“You’re okay. You’re safe.” His entire body is tense, and his fingers shake as he digs into his arms. I turn my voice into soothing cough syrup and speak healing into his eyes. “Just take a minute and breathe. Get yourself together again. Okay, slow down.”
We had a plan. A good one. A solid one. But I know better than anyone else that sometimes things don’t go as planned.
Like Genevieve’s plan to kill me when I was twelve just like she killed my daddy six years ago. I never took those pills like they said I did. Never. What I did take was a great big milkshake that she made for both me and Mason that night while we were watching TV. She never included me in any of the special things the two of them did together, so I was delighted. Totally over the moon. I was still so young. So foolish and naive. I’m glad I’ve matured and grown up. It’s not good to be that attached to someone who wants nothing to do with you.
She put in lots of chocolate syrup, and we even got to use the old-fashioned vanilla ice cream that she reserved for birthdays and special occasions. I was so excited because she gave me a cheat night on my diet. She’d started restricting my calories so that I’d lose weight. She insisted that my problems with stage fright—that’s what she called it—were because I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin because I was chubby. She called it my baby fat and swore that as soon as I got it off, I’d want to get right back up onstage.
But that night she let me have a chocolate milkshake, and I licked every single drop.
I woke up in the middle of the night covered in my own vomit and urine. Everything I kept trying to tell the doctors and nurses—that I hadn’t taken any Tylenol, explaining that it had to be my mom—was only met with denial, and the more I talked and she denied it, the crazier I sounded. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself locked in the children’s psychiatric ward on a seventy-two-hour hold because they thought I was a threat to my own safety. My life was never the same.
Until I stopped playing her games and started playing my own. Back to this one.
I give Brett’s uninjured knee a squeeze. “What happened when you got there?”
“I did just like we planned. Everything was perfect.” His voice trembles as he speaks, but he’s shaking less. I don’t know how he managed to drive all the way from Tuscaloosa in this shape. I’m so glad we filled those containers with gas so he didn’t have to stop. We would’ve been busted for sure if he showed up at a gas station with an open gunshot wound. “I got to the spot and drove the truck all the way in, underneath those trees you showed me. She was already there waiting for me. It all happened so fast once I got out of the truck that I didn’t even really have time to think about it. Your mom was standing by the swamp with the bag, and we did the exchange in like two seconds.” He pulls his head up and looks at me. “Don’t worry, I remembered to count it.” I give him a pleased smile and a pat of approval on his forearm. “Anyway, after that, she started demanding that I delete the video, and I started getting real nervous then, because she looked like she was about ten seconds away from losing it.” He points to his leg. “Which I clearly wasn’t wrong about. But I didn’t know what else to do, so I just said she couldn’t do anything with the video and took off.”
There’s no video. There never was. At least we never had it, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was making Genevieve think we did, and that was easy to do because my daddy had it at one time. He referenced it in some of his last text messages with Genevieve before he died.
I can’t believe you would do something like that to our son. I saw the video. How could you?
She pleaded ignorance in her texts just like she always does in person. She made him think he was the crazy one instead of the other way around.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you okay?
She knew exactly what he was talking about, just like I did when I read their exchanges, because I had found the hidden office where she tortured Mason too. I discovered it a few weeks before he did. The only thing inside was an old-fashioned mahogany dresser that I’d never seen before. It didn’t match anything in the house. All four legs looked like they’d been chewed by a dog, except we’d never had a dog. Or a cat. Genevieve didn’t allow pets. Mounds of melted candles sat in the corners. A camera hung down from the ceiling. The worst part was the carpet. So disgusting. It was stained with urine and feces. Parts of it were burned. All I kept wondering was how she kept the putrid smell inside. It made me gag.
I’m not sure which video my daddy saw, but I rewound the camera and watched in horror as she dripped burning wax onto Mason’s thighs and held his arm over the flame while she counted out loud the seconds until she released him. She smothered him with kisses every time he made it through without grimacing or making a sound. He beamed like he had when he’d graduated kindergarten. I turned it off after she started making him slap himself whenever she tapped her fingers on the side of her thigh. Two taps. Then a slap. He didn’t flinch when he did that either.
I was working up the nerve to tell my daddy, but how was I supposed to tell him my mom was locking my brother in a walk-in closet that she’d turned into a torture chamber in a way that didn’t make him think I was delusional again? And then he found it all on his own.
She made her office space disappear just like she made my daddy.
Nobody ever worried about my daddy’s phone the day he died. They were too busy planning a funeral and worrying about his money, but I wanted his phone. I got lucky and found it underneath the armoire in the dining room that night. I slept down there so that I could be close to the last spot he’d been alive in. I made myself a bed with his pillow and favorite flannel shirt. I lay there next to his chair, pressing myself against the hardwood floors, trying to feel him. That’s when I spotted the phone, and I’ve had it with me ever since. It’s been shut off for years, but I make sure to keep it charged so the battery never dies. I’ve transferred all his stuff over to my account, and I go through it over and over again. His voice memos are my favorite. I listen to those while I’m falling asleep. He was always leaving messages to himself, and I love how he talked when he thought no one was listening. I’ve also combed through all his texts hundreds of times. That’s how I put all the pieces together.
Genevieve hurting Mason was why my daddy was so mad at her. That’s why he was going to leave her. And that’s why she killed him. He doesn’t say anything about leaving her in the texts, but he told me two nights before he died. Made me promise not to tell anyone.
I knew Genevieve killed my daddy in the same way I knew she had something to do with Annabelle’s murder from the moment I heard about it. I couldn’t prove either just like I couldn’t prove she’d tried to get rid of me too. That’s what she does with people she doesn’t have any use for anymore or who stand in the way of what she wants—she tosses them away like nasty trash.
Brett and I have been plotting how to blackmail money out of Genevieve for the last year. We met in the psychiatric ward at White Memorial when we were both fifteen. He was in for a drug-induced psychosis, and I was in for a mom-induced one. We’ve stayed in touch ever since, and he was thrilled when he found out I was going to Ole Miss, since he was too.