by A J Rivers
Leona jumps up from her chair and runs out of the room, her hand over her mouth as if she’s going to throw up.
“Ashley,” I say carefully. “We need to talk.”
“It’s so funny how she acts like that. When we’re at home she tells me everything.”
“Ashley?” Misty comes to the door and looks in. She’s surprised to see me. “Oh, Agent Griffin. Hi. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“I was just stopping in to check on your mother. How is she doing?”
“Better,” Misty says. “Still not out of the woods. Come on, honey. We need to get going. We have that therapist appointment this afternoon.”
“Therapist?” I frown. “I thought you didn’t want Ashley speaking with a therapist.”
“I changed my mind. I think it would do her good to talk through what happened to her and try to get past it,” she says.
“Can I have a word with her just really fast?” I ask.
Misty glances at her watch. “We don’t have the time. Maybe tomorrow.”
They leave, Ashley glancing over her shoulder at me before heading down the hallway. I walk over to the bed and look down into Mary’s face before checking the table. The medical ID bracelet is still sitting there. I pick it up and turn it over, reading the inscription before running my fingers over the stones.
One sapphire, two pearls.
Fifty-Four
This is the part of every investigation I hate the most. I feel held down, trapped in place and unable to do what needs to be done. There are still steps that need to be taken. Evidence that needs to be gathered. I don’t want to go through it. I don’t want to wait. Every second that passes could make everything so much worse.
I spend every one of them trying to push the investigation through. I need to put the final pieces into place. To ensure the excavation under the front porch of the farmhouse is complete. To get the results of the blood test on the mirror.
Friday the thirteenth dawns, and a heaviness settles over me. I’m not superstitious. That belief was even more grounded by the events at Arrow Lake. The date has never meant anything to me except for the times I would curl up with a bowl of popcorn and watch scary movies with Bellamy when we were younger.
Now it’s different. I can feel something crawling along my skin. Taunting me. The rain dripping down from the sky is too appropriate. Too on-the-nose. It makes everything feel more closed in.
I spend the morning fighting with the detectives and judges, trying to get them to release more information to me. Even with everything I already have, they won’t budge. There are steps that need to be taken, legal channels that have to be followed to get what I need. They’re right. I know they are. Some of the information I need will only be useful if it’s acquired through those legal processes.
But that means nothing to me at noon, when my phone rings and I hear Misty sobbing on the other end.
“She’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone? What’s going on, Misty?”
“Ashley’s gone. I can’t find her.”
“Stay where you are. I’ll be right there.”
I don’t even remember the drive to the house. When I get there, Leona and Misty are in the front yard. Misty is holding her daughter by the upper arms, trying to keep her under control as the girl thrashes and cries.
John comes out of the house holding his phone. He looks at me, his face like stone.
“Leona, you need to calm down,” Misty says. “You need to calm down. We’re going to find her.”
“No!” Leona screams. “No. She’s not here. She never was. She’s gone!”
“Stop talking like that,” Misty says. “Everything is going to be fine. Daddy is calling her friends. She’s probably just out with Vivian and Allison. Everything is going to be fine. Do you hear me?”
Leona finally breaks free of her mother’s grasp and starts to run. She trips, crashes to the ground, and crawls through the mud before getting her feet under her again and running for her car.
“No!” Misty screams.
John scrambles down the porch steps, nearly falling. He’s still in his pajamas, his hair disheveled, as though he was trying to sleep the entire day away.
“Call the police,” I tell him. “Then call Dean. You have his number, right?”
“Yes,” John says.
I nod. “Call him. Tell him to have Xavier find me.”
I know Xavier still has the tracker on my phone. He’ll be able to locate me no matter where I am.
“Where is she going?” Misty asks.
“You need to tell me that,” I say.
She looks at me with a bewildered expression. “What do you mean?”
“I think you know exactly where Leona is going. And you know why. Why don’t you show me, so we can end this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Misty says. “Everything was fine this morning and then all of a sudden Ashley was gone and Leona completely panicked. She has been really on edge and hasn’t been able to accept that her sister is back. This pushed her past her limit. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Misty, this is enough. You need to stop now. The police and my partner are going to be on their way. You really don’t want either one of them to get to her before you do. This may be your only chance to save the children you have left.”
Half an hour later, I follow Misty’s car into the overgrown parking lot of an abandoned factory. As we drive past the broken, weather-faded sign, I can’t help but notice the name of it.
WiseAcre Inc.
We drive around in loops for a few moments. Misty is stalling. I don’t know what time she’s waiting for, but I’m not going to play her game anymore. I stop my car and get out, running toward the hulking remains of the factory.
Misty follows close behind me, resigned to the reality that she isn’t going to stop me. She leads me inside through a collapsed door. We haven’t gone far onto the old factory floor when I see a figure standing in the middle of the room.
“Ashley!” Misty calls out.
Ashley whips around but says nothing. Even from a distance, I can see the tears streaking down her face.
