Page 90 of Things We Do in the Dark
Until Ruby’s first letter arrived, Paris had no idea that the ashes supposedly belonging to Joey Reyes were in an urn somewhere in her aunt’s house in Maple Sound. It never occurred to her that the body would be cremated and sent to her next of kin—she hadn’t given much thought to the body at all after she’d burned it. And it wasn’t until she googled it that she learned ashes could be tested for DNA.
The best defense was a good offense, so Paris got to work. She started by creating a new email account under a fake name, which allowed her to create a fake Facebook account that said she was a retired nurse who used to work at Toronto General, the hospital where Tita Flora worked before the family moved to Maple Sound. She sent out friend requests to as many nurses as she could find who’d worked there, and then sent arequest to her aunt. Tita Flora accepted immediately, likely because they had so many mutual friends.
Boom. Now Paris had a way to track what the family was up to. And the first thing she saw on her aunt’s page was that Tito Micky was dead. There was a photo of Tita Flora laying flowers at his grave on the fifth anniversary of his death, in the cemetery behind St. Agnes Catholic Church in Maple Sound. It looked like a pretty, peaceful spot.
Paris didn’t know how to feel about that.
It would be another two months before a window of opportunity presented itself, and when it happened, it was because of Carson. Her youngest cousin, the little boy who used to follow her around, was almost thirty now, and he was getting married. The whole family—minus her late uncle, of course—would be attending the wedding in Niagara-on-the-Lake, three hours away from Maple Sound. They’d be gone the whole weekend—Lola Celia, too, who was still alive at the age of eighty-eight. Why was it always the meanest ones who lived the longest?
This meant the house in Maple Sound would be empty.
The plan was straightforward: all Paris had to do was break into the house, locate the urn, switch out the ashes, and get the hell out. When the family returned from the wedding, they’d never know anyone had even been there.
Next: her alibi. This one was easy. The yoga convention in Vancouver was the same weekend in June, giving her the perfect reason to cross the border. Paris registered online and booked a last-minute cancellation at the convention hotel from Thursday to Sunday.
While stalking Tita Flora on Facebook, Paris also spent a lot of time on anonymous message boards searching for someone with a specific type of expertise. Eventually she was given an email address for a guy named Stuart. Using another fake email, she contacted him. He quoted her ten grand, and said it would take two weeks. Paris withdrew half the amount in cash from her savings account, and drove down to Tacoma later that day.
Stuart turned out to be a nineteen-year-old college dropout covered in Cheetos dust. He lived at home with his parents, who both worked during the day. He ushered Paris upstairs to his bedroom, where she stood in front of a plain white wall as he snapped a few headshots of her withhis iPhone. She paid him five thousand dollars, and he told her to wait for his email.
“I know you,” he said, as she was leaving. “You’re married to that old guy. The comedian. What do you need a fake Canadian ID for?”
“You don’t know me,” Paris said. “And if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
Thirteen days later, an email from Stuart said her new Canadian driver’s license, credit card, and burner phone were ready. She was in Tacoma ninety minutes later, where she paid him the rest of the money.
“The limit on that Visa is only a thousand.” Stuart handed over her ID. “So don’t go crazy. It’s activated and good to go. The birthday on the driver’s license is the PIN for the card. Makes it easy to remember.”
She looked at the ID. It was her picture, but the name on it was Victoria Bautista, which was fine by her.
“Thanks,” Paris said. “And if anyone ever asks…”
“You were never here.” Stuart rolled his eyes. “Lady, this is my business. If I tell on you, you’ll just tell on me, and that benefits nobody.”
“You’re smart,” Paris said. “But you’re too young for this kind of work. Be careful, okay?”
“You ever need a passport, it’s fifty large,” he said with a grin. “It takes three months, so plan ahead. You got my email.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and she would.
The following weekend, she left her iPhone at home on the nightstand and made the three-hour drive north to Vancouver. At the border, she held her breath as a Canada Border Services official checked her Paris Peralta passport, but it was fine, like always.
She arrived at the Pan Pacific hotel in the late afternoon and valet parked. At the registration desk during check-in, the hotel exchanged her US cash for Canadian. From there, she headed straight down to the conference level to sign in for the convention, where she put on her attendee badge. She ate dinner at one of the on-site restaurants, and signed the meal to her room.
Before she went to bed, she put theDO NOT DISTURBsign on the door, called the front desk to request complete privacy for the weekend—no housekeeping or turndown service needed—and then tossed and turned the rest of the night.
Early the next morning, she locked her Paris Peralta passport and driver’s license in the hotel room safe, and caught a taxi to the airport. She didn’t want to use the credit card she bought from Stuart until she had to, so she paid the fare in cash. Two hours later, at Vancouver International, “Victoria Bautista” boarded a domestic flight to Toronto using only her driver’s license. She landed at Pearson International at eight Friday evening, where she used her brand-new Visa to rent an economy car from Enterprise.
She reached her aunt’s house in Maple Sound just before midnight. She drove halfway up the long hill, cut the lights, and then drove the rest of the way in the dark. Before she reached the top, she stopped and did a three-point turn, so the car was facing downward in case she needed to make a quick getaway. She left the key in the ignition and the driver’s-side door slightly ajar, then grabbed the small knapsack she brought with her.
She was eighteen when she left Maple Sound, and she hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. The day after her high school graduation—which she didn’t attend—she cleaned out the empty coffee canister above the fridge where Tita Flora hid her grocery money from Tito Micky. Then she swiped the gambling winnings Tito Micky hid from Tita Flora from the bottom of his fishing box in the toolshed. Last, she plucked out the roll of bills Lola Celia kept stuffed in a sock at the back of her underwear drawer, money the old woman was saving to pay for her yearly flight back to the Philippines. All that, combined with five years’ worth of cash that she’d pilfered little by little and stashed in her hiding spot, came out to twelve thousand dollars. Severance pay for five years of babysitting, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry… and Tito Micky.
The only thing she didn’t touch were the kids’ piggy banks.
She stood in the dark and stared up at the two-story house, backlit by the moon over Lake Huron. All the lights inside were off. From somewhere nearby, an owl hooted, and she could hear the sounds of small animals rustling in the bushes.
She never thought she’d see this place again.
An older Nissan Altima was parked at the side of the house where Tito Micky’s wood-paneled station wagon used to be, but her aunt and grandmother would have only needed one car to get to the wedding. Thepond looked the same, as did the tree swing and the toolshed. But the brown porch was now white, and there were hydrangea bushes all along the front of the house. Whatever. Tita Flora could pretty this place up all she wanted, but it would never fully cover the ugly that lived inside it.
