bedroom. Gently he slid the curtain aside to step out onto the mermaid-shaped shag rug.
He felt hatred bubble up as he noticed she’d bought herself a pretty new mirror since he was here just a few days ago. The mirror was framed in seashells, and it was all he could do not to smash it on the tile floor.
It wasn’t the mirror. Or even the stupid seashore stuff. It was that she’d done just fine without him. Better than fine once she’d dumped him.
The realization was like acid inside him. It ate away at the hope that she’d missed him. That she’d been sorry she’d left him.
He thought of the seven-year-old boy he’d been. He could smell the dust her car tires had thrown up as she’d torn across the dirt lot of the filling station. He’d run out of the restroom, thinking she hadn’t realized he wasn’t in the car, and had called after her. Running, tears streaming down his dirt-streaked face, until he’d stumbled and fallen and lain bawling his heart out as her car had grown smaller and smaller on the two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere.
The memory jarred him into motion. Stepping through the bathroom doorway, he stopped to wait for his eyes to adjust. Her bedroom door was closed. That was odd. It had been open when he’d been here a few nights before.
Worry knifed through him. The hallway was lit by another shell night-light. The cramped space smelled of stale beer and old cigarette smoke.
He inched down the hall, anticipation thrumming in his veins. At the door, he stopped, suddenly worried what he would do if for some reason she’d locked it.
His hand shook as he reached out and took the knob in his damp fingers. He closed his eyes, knowing it couldn’t end here, with him locked out of her room, and that it would end very badly if he had to break down the door. She would be able to call the police before he could get to her. He should have cut the phone lines, he realized now.
The knob turned in his hand.
He slumped against the doorjamb for a moment, his relief so intense it made him light-headed. He was sweating hard now, his T-shirt sticking to his skin, and yet he felt a chill as he looked into her bedroom.
The bed was one of those California kings he’d heard about—and damned near as big as the bedroom. He could make out a small form under the covers. Another one of those stupid shell night-lights glowed from a corner of the room.
He stepped in. The only sound was her drunken snores. She was curled on her side, her back to him on the edge of the bed farthest from him. All he could see was the back of her head on the pillow. Her hair was darker than he remembered it. He realized she probably dyed it because she could be getting gray by now.
It finally struck him: he was going to come face-to-face with the mother who had abandoned him at a gas station twenty-four years ago.
A memory blindsided him. A memory so sweet it made his teeth ache. The two of them sitting on the couch watching her favorite soap opera. A commercial came on for hair color. Him telling her she would look beautiful no matter what color her hair was, even gray. And her smiling over at him, tears in her eyes as she kissed his cheek and pulled him into her arms for a hug.
She’d held him so tightly he couldn’t breathe. But he hadn’t complained. It was the last time he remembered her touching him.
He crept around the perimeter of the bed, feeling as if he were floating. It all felt so surreal now that he was finally here, finally ready.
She stirred and he froze. She let out a sigh and drifted off again. He edged closer until he was standing over her.
He couldn’t see her face. Not the way he wanted to. He knew he was going to have to turn on the lamp beside her bed. He wanted to look into her eyes—and have her look into his. He wanted her to know.
As he turned on the lamp, his fingers brushed the stack of old magazines next to the bed. The magazines toppled over, hitting the floor with a whoosh that startled him as much as the brightness of the lamp as it came on.
She jerked up in bed onto one elbow, blinking against the brightness of the light.
He could see that for a moment she thought he was her husband. She’d aged. It shouldn’t have shocked him. But she’d been only twenty-three when she’d left him at that filling station in Montana. She wasn’t even fifty, and yet she looked a lot older.
He’d always wondered if she’d grieved over what she’d done. Her life’s road map was etched unkindly in her face, but he knew that the very worst she’d had wasn’t even close to what he’d been through.
She blinked, that moment of mistakenly taking him for her husband turning to confusion, then fear. Her mouth started to open as she clutched the sheet to her throat.
“Don’t scream,” he said and touched the knife in his hand, the blade leaping out to catch the light. “Don’t you dare scream.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t. Only a small sound came out of her as her eyes met his and he saw the recognition.
That should have given him some satisfaction.
She knew him even after all these years.
He used to have this dream that she would fall to her knees and beg his forgiveness. He’d always wanted to believe that she’d come back for him but it had been too late. He’d thought about her searching for him for years, her life as miserable as his had been because of what she’d done.
The dream popped like a soap bubble when she opened her mouth again. “So you found me.” Her voice was rough from years of cigarettes and late-night boozing, bad men and barrooms.
“So what now?” she asked with a shake of her head. Her eyes flicked to the switchblade in his hand and something came over her face. A hardness that he now remembered from when he was a boy.
What he saw in her eyes was not the remorse he’d hoped for. No sorrow. No guilt. Not even fear anymore. Her gaze was challenging. As if telling him he didn’t have what it would take to kill her.
“You think I haven’t always known that you’d turn up one day?” she said as she sat up in the bed and reached for her cigarettes and lighter on the nightstand. She lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
He stared at her. He’d often wondered if that day at the gas station she’d looked in her rearview mirror. Now he knew that answer. She hadn’t looked back. Not even a glance. He guessed he’d always known that.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to me?” A seven-year-old boy abandoned like that. He wanted to tell her about the man who’d picked him up and eventually dumped him just the way she had. Dumped him at a place with an innocuous name: Harper House.
He and the others, though, they’d called it Hell House.
Her eyes narrowed at the question, cigarette smoke curling around her. “What? You want to swap horror stories?” She let out a laugh that turned into a cough. “I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl.”
She must have seen his hurt. “Hoping for a heartwarming reunion, were you?” She flicked another glance at the knife. “Or were you thinking you could get money out of me?” She let out another laugh. “Sorry, but you’re going to be disappointed on both counts.”
