And Don't Look Back, page 18
“We never got to go to school,” Christina says, stirring a pot of simmering vegetable stock. “Be grateful.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clem says, sitting up and pointing at Christina, then Cora. “How about you talk to her about actually registering for college classes?”
Christina spins away from the stove, waving a wooden spoon accusatorially in Cora’s direction. “You told me you did already!”
“I did!” Cora makes a face, knowing she’s caught. Ugh, Clem is such a little rat sometimes. “I mean, I started to. I just don’t know what I want to take exactly and there’s a million different—”
“Tonight,” Christina says firmly. “You and me, after dinner. We’re sitting down and we’re getting it done.”
“Christina—”
“Don’t bother! It’s happening, Cora. This is the plan, remember? Clem in school, you in college, me working—you can’t back out now. We’re all getting a life. Remember?” she says again.
Cora presses her lips together like she’s annoyed, but she’s not really. Christina is right: this is the plan they made, when they realized they were really alone and could do whatever they wanted, all the things they weren’t allowed to before. When they realized that without Eve, they were free.
“Fine,” she says to Christina, and then, with a sly glance at Clem: “But just so you know, Clem totally got her belly button pierced two weeks ago.”
Clem’s mouth drops open. “Cora! I hate you!”
“Clementine Kennedy—” Christina, a scandalized expression on her face, heads for Clem. “You little shit! Show me!”
“No!” Clem jumps up and runs past Cora, Christina giving chase, and their infectious laughter fills the house. Cora runs after them in time to see Christina fall onto the couch with Clem on top of her, arms around Clem’s waist as she kicks at the air and squeals. “Okay, mercy! Mercy!” She rolls on the floor and pulls her sweatshirt up to reveal the tiny pink gem sparkling in her navel. “Here. Happy?”
Christina bites her lip as she examines the piercing and shakes her head before looking up at Cora. “Well,” she says with a dramatic heavy sigh. “I guess it’s actually kinda cute.”
Clem looks between her sisters, her nose wrinkled in confusion. “Wait. You’re not mad?”
Cora can’t hold it in any longer, then, and bursts out laughing, Christina joining her a fraction of a second later. “No, she’s not mad,” Cora says between breathless laughs.
“I don’t care!” Christina says. “I never cared! I just wanted to see how long you thought you’d get away with hiding it.”
Clem’s eyes flash as she realizes she’s been tricked. “Oh, that’s it,” she says, scrambling to her feet. “You two are dead—”
And then there is a hollow, hard knock on the front door.
30
Harlow stares, frozen at Vincent—Oliver—whatever the fuck his name is, whoever this fucking man is.
Sloane’s dad. The con-man private investigator who Harlow has just realized poses a threat, who maybe is the reason that Eve vanished, the reason her own mom is dead, is actually Sloane’s deadbeat father.
What the fuck is going on?
Run. Harlow hears the word in her mom’s voice again. You know what to do. Run and don’t look back.
Harlow’s muscles tense, ready to bolt. Who he is and what he wants are not important right now. The voice in her head is right, and she’s certain now. She needs to get out of here, as fast as she can.
“You know what?” Harlow forces a bright tone, making herself look Vincent-Oliver right in the face before turning to Sloane. “I completely forgot I need to go meet my—somebody. We have dinner reservations. I can’t believe I forgot. I’m so stupid! Nice to meet you, Mr. Prescott, and, Sloane, I’ll text you later, okay? Okay, all right, bye!’
It all comes out in one rushed sentence, Harlow tripping over her words and then over her feet in her haste to get out, cursing herself for giving away her nerves. She knows Vincent—Oliver, Oliver—notices, his fake smile turning cold as she backs up and fumbles for the door, pulling it open and stepping back out into the cold. Sloane only looks confused, rattled by the abrupt shift in Harlow’s demeanor. “Wait, what?” Sloane says as Harlow turns now, covering the short distance to her car. “I thought you wanted to talk—Harlow? Harlow!”
