19
Aftermath
LIVIA DUG HER KEYS out of her purse as Blake and Mouse hustled Kyle to the fire door. As they burst through, Livia braced herself for an alarm, but it remained silent. Four of Beckett’s crew parted to allow them to exit, nodding at Mouse and Blake. They skirted the outside of the parking lot to find Livia’s car, then stuffed Kyle in the backseat with Blake and Mouse on either side while Livia drove them home. As they pulled away, the night was on fire with red and blue lights. Halfway there, Kyle started throwing up. Blake handed her a plastic grocery bag he found on the floorboards to save Livia’s upholstery. Livia pulled into the driveway but wondered aloud whether they should take Kyle straight to the hospital.
“I’ve been worse than this before,” Kyle assured them between heaves.
Mouse helped Blake get Kyle upstairs, but returned immediately to the front porch. “I’ll keep an eye on things,” he explained. “I’m supposed to stay. One of the guys will bring a car for me. Can I have Cole’s shirt back though? I’ll need to burn it.”
Livia nodded as the weird night got weirder.
Now that Kyle had returned to familiar territory, she lost some of her fight. She allowed Livia to put her in soft clothes, and Blake disappeared with Cole’s shirt. Kyle collapsed in bed as Livia tucked her in.
Livia stepped into the hallway as Blake came back up the stairs. “I guess I’ll stay in here to make sure she’s doing all right,” Livia said. “Kyle might decide she wants to talk, or worst case, she might choke on her own vomit.”
Blake nodded and loosened his tie. “I’ll keep you company if you’d like.”
“I would like.” Livia was thrilled he would stay, even without the promise of being alone in her bedroom.
Livia scooted past him to change into sweats. She selfishly didn’t offer Blake any new clothes because he looked so magnificent in the loose tie and black pants. She came back to find him sitting on Kyle’s floor with his back against the wall. She slid down to sit next to him, their legs touching.
“Blake, what do you think happened in there tonight?”
“I think Cole walked in on someone trying to hurt Kyle, and he handled it.” Blake shrugged.
“Handled it?” Livia couldn’t imagine how a would-be priest wound up covered in so much blood.
“Cole has a background that required him to fight like an animal,” Blake said, seeming to choose his words carefully. “His dedication to the Church comes partly from what he endured as a child.”
They sat holding hands in silence for a long time after that. Periodically Blake would peek over at her and smile.
Livia felt bold in the darkness of Kyle’s room. “Blake, do you remember the first day your skin was like glass in the sun?”
Blake was quiet for what seemed like an endless expanse of time.
“I remember.” He sighed.
Livia waited. He would tell her if he could. She would listen.
“You already know my mother was an alcoholic. She would get so frustrated with herself for failing me, but then she would take it out on me. Physically. When I was older, no matter which new housing program we were enrolled in—we always had to change and move—I was fortunate enough to be within walking distance of the Poughkeepsie library. I sort of used it as self-imposed daycare. I’d stop in after school and stay as late as it was open. In the summers, I spent my whole day there. The volunteers and the librarian did much more than organize the stacks.” Cole stroked Livia’s hand in his. “It was the center of the community, and those volunteers saw my need to learn and be mothered. They took it upon themselves to teach me, help me with homework, and give me lessons on the piano in the basement. I was like a stray cat with a dozen houses to call my own.”
A smile crossed Blake’s face at the memory. “Those ladies shaped me and ingrained my manners deeply,” he continued. “Miss Joan would always say, ‘Manners are everything, Blake. They’re worth more than money.’ But at home, my mother was getting worse. I was getting bigger, and I think that frightened her. She began increasing her episodes with me until there were times I couldn’t go to the library because I didn’t want them to see how I looked with bruises and think less of me.”
Livia touched Blake’s face, placing a soft kiss on his lips before he continued.
“When I was twelve, I made the worst mistake of my life. I didn’t use my manners. I didn’t respect my mother. The day my skin became glass, she used something other than her hands on me for the first time. She picked up my belt. She scared me. I was afraid to be hit with the belt. The metal buckle was headed straight for me.” Blake rubbed his eyes against the memory.
