Page 44 of The Intruder

“He abandoned my mother before I was even born,” she says casually. “He’s a terrible person.”

“If you never met him, how do you know he’s a terrible person?”

“Well, I know somebody who abandoned their baby daughter is a terrible person, right?”

“Maybe he had a good reason?”

“No.” Her voice is suddenly seething with hatred. “He did not have a good reason. Some people are just rotten, you know?”

Looking at the bruises on her arm, I can’t argue with that. Anybody who would do that to a child is just rotten. And the man who left his daughter to that fate is likely also rotten.

“But I believe,” she goes on, “that bad people always get what’s coming to them.”

I secure the bandage on her arm and step away to examine my handiwork. It looks good.

Eleanor turns to look at me. “Do you believe that, Casey?”

“Believe what?”

Her blue eyes bore into me. “Do you believe that bad people get what’s coming to them?”

I don’t like the way she is looking at me. This was not a hypothetical question. She showed up on my property, covered in blood, with a knife in her hand and a map leading to my house. Part of me is frightened that my answer to this question could determine my fate.

“I believe,” I finally say, “that everything happens as it should.”

She doesn’t blink. “Do you?”

“I do.”

“Then,” she says, “you’re very stupid.”

With those words, she pushes past me, out of the bathroom. She walks back to the bedroom and closes the door behind her, shutting me out.

But I’ve still got her notebook.

32

BEFORE

ELLA

I’m on my way to my room when I notice the smell.

I just got home from school, and my mother will be home within the hour. She won’t leave me alone for the whole evening here, but she doesn’t think I can do that much damage in less than an hour. I have managed, on occasion, to fill up a garbage bag worth of stuff and dump it down the block where she can’t get it back. But even that is a stretch—I have to work quickly. I used to try to sneak garbage out in my backpack and throw it away at school, but some kid saw me doing it and told everyone, and now I won’t risk it.

I wasn’t planning to take out any garbage tonight though. I have homework to do. Everything takes twice as long when I’m trying to focus while working on my lumpy bed.

But it’s even harder to focus now because of the smell.

I have been noticing it a little bit the last few weeks. I mean, I’m going to be honest—my whole house smells bad. The cigarette smell is the predominant one downstairs, but anywhere you go in my house, there’s an unpleasant odor. It’s musty and a little sour. That’s why I’m so paranoid about people at school thinking that I smell, although Anton now swears he made it up and that he thinks I smell good.

Anyway, even though I noticed it the last few weeks, it’s worse today. Like, much worse. It’s really bad in the hallway as I’m walking to the bathroom, but I can even smell it in my room. It’s at the point where I’m breathing through my mouth to stop from gagging.

Finally, I give up studying to investigate.

The smell is strongest in the hallway and seems weaker when I go into the bathroom, so I know it’s not coming from my room or the bathroom. And although there are a lot of papers stacked in the hallway, I don’t see anything that looks like it could smell. That only leaves one other place:

My mother’s bedroom.