Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 45

"Marlene Bilek!" Wyatt called out. "This is the police. Drop your weapon!"

He leveled his own weapon, but at this distance, in the dark . . .

Apparently, Marlene Bilek figured the same. Because in the next instant, she scooped up a flashlight. Then, as they watched, she took off across the gra.s.s.

"She's running away," Tessa exclaimed.

"Or giving chase. Where's Nicky?"

"s.h.i.t!"

They both took off into the night.

LEAVES SLAP MY face. I twist around one tree only to become briefly entangled in a bush. The woods are thick, heavily overgrown, and I have no light to guide my way. Already I'm thrashing and heaving, whacking my way through the vegetation like an enraged bear.

She will find me. She has a flashlight. She has a gun.

She's already taken out Thomas, and now it's my turn.

I will die in these woods, just like I did twenty-two years before.

Now, with my heart heaving in my chest and tears pouring down my cheeks, it amazes me all the pictures popping into my mind. They are not of the dollhouse. They aren't of Vero. They are of Thomas.

I am running for my life. Approaching the precipice of my third death, and mostly, I'm remembering the man who loved me.

Days and weeks and months in the dollhouse. Exchanges of looks but never words. Coconspirators before either of us was ever brave enough to verbalize the crime. But he knew, and I knew that he knew, and it was enough to give both of us hope.

Because what is love, if not an exercise in faith?

The nights he never left me. I cried and cried. I railed at him; I hit him. I blamed him; I begged him. And he took it. He held me and stroked my hair and whispered it would be all right. Because what is love, if not perseverance?

I forgive you, I think, though until this moment, I didn't realize just how much I blamed him for the fire. But he was right; we were just kids. We didn't know what we were doing. And none of us should've been there anyway.

Vero knows that. If I could stop right now, sit and have a cup of tea, Vero would be wearing her finest dress. She'd hug me, and I would hug her back, and we'd hold each other tight.

Because what is love, if not forgiveness?

More crashing. From behind me. Coming closer.

I'm running blind. Maybe even in circles. There's no place to go. Just trees growing steadily larger, bushes filling out thicker and thicker. I come to a small clearing, and that's that. I spin around and around. But I'm trapped.

This is it. What I've spent twenty-two years waiting for.

Deep breath. I stop, turn, prepare for the worst.

Shouts in the distance. The police, I realize. Here and in pursuit. Meaning if I can just find a way to buy time. Two minutes? Three, four, five?

I should climb a tree. But just as I try to figure something out, I hear a fresh snap right behind me. I whirl around, and Marlene Bilek is standing there.

The woods haven't been any kinder to her than to me. Her face is scratched and bleeding, her short Brillo hair now a rat's nest of leaves. Her chest is heaving from her exertions and it's clear the chase has only increased her rage. She fumbles slightly with the gun; then she's got it up.

"Don't move," I hear myself say.

She frowns at me. "What are you talking about?"

"She's here. Can't you feel her? She's here. Right here. With us."

"Girl, you've taken one too many hits to the head."

"She would've gone anywhere with you, you know. A homeless shelter, a women's home. She loved you so much. You were her world. The one person who kept her safe."

"Stop it!"

"She remembered that night. Ronnie beating her so savagely. Felt like it would never end. But then he was gone and there you were, holding her in your arms. You whispered to her all night long. You begged her to live. She heard every word. For you, she came back again."

Marlene's arm is trembling. She thins her lips; I can see her willing her finger to move on the trigger. I wonder if she knows she has tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Five thousand dollars. That kind of love, and you sold it for a measly five grand?"

"Stop!"

But I don't. I can't. "Tell her you love her. Now. Say the words. She's been waiting thirty years! Thirty years for you to return to her. Thirty years for you to remember how much you love her."

"No-"

"You have to!"

"I can't! Don't you understand? I didn't know. I didn't understand. I really did tell myself it was for the best. Then, when she was gone, when I realized what I had done . . . There was no going back. Don't you understand? I ripped my own heart out of my chest, and there was no putting it back again!"

"Did you miss her?"

"Yes! Every day!"

"Do you love her?"

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes!"

"She loves you, too. She loves you and she hates you, and there is nothing I can do to save you from what's going to happen next."

Marlene frowns at me.

"Girl, you're crazy!" She takes a determined step forward, as if to end this once and for all . . .

She doesn't see what I already know. The jumble of objects all these years later, still sticking out of the earth. Because the night had been dark then, too, and time compressed and my vision blurred by the thickness of my tears. As I'd dragged her body through the woods, away from the flames. As I found the half-filled grave dug just hours before. As I sat back on my heels and used my bare hands to further excavate the heavy, wet earth.

Of course, I'd been exhausted and sh.e.l.l-shocked and traumatized. I hadn't dug very deep, before depositing my most precious possession in the earth. Her limbs flopping awkwardly. Her sightless gray eyes staring back at me. Not enough time for perfect. Just good enough.

As I closed her eyes.

As I kissed her cheek.

As I whispered, "I'm sorry."

Before dumping a few handfuls of mud, then running off into the night.

Now Marlene comes for me.

She steps forward.

She trips over the first protruding object. Stumbles into a second, then a third. Throws out her left hand as if to catch herself, but it's no use. The objects have won.

She falls back.

Simple really. Stumble, fall, get up again.

But this time there's a crack. Loud enough to echo through the silence as Marlene's head smashes against a particularly round and smooth rock.

