I shudder. “The blue wrap. They were in the blue wrap, and they wouldn’t talk to me anymore. They were different, and I was the same.”
“Tell me about the swans, the way the swans circle the stars and the clouds shoot across the sky.”
The words bring a type of calm with them. I can see the swans circling the stars. I don’t know it at first. I blink in the sitting room, realizing I am alone. Derek walks in; his shirt is clean again. He smiles and drops to his knees, taking my hands in his and kissing them. He lifts my face, kissing me softly and muttering against my lips with hot breath, “I found you in the dark, and you became my light.”
He kisses and fades away.
17. ALL THE PRETTIES IN A ROW
Can you hear my voice?” I can, but I cannot respond. There’s a block, and my lips don’t work. Light starts to poke its way through my lashes, beckoning me to come to the surface. “Come back, Jane. Come back to me.” I think my lips crack a smile when I hear his voice.
I blink, trying desperately to let the light in. It blinds and shocks my eyes, but I push past the pain until I see something, a shape in the hazy fog. I blink it away like windshield wipers cleaning the mud off. He stands at the foot of the bed, giving me a look. I cock an eyebrow, moaning and trying to move my head a little. He sighs as if he’s waited all day for this. “You all right?”
I lift my hand to my head, rubbing it. Everything is washing in, hitting me like waves after a storm. He sits on the bed, rubbing my foot as his face makes a story. He’s Rory, my partner. “You had me worried this time; you were gone a long time.”
I nod, finally sitting up a bit. “Lakes surrounding the house in Geneva. She rode her bike all day, but it couldn’t be too far. She was eight, she couldn’t have ridden too far.” He’s gone instantly, leaving me lying next to the blonde girl named Sam Barnes. She’s still, peaceful looking, not at all how she seemed in her head. In there she was scared and unsure. I can feel it still on me, like I too am unsure of things. I wish I could take it away, all her memories—wash us both clean.
I wish I could go inside them and walk away scot-free, taking with me the evil they know so they can go in peace. But I can’t. I take things away with me, things like songs and habits and fears, and sometimes they become mine too.
Rory comes in, grinning at me from ear to ear. “They’ve been dispatched. You’re a fucking genius. We’ll know something soon enough. There are seventeen lakes it could have been, but we cross-referenced with her father’s friends to check on lakes he frequented or ones he avoided. The teams are dispatched.”
“Stop cussing. It just gives Angie a reason to mock you.”
He winks. “She loves me and she knows it, filthy mouth and all. Ya should hear her at home, cussing away like a typical Scot.”
“You people are sick.” I nod, not taking my eyes from Samantha Barnes’s calm face. “It would have been a place he went to. Somewhere he wanted everyone to go to—he is smug.”
“What?”
“The lake. He would have gone there, knowing they were dead and at the bottom of the lake. He would have reveled in it.” I sit up completely, letting my legs fall from the bed.
Rory gives me his arm. “Take it easy, Jane. Ya get that Scotswoman angry and it’s my arse later.”
“You like her angry.” I push off from the bed, falling forward and refusing his arm. I don’t like it when he touches me. I have a hard time looking in his eyes and not seeing the way I think about him when I’m inside them. In their heads it’s safe to look into his eyes and imagine what it must be like to be loved by something that harsh and rugged.
I land on the edge of her bed, staring at her pale lips. I can see them holding a cherry, just like her babysitter taught her to. I wish her eyes would open, and I wish her lips would speak to me. Instead, they will haunt me like the others. Too pale and too calm. No animation or life. She is alone inside that place now. She is still sitting on the floral couch in the house in France, the estate I visited once to make a place for my imaginary grandmother.
That’s how it works. For as much as they let me inside their heads, I let them inside mine.
She is number seven for me. The seventh person I have entered and manipulated. The seventh person I have controlled and convinced to give me all their secrets, at the same time I let her see mine. There’s always a moment when I glance at the glass and wish I could be the doctor behind the glass, observing. Maybe then my head wouldn’t hurt quite as much as it does now, a leftover from the haze we make of each other’s lives. But that moment is fleeting as the pain fades away and the reality of the insane act I have just committed settles in.