Down the Darkest Road

49

Leah felt terrible. She went about her chores on the brink of tears, shaking inside, feeling sick over the terrible things she had said to her mother. The most terrible thing was she had meant all of it.

She was angry. She was so angry. She was angry with her sister for being so headstrong and so stupid and so careless. She was angry with her father for being so selfish and so weak that he would leave them just to end his own pain and not think anything about the pain Leah or her mother had to deal with after he was gone.

She was angry with her mother for holding on so tightly to the misery, and for fighting and fighting and fighting when it would have been so much easier for them both to just forget and go on.

And more than anything, she was angry with herself for having all of those feelings. What kind of terrible person was she that she could resent her sister, who was probably dead, who had probably been tortured and gone through unspeakable things at the hands of Roland Ballencoa? How could she hate the father she had loved so much and missed so badly? She would have given anything to have him back, to feel his strong arms around her as he told her everything would be all right. How could she lose patience with her mother, who had been left to deal with everything with no help from anyone?

Leah thought she would choke on the guilt that rose up inside her. And at the same time she wanted someone to feel sorry for her. She wanted someone to agree with her. She wanted someone to tell her it was all right to have these terrible feelings and to allow them to tear out of her like a pack of wild animals.

But she was afraid to ask for that. She was afraid of being told it wasn’t all right, that she shouldn’t feel the things that had been building inside of her all this time since Leslie had been taken.

What would Anne Leone think of her if she confessed all of these ugly emotions? Leah had told her mother she wasn’t the crazy one, but she had a terrible suspicion that maybe she was. How else could she think to hate the sister she had loved so much? How else could she bring herself to cut herself and cause herself pain and make herself bleed? If that wasn’t crazy, what was?

Unable to concentrate, Leah had asked to skip her riding lesson with Maria. She had thrown herself into her tasks—grooming horses and cleaning tack. These were jobs she usually enjoyed because they were simple and physical and let her see a result, and at the same time her mind was free to wander. Today she didn’t want her mind to wander because it wanted only to go down dark paths to places that frightened her.

She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. She didn’t want to interact with other people. She wanted just to go home, but she didn’t really have a home anymore. The house they were living in wasn’t home. The home she had grown up in was being sold. Her life had no anchor. She felt like she was trapped in a clear balloon floating aimlessly while she suffocated inside it. And the people around her were watching it happen, but seeing nothing.

She was afraid to be by herself. She was afraid of herself. She was afraid now for her mom after the things her mother had talked about in the car. She was just plain afraid.

She went into the stall with Bacchus, just to be near him. He was so calm and seemed so wise. He didn’t think she was crazy. He was always happy to see her, and welcomed her with a nicker and a nuzzle from his big soft nose.

In a weird way, going to Bacchus had taken the place of going to Daddy for comfort. Bacchus was big and strong. He didn’t judge her. He loved her unconditionally. Nothing ever seemed as bad when she was next to him.

She stroked his face now as she struggled against the need to cry. The pressure was building and building inside her until she felt like she would explode. Her whole body was shaking from the very core outward. She wanted to run away from the feeling or curl up into a tiny ball and disappear. But she felt unable to do either one of those things. She put her hands over her face as if to hide.

Bacchus put his chin on her shoulder and gently pulled her to him until she was tucked against his shoulder, and he curved his big, thick neck around her as if to hold her there. Leah pressed her face against the horse’s warm body and sobbed and sobbed until she thought she would drown in her own tears.

Then Maria Gracida was there beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders, drawing her back away from her horse and into the comfort of a human embrace.

Leah struggled to rein in the flood of emotions. She was embarrassed to cry in front of Maria. She felt stupid, but she couldn’t help it. When Maria asked her what was wrong, she said she just didn’t feel well. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She told her she had stomach cramps and she just wanted to go home.

Maria tried to call her mom, but got the answering machine, and drove Leah home herself.

“Do you want me to wait with you until your mom gets back?”

Leah already felt like a fool. She knew Maria had lessons to give and horses to ride. She’d been enough of an inconvenience. All she really wanted to do was go back to bed and pull the covers over her head, and not come out until the world changed for the better.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m just really tired, that’s all.”

Her boss looked unconvinced, but torn at the same time. She glanced at her watch and frowned. “I should wait.”

“I’m just going to go to bed,” Leah said. “I’ll make sure all the doors are locked. Mrs. Enberg will have a cow if you’re not there for her lesson.”

The Gracidas were not wealthy people. They made their living from their ranch, from Maria’s teaching and training business and Felix’s polo school. They couldn’t afford to lose a fussy wealthy client because Maria was a no-show for a lesson. And the last thing Leah wanted was to be the cause of more trouble.

“I’m going to call and check on you,” Maria said, reluctantly moving toward the door. “I want your mom to call as soon as she gets home. Okay?”

