CHAPTER 38
I’m awake, only my eyes don’t know it yet. The lids refuse to lift no matter how much I contort my face. I try to raise my hands and force the eyelids open with a finger. I can’t. My hands are lead, resting in my lap.
“I know you can hear me,” Tina says. “Can you talk?”
“Yes.” The word can’t even qualify as a whisper. “What—”
It’s all I can manage. My thoughts are equally as weak. Snails plowing through a field of mud.
“It’ll wear off,” Tina says.
It already is. A little. Feeling creeps back into my body. Enough for me to know I’m sitting up, something strapped diagonally across my chest. A seatbelt. I’m in a car.
Tina sits to my left. I feel her presence. I hear the leathery squeak of the steering wheel in her hands even though the car isn’t moving and the engine is silent. We’re parked.
I try to move, twisting against the seatbelt.
“Why—”
“Relax,” Tina says. “Save your strength. You’re going to need it soon.”
I continue to writhe in the seat. I reach for the door handle. My heavy fingers merely claw at the air.
“You could have made this easy, Quinn,” Tina says. “Trust me, I wanted it to be easy. I wanted it to last a day. Two, tops. I show up, make nice and then have you tell me everything you remember about Pine Cottage. In and out.”
My fingers finally connect with the door handle. Somehow I’m able to pull it. The door falls opens and a rush of woodsy October air hits my face. I lean toward it, trying to roll myself out the door, but the seatbelt stops me. My hazy mind forgot about it. Not that it matters. Even if I was free of both seatbelt and car, there’s no way I could escape. Not with most of my body feeling like marble.
“Whoa there,” Tina says as she pulls me back into the seat. When she reaches across my lap to close the door, I swat at her arm. The blows are so weak I might as well be petting her.
“This doesn’t need to be hard, babe,” she says. “I just need the truth. What do you remember about Pine Cottage?”
“Nothing,” I say, my tongue loosening. I’m even able to speak a full sentence. “I don’t remember anything.”
“You keep saying that. But I just can’t believe you. Lisa remembered everything. It was in her book. Sam did, too. She told that interviewer all about it.”
My mind continues to pick up speed. My mouth follows suit. “How long have you pretended to be her?”
“Not long. A month or so. Only once I realized I could get away with it.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed to know how much you knew, Quinn,” she says. “After all this time, I had to know. But I needed help. And since I knew you and Lisa wouldn’t otherwise give me the fucking time of day, I pretended to be Sam. I knew it was risky and that it might not work. But I also knew it would get your attention. Especially Lisa. She did everything she could to help me find out more about Pine Cottage. I told her it would help you. I said getting you to remember would aid the healing process. She bought it for a few days before she started having second thoughts.”
“But you kept at it,” I say. “You called my mother.”
Tina doesn’t sound surprised that I know this. “Yeah, once I realized Lisa wasn’t going to do it. Then she kicked me out.”
“Because she found out who you really are,” I say, all this talking giving me strength. Energy stirs within my body. My hands are lighter. So are my legs. I can speak without thinking about it.
“She found my driver’s license. Did some digging.”
“Is that why you killed her?”
Tina pounds the steering wheel so hard the whole car shudders. “I didn’t kill her, Quincy! I liked her, for God’s sake. I felt like shit when she learned the truth.”
“But you came to me anyway.”
“I almost didn’t. It didn’t seem like the best idea.” A laugh bursts out of her, inappropriate and thick with irony. “Turns out I was right.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“Joe Hannen,” Tina says.
The name is a lightning strike, zapping me awake. My eyes flicker open, pink-orange light catching in my lashes. Sunset. A strip of dying light crosses over the dashboard, collecting and reflecting off something Tina has placed there.
A knife. The one from my kitchen.
“Go ahead and try to grab it,” Tina warns. “I guarantee I’m faster.”
I lift my gaze from the knife to the windshield above it, dirty with wiper streaks and splotches left by wet leaves. Through the grime, I see trees, a gravel drive, a run-down cabin with cracked windows flanking a moss-flecked door.
“No,” I say, clenching my eyes shut again. “No, no, no.”
I keep saying it, hoping enough repetitions will make it not true. That it’s just a nightmare I’ll soon wake from.
But it’s no nightmare. It’s real. I know it as soon as I re-open my eyes.
Tina has brought me back to Pine Cottage.