And Don't Look Back, page 21
“Clem,” Christina says again, the word filled with wonder, and she crosses the front yard, steps over the broken section of the garden wall, her hands outstretched and reaching for her sister. But she stops short of actually touching her, halting in front of Harlow on the ground. Christina twists, as if remembering that Harlow’s there, and now her outstretched hand reaches toward her, instead.
But Harlow doesn’t take the help. She can’t, because out there in the woods there are human remains, and this is the house that Christina and Clementine and her own mother lived in while they waited for their missing mother to come home.
Oliver’s words come back to her: You know Eve is dead, right? She was probably dead before the cops even heard her name.
“No.” It comes out quiet, Harlow’s voice croaky, and her face warms, embarrassed at how scared she sounds when what she wants is anger, what she wants is for Christina—and Clementine—to know exactly how incandescent she feels right now. “No,” she says again, and it’s better this time, loud and sharp, and Harlow pushes herself farther back from Christina as she gets to her feet. “I don’t want your help, Christina. I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Harlow, I—” Christina shakes her head, her face the picture of worry. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Harlow tries to laugh, but she can’t even force the sound out. “What’s wrong?”
“She saw.”
Clementine speaks, and her voice is so young that it sounds wrong coming out of her mouth, from a full-grown woman. Harlow didn’t hear it before, the sweet tremulous tone of her voice.
She was focused on other things.
“Saw what?” Christina’s saying, and she looks from Harlow to her sister and back, and Harlow isn’t sure if her confusion is real or a performance, but then she looks back at Clementine and says, “What are you doing here? You look terrible, Clem, Jesus. I don’t understand—”
Clementine’s stained dress flutters in the wind, but she stands still, not the slightest indication that she can even feel the cold. “I couldn’t stay away,” she says. “You said we had to stay away, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I had to come home, I wanted to come home—”
“When?” Christina asks. “You told me you were in Europe. I called you and you told me you were there—how long have you been here?”
“A while,” Clementine says, smiling. “Only a little while. All by myself but then she arrived, and you came, and I tried to keep us all safe but she saw, Chrissy. She knows.”
Harlow watches the understanding wash over Christina, and then a flood of different emotions as she turns from Clementine to face her, hands clasped together. “Let me explain,” she says, and the way she skips over any attempt to deny it, doesn’t even try to convince Harlow that what she found out in the woods does not mean what she thinks it does tells her all she needs to know.
She takes a step back, and for the first time she is afraid of Christina. “Don’t,” Harlow says. She pulls in a ragged breath, her chest struggling beneath the weight of the moment.
All of her wondering, coming here to find out what happened to Eve, in some naive hope that it would mean closure on the fear her own mother had lived with—giving up on Eve because it seemed like everyone she spoke to was right and there was nothing more to be found, no leads to follow—convincing herself, instead, that whatever her mom had run from had been separate from Eve’s disappearance—
And Eve has been dead the whole time. Hasn’t she? It’s her out there, isn’t it? Buried in the woods that surround the house her mom grew up in. The house that Harlow has come back to, for her.
What had Cora Kennedy been running from? The guilt, Harlow thinks—no, knows. She knows it now. She has all the proof she needs in Christina’s lack of a denial, in the wild, wide eyes of Clementine and the dirt caked under her fingernails.
Eve is dead, and you three are the ones who killed her.
She doesn’t realize she has said it aloud until Clementine lets out a keening wail, a newborn wolf howling at the moon, and Christina begins to cry. “You don’t understand,” she says. “Please, you have to understand. It didn’t happen like you think.”
“No?” Harlow stares at her. “How did it happen, then?”
BEFORE
Cora can do nothing but stare at her mother, like an apparition in the dark, except Cora knows this is no vision, no image concocted by her own mind.
No. That would be too lucky.
They have been too lucky, Cora knows. She’s always known it, that Eve wouldn’t stay gone forever, that at some point she’d have to come back, because of course she would. She couldn’t stay away and leave them alone in their happiness without her. No, Eve wouldn’t be able to bear that.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” Eve says. “I’ve had a long drive.”
There’s a tightness in Cora’s chest, her lungs collapsing in on themselves so that every breath she takes is too shallow, too tight, not enough oxygen reaching her. Panic attack, she realizes, the old familiar sensations flooding her body. It’s been so long since she’s had one. They used to catch her when the house had been peaceful for too long, when Eve had been playing the doting-mother role for too many consecutive weeks, and Cora could feel the tension building. Eve waiting to make her move, Cora and her sisters on edge, each wanting to not be the one who finally made her break by saying the wrong thing or walking too loudly or looking at her the wrong way.
See, there is the story they spun to the outside world, the one where they were three girls from a normal family living in a normal house, left grieving and bereft after the disappearance of their mother, praying for her return, and appealing to the public, wearing the costume of the ever-hopeful left-behinds who turned away from the theories about death, abduction, murder, and focused only on the belief that she was okay out there, somewhere, their beloved missing mother.
