Page 55 of Stay Away from Him

Melissa spotted Amelia sitting on a bench at the edge of the lake, with an asphalt trail sitting between her and the water’s edge.

It took her a moment more to find Rhiannon, wandering through some tall grasses at the place where the waves lapped at the dirt, head bowed, hands laid together and drawn up to her waist as though she held an invisible bouquet of flowers.

“I see them,” Melissa whispered to Bradley as she let him out of the car, then, as he craned his neck from the parking lot, pointed them out through the trees. He darted off, and Melissa followed at a slow walk, smiling.

“Amelia!” Bradley called as he reached the park bench. Melissa smiled as Amelia made a show of being startled, jumping where she sat, putting a hand to her chest.

“Bradley!” she said breathlessly. “You little rascal. You scared me!”

Bradley giggled, and Melissa shared a smirk with Amelia as she came through the trees to the trail. She loved how her son had taken to Amelia, and she struggled, now, to imagine that she’d ever thought of the other woman as a rival, an enemy.

It had been six months since that terrible night in the woods, winter come and gone again, and so much had happened since then.

The biggest things—Thomas and Kendall in prison, the media firestorm following the revelations of Rose’s journal and Amelia’s recordings, combined with the inescapable physical evidence against father and daughter—seemed minor in retrospect, next to the small thing that had become more important than Melissa could have ever imagined: the friendship that had grown between her and Amelia in the wake of their trauma, and the little found family that had grown between the four survivors.

Melissa and Bradley, Amelia and Rhiannon.

They’d saved each other’s lives in turn, helped each other excavate the truths they’d feared, suspected, and known but couldn’t bring themselves to say.

And now they were bound together, forever.

Rhiannon was living with Amelia now—and together, both had moved from the north to the south suburbs of the Twin Cities, wanting to get away from the house and the neighborhood where Rhiannon’s traumas had occurred.

The girl was a legal adult now, didn’t require a guardian as a matter of the law, but all the same, Amelia was talking of adopting her, making Rhiannon her daughter.

Melissa, meanwhile, had moved too, gotten a new apartment, a new accounting job.

Anything to get away from the woods where she and her son had nearly died, the sight of which still gave Bradley fits of breathless panic.

With Amelia’s help and referrals, she’d also found a good child therapist to assist Bradley in processing everything that had happened—and another for Melissa too, a kind-eyed younger woman who’d spent the past few months gently guiding Melissa through why she’d been so drawn to Thomas in spite of her misgivings, while assuring her at every step that none of this was her fault.

Melissa and Amelia also met once a week themselves, with Bradley and Rhiannon, who’d developed their own sweet relationship: Rhiannon protecting Bradley while Bradley practically worshipped Rhiannon, almost like siblings.

“Where’s Rhiannon?” Bradley asked Amelia.

She pointed toward the lake, and Bradley scampered off to meet her, Rhiannon’s gaze rising and a gentle smile breaking across her face.

Melissa watched as Bradley ran into the arms of the girl, eighteen now, warmth spreading through her chest, even against the still-crisp April air.

The winter had been long and grueling, but spring was breaking through, light streaming from above as life pressed up through the ground, turning brown to green.

Melissa basked in the moment, then turned to Amelia. “Hey,” she said.

Amelia nodded. “Hey.”

The two women moved toward each other, shared a brief hug.

Melissa closed her eyes and accepted Amelia’s kiss on one cheek, then the other—a greeting that had embarrassed Melissa months earlier, but that had come to comfort her now, a sign of Amelia’s fundamental warmth and kindness beneath her sharp, intellectual exterior.

There were surfaces and depths to people, Melissa had learned.

Sometimes a kind exterior hid something dangerous under the surface—but it could also be the other way around, the person who seemed intimidating or aloof turning out to be the one who saved your life.

“It’s good to see you,” Amelia said, something fierce and urgent in her voice. Melissa understood. They had a lot to talk about.

Bradley and Rhiannon’s footsteps rustled in the underbrush, and then they came onto the path, walking hand in hand toward a small playground a couple hundred yards distant.

“Shall we follow?” Melissa asked.

Amelia came next to her and looped her arm through Melissa’s. Leaned against her, the warmth of their two bodies combining even through their coats.

“Slowly,” Amelia said.

They walked a few steps as, ahead, the kids reached the playground, Bradley running to a set of swings, Rhiannon slowing behind him. A wind came off the small lake, chilling Melissa, then died down.

“So,” she began after a silence. “You saw him.”

Amelia sucked in a breath and seemed to steel herself, her arm going taut in Melissa’s.

“I did.”

“And?”

