A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  Jeannie jerked out of Todd’s grip and circled around him to stand right in front of Beth. Beth did not retreat. Her heart squeezed down to nothing, fear and freedom crushing it into a hot, red pebble inside her.

  She could not look at Dana, however much she wanted to. She had to focus on her mother. She had to sell it, to her father, to her mother, to herself.

  “You were crazy desperate to get him back, but you knew you could never actually hurt him. So you had to scare him. You faked being sick. You put the idea into his head to get the money for treatment out of me.”

  There it was, the crystallized anger and the bitterness built up across years of having to constantly monitor one man’s moods and pretend and shift and lie depending on his next whim. Jeannie had built her survival around being what Todd needed of her. It had given her power over him, and she wielded it with care sometimes, with abandon others. She reveled in that power, and he craved her dependency.

  Each of them was what the other made. Each of them utterly reliant on their creation.

  Each of them hating themselves for what they’d tied themselves to.

  “Todd, this is bullshit,” said Jeannie. “You know it is. She’s just trying to get you mad enough to make a mistake, and then she can take herself and her girl away again.”

  “And go where?” Beth spread her hands. “You locked that door and threw away the key when you killed Doug, Mom, and now you’re trapped in here with me.”

  “You need to stop lying, Grandma,” said Dana. “Just say you’re sorry, okay?”

  “Shut up! All of you!” Todd screamed. He screamed. Not shouted, not ordered. Screamed until his voice broke. “Just…just shut up!”

  His eyes had gone wide. He looked scared, like he was skirting panic.

  What are you going to do now, Dad? You can’t trust any of us. How are you going to keep it under control now?

  And there was the question, the thing she’d almost forgotten.

  Where’s the gun?

  Todd was still in his underwear, a sagging and pathetic old man. He did not have it on him.

  Her father paced to the other side of the room, his hands flexing—open, shut, open, shut. He stood facing the window, and then he turned and swept his arm out, sending the bedside lamp and clock crashing to the floor.

  “Now, this is what we’re going to do.” He was talking to the wall, and somehow that made it scarier. “We’re going to pack up, and we’re going to get in the car. And if I have trouble from any one of you, somebody is going to get shot, and I am not really going to care who it is!”

  Jeannie moved to stand with him, choosing sides. “You heard your father, Star,” she said.

  Where’s the gun?

  Beth was trying to look in every direction at once. She spotted Todd’s jacket hanging on the back of the desk chair. There? Still in that pocket?

  Jeannie spotted her before Todd did.

  “Oh, no you don’t, Star,” she said. Jeannie stepped backward. “Todd…”

  That was when Dana charged.

  Beth screamed and Jeannie screamed and Dana hit the floor in a heap with her grandmother.

  “He’s got a gun!” screamed Dana, trying frantically to grab Jeannie’s wrists. “He’s got a gun!”

  Beth lunged for the chair and the jacket, but Todd got her first. He wrapped his wiry arms around her waist, dragging her backward, swinging them both around. She stomped on his foot—she was in stocking feet, but her heel was hard enough.

  Dana screamed.

  Beth had no strength left in her, but she tore herself out of her father’s grip and lunged forward, skidding hard across the carpet, tearing skin. Hands clamped around her ankles, and the world spun.

  And he was on top of her. Dana was screaming and screaming, and there were sirens in the distance, and the world flipped over, and there were hands on her face and her throat, scrabbling for some kind of hold, and she was fighting and she didn’t know how. And there was a crunch and Todd shouted, and she was free and crab-crawling backward, and Dana was standing over him, the gun in her hand, pointing it, crying and swearing and shaking.

  The sirens were getting closer.

  “Kill him!” screamed Jeannie. “You have to kill him! He’ll say you did it! He’ll say you killed your father and your mother helped!”

  “You bitch!” screamed Todd. “You fucking bitch!”

  “Shut up!” shrieked Dana. “Shut up or I’ll kill you!”

  Todd shut up. Todd was not stupid, and Dana very clearly was all done with her grandparents.

  “You used me!” she screamed at Jeannie. “You said you loved me! You said you wanted to be family. You said you needed us, but you used me!”

  “Dana, I was afraid,” Jeannie pleaded. “You saw what he did to me! I had no choice. He was going to kill you! And your mom, Dana! That’s what he’s like! You know! You saw!”

  “You killed my father! My fucking, pathetic, stupid, useless father!”

  She raised the gun. She groped for the safety.

  “No, Dana,” said Beth.

  Beth had managed to get to her feet, right behind Dana. She laid her hands on her daughter’s. “No, Dana,” she breathed. “I’ve got this.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Dana’s fingers went instantly loose beneath Beth’s hands. Beth took the gun and stepped in front of her.

  Kill them, said a calm, steady voice in the back of her mind. Kill them both. Bang, bang. All gone. Compared to the shotgun, the Glock would have barely any kick at all.

  Dana would go to stay with Rafi and Angela. Beth would go to prison, or to her own grave, depending on whether or not her nerve held.

  But it’d be done. What she should have done years ago, when she first found them. But she’d told herself there was no rush. That she could do it anytime.

