The Whispering Room

Evangeline scrutinized the intruder. She was pale and thin, and she wore a plain, dark skirt, shapeless cardigan and tennis shoes. With her free hand, she pushed one side of her long, thick hair from her face, and it tumbled in a tangled, blond mess over one shoulder.

“What do you want?” Evangeline asked in a calm, reasonable tone. “Tell me so we can end this.”

“I have a story to tell you.”

Evangeline swallowed. “Okay. But why don’t you put the baby in the crib. We can talk in the other room.”

She smiled over the top of J.D.’s head. “I think it would be better if we talk in here.”

“We might wake up the baby. You don’t want to do that.”

“But without the baby, you won’t listen to me. And if you don’t know the whole story, you won’t be able to understand. So far, you’ve only heard her side.”

“Her?”

“My sister.” She looked up and the light from the window caught her in such a way that Evangeline saw another face, also thin and pale, but more refined. More elegant.

The resemblance in that moment was so uncanny, she didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it right off.

“You’re Rebecca,” she said softly. “And Lena Saunders is your sister, Ruth.”

Why hadn’t the woman told her the truth? Evangeline wondered. Why pretend she was someone else? Lena Saunders and Ruth Lemay were one and the same. And now Evangeline stood facing Rebecca Lemay. What kind of strange game were the sisters playing with her?

Rebecca Lemay nuzzled the top of J.D.’s head and drew a deep breath, as if trying to drink in the very essence of the sleeping child.

And Evangeline went weak in the knees. Dear God.

According to Lena Saunders—Ruth Lemay—this was a woman who, as a child, had helped her mother murder one of their young brothers. This was a woman who, as an adult, had killed at least three men in cold blood.

And now she held Evangeline’s sleeping son in her arms. Her cheek was against the baby’s head as she rocked him back and forth.

Chill after chill swept over Evangeline. The scene before her seemed surreal. It couldn’t possibly be happening, and yet…it was.

Outside the window behind Rebecca Lemay, the sky darkened to cinder and Evangeline could see heat lightning in the distance. Her gaze lit on the weapon she’d placed on the dresser. It was so close and yet as useless as a severed limb.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“The girl who watches the baby…I saw her put the key underneath a rock by your front porch.”

So she’d used Jessie’s key to let herself into the house. Evangeline thought about the molted snakeskin she’d found, and her heart pounded even harder. “Have you been in here before?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rebecca said. “The only thing that matters now is that you hear my side of the story.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

Her cheek still rested on J.D.’s head as she cradled him snugly against her bosom. “It was a long time ago, but I still remember everything about that day. Mama was acting so strange. I didn’t understand why, but I sensed something bad was about to happen. For days, I’d had this awful tightness in my chest. It was like trying to breathe underwater. I even dreamed one night that I was drowning….” She cuddled J.D. even closer and he whimpered again in his sleep.

Please, Evangeline prayed. Please, please don’t hurt him.

“Mama hadn’t really been herself since Daddy left, but this was different. It was like…something had taken hold of her. Possessed her…” She paused to draw a long breath. “She started cleaning the house like a mad woman. I thought company might be coming, but we never had visitors. Even the church people stopped calling. Mama always kept a spotless home, but that day she scrubbed and mopped and dusted until every room sparkled. She worked at it for hours, on into the night. I could hear her downstairs after we’d put the boys to bed. Working and working. She and my sister. When I went down to see about them, they were on their hands and knees, scrubbing the same floor Mama had mopped that very afternoon. She didn’t even look up at me, but my sister told me to go on back to bed and leave them alone. They had work to do and I was too little to help.”

Her voice had gotten slightly higher as she told the story, and the years seemed to melt from her face so that Evangeline could see clearly the child from the photograph. A little girl whose innocence had been so fractured by her mother’s obsession that she was never going to be whole.

She was still looking at Evangeline, but her eyes were losing their focus as she slipped back into the past.

“I woke up just after dawn and my sister’s bed was empty. I figured she and Mama were still working. I got up and dressed. When I came out into the hallway, I heard a sound from Mama’s bedroom. Like a moan or a soft cry. I didn’t know what to make of it. I was scared to go in there and see, and yet I couldn’t stay away. I thought Mama might need me. So I eased down the hallway and opened her door.”