Page 71

Rhue

Noelle is very good at telling people exactly what they need to hear. The cops who show up think it looks like a drive-by, though they can’t make it fit the neighborhood. A few other theories are flying around as we wait for them to be finished with us, but none so far-fetched as the truth.

I see Contreras managing the team, but he doesn’t look at me.

He knows what I saw back at the station—he knows I’ll never trust him again.

Eventually he tells someone to take our statements and prints and cut us loose.

The cop who does so tells us to keep our phones on and don’t leave town.

I’m choosing to take the latter as more of a suggestion than an order.

After all’s said and done, I end up in a café, sitting across from Noelle. I’m eating and washing the food down with coffee. I wish it was whiskey, but I’m hoping I’ll be leaving here soon—preferably to rescue Maddie from wherever dad has her holed up.

Noelle’s been playing with her tablet for a while, scowling at it while she taps the screen. She said she’s trying to enhance the photo, but I don’t see how she could work with the picture we were sent. It’s just Maddie tied up against a black background. There’s nothing to show.

Eventually, Noelle sighs. “It’s the best I can do,” she says, sliding the tablet over to me. “Anything about it look familiar?”

I look at the picture and my heart stops.

There’s no fucking way.

Rochester fades behind me in a sea of twinkling lights.

Ahead, darkness spreads, all black and ominous as I try to focus on what I can still do, rather than dwell and suffer over what I cannot.

Madison is alive, that much I knew from the moment I left my father back at the mansion.

She’s alive—and, unless I’m very sorely mistaken, she’s at the cabin.

Our cabin. It feels like a test. A scavenger hunt with the world’s highest stakes.

Goosebumps explode all over my arms as I grip the wheel harder and step on it.

My phone keeps ringing. Laura. Steve. At least two of my father’s assistants.

There’s this whole frenzy unraveling around our family regarding election day next week.

Everybody’s up and texting and calling, the last big push to get the locals out to vote for Julian Echeveria—the goddamn devil in an Italian suit.

I’m disgusted. I’m ashamed of my last name.

My mother must be turning in her grave right about now. The audacity of this man!

It hurts me on so many levels to have this awareness of truth. To understand that my father isn’t just a serial rapist and a filthy opportunist, but that he’s also a murderer. He killed…

“Motherfucker,” I hear myself say with a trembling voice.

He killed my mother. Sibel basically confirmed it.

My phone rings again, and I can’t take it anymore. It’s Laura, for the eighth time. I can’t push her away again. I need her to get back on board, to stop whatever foolishness is driving her to abandon the mission she started in the first place.

“Hey,” I answer, putting the phone on speaker.

“Where the hell are you, Rhue? Dad’s been looking for you since you left.

” Ironically, Laura sounds upset with me.

Me, of all people. I can’t help but roll my eyes while I focus on the road ahead.

The interstate is relatively free at this hour.

The opposite lane is a garbled mess, but the way out of Rochester is a breeze.

People are coming back to the city to begin a new week tomorrow.

“I’m on my way back to Ithaca. Let’s just say it’s been a crazy couple of days.”

“Rhue, what happened? Why won’t you talk to me? How can I help you? Please. I wanna help.”

“You can’t help unless you stop gaslighting yourself and open yourself to the possibility that you were probably right all along.”

There’s a beat of silence, broken only by the nearly-silent whine of her wheelchair in motion.

“This is something we should talk about. Like, away from the house, away from everybody,” she says in a quiet, almost whispered, rush. It almost sounds like a concession. Like maybe she’s actually willing to listen.

“Away from Steve the Manny, too, I hope. You do realize he’s on Dad’s payroll, right?”

“Yeah, him too,” she agrees. “Rhue, I really think you need to listen to me. Come pick me up, let’s talk about this. We’ve always been able to talk before. We’ve always been there for each other, haven’t we?”

“Yes. Which is why you should at least trust that everything I do, I do it so you and every other person I actually love and hold dear are safe and happy.”

“Are you talking about Madison?”

My heart hurts at the mere mention of her name. “Yes.”

“Any news from her, yet?”

“No.” No news from her, exactly. I just happen to know where she is.