  Time’s up.

  The gun was heavy and warm, Beth’s palm was slick with sweat, her arm was weak as water. The sirens were still going but not moving. The cops were here. How long would it take them to get to this room?

  They’d see this. They’d shoot her.

  Bang, bang.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think of me!” shouted Jeannie. “You know he’s not going to stop coming after you! After your girl! He’ll make me do it all again!”

  “You better hope she kills me!” roared Dad. “Because I’m going to kill you if she doesn’t! Kill the jealous bitch! Kill her! This was her idea!”

  “You have to stop him, Beth!”

  Beth again.

  She should have called me Star. Star would do what she was told. She wouldn’t know what else to do.

  But Beth was another story. Beth understood the game.

  “Mom?” whispered Dana.

  They could have fought each other, could have done each other in years ago. But they hadn’t. Despairing, furious, unable to understand how it had all gone so wrong, they lay there, looking for somebody else they could sucker into doing what they wanted. For the one who would save them from themselves.

  That was supposed to be her job. That had always been her job.

  Beth raised the gun a little higher. She thumbed the safety. She sighted along the barrel. She laid her finger across the trigger.

  “Bang,” she said.

  And dropped the gun and kicked it across the floor so Dad could dive after it.

  “Open the door!” she shouted.

  Dana did, and Dana screamed, and the cops poured through.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Beth was knocked down and hauled out of the room and into the parking lot. It was a very big, very loud blur. She probably screamed. She wasn’t sure. There was no way to keep track.

  Eventually though, the shouting and confusion ebbed away, and she was able to hear someone asking, “Are you Beth Fraser? We’ve got your daughter. She’s safe.”

  She didn’t remember anything for a while after that. Not until she was climbing out of the police car in front of some squared-off co
ncrete building, and Dana was pressing against her, gently this time. Beth held her and rocked her, and Dana began to cry.

  After that, they were herded into a small room with a table and chairs. Beth sat down without letting go of her daughter. Maybe she was crying too. She didn’t know or care.

  After a while, the door opened again, and Detective Patel came in and sat down beside her. Dana looked up and pulled away, wiping hard at her face and eyes.

  The detective pulled cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket, lit one, and blew smoke into the ceiling, probably in violation of all kinds of codes. Beth found she had no inclination to point this out.

  “We have your parents in custody.”

  Dana blinked, but she stayed steady. Patel wasn’t even looking at her. All her focus was on Beth.

  “You’re going to need to thank that girl, Chelsea Hamilton. She was a huge help, especially turning us onto that video so we had visuals we could start showing around. Of course, your dad helped too.”

  Beth looked at her, and Patel smiled. “People tend to remember ‘a real charmer.’” She made the air quotes. “Would have had you yesterday, but there was some jurisdictional stuff. But none of that’s your problem.” She sighed and blew out another cloud of smoke. “So, you still exercising your right to remain silent, Ms. Fraser?”

  Beth laced her fingers through her daughter’s and felt the strength of Dana’s grip in answer.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t…I just…”

  “It’ll be okay,” Beth breathed. “Everything will be okay. I promise.”

  And this once, it was the truth.

  Beth pulled Dana close, and she started talking.

  EPILOGUE

  Dana didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror hanging on her closet door.

  She was taller, her hair cut short and slicked back from her forehead. She had a unicorn tattoo on the side of her neck. She wore (really ridiculous) black-and-white-checked trousers and a bulky white chef’s coat with the word INTERN embroidered in blue on the pocket under a logo of an ivy-covered cornucopia.

  The eyes she recognized—the green one and the brown one. Bright and sharp.

  It was summer again and already too hot outside. Finals had been pretty much a disaster. In fact, the whole last year had pretty much sucked. Mom had told Dana she didn’t even have to go back to school, especially while she was out on bond and wearing the electronic monitor and everything was still all over the local news.

  But Dana had wanted to show she wasn’t afraid. Not that she was in school much anyway. She spent more time in attorneys’ offices and courtrooms and deposition rooms than she did in the classroom. Before she even took the witness stand, she’d had to tell her story a thousand different times to a thousand different lawyers and legal coaches to make sure she got it just right. Details dissolved into a sea of words and advice: Don’t look here. Don’t clench your hands. Say it this way. And never, ever say that.

  Real life was no help. The few friends who decided she wasn’t crazy didn’t know what to do with her, or they wanted all the details, and when the details didn’t match the story on the news or in their heads, it was like they started making shit up until it all sounded right to them.

  It got so bad that some days Dana wasn’t sure she really remembered what happened anymore. She just knew what speech she was supposed to give on what day. The rest was gone.

  She tried to tell herself it had all been worth it. Even the part where she’d almost been sick right in the middle of the courtroom when Amanda Pace Martin got up on the stand and blamed Mom for everything, and then Susan got up right after her and lied for an hour straight about how Mom was stealing from Dad, and Dana’d had to be yanked out of there by one of the fifty-three lawyers because she started crying and she couldn’t stop.

  Because Jeannie and Todd might get off. They might come back.

