langdon just saw her as a threat to his relationship with you. Ultimately, neither one of them saw her even as a person. For Langdon, she was an obstacle. For Luke, she was just a game piece.”
With Langdon in a coma and Luke supposedly catatonic, the details of who was using who and why were elusive. I asked her what she thought.
“I honestly just don’t know,” she said. She was the embodiment of exhaustion. Just looking at her made me want to lie down and go to sleep for a thousand years.
I couldn’t help but think about my father. Two sons, by two different women, both with mental illness. My mother and Rachel were physically and energetically so different. What was it about each of them that drew him?
I remembered what she had told me about the mental illness in her family-her father’s battles with depression, her brother’s suicide.
Was it the damage in each of these women that attracted him? My father was a man who liked to solve a problem, to fix the damaged things. He liked to feel needed. Maybe Rachel and my mother exuded a kind of scent that attracted him. They needed his stability, and he needed their chaos. Yin and yang.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked her. “Why are you telling me this now?”
So many years had passed, and my father was so close to the lethal injection. Rachel was just about to get away with murder. I always knew that part of my father’s money would go to the other child. He’d told me himself long ago. It was something that I had pushed away. I didn’t want to know about them. Rachel was around the corner from a big payday.
She sagged across the table, dropped her head in her hand.
“Because I’m tired, Lane. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want your father to die because of something for which I am ultimately responsible. I can’t lie my way through another day. I can’t help Luke. I thought I could, that’s why I kept this secret so long. But I see now. This incident has proven to me that he has grown beyond me. One day he’ll be bigger than me. One day, when it’s the most advantageous for him, he’ll kill me.”
I didn’t say anything. It was true. Part of me wanted to comfort her, but I held myself back. There was a hard knock on the door then.
“Hollows PD,” came a booming voice. “Open up.”
She looked up. “You already knew,” she said. “You called them.”
“Are you ready to tell your truth?” I asked.
She gave a faint nod, had the pale, trembling look of fear. She grabbed my hand. This time I held hers tight, gave her a comforting squeeze. I know how soul wrenching it is to face the truth, the past, everything you’ve sought to hide. It’s vertigo, standing on the edge and looking over, imagining the fall, the impact. But at first, it feels like flying.
“Will you take care of him, Lane?”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”
33
Langdon Hewes died. It was written in the headlines of The Hollows Journal: HEWES DIES FROM ANEURYSM. The words, so stark on the page, so devoid of all the layers of incident that led to them, made me angry. I folded the paper and tossed it to the floor, where it lay soft and harmless in the morning sunlight.
And even though I have no reason to wonder, I do. Langdon’s injuries were extensive, but the last I’d heard he was showing some improvement-some movement, some speech. Then, suddenly, he died. Some would say that his death was a blessing. That’s what people say when something has gone on too long for their comfort. It was a blessing. He’s at peace now. It’s for the best. Of course, none of us knows if that’s really true. What awaits Langdon on the other side? Who can say?
It is September now, autumn in The Hollows. It’s still warm outside, and the days still seem long and lazy. Beck and I are back at school. She’s redoing her last semester. And I am beginning my master’s work in abnormal child psychology in the graduate program at Sacred Heart, working at Fieldcrest as part of my study. My mother wanted me to help people, and I want that, too.
It’s the work you were born to do, Beck always quips. Psycho.
It had been an Indian summer day like this when Elizabeth went missing. I still think about her and how her life was cut short. Her case was never reopened, and the ruling of accidental death still stands. Once it was understood that I had nothing to do with Beck’s disappearance, there was less reason to take a fresh look at the events of that night. Another loss for the world, another beautiful girl gone. But was she a victim of fate or a victim of violence? I have tried to remember that night. Did we fight? Did she somehow know about me? Did she run away from me that night and not her boyfriend, as some witnesses claim? I pray that my dreams of her crying are just that, and not memories. I do know I never would have hurt her, not on purpose. Which doesn’t make anyone feel better, does it? Death by accident is as cruel as murder would have been, just as merciless.