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“Why is that?”
“Because I left her there.”
“All alone,” Marge says, not bothering to phrase it like a question. It’s a fact. One Charlie has tried to grapple with for the past two months.
“I regret it,” she says, her voice breaking. “I regret it so much. And if I could go back and change it, I would.”
“But you can’t,” Marge says. “It happened, and you have to live with that. This is your reality now.”
Charlie understands that. So much so that she wishes she could escape into the movies this instant. She longs for the soothing distraction of a film—even one that’s just in her mind. If she could, she’d summon one, taking her away from her current state of uncertainty, fear, and, she suspects very shortly, pain. But that’s not how they work. Even if the projector in her mind does click on, it won’t change the reality that Marge intends to hurt her.
The movies can’t save her now.
“What did you tell my granddaughter before you left her all alone?” Marge says.
Charlie swallows hard, stalling. She doesn’t want to say the words aloud. Not because she fears what Marge will do to her when she does—although Charlie fears that plenty. She wants to staysilent because she doesn’t want to hear them again. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her last words to her best friend.
“Go on,” Marge says. “Tell me.”
“The police already told you what I said.”
“I want to hear it from you. I want to hear the exact words you said to Maddy.”
“I—” Charlie swallows again, her throat tight and her mouth dry. “I told her to fuck off.”
For a long time, Marge says nothing. There’s just silence, thick in the darkness of the lobby. The only things Charlie hears are the pliers opening and closing.
Click.
Pause.
Click.
“For that,” Marge finally says, “I should rip your tongue out. But then you wouldn’t be able to tell me about the man in the alley. What did he look like?”
Charlie twists in the chair. “Please don’t do this.”
“Answer the question, sweetie,” Marge says, holding the pliers open now, the space between the tips exactly the size of one of Charlie’s back teeth. “It’ll be easier for both of us if you do.”
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” Charlie says.
“But yousawhim.”
“I saw a figment of my imagination. It was different than the real thing.”
“Or maybe it was the same.”
“It wasn’t,” Charlie says. “He looked like something out of a movie. He wore a hat.”
Marge leans in closer. “What kind?”
“A fedora.”
“And his clothes?”
Charlie closes her eyes, silently begging her memory to conjure what she saw that night. Not the movie in her mind, but the realityshe failed to comprehend. Nothing comes to her. All she sees is the same dark figure that’s haunted her for two months.
“I didn’t see them.”