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“I didn’t hurt you out there.” There was the slightest note of regret and guilt in his voice. If he thought he could rationalize now and make her believe it, too... he really had lost his mind past the point of return. The thought made her even more afraid.
“You scared the shit out of me,” she said, her tone bitter. “I get it. You’re all powerful. You can stop lording it over me. You know I’ll do whatever you want to stay alive.”
He started the truck and eased it down the dirt road. “I want everything, Ronnie. Not just your body. I want your soul, your every thought and desire. I want it all. By the time I’m finished, you’ll give it to me.”
“Or you’ll drown me?”
He pulled the remote out and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t want to use this on you.”
She shut her mouth and looked down at her hands. If he didn’t want to use it, it was a simple matter of just not using it, but she didn’t dare give that thought voice.
They drove in silence for a while and he finally said, “You’re so like her. Justbeher, please. Be Trish.” His voice cracked.
This time the glimpse of vulnerability didn’t make him seem as crazy and unhinged, just sad. So terribly sad. And broken. She wondered if he fully comprehended how wrong his actions were, or if he was just so desperate to bring back a ghost that he couldn’t see anything else but Trish. Veronica was a casualty in his quest to work magic to transform her into another woman, and he didn’t seem capable of understanding what he was doing.
Sympathy and hate warred within her. She wanted to escape him, but at the same time, it hurt her that when he looked at her, he saw another woman sitting there. What would it be like for him to look at her and seeher?To wantherinstead of a passing specter? Instead of the phantom that sat in the sixth chair at the table for their morning and afternoon meals.
“Would you have taken me if I didn’t look like her?”
“No,” he said. There was a conviction in his voice that she couldn’t deny. At the very least, he believed it.
The admission only made her more confused. In a sense hehadrescued her. In her thoughts of escape and freedom, she’d tried not to think about what she’d be going back to. If he hadn’t taken her where would she be by now? In a soup kitchen line? Sleeping under a bridge if she didn’t make it to the shelter in time, or if they were too full? What about when winter came? The only thing that had put her in a warm bed with food in her belly was her resemblance to Luke’s former lover. He couldn’t have victimized her otherwise, but he wouldn’t have saved her.
They stopped at a four-way stop sign and he turned to her, his eyes so dark and intense she wanted to find a way to hide under the seat or just disappear for a few minutes.
“I’m not kidding, Veronica. You willbeher. Or else. You’ll make me forget you aren’t her. I’m not going back to before I found you. You will love me and obey me and submit to me, and you’ll do it with that look of adoration Trish used to give me or I’ll never stop making you regret wearing her face.” His voice had risen as he became more intense. “Am I getting through, here?”
“Y-yes, Sir. I’ll be her. I swear. I’ll do whatever you want.”Just don’t be crazy. Please don’t be crazy. I need something safe to hold onto.
A Sheriff’s deputy pulled up at one of the other stop signs and for a moment both Luke and Veronica froze. The wheels spun in her head. If she could get the cop’s attention as they passed ...
“Do it and you might not survive to tell your story. How much of this do you think you can take?” She looked over to see the remote in his hand. The look in his eyes said that whatever brief moments of guilt or regret he felt, he’d do whatever he had to do. “Eyes on me.”
Hesitantly, she looked at him. Then Luke stepped on the gas and lurched past the police officer. When they’d passed, she turned in her seat to see the cop go in the opposite direction down the road they’d been on—toward the lake. She wondered if the lake was his destination. Maybe he’d just gotten off work for the day and wanted to fish or swim. What if their timing had been just a little different? What if he’d discovered them in the water?
“Do you think he’s going to the lake?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What if he’d caught you while I was underwater? Would you have killed me even though it wasn’t my fault?”
His only answer was silence. Finally he said, “Going out was a bad idea.”
EIGHT
They didn’t speak about the trip again. But when he took her to the playroom that night, the only thing in her head was his demand that she be Trish. She wondered if the afternoon had sobered Luke up, if it had brought home how dangerous the game he was playing with his freedom really was—how easily it could all go wrong. How easily he could be caught. For now, his community thought he was a law-abiding citizen, but how close would he come to unraveling that fiction?
She was finished fighting him. If being his former lover was the only way to stay safe, that’s what she’d do. She’d hide in plain sight.
As soon as they arrived home, he disappeared out to the barns, doing God only knew what. Without a list of chores, she went to the living room and pulled out the box of videos. She watched them until he came back inside hours later. When the door clanged in the kitchen, she hurriedly took out the tape and put the box back where it was, darting to the couch to look through a five-year-old magazine on the coffee table.
With the videos, she’d been studying her role. Could she look at Luke with that same look of desperate longing? Could she convincingly fake it? If she’d been the one he’d met first, could it have been real? If things had happened very differently, of course. There was a lot to find appealing in Luke Granger. He was good-looking, hard-working, had his own business, smart, stable—with those isolated psychological exceptions—sexy, kinky. Yes, if she’d been first, she would have looked at him with that helpless devotion. And she would have meant it.
What she had instead was a twisted shadow, and Veronica found herself jealous of a dead woman.
“What are you thinking about?” Luke asked.
“N-nothing, Sir.”
