She hears herself say, “Please let her be alive.”
Carl clutches the shirt in his gnarled hands. His eyes are shut. He starts to hum softly, his head swaying back and forth. Lyla plucks a pink crystal from the table and cups it in her hands. It’s very heavy, with sharp, daggerlike edges, and lovely to look at. They’re supposed to soothe fears, the pink ones. Rose quartz, she recalls Nolan saying, is a calming stone. She listens to Carl hum and cups the rose quartz, its surface grainy with dust.
Finally, Carl says, “She’s alive.”
Nolan puts a hand over Lyla’s, and her breath catches, the tiniest spark of hope . . .
“Where is she?” Nolan says. “How can we find her?”
Carl opens his eyes. They make Lyla think of spotlights. “She’s screaming,” he says. “She’s screaming for her mama.”
Nolan says, “Is she in pain?”
“It’s fuzzy,” Carl says. “All I can hear are the screams. And I see something. A train.”
“A train?”
“With eyes. A train with eyes.”
Lyla’s mouth goes dry.
“Does that mean anything to you?” Carl says. “A train with eyes?” He’s staring straight at her.
She clutches the crystal. Its edges bite into her palms. “No,” she says.
“Are you sure? It’s getting clearer. A blue train. With—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Who’s Leslie?”
“What?”
“Leslie? No, wait. Lisa.”
“I don’t know.”
“Lisa. Lisa. Leeeesaaa . . .” Carl’s voice pitches up an octave. He sounds like a girl. “Leeeeeessaaaa . . .” A tear slips down his cheek.
Nolan grips Lyla’s hand. She can’t breathe.
“The blue train has big black eyes.”
Lyla says, “I want to leave.”
“She needs her mother. She’s screaming for her.”
“Stop!”
“She’s so young. So small and helpless. She doesn’t like being taken away from her mother.”
“Stop now!”
Nolan says, “Are you all right, Lyla?”
Lyla tastes copper in her mouth, the warm, sick slickness of it. “I’m fine.” She’s bitten her lip so hard it’s bleeding. She puts the crystal down, her palms scratched, bleeding too.
Carl opens his eyes.
Lyla feels her husband’s hand on her shoulder.
“You’re—”
“I’m fine, Nolan. We need to go now.”
She wipes her palms on her sweats and stands up. Nolan says a few words to Carl. He replies. Lyla hears none of it. She makes a point of not listening to Carl. She’ll never listen to him again.
Lisa, what are you doing?
Lyla heads for the door and waits there for Nolan, Carl’s blue gaze burning through her back.
“I don’t like him.” Lyla says it to the windshield, the peachy-pink sunrise.
“I don’t know. I thought he was . . . I don’t know . . .”
“What, Nolan? You thought he was what?”
“Real.”
“Well, he’s not. He’s a rip-off artist. A con man. I’ll give him one thing, though. He’s a terrific actor. That performance in there . . . That was, like . . . goals.” She forces out a laugh. It sounds natural.
“You don’t know anyone named Lisa? Maybe one of the other moms from the school. Or a nanny, or—”
“I don’t know any Lisas.”
Nolan lets out a long, wounded sigh. “I don’t either,” he says. “And a train with eyes. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Lyla stares out the window and shakes her head. Acting may not be her purpose in life, but it is a gift, she knows. For years, acting has provided her with a generous livelihood. But more important, it enables her to keep secrets. In her mind, the memory resurfaces. The train’s round, staring eyes, the heat tearing through her . . . Why, Lisa, why? Her muscles tense with it. The heat. The rage. In her throat, behind her eyeballs, tears start to well. But thanks to her gift, Lyla’s expression remains serene. What is acting, she wonders, other than lying? And what is lying other than a way to survive? “I have no idea what it means,” she says.
Everyone’s awake by the time Nolan and Lyla arrive home—the gardeners and the housekeepers and the security detail, the feds and state detectives, checking on nonexistent leads. Even in Fidelity’s absence, the house feels noisy and alive—a contrast to the dead quiet of the psychic’s lair.
Their personal chef, Sydney, is preparing breakfast smoothies in the kitchen, and Lyla chokes one down for the sole purpose of being able to stand upright. She’s hardly eaten or slept since Fidelity disappeared. Courtney is sitting at the kitchen table, the same spot she was in four days ago, staring at her hands like a kid in detention. Lyla wants to ask her: Why are you still here? In my kitchen, in my house, in my life? Her gaze shoots from the spindly, dull-eyed girl to the rack over the stove. The heavy copper pots they’d imported from Germany. How easy it would be to grab the skillet by the handcrafted handle, to raise it high over Courtney’s useless head and bring it down . . .
Lyla takes several calming breaths, the cuts on her palms stinging. She makes small talk with Sydney and waits for Nolan to finish his smoothie and head off for the home gym. And only then, once this feeling has subsided, her skin no longer prickling with it, is she able to look at Courtney again. “You’re fired,” she says. “Pack your things and get out.”
Courtney says something, but Lyla doesn’t care enough to listen. She leaves the kitchen and sets out from the house in search of Aziz.
She circles the house a few times before finally finding Aziz on the running track, completing what must have been the latest of many laps. Aziz is very disciplined. While other members of their bodyguard detail spend their breaks playing video games or in the home cinema watching movies, he’s always lifting, running, cross-training. Building his strength. He’s always seemed so practical minded to Lyla, which is why it strikes her as odd that he recommended a psychic to Nolan.
Lyla waves to Aziz as he crosses the finish line, and he slows his pace to a trot. Before heading over to her, he swipes a towel off the bench and mops his forehead, though once he’s closer, she sees that he’s barely broken a sweat. “Ma’am?”
“What can you tell me about Carl?”
He stares at her for several seconds. Then he says it again, in the same flat tone, like a rewound tape. “Ma’am?”
“The psychic? In Woodstock. Nolan said you recommended him, and I’m just wondering what you know about him.”
For several seconds, Aziz says nothing. His expression doesn’t change. The sun gleams off his bald head, and Lyla imagines wheels spinning beneath his skull. Does not compute. Does not compute . . . “Oh, wait,” he says. “You mean Mr. Budowitz.”
“I don’t know his last name.”
“He said he could help find Fidelity. He wanted to speak to Mr. Carnes, but I didn’t recommend him.”
“You didn’t?”