Leah promised.

She locked the door behind Maria Gracida as she left.

The house was quiet. The tension that had filled the air that morning was gone. Leah welcomed the calm. She felt a little better since she’d had her meltdown. The pressure inside her had gone. Now she mostly felt empty and tired.

Maybe she would do what she had told Maria—just go to bed and sleep, and hope the world looked brighter when she woke up. Although she dreaded having to face her mother again after all the rotten things she’d said that morning, now she just wanted to apologize and beg forgiveness, and pretend it never happened.

She went upstairs and lay down across her bed, too tired to change out of her riding clothes other than to let her clogs fall off her feet onto the floor. She still had sugar cubes in the pocket of her breeches, and her steel hoof pick hung from a snap attached to a belt loop.

The Gracidas’s farrier had given it to her to clean the horses’ feet. He had forged it himself, and he gave one to every groom who worked with the horses he shod. Lauren unsnapped it from her belt loop and looked at it just to occupy her attention for a few moments.

The slender steel had been formed into a unique curve that mimicked the number 5. The top bar of the 5 had the sharp end designed to dig the debris from the crevices of the horse’s foot. The curve of the 5 shape fit perfectly in the hand to give just the right leverage. All the grooms at the Gracidas’s wore their picks clipped to a belt loop, at the ready. No horse came out of a stall in their stables with dirty feet.

Leah clipped hers back onto the snap.

She wanted to sleep. She wanted to sleep but not dream. She wanted her mom to come home. She wanted not to be alone.

If Leslie hadn’t been taken, she wouldn’t have been alone, she told herself. Even when they hadn’t been together, they had still been sisters. She had known that no matter what happened during the day, at the end of the day Leslie would be there for her, and they would talk, and everything would be all right.

“I’m sorry I said I wished you were dead,” she murmured now as she stared at the photograph she kept on her nightstand—of the two of them sitting together on one of Daddy’s horses with Daddy, so handsome, standing holding the bridle. Leslie had been nine at the time, Leah five and missing two front teeth. Leslie sat behind Leah with her arms wrapped around her. She remembered how safe it made her feel to have her sister’s arms around her. How sad it made her feel now to think that she would probably never have that again.

She shivered as the emotions began to rise inside her once more. She got up and began to pace, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.

She wished her mom was home. She wondered where she’d gone. What if she’d done something crazy again? Leah had been terrified to see her attack Ballencoa at the tennis courts. It had seemed like something out of a terrible movie, like her mother had been possessed or something. What if something like that happened again? What if she’d gotten arrested?

The idea made Leah angry. No one had arrested him. No one seemed to care that he’d taken Leslie. No one seemed to care about what was right. They only cared about what they could prove. It was like a game, and he knew how to play it better than anyone.

Frustration and anger rejoined her other emotions, and the pressure inside her built and built. She wanted it to go away. She thought about the razor blade hidden in the book on her nightstand. She could cut herself. She didn’t want to, but she hated this feeling so much. It scared her so badly. But what would happen if she cut herself and the pressure didn’t go away? Then what? Would she cut herself again and again? Would she cut herself so badly she might bleed to death?

It scared her that she would even think that could happen.

Why couldn’t her mom come home?

Suddenly the telephone rang and Leah jumped a foot in the air. It wasn’t the normal ring of a phone call. It rang three times in quick succession, which was the intercom for the front door.

No one could come to the door without first coming through the gate. Only people with the code could come through the gate. But no one with the gate code would ring the doorbell.

Leah stared at the telephone on her nightstand, afraid to answer it. But as it rang again, she thought again of her mother. What if something had happened to her?

On the third ring she picked up the phone. The man on the other end spoke with authority.

“Leah, I’m with the sheriff’s office. There’s been an accident. I’m here to take you to the hospital.”

The sheriff’s office probably had some kind of code to get through gates, Leah thought. That made sense.

“Was it a car accident?” she asked, thinking a million things at once. Was her mother dead? Was she alive? Had she been drinking and driving? She drank too much. Leah had told her.

“Yes, a car accident,” the man said.

She could hear her mother’s voice from just hours ago: You know you would never be left alone, her mother said. If something ever did happen—and I’m not saying that anything will—but you need to know you will always be taken care of, sweetheart. Your aunt Meg would take care of you—

“Oh my God,” Leah said, fear grabbing hold of her like a hand closing around her throat. She wasn’t supposed to open the door to strangers, but he was from the sheriff’s department and he knew her name. He wouldn’t know her name if he was a stranger. Someone had to have told him.

“She’s in pretty bad shape, Leah,” he said. “We need to go now.”

Her mother needed her. What if she died? What if she died before Leah could get to her and tell her how sorry she was for all the hateful things she’d said that morning?

She had to go.