“I can’t.”
“Well, I can. My mother was and did all of those things,” Allie said, her voice even louder, her harsh tone startling even herself. “And she really screwed up my brother, who meant everything in the world to me . . . so he killed himself. Right in front of me . . . he blew his head off. Then he bled all over me.” Tears gathered in her eyes, and she tried to blink them away. “But I guess you can imagine what that was like, too, right?”
The woman’s shoulders slumped and she didn’t look so sure of herself anymore.
“My point is, you can’t even begin to imagine what I went through,” Allie said. “And if I were you I wouldn’t even try, because it might hurt so much you’d wish you were dead.”
Allie stood and left the room.
CHAPTER 14
ALLIE WAS RELIEVED the old woman didn’t grill her about the therapy session. In fact, Miss Bitty told her that if she didn’t want to go again, she didn’t have to. That she’d find a way to get around the mandatory sessions. Then, she took Allie shopping.
After spending several anxiety-provoking hours in the mall, Allie stood alone in her bedroom and stared at her new clothes. On the way home, she had warned the old woman not to throw her old clothes away. “Because the minute I get myself out of here—”
“It’s all in safekeeping,” Miss Bitty assured her. “You’re free to look as trampy as you wish when you go. For now, though, I’m not running a whorehouse and I won’t let you walk around here looking like one.”
Allie had blinked, wondering if her file had mentioned that she’d grown up in a whorehouse.
Or that she’d once been a whore.
At the mall, they’d bought tank tops and tees, underwear, bras, socks, jeans, shorts, dress pants, a skirt, a little black dress, and a swimsuit. Shoes that fit her: tennis shoes, sandals, flip-flops, wedges, and a pair of heels. A couple of simple necklaces, a pair of earrings, and a watch. They’d even bought her expensive department store makeup to replace the cheap stuff she’d always gotten from dollar stores.
While they were shopping, Allie had nodded off twice on the straight-back chairs the stores kept near the fitting rooms. She’d tried not to but couldn’t help it. She was still lethargic, and all the stimulation of the big crowds, the hum of a hundred conversations throughout the wide aisles, pelted her brain like pressure waves.
Then there were the endless mirrors and harsh fluorescent lighting, all of which frightened her. Her heart had raced so hard for so long, she was completely drained.
Several times throughout the afternoon, people walked up to the old woman to say hello. The people always looked really happy to see Miss Bitty. They’d talk for a couple of minutes, then the old lady would resume her shopping, Allie reluctantly trailing behind her. Later, Miss Bitty explained that the people were clients—some current, some past.
When they finally returned to the house, Bitty had shown Allie how to neatly fold some of her clothing and how to properly hang the rest. But as soon as the old woman left the room, Allie locked the door and pulled everything out again.
She couldn’t get over seeing it all right there, in one place, on the bed. Everything fit well and was brand-spanking new . . . and all of it was hers.
She posed in front of the bathroom mirror, modeling her new clothes, careful to only look at the good side of her face. For once, she actually looked well put together. Almost like the pretty therapist, Renee.
I look nice. Like, for once, I actually look like I have class.
The new image of herself made her almost breathless.
But then she remembered who she really was.
She shrugged off the clothes, put everything back as neatly as it had been before, and crawled into bed. But she made sure to leave the folding closet doors wide open just so she could see the clothes as she fell asleep.
She loved them all, every single piece, but knew that they would never truly be hers, because she’d been taught better than to trust the old woman. She was too kind. Too generous. She hadn’t even yelled at her once . . . and she really, genuinely paid attention to her. All of that and she didn’t even ask for anything in return.
She seems too good to be true . . . which could only mean one thing: she was.
A summer storm was raging outside when something summoned Allie from a sound sleep. Exhausted, she was tempted to ignore whatever it was and slip down deeper beneath the covers.
But she sensed someone’s presence.
Opening her eyes, she sat up and saw Miss Bitty standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on?” Allie asked, irritated to have been woken.
Miss Bitty didn’t answer.
Allie frowned in the darkness. “Is everything okay?”
Nothing. Just the sound of raindrops striking the bedroom window.
Her pulse quickened and she sat up straight. “Miss Bitty? Is that you?” She squinted to try to get a better look, but it was too dark in the room. Frightened, she clung to the comforter.
Lightening flashed outside, briefly illuminating the room. But the doorway was empty. Allie exhaled, wondering if she’d only imagined someone had been there.
Thunder crashed in the distance and her grip on the comforter softened. She watched the doorway for several more minutes, until she was certain no one was there.
I’m just losing it. No one was ever there, she told herself. My God, what is wrong with me?
She lay back down and squeezed her eyes shut, willing her pulse to return to normal. She was just exhausted . . . and her imagination was running wild.
Pulling the covers more tightly around her, she listened to the rain strike her window and soon fell into a restless sleep.
CHAPTER 15
UNABLE TO SLEEP, Miss Bitty stepped into the rain-cleansed air. She walked barefoot to the garden to knead her weathered feet in the cool mud. The practice was called earthing, and it was something she often did when her sense of tranquility eluded her.
