Page 101 of Strangers She Knows

“See? It’s not so easy. For you…you’re weak.” Mara was triumphant. “For me… I endured it for seven years, from the time I entered school until I was twelve. At last, one night I wasn’t afraid anymore. I pulled my hand off the needle, and I ended my torment…forever.”

“How?” Kellen knew. She knew. But she had to hear the details.

“It was the dark before dawn. So apt! So perfect. I freed myself, pulled my hand off the table. The blood had pooled there. It was sticky, and the wood contained stains from all the other times. Father liked a record of what he’d done.”

“A monster.” Kellen wasn’t sure if she was speaking of Mara or her father.

“I pulled the tip of the bloody needle out of the table. I waited, huddled in Father’s easy chair by the fire. He rose, as he always did, at 5:00 a.m.—he believed a disciplined life created a man of character. I heard the water running for his shower—cold, of course. I imagined him dressing, and I heard him come down the stairs and walk toward the kitchen.” Mara told the story with animation, creating an atmosphere of dread. “He rounded the corner and looked surprised that I wasn’t in my place—and I launched myself at him, and stabbed the needle through his eye.”

Kellen didn’t know what was worse, hearing about the abuse Mara’s father had doled out, or how Mara got her bloody revenge.

“He screamed the way he always admonished me not to do. He tried to knock me aside, but I clung to him. He was my father!”

“You loved him.”

“Yes. I loved him.” Mara breathed hard. The Cheshire Cat was back, with its cruel smile. “He didn’t die all at once, so I knelt on his left arm and plunged the needle through his hand, eight times to commemorate each time he made me pay for my failure, and one time for his failure to anticipate my attack. You see, he had to pay for his failure, too.” Mara grabbed Kellen’s hair, jerked her head back, and stared into her eyes. “Everyone has to pay for their mistakes.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“That’s what he taught me. He was right. He paid. He died. I removed his hands, his soft, scholar’s hands, and kissed each one.”

Kellen could see the ghosts of Mara’s prey, floating behind her. “Did you kiss their hands?”

Mara looked wide-eyed at Kellen as if she’d pulled her back from a precipice of memory. “Who?”

“When you took the hands of your other victims, did you kiss them, too?”

“No. They weren’t worthy.”

The ghosts shrank back and blew away with the wind.

“How did they catch you?” Kellen asked. “The authorities?”

“My mother…she wouldn’t stop screaming, and she had never loved me like my father did. She’d tell him not to hurt me. She never wanted me to be better.” Now Mara’s voice was indifferent. “So I killed her, too.”

Kellen couldn’t remove her gaze from her hand, pinned to the table, writhing, then still, seeking a way to escape the pain. Yet although agony buzzed along her nerves and the world stretched and rolled, she heard every word of Mara’s story. The horror sank into her bones, and she feared the craziness and the cruelty would infect her, too. She feared the drugs would take her to the edge of psychosis and beyond. “You murdered both your parents, and you went to juvenile prison.”

“Of course. The authorities released me when I was eighteen. They said I was fixed.” Mara chuckled. “All I had to do was stay on my medication. I didn’t. I found a man to pay for my ticket to the US, and I came here with him. He died.”

“All your men must die.”

Mara shrugged. “Eventually. Eventually, they all try to betray me.”

Kellen was thirsty. So thirsty. She reached for the water, but her fingertips couldn’t quite reach.

Mara chuckled. “Frustrating, isn’t it? I’ll free you in the morning. Let you have food and water. Let you run—and shoot the legs out from under you. It’s not going to be another day like today. You won’t survive.”

“I don’t care if I survive. I only care if Rae survives.”

“She will. She will.” In one of those sudden moves that made Mara so spooky, she knelt beside Kellen and took her free hand, her atrophied hand, and held it. “You don’t understand. I’ve decided I’m going to make it my life’s mission to care for Rae.”

What did she mean? “Max will care for Rae.”

“No. He’s going to die, too. He was supposed to die first, to make you suffer more, but he got off the island. Broke my heart, that did.”

Kellen’s heart, too, for she feared for him…and she needed him.

“But Rae—she’ll need someone to take care of her, to show her how to control people, make them love her, want to do things for her. How to build a network of sycophants—”

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