“I punched her right in the face, Livia. My own mother. She was furious and hurt. I let her use the belt after I realized my mistake. She backed me into our coffee table and I tripped. I fell into the glass liquor cabinet that was her pride and joy. The glass shattered around me, and all the liquor bottles broke. Bits and shards embedded in my skin.” He touched his forearm as if the glass was still there.
“My mother called the cops and demanded they remove me from the house. I was never sure if she had me removed because she was scared of me or mad that all her alcohol was in puddles mixed with glass and my blood. When the police and paramedics brought me into the sunlight, I saw. I saw the glass in my skin. The sun reveals what I really am, Livia. I hit a woman. My own mother. The glass and liquor seeped in, and I can’t get it out.”
Livia stayed silent and tried to quiet the screaming in her head. Fuck your mother, Blake! She was a drunk and a coward. You were a child, not a man, and you were only trying to end your own pain. She held tight to Dr. Lavender’s advice. Listen. This was Blake’s plane crash. Livia’s silence invited him to continue.
“Social Services picked me up from the police station,” he finally said. “The gentleman gave me a cardboard box with a few of my things in it, and he told me my mother had relinquished all her rights. My foster home was nowhere near the library, so my family there was lost as well. I couldn’t have gone back in there anyway. They’d have known my mother gave me up and I hadn’t been a gentleman.
“My manners were not impeccable,” Blake added, his voice bitter now. “My manners were not worth more than money. I was medicated for my violent tendencies and spent a great deal of time either in a haze or totally numb, but I tried to uphold my library family’s high expectations. A few years later the two little girls in the minivan paid the ultimate price for my cowardice.” He took his hand out of hers and put it in his lap. “Now you know, Livia. All that I’m not.”
So many people had tried for Blake, but so many had failed. All it takes is one to be the glue. It’s going to be me. Livia moved quietly to straddle him. She put her hands on his scruffy cheeks. “I know all that you are. You almost don’t belong here, your soul’s so pure.” Livia put a hand on his chest. “You’re perfect to me. You’re chivalrous to me. I adore your manners. You can’t disappoint me. It’s not possible.” Livia leaned in and kissed him sweetly. See? See how much I can fix?
Blake became absorbed by her hair, grabbing handfuls of it. He pulled her to his chest, combing it out with his fingers as he hummed a soothing song in her ear. The liquid velvet of his voice lifted her into dreams.
The flames reflected in Eve’s pupils matched her anger. She threw the rest of the gasoline on her private bonfire. The body of the witness produced almost-white flames and blinding heat. I overdid it.
But Eve wanted something tangible. Something to blister her skin a bit, to match her soul.
She was allowing herself to think of her past, which was a rare indulgence. She needed to relive it because she’d strayed from her purpose. She’d disregarded her calling. Eve chipped away at her decayed insides to find the little tiny piece of pink that was her heart now. She closed her eyes and let the waves of heat send her back to the accident.
The summer sun had been searing that day. Eve twisted the air conditioner on immediately as David started his old beater.
“Sweetness, a car needs to warm up to cool down.” David chuckled as Eve blasted them both with fire-breathing dragon hot air instead of the instant relief she sought.
“That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, being too hot can’t be good for the baby.” Eve’s eyes twinkled. She tried to put the word baby in every sentence she could nowadays.
“She’s probably already hot-tempered if she’s anything like her mom.” David put the car in gear.
Eve put both hands on her stomach. The description for week ten in her pregnancy book was her favorite so far. The baby had lost its tail, and its face had formed. There were even little fingers and toes. Eve couldn’t wait to get her first pair of maternity pants. She was the only nineteen-year-old she knew who wanted to gain weight. David teased her when she flipped through the book, each chapter revealing new mysteries about her baby. My baby.
When she’d missed her period, Eve had gotten a pregnancy test—the most expensive brand because she wanted the best for her maybe-baby. She’d used it right when she got home, not even waiting to get David. She could hardly tell, but the test window looked like it might have two lines. Two lines!