After she quit drinking, years ago, she’d turned to practices like earthing for the type of calmness a bottle of wine had provided those many years when she’d been a closet drunk.
Usually it did the trick.
Usually.
As the late-night breeze ruffled her hair, she studied her garden in the moonlight and let the cool mud sink between her toes. She’d been toying with strategies to get Allie to trust her. From what she’d gathered thus far, the girl was very intelligent, so it wouldn’t take much to raise suspicion. She’d have to be calculating.
But that wasn’t all that was concerning her. A sick feeling had bloomed in her gut earlier in the day. Something horrific was on the horizon. Something that could ruin everything.
The entire well-laid plan.
She had a gift few were aware of: she knew things. Sometimes she knew before events happened. Sometimes as they were happening. And the knowledge always began with the same twisted feeling in the pit of her gut.
The problem was that she never got the complete picture—and sometimes this made her desperate, especially when she intuited something that was so dangerously close to home . . . like she was now.
She walked around the house until she found herself outside the girl’s bedroom window and wondered if she was asleep. Peering at her watch, she realized it was nearly half past three in the morning, so she figured Allie was.
A warm breeze tickled her neck, making the hair on her arms and legs stand on end. She pulled the robe tighter against her body and walked back to the house.
CHAPTER 16
TEN MINUTES LATER, Allie jackknifed to a sitting position. She gathered her breath, trying to get her bearings.
Something had awoken her again. She stole a look at the doorway. To her relief, it was still empty. She glanced at the bedside clock: 3:40 a.m. The brunt of the storm seemed to have passed and now the branches outside her window were swaying in the wind, casting long, eerie shadows on the bedroom’s walls.
With the moon s
hining through the bedroom window, she could make out the soft outlines of some of the clothes hanging in the closet. She groaned and peeled back the covers.
Something wasn’t right. She couldn’t put her finger on it . . . but she didn’t think she should stay long enough to find out. She was too smart to believe that Miss Bitty was only trying to help her. No one in their right mind would go out of their way so much to help her. Besides, she didn’t belong here.
Although she had no idea where (if anywhere) she belonged, she knew it wasn’t in the old woman’s squeaky-clean house, living some charade until everyone figured out who and what she really was. Even if the woman did have good intentions, it would only be a matter of time before she realized she didn’t want her around, and Allie didn’t think she could handle more abandonment.
Allie went to the window and pressed a palm against the warm glass. She was pretty sure she knew her way home. She used to know the woods like the back of her hand, having gone on adventures with her brother as a kid.
She went to the closet, pulled on the new tennis shoes, and packed a few of her new things into the backpack since the old woman had stored away most of what she’d come with. Then, back at the window, she carefully pushed the screen out of the pane.
Hopping out, she darted across the backyard and disappeared into the murky woods.
Allie sat on the cement steps that led from the back door of her childhood house.
Although the late-night air was warm, she shivered as she stared in the direction of the pond at the edge of the property. As a little girl, she had spent many years swimming in it and running along its grassy bank. That was, of course, before she realized that several human bodies were decomposing beneath its smooth surface.
Unfortunately, she’d learned about them the hard way.
It had been a scorching afternoon. She was out shooting water moccasins with her brother’s pellet gun and had just pulled off her tennis shoes and begun wading in the cool water when she noticed the first one: the pale, bloated body of what appeared to be a man. He was floating on the surface less than a yard from her. But just as she began to scream, a hand gripped her shoulder.
Her mother’s hand.
“You will keep your mouth shut if you want me to love you,” the woman warned, her teeth clenched tightly. She pinched Allie’s shoulder hard, then let go and waded into the murky water, toward the body. She called over her shoulder, “And don’t you dare even think about judging me. Because you’ll turn out no different than me, Allie Cat. Wait. You’ll see.” Then, as though it had been an afterthought: “Of course, things will be even harder for you . . . with that strange little face of yours.” She grimaced. “How I made such an ugly child is beyond me.”
Allie tried to shake off the memory of her mother’s words. Words she thought about much too often.
She hadn’t been inside the house yet. She wasn’t ready. It had taken her thirty minutes on foot to reach the house and having traveled through wet, tree-filled ravines, she had ruined her new shoes.
An early-morning breeze kicked up, rattling a loose windowpane in the kitchen. She was still staring at her mud-splattered shoestrings when a sound came from the pond. She froze and listened closely. She heard it again: a woman screaming. Gooseflesh rising on her arms, Allie jumped up. Pulling open the screen door, she hurried through the kitchen and down the hallway.
Back in her brother’s musty room, she crawled into the bed and curled into a tight ball. Trembling, she wondered, not for the first time, if her mother had been right. She was becoming just like her, wasn’t she? She was starting to see things . . . hear things. Things she honestly doubted were actually there.
I’m losing it.
And I’m all alone.
An intense loneliness washed over her and she suddenly wished she were back at the old woman’s house. Tears filled her eyes as she finally accepted the fact she was out of options.
