Page 71 of The Tenant
“Did she… I mean, do you think she was the one who…”
“Did she kill him?” There is a flicker of amusement in Mrs. Cross’s eyes, and for a moment, I wonder if the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. “Only Whitney knows the answer to that question. Well, WhitneyandJordan. If I had to guess, I’d say yes, I think she pushed him off the roof. But I can’t be sure. Whitney has a way of making you so miserable, suicide suddenly seems like a viable option.”
Her words rattle me down to my soul when I think about the last couple of months. “Yes.”
“My husband would still be here if not for her.” Her eyes drop. “He couldn’t take it. He had a heart attack one month after she disappeared.”
“When she disappeared,” I say, “where did she go?”
“I didn’t know at first,” Mrs. Cross says. “I still don’t know for certain. The Gallos were making a lot of trouble for her, so I don’t blame her for wanting to get away. We reported her missing, but the police considered her a runaway, and since there was no warrant for her arrest, they didn’t spend much time looking.” She cocks her head thoughtfully. “She definitely left the country at some point. Three years after she vanished, she sent us a postcard from Braga, Portugal.”
Braga, Portugal. Like the name Telmont, it sets off little bells in the back of my head. Why can’t I remember? It’s so frustrating.
“But I knew she was back in the States,” she adds.
“How? Did she contact you?”
“No.” Mrs. Cross leans forward as if to tell me a secret. “Because six years later, the girl that Jordan left Whitney for was found murdered.”
It takes me a second to wrap my head around this. Whitney’s high school boyfriend cheated on her with another girl, and she killed him right away, waitedsix years, and then killed the girl too. Over a stupid high school infidelity.
That takes a special kind of insanity.
“So you have to understand, Mr. Porter,” she says, “if you have done something to Whitney, she will never let it go. Not a year later—not ten years later. No matter how long it takes, she will make sure you pay the price.”
I bury my face in my hands. I don’t understand. I never even met her before she moved in, much less committed some unforgivable crime against her. Why is she doing this to me? Why?
“Are you okay?” Mrs. Cross asks me gently. “Can I get you something? Some water?”
I raise my head and nod. “Water would be great. Thank you.”
A deep depression sets in. I had hoped coming here might solve all my problems, but it hasn’t solved anything. Mrs. Cross doesn’t know how to handle her daughter any better than I do. And I still don’t understand why Whitney has targeted me.
Mrs. Cross leaves me alone in the living room while she disappears into the kitchen. I stand up to stretch my legs and wander over to the fireplace, where several framed photos are positioned on the mantel. There is one of Mrs. Cross and a man who I assume is her late husband. Then another of a man in his twenties—presumably her son.
She has one family photo, which looks like it was taken a long time ago. Mrs. Cross looks at least fifteen years younger than she does right now. Positioned between the parents are their two teenage children—a much younger version of the man in the other photo and a teenage girl. I stare at the photo for a second as a sick feeling mounts in my stomach.
What the hell is going on here?
Mrs. Cross returns with a glass of water in her hand. I rip my eyes away from the family photo and turn to look at her. I jab at the picture frame with my index finger. “Who isthat?”
“That’s a family picture,” she says defensively. “Just because my daughter has done something terrible, that doesn’t mean I have to forget her entirely.”
“But…” I shake my head. “Who is that girl in the photo?”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “That’s Whitney. My daughter.”
“But…that’s not…”
I turn to examine the photo again, making sure I’m not imagining it. Then I look over at Mrs. Cross. And now I see it—the resemblance.
“Mr. Porter?” Mrs. Cross crinkles her brow. “Are you all right, young man?”
No, I am not all right. I am so far from all right, it’s not even funny.
Because the teenage girl in that photo is not the woman who has been living in our guest bedroom, the one who’s been tormenting me. The one who calls herself Whitney Cross. No, the teenage girl in the photograph is somebody entirely different.
It’sKrista.
