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MEMORIES
It’s not as dramatic as I believed it would be, this return of my past. I envisioned being bowled over by it, taking to my bed, feeling helpless to do anything as the memories trampled me like runaway horses. But it is more like watching the rerun of a black-and-white horror film I saw as a child. The images are familiar, but too grainy and drained of power to be truly frightening.
After I put Victory to bed her first night back home, I start to remember. I tuck her beneath her sky blue sheets and sit with her as she drifts off, watching the delicate rise and fall of her chest. As I get up quietly and slip from her room, she says sleepily, “I want my baby.” I find Claude on the floor and put him beside her, but she is already sound asleep again. As I leave the room, I hear Janet Parker’s voice and there’s a terrible ringing in my ears. Once I’m back in my bedroom, I’m swept away, traveling back to a place I haven’t visited
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THE VENGEFUL LUNA ACTION
Yet this is not a fugue, this most recent flight from my life. For the first time maybe, I am sure of who I am and what I must do. This has been a purposeful escape to protect my daughter from mistakes that I have made, to protect her from the woman I have been. If I can’t do that, then she’s better off without me.The boat is pitching horribly now, and I cling to the rail on the wall as I make my way back to my cabin. The wind is wailing, and I think of Dax on his little boat and wonder how he is faring in the big waters and if he’ll survive, if he’ll come back for me. My stomach is in full mutiny, and I hold back vomit as I move through the door, pull it closed behind me, and resume my crouch in the small triangle of space that will be created when the door swings open. I listen to the wind and the churning water.It isn’t long before I hear the thrum of a powerful boat engine, then footfalls on the deck above me. I take the gun from my
THE VENGEFUL LUNA HIS GIFT
“Mom!” I yelled, grabbing the banister and racing up the stairs. I covered my mouth and nose with my arm, but the smoke was insidious, burning my eyes, clawing at the back of my throat. By the time I got to the top landing, I was coughing and light-headed.I found my mother alone in her bed, passed out cold, oblivious to the fire raging through the house. I don’t know what I thought would happen to her in all this, but I couldn’t leave her to die. I shook her but couldn’t rouse her. Finally I dragged her until she stumbled from the bed, leaning her full weight on me.“What’s happening?” she muttered.“There’s a fire!” I yelled, struggling to get to the door. “Where’s Frank?”But she didn’t seem to hear. “Lolita,” she slurred, “let me sleep.”I dragged her into the hall, where through the smoke I saw two figures on the staircase, one lon
THE VENGEFUL LUNA WE DON'T GET TO MOVE ON
“He was gone most of the time,” Gray said of his father. “And when he was home, he was this brooding presence. Sullen, staring at the television or angry at my mother for something she’d bought or had done to the house while he was gone. I hovered around him, wanting and fearing his attention. Occasionally I’d get these quick pats on the back or we’d try to play catch or build a tree house, something that fathers and sons might do together. But it was never quite right. We always walked away feeling like we’d failed at something indefinable. We just couldn’t connect, not really. Not ever.”He used to spend time talking to me like this, even when he thought I might not be able to hear him or that I didn’t care. He’d sit in my room at the psychiatric hospital in New Jersey where he’d admitted me as Annie Fowler and talk. I’d stare off into space, not responding. I wasn’t exactly catatonic, but I
THE VENGEFUL LUNA RETRIBUTION
He’s moving fast, crossing the causeway and pulling on to the highway. He’s not stopping at the police station. He’s headed into the city, which seems odd. I never thought to ask him how he knows where Harrison lives. He has his methods.“I was in a bar in the East Village once, a place called Downtown Beirut. You know it?” Gray asked me one night at the hospital. Our relationship had improved by this time, but I didn’t answer. I almost never did. I don’t think he minded. He knew I was listening.“A real dump, the biggest dive you ever saw - what a shithole. I used to drink there a lot. Just find a corner and pound them back until I could barely get myself home to my apartment on First Avenue. It wasn’t every night that I’d get drunk like this, only when I couldn’t sleep, when it was all too much with me. My mother passed after I was discharged, a stroke. I blamed my dad. I blamed him for almost everythi
THE VENGEFUL LUNA WHAT EVER IT TAKES
They told me that I left myself behind that night when I got into that black sedan with Marlowe, that Lolita ceased to exist and a new girl took her place.So who am I now? I remember wondering as Gray shouldered the bag filled with the things he bought for me and we walked through the automatic doors into the cold parking lot. Am I Annie Fowler or Lolita March or someone else entirely? Two and a half years of my life were gone.I got into the black Suburban and wrapped my arms around myself against the cold. I was shivering, from cold, from fear. On the day I left Frank Geary’s horse ranch, I was seventeen, nearly eighteen. On the day I left the hospital with Gray, my twenty-first birthday was just three months away.Gray turned on the heat, and we sat for a while in the car. I was scared. I didn’t know who I was or what I was going to do with myself now. But I stayed quiet. I couldn’t afford to show any weakness.“I know a
THE VENGEFUL LUNA WHAT IT TAKES
We drove for two days and finally wound up at Vivian’s place on the beach. She and Drew were just dating at the time, so I lived alone with her. Gray took an apartment nearby. He wanted me to have some time to get to know myself, to get to know him.“We’ll date,” he said. “Like normal people.”Vivian took me into her house and treated me like her daughter. She cooked for me and stayed up late listening to me talk. She offered me a sort of kindness that no one else ever had. As I got my GED and started taking classes at the local college, my belly grew bigger. Gray and I dated. It was the happiest time of my life.I suppose some people would have considered ending the pregnancy. But it didn’t even cross my mind. I’ve never once thought of Victory as Marlowe Geary’s daughter. She has always been mine and mine alone.* * *I watch as Gray gets out of the car with a black duffel bag. He puts t
THE VENGEFUL LUNA BRIGGS' DEAD
I wanted to tell him that it couldn’t be true, though I’d read this much. I don’t think I could have witnessed these crimes and done nothing, but the truth was, I didn’t know for sure.“A few weeks earlier, a witness, a stock boy Geary left for dead in the back room, said he saw you. He was badly wounded, unable to help the girl Geary was torturing. All he could do was listen to her screams, thinking he was about to die himself. He said you were virtually catatonic, that you sat in a corner and rocked, gnawing on your cuticles. That Geary led you out when he was done. You went with him like a child.”I covered my face in shame. I hated to think of myself this way, weak and in a killer’s thrall, just like my mother.“Up till then I wasn’t sure. Your mother said you went with Geary willingly. But your father said when you came to New York that you weren’t right, you weren’t the girl he knew. He said
THE VENGEFUL LUNA THE IRRESPONSIBLES
The envelope is thick and heavy, and I don’t pause to peer inside, just move quickly back to my car. I slide the envelope under the passenger seat, start the engine, and get out of there. As I pull back on to the highway to start toward home, I wonder why Gray didn’t search the van. He knew that Simon Briggs was looking for me, that Detective Harrison was all over me, but he left everything there for the police to find. It doesn’t make any sense.My cell phone rings. It’s Detective Harrison again. This time I answer.“What do you want, Detective? Is it money? Just tell me what you need to leave me alone and it’s yours.”“Yesterday it was money. Today I’m not so sure.”I’m driving too fast. I change lanes carelessly, and the Toyota behind me honks in protest. I lift a hand.“Cell phones kill,” says the detective. “Did you know that you’re just as im
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