Amelia turned to face her. “Do you really want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Melissa admitted. Then, after thinking about it: “Yes.”

Amelia sighed and was quiet for a few steps. Melissa knew she was thinking.

“He wanted me to tell him he was a good man,” Amelia said at last. “And I think…”

She trailed off, and Melissa waited. “What?” she prodded, when the end to her friend’s thought was slow to come.

“I think that’s what he wanted all along,” Amelia said. “When he first came to me, after Rose went missing. And again later, when he saw you at that party.”

Melissa looked ahead, thinking of that moment—the moment when she’d seen him across the room, the moment when their eyes had met, the moment when she’d thought herself plucked out of all the women in the world.

Chosen to be pursued, to be desired, to be loved.

Knowing everything she knew now, what could that moment have possibly meant to him ?

To Thomas? What could he have been thinking?

“I still don’t understand it.”

“I know,” Amelia said, then raised her eyes to the sky, squinted into the sun.

“But I’ve been thinking about it. And I think that there was something inside of Thomas—something dark and cruel that he didn’t like to talk about.

Something he hid away deep inside and built a whole persona against. A mask, to hide this part of him.

He even fooled himself, I think. But then Kendall came along, and it was a part of her too, and seeing it—it destroyed him.

He needed to hide it, needed to hide Kendall , because it was what he’d learned to do.

Conceal. Deny. And protect. Protect his family.

Protect himself—his vision of himself, the false self he’d built to fool the world.

That’s why Rose died. And that’s why he came after me next. And you.”

They kept walking like that, arm in arm. Melissa felt sad in a way she couldn’t quite name. The trees, bare of branches, looked harsh and jagged as they poked at the sky, and for a moment she was afraid.

“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” Melissa said. “I feel so stupid. To have been sucked in by him. To have put my son in danger.”

“But it’s not your fault, Melissa,” Amelia said.

She stopped, unlooped her arm from Melissa’s, then grabbed her by both shoulders, turned her so they were face-to-face.

Melissa resisted at first, but then looked directly into Amelia’s eyes.

“Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault—and it wasn’t even about you.

Okay? It was about Thomas, all along. He wanted you and your love for his own reasons.

Wanted to use you as armor, don’t you see?

Armor against what he really was. Armor against the terrible things he’d allowed to happen.

To Rose. To Rhiannon. Even to Kendall—she’s a victim here too.

Because she didn’t get the help she needed, when it would have done her some good. ”

Melissa was quiet, letting it settle in her.

None of it had been about her. Her mind drifted, then, not to Thomas, but to Derek Gordon—another man disgraced following the revelations of Rose’s journal, a cop who’d abused his position of authority to take advantage of a troubled and vulnerable woman.

He’d quit the force entirely under public pressure, would never serve as a police officer again.

No doubt he’d told himself that he was trying to help Rose, that he was trying to save her—later, that he was trying to get to the truth of her murder.

But he was just another man using a woman to fill some part in his own story.

To absolve himself of the things he’d done.

Melissa still wasn’t sure what to think about Thomas, though.

She didn’t tell Amelia that there were times when she felt sorry for him, wondered what she’d have done in his place.

Ultimately, he was only protecting his child, trying not to lose her, preserving what was left of his family after Kendall killed Rose.

Melissa knew what it felt like to love a child so much you thought you’d do anything to protect them, sacrifice your own well-being to save them, even from the consequences of their own actions.

If it had been her, would Melissa have sacrificed the rest of the world too?

Endangered others to hide a child’s crime?

She still wasn’t sure—but between her uncertainty and Amelia’s conviction, one thing was clear: It was time for her, for all of them, to move on.

Melissa pressed her lips together and made a little nod. Amelia squeezed her by the arms.

Gradually, Melissa became aware that they were not alone on the path; some dozens of paces ahead, a man walked with a dog, a square-jawed gray boxer nosing through the grass.

The man looked at them as he passed, and something in the man’s eyes made it clear that he wanted to talk to them—that he was interested in Melissa or Amelia, or both.

He was handsome, but also a stranger, and Melissa felt a chill, imagining what might be behind his eyes.

What this man she’d never met might be thinking of as he watched her and Amelia embracing on the path.

“Don’t,” Amelia said, and Melissa’s eyes came back to her friend. Amelia gave her head a small shake. “Let him stare. We’ve got other things to think about.”

Melissa nodded. She understood. Her eyes drifted past Amelia’s face, over her shoulder and to the playground, where Rhiannon pushed Bradley on the swings—higher, higher, his toes pointing to the sky.

“Let’s go,” she said.

And together they turned and crossed the grass, went toward the young ones it had fallen to them to protect with their lives.