Hanging by a Thread (27 page)

“My husband had gone to the store. We were out of Tylenol,” she murmured almost dreamily. “He started getting the headaches, you see, after we lost Dillon. I told him if I felt up to it I might go see my sister, and not to worry if I was gone when he got back. I’d always wondered what I would do if I came face to face with Amanda, and here she was,
she
came to me. She was standing right over there. And do you want to know something, Clare? I watch Rachel. I watch you girls. I came by your little stand the other week. You didn’t even recognize me. I had on sunglasses and a hat.” She chuckled, as though proud of herself. “You have talent. I’ll give you that. And Rachel … Such a pretty girl, you can’t even tell she’s rotten on the inside. Evil.”

“She’s not … We’re not …” I was trying to scream, to summon Jack from wherever he’d gone, but Mrs. Granger had cut off almost all my air and I could barely manage a whisper.
She’s not evil
, I wanted to say. Neither was Amanda. She had just made a horrible mistake.

I was starting to black out, and it was nothing like the visions: it was terrifying. I was going to die here in the kitchen. I kicked as hard as I could but my feet were just shuffling on the floor.

Maybe this time Rachel would be brave enough to go to the police with what she knew, but she had guessed wrong. She’d give them the wrong name. How could we ever have imagined it was Mrs. Granger, with her pink lipstick and
her kind smile and her pearls? Besides, without knowing where Amanda’s body was, they would never be able to convict Mrs. Granger.

“I’ll have to kill her too,” Mrs. Granger said, sounding more matter-of-fact than unhappy about it. “All three of you. But that ought to wrap things up. You haven’t told anyone else, have you? No? Well, it will all be over soon. You know, Dusty keeps saying we need to start to move on. Can you believe that? I mean, he’s Dillon’s
father
, how he can—”

Mrs. Granger suddenly pushed me into the closet, sending me toppling into the clothes as I put out my hands too late to break my fall. I heard her howl with anger, and then came another voice:

“Stay there, Clare!”

It was Jack, and I was so relieved that I ignored him and crawled out on my hands and knees.

He was much stronger than Mrs. Granger, and he had her around the waist, but she was kicking at his feet and stabbing wildly with the knife as he tried to grab her arm. I saw with horror that she’d already managed to cut him—the sleeve of his T-shirt was stained with blood.

She was aiming for his neck, fighting as hard as she could, making sounds like an angry cornered dog. With the last of my strength I reached for the fabric of her pants, grabbing as much in my hand as I could, and pulled. She screamed, tripping backward, and I heard the clatter of the knife on the floor right before she landed on me, knocking the wind out of me.

Jack dragged her away and the fabric slipped out of my fingers, but not before I caught a glimpse of the bleak, poisoned place that Mrs. Granger’s mind had become.

Jack never took his gloves off, so the only fingerprints we had to wipe away were the ones on the closet door. It didn’t take too long—my strength came back quickly once I got away from the coat and Mrs. Granger.

I watched Jack tie her up to a kitchen chair, wondering if the rope he found in the garage was the same rope she’d used to tie the weights to Amanda before she tipped her into the livestock pond. Jack had taped her mouth, taking care not to hurt her, not until I’d asked her a couple of questions. She strained against the rope and tried to scream, so Jack clapped his hand over her mouth and nose until she stopped struggling and got more cooperative.

She told us Amanda had been wearing the jacket when she dragged her across the field to the farm pond. It had come off her body along the way, and when Mrs. Granger discovered it lying on the ground on her way back to her car, she knew she had to get rid of it. Even as filthy and torn as the jacket had become, it was still a loose thread.

She’d dumped the jacket at the landfill on the way home.

As I sat shivering, thinking about the jacket’s strange path from Amanda to me, I didn’t miss the confidence with which Jack handled Mrs. Granger. I wondered if it came from working in the clinic. In a way, Mrs. Granger had
something in common with the other dangerous animals they occasionally saw, the ones bred for fighting or ruined by abuse. Mrs. Granger had been ruined, too, but she couldn’t just be put down like a rabid coyote or a pit bull who’d attacked a child.