Harlow’s in the car now, key in the ignition, but when she turns it, the engine stutters and dies. “Don’t,” she says, smacking her palm on the steering wheel. “Come on, wake up.”
But now Sloane is at her window, rapping her knuckles on the glass. “Harlow,” she says, her voice muted. “Where are you going, weirdo?”
“I have to go,” Harlow says without looking at Sloane, and tries the engine again, getting the same faint whimper of life before nothing.
“Harlow—put the window down,” Sloane says, and because Harlow can’t think of a reason not to, she does as she’s told, rolling the window down so there’s a two-inch gap for Sloane to speak into. “What the fuck? I thought we were going to… talk about things. Did something happen? Did I say something? I know you’re mad because of yesterday but I told you, I can explain. I want to explain.” She makes a face. “Is it because my dad is here? I swear he’s leaving now. He’s not even supposed to come to the house, my mom has this rule—anyway, he’s going so it’s fine, just come back inside and be normal, okay?”
Normal, Harlow thinks. Sloane has no fucking clue. Normal would be getting to explain to your friend why you’re leaving town, not taking off with zero notice. Normal would be a family with run-of-the-mill secrets—who got arrested once, who owes money to the IRS, who had an affair with the next-door neighbor. Normal would be meeting your friend’s dad and not finding out that he’s been pretending to help look for the woman he most likely hurt so long ago.
“I can’t fucking do this,” Harlow says aloud, and she doesn’t mean for it to be a response to Sloane, but it does make Sloane step back, her hands up like she has no idea what Harlow’s deal is but she knows enough to be freaked out. “Sloane—shit, I’m sorry. But I have to go. Okay? I’m sorry, I really am.”
She turns the key in the ignition for the third time, and this time the engine roars to life. Only now does Harlow let herself look at Sloane, on the other side of the glass, golden hair blowing across her confused, beautiful face. For a moment she feels herself weakening, wanting to stay a minute longer, to give Sloane the goodbye she wants.
But then she glances up, and there’s Sloane’s dad framed in the doorway, aglow from the light inside the house, and he raises his hand in some kind of salute.
“Harlow—”
“Goodbye, Sloane.” Harlow reverses out of the driveway, a wide arc onto the rain-slick road, and then she puts it in drive and floors it, leaving Sloane and her liar of a father behind.
* * *
Harlow drives but doesn’t let herself relax. She can’t, won’t, until she’s out of this place for real, the whole town and all the things buried here in the rearview for good. Go home, Harlow thinks as she navigates through a descending fog. Pack up, leave, get out. You can call Christina from the road, say goodbye that way. There is no time for her to linger, she knows, not when the danger is so close. He made it clear, the way he smiled at her, appearing in the last place she would have guessed: You can’t escape me. But she has to, now, and she can’t see Christina, can’t say goodbye, will have to let a shitty phone call be enough. The last call she’ll make before she tosses that SIM card and picks up another. This is how it goes, starting over. You leave everything behind. You lose everyone.
Harlow drives but doesn’t let herself relax, already thinking about the future unspooling in front of her. It’s probably best to go all the way back to where she started this journey, putting that much distance between herself and Vincent Harris. Where did he even get that name? And how did he know that posing as a private investigator would be his way in? How did he know about Marcy, and what they’d talked about?
Harlow drives but doesn’t let herself relax, and when she sees the gray car gaining on her, she knows she was right not to.
She presses harder on the gas, watching the speed creep up, feeling the body of her hastily purchased and barely inspected car shake as the needle ticks to sixty, sixty-five, seventy. Too fast to be going on these winding roads coated in rain, the view ahead partially obscured, and Harlow has no idea what her next move is, but all she knows is running, so here she is, going as fast as she can.