Some subtle change in her tone keeps me from saying so, though—but it won’t keep me from speaking my mind.

If he's listening, he can damn well hear what I think. “He did this, you know? Maybe you’re not ready to accept or admit the hard truth, Laura, but you’ll look back on this moment someday and understand why I did the things I’m about to do. ”

I overtake a couple pick-up trucks on the interstate and follow the usual signs to Ithaca.

It’s a two-hour drive, but with my current speed, I doubt it will take me that long.

The engine roars as I switch lanes, trying to shorten the distance between here and Madison.

Laura’s stubborn ingenuity isn’t helping, either.

“What are you about to do? No! No, don’t tell me. Just—call me when you’re safe, okay?”

I will need hard evidence for Laura. Indisputable proof of our father’s crimes.

Anything less, and she might reject it. I don’t know what he said to her or did to her to make her flip like this, but it wouldn’t take much.

With our mother dead, all she has as a person to follow and to look up to, all she has as a parent, is our father. And he’s a fucking beast.

There are many questions I’ve yet to find the answers to.

Many things that happened which I have yet to fully understand—the rash of apparent suicide attempts in my family, for one.

First Mom, then Laura—now Laura switching from accuser to protector overnight for no apparent reason.

It’s like they’re all possessed or something, like the people I know and love disappeared, replaced by people who look and sound the same, but their thoughts are all backwards.

“Rhue, are you still there?” Laura reminds me that I’ve yet to hang up.

“Yeah, sorry. Okay, yeah, I’ll call you back. Bye.”

I glance at Maddie’s phone. There are no new messages from the unknown sender, and nothing on my phone except campaign-related garbage.

I never signed up for any of it, but I suppose Laura put my number on every possible mailing list anyway.

My mind is a tangled mess, my synapses frantically firing every which way.

It’s hard to get that image of Sibel at her dinner table out of my mind.

The sound of her dying. The window breaking with that second bullet.

It’s even worse when my subconscious somehow substitutes Sibel’s face with Madison’s within that wretched scene, bringing my worst fear to life in a twisted fashion.

By the time I reach the woods, my skin feels cold and slick.

It’s the fear oozing through every pore.

I am not prepared for any of this. No one taught me how to deal with a kidnapping.

Until a few weeks back, I wasn’t even aware how rotten my family truly is—my father, in particular.

I guess, in a way, we all have our faults.

Mom allowed his behavior to go on for far too long, even while she treated the broken minds of women who had been victimized by people like him.

Laura is so soft and malleable, all it takes is a day or two to change her whole outlook, all of her convictions—and at this point, I can’t even blame her age.

Then me—just as flip-floppy as Laura, just as passionate about the righteousness of my position whether I’m heads or tails.

At least Julian has always been consistent in his evil.

Again, Sibel pops into my mind.

At the dinner table. Bleeding from the gaping hole in her throat.

With Madison’s face.

“Jesus fucking… Argh!”

I have to pull over. It’s a local road I’m on, a two-lane strip of black asphalt that snakes along the forest’s south side.

There’s barely anyone else out here. I’m shaking as I get out and start taking deep and surprisingly loud breaths.

I don’t even realize that I’m crying until the tears are running down my cheeks. Fuck.

The minutes go by. Heavy little things that roll over, crushing me with their weight.

I don’t remember crying since Mom’s funeral.

This––this feels much worse because I can almost feel Madison slipping through my fingers.

It’s the despair that’s getting to me. With Mom, I had no say in her demise.

She was gone, and that was it. But with Madison, I have a chance to stop it, a chance to save her.

And yet I am so scared of failure that I can’t stop envisioning the worst-case scenario. Because that’s what these visions of Sibel with Madison’s face are. Simple manifestations of a possible outcome that I dread more than anything.

I need some time to pull myself together. Cars drive by. The occasional truck.

Every time, the draft of their sudden passing-by smacks me in the face, cold and unforgiving. It’s evening, now. It’s dark, save for the distant streetlamps and the stars twinkling overhead. It’s so quiet and nice out here. Cold and lonely, too, but quiet.

I can’t stay here.