The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [71]
“You’re working on your thesis, aren’t you?”
“My thesis is on ‘Challenges of Modernity: The Growth of Urbanization and Its Impact on Disrupted Personalities,’ thank you very much.”
“Oh. Mine was on attachment disorder. You know, why good families can still breed little fucking psychopaths.”
Kimberly blinked. “Attachment disorder. That’s one of my favorite subjects.” She looked at Rainie more appraisingly. “I didn’t realize you were a psych major.”
“B.A. I never went back for my master’s.”
“Still, that’s pretty cool.”
“Thanks.”
They both returned to their coffee. After a moment, Kimberly said softly, “Rainie, could you keep talking? In all honesty, it’s easier to dissect your life than to think about my own.”
“I’m really sorry, Kimberly.”
“Who’s going to help me plan my wedding? Who will I call when I’m expecting my first child? Who will hold my hand, when I give birth to a baby girl and see Mandy and my mother in every curve of her face?”
“We’ll find out who’s doing this. We’ll find him, and we’ll make him pay.”
“And will that make things better? Look at you and what happened last year. You found the guy who did it. You and my father killed him. Are you better off?”
Rainie didn’t say anything. After a moment, Kimberly said, “I thought as much.”
Quincy dreamed. In his dream he was back in Philadelphia, walking through Bethie’s beautiful, ravaged town house. He held a pillowcase in one hand. He was trying to capture all the feathers and stuff them back in. Then he was standing over the bed, his hands now holding Bethie’s intestines, and trying frantically to pile them back in her body.
Don’t, his subconscious told him in his dream. Don’t let him win by remembering her the way he intended.
His dream spiraled backwards, his mind seeking happier times. Bethie, mussed hair, sweating face. No makeup, no pearls, but a smile that could light up a city as she lay in the white hospital bed and held out their firstborn child. Himself, touching their baby girl delicately. Marveling at the ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes. Then touching his wife’s cheek. Telling her how beautiful she looked. And vowing that he would be a better father than his own dad had been. Fresh family. Fresh start. His heart, so big in his chest.
Bethie sixteen years later, coming into the family room with a dazed look on her face. She’d been cutting up carrots in the kitchen. The knife had slipped. She now carried her finger in her other hand. Himself, fresh from a California crime scene, twenty-five corpses found in a hillside, fifteen of them young women, two of them babies. Telling his wife, “Oh honey, it’s just a scratch.”
Bethie yelling, “I can’t take it anymore! How did I end up married to a man who is so goddamn cold?”
Time fast-forwarding. He was in Massachusetts, keeping watch on human bait, Tess Williams returning to her old house in the hopes that it would lure her homicidal ex-husband out of hiding. Everything going wrong. Himself now inside the house as shots erupted down the street. Telling Tess not to go near the door. Promising he would keep her safe. Jim Beckett appearing, and blasting him back with a close-range spray from his double-barrel shotgun.
Himself thinking, Wow, I feel so hot, for someone who is so cold. Later, out of the hospital, paring back his work hours, trying to find some balance, picking up the girls for a weekend visit.
“How are you?” he asked Bethie.
“Better.”
“I miss you.”
“No you don’t.”
“Bethie . . .”
“Go back to work, Pierce. Who needs to be a mere husband, when you can play at being God?”
In his daughter’s two-bedroom apartment, Quincy jerked awake. He lay in the darkened room, watching threads of light from the closed blinds dance with dust in the air, listening to the sounds of the huge city below. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” he said.
Then he got up and went to the TV room, where the last living member of his family