“Here’s what’s going to happen now,” Jack said calmly when she was finally secured to the chair, silent and still. “We’re going to make a call tonight. They’ll be searching all the farm ponds in the county by tomorrow. I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long.”

Mrs. Granger made muffled, angry sounds from her chair, twisting her body as much as the rope would allow.

“I wouldn’t tell them about us if I were you,” I said, my voice scratchy from my throat being squeezed so hard. “Not about Rachel, either. I mean, you could, but then we’re going to have to tell them that you invited me and Rachel here because you planned to kill us. I’ll tell them how I brought Jack instead, and you tried to hurt us and we barely managed to get away … how we were terrified to say anything. I’ll be convincing, believe me.”

For a moment I felt genuine pity for the poor shell of a mother in the chair. I didn’t doubt that the real Mrs. Granger had been a very different person, and I was terribly sorry that she was gone, along with her child.

But I had my own future to think about. Mine, and Jack’s, and Rachel’s. “But if they thought you were going to kill us, too, they might not feel so sorry for you. And don’t forget, we still have the jacket. Are you willing to gamble that you left no trace of yourself on it?”

“Wait for your husband,” Jack said. He’d gotten Mrs. Granger’s cell phone out of her purse and found Mr. Granger’s mobile number at the top of the favorites list. He’d written a text saying to come home right away, that there had been an emergency. All that was left was to hit “Send.”

“Ask for his forgiveness. Maybe he’ll stand by you. I guess you could try running … if he was even willing to let you.… But you wouldn’t have much of a head start.”

Mrs. Granger sagged against the chair, the rope cutting into her shoulders. The fight suddenly appeared to go out of her. I had to admit it was a pretty good plan—far from foolproof, but the best we could do.

Jack looked questioningly at me, his thumb poised over the “Send” button.

“Ready?”

A
WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED
, Mom and I threw a dinner party.

Mom had walked up Grover Hill earlier in the week with a bottle of sparkling wine and a basket of freshly baked empanadas—and hadn’t come home until after midnight, her eyes puffy and red but her face lit with a hopeful smile. I had a feeling Nana’s visits were going to be more frequent from now on.

In fact, I had been getting the china out of the sideboard on Sunday morning when Mom came into the dining room wearing a shirt she’d never worn before, her hair in a ponytail. “No, no, honey, let’s try something else tonight. I was going through some things.…”

All day long Mom pulled boxes from storage, unearthing all kinds of keepsakes and heirlooms I’d never seen before. Some had even been given to her by Dad’s mom before she died, and when I asked Mom if she wanted to
send them to Dad out in Sacramento, she frowned for a moment and then laughed.

“You know, I doubt the cheap bastard would miss any of this—let’s just not tell him.”

She had never, ever said a negative word about my dad before, but as I watched her take out the colorful embroidered napkins his mom had brought over from Czechoslovakia, the shell-handled teaspoons, the red glass goblets—all the while singing along with a Rolling Stones CD I’d had no idea she owned—I realized there was a lot more to my mom than I knew.

The shirt she was wearing, by the way, was one I’d made for her a couple of years earlier. It had started life as a simple linen blouse, but I’d belled the sleeves and added vertical rows of silk ribbon up the placket. At the time she’d said it had a sort of gypsy charm, but I’d never seen her wear it until today. Now she hummed and sashayed around in it like it was her favorite thing ever.

Jack would be over soon to help before the rest of the guests—Nana and her new boyfriend, Rachel, and Jack’s uncle Arthur—arrived. When everything seemed to be under control, I went to my room to wrap the little gift I’d found to cheer Rachel up.

I’d been teaching her simple cross-stitch, and I’d found a set of vintage pillowcases stamped with a retro sunflower design at a garage sale the week before. They were perfect, especially after I added some embroidery floss that I had in my thread box. We’d recently spent a few nights watching
old movies, talking and stitching, and Rachel needed a new project.