After her call, David had made an excuse to leave his job as a mechanic for an hour so he could come to Eve’s place in her dad’s apartment building and peer at the stick in the sunlight. They waited together while she took the other two tests in the box in quick succession.
By the third test, she had been certain she was pregnant. Eve called her gynecologist immediately, as if being pregnant for five minutes was an emergency. David and Eve were too young and they weren’t even married, but a baby was all she’d ever wanted.
Eve had planned to be a mom for as long as she could remember. In almost every childhood picture, she carried a baby doll. Before she was even of legal age, Eve was babysitting. She had an easy, natural way with children and found herself in great demand. Eve gravitated to babies, with their sweet cheeks and gummy smiles. They fit so perfectly on her hip, but she always had to give them back to their mothers.
Not this baby. This one is mine. With David as dad.
She’d made the best decision of her life when she convinced the easy-going David that, yes, he really did want to take her on a date. One year later they were inseparable.
He would make a patient, persistent father. He clearly adored Eve, but he also refused to put up with any of her drama. They solved their problems in quiet, respectful voices. Even Eve’s father had seemed convinced that Eve and David would be together until they were old and forgetful.
“David, how can you be so sure the baby’s a girl? It’s way too soon to know,” Eve had teased.
David reached over to cover both her hands, and much of her stomach, with one of his large, dark ones.
Eve let time freeze on his smile—his big, comforting smile. She wished the memory ended here and in that next instant, she’d just ceased to exist.
They’d been heading through a bad part of Poughkeepsie, on their way to get Chinese food because Eve had said the baby wanted it.
“Anything for my two girls.” David had loved saying “two girls.”
The accident that twisted the car into a searing, crushed pile of agony happened so quickly that Eve’s mind couldn’t process it. The noise alone was enough to make her think she was going insane. When the spinning stopped, Eve grabbed for David.
He was gone.
His eyes were open, but there was nothing left. Eve didn’t realize she was the one screaming until her throat started to hurt. Time went by in great leaps forward, alternated with endless frozen pauses.
Sirens, eventually. Pain, eventually.
Eve finally looked down and saw a piece of maroon dashboard stabbing through her hand and into her stomach. Oh, that’s just plastic, she thought. But the paramedics wouldn’t let her pull it out.
She overheard one of them shout, “This is Dr. Hartt’s daughter!”
Eve had no idea why those words came back to her at night. Over and over her brain repeated, “This is Dr. Hartt’s daughter!”
Not “Eve, we aren’t showing a heartbeat on the baby.”
Not “David Statford was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Not “We can’t stop the bleeding. She’s hemorrhaging.”
Not “If the infection continues, we’re not going to have any choice. Eve, we’re recommending a hysterectomy.”
Maybe it was because she’d still had hope when she heard those words. Maybe because she’d thought she’d be protected since her father was a surgeon at the hospital where the ambulance took her.
Eve grabbed the shovel and started to dig. After the witness was done smoldering, she’d bury him here in the woods. She’d dig so deep no one would ever find him. A murderer got caught when she got sloppy or got scared. Eve was neither of those things.
When she’d finally been released from the hospital, Eve found herself without a purpose. She had sat at home on her bed watching horrible daytime T.
Her new mission—the one she’d so pathetically wavered from now—had been given to her by mistake. She never answered the phone in those days, but when she heard Officer McHugh from Poughkeepsie Police Department on the answering machine, she hit the TV’s mute button.
“Ms. Hartt? This is Officer McHugh. I have some personal belongings from the car accident. The reconstruction team is finished. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ll keep the belongings at my desk, if you’re interested in them.”
Eve stared at the flickering, quiet TV for a while before she got up. Almost as if she were on autopilot, she drove her dilapidated Civic to the station. As the receptionist pointed out Officer McHugh’s desk, Eve sensed that the people in the room were talking about her.
Two cops and a well-dressed woman discussed a car accident.
“That man’s a bane to this community,” the woman said, clearly in the midst of a tirade. “That couple in the wreck a few weeks back—did you know she lost the baby? The collateral damage that follows him around is amazing.”
