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“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she says. She walks me to the door and wishes me good luck with the birth of my baby and I thank her.
Before I step outside, Vivian lays a hand on mine. It is soft, cool. “I should have spoken up twenty-five years ago but no one asked my opinion,” she says. “So I’m going to say it now. I know it sounds crazy, but that girl killed her sister or knows who did it.”
I almost laugh out loud. If she only knew. Then I go back to my car and start to cry again.
I need to compose myself before I head home for the day so I decide to drive around for a while. There’s something calming about driving the back roads. The gentle twists and turns edged by ditches filled with waving black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne’s lace.
I can’t believe I considered, even for the briefest of moments, running away or killing myself. I could never do that to my baby, to Shaun. But I also never believed that I could murder my best friend. For years I was afraid to fall asleep, scared that Eve would come to me in my dreams. I was afraid to close my eyes and find her staring back at me with those dead, unseeing eyes.
The nightmares came, but not in the way I thought they would. Eve would come to me as her seven-year-old self, all red hair and knobby knees while I continued to age. She’d smile at me, her front tooth missing, her freckles forging a path across her nose, her scarf wound around her neck. In my dreams Eve would hold her hand out to me and though every fiber of my being told me not to take it, I always did. Together we’d run toward the caves and once there we’d stop and peer into the black hole at the mouth of the cave. Come on, Eve would urge. I would shake my head and beg her not to go inside. She pleaded but I refused until she released my hand and went forward without me.
Don’t go, I cried and in desperation I grabbed at her scarf and pulled and pulled. Eve’s eyes bulged and her lips turned blue, her fingers scrabbled at her neck, but still I pulled until Eve dropped to the ground, her red hair spread out against the ground like a cardinal’s wings. Then I would wake up, crying.
I’m not a bad person, at least that’s what I tell myself. If it was just me, if I didn’t have Shaun and the baby, I think I could turn myself in. But I do have them and why blow up the lives of two innocent people? Four, really, if you include my dad and brother. Nola has offered me a way out. All I have to do is frame a not-so-innocent man for murder.
I find myself driving past Sacred Heart High School. I think of what Colin told me about Cam Harper being a softball coach for the girls’ high school team. I pull into the parking area that sits between the soccer field and the softball fields. On one side a horde of teen boys is running footwork drills warming up for a soccer match and on the other the softball team is running laps around the bases.
And there he is, grasping the chain fence that surrounds the field. Cam Harper is wearing a Sacred Heart Stallions T-shirt, khaki shorts and holding a clipboard. He spits off to the side and shouts something at the girls that I can’t hear. I look at the girls, ponytails swinging. They look so young. Just babies really—fourteen, fifteen years old. Just like I was.
I watch as Cam comes around the fence and toward a girl with long dark hair who is standing off on her own, away from the team practicing her swing. Cam talks to the girl who looks like she is trying to adjust her feet based on what he’s saying. Finally, he comes around behind her and begins to move her hands, repositioning her fingers along the shaft of the bat. He places his hands on her hips and thighs, adjusting her stance. His fingers linger too long, slide along her bare legs. The girl seems to lean into his touch. She looks up at him with adoration. Cam Harper definitely has a type. I turn away in disgust. He was back at it. He probably never stopped, just cycled through girls until they reached a certain age and then started all over again.
I know I wasn’t a likely target for someone like Cam. I was the daughter of the police chief for God’s sake. But Cam saw something in me. Something sad and broken and lonely. Somehow he knew I could keep a secret. If only there was someone who could have told me to watch out, to beware. Would I have listened? Probably not.
When I get home Shaun is sprawled out on the living room floor, a large cardboard box, tools and pieces of what could be a baby swing strewn around him. I stand in the doorway and watch him for a minute as he sorts screws into neat little piles. There’s so much I’ve kept from him. So much that is unforgivable. Shaun could never find out about Cam Harper or Eve. He’d never look at me the same way again. “What’s all this?” I ask, stepping into the room.
“Baby swing,” Shaun says, looking up from the direction pamphlet. “This thing can actually detect when a baby starts crying and then adjust its settings to try to get her to stop.”
“Wow,” I say. I lean against the doorjamb. I’m drained of energy.
Shaun looks at me with concern. “You okay?” he asks.
“If something happened to me you’d still take care of the baby wouldn’t you?” I ask thinking of Nola’s warning to me: And what do you think your husband will do once he finds out that the mother of his child is a monster? Do you really think he’d want the baby? Off to foster care she’d go.
Shaun sets down his screwdriver and gets to his feet. “Are you feeling okay, Maggie? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “But if something happened to me and I couldn’t be here to take care of the baby, you’d look out for her, right?”
Shaun stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Of course I would. She’s my baby. Our baby.” He pulls me into an embrace. “What’s going on? Was it the fire? Did you find out who set it? Have you gotten more phone calls?”
“No,” I murmur into his shoulder though it’s so much more than the fire and the calls. It’s the new evidence, it’s Nola’s threats, it’s the knowledge that everything I love could be taken away from me. I could be going to prison. “Just promise me, okay?” I squeeze him tight, tears flooding my eyes. “Just promise me that you’ll always be there for her, no matter what.”
Shaun promises and this makes me feel better, that maybe this will all turn out okay.
I know one thing for sure. Nola isn’t going away but an idea has already begun to form. Just a seed but it’s been planted. Maybe there’s a way I can keep Nick Brady out of this after all. And more important, maybe I can protect my family and even keep myself out of this entire tragic mess.