  They kept her out of court for the next two days. She missed Zoe Keyes on the stand, and Rafael and James Kinseki. But she did not miss the part where Thomas James Jankowski and Deborah Ann Watts, aka Todd and Jeannie Bowen, were convicted of assault and murder and kidnapping and fraud and accessory to fraud and a whole bunch of other stuff. The judge, who was a mother and a grandmother, dropped ninety-eight years down on both of them. They were gone, and they were not coming back.

  Except at night. In the middle of the night, they always came back. They brought Dad with them, and that was when Dana remembered everything and woke up screaming. Then, Mom would be there, and Chelsea.

  That was one good thing. Chelsea was living with them now. She’d taken over the guest bedroom and redecorated it all in her secondhand Loli-Goth style. Mom had had a whole bunch of conversations with Mrs. Hamilton, and a few with Mr. Hamilton. She never did give Dana and Chelsea all the dirty details, but the upshot was Cody and his band were not arrested for dealing, and Chelsea didn’t have to go home if she didn’t want to.

  Dana and Chelsea fought a lot more than when they’d been living separately, and Mom had a whole big conniption about Chelsea’s Swedish death metal habit after she’d Googled a few of the bands. But it got better, usually after cupcakes. Or therapy.

  That was another change. Dana and Chelsea and Mom were now on a first-name basis with half the talk therapists in the Chicagoland area, and a whole raft of psychiatrists. Dana had pills and she had appointments and no social life.

  All those therapists warned her the anniversary would be hard. It wasn’t yet, but she could feel it, lurking behind her—waiting to open the door, waiting to slip something into her coffee or whisper a fresh lie in her ear.

  Waiting for her to relax just a little and believe the wrong thing so it could cover her eyes and pull her away.

  “Dana?” Mom was knocking on the door. “You done?”

  Chelsea, who after nearly a whole freakin’ year still had no boundaries, just shoved the door open and threw her arm around Dana’s shoulders.

  “Chef coat selfie!” She held up the phone and snapped their picture.

  Dana glared at her and ducked out from under her arm, but she didn’t really mind. Mom just stood in the doorway, pointing at her watch. Dana rolled her eyes.

  “Ready to go?” Mom asked.

  “Ready.” Dana grabbed her purse off her dresser. Chelsea made a big show of brushing the wrinkles out of her sleeves until Dana made an even bigger show of getting ready to swat her upside the head.

  Now Mom was rolling her eyes.

  “Phone?” she asked.

  Dana pulled her newest smartphone out of her back pocket and held it up.

  “Mad money?”

  She dug into her purse and brandished her wallet.

  “Keys?”

  She jingled the ring in her other pocket.

  “Text time?”

  “Whenever they let me off shift.”

  “Don’t worry, Dana.” Chelsea patted Mom’s shoulder. “I’ll take good care of her. I’ve got the whole day all planned out.”

  “God help me,” Mom muttered. “My hearing may not survive this.”

  Dana’s phone beeped and her app flashed. “Ride’s here,” she said. “Gotta go.”

  She planned to just breeze on out. No big thing. No looking back. No tears. She’d cried enough.

  But she got to the door, and she opened it, and she turned around anyway, and Mom was right there.

  “You are going to be okay, right? I mean, with Chelsea and everything…”

  Mom met her gaze, and Dana knew she understood what was underneath that question. It wasn’t really about Chelsea, or the internship, or the anniversary that was hanging so heavy over everything. It was just the same question she’d been asking every day since…it…happened.

  And Mom smiled, and Mom hugged her and kissed her cheek.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, Dangerface,” she said. “I promise.”

  This time, it was the truth.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve
said it before, but it bears repeating. No book happens in a vacuum. This book, like all the others, is the result of a lot of work, care, and support from a lot of people. I’d like to thank my (very) hardworking editor and agent who stuck with me through all the rewrites, and my (very) patient writer’s group, ditto. And as always, to my husband and son, who have always supported me throughout. None of this happens without all of you. Thank you.

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  About the Author

  Sarah Zettel is a bestselling, award-winning author. She has written thirty-five novels and multiple short stories over the past thirty years, in addition to cooking, hiking, embroidering, marrying a rocket scientist, and launching her rapidly growing son.

  Praise for The Other Sister

  “Compulsively devourable.”

  —Nina Laurin, bestselling author of Girl Last Seen

  “Sarah Zettel’s The Other Sister is as dark and twisted as they come; a compelling and sinister psychological thriller in which every character is deeply flawed, their desire for revenge understandable and relatable. With its intricate web of secrets long buried, readers won’t be able to stop turning the pages!”

  —Karen Dionne, internationally bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter

  “An exhilarating ride full of twists and turns, this page-turner will leave you guessing until the very end!”

  —Steena Holmes, New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Ones

  “An excellent psychological thriller that’s filled with dark family secrets and plenty of intrigue.”

  —New York Journal of Books

  “The story of Geraldine’s return to her roots is vividly told…[for] readers looking for something to follow Jeannette Walls’ nonfiction The Glass Castle.”