“Drugs and trouble,” one cop said, shaking his head. “That’s all he has to offer. What a sack of shit.”
“Bad enough that they do those cowardly drive-by shootings, but they could at least wait until the victim’s out of the car,” said the second cop. “So they don’t take anyone else out.”
The woman shifted from one foot to the other. “Never any proof to nail that bastard. Beckett Taylor’s one slippery asshole.”
Eve hadn’t noticed that the officer who’d called her stood behind his chair.
“Guys, take that somewhere else,” he said. He gave a pointed glance in Eve’s direction, and the group went silent. He ran a hand down his face and sat down. “I’m sorry. They don’t think sometimes.”
Eve used her voice for the first time in weeks. “The car that hit us…” The word us punched her in the heart. “The driver was the victim of a drive-by shooting?”
She appreciated that Officer McHugh told it to her straight. “Yeah, the driver had a fatal gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “The car he was driving came at yours head-on.”
“Who’s Beckett Taylor?” Eve tried to form a picture in her mind. The name didn’t sound menacing.
“You overheard quite a bit. I’m sorry for that. Mr. Taylor’s a waste of skin, but we have no evidence tying him to this shooting.” The officer tapped his fingers on his desk, like he was itching to do something.
“So David and my baby were ‘collateral damage’?” Eve took small, sharp breaths.
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but you are a victim of a crime, not just a tragedy. Would you like your belongings?” Officer McHugh looked under his desk.
“No, I’m good.” Eve stood up and left. With every step she felt herself harden. She was a walking statue by the time she hit the police station’s exit.
She had a purpose again. Hate.
Eve cuddled hate to her heart like a baby—like the only baby she’d ever have. Eve despised reliving the accident, but she had to do it to get harder. She needed to be angrier.
She’d spent the years after learning Beckett’s name turning herself into a killing machine. Every time she felt a twinge of pain, she numbed it with a new skill. At first her father thought she might be interested in the police academy or the military. But Eve had no such plans. Her only goal was to kill Beckett Taylor. And she was nothing if not tenacious. All the fabulous capabilities she’d been proud to possess before the accident she now twisted into perfect means of causing pain.
Before she’d lost her purpose, Eve never let her CPR or first aid certification lapse. She prided herself on her work at the daycare, and someday she’d hoped to be a full-fledged teacher. She kept an eye on any child she could see, even in a store or at the mall, and she’d returned many a lost kid to his parent.
But now she used that watchfulness and vigilance to learn any deadly skill she could. Because once she was face to face with Beckett Taylor, she was going to kill the fuck out of him. She had no plans for after his death. She didn’t give a rat’s ass if she made it out alive. She wanted to be with David and her baby, but first she would end the man that had ruined it all.
Eve now knew how to kill without a sound. She knew every place on the human body that could be penetrated with a knife to induce death. She was better at killing than the man she hunted. Eve would never feel the soft, downy hair of her own baby against her cheek, but she knew she could kill at least three heavily armed men with a golf club.
All that was left of the witness was dispatched in just a few scoops with the shovel, so Eve now lifted the dirt back into the hole. Today she had to acknowledge that she was avoiding her mission. She could explain away all the other times she hadn’t killed Beckett so far. I’m just going to see what his inner circle’s like…If I find out who he loves, I can kill them while he watches…If I make him fall for me, it will hurt worse when I kill him. But there was no excuse for tonight. In that men’s room she’d had another perfect opportunity. He’d gone willingly in front of her knife and fists.
But she’d spared him. She’d used all her deadly skills to save him instead. She’d spit on the memory of David and her baby to give Beckett a get-out-of-jail-free card.
She surveyed her work in the Hummer’s headlights. Perfect. She’d done it so many times now it was second nature. Now I’m just a murderer, not an avenger. I’m just like him.
Eve drove his Hummer through the brush and back onto the path ATVs had made through the woods. It was almost morning.
She had to kill him. She had to kill Beckett the next time she saw him or all she’d done to become an exquisite monster would be for nothing.