It’s One of Us, page 21
No. It is not him. Of course it’s a mistake.
It started with night terrors. Peyton had slept alone for years with no problem, but after Scarlett was born, suddenly needed to be in Darby’s bed or he would scream in fright all night, waking the baby, who would join in the chorus.
Then the tantrums began.
Not typical tantrums, not crying because he couldn’t have candy at the checkout tantrums, but full-blown rages that forced her to lock him in his room so he wouldn’t hurt her, or the baby. Frustrated by the lack of targets, he would bang his head on the wall until huge lumps formed on his forehead.
She took him to his pediatrician. To specialists. There were brain scans, MRIs, drugs. So many drugs. He’d cry his little heart out at the kitchen table because he couldn’t feel anything anymore, then tear through the house ripping paintings from the walls and overturning tables if she tried to console him. You’re doing this to me. You hate me. You love her more than you love me.
More drugs. Higher dosages. They zombified him, and he sat, staring blankly at the walls, losing weight because she couldn’t rouse him to eat. He was tall and thin, a wraith with a shock of brown scarecrow hair and dead eyes.
She tried everything. Every drug. Every doctor. With every new specialist, a different diagnosis. Autism. Bipolar. Borderline. ADHD. Early-onset schizophrenia. She changed his diet, eliminating gluten, dairy, soy. Skipped his vaccinations. Anything, everything, she tried it all.
He was eight when he accused her of trying to kill him. He was nine when she caught him in the bathroom, Scarlett in the bathtub merrily splashing away and Peyton with his dead eyes, a knife raised over his head.
She had no choice at that point but to try inpatient treatment. She had to protect Scarlett. And she was so tired. So tired.
The horror of her choice wouldn’t let her rest. She’d chosen her daughter over her son.
Her safety, Darby. You chose to keep her safe. Big difference.
The hospital that specialized in childhood-onset psychological disorders was in Maryland, so she moved them there to be close. And miracle of miracles, it worked.
After the first few months, they experimented by weaning him off the drugs. Her little boy was clear-eyed again. After a year, they let him do an in-home visit. He cuddled with Darby and played dolls with Scarlett and seemed so happy again.
When he was thirteen, after they’d definitively determined the psychotropic drugs he’d been given in the early days of his disease were inducing schizoaffective disorder and got him on a small dose of antidepressants daily with good vitamins and lots of clean food, he returned to the sunny, bright, precocious child he’d always been, and was deemed stable enough to be sent home permanently.
He never blamed her. This he told her the first night after Scarlett had been put to bed, round-eyed that her big brother was home. They’d sat at the table, Darby with a glass of chardonnay, Peyton with chamomile tea, and he told her his heart.
“I don’t blame you. I was terrified of myself. You did exactly the right thing, making sure I was safe, with specialists who could help me. It was beyond us both, Mom. If I’d hurt Scarlett...” He’d closed his eyes and shuddered. “I love you, Mom. Thank you for saving me.”
She thought about locking the bedroom doors that night. But she had to trust him. Had to trust that the doctors were right.
And they were. Peyton outgrew his problems. The darkness was no longer. Now it was only light. The frightening chapter was closed for good.
Or so she’d thought.
Her mind wars, the thoughts tumbling against each other. It’s a mistake. He isn’t the one. This is just a man someone saw and thinks is involved. It’s not him. It’s not. She knows in her heart her son could never do such a thing.
Doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?
Yes. He could never hurt someone like this.
Ah, but he could. He might have if you hadn’t stepped in and put him in that place. If you hadn’t had the strength to get him help.
No. This isn’t happening. He couldn’t be capable of such a thing.
Darby needs to talk to her son, and she needs to do it right now. Before anyone gets their hands on him. She wants to look him in the eye and hear him say the words.
I didn’t do this, Mom. I swear it.
What if he said, Oh God, Mom, I lost control again. I didn’t mean to do it. It was a mistake.
Could she still love her son properly if he admitted his darkness had become a real, tangible thing? That he had raped and strangled a woman Darby herself knew? And, dear God, possibly taken another?
She had found the strength to love him before. She would again.
But it’s not him. It’s not.
Is it?
She hates herself for the tiny seed of doubt, rushing back in the glint of the knife raised over his sister’s unknowing head, in the bathroom of their house, all those years ago.
“Mom?”
Scarlett slinks downstairs, hair in a wild bun on top of her head. She’d alternated between trying to reach Peyton and chewing her nails down to the quick until her body revolted and she had to sleep. Strangely, she hadn’t cried.
Darby hadn’t shown such restraint. The moment Scarlett declared it was all a mistake, that when her brother returned from his camping trip, he would tell them all how silly this was and marched herself off to bed, Darby had broken. She hadn’t cried so hard in her entire life. Nothing, nothing, shattered her, but this did.
You think he did it. You are a terrible mother, to think he could be capable of such a thing. You have failed him, you have failed Scarlett, you have failed yourself. How could you think he’s responsible for this?
How can you think he isn’t?
The noise from the call. The sound of a woman’s voice, a scream of fear echoing through her brain. A video, he claimed. A video.
