“Well, I’m glad you called.”
“Me too. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“About what?”
“Ted Craddick told me you’re visiting all the families.”
“Trying to at least,” he admitted.
“Why?”
“To talk about what happened.”
“Is that all?”
“No. No, it’s not all. I told them what I planned to do.”
“And what are you planning to do?”
“I’m going back down there, Claire. To Elkwood.”
“Why?” The tone of her voice told him she already knew, and just wanted to hear him say it.
“To stop the men who did this from ever doing it again.”
“How do you know it was them and not the doctor? Everybody else seems to think he did it.”
“Did he?”
“No,” Claire said. “No, he helped get me out of there. I’d be dead if not for him.”
She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, there was no emotion in her voice. “I can’t stay long. I’ll try to call back later if I can. We need to find some way to meet.”
“You’re a grown woman, Claire. They can’t keep you a prisoner in that house.”
“Yeah. Tell them that.” Her sigh rumbled over the phone. “When are you going?”
“Friday.”
“Okay.”
“Why did you call, Claire?”
“Because I can help you. I think I have a way of finding out where they are.”
Finch experienced something akin to a jolt of nervous excitement in his guts. Since making his decision to go after the killers, he had dreaded the notion that maybe he would get there and they’d have vanished underground, or hidden themselves away in a place not found on any map. The chance that someone in Elkwood would know where the Merrill family had gone was a slim one. Getting them to tell him even if they did know would be even harder. But it was all he had. That, and whatever Claire was willing to share. But now she was offering him more than he had dared expect.
“How about tonight?” he asked.
“Sure, but how?”
“I’ll call you. You can tell them it’s Ted Craddick, and that he wants to see you to reminisce about his boy. If they object, throw a fit. Accuse them of smothering you with their attention. Say you’re old enough to make your own decisions. Call your sister a bitch or something.”
“You would say that.”
He smiled. “Head for Ted’s house. I’ll be parked outside.”
“Okay. But I gotta go now. Kara’s calling me.”
“Sure. I’ll call later.”
She was gone. Finch stared at the phone in his hand for a long time before hanging it up. Though his hangover was severe, it almost didn’t matter. He was elated. As he headed for the shower, he felt that same nervous excitement course through him like adrenaline, diluted by the slightest undercurrent of fear.
In the bathroom he paused before the mirror and studied his wan, unshaven face. His eyes were like ice chips anchored in place by dark red threads.
We’re coming for you.
He was readying himself for war against a foe he’d never seen, in a place he’d never been.
It would not be the first time.
-26-
Kara lit a cigarette and through the smoke and the rain-speckled windshield, watched her sister cross the street, her progress slowing as she scanned the other cars parked alongside the curb for the occupied one. Finch was parked somewhere among them, Kara knew, so Claire was unlikely to look down the row of vehicles far enough to spot her. She watched, fiery anger demanding she put a stop to this immediately, before any further damage was done. But for the moment, she resisted and dragged deeply on her cigarette—a habit she had managed to keep secret from her mother for ten years until the night they’d brought Claire home. Even then, it had been her mother lighting up first that had triggered her confession.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” she admitted to her mother, aghast. Her mother had shrugged. “Didn’t know you did either.” And they’d smiled weakly and lit up. It had helped eased the tension that had existed between them ever since the night her father had died and Kara, in an inexplicable and uncharacteristic moment of frightening rage, had struck her mother, when it was clear the woman wanted nothing more than to join her husband in death. They hadn’t exactly been friends since, and her mother’s contention that what had happened to Claire in Alabama was their fault, the result of not being caring or vigilant enough with her, hadn’t helped. Throughout their vigils, sitting in antiseptic-smelling waiting rooms, corridors, and starkly furnished hotel rooms waiting to see how much the ordeal had affected Claire, Kara had had to listen silently to her mother’s allocation of blame, the self-flagellation, the expressions of guilt, and it had almost driven her out of her mind. We should have known, her mother had said, though of course there had been no way of knowing. I felt it in my gut. I just knew something had happened to her. A mother knows. Kara had recognized this last for what it was—misremembered maternal instinct fabricated to perpetuate the self-punishment her mother seemed to need, so she’d ignored it and gritted her teeth and tried not to be infected by it.
For Kara’s part, she’d been sick with worry for Claire, but as strained as her relationship with her mother had been, her relationship with Claire had—and still was, she supposed—even more fragile. And for this, she did blame herself. After their father died, their mother had lost something of herself, had grown distant and stayed in that gloomy place which rendered every smile false, every kind word forced. With every passing year, it seemed as if her only goal was to find a state of consciousness that would allow her to get closer to the husband she’d lost, until her body felt compelled to follow. It wasn’t fair, but it was fact, and so Kara had, without being aware she was doing so, adopted the role as guardian to Claire.
I tried, she told herself as she rolled down the window a crack to let the smoke out. Five cars ahead, Claire smiled slightly, tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, and opened a car door, then slid inside and shut it behind her. The cars parked between them blocked Kara’s view of the vehicle, but it didn’t matter. She knew who her sister was meeting here.
That bastard. Again the anger tugged at her, tried to force her hand to the door, but she stayed where she was. Not yet. The longer she thought about it, however, the more uncertainty gained a foothold in her mind. Why was she here? To protect Claire from Finch? It didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense now that she studied her motives more closely. Finch wouldn’t harm Claire, and what harm there was to be done, had been done over two months ago in that backwoods town. Claire had survived a nightmare that had claimed her friends. She was alive, if not altogether recovered, but that would come with time. Why then, was she sitting here, overwhelmed by the urge to rip Claire from the car and smash Finch’s face in for luring her out to meet him? It was too late to protect Claire. The damage had been done, and the measure of compensation didn’t exist that could ever again make her feel safe. So again: Why was she here? The answer when it came, was simple, and heavy with truth.
She was here to keep her from Finch.
He might not hurt her, but nor was he a presence she wanted in her sister’s life. She had taken that one for the team, thank you very much, and there was no valid reason why he should have contact with anyone she cared about ever again. The man she had once, and foolishly, loved with all her heart, had almost destroyed her so driven was he by the compulsion to destroy himself. For him, happiness was an elusive thing, a concept infrequently understood and mistrusted when it came. He had told her stories of his past that had made her skin crawl—the abusive father, the bullying at school, the shyness he had eventually managed to cast off during his unsteady journey through puberty, the hunting trips with his father in later life which had invariably ended in arguments, and in one case, a mutual threat of murder, the alcoholism, the drugs, the fistfights. She had not been surprised when he’d accepted the call to war. He was not a happy man, nor was he even remotely patriotic. Finch was his own country, the government unstable, the population volatile. Often during their six month relationship, she had seen glimpses of the man she wished he could be, the man she suspected Finch himself wished he could be, but they were transient and towards the end, vanished altogether, leaving only the anger and the cruelty behind. She would never deny that a part of her still loved him, but it was a small part, a speck on the great wide-open plain of her hatred. He had hurt her, and he would keep going until he had hurt everyone around him.