Their Last Secret Read online

  Marie wiped her tears.

  Nikki and Janie touched her shoulders to console her.

  “You know what?” Marie said, her composure instantly regained. Her tears gone. “Maybe I did kill him on purpose. And maybe I don’t even care. They always liked Pike more than me so it all evens out.” Then she giggled to herself.

  Exchanging glances, Nikki and Janie took a moment to absorb Marie’s admission, letting a silent moment pass before Nikki turned to Janie, who took a breath.

  “One day, I was looking for an old school paper I was going to use for a new assignment.” Her eyes locked on to the flame as if she were watching herself. “I was searching through some of my mother’s things. I went into her closet and through some boxes and found an old journal my mom had. I began reading it and learned that my dad was not my dad, that he used to beat my mom and she went out and had sex with some jerk she’d met at a bar. She didn’t even know his real name. She was going to have an abortion but tried to convince my dad that he was my father.” Janie exhaled. “I guess my dad found out that I was not his kid and that’s why he left. My mother doesn’t know that I know, or maybe she does, I don’t know, but it’s like this hateful thing between us and I’m not sure I can ever really love her like I should, you know?”

  “That’s sad. You came so close to not even being born,” Nikki said.

  An owl hooted in the quiet that followed until Marie said: “I’m getting cold. I want to get dressed.”

  “Shh. Not yet.” Nikki took a half sheet of paper from her bag and set it before the candle. In the light they saw her neat printing but could not read it. “We need to make a circle, hold hands, and you must repeat the words I say exactly as I say them. This is serious. Do not say anything else. Repeat them together. Ready?”

  The girls held hands, nodded, and Nikki began making strange sounds.

  “Nema! Live morf su reviled tub... .”

  Momentarily taken aback by the gibberish, Janie and Marie repeated the odd sounds in unison with Nikki until she ended with “...ni tra ohw rethaf rou!”

  “What did we just say?” Janie asked.

  “The Lord’s Prayer backward.”

  “But why?” Marie asked.

  “It gives us power from the nether regions.”

  “The nether regions? Do you mean hell? Are we, like, witches?”

  “No, it’s in the books I read. We’re almost bound. One more thing, give me your pointer finger on your left hand.”

  Nikki reached into her bag. Something small glinted in the night and without warning, using a sewing needle, she pricked the tips of Marie’s and Janie’s fingers, then her own, drawing blood.

  “That hurts! What’re you doing, Nikki?” Marie said.

  “Don’t be a baby. Touch your bloody tips together with mine over the flame so our blood mingles.”

  The girls pressed their fingers together. Their blood hissed as it dripped into the melted wax pooled atop the candle.

  “All right, now each of us gets a ring. These might be a little big. I got them from the truck stop today. You must always have your ring with you, on your finger or a chain.”

  They were three different skull rings that bikers and truckers liked. Nikki gave Marie the death’s head; gave Janie the sugar skull and kept the skull expressing rage for herself. The girls slid them on their fingers.

  “Now it’s official,” Nikki said. “By this ritual we’re secretly known as The Skull Sisters. We’re family. We do everything together. Everything we get, we share. We protect each other. We never betray or tell on each other. None of us is better than her other sisters. No matter where we go or what we do in life, nothing will tear us apart, because we’ve made a blood bond and a pact that are forever.”

  As the breezes raked through the treetops and the candlelight burned in their eyes, Janie, Marie and Nikki nodded.

  Their bond was sealed.

  “Now,” Nikki said, “the first thing The Skull Sisters are going to do is make sure Janie gets the money the Tullocks owe her.”

  * * *

  The next day they met in Prairie Sun Memorial Park. Its main features were the weather-beaten soldier statue and flower gardens honoring local people killed in wars.

  In the section of the park with the playground, Janie, Marie and Nikki were on the swings, which creaked with their gentle swaying as Nikki outlined the plan to right the wrong the Tullocks had inflicted upon Janie.

  “They treat you like crap and rip you off, right?” Nikki said.

  “Yes.”

  “They look down on you and people like us, right?”

  “They do.”

  “We hate them so much, right?” Nikki said.

  “We hate them,” Marie said. “They think they’re better than everyone.”

  “They owe Janie over a hundred dollars. All we’re going to do is get it.”

  “How?” Janie asked.

  “Simple. You said they’re planning to go away soon with their brats.”

  “To Regina to visit friends.”

  “So the next time you sit for them and just before they go to Regina, you just make sure a window is unlocked. That’s it. And we’ll go in and find where they keep the cash. They’ve got to have plenty in the house, and The Skull Sisters will collect—not steal, but collect—what they owe you.”

  Janie thought about it.

  “It’s perfect,” Nikki said. “If it happens when they’re away, it could be anybody—they have no reason to suspect you. And, they’re so freaking rich they probably won’t even miss it.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Marie said, admiring her new ring. “It’s not stealing if they owe you.”

