Alexandra Burt - The Good Daughter - A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

I bow down to get a closer look. Eyes peek from within the ground. They are surrounded by a spongy layer of pine needles.

Still the square block doesn’t fit into the round hole. Broken and cloudy, the eyes stare beyond the cathedral high pillars. The lids seem to quiver ever so slightly.

And then the hand moves.

Run.

My body obeys. Ten steps and I lose my footing and stumble, hit the ground, left shoulder first. I roll down a hill and sharp branches nip at my skin. I tumble farther and farther, a steady and painful descent that I’m unable to stop. I come to a halt and I feel a sharp pain hit me right between my eyes. Then my world goes dark.

When I come to, everything is quiet but for the thumping sound of my heart. I swallow water. I’m drowning. My head throbs but I manage to push my body off the ground. I’m in a creek, facedown. The vision of the hand has carved itself into my brain. I must be mistaken, I tell myself.

I catch my breath and return to the very spot. I kneel down and a burning sensation moves up my arm, to my face, then to my neck. There is an anticipation, a nervous kind of energy tingling through me, as if electrical sparks are traveling all the way to my toes. A scent hits my nostrils, an olfactory hint of something … unpleasant … out of place within the otherwise fresh forest. The scent is sickly sweet, a mere hint one moment, then a good stench. Something is dripping onto my lap—warm moisture spreads onto my bare thighs—and I realize my nose is bleeding profusely. My shaking hands are covered in blood.

A buried body , I think, as if I have finally solved a riddle I’ve been pondering for a while. My mind tumbles, spills into itself. My sense of smell is heightened and the soil and decomposing leaves make the atmosphere thick. I feel a sense of paranoia, I imagine someone watching me, no, I don’t imagine, I know there’s someone watching me.

I scan the trees around me. I know what I am; prey. A small sob works its way up and out of my throat.

There’s no visual clue, just knowledge and intuition, and my eyes find a narrow path with knotted roots. Run , I repeat to myself, and again my body obeys.

I reach the road and wave down a truck filled with men in overalls. There’s a large ladder covered in paint splatters extending beyond the truck bed. I scream and point at the tree line and they rush in that direction.

One man stays behind and says words in Spanish I don’t understand.

I feel as if I have traveled through a time machine: I remember the clinic well—Metroplex, a three-story building, aged and tacky, from the industrial carpet to the disassembled pay phones left deserted on linen fabric–covered walls.

I recall the emergency room—every strep throat, every fever that wouldn’t go away, every sprained ankle, every cut that required stitches resulted in arguments with nurses and administration. My mother refused to sign paperwork, wouldn’t give them any information but our names.

There’s this rage inside of me that I feel toward my mother and I wish my memory was a sieve, yet it maintains a detailed account of her transgressions, all fresh, all defined, neat and organized. They sit in waiting and many have come back to me lately, so many memories have returned, yet not a single one of them pleasant. Lately, all it takes is an image, a smell, a faint recall, and the dam of restraint breaks. It sloshes over everything, unforgiving in its clarity.

They say—I’ve done the research—humans are hardwired to retain negative memories as a matter of survival.

Survival; the act of surviving, especially under adverse or unusual circumstances.

El Paso, Texas, 1987

I roll down the car window to allow the night to seep in. I hear trucks idle. I listen to the drone of the engines; observe them maneuver in and out of the parking lot. They hiss and scream; sometimes their engines fall silent. Men emerge and climb from the cabs.

It’s their house on wheels , my mother tells me.

My house is the backseat of my mother’s car. From there I watch the constant movements of trucks and men. I arrange my pillows and blankets just right. I have learned how to tuck myself in. I am to remain underneath, hidden.

It’s just a game , my mother says. So no one knows you are here.

I listen to their radio until it jitters, and then there is nothing left but silence. Underneath the many layers, I hear my mother talk to the truckers.

One man said, I saw a black dog, so I pulled over.

I’m afraid of the black dog. I watch the road sometimes, expect him to stand in the middle, drooling, baring his fangs.

I spread out my crayons over the seat. When I run out of paper, I flip through my drawings until I find one that’s blank on the back.

We wash up in a sink in a nearby building. The floor is cold and my bare feet leave dirty wet trails all over the white tiles. I wiggle and struggle to get away from the cold that makes my skin turn into tiny bumps.

Is the black dog coming for me? I ask my mother.

She just laughs.

The dog’s not real—it’s when you drive too long and you see things. It’s time to pull over and sleep. That’s all.

I know the feeling of seeing things. I will keep an eye out for the black dog anyway. To make sure.

Mom leaves and when she returns, she smells of food. She hands me a donut, and I eat in the car. I get powdered sugar all over everything but mom doesn’t seem to mind.

Those days don’t feel real. It’s almost as if I travel while I sleep. When I wake up, I’m in a different place but still in the car.

I love the car. All my toys are in the car.

Dahlia

The ER waiting room is quiet but for the hypnotic tick of an old plastic clock hanging on the wall. A whiff of latex and disinfectant hangs in the air.

Bobby’s uniform is tidy, his blue button-down shirt and navy-colored slacks pressed immaculately. His hair is short, his face freshly shaven. A lifetime ago Bobby and I went to high school together, but he stuck around and I left Aurora days after graduation. We haven’t spoken since I’ve been back in town.

“I can’t believe this,” I say and struggle to line up the events. My clothes are wet; so is my hair.

Bobby smiles at me. “You’ve been back in town for what … a few months, and I see you’re still the same old troublemaker.”

For a split second I’m a teenager again, remembering how we’d roam through town, wandering around in abandoned buildings, acquiring cuts and bruises and sprained ankles along the way. “Seems that way, doesn’t it?” I finally say.

“I waved at you the other day, at the gas station. I was going to follow you and pull you over.”

I feel some sort of way about his words. That’s how we met a long time ago; his father pulled my mother over by the side of the road. Bobby sat in the backseat of his father’s cruiser, I was in the backseat of my mother’s car, and we stared at each other.

I ignored Bobby at the gas station because of the way I’d left fifteen years ago. That and the fact that my life is nothing to be proud of. I have been dreading having to make small talk with him, catch up, swap stories about our lives.

“How long has it been?” Bobby asks. “Just about fifteen years?” he says as if he’s kept track of time.

I do the math. I arrived in Aurora just shy of thirteen. I did one year in middle school, then went to high school. In high school, I saved every dollar I made; I bagged groceries, worked at the car wash, even put away my allowance. There wasn’t any money for college, and I didn’t have any motivation or big dreams short of getting out of town—but Bobby was going through something then. His mother had cancer, had been well for years, but then it returned. There seemed to be something else; he was preoccupied with things I knew nothing about, things he was reluctant to share. I left Aurora at eighteen. Fifteen years exactly.