Suzie had walked into the pharmacy that morning, and instead of getting the shop ready for the day, she’d spent fifteen minutes going through Abigail’s social media pages, clicking on each photo in turn even though she’d seen them all a hundred times before. She’d dreamed about her last night, just as the wind had started soughing through the pines. Abigail had been wearing her prom dress and standing in a fog of smoke that concealed her lower half from view. Her flower corsage was withered and dead, browned petals drooping on rotting stems. She had opened her mouth, and smoke had poured from it, as if the long column of her throat was a chimney and somewhere inside her, in the spaces between her ribs maybe, or in the caverns of her lungs, a fire was raging.
“I know what you did,” Abigail told Suzie in a blackened, brittle voice, “and I won’t ever let you forget it.”
Now Suzie’s fingers are white and wrinkled from being submerged so long in hot soapy water. Her cuticles are bright pink from the scrubbing and if she lifts her hand to her nose, she can smell the astringent carbolic soap. But the urge to scrub away a layer of skin persists, like a bell ringing in Suzie’s brain.Since Hazel came back,it’s like we’ve all gone crazy, she thinks, remembering walking in Belle Vue yesterday, the tart, clinical smell of the place, bleach and ammonia. The receptionist had been an older woman with short gray hair cut closely to her head. She’d worn a necklace of big red beads that had made Suzie think of blood blisters.
“I can’t give you specific information about clients,” she’d told Suzie with a frown, taking the sherbet lemons and peering into the little paper bag studiously, “but what I can tell you is that she left here three weeks ago, and she won’t be back.”
The bell over the door chimes and Suzie lifts her head. It’s Cathy. Suzie frowns. She wasn’t expecting her this early, and Cathy looks like she’s just rolled out of bed. Her cowboy boots are pulled over a pair of baggy black tracksuit bottoms, hair dragged up into a topknot. Kohl smudges form crescents beneath bloodshot eyes that are not still.
“Didn’t think you’d turn up till after lunch.”
“I’ve taken an early shift.” Cathy’s heels clack across the floor. “I just cried handing Scout over to the childminder. Normally I can’t get rid of him quick enough.”
Suzie studies her, offering a weak smile. “Have you heard from the police?”
Cathy spits a mean little laugh. “Of course not. I’m headed over to the station now. Got a reference number and the note in my pocket. Just wish I could shake this feeling that…” She tails off.
“What?”
“This morning, my littlest, Scout. He wasn’t in his bed. I found him in the sitting room, mostly undressed. That was weird, but what was worse was how he felt when I picked him up.”
Suzie leans forward, forgetting all about her dream of Abigail, wreathed in smoke and grinning.
“He was damp, like he’d been running a fever, only he smelled different too. I don’t know how to explain it—it was as if he’d been swapped in the night. A changeling. Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing, Cathy,” Suzie tells her soberly. She means it too. She has never felt less like laughing in her life. Her hands are raw and pink and her fears chew at her all the time.
“I hope I can keep it together at the police station. I feel like I’m coming undone. Ugh. What did you want to show me?”
Suzie folds her arms and leans over the counter, starched white coat rustling. “I went over the shop CCTV. It doesn’t give a good angle on the man who brought the receipt in, unfortunately—he kept his hood up and because it was raining, I didn’t really query it—but there’s a pretty good view of his truck outside.”
“It’s a start, right? You mind if I take a look?”
Suzie hesitates. It’s not just how wary she is of Cathy, that mean streak in her a mile wide that has a tendency to surface when you least expect it; it’s how Teddy had looked at her over breakfast that morning, his brow deeply furrowed. “You don’t want to get mixed up in things that don’t concern you, Suzie-Q,” he’d said. He’d still been mad as all hell that Suzie had shut up the pharmacy yesterday, even more so when she’d told him about the trip to Belle Vue.
“Well, I don’t know, Cathy. I’m not meant to bring anyone back here. I could lose my job. Maybe we should wait on it until the police reach out.”
“How long do you want to wait? Another week? Two? How long does my sister have to be missing before someone actually fucking does something?” Cathy’s hands are gripping the counter tightly, but now she pushes herself away, throwing them into the air in exasperation. “I just want to see for myself. See if I recognize this man or his truck. Fuck, even the way he walks might give me some clue. Please, Suzie. Please. Just five minutes and I’ll be out your hair.”
Suzie considers, her mouth dry.
“Please, sweetie. For Hazel.”
“We call that guilt-tripping round here,” Suzie says, but she lifts the flap of the counter anyway, ushering Cathy through before she changes her mind. In the small back room, stacked with pill boxes and charts and carousels of plastic dispensers there is a desk with a monitor on it. Suzie switches it on, one eye on the small TV screen above that shows the shop floor.
“See the angle?” She nods toward it. “That’s where the camera is, behind me. Normally you should be able to get a look at his face that way, but like I said—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. He had his hood up. Just go ahead and play the tape.”
It’s a file now, Cathy, Suzie thinks as she leans over and moves the cursor to the dated footage.We haven’t used tapes in here since 1990.
“Here. Just click to view it. He’s the first customer, so you’ll see him right at the start.”
Behind her, the door chimes. She looks up at the screen to see Mrs. Scott edging carefully into the store, pushing her walker ahead of her.
“Go ahead and watch, Cathy. I’ll just deal with Mrs. Scott.”
“Thanks, Suzie. For everything, I mean. I won’t ever let you forget it.”