  Janie got to thinking how Connie Tullock with her fake accent acted like she was superior to her; remembered her mother on her knees cleaning Roy Tullock’s shoes. Janie thought about the pain she carried about who she was and where she belonged in this world, thought about the Tullocks keeping her money and she found herself nodding as anger bubbled in her stomach. “Let’s do it.”

  “Good,” Nikki said. “Okay, there’s something we need to do.”

  Emboldened with their bond and their mission, the girls decided to record the milestone. Disregarding Nikki’s ban, they went to the mall and directly to the photo booth near the main entrance. Laughing, they all jammed inside, shut the curtain, deposited the money, then did a series of poses. The booth’s mechanism hummed and ejected photo strips. They collected one for each of them.

  Admiring the photos, Nikki grinned. “This is going to be historic.”

  * * *

  Nearly three weeks later, just after midnight, The Skull Sisters met on the corner near Nikki’s house where she was smoking. Seeing them, Nikki blew a stream of smoke and held up the vodka bottle with orange juice she’d prepared for the night.

  The girls drank as they walked to the edge of town with Janie confirming that the Tullocks had left the previous day for Regina. She said she knew how to work their alarm system and could switch it off when they got there. When she’d sat for them a couple of nights before she’d unlocked a basement window in a storage room that no one seemed to use.

  Hearts beating faster with every step they covered the distance across town in no time before they came to the Tullocks’ property.

  They stood on a small rise overlooking the sprawling yard, the house standing before them, deserted in the darkness, glorious for all it represented. Their rage and private pain burning, they each took last gulps with Nikki finishing the bottle and tossing it.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They moved toward the house, taking the next steps that would irrevocably change their lives and release them from Eternity.

  Four

  Orange County, California

  Present day

  Where’s Carson Clark?

 
Emma Grant checked the time—ten minutes late. Students were often late for appointments with the school counselor but as she clicked through his file again, concern seeped into her thoughts.

  Carson’s grades were slipping, jeopardizing his plan to go into the military as a way to pursue a medical degree. His parents had recently separated; his mother had been in and out of hospital fighting cancer. Fortunately, relatives lived nearby. But Carson had told Emma he was “a bit sad about my folks...sometimes it’s like, what’s the point?”

  She had tried to set him up with a psychologist, just to talk. But Carson smiled that broad smile of his and said: “No thanks, I’m good.”

  It worried Emma that many of the students who confided in her refused to accept expert help. Apart from their home lives, they faced so many issues: academic and athletic pressure; stress; online bullying; race, gender and mental health discrimination; along with postsecondary planning. Amid all that, Emma had to navigate around legal, privacy and policy restrictions, to decipher the subtext of what students shared with her to identify those at risk of harming themselves, or being violent against others.

  It was never easy but she’d made it her life’s mission to help young people. She’d learned long ago from painful, personal experience that one wrong decision could change the course of your life.

  Now at thirty-four with a master’s degree, and even after taking every new course available to do her absolute best for the kids she counseled, she was lucky if she could get through to even one each day.

  But the one she could not seem to reach was the one closest to her: Kayla, her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter. Emma checked her phone. Still no response to the texts she’d sent her.

  Emma realized that Kayla would never accept her as her mother, especially after Kayla’s dad had married Emma three years after Kayla’s mom had died. Kayla’s dad had called his daughter’s relationship to Emma “a work in progress.” But today Kayla had been more distant than usual, picking at the omelet Emma had made for her.

  “Kayla, is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

  “Not really,” Kayla said to her phone. “I gotta go.”

  She hefted her bag over her shoulder, kissed her dad, then left for school. When the door closed Emma had turned to Ben.

  “I’m failing with her,” she said.

  “No you’re not. She’s still adjusting.”

  “We’ve been married a year. We’ve been together longer than that, yet she refuses to let me into her life.”

  “She’s still grappling with unresolved grief. She just needs time.”

  Emma understood but needed to diminish the undercurrent of tension between them. Kayla did not attend Valley Meadow High School where Emma worked, a blessing because it gave them space but it was also a challenge when Emma wanted to talk to her face-to-face. Emma’s texts to Kayla suggesting a shopping or lunch date had gone unanswered.

  Her thoughts shifted to Carson and the time—seventeen minutes late—when her phone chimed with a text. Not Kayla, but one of Carson’s friends. Cheyenne, a sensitive student Emma had counseled who planned to become a nurse.

  Cheyenne had written:

  Thought you should see this message Carson just sent out. We’re worried, somebody just saw him cleaning out his locker.

  Then a screenshot of a text from Carson came through:

  Time for me to check out-don’t want to be on this earth any longer. I love you guys.

  Emma sat bolt upright, looked up Carson’s number and called his phone. As it rang, she put it on speaker, her keyboard clicking as she searched Carson’s social media accounts. All had been deleted but one, which had one message: “Bye,” next to a sad face with a teardrop.