“Honey, we were all so scared. What are you doing here?” Misty asks. When there’s no response, Misty starts to get visibly unnerved. The smile she plastered on her face is fading, worry filling her eyes. “Where is your sister?”
That’s all it takes.
“I don’t know!” The words explode out, filling the crumbling space. “I don’t know where my sister is. Maybe she’s in one of the machines. Maybe she’s in the river. Maybe in the dirt.”
“Stop it,” Misty says.
“Maybe she’s in all of them. Parts of her in the gears. In the vats. Do you think there might still be chemicals in them? That would help the process along, wouldn’t it?”
“Stop,” Misty repeats, her voice starting to unravel. “Stop it now. Tell me where Leona is. Tell me now.”
The scream of pure rage and agony that rips out of a girl too small and young to make that kind of sound rattles off the rusted machines. Her eyes burn into Misty, the tears flowing unchecked.
“That’s all you care about, isn’t it? It’s all you’ve ever cared about. Never me.”
Her hands clench and unclench at her sides. Teeth clenched, her breath seethes in and out. I step in front of Misty to try to break her fixated stare.
“Focus on me,” I say. “Just look at me. Do you see me? It’s me, Emma. Just focus on me, okay?”
She looks at me and I see the emotion shift. She nods.
“Good. Good. Can you show me where Leona is?”
She turns without a word and I follow her across the dirty floor to a set of spiral metal steps. We climb up them and she points down into an empty water reservoir. Leona lies at the bottom on a pile of debris. One leg is twisted and broken and I can see blood on her face. I hear a groan.
“She’s alive,” I say. “We need to ge
t help for her.”
Ashley faces off with her mother.
“She came here looking for me, didn’t she?” she asks.
“We didn’t know where you went,” Misty says. “You were just gone. She was worried about you.”
“No. She came here to see if I really had crawled out of the grave she put me in.”
Misty recoils. “Stop it. Don’t you say things like that!”
“She already knows, Misty. And so do I.” I turn to the girl I’ve been calling Ashley. “Lyla. Have you heard that name?” She shakes her head. “It’s yours. It has been since you were born.” I gesture toward the top of the steps. “Leona didn’t know. She didn’t know about you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Misty says. “What are you going on about? This is Ashley. My daughter. Ashley Marie Stevenson.”
“This is your daughter, but it’s not Ashley. I noticed your mother’s medical ID bracelet. Leona mentioned it had birthstones for her grandchildren in it. There were three. One for January, two for June.”
“I lost a baby,” Misty says. “I told you that.”
“I know,” I say. “And in a way, you did. But not how you say. The daughter you raised, one of the June babies, was actually a twin.”
Misty looks angry, but a smug look crosses her face.
“You have no way of knowing us,” she says. “You can’t access my medical records.”
“No,” I say. “I can’t. But I can access death records. They’re public. And there’s one for Lyla Jane Gray. Your infant daughter. You hadn’t married John yet, so she didn’t have his last name. Ashley didn’t get his last name until she was almost a year old, did she?”
“This is completely outrageous,” Misty snaps. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I do, Misty. The death record is for a stillborn twin. Only, the morgue has no records of receiving or disposing of any infant remains on that day, or any of the days in the week before or after June thirteenth. That’s because there weren’t any. Because your daughter Lyla wasn’t stillborn. She was born healthy and strong, just like Ashley.
“And then she went home with your nurse. Jessica Blanchette. She had been pretending to be pregnant for months, ever since she took care of you when you were sent to rehab for your gambling addiction, rather than having to serve jail time after being caught with a hell of a lot of pills. Tell me, was that the plan all along? Did you know while you were in that rehab center that you would sell your baby daughter to her? Or were you as fooled as everybody else was with her fake pregnancy?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Misty says.
“Of course, you do. John showed me the picture of the two of you with your pregnant bellies. How long did it take until you found out your boyfriend was in that facility a year before you? That they met before you racked up a huge debt to him and then made it infinitely worse by losing the drugs you were supposed to sell?”
“So, you sold me instead,” Lyla says.
“I’ve seen all the transactions. I know how it happened. Just tell me, for my peace of mind, that that man isn’t your children’s father,” I say.
“No,” Misty says, shaking her head. “He died before I found out I was pregnant.”
“Why did you lie to your husband about when you lost a baby? Why didn’t you tell him the twin died, the same story you told your mother?” I ask.
The tears are falling freely down Misty’s face now. She’s stammering, but somehow holding it together.
“I didn’t want him to know. I begged my mother not to tell him. He was in treatment longer than I was. We weren’t really serious until after he got out. I hadn’t told him I was pregnant with twins. It wasn’t something we talked about. My life was finally starting to turn around. I told my mother I didn’t want to start our life together in pain.” She turns to Lyla. “But I was still mourning. I needed to be able to grieve for you.”
“To grieve for me?” Lyla screams. “You’re the one who caused this. You’re the one who put me in his grasp! He called me ‘thirteen’. That’s all he ever called me. I used to spend all my time dreaming of my family. Wondering what you were like. Imagining that you were looking for me. That you loved me and were going to find me one day.”
