Seattle, Washington
December 20, sixteen years later
She walked into the bedroom dressed in a gold satin gown so tight Paul could see every sinewy muscle as she moved toward him. Her hips swayed, and she touched the tip of a finger to her mouth, wetting it, then pushing it farther in, sucking on it as her eyes met his in a familiar promise. The fabric of the dress was so thin, so tight, it was little more than gold sweat outlining her breasts and the deep V between her thighs.
God, she looked good. How many hours a day did it take to stay in such great shape?
Momentarily he thought of Gina, his wife, and felt a pang of remorse. He remembered the way they had been together the first year of their marriage.
But that was more than twenty years ago, and no matter how hard they had tried to hold things together, no matter how they had honestly wanted it, nothing had been the same since that terrible Christmas when Angela…
As fast as the thought came, Paul turned it off. He had learned to do that—to compartmentalize and not dwell on the bad times. Instead he turned his attention to his groin, and the fact that he was growing hard. It was almost painful, the excitement his mistress, Lacey, could invoke in him by the merest look. It was a good pain, though, telling him he was still alive. Rational thought flew out the window as she reached the side of the bed and raised one long, slender leg, straddling him. Leaning down, she swept his cheeks with her waist-length blond hair, teasing and laughing softly as her full breasts nearly fell out of their satin shield.
Paul reached up and yanked the low-cut neckline apart, his arousal intensifying as he heard the buttons pop, the thin fabric rip. Lacey gave a soft laugh. He had bought her the gown so that he could do this, playing out a fantasy that Lacey enjoyed. He could never bring himself to actually hurt her, nor did she ask for that. This pretense at roughness had become part of their foreplay, one his mistress had suggested, and the lingerie was a one-time purchase he could well afford. She threw back her head, shaking her hair in buttery waves as her body began to move over his. Reaching for him with one hand, she slid him inside her while remaining upright and giving him access to her breasts. Rocking back and forth, she moaned.
The tightness in Paul’s throat grew as he grabbed her breasts firmly, the way she liked it. Squeezing her nipples until they were stiff, hard nubs he could fix his mouth around, he stroked the soft fullness of them, letting the feel of her overtake him until all coherent thought left his mind. Only a blank slate was left. A blank slate with nothing written on it—no unhappy past, no painful present, no pallid future.
When it was over, it was as if a job had been done, a commitment met, if only to himself. He had managed to hold the memories at bay.
Spent, Paul stared at the ceiling. For three months, holding the bad memories at bay had been Lacey Allison’s only job. He had rescued her from a string of temporary positions as an assistant to various Seattle CEOs and had put her up in this luxury apartment. For the past three months she had waited for him every evening, whether he was able to come here or not. Even during the day, when she went out to shop, she would take a cell phone with her so that he could reach her at any time. This, too, was her suggestion. She wanted to be with him every possible moment.
As for Paul, from the day he’d made the decision to be with her—unthinkable up until then—he couldn’t get enough of her. He wanted to drink her down, make her a part of him that would never leave, never go.
He reached for her, and this time an aeon passed that he wouldn’t remember later. He had gone into another world, a world where nothing mattered, not even the sex. Lacey did that for him. She took him to that blank slate where, for a few moments, at least, nothing existed—not even Lacey herself.
Gina Bradley opened her front door and stood for a moment, listening for signs of movement. Shifting the bags of groceries in her arms, she shook her head and sighed. For heaven’s sake, who did she listen for?
Certainly not Paul. It was only five, and he had been coming home later and later these past few months. In the beginning, she would hold dinner for him, warming it in the oven at seven, eight, nine. In recent weeks she hadn’t bothered, taking a sandwich for herself up to their room and watching television or reading until he came home. Often it was after midnight when she would hear his car pull into the driveway. The Infiniti’s headlights would sweep the room quickly, leaving as faint an impression as Paul’s presence when at last he would tiptoe quietly into the bedroom with a mumbled apology.
His excuse, always, was that he’d been working late, and Gina had no reason not to believe it. Paul became moody and withdrawn every year before the Christmas holiday. Losing little Angela sixteen years ago had changed her husband in ways even she couldn’t comprehend.
Not that she herself didn’t still miss the child. But it was a long time ago, and Gina had tried to move on, to build a career she could exist inside, like a hermit crab. If her work as an interior designer didn’t always satisfy, she accepted that as natural, given the circumstances. Losing a child—even a child one had adopted and lived with for only four years—had left a hole in her heart. Not just a break, the kind country-western songs were written about, but an actual hole as seen in medical journals, the kind that led to death, or at the very least, drastic surgery.
For a while, Gina and Paul thought that, because of their grief, they might actually die. However, they had somehow pulled themselves together and had been saved—if saved was the right word—by the surgical removal of memories. Clean, antiseptic cuts were called for, as in the giving away of clothes and toys, the burning of photographs, the removal of everything that might remind them of Angela.
Everything, that is, but Rachel, her twin.
They had wished for identical twins at first, little girls they could dress in the same outfits, a cutesy look that would have people stopping in the street to coo over two-seater strollers and rhapsodize, “Oh, how precious.” They came to be grateful, however, that Rachel and Angela had been fraternal twins instead. The fact that they didn’t look alike helped after Angela was gone. And as Rachel grew, she took on more of Gina’s and Paul’s traits, so that eventually the reminders of Angela were diluted in that way, as well.
Except at Christmastime. If they lived to be a thousand, they would never be able to wipe away the memory of Angela in her new white dress with the wide scarlet sash, the knife in her hand as she stood over Rachel, a look of pure evil on her face. Then, as Paul and Gina had screamed in unison, there was that awful, unbelievable moment as Angela had thrust the knife down, slicing at Rachel’s tiny five-year-old chest, while tree lights twinkled and carols played.
As Paul had said later, it was as if the devil himself, not the Lord, had arrived that night. The devil in the form of a five-year-old girl, a girl they had raised in almost exactly the same way as her twin, whom they had adopted, too, thinking that keeping the girls together would be a blessing for all concerned.
That one of those girls would turn out to be a killer, they could not have foreseen. A “bad seed,” to coin a term. But one didn’t coin terms when one loved a child. One simply stood by in horror and disbelief as signs of evil began to show themselves, growing in intensity until that evil reached a crescendo on a holiday night that was supposed to be a warm, loving, family occasion.
It was all Gina and Paul could do to survive the shock—and then to remove all traces of Angela from their home.
Unpacking groceries, Gina wiped away tears. Often, when she allowed herself to remember Angela, tears sprang to her eyes and her collarbones ached from the emptiness in her
