Deep Water by Mark Ayre (best free ebook reader txt) 📗

Staring at the cover, Abbie, for a moment, lost her train of thought. Why had she removed the book? What had been her point?

When Alice crossed the room and dropped to her knees at the coffee table, Abbie remembered. It was about trust. Sometimes you had to cut open your emotional core and bleed pain in someone's sight for them to trust you.

Nodding at the book's cover, the author's name, Alice said, "Stephen King. That's where you got the surname?"

Abbie nodded.

"And Abagail?"

"I've read this," Abbie said, tapping the cover with a delicate finger, "hundreds of times. And Violet read it hundreds of times before me. Abagail Freemantle is the lady responsible for bringing together the good guys before their ultimate battle with evil. Which, as it turns out, is irrelevant. It's a rubbish ending."

Alice smiled. "I remember. I read it in the late 70s when it first came out, and again at some point in the last few years, behind the bars of my prison cell."

At that comment, Abbie didn't look up. Hope struck her heart. That Alice had mentioned prison made Abbie believe this exercise could be worth it. By opening up, Abbie had earned Alice's trust, and that flowed both ways.

Still at Abbie's side, on her knees, Alice rolled up her sleeve and showed her wrist to Abbie. Encircling it was a piece of string attached to which were numerous items. Part of a pine cone, a hair tie, a paper clip, and more besides. It looked uncomfortable, and it made a strange rustling when Alice turned her hand.

"Aurora was my miracle child," said Alice. "I thought I was done with kids. No surprise. My second youngest was born when I was thirty-seven, and even that seemed too old. When I fell pregnant at forty-four, I considered getting rid. Strongly considered. Rejecting what seemed like the sensible choice was the best thing I ever did."

Twisting the bracelet around her wrist, it was as though the makeshift charms were hypnotising Alice. She stared at those relics. Abbie knew the bracelet was acting as a gateway to Aurora as The Stand served Abbie as a gateway to Violet.

"Aurora made me this when she was six. Presented it me on the day a judge sentenced me to fourteen years in prison. I don't often cry, Abbie, but I cried when Aurora, tears in her eyes, pressed this into my hand. Of course, I couldn't keep it in jail. God forbid I use the paper clip to remove a fellow inmate's eye. That was hard to explain to my little girl when she first visited. Aurora cried, I cried, then my miracle stormed out. I felt as though she'd ripped my heart from my chest and taken it with her. When I was paroled nine years later, I put it straight back on. I wore it when I hugged Aurora upon my return home. Didn't take it off for a week after. Told myself I never would, but you know how it is. It became an irritant. I stripped it off and left it in a drawer, and in a drawer it remained until the day the police came to my door and told me my Sleeping Beauty was gone forever. I'll never remove it again. This time I mean it."

For thirty seconds, Alice's eyes remained on the bracelet. Then, with a snap, she tore them away. Pushing her sleeve over the jewellery, she looked at The Stand as though it were a voodoo doll bearing her likeness. Shaking her head, she found a smile and tapped the book’s cover with almost as much delicacy as had Abbie.

"Good tactic," she said. "This isn't the first time you've had to ingratiate yourself to a stranger you fear is going to die, is it?"

"No," said Abbie.

"How many?"

Abbie pretended to consider. In truth, she knew the number by heart. Like she knew the number of people she'd murdered. Their names she kept written in a little black book, often pored over.

"Must be coming up on fifty," said Abbie. For some reason, she couldn't bring herself to say the exact figure.

"And they all faced a life or death situation after you arrived?"

"Yup."

"Maybe you're a harbinger of doom," said Alice. "Maybe your arrival causes bad things to happen."

"Maybe it does," said Abbie. "Doesn't matter to you."

"It doesn't?"

"Here now, aren't I? Maybe my presence has already put you on the path to demise, but now I'm here, you might as well keep me around. Let me help prevent the damage I might have caused from coming to pass."

"Nice logic," said Alice.

"I thought so. That all the questions you wanted to ask?"

"One more."

"Go on."

"Of these fifty-odd people who faced a life or death situation after you turned up, how many did you fail to save?"

"Few enough that I can count them on the fingers of one hand."

Alice gave a slight nod as though approving. "That's a laudable success rate. What, 90% at worst?"

"Whatever it is," said Abbie, "it's not good enough."

"An honourable attitude," said Alice, nodding. She stood from the table, and moved a little way across the room, looked out the window. "Maybe you are cursing the people you think you're coming to save. In my case, I want you to rest assured your arrival has made no difference to my life expectancy."

Still on her knees, looking up at the older woman, Abbie said, "Is that so?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fifty-nine today, and it's my birthday tomorrow," said Alice. "Whether you'd turned up or not, I was never going to live to see sixty."

Nine

A silence draped the room as a sheet drapes a dead body. Then Alice said, "Are you single?"

Despite Alice's declaration from moments ago, Abbie couldn't help but smile. Here was a non-sequitur, a sign Alice and Abbie were perhaps not so different. Alice was in a feud with Louis that had led to the murder of her teenage daughter. She had committed crimes a judge deemed worthy of