Misty shudders. Lyla continues.
“Things didn’t start getting really bad until I was around twelve. Before then, I knew they weren’t my parents, but they took care of me. I didn’t realize until then they were grooming me. They were raising me like livestock. That’s when I found out the truth. Where I actually came from. And the thing was, I didn’t even know then how horrible you really were. Not until Ashley disappeared. He used to make me watch the news with him so he could laugh about Ashley. About you.
“He wanted me to know that what I thought about you was wrong. He wanted me to know where I really came from. That I was used as collateral. Payment so you could go on with your life. But even then, I convinced myself to have compassion for you. I told myself you were manipulated and mistreated by them just as I was. That you wouldn’t have made that choice if you didn’t absolutely have to.
“I wanted to find you again. I wanted to be part of a family. If I could give Ashley back to you, it would be what you wanted. But then I found out what you really did. That you and Leona murdered her. She didn’t go missing. She hasn’t been lost for five years. She’s been dead. Leona told me. She thought I had come back from the dead to torture her for what she did. And now that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
She takes a step toward her mother, but I stop her. “Lyla, no. Not for them.”
“No!” Misty says, crumbling in a heap of sobs. “Leona didn’t do anything. It was me. I did it. The only one to blame is me.”
“Stop,” Leona’s voice comes from below us. “Mom, stop. You can’t take the blame for this. You’ve covered for me for long enough. It was me.”
I look down and see Leona grimacing as she tries to pull herself up to sit with her back against the metal container. She looks up at us. “I didn’t mean to. Ashley was always the favorite. She was always the one who did everything right and was popular and beautiful. She got away with everything.
“I got so tired of it. I was always living in her shadow. No matter what happened, she wasn’t blamed for it and everything went her way. That night, I was supposed to go out with Sean, but he called me at the last minute and said he couldn’t go. I still wanted to go out and do something, but Mom said I had to stay home and help her because Ashley was out.
“Later, Sean came over and apologized for not seeing me. He gushed all over me and told me how special I was, how much he loved me. Then he told me what happened with Ashley. That he had been with her and the other girls, and she was drunk out of her mind. He wanted me to go pick her up and bring her home so he wouldn’t get in any trouble.
“Of course, I did it. I was so mad at him and so hurt, but I was so wrapped up in him. I guess I still am. As soon as I saw her, I was so angry, I couldn’t even see straight. I brought her out here to sober up. But she started rubbing in my face that she was hanging out with my boyfriend and his actual girlfriend while I was home. She kept saying she was only thirteen and was already getting more attention than I ever had.
“I snapped. I picked up a piece of metal. I really just wanted to scare her, but it cut her. Right across the side. She stumbled and fell over the edge into this water reservoir. I tried to save her. But I couldn’t. I called Mom and told her Ashley went missing.”
“Leona,” gasps Misty. “You?”
She seems shocked to have the truth finally come out, but at the same time it seems she’s known somehow all along, just kept it buried deep under the surface.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Leona is crying now, and so is Misty, and even Lyla has tears shimmering in her eyes.
“I thought,” Misty says, “I thought that if—if I gave Ashley the love I should have given Lyla all those years that somehow, some way, she would
feel it. I know you missed out on it, Leona. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, for both of you.”
Neither Lyla nor Leona answers.
Fifty-Five
“Mary is going to be fine,” I tell the group gathered around me. “Misty knew her mother was going to tell me about the twin, so she had to do something to keep her quiet. Her medical alert bracelet said that she was allergic to quinine. It’s easy to access, undetectable, and results in organ breakdown and heart attacks in those who are allergic to it,” I say. “She just didn’t expect her mother to survive.”
“What about the man she sold Lyla to?” Bellamy asks.
“His name was Frederick Smith. Nowhere near a Wolf, I have to admit. They found his body behind the house he shared with Jessica. Lyla told me when Misty started making statements on the news about Ashley’s disappearance, he wanted to capitalize on it. He wanted to extort money from her by using Lyla as a pawn. After an entire lifetime of being used and manipulated, she wasn’t going to take it anymore.
“She decided she was going to benefit from it herself. Thinking about getting out and finding her family was enough to give her the strength to fight back. Jessica was helping her get ready for her appointment that day. She smashed her head in the mirror, which knocked her out. It wasn’t enough to kill her, but she wasn’t the one Lyla was particularly focused on. Jessica had always been kinder to her. Lyla was after Frederick.
“He was stabbed thirteen times. That wasn’t a coincidence. Apparently, Jessica regained consciousness and realized what had happened. Shecleaned up all the evidence of Lyla and took Frederick’s body. The knife Lyla used came from the kitchen. They found it under the porch. That was why the blood didn’t extend far. She dropped it through one of the rotten boards.”
“I can’t believe she lived through that,” Sam mutters. “Poor girl.”
“She has a long road ahead of her,” I say. “But at least now there’s something at the end of it, and all the people who failed her are paying for it.” I look at Bellamy, with Bebe cradled in her arms. “Twice now mothers were involved. I don’t understand.”