And now he’s off camping? Without phone access?
Jillian Kemp is missing...could he have taken her? Her baby? Her boy?
No. Just...no. Please, no.
Darby’s thoughts swirl so fast, so strong, a current dragging her downstream, that she barely notices Scarlett has made and poured coffee for them both until her daughter presses a cup into her hands.
“Did you sleep?”
Darby shakes her head.
“Did he answer?”
Another shake.
“Okay. Okay. What do we do? I can’t imagine someone won’t recognize him and call the police. It was a good likeness. Sort of. His eyes were all wrong. Scary wrong.”
“I’m going to Murfreesboro.”
Lightning has struck, at last. Of course she must go to him. Darby is on her feet before the words have left her mouth. “I want to see firsthand that he isn’t there, that’s he’s really off camping. Maybe his roommates will know something. Know how to reach him.”
“I’m coming.”
“I don’t think—”
“I’m coming.” The finality of her daughter’s words hangs in the air between them. They stand nose to nose—no, Darby realizes, she’s actually looking up a touch. Scarlett is suddenly taller than she is. Her daughter touches her cheek, gently, so gently. A caress reserved for mother to daughter, not the other way around. “Brush your hair, brush your teeth, and I’ll drive. You haven’t slept, Mom. It’s too dangerous for you to drive like this, tired and distracted.”
“I—”
“You’re upset, you haven’t slept, and I am driving. Now, go.”
Scarlett has the audacity to give Darby a tiny shove toward the stairs.
The role reversal stings, but Darby heaves in a breath and complies. She is so weary, so very weary. Her mind is being torn asunder, and her daughter is the one taking control.
You’ve taught her how to be a woman, Darby. Be glad that when the crisis came, she stood up for it.
* * *
The drive south is uncomplicated. They are on the road early and going against traffic. The miles fly by, and Darby finds herself standing in the parking lot looking up at the balcony of the apartment she’d secured for Peyton at the beginning of the semester. It is a mile off campus, easy enough for him to ride his bike or walk on nice days, drive on bad ones. They’d both been tickled with the location, and the price. The roommates she could take or leave—they seemed nice enough, but she could tell Peyton wouldn’t be hanging out with them. Not that it mattered. Sharing a kitchen and living room with a couple of people you don’t get on with is a life prerequisite.
Now she wonders if they influenced him somehow. Gave him drugs. Challenged him to drop down into the gutter with them.
It’s their fault. Not his. Not hers.
They climb the two flights in silence. Scarlett gets to the door first, knocks hard. It is 6:15 a.m. These are college students. Chances are they will still be asleep, having rolled home only a few hours earlier.
Kids still did that, right? Get out from under their parents’ thumbs and turned into booze-soaked loons for a few years until they figured out how boring it is waking up feeling like crap all the time?
“Coming,” a girl’s voice trills. The door opens to reveal a willowy girl dressed in yoga clothes, hair up in the same type of messy bun Scarlett is sporting. Like they watched the same Instagram Reel on how to pull it up, fold it over, secure, fluff the front...
“Can I help you?” she asks, chipper as a puppy. Not the hungover slouch Darby was expecting.
“We’re looking for Peyton. Is he here?”
“Peyton? I don’t know anyone named Peyton.”
A young man Darby recognizes joins the girl, looping an arm possessively across her shoulders. He, too, is dressed in workout clothes, his eyes clear, breath minty fresh, beard trimmed, hair twisted into a small bun on top of his head. Darby scolds herself internally for a moment for making assumptions, but Scarlett charges in.
“Peyton Flynn lives here, doesn’t he? Or do we have the wrong apartment?”
“Hi, Mrs. Flynn,” the boy says. “Peyton moved out, a while ago.”
Darby’s heart quite literally stops for a moment, then rages ahead, dumping so much adrenaline into her system she has to take a few quick breaths to control it. It’s the same feeling she gets when they have a code blue at the hospital, everyone charging toward the room in question to try and save a life.
“What do you mean, he moved out? David,” she adds, the boy’s name finally penetrating her senses.
“Yeah, it was pretty uncool of him. He took off in July.”
July? It is September now. Where in the world has her boy been living? “But the lease was signed through December of this year.”
“Yeah, I know. I had to scramble to find another roommate who was taking summer school and needed a place and would stick around through fall semester.”
“Did he tell you where he was moving?”
“No. He came home one night just rocked out of his mind and took off the next day. He looked like he’d been in a fight. I haven’t seen him since. I’ve been keeping his mail. You should probably take it. There’s some stuff from school in there. Hold on.”
Darby can’t meet Scarlett’s eyes. Peyton has been lying to her for months, apparently.
The willowy girl moves deeper into the apartment, away from the drama. Darby can hear whispers. David comes back to the door alone and hands her a brown Whole Foods bag full of mail.
“Did he leave his furniture?” Scarlett asks, and David shakes his head.
“No, he packed everything up into an old van and bounced. Sorry I can’t be more help. Gotta go, we have a class. Willow is a yoga teacher.”
The willowy girl is named Willow. Of course she is.
Darby thinks she might just be losing her mind a bit.