Such as the kind a girl might find in the woods and use as a marker for her best friend's grave.

The wind, whispering again. I swear I hear her voice. I feel her tears. The lost princess of the secret realm, finally reunited with the magical queen after all these years . . .

I open my arms. "I'm sorry," I tell her. "I love you, Vero."

Marlene doesn't get up again.

Minutes later Wyatt comes crashing into the clearing, drawing up short as his flashlight finds me. He illuminates me, then the body, then the objects sticking out of the earth.

"Thomas?" I ask quickly.

"Tessa is tending to him. Ambulance is on its way." He takes a step closer to Marlene's body, his flashlight dancing over her cracked skull, sightless eyes. There's no need to check for a pulse. It's as obvious to him as it is to me; what's done is done.

His flashlight returns to the ground near her feet. To the ma.s.s of skeletal bones protruding from the earth.

He looks up at me.

"Wyatt, meet Vero. Vero, meet Wyatt."

After that, neither of us says another word.

Chapter 42.

I DIED TWICE before.

I remember the sensation of pain, burning and sharp, followed by fatigue, crushing and deep. I'd wanted to lie down. I'd needed to be done with it. But I hadn't. I'd fought the pain, the fatigue, the f.u.c.king white light. I'd clawed my way back to the land of the living.

For Vero. I came back from the dead for her.

Now I am finding the ability to move forward for me.

Marlene Bilek shot Thomas in his side. Not a serious injury, as the bullet grazed his ribs without hitting anything important or lodging anywhere permanent. I still spent a sleepless couple of days bedside in his hospital room, holding his hand while fixated on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

How had he done it? I wondered. Accompanying me after three separate accidents, where I got to sleep off the pain, while he was forced to sit, wait, watch, wonder. To love someone so much and feel so powerless.

I marvel at this man I married. Maybe it's taken me twenty-two years, but I'm finally starting to appreciate my own good fortune. To have found love. To have built a life. It's all there, really.

It's simply up to me to grab on with both hands and claim the future as my own.

In the immediate aftermath, the police had many questions. I did my best to answer, while my brand-new lawyer, produced by Tessa, was careful to remind everyone of my young age at the time of the alleged incidents as well as the abusive situation: mitigating circ.u.mstances.

From my own perspective . . . what is memory? What do any of us truly know about the past? I described that last night with Vero the best that I recall it to be true. But as I think Sergeant Wyatt can attest from several days in my company, truth can be relative, the mind a fickle beast. What I think I know, and what I actually know . . . All I can say is, ask Vero. Spend an afternoon. Have some tea.

This is her story after all.

Marlene Bilek's body was claimed by her husband, Hank, and daughter, Hannah. They have not asked to meet with me and I don't think I could meet with them. It is too hard to look at Hannah, Vero 2.0, and not think of what might've been. For their part, I would guess I'm the woman who tried to exploit Marlene by claiming to be her long-lost daughter.

What do they know of the police's suspicions regarding Vero's disappearance thirty years ago, let alone Marlene's actions that final night in the woods? Technically, Marlene died from a fall. She tripped; she cracked open her skull. I saw it with my own eyes. She shot Thomas, definitely. From our perspective, she acted aggressively, to cover up the truth from thirty years ago. But it would be just as easy for her loved ones to believe she acted out of revenge against two people a.s.sociated with Vero's abduction.

The past is the past. Whatever sins Marlene committed, she paid for. I saw her pain with my own eyes. I watched her die.

Now it's between her and Vero.

This is Vero's story after all.

Of the two of us, Thomas faces the most legal scrutiny. First, there is the suspicious fire that destroyed our home. Second, possible charges of manufacturing evidence, given the presence of Veronica Sellers's fingerprints in my Audi. Finally, the burden of the unsolved burning of the dollhouse, not to mention the death of his mother, twenty-two years ago, plus the recent discovery of skeletal remains on the property.

Our lawyer isn't worried. It would appear we are the only two witnesses from that night so long ago. It's our official statement that Thomas's mother died falling down the stairs. While Vero, trapped in the fire, jumped from a three-story window. That leaves the matter of what started the fire, but apparently the original evidence wasn't preserved. Small towns, limited resources and all that.

As for more recent events . . . Hard to prove Thomas created fake fingerprints, given that the three-D printer in question has been burned to a crisp. Speaking of the house fire, so far the arson investigator has only recovered Thomas's fingerprints on the gas can. Nothing unusual about that, as it was his property.

Tessa told me herself, smiling slightly, that a single fingerprint isn't as good a piece of evidence as you'd think. To truly build a case, prosecutors want multiple pieces of physical evidence, not to mention a witness or two. Otherwise, there's always doubt. And in this day and age of intense media coverage of high-profile cases . . . Prosecutors don't like doubt. Apparently, many choose to shelve the case, fingerprint and all.

She and Wyatt came to visit me this morning. I have found a lovely cabin for Thomas and me to rent while he recuperates. I think in our entire married life, this is the first time I've found a place for us all by myself. It feels good to take the lead.

It also feels good to take a stand.

Thomas, bedridden in the hospital: "You should go. New name, fresh start. Get out while you can. For G.o.d's sake, Nicky. I could be arrested on arson charges any day. Not to mention I engineered a car crash with you still inside the vehicle. What kind of a man does such a thing?"

"You love me."