Run (23 page)

“You’re pathetic, Mom,” I yell at her. “I don’t know why I bothered to find you. You made my life a living hell. You took me away from everyone and everything I ever loved. I’m not even sure that I can love any more. I might not be any better than Psycho Dad.”

That’s the biggest lie I ever told. I do love Mom. I loved Rolland. I love Hayden. I even have feelings for Caleb that fall somewhere beyond that gray area between crush and love. I don’t know.

But I’m not done with my phony recriminations. Not yet.

“To think I actually felt sorry for you. You dragged us around like we were nomads and I thought that you were running from an old boyfriend. Then I find out he’s a goddamn serial killer and that you have been with him again. Hayden! Hayden’s his little boy, isn’t he?”

“He’s not his,” she says. Her eyes are blistering at me. “Don’t say it!”

“I’ll say whatever I goddamn want. You have no say any more how I live or what I do. Your days of scurrying around trying to avoid the light of truth are over. You make me sick. You have betrayed me and, honestly Mom, I’m so sick of every lie that spews out of your mouth. At least Fuckface Dad here is honest.”

I’m pleased with that last line. I’ve never said the F word in front of Mom before. It felt a little liberating, which is ironic as we are both doomed by the man that killed at least four others.

“You left Leanne!” I continue ranting, while Mom just sits there like a stunned bump. “You are such a bitch!”

I’m pleased again with that line too and I stop. I evaluate. Dear old Serial Killer Dad looks like he’s enjoying the tirade. He might even think he has an ally. I doubt he’s going to rape me. Even for a serial killer that might be too low.

“I did it for you,” Mom finally says.

“Bullshit,” I shoot back. “You didn’t even know you were pregnant with that asshole’s baby when you left Leanne to die.” I pause and go for the jugular. “You only thought to save yourself. That’s what this whole thing is about. Isn’t it, Mom?”

She’s crying now. She’s slumped on the edge of the makeshift bed and is sobbing like a baby. I hit her in the truth spot and I hit her hard. In a second, I’m on top of her trying to comfort her.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m scared. I didn’t mean it.”

Now her face is pressed against the mattress and I can’t hear her response.

“You two knock it off,” Alex says.

I turn to him. “She’s a bitch, but she’s my mom.”

He comes closer and tugs me roughly by the shoulder, hurting me.

“She’s my bitch,” he says.

“And you’re mine,” I say, as I take the straightened coil from the mattress and shove it in his left eye. Hard as I can. He screams so loudly dust falls from the ceiling, but his pain only fuels me. I scream as loud as I can and I twist the heavy metal wire like a corkscrew and pull.

Alex Rader only has one eye now. The other is hanging from a thread. His hands go up to his face and the gun falls to the mattress. I don’t even think. There isn’t time for that. I grab the gun and before he can take half a breath, pin its barrel to his forehead.

He looks at me with his good eye. Blood gushes down his face and into his mouth. His hand looks like he’s wearing a shiny red glove. As I get ready to do what I know I have to do, he speaks.

“Look what you’ve done. You’ve hurt me bad. You don’t know shit about me,” he says, his voice a low croak.

My hand shakes a little and I tighten the sore muscles in my aching shoulder. I press the gun harder against his forehead and he winces.

“I don’t care to know,” I say.

The truth is, part of me
would
like to know. Part of me would like to understand the toxic DNA that we both share. I’ve done things in the last few days that I didn’t know I could do.

Didn’t want to do.

“You think I’m a monster,” he says, his voice croaking more.

Emotion? Self-pity? Or is it that he knows he’s going to die?

“But I’m only half of one,” he goes on. “There’s part of me that’s sorry. I did what I had to do. I had no choice.”

If I had any food in my stomach I would like to vomit on him just then. He is repulsive. A liar. A blamer. He is going to give me some kind of bogus reason why he murders and rapes young women. Something that indicates it isn’t his fault. That his DNA was coiled around a virus. That his mother bottle-fed him. That his father whipped him with the buckle end of a belt.

None of that will explain the evil he’s done.

There’s really no way of explaining that kind of nasty.

“You didn’t
have
to do anything,” I say.

“Do it,” Mom calls out from behind me. “Rylee, kill him!”

Her voice is pleading and demanding at the same time. She’s counting on me. She wants me to fix what she couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Please help me.”

He releases his hand and his eye drops lower, swinging like a pendulum.

“I need a doctor. I’m begging you. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I promise. I’m good at following orders. I just don’t want to die.”

I feel the shaking of the gun in my hand, but I know that it isn’t my hand that’s causing the vibration. It’s
him
. That bloody aberration that is my biological father is quaking in fear.

When I release the trigger, in my head I’m thinking four words.

This is for Leanne.

He falls to the floor. Without hesitating a beat, I plunge myself on top of him. I can’t stop. It’s like I’m not even me—the me that I pretended to be all my life. I’m the girl that I really am.

I fire a shot into his chest.

This is for Shannon.

And finally, I go lower. I unzip his pants, pull down his pale blue boxers and expose his penis. I’ve never seen a grown man’s penis in person before and wonder if this is the source of his rage. It’s small, shriveled and pathetic.

I blow it off the face of the earth with two shots.

One for Megan and one for Mom.

Chapter Twenty

Cash: None.

Food: None.

Shelter: None.

Weapons: Two bullets, a gun, and my hands.

Plan: Finish the job.