  Carson’s phone went unanswered and Emma’s focus shot to the protocol for alerting the school to a student at risk of self-harm.

  Or harming others.

  No, Carson wouldn’t do that. Would he?

  Then, as if on cue, as if by some fantastic miracle, Emma glanced out her office window and saw him—Carson was outside.

  Relief and alarm pulsed through her as she rushed from her desk, ran down the hall, students turning, jaws dropping as Emma burst out the main entrance doors.

  Carson was well ahead of her, walking away from the school, moving with big strides along the sidewalk that bordered the busy four-lane boulevard. She saw his bulging backpack, saw him gripping the straps.

  “Carson!” Emma called as she ran.

  He didn’t respond. He was heading in the direction of Meadow Valley Elementary.

  What’s in his backpack?

  “Carson, stop!” Emma called over the traffic, running closer to him.

  He turned to her, gripping his straps.

  An engine growled as she got closer. Carson raised one hand, flashed his palm; their eyes met as he mouthed the word Bye, then stepped from the sidewalk into the path of an oncoming Orange County transit bus as it gained speed.

  Blood thumping in her ears, Emma reached out and in a heartbeat clawed at one of Carson’s straps, gripping it, saw the bus driver’s eyes balloon with horror as he twisted the steering wheel, brakes pealing, wheels locking, thudding, the entire bus dipping, swaying as Emma pulled Carson away and down to the pavement.

  The bus just missed him.

  The stench of burning rubber and clouds of smoke rolled over them. Horns blared. The bus doors opened, the driver flying out to them. Passengers and students gawked. Someone called 9-1-1.

  “What the hell, kid, are you all right?” the driver asked.

  Carson was crying, choking, coughing sobs. Emma gently pulled off his backpack and held him for a long moment.

  “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get help. You will get through this,” Emma said to the wail of approaching sirens.

  * * *

  As a precaution, paramedics took Carson to the nearest hospital.

  His mother was undergoing chemotherapy miles away at a different hospital in Irvine. The school alerted his aunt and uncle, who rushed to be with him. They’d also reached his father, who scrambled to get on the next flight from Houston.

  Emma gave a statement to police, then in accordance with school policy, completed reports and forms. Twice she reached for her phone to call her husband but was at a loss as to what she’d say, deciding to wait until she saw him at home. Afterward Glenda Heywood, the principal, came to her office to speak with her.

  “The police told me what the bus driver said. Your quick action saved him, Emma.” Heywood touched her shoulder. “How’re you holding up? Do you need to talk to anyone?”

  Emma shook her head, adrenaline still rippling through her. “We were so lucky. His friends noticed something wrong and alerted me. The signs weren’t glaring but they were there.”

  “He’s alive because of you and his friends,” Heywood said. “Cancel whatever else you’ve got today and go home. Want me to call anyone for you?”

  “No. I’ll be okay. Thanks.”

  After wrapping up matters and collecting her things, Emma stared at her phone. Again, she thought of calling Ben but dismissed it. Still no response from Kayla.

  I’ll deal with all of it later, she thought, embracing the warm breeze drifting across the staff parking lot. She got behind the wheel of her SUV and before starting it a chill coiled through her. Glancing at her phone and Carson’s farewell text, she knew what it felt like when you don’t want to be on this earth any longer.

  But she was a survivor. It took years but she’d made so many changes so she could crawl out of the dark, fighting to prove that she had value in this world, that she could help people. She was doing that every day, building a life, a good life with Ben and Kayla. But beneath the surface she struggled because the scars of her past would never, ever fade.

  Emma thrust her face into her hands and cried.
/>   After several minutes she found her composure, searched her bag for a tissue. Using the visor mirror, she tried to regain her composure, then froze at what she saw.

  In the distance, far across the street she saw a parked car, a green sedan, with a woman behind the wheel wearing dark glasses and a white ball cap.

  Is it my imagination, or is she watching me?

  Emma was certain she’d seen her once or twice before...

  Anger surging, she opened her door, got out and strode toward her. But before she could cross the street the woman started her engine and drove off, leaving Emma exasperated and perplexed. Cursing under her breath, she returned to her SUV, halting when she noticed something she’d missed before: a small, white envelope tucked under a wiper.

  Nothing was written on it.

  She tore it open, finding a single sheet of paper with a printed message.

  SOON IT WILL BE 20 YEARS. YOUR DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING.

  Five

  Cielo Valle, Orange County, California

  Present day

  Tires.

  The ad for the sale popped up on Ben Grant’s computer screen triggering memories of his wife.

  The deputies investigating the accident had said that Brooke’s tires were worn and the right front had blown when she’d swerved in the rain, likely to miss a raccoon or coyote. She’d lost control; the car had rolled down into a ravine.

  Brooke had been on her way to join him and Kayla at their cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains. Two weeks before her crash Brooke thought her tires might need replacing.