Greg Iles - Sleep No More

Fear ate through his bowels like a ravenous worm.

“I know exactly how things are going to work out,” Lily said, “so you may as well accept it all now. Six months from now, you won’t even remember Lily-”

Waters seized her throat again and squeezed with enough force to crush her windpipe. His arms quivered from the strain, and Lily’s face went red, then blue.

“Mama?” Annelise called.

Waters let go the moment the dining room door opened.

“The macaroni’s- Mom? Your face is all red! What’s the matter?”

Lily knelt and hugged Ana. “Nothing, baby. I bent over to look under the table, and the blood just went to my head. It’s nothing. Let’s go eat!”

She smiled at Waters and led Ana back into the kitchen. He waited a moment, then followed, his hands shaking at his sides.

Lily was brushing mushrooms into an empty bowl, which she then handed to Annelise. “Do you remember how to take the stems out, baby?”

“Of course I do. That’s easy.”

“Will you do it for me?”

Annelise nodded and sat on the floor, the bowl between her knees. Lily turned to the cutting board and resumed slicing the tomatoes.

“I hope Pebbles doesn’t come in here and try to eat from this bowl,” Annelise said. “She won’t like mushrooms.” She looked up at Waters. “Will she, Dad?”

Tears stung Waters’s eyes as he looked down at his daughter. “Probably not, punkin.”

A bright reflection suddenly flashed past his eyes. He looked up at Lily, and his heart stopped. She was dangling the butcher knife over Annelise’s head like a miniature sword of Damocles. Its point swung back and forth as Ana patiently picked stems from the mushrooms.

“Your daddy’s in a funny mood today,” Lily said, her eyes mocking Waters. “I think he ought to realize how much he has to be thankful for. Don’t you think so, Ana?”

Annelise pursed her lips as she worked at a thick brown stem. “Daddy knows what to be thankful for.”

“I wonder sometimes.” Lily lowered the knife to within a half-inch of the crown of Annelise’s head. “Do you, John? Do you know what to be thankful for?”

“Yes,” he said in a shaky voice. “I do.”

Lily smiled, then lifted the blade about twelve inches. Waters felt slight relief until she dropped the knife and caught the flashing blade just above Annelise’s head.

“Oh!” Lily cried in an exaggerated voice. “I almost had an accident!”

“Be careful,” said Annelise. “More kids get killed from accidents than from getting sick or anything else. I learned that in school yesterday.”

Lily winked at Waters, then went back to slicing the tomatoes. He fell to his knees and hugged Annelise until she told him to stop. Ninety minutes later, Waters was tucking Annelise into bed upstairs.

“Why isn’t Mama tucking me in too?” she asked.

“Mama still feels tired.”

“She said she was all better.”

Waters nodded. “Mothers fib a little sometimes, so daddies and little girls don’t worry so much. But she’ll be fine. You sleep tight. Hang on to Albert tonight.”

Ana clutched her stuffed rabbit to her chest.

He kissed her forehead, then walked to the stairs.

“’Night! Love ya! See ya in the morning!” Annelise called, and she laughed when he repeated it back to her.

As he descended the stairs, he realized why Mallory had let him put Ana to bed alone. She wanted to emphasize just what was at stake if he didn’t get with her program. For Waters, the stakes did not need emphasis. But as his foot hit the bottom step, he realized that Mallory’s latest object lesson cut two ways. Everyone feared losing someone, and Mallory was no different.

He found Lily in the bedroom, lying across the down comforter in a nearly transparent camisole that she had received as a gag gift at a friend’s bridal shower. She had never worn that piece of lingerie before tonight. He walked to the foot of the bed and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion.

“I want you to listen carefully. You think you hold all the cards, but you don’t. The final card, I hold. And if you don’t do what I tell you to do, I’ll play it.”

She must have heard something new in his voice, for her smile vanished, replaced by a crafty attentiveness. “What card are you talking about?”

“The death card. The ace of spades.”

Lily twined a lock of her short blond hair around her finger and began to twist it. “What do you mean?”

“Before I let you destroy my wife and child, I will blow my fucking head off. And you will never have me.”

She seemed not to have heard his threat. Or perhaps not to have fully understood it.

“You know me, Mallory. If you leave me no choice, I’ll kill myself.”

Lily shook her head. “You won’t. You wouldn’t leave Lily and Annelise without you.”

“You’re right. I’d take Lily with me. A bullet in the head for her. Then me.”

She went still, her eyes wide with fear. At last he had rattled her. “You wouldn’t do it,” she said, sounding not at all sure. “You wouldn’t abandon Annelise.”

“Here’s why you’re wrong,” Waters said. “When I shoot Lily, you die with her. I couldn’t live with myself after killing my wife, so I’d finish the job on me. But Annelise would survive and be safe. She’d go to live with her grandmother. That’s already arranged in our wills.”

Lily’s head moved slowly back and forth. “That will never happen.”

“You don’t think so? Do you know why I survived the hell that was the end of our relationship? Because I’m stronger than you are. How many times did you try to kill yourself? Four? Five? But you couldn’t do it. It was all theater. But I don’t act, Mallory. You know that. The day I decide to do it, consider it done.”

Lily got up and began to pace the bedroom, her mouth working in frustration. She gave off the desperate fury of a wild animal pacing a cage. Suddenly she stopped and met Waters’s eye.

“You said you’d do that if I don’t do what you wanted me to do. Well? What do you want me to do?”

“Leave Lily alone. Get out of her head.”

“If I do that, what will you do for me?”

“Why should I do anything for you?”

Her hand went to her neck and twined another lock of hair around her finger. “Because you love me. But if you can’t face that yet, you should do it because I’m the only thing keeping you out of jail.”

Waters fought back his anger. “I do love you.”

Lily’s eyes softened.

“I just can’t let you destroy my wife. That’s why I want you to go into another woman.”

She watched him in silence, trying to work out his thoughts. “Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“But you pick this woman, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Someone you like.”

“Whose face and body I like,” he said.

She stared at him for nearly a minute, her eyes growing dark with suspicion. “If I go into this other woman, you’ll kill her. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“You know me better than that. I couldn’t kill an innocent person.”

“If you thought you were saving your family, you might.”

“I’d kill myself, Lily, and Annelise, before I’d kill an innocent person.”

Morbid curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Why?”

“Because I’m responsible for this. For you being like you are. Lily and Annelise are part of me. They’re involved, even though they didn’t ask to be. The sins of the fathers and all that. But I can’t visit this karma on anyone else. If someone has to pay, it should be me and mine.”

She tilted her head, studying his eyes. “You know what, Johnny?”

“What?”

“Lily is too old, anyway. We’re going to have our own babies, and thirty-nine is too old for that.” She lifted the camisole, grabbed a dimple of cellulite from her upper thigh, and pulled. “ Yuck. Pick someone under thirty, okay?”