Page 93 of Kill For Me Kill For You
She needed all of it.
Amanda turned and looked to see if there was a rear exit to the laundromat. As she did, she took out her cell, dialed into her voicemail and put the phone to her ear.
53
Ruth
The crowds began to gather along the parade route in Manhattan at five a.m. By six thirty the streets were packed with families, five deep, waiting for the parade to begin at nine. Ruth didn’t want to stand in the cold for that long. She had booked a window table at Stella 34 Trattoria.
She arrived at eight thirty and entered Macy’s on 35thStreet. The express elevators took her straight to the restaurant where she was seated with coffee and pastries as the parade began. The restaurant was full of kids, some in fancy dress – some of the parents too. There was face painting and a holiday atmosphere that gave Ruth a warm feeling.
Her early memories of Thanksgiving were getting up early to watch the parade on TV. Her family rarely went into the city on parade day. Her mom didn’t like the crowds and her father complained about parking. After her parents divorced, Ruth didn’t get to go to the parade until she was an adult. When she’d first moved to Manhattan, Ruth made a point of coming to Stella 34 to watch the parade. It was expensive – four-hundred dollars for a table, which she couldn’t afford back then – but being so close to the sights and sounds and the floats and bands and cheerleaders . . . it was magical and worth living off instant noodles for a month afterwards.
The wonder on the faces of the children around her was more soothing than she cared to admit. Knowing she would never bring her own child to the parade somehow didn’t matter in that moment. It would afterwards, but not now. She gazed at the excitement in the children’s eyes as they pointed at the vast inflatables of their favorite cartoon characters. But, more than anything, Ruth just loved the spectacle of it all.
The highlight, for the kids, and for the grown-ups too, was the big guy. Macy’s Santa closing the parade. It reminded her of sitting on her father’s lap, watchingMiracle on 34thStreet.
Nostalgia was good for the soul.
As the parade wound down, Ruth made for the gift shop and saw snow globes on sale. One caught her eye. A miniature family, all in their winter clothes, standing on a snow-covered hill. A mother, father and two kids. She shook it, watched the white plastic particles dance in the liquid and then slowly descend on the hill. It was a plain souvenir, with no music box in the base, but still she couldn’t resist. Ruth took the globe to the counter and paid for it. The assistant put it in a flimsy box for her and then Ruth went to the elevator. She was first in line.
Stepping inside as the doors opened, she moved to the rear of the elevator car, turned and leaned against the mirror on the back panel. Two children came inside. One was dressed as a bumblebee, a little boy, probably four or five years old with long blond baby curls. His sister was a little older. She was a fairy princess, in a pink sparkly dress with fine, plastic wings on her back covered in glitter. The fairy princess held her mom’s hand – a woman with dark brown hair, chestnut. She wore an expensive navy cashmere coat and an equally expensive scent. The father was tall, with close-cut black hair, a square jaw and the most luminous, almost shimmering blue eyes. The family exuded the old wealth and privilege that was the dream of everyone who came to the city. The boy stood close to his father, who smiled at Ruth as he got in, then turned his back on her to face the door. Her heartbeat quickened. The big scar on her belly began to itch and burn, as if someone was swiping a blow torch over it.
Macy’s department store was in an old building. A New York staple. With age came character and an accelerating demand on maintenance. The doors rattled and screeched closed, and the elevator descended with a metallic whine. The noise made her wince as it resounded in her head, painfully. For a moment, Ruth didn’t know if it was the elevator making the noise for in her mind the old chest was vibrating – the wood was groaning, and the entire chest shook, rumbling on the floor. Something inside was trying to get out. The thick chains around it screamed with the strain as the lid threatened to break every link.
Instinctively, Ruth covered her ears.
It took half a second to register that she’d let go of the snow globe. She realized right before she heard it exploding on the floor of the elevator. It sounded like a shot. Ruth heard something else mingled with that noise – metal being torn asunder, wood splintering and the whine of heavy brass hinges turning.
The two kids jumped, and the girl let out a short squeal of surprise and hugged her mom, burying her face in the mother’s coat. The globe had burst out of the box. Fragments of wet, curved glass sat in the puddle of liquid that had gushed from the globe.
Ruth bent down to pick up the box. As she did so, she must’ve stepped on a shard, because she heard a sound.Thatsound. The same sound she’d heard in the bedroom of her brownstone in Manhattan that night, all those years ago – thecrunchof glass underfoot.
She saw her reflection in the broken arch of glass. Her image distorted from the curvature, but still brightly lit from the overhead light in the elevator.
That sound again.
Crunch.
Her flesh burned with fear. Her fingers began shaking as they reached down.
Crunch.
And then she froze. Her throat closed. Her body shut down as if someone had thrown a circuit breaker in her brain. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
All she could do was see. Her eyes locked on the floor.
Because there was another face reflected in that elliptical shard of glass.
A man with dark hair and iridescent blue eyes. Gazing down upon her.
Ruth’s head swam, and she was no longer in Macy’s elevator. She was at home, in New York, in her hallway. Scott was out partying, and she was looking at her attacker’s reflection in the broken pane clinging to the frame of her back door.
Her head tilted up. She didn’t want to look. But she couldn’t stop herself. As her gaze lifted, she saw them.
All of them.
Staring at her. In unison. The little boy, the girl, the mother andhim. Cold grins on their faces. Their eyes were set in anger. Twin orbs of blue flame in each of their faces. All of them, lookingrightat her. And then she heard them.
