Mind Games

He picked one up, and she could feel him smiling as he put the pillow over her father’s face and shot through it.

Because her breath caught, Lucy held her tighter.

“I screamed and screamed, but no one could hear me.”

“If you saw all this—”

“Alice, hush,” Tate ordered. “You go on when you’re ready, honey.”

She breathed in, breathed out, and went on. Seeing it again as she spoke.

The gun made a kind of ugly pop. Feathers flew out, and her father jerked, like he had a bad dream. Then went very still.

Her mother stirred, started to reach out, but he came around the bed, fast, very fast, and put the gun under her chin.

Scream, bitch, and I’ll shoot you in the face just like I did him. Where’s the fancy-ass watch? Where’s the safe? What’s the combination?

She started to scream Dad’s name, and the man hit her in the face with the gun. She cried for Dad, tried to reach him, and the man hit her again.

Tell me and I won’t hurt you again.

But that was a lie.

She heard her mother’s voice in her head, so clear. She heard the fear, the shock, the grief.

It’s on the dresser, over there on the dresser. Oh God, John. John.

She reached for Dad’s hand, and squeezed it, hard, hard.

The safe’s in the closet over there. The combination’s nine-two-nine-four. That’s the day they met, September second, nineteen ninety-four. Take whatever you want.

He said: Gonna.

And slapped a pillow over her face and shot her, just like Dad.

Now, Thea leaned her head against Lucy’s body.

“I was screaming, but it didn’t come out of my head. He went to the closet, and he took out the money, and he thought: Five grand, not bad. And he took Dad’s good watch, and the pink diamond studs he gave Mom when I was born, because I was a girl, and the blue diamond ones for Rem, because he was a boy. And the diamond hoop earrings he gave her one Christmas, and the gold bracelet she bought herself one day.”

When she paused, pressed her face against Lucy’s arm, Tate spoke gently.

“Did you see his face, honey? Can you say what he looked like?”

“I was behind him, always behind him, and it was like, almost like I was looking with his eyes for some of it. He took the money from her purse, and from Dad’s wallet, and the keys from Dad’s dresser. Then he went to Mom’s dresser for the watch. He felt good when he picked it up. Happy. He smiled when he looked up, into the mirror.

“I saw his face then, and something in him knew it, and he was mad and scared. He turned around fast, and his heart beat really fast, too. I could still see him. I could see him, then he ran. He ran and left them there, in the bed, with the pillows over their faces.”

Though tears had coursed down her face throughout her retelling, now Thea clung to Lucy and sobbed.

“I’ve got you, darling. I’ve got you. Deputy … Alice,” Lucy corrected. “Would you go into the kitchen and get my granddaughter a glass of water please?”

“Of course.”

Lucy recognized the look on her face, in her eyes before Alice left the room. That look of suspicion and fear and the need not to believe.

“I’m so sorry, Thea,” Tate said. “I’m so very sorry.”

“I couldn’t stop him.”