It’s not fast enough: the gray car catches up to her easily, lights flashing bright behind her, and Harlow grips the wheel hard as Vincent presses up close to her. Too fast too fast too fast, she thinks as she takes the next bend and feels the car skidding beneath her, her steady grip on the steering wheel the only thing that keeps her on the road. A thousand sharp slices of memory explode in her mind: the snap of her head against the window when the truck hit them. The burn of the seat belt across her chest. The crunch and smash of glass and metal, a chorus backing to the noises her mom made when the metal bar pierced straight through her.
Harlow’s heart is thrumming, her breathing shallow and raspy, her eyes barely focused on what little of the road she can see. Not again, not again not again, Mom—
The dull thump of bumper to bumper is unmistakable, and Harlow snaps back to the present as she whips forward in her seat. I’m in a replay, she thinks. The same moments over and over again, her life a series of bad choices repeated and repeated, and here she is running without truly knowing why, to a destination as yet unknown. All she can see is her and her mom that night—not just the accident, but before that too: the moment when she got Harlow out of her bed and told her it was time to go, with that fear in her eyes. The two of them on the road like so many times before, and how Harlow had wanted to ask yet again what exactly her mom was so afraid of but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Hadn’t she been tired? Hadn’t she been so angry that this was her life? And yet here she is carrying on the old traditions when she could be the one to change things.
Harlow pulls the wheel hard to the right, setting the car into another spin that ends safely on the side of the road. She sits for a moment, watching as the gray car speeds past before turning back and coming to a stop on the side too.
Enough. She came here to find the truth, didn’t she?
She watches Vincent or Oliver or whoever the fuck he is get out of his car, can feel the burn of his stare even from this distance.
If I’m going to run, let me at least know who it is that I’m running from.
She steps out of the car.
31
He’s at her in seconds, looming large, and Harlow holds herself steady. Pulls up to her full height, pretending she’s not afraid of this man. “I think we need to talk, you and I,” he says. “Don’t you?”
Harlow nods, blinking at him through the rain and fog. “Yeah,” she says loudly. “First things first. You tell me who the fuck you really are.”
He begins to laugh, taking a step back. “You can still call me Vincent,” he says. “If you want.”
“But your name is Oliver Prescott,” Harlow says. “And you’re Sloane’s father.”
“Yes.”
Harlow is breathing heavily, grateful for the extra inches of space between them. “Tell me,” she says. “Tell me what you did to my mom. To my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother?” Oliver looks confused. Oliver: that’s all she can see him as now. Vincent was the disguise, the front that made Harlow give him the benefit of the doubt, and now she knows he’s a liar, she can see through it all. The heavy watch that’s no more than a fake. The slick smile that belongs to a con artist, not a detective. A man more used to breaking the rules than finding those who did the same. “I don’t know what you—” The realization dawns, and revulsion takes over his face. “Jesus Christ, have you lost your mind? Kid, you’re more stupid than I thought.”
“Stupid?” Harlow bares her teeth. “I know my mom left town because she was too scared to stay, and I know my grandmother vanished one day never to be seen again. And then here you come, knowing all about me and my mom, pretending to be someone you’re not so you could—” She pulls her phone out of her pocket. “You killed my grandmother. Did you kill my mom, too? Was it you, did you plan the whole thing, send the truck after us? You want to finish the trifecta, come for me now too? Fine. But I’m not going down easy.” She holds her phone up now, praying he can’t see the tremor in her hand that reveals all her lies. “I have Sloane on the other end of this call. She can hear everything. So when you kill me, there’s going to be a witness. Your daughter is going to be my witness.”
There’s a moment where they do nothing but stare each other down, and Oliver’s eyes are wide and wild, and then he lets out a feral yell and lunges at Harlow.
She’s ready for it and throws herself to the left, feeling his fingers brush right by her hip. She can’t let him see her phone, find out she was bluffing. She had only wanted to scare him. No: she had wanted to scare him and give herself a chance. See whether what he wanted to do to her was worth the risk if there was a witness to it all. Would he still kill me knowing his own daughter could hear the whole thing?