She wouldn’t be able to live in the house without electricity and water. She had no skills to offer an employer . . . and she could never go back to selling herself.
Something clattered in front of the house. Allie stiffened and strained to listen but couldn’t hear anything.
A few minutes later, the wind started screaming on the other side of the window. Allie’s thoughts shifted to the many nights she’d lain in the very same bed, cocooned beneath the blankets with her brother, trying not to hear the violent weather inside the house.
She hated when she’d gotten too old to lay in bed with him. When she was thirteen, he began turning her away. “You’re too old for this,” he said. “It’s just not right. Go sleep in your own bed. Go, now. Before Mother finds out you’ve been in here.”
But the rejection had been unbearable—and only led her to new appeals. Eventually she had the brilliant idea of trying to emulate the pictures in the dirty magazines: pictures he’d been so obsessed with; pictures he’d spent hours looking at and then ripping up. Only now did she realize her mistake. The girls in his magazines that she copied were girls he loathed. His fixation for them had nothing to do with adoration or love. It had to do with hate . . . which was probably a big part of why he’d begun to hate her, too. She made him uncomfortable. Miserable even.
What she had done had been so incredibly wrong.
So incredibly stupid.
For the next two hours she lay curled up in the filthy bed. She would lie there until the morning, until she was able to figure out what to do next.
The steady purr of a motor stirred Allie from her sleep. Her eyes popped open beneath the covers, and she remembered where she was and knew what was about to happen.
The Department of Children and Family Services was there to take her in again, and this time they’d find her a new foster home. Probably one that was truly terrible like her caseworker had warned. Her first instinct was to run, but she didn’t because there was absolutely no place to go.
The screen door to the front of the small house squeaked open. Then there were footsteps and a familiar voice.
“Allie? You in here?”
It was Miss Bitty.
Allie’s pulse quickened. She sat up and wiped her eyes.
“Allie? It’s me, girlie. Are you here?”
Don’t trust her, something warned inside her head. But Allie ignored it. She climbed out of the bed and moved into the dark hallway. Bitty shined a flashlight on the wall to help light her path. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you home.”
Home?
She didn’t even think before talking next. “What if I don’t want to go back there?”
“I happen to think you do,” the woman said, her voice gentle. “Don’t try so hard to be tough. Please. Accept my help.”
Allie paused. “If I go back with you, are you going to call them to come and get me?” she asked.
“What? Call whom?”
“My caseworker. DCFS.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re angry at me.”
“Why would you think that? I’m not angry.”
Allie stared at the woman. “But I’ve been trouble for you. Why wouldn’t you be angry?”
“It was a short drive, girlie,” Bitty said. “Besides, I get it. It’s just going to take some time. Now c’mon. Let’s get you home, cleaned up, and into your bed.”
What? How could she possibly not be angry?
“I still don’t know why you’re going out of your way to help me,” Allie said, her voice coming out much more squeaky than she’d hoped. “What are you getting out of it?”
“I think everyone deserves some help when they’re down. Don’t you? And if it makes you more comfortable, I have no problem making you work for it.” The woman put the flashlight up to her old face so Allie could see her wink.
What do I have to lose? Allie asked herself. Nothing.
But Allie shook her head. “No, I want you to be honest with me,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “None of t
he bullshit. Why are you helping me?”
The woman was silent for a long moment. Finally, she sighed. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, if you must know, I’ve done something bad. Something really, truly awful and I’m trying to make up for it the only way I know how.”
Allie processed the old woman’s words. She sounded so honest and heartfelt it was hard not to believe her. Maybe the woman had done something truly bad. If she had, that was okay. There was no way she’d done anything worse than Allie had. She’d practically killed her brother. If it wasn’t for her being so hateful to him, he’d possibly still be alive.
Bitty suddenly seemed more real to her. Maybe she really was going to help her. Maybe she could really give her a new life. Maybe it would be okay to believe her . . . at least for now.
“Now c’mon, you,” the old woman said. “Let’s stop talking and get you home.” She reached out to take Allie’s hand.
And, for the first time, Allie let her.
CHAPTER 17
HE’D GOTTEN ATTACHED. He’d only visited Hope a handful of times—but already he thought about her all the time.
No matter where he was.
No matter whom he was with.
With Hope, he suddenly felt like he wouldn’t have to kill to relieve himself of the itch. With Hope he felt that stalking might finally be enough to get him by.
He should’ve known Hope was going somewhere when she didn’t post a new waitressing schedule on the refrigerator. He should’ve stopped her.
But she was out of town now and he was a mess. Since she’d been gone, he hadn’t been able to sleep or eat. He couldn’t even think straight. The itch had returned, just beneath his skin. Just beneath his scalp and between the fragile skin of his fingers and toes.
Everything seemed darker.
More hopeless.
Little things were beginning to set him off. Practically everything SHE said to him grated on his nerves. He was pretty sure he was even starting to hate HER. But it wouldn’t be the first time. He had hated HER before.
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