Page 183 of Forever Dead

Selena laughed again, louder this time. Her head punished her for it, but she kept going.

"I see it now," she said. "She did something to create embarrassment. And you, on the run-up to Halloween… You killed, wearing a mask to make you feel strong. In control. Something to do with the mask… What was it?"

Foss took one step toward her.

“The mask. It’s there because you can’t stand being yourself.”

"She… She made me wear one… While she beat me." He put on a high-pitched shriek of a voice. "Gerald! You want to go and dress up! Well, here, have a mask. Keep it on!" He shook his head. "She made me wear it for four days in my home. The sweat. The smell. She beat me if I tried to take it off. I was only seven years old!"

In some ways she felt sorry for Gerald. But Selena knew she was close. Close to getting what she needed to survive. “Was she embarrassed by you? Did she tell you that you’d never be good enough?”

Foss moved closer.

Selena shifted her good leg beneath her. “Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t because of your mother and what she did. You wear other people’s skin because your mother was right. Gerald Foss isn’t enough. You have to hide what you really are. ”

“Stop talking, you bitch!”

“The mask isn’t to scare people. It’s hiding the scared little boy you still are!”

Foss lunged.

Selena drove her good foot sideways into his knee.

The joint buckled and Foss crashed into the worktable. A metal tray hit the floor, scattering forceps and clamps. Selena rolled onto her left side and pushed herself up, using the table to take weight off her right knee.

Her pistol lay at the far edge.

She reached across, but Foss caught her right wrist and twisted. His grip pulled her against the steel despite the leg she had struck.

The rowing photograph returned to her: Foss holding a trophy at a regatta the previous summer. She had registered retirement and gray hair while overlooking what the photograph showed.

Selena drove her left elbow into the lower part of the mask. His grip loosened.

Her fingers closed around the pistol, but he struck her forearm before she could lift it. The gun fell, skidded across the tiles and vanished beneath the cabinet.

Foss shoved her against the table. Her phone slipped from her jacket and struck the floor beside it.

Selena caught the table’s edge. The cane lay near the doorway, a few steps away. She dragged her right leg after her, snatched up the cane and swung as Foss reached for her.

The shaft struck his shoulder. He recoiled, and she limped into the hall.

Behind her, metal scraped across the laboratory floor.

She moved toward the front of the house as quickly as the knee allowed. The study doorway passed on her right. The front door was thirty feet away, then twenty.

Foss said her name behind her.

“Selena.”

She did not turn.

Ten feet.

The hallway went dark.

Selena stopped. Every light in the front of the house had gone out, and a switch clicked somewhere behind her.

She reached for the wall and kept moving. The porch lamp showed dimly around the edges of the front door.