Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

There was a murmuring sound from the other side of the house.

Conversational. Not threatening, or screaming, or begging for help. More like Andy used to hear from her parents after she went to bed.

“Diana Krall’s going to be at the Fox next weekend.”

“Oh, Gordon, you know jazz makes me nervous.”

Andy felt her eyelids flutter like she was going to pass out. Everything was shaking. Inside her head, the sound of her heartbeat was like a gymnasium full of bouncing basketballs. She had to press her palm to the back of her leg to make herself walk.

The house was basically a square with a hallway that horseshoed around the interior. Laura’s office was where the dining room had been, off the front of the kitchen. Andy walked up the opposite side of the hallway. She passed her old bedroom, now a guest room, ignored all of the family photos and school drawings hanging on the walls.

“—do anything,” Laura said, her tone firm and clear.

Andy stood in the living room. Only the foyer separated her from Laura’s office. The pocket doors had been pulled wide open. The layout of the room was as familiar to Andy as her garage apartment. Couch, chair, glass coffee table with a bowl of potpourri, desk, desk chair, bookcase, filing cabinet, reproduction of the Birth of Venus on the wall beside two framed pages taken from a textbook called Physiology and Anatomy for Speech-Language Pathology.

A framed snapshot of Andy on the desk. A bright green leather blotter. A single pen. A laptop computer.

“Well?” Laura said.

Her mother was sitting on the couch. Andy could see part of her chin, the tip of her nose, her legs uncrossed, one hand resting on her thigh while the other was strapped to her waist. Laura’s face was tilted slightly upward, looking at the person sitting in the leather chair.

Hoodie.

His jeans were soaked. A puddle spread out on the rug at his feet.

He said, “Let’s think about our options here.” His voice was deep. Andy could feel his words rattle inside her chest. “I could talk to Paula Koontz.”

Laura was silent, then said, “I hear she’s in Seattle.”

“Austin.” He waited a moment. “But good try.”

There was silence, long and protracted.

Then Laura said, “Hurting me won’t get you what you need.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to scare the shit out of you.”

Andy felt her eyelids start to flutter again. It was the way he said it—with conviction, almost with glee.

“Is that so?” Laura forced out a fake-sounding laugh. “You think I can be scared?”

“Depends on how much you love your daughter.”

Suddenly, Andy was standing in the middle of her old bedroom. Teeth chattering. Eyes weeping. She couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. Her breath was huffing out of her lungs. Her heart had stopped beating, or maybe it was beating so fast that she couldn’t feel it anymore.

Her mother’s phone would be in the kitchen. She always left it to charge overnight.

Leave the house. Run for help. Don’t put yourself in danger.

Andy’s legs were shaky as she walked down the hall toward the back of the house. Involuntarily, her hand reached out, grabbed onto the doorjamb to Laura’s bedroom, but Andy compelled herself to continue toward the kitchen.

Laura’s phone was at the end of the counter, the section that was closest to her office, the part that was catching a triangle of light from the partially open door.

They had stopped talking. Why had they stopped talking?

Depends on how much you love your daughter.

Andy swung around, expecting to see Hoodie, finding nothing but the open doorway to her mother’s bedroom.