Scared to Death Read Free

winter.
    â€œI didn’t say I want to…I said I feel like I should know more about her. About him .”
    â€œHas she been in touch with you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen let it go,” Mike advised, and for the most part, Elsa has. Just once in a while…she wonders. That’s all. Wonders how the other woman is feeling, and coping. Wonders whether she has questions about Jeremy; wonders whether she can answer some of Elsa’s.
    She finds Renny sitting up in bed, knees to chest. Her worried face is illuminated by the Tinker Bell nightlight plugged into the baseboard outlet and the canopy of phosphorescent plastic stars Brett glued to the ceiling.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, honey? Are you feeling sick?” Elsa is well aware that her daughter had eaten an entire box of Sno-Caps at the new Disney princess movie Brett had taken her to see after dinner.
    â€œWhy would you let her have all that candy?” Elsa asked in dismay when he recapped the father-daughter evening.
    â€œBecause we wanted to celebrate the end of the school year, and it’s fun to spoil her.”
    â€œI know, Brett…but don’t do it with sugar. She’s going to have an awful stomachache. She’ll never get to sleep now.”
    Renny proved her wrong, drifting off within five minutes of hitting the pillow. And right now, she doesn’t look sick at all…
    She looks terrified. Her black eyes are enormous and her wiry little body quivers beneath the pink quilt clutched to her chin.
    â€œI’m not sick, Mommy.”
    â€œDid you have a nightmare?” It wouldn’t be the first time.
    â€œNo, it was real .”
    â€œWell, sometimes nightmares feel real.”
    And sometimes they are real. Renny knows that as well as she does. But things are different now. She’ssafe here with Elsa and Brett, and nothing will ever hurt her again.
    Elsa sits beside her daughter and folds her into an embrace. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
    â€œIt wasn’t a nightmare,” Renny insists, trembling. “A monster was here, in my room…I woke up and I saw him standing over my bed.”
    â€œIt was just a bad dream, honey. There’s no monster.”
    â€œYes, there is. And when I saw him, he went out the window.”
    Elsa turns to follow her daughter’s gaze, saying, “No, Renny, see? The window isn’t even—”
    Open .
    But Elsa’s throat constricts around the word as she stares in numb horror.
    The window she’d closed and locked earlier is now, indeed, wide open—and so is the screen, creating a gaping portal to the inky night beyond.
    Â 
    Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…
    Which nursery rhyme was that?
    Does it matter?
    Really, right now, the only thing that matters is getting away from the house without being spotted.
    Yet this is far less challenging than escaping Norwich earlier in broad daylight. That went smoothly; no reason why this shouldn’t as well. At this hour, the streets are deserted; there’s no one around to glimpse the dark figure stealing through the shadows.
    Not a creature was stirring…
    Damn, it’s frustrating when you can’t remember a detail that seems to be right there, teasing your brain…
    Sort of the way Jeremy had forgotten Elsa Cavalonuntil, by chance, he caught a glimpse of her on television back in September.
    Anyone who doesn’t understand what Jeremy’s been through might wonder how a person can forget his own mother.
    How, indeed.
    The human mind doesn’t just lose track of something like that, like the name of a nursery rhyme. More likely, out of self-preservation, the brain attempts to erase what’s too painful to remember.
    What’s too painful to remember…
    Hmm…Wasn’t that a long-ago lyric?
    Maybe. But the song title, too, is elusive—and unimportant.
    One thing at a time.
    Not a creature was