Page 72 of Made for You
“Fuck!” I cry, instinctively pressing the gun into Deborah’s back. She’s wearing a blue dress—red hair—
Not a real person. Just a cardboard cutout...of me.
Devil horns adorn my head. Yellow ridged darts speckle my face, and red marker lines make it look like my eyes are bleeding.
Panic crawls its tentacles up my spine. If Deborah comes to her senses and remembers No Harm—if she somehow overcomes me in this horrible place where no one could hear me scream—
“Keep walking,” I shout, even though Deborah didn’t stop.
A little farther down, on a foldout table wedged between boxes, is a makeshift shrine. An electric candle flickers unnaturally under a framed photograph of a young man in a cap and gown. Fuck—it’s Josh. Four Barbie-sized doll heads are stuck to the frame, two on each side of Josh. The dolls’ hair is cropped short like the mobile dolls, and wallet-sized baby pictures have been taped to their faces. Four angels vigil keeping, I think with a deep shiver.
Finally in the kitchen at the very back of the house, I gesture to a chair, which is mostly clear save some clothes draped over the back. My pulse is going a million miles a minute.
“Sit,” I order. I can’t sound scared. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Deborah obliges. With her hands clasped in her lap like a child, she looks up with those pale blue moon eyes. I point the gun at her chest. My hands are sweaty. The metal feels slippery. This whole situation feels slippery.
“Why did you kill my husband, and where is his body, Deborah?”
“I would never kill any of my babies.”
“Josh wasn’t your child.”
“In my heart, he was.” Deborah holds my gaze, unblinking. “Josh and my baby were the same age. Then my baby died.”
Oh... God. Was Josh some kind of substitute for her own child? And were those cherubic faces taped to the Barbie heads... But there’s no time to dig into the psychological squalor that is the mind of Deborah Reeves.
“Tell me where you were Saturday night,” I demand.
“Here.”
“Prove it.”
She blinks twice. “I don’t have a working car.”
“I know you can get around. I saw you at Walmart.”
“There’s a church group. They take me shopping.”
“Someone could have driven you to Josh’s campsite Saturday.” The muscles in my hand are hurting from holding the gun so tightly.
Deborah gestures to a TV with a warped screen. “I was watching Josh on The Proposal, like I always do on the weekend. It’s on Netflix.”
I readjust my grip on the gun. “Pull it up. I want to see your watch history.”
She reaches for a remote, then slowly navigates it with awkward fingers until she reaches the screen that shows the dates and time stamps of what she’s watched. Just like she said, she was watching The Proposal between 5:00 p.m. and midnight Saturday. From the looks of it, she watched the final episode with the proposal multiple times. In a row.
“You could have watched this from your phone.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.” She gestures to an ancient-looking brown landline attached to the wall. “I’m on a fixed income.”
I think of the line from her letter. They all died.
“You said you were cursed. What did you mean?”
Her face twists, and faster than I can react, she lurches forward, forcing her fingers around my hands, twisting the gun so it’s pointed at the ceiling, pressing me with unnatural strength until the trigger clicks.
She releases a ragged cry of triumph as I wrench myself free, the useless gun falling to the floor. I spin and collide with a stool covered in magazines, which spill like a glossy river at my feet. The ruse is up.