And then there is the truth, Cora thinks. How three girls who had been isolated from the world, raised by a woman who showed her love through punishment, through open-handed slaps and restricting food and belts lashed against their backs, had held their breath one day as that woman failed to return home. Who kept that breath held as time rolled on and she stayed away, and they knew that she had finally had enough and abandoned them because there were clothes missing from her closet, and the rings she’d kept in a dish on her nightstand ever since their father died were gone too. But they didn’t tell the cops that when they reported her gone. They didn’t tell them about all the times over the years when Eve had screamed at them and finished by saying One day I’m going to leave you and let’s see how well you’ll do without me. They couldn’t, Christina said, as they’d all three sat huddled in Cora and Clem’s bedroom, the beds pushed together in one corner. “We can’t tell anyone about what she’s really like,” Christina said. “Because if we’re wrong, and she hasn’t really gone, if she decides to come back a week from now and we’ve gone running to the cops telling them what she does to us—how much worse do you think it’s going to be when she hears that?”
Cora reached to rub at the puckered skin on her back, the scar that sat unsettled and raised against her brown skin. She could imagine only too well what Eve would do to them if she returned home to find her illusion shattered. Gone would be the rustic, homespun family in the woods, and out would come the true tale, of the woman who seemed to hate her daughters and her life and being a mother so much that Cora didn’t even know why she’d done it. And besides—would anyone even believe them? They were kids, and they barely knew anybody in town, only ever going in with Eve when she allowed it, warned to be on their best behavior. Watching Eve turn on her sunny personality for these strangers, laughing and making jokes and flirting with the man outside town hall, the one who Christina whispered was the mayor. No one would believe three liars. That was what Eve had always called them, when she was accusing them of things they hadn’t done, telling Cora to get down on her knees in the shattered remains of the vase she swore she hadn’t knocked over, saying it so many times over and over until Cora started questioning her own mind, had she really watched the vase fall when the wind blew the back door open, or was Eve telling the truth and it was Cora’s elbow that had connected with the china, sending it toppling to smash on the tile? I can’t remember, Cora thought as the remains sliced into her knees, I can’t remember at all.
Now, here, in the present, Cora stares at Eve and wills herself to calm down. Slow breaths, even in and out, in and out. She remembers now. She remembers everything now, the cruelty Eve put them through. The tentative hope they felt as the days passed and she still hadn’t returned, always on the outside wearing their mourning faces and being the perfect girls the cops wanted. Couldn’t let them know how badly they hoped for their searches of the woods to turn up nothing, for the car found left on the side of the road to bear no clues, for no one to report any sighting of their mother. If she was really doing it, Cora knew, if she had truly decided to abandon them, then there wouldn’t be any sightings. No way would Eve risk being seen and someone raising the alarm, forcing her to come home to the daughters she’d abandoned.
And yet, Cora thinks. Here she is. Two full years later and she just shows up.
Two years. Two years in which they, she and Clem and Christina, have kept themselves safe and fed and loved. Two years in which Christina has worked her ass off to keep this roof over their heads, two years during which they have ventured out into the world and learned how to be functioning members of society, done all the kinds of things they were banned from when Eve was there, tasted freedom. Tasted love. Two years, and in that time Cora has come to learn she is not, as Eve always told her, weak and pathetic and stupid.
Cora feels her heart beginning to slow; the shadows at the edges of her vision recede. Only now does she have the chance to take Eve in: the knee-high boots that look like they cost more than Christina makes in a month, and a heavy black coat tied loosely around her waist, and her face healthy, flush, a brightness to her deep blue eyes. Cora takes a breath and folds her arms across her chest, leaning so she fills the doorframe, not so subtly blocking Eve from entering. “Wow,” she says. “Look at you, stranger.”
“Cora,” Eve says, and there it is: the edge in her tone, the warning that is supposed to be enough to scare Cora back into line. It used to be enough—used to scare Cora out of saying anything she was really thinking, until all that came out of her mouth was what she knew Eve wanted to hear.
But now she is not afraid. “Eve,” Cora says back. “I think you should leave.”
From behind her Christina calls out, “Who is it?”
And then Clem, laughing: “Yeah, what’s taking so long?”
Eve’s face lights up at the sound of their voices, and Cora is halfway through turning around, stepping back inside and calling out No, stay where you are, but she’s too late.
Christina and Clem come tumbling out of the living room, hand in hand, and Cora watches in painful slow motion as they see past her, see who is standing at the door, and the nightmare begins.
37
“She left,” Christina says, and turns her face up to the sky. “She left us, and it was the happiest day of our lives.”
Harlow’s mind stutters. Happiest? “I don’t understand,” she says slowly. “How could you be happy that she was gone?”
“Because she isn’t the person you imagine her to be.” Clementine says it in her light, girlish voice, her eyes locked on Harlow. “And you’re lucky, because you miss your mom, now that she’s gone.” A single tear slips down Clementine’s face. “That means you loved her. That means she loved you. But Eve wasn’t like that. She was cruel to us. She kept us locked up out here in this house, hidden away where no one could see what she did to us. Imagine that, Harlow. Imagine your mom starving you, and belittling you, and locking you out in the middle of the night in winter when you’re six years old and wet the bed. Imagine living with that and how you would feel if one day you realized you were free.”