I knew she’d be fine eventually, but after Amanda’s body was found in a livestock pond four miles southeast of town, Rachel kind of lost it, and I’d been spending a lot of time with her. It was hard to keep everything I knew to myself, but I’d decided not to tell her about my gift for now. As far as Rachel knew, Mrs. Granger had had a fit of conscience, and her husband had driven her to the police station so she could confess to killing Amanda after Amanda admitted hitting Dillon with her car. Mrs. Granger never mentioned Rachel at all, and Rachel was finally starting to believe that she was now safe, especially since Mrs. Granger was awaiting sentencing in the county jail.

It was all anyone talked about. Mrs. Stavros buried her daughter on an overcast day, rain threatening to pour from rolling purple clouds, after a service attended by enough people to overflow the church yet again. After that, she wasn’t seen in town, and she was rumored to be staying with her sister. My guess was that neither she nor her husband would ever return to Winston, that in time it would be like they had never lived there at all.

I went with Rachel to visit Amanda’s grave one day, and she left Amanda’s necklace on the smooth marble headstone.

My mom had gone out to lunch with Mrs. Slade a week after the funeral, but she told me afterward that they still didn’t have much in common. Maybe it was a friendship that wasn’t meant to be. But Mom had better luck with a
few other people, friends from her long-ago tennis team and concert band, and before long she was going out a couple of times a week for a movie or a glass of wine.

I didn’t tell her or Nana what had really happened. I decided it was best if they thought the same thing everyone else did, that Mrs. Granger had simply turned herself in. I thought that if no one knew, then things could simply stay the same. But they didn’t. Maybe I was the one who changed first—after I’d learned and survived, none of the small things that used to drive me crazy seemed to matter. And Mom changed too. She must have been ready for a reconciliation with Nana, after I forced her to come to an understanding about our gift. Whatever the cause, she seemed happier and more energetic than she had in a long time.

And she had been cooking nonstop.

Every day she came home from work at a reasonable hour, loaded down with groceries and produce from the farmers’ market. Soon the house would be fragrant with whatever was simmering on the stove or baking in the oven or cooling on the counter. There was always more than we could eat, and we got into a habit of going for walks after dinner, taking plates of food to the neighbors, the guys down at the fire station, and, on one occasion, the very surprised Garza brothers, the dishwashers at the Shuckster, who seemed delighted to be the recipient of Mom’s zucchini-chèvre lasagna.

My Blake friends were coming down in a few days for an end-of-summer celebration before we all went back to
school, and Mom had promised to help me cook and get the house ready. It would be crowded, and I was nervous about my old friends meeting my new ones, but mostly I was excited. I’d told Jack and Rachel all about Lincoln and Maura and Caleb, and I couldn’t wait for them all to meet.

For tonight’s party we were doing a taco bar. Mom had been smoking a pork roast all day, and its heavenly smell wafted in through our open windows. The corn was shucked and ready to grill, the salsa sitting on the counter in a pottery bowl so the flavors could blend. I had taken the flourless chocolate torte out of the oven earlier in the day and Mom had piped ganache on top once it cooled. She’d offered to let me try, but I knew she’d do a perfect job.

And I kind of wanted her to shine.

I heard Jack’s knock at the front door and called for him to come on in. He was fresh from a shower, wearing a T-shirt I hadn’t seen before, his damp black hair falling in his eyes. While someone else might have picked out something special for the occasion, Jack’s shirt looked like it had been at the bottom of his dresser drawer since the last time he ran out of clean laundry—creased and gray and threadbare, with “Boise State” in faded script. I wondered if it had been his dad’s—for sure, there was a story there. Maybe someday he’d tell me.

Jack wrapped his arms around me and almost lifted me off the floor with the force of his hug. He had greeted me like this ever since that day, when we’d left the Grangers’ and driven up to the overlook, where we spent the afternoon watching the sailboats on the ocean. He’d
promised to destroy the jacket for me so I would never have to see or touch it again. And I’d cried as Jack held me on the bench seat of his old truck.