Landing on her knees, a jarring hit to the asphalt that sends a shock wave through her entire still-healing body, Harlow has her answer. She scrambles to her feet, but adrenaline makes her unsteady and she trips, going down again and her phone slipping out of her grasp, landing in the marshy grass at the edge of the road. Harlow is up on her hands and knees to crawl to it when a hand grips her ankle and yanks her back. Her knees go out from under her, and her hands, and her chin hits the ground, asphalt ripping at her skin. The hit turns her dizzy, but she stretches one arm out still, reaching for her phone. But then his hands are on her thighs, her waist, her shoulders, and she finds herself flipped over, back pinned to the cold road with Oliver over her. He is so close she can feel the heat of his breath on her skin, smell the stale cigarette smoke on it.
The whole thing takes less than a minute. Harlow struggles beneath the weight of him, feels the blood dripping hot from her chin. “Do it,” she says through gritted teeth, a wild mix of terror and spite turning her voice harsh and hot. “Kill me like you killed Eve.”
Above her Oliver’s face turns red, and she feels his fingers curl tighter around her arms, digging into bone, layering new bruises over the half-faded marks already decorating her body. “I didn’t kill that woman! I never even met her.”
Harlow stills. She can feel the cold seeping through to her skin, and rain falls right into her eyes, blurring her already unsteady vision. “You’re lying. You’re a liar.”
“I couldn’t give a shit about Eve Kennedy,” Oliver spits. “I only want what I’m owed. What your bitch mother owed me.”
He lets go of Harlow suddenly, and she can feel the blood rushing back to her wrists, hands, the places on her legs where he’d pinned her with his knees. She sits up gingerly as he strides into the grass, scanning the ground. He bends and snatches her phone up, then turns to look at her, disgust evident on his face. “Here,” he says. “Take this useless piece of shit and learn to lie better.”
He throws the phone and it lands at Harlow’s feet, the screen shattered. She’s still catching her breath and trying to forget the feel of his hands on her. “What do you mean?” she says. “What my mom owed you?”
Oliver brushes his hands off. “A long time ago, I did her a favor,” he says, looking down at her. “A very expensive favor. A favor for which she neglected to pay me. And then she skipped town, like that meant I would forget. But I don’t forget people’s debts, Harlow. And just because somebody dies doesn’t mean their debt is cleared, either. It just means it passes to the next person.”
Harlow swallows. “Me.”
“You.” Oliver nods. “So how about it, kid? You ready to pay your mom’s debts?”
I’ve been doing it all my life.
Her rages rises. This, this is the reason she’s had to pretend to be somebody she’s not every day of her life? Hiding and faking identities and moving in the middle of the night all because her mom owed some washed-up piece-of-shit asshole back in her hometown? “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she says, and she starts to laugh. “Really? This is all about money? Oh my god.”
“Ten grand.” Oliver kicks at the ground near Harlow’s hand. “And because I’m nice, I won’t add on the interest. That’s real generous of me, you know.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m paying you,” Harlow says. “You’re out of your mind if you think I have ten grand lying around to give you.” She hopes she is a better liar than he has pinned her for. The fifteen grand from the safety-deposit box is hers. There’s no way she’s going to give almost everything she has left of it—considering what she’s already spent—to this fucker. That’s her escape route, her get-out-of-jail-somewhat-free card.
Oliver crouches now, that dangerous, slippery smile back. “See, I actually don’t care whether you have it or not,” he says. “What matters is that you’re going to get it. One way or another, Harlow, I’m going to get paid.”
“You’ve gone this long without it,” Harlow begins to say, and he’s on her again before she can react, grabbing a fistful of her short hair and pulling her head back so she can’t move.
“Not for lack of trying,” he says, and then eyes her, eerily calm. “You know, you’ve changed since you were a kid, but not so much that I didn’t know it was you the first time I saw you. Helps that you look just like Cora. You always were so alike, always together. Except she’s dead now, so I guess it’s just you, huh, kid?”
You’ve changed since you were a kid.
Always were so alike, always together.