Clementine moves closer as she talks, light footsteps that make hardly any sound. “She’s not what you imagined,” Clem says, “and I’m sorry that she wasn’t. But that’s why we were happy when she disappeared.”
She reaches Harlow, standing right in front of her and like this they are eye to eye, the same height. “That’s why we hated when she came back.”
Harlow recoils. When she came back?
No, no—she still doesn’t understand. And yet she does, even though she’s fighting it—watching her fantasies of the grandmother she never knew be sliced to ribbons by the sharp truth of Christina’s and Clementine’s words, seeing the images she watched behind her eyelids burn out to be replaced with something altogether darker and meaner. Not a quiet, soft life out among nature, a bereaved family clinging together in order to navigate life, taking homeschool lessons out into the meadows and dancing around a house filled with music and light. Instead an ominous silence, a tense atmosphere knotted with pain. She is brought out of her dazed thoughts by the feel of Clementine’s hands on her cheeks, her fingers icy. “You look nothing like her,” Clem whispers, and her breath is hot against Harlow’s face. “Oh, I’m so glad that you look nothing like her.”
Harlow keeps still, almost afraid to pull out of Clementine’s hold, of what reaction that might bring. “When did she come back?” she asks, whispering in response, matching Clementine. “Where had she been? Why did she—”
“It was two years after,” Christina says, and her voice seems to break the spell on Clementine, who lets Harlow go and steps backward. “To the day. Can you believe that? Of course she would time it that way. Do you know what we had spent that day doing? We had to go to a memorial, to stand there with people who had no idea about how evil she really was and listen to town officials talk about her, how we all hoped she would come home safely, how they were all praying for her return. We had to get onstage in front of cameras and reporters and say it ourselves, how much we missed her, how we weren’t giving up on her, how we hoped that wherever she was she was safe and alive and would come back to us one day.”
“And then she did,” Clementine says wonderingly. “Like nothing had even happened. She acted like we were supposed to run to her. I always wonder if she thought that time away was enough for us to forget what she had done to us. Or was she that good at deluding herself, that she thought we’d welcome her home?” Clementine looks off into the distance as she speaks, as if she has forgotten Harlow and Christina are even there. “If she had left us alone, none of it would have happened. If she had just done what we’d asked—”
“You have to understand,” Christina says, cutting Clementine off. She bites her lip and wraps her arms around herself, shivering. “Come on. Let’s go inside—let’s all go inside and get out of the cold—”
“No,” Harlow says. “I want to hear it, now. What did you do to her?”
Christina opens her mouth, but nothing comes this time. She looks across at Clementine.
And Clem presses her hands together as if she’s praying. “It really was an accident,” she says, her big eyes faraway. “Do you believe me?”
BEFORE
—somehow they are back in the living room, but this time Eve is with them and there’s no laughter, none of the lightness they felt only a short while ago. Now it is that old atmosphere Cora hates, that she has tried so hard to forget the feeling of: the sensation of being on a cliff edge, perpetually inches from doom, as Eve’s voice whips at them—
“This is my house, you are my daughters, how dare you think you have any say in this—”
Cora can’t look away from Eve, that tight face, angry patches of red on her cheeks, the terrifyingly familiar storm behind her eyes. She has the sense that she could so easily be swept up in it and drowned, all hope of life lost.
But.
Two years.
Cora finds Christina, standing behind the couch, out of the reach of Eve’s grasp. She looks to Clem, her baby sister, so grown-up now, the one she’s always thought had the best chance of all of them to go out in the world and live a real life, without Eve dragging her back. They always tried to protect Clem, she and Christina. Tried to make sure the brunt of Eve’s anger fell on them, that they received the harshest punishments so Clem could be spared, but they didn’t do a good enough job. Every time they failed, Cora felt it—the guilt of knowing she was letting her little sister down.
She’s not going to let that happen again.
Two years, and in that time Cora has gotten stronger. That’s the mistake Eve has made. She thought she could waltz back in to the same cowering, broken girls she left behind, but they aren’t them anymore. Cora is not afraid anymore.
“It’s not your house,” she says, cutting Eve off in a way she would never have dared before.
Eve’s mouth falls open. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s not your house,” Cora says again, shrugging. “You left—sorry, you went missing, and there were decisions that had to be made. Someone had to be in charge. So I think you’ll find that technically, if you check with the town council, Christina is actually the legal owner of this property. And so when we tell you to get out of our house, we mean it. It’s ours, not yours. And we are not yours anymore either.”
Eve crosses the space between them in two long strides and jabs her finger in Cora’s face. “Watch yourself.”
It’s funny. Up close like this, it only makes the time they’ve been apart more evident. Eve used to tower over Cora, and now Cora is the taller one, looking down at Eve beneath her. So far beneath her.
“You watch it,” Cora says. “You walk out on us and then expect us to let you back in like nothing—”
“I’m your mother, of course I was going to come back, I was always going to come back—”