MOM AND I ARE IN Alex Rader’s car, a boring Toyota Camry. I’m driving as fast as I can down the gravel road from the place where he’d raped and killed everyone but us, heading toward the lights of the Interstate. Our hearts are in sync, pounding like a couple of tom-toms. It is dark outside. I’m unsure of where we are until I see the signs to the highway. We haven’t said a word. Not about the fact that I’m driving without a license or the fact that I’d called my mother every name in the book. Not that I’ve just executed my monster of a biological father.

And then I see it.

Hanging on a thin silver wire from the review mirror. A picture.

I slam on the brakes and the car slides before it stops.

“Was it a deer? I didn’t see it.”

I turn and look at her. She is a stranger to me right now. This woman who I adored and still love with every bit of my being, is as much as a stranger to me as Alex Rader was until I did what had to be done.

Shot him.

Dead.

“What’s this, Mom?” My fingers grasp the photograph and, still keeping it on the chain, I pull it closer for a better view. It’s a girl with a long blond ponytail, carefully arranged over her shoulder. She’s wearing a bright yellow top. There’s a gap in her teeth. She is four years old.

Her name at the time was Sarah.

My name at the time.

“How in the hell did he get that?” I ask.

“I had to,” she says, her tone bordering on hysterical. “I had no choice but to keep him informed. To keep him away, I kept him close.”

I am so disgusted I want to kick her out of the car. But I don’t. I put the gas to the pedal. I just keep going. It’s as if the speed will erase her words into a blur.

“Mom, you’re messed up,” I say, turning to her as I drive. “You’re so messed up you don’t even know how much.”

She starts to shake. “He wanted a picture. I thought by giving it to him he’d leave us alone. He said he just wanted a reminder.”

She turns away and looks out the window. But I don’t let her. I grab her shoulder and yank her toward me. The car swerves a little and my adrenaline pumps.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” I say. My anger is real now, and completely, I think, justifiably uncontained. “A reminder of what?”

Her eyes are empty. She doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t try to pull me in with a sob story about what she did. She’s done with that. And for that, I’m glad.

“Of you,” she says.

I don’t know her. I don’t understand her.

I do not scream at her, but I doubt if I did anyone would blame me.

“What did you do?” I ask. “Send him newsletters about Hayden and me? Did you keep him abreast of my first tooth, when I started walking, my first period? Jesus, Mom! What in the hell?”

She looks at me and I deflect her attempt for pity and support by focusing my eyes on the road.

“He said he’d kill you.”

Perfect.

“No, Mom,” I say without holding back my disappointment. “He didn’t. He said he’d kill
you
, isn’t that right? That’s why we ran?”

Mom is thrashed and fretful. She shakes her head. “No, Rylee, that’s not true.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say, again as coolly as I can. “Call me my real name. Not Sarah. Not Katie. Not Rylee. My real name, Mom? Call me that.”

Tears roll from her eyes and she wipes them on her dirty sleeve.

A dog barks somewhere and it fills the silence between us.

“Alexandra,” she finally says. “Your name is Alex.”

This is a balled up fist in my stomach but I just take it. I don’t want to believe it. But there it is. She said it. My name. Like the tattoo she tried to erase. The one the other girls had too. Marked. I was marked too.

Alexandra.

I shake my head. “Who would do that? Who would do that with their child? Naming her after a monster?”

Mom doesn’t answer for the longest time.

“People do what they have to do, honey. To survive.”

I don’t respond. I don’t care anymore. I reach over and pull the photograph off the chain. I roll down the window and let it fly. Away.

I’m so done.

I PULL UP TO THE SAME DENNY’S in Kent and I let out my mother. We haven’t spoken a word to each other for the past forty minutes. I guess she tried, but there was nothing left to say.

At least not by me and not right now.

“Go inside and wait,” I tell her. It’s an order, not a request.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the door.

“What are you going to do?” Her eyes are red and her skin is dirty and blotchy.

“Something you should have done, Mom.”

She doesn’t ask me what my plans are and I’m grateful for that. I’m still making it up as I go along. I know that flexibility and randomness are protectors of the hunted. Rolland always said so. Even in the madness of the switch I knew that tipping a hand to anyone could only result in failure.

“Be careful,” she tells me.

I know she means it, but I’m still so sickened and mad I don’t wish her the same. Instead, I throw the vehicle into reverse, back up, then drive away. I watch Mom fade in the mirror. She’s closer than she appears just then, but she’s still very far away. I know that she’s always been far away.

FUCHSIA LADY APPEARS TO BE GONE, which is good. From the glovebox of the Camry I retrieve a garage door opener. I push the button and the door at 2424 Summer Hill snakes up its track. I park next to the van. It is old, bronze-colored, with the words
Sun Catcher Express
painted merrily on the side. A big sun winks from just over the S. It is grotesque and if I didn’t have something very important to do, I’d grab a paint can from the workbench and splatter it. I’d tear up the seats. I’d rip out the wheelchair lift. I would do all of that and more so that it never would be used for what it has been.

By Alex and Marie Rader.

It passes through my mind that Aunt Ginger’s car isn’t there and that I’m going to be in big trouble for losing it. Then I scratch that thought. Where Alex Rader ditched my aunt’s car is the least of my worries. If I’m in trouble for anything, losing a car is somewhere at the very bottom of the list.

And the list is getting longer by the minute.

The garage door rolls down behind me and I don’t need to use the keys because the door leading into the house is unlocked.

“Baby,” I hear Marie call out. “I’m in the kitchen. Made you a pie today. Bet you’d love a slice.”

I’d love to slice her.