“Thank you,” she says numbly, and follows Scarlett back to the car. Darby leans her arms on the doorframe and her head onto her arms. Scarlett riffles through the bag of mail like a terrier after a rat. She rips open an envelope, thrusts the paper toward Darby’s nose.
“He dropped out of school, Mom. This is confirmation his tuition refund is being processed.” Finally, finally, Scarlett loses it. The tears course down her face. “Why would he lie to us?”
Not to you, Darby thinks. To us. What small comfort that tiny word brings.
“I don’t know, honey,” she says, gathering her weeping daughter in her arms. “I don’t know.”
Scarlett hiccups and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Darby automatically reaches into her pocket for a tissue. Scarlett wipes her face and gives a great, shuddery sigh.
“So now what do we do?” she asks, infuriatingly calm for a girl who’s just had a massive breakdown in an apartment complex parking lot.
“I don’t know. But it’s only a matter of time before someone sees that sketch and recognizes him. Maybe we need to go to the police.”
“Oh my God,” Scarlett mutters. “This isn’t happening. Try him again.”
Darby calls, again. No answer, again.
She stashes her phone in her pocket. “All right. Let’s go back home. We can discuss what we should do when we get there.”
* * *
They are on the outskirts of Nashville when her phone rings. Hope flares—Peyton, please be Peyton—but she doesn’t recognize the number. The car’s system picks up the call, and Darby reaches over and presses the phone button on the steering wheel.
“This is Darby Flynn,” she says.
“Mrs. Flynn? My name’s Detective Osley. I’d like to talk to you about your son.”
32
THE WIFE
Olivia wakes to the sound of beeping, and the heady, unwelcome stench of lilies. It takes her a few moments to piece her world back together.
IV. Bright light. People bustling about. Hospital.
Her throat is sore.
A quick heartbeat of elation. The procedure is over. Her hands go to her stomach, caress the flat planes.
As of this moment, she is officially pregnant. Of course they must wait for the test results, but she can already tell, can already feel them inside her. Her babies. The doctors were thrilled; they had several excellent, healthy embryos to implant, and two possibles that were still being analyzed as she was put under. Here she is, with them inside her.
Amazing, even with the haze of the leftover medication they gave her to help her relax while they did the transfer, how quickly she is attuned to them. They are her, and they are apart, floating in their safe, happy home.
“Hello,” she whispers. “I hope we get to meet one day soon.”
“Oh, finally. You’re awake.” Park takes her hand. “I’ve been so worried.”
“It went well?” she asks. “The babies are okay? How many did they put in?”
He seems to be struggling for composure, and her heart sinks. Did it not work? But she can feel them.
“Honey, you’re confused. We’re not at the clinic. We’re at St. Thomas. You had a car accident. You’ve just come out of surgery.”
But she can feel them... Nothing makes sense.
She struggles to sit up, is forced back by a searing pain in her shoulder. Her arm is strapped to her side. Park gentles her back down as if she’s a spooked horse.
“No, no, you need to stay lying down until the nurse comes.”
The pain clears her head a bit. “Oh God, that hurts. What’s happened?”
“You hit a deer. The antlers impaled you. It’s a miracle, a few inches lower... Your collarbone was broken, badly. The doctors pinned it together, removed some pieces of shattered antler. Do you remember?”
A flash of white, an eerie screech, the impact. The rolling black eye. The blood.
The searing physical pain is replaced with a deeper, primal soreness. Blood, and cramping. Her heart, broken.
“I lost the baby.”
“That was earlier. Not because of the accident.”
“Oh, Park.” Her voice is thick with tears and leftover anesthesia. She is chilled, and begins to shake, the movement jarring her body. Park pulls up the blankets and clings to her good hand.
“You’re going to be in a sling for a while, but they say you can come home this morning. I called your parents. They want to fly home, but they have to get to the next port first. You scared me, honey. When the police called to say you’d been hurt, I rushed here immediately. They let me see you for a minute before they took you to surgery, but you were out cold. You’ve been asleep since. I’m so glad you’re okay. If something worse had happened, I don’t know what I would have done. Oh God, Olivia. I—”
A fuzzy sense fills her. She should be mad. She is mad. But she’s not sure why.
“Shh. I’m all right. I’m okay, Park. Call my folks again and tell them not to come. I can’t be the reason they leave that cruise. I promise, I’m fine.” There is a vase of white lilies on the tray by her hand. She hates lilies. They smell like death to her. “God, can you get rid of those flowers? I’m sorry, the scent is making me nauseated.”
She catches his frown. “I don’t mean to be harsh. It was sweet of you to bring them—”
“I didn’t. I would never bring you lilies. I know how much you despise them.”
“Thank God. I thought you might be punishing me.” She gives him a wan smile, and he smiles back, just as tremulous. “Who are they from? Is there a card?”
“No, no card. I went for a cup of coffee, and they were brought in while I was gone. Let me go donate them to someone else.”
He disappears for a few minutes, giving her time to gather herself. The scent lingers, rot and loam and perfumed air.
An accident. She’s been in an accident.
But she can still feel them inside her.
