Greg Iles - Sleep No More

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth. ‘I’m Mallory,’ I said. He didn’t believe me until I started to talk. I told him things only I could know, like I did with you. I reminded him of things he’d said to me, things no one else could possibly have heard. I’d been talking for about two minutes when he grabbed his left arm. I ripped the phone out of the wall and walked out with the photo album. That night, I heard that he’d died of a heart attack.”

Savage satisfaction entered Lily’s face.

“Why did you tell me this?”

She cocked her head and smiled. “An object lesson. You betrayed me too, Johnny. Not like he did. You looked me in the face when you did it. You tried to ease the pain as much as you could, but in the end you only made it worse.”

“Mallory-”

“Don’t worry. I forgive you. I’m trying to, anyway. I know why you did what you did now. I felt your guilt when I was inside you. You were so young. You couldn’t even imagine being married. It takes men longer to see what the important things are in life. I know that now. We had some bad luck…but now we have a second chance.”

“Mallory, listen-”

“We don’t have time to talk about this now,” Lily said, uncrossing her legs and sliding to the edge of the bed. “We have to take care of Annelise. She’s scared, and she doesn’t understand what she just saw.”

He remembered his daughter’s tear-stained face. “Mallory, you can’t…This is all wrong. You can’t do this to my wife.”

She shook her head as though he were speaking nonsense. “I am your wife now, Johnny.”

“Mama? Where are you?” Annelise’s frightened voice echoed up the hall.

As he turned toward the door, Waters heard Rose call, “Mr. John, this baby’s upset! She got to see her mama!”

“In here, Rose,” Lily called.

Annelise shot through the door like a missile, then froze and looked from father to mother. Lily held out both arms.

“Come here, baby! Mama’s right here!”

Annelise leaped onto the bed and hugged Lily tightly.

“What ya’ll want me to do?” Rose asked from the doorway, her voice strangely suspicious.

Waters sighed in surrender. “Go home, Rose.”

“There’s nothing but cornbread made. The pork chops and macaroni still got to be done.”

“I’ll do that,” Lily said from the bed. “Go on home and rest old Arthur.”

Old Arthur… Rose’s nickname for arthritis. Mallory could access Lily’s memories at will. No one would ever be able to discover the truth by probing her with questions. Only Waters, who saw the differences revealed behind the bedroom door, would know Mallory lay hidden behind Lily’s eyes. Perhaps with time Rose would sense something amiss, but by then it would probably be too late.

“All right, then,” Rose said reluctantly. “I’m going on.” She gave Waters a last look of disapproval and walked down the hall.

“Are you really, okay, Mom?” asked Annelise.

Lily gave her a storybook smile. “Sure I am. You go with Daddy and start the water for the macaroni. I’ll put on some real clothes and then make the pork chops and the salad.”

Ana hugged her again, then climbed down from the bed and came to Waters. “Do I get to cook the macaroni by myself?”

“Do you think you can?”

“Mama said!”

“Okay, then. Come on.”

With a last hard look at Lily, Waters picked Ana up and ran for the kitchen. She giggled all the way there, but Waters’s heart felt like a stone. He wanted to run right out the front door to the Land Cruiser and put as much distance as he could between Annelise and the lost soul dressing in the bedroom.

But running was not an option. Mallory wouldn’t even have to chase him. She could simply call the police and accuse him of kidnapping. He’d be lucky to get a hundred miles from town before he was arrested. And no judge in the state would believe one word of his story.

Twenty minutes later, the pork chops were simmering in a skillet full of gravy, and the macaroni was boiling on the range top set in the marble island. Lily had tried to make preparing the dinner a family affair, but it took all Waters’s will to simply play the role of a sane father.

Lily and Annelise were working on the salad now, and whenever Ana’s attention was diverted, Lily would wink or smile at him. As the charade played on, one question filled his mind: Where is Lily right now? While inside Eve, Mallory had described her host as “sleeping.” What did that mean? The only encouraging thing Waters could recall-as horrible as the memory was-was that Eve seemed to have snapped back to herself before she was murdered. Which meant that her true self had survived, even after a year of possession. Mallory had been inside Lily for only forty-eight hours.

Lily lifted a butcher knife from the block and began to slice tomatoes. Watching her deftly handle the blade, Waters recalled Mallory sitting in a fetal position in an empty bathtub, methodically cutting parallel lines into her wrists. He felt a scream building behind his lips. The only thing that kept it there was his desire to spare Ana the trauma of seeing her father lose control. Yet how long could he spare her? He was trapped in a situation no one would believe: while a murder investigation moved ever closer to him, his daughter lived under threat from the real killer-a woman everyone would perceive as her mother. And if no one believed him, no one would help him. He would have to solve his own problem. There was only one solution that he could see. Mallory had to leave Lily’s body.

“Hey, punkin?” he prompted Annelise. “Time to get the Velveeta ready.”

While Ana worked to tear open the foil packet, he strained the macaroni in the sink, then transferred the noodles to a ceramic dish. “You want to stir the cheese in this time?”

She clapped and grabbed a big spoon from the drawer.

“You know how to do it,” he told her. “I’m going to show Mom something in the dining room. We’ll be back in a second.”

“Okay.” Ana climbed up on a chair and began squeezing Velveeta into the noodle dish.

Waters took hold of Lily’s wrist, pulled her into the dining room, and shut the door behind them.

Lily seemed amused by his action until he grabbed her throat and pushed her up against the wall.

“Listen to me, Mallory,” he hissed. “You can not do this. You have to get out of my wife.”

She gave a constricted laugh.

Waters squeezed harder, cutting off her air. “You know as well as I do that I can’t kill you. Because I can’t kill you without killing Lily. You’re like AIDS, or cancer. But there are things I can do.”

“Such as?” she croaked, her eyes still bright with laughter.

“You think you felt dead when you saw that room at your parents’ house? If you don’t get out of Lily, this is how it will be. When Annelise is around, I’ll treat you just as I would Lily. But the minute she’s gone, you won’t exist. I won’t look at you. I won’t speak to you. I won’t acknowledge a word you say. I won’t sleep with you. Ever again.”

Lily’s eyes seemed to dilate with fear, but the moment he loosened his hand, she laughed. “You’re so naive, Johnny. I’m going to let this little outburst go, because I know you’re in shock. But you don’t tell me what I’m going to do. You strangled Eve.” She batted his hands away from her neck. “All I have to do is give them your name, and they can match the DNA to the semen you left in her body. Okay?”

Waters’s mouth fell open. “My God. That’s why you killed her.”

Lily’s mouth flattened to a thin line, and her eyes went arctic cold. “You have no idea what you put me through. You gave me two babies, and you made me kill them. Then you walked away. Well, for once you can’t walk away from me.” She reached up and touched his cheek. “Do you know what it’s like to hate someone enough to kill them, but love them too much to do it? I thought of killing you a thousand times. And her. But I’m glad I didn’t. Because now I have you.” She pinched some skin on her arm and pulled it up. “And her too. And that’s all I want, Johnny.”