by Kara Thomas
“You’re probably wondering what kind of mother I was,” she says, “to raise someone like her.”
I don’t say anything. Gram sighs.
“I keep going over everything I did, trying to find a reason. But I just don’t know, Tessa.” Gram wipes the area under her eyes. If she starts to cry, I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it. “I fed her. I changed her. I picked her up from the bus stop. I did everything you’re supposed to do to care for a child.”
Over Gram’s shoulder I can see that we’re not alone. Joslin is in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe. She’s in a yellow sundress. If you looked at her, you might call her pretty, soft. If you looked hard enough, you’d see the eyebrow ring. The creases in her forehead that she’s too young to have.
“I never got to know Annette,” Gram says. “I never asked what she liked or what she wanted. I didn’t have room for all that information, not after her father died. I did what I had to do to survive and tuned out everything that made the surviving worth it.”
She pats my feet. “I see so much of myself in you, Tessa. And sometimes I can’t bear it.”
Gram gets up. Slips past Joslin, who steps into the room. We watch each other, an awkward staring contest that burns me up inside.
“I know you probably hate me,” she finally says. “Ten minutes. Just give me that.”
I sit up, and I make room on the bed for my sister.
•••
Jos never knew that Annette and Lori argued on the phone that night. She was distracted by Danny calling her in a panic, saying he needed her to do something for him. She lied for Danny when the police came looking for him, and it wasn’t the first time. It was just the first time he’d been stupid enough to blow something up.
Joslin didn’t believe Lori could possibly be right about her crazy Macy Stevens theory. They argued about it a few days before Lori was killed—Joslin accused Lori of buying into the media frenzy over Baby Macy.
It wasn’t until after Lori was gone that Jos started to feel guilty about not listening to her. Jos went through Annette’s bedroom and found a birth certificate issued to Joslin Mowdy. The father’s name was Alan Kirkpatrick.
Joslin saved up for months for a ticket to New Orleans. She slipped out of the house the night she ran away, got a Greyhound to Philly to catch the train. Once she was in Louisiana, she hitchhiked to the address she’d pulled up for Alan Kirkpatrick with a ten-dollar background check.
Alan, a leathery man who smelled like fish guts, was shocked to find Joslin at his front door. Jos said she took one look at him and knew he wasn’t her father. Alan told her Annette had been pregnant when they’d been together. The lost baby was real.
But Annette moved out a few months after the miscarriage. She and Alan couldn’t stop fighting—about children. Annette wanted them. Alan didn’t.
Joslin called the Pennsylvania hospital on her birth certificate; they’d never had a record of her, or Annette Mowdy. The birth certificate was a fake.
Jos headed back up to Pennsylvania to tell Annette what she’d found. She showed up at our door in the middle of the night; realizing the truth was catching up with her, Annette played the only card she had left. She used me against my sister. Annette told Joslin that if she breathed one word about the Macy Stevens story, Annette would kill me before the cops could even get to our doorstep.
Jos came back for me when she turned eighteen, but I was already down here with Gram. She eventually tracked Gram down and called the Florida house while I was at school. She told Gram she wanted me to come live with her. Gram calmly told Jos that the next day was swimming day at school. I was so excited about it, I wanted to wear my bathing suit to bed. That weekend, we were going to Disney World.
Jos hung up and never called back.
Five years ago, Joslin went back to Fayette; she visited my father in prison and confronted him about Macy Stevens. He said he didn’t know anything, and Joslin believed him. She made him promise not to tell anyone. She was waiting until I was safely in her possession before contacting the police with her suspicions.
That was when my father called the Stevens family. Tried to extort the reward money from them. Joslin didn’t know until she emailed them through their Find Baby Macy website, saying she suspected she was their granddaughter. The Stevenses took one look at the name—Lowell—and told Joslin never to contact them again.
Jos was angry at their rejection. She started to doubt again that Lori was right about her being Macy. So Jos stayed in Allentown. She bought a new identity, Brandy Butler, so she could go to nursing school part-time.
Four years ago, she and her boyfriend had a baby girl. That was when she realized that she didn’t just have herself to look out for anymore. She had to do everything in her power to keep her daughter safe, even if it meant letting Annette get away with what she’d done. Jos was afraid if she went public, no one would believe her, and that Annette would come after her and her daughter.
“I was so stupid.” A tear streaks down her face. “I believed it when she said that no one would believe me. That my real mother never wanted me, and that my real family would never accept me.”
“How did you know Daddy was dying?” I ask her.
“I had a Google alert set up on his name,” Jos says. “A local news station found out he had cancer. You’re too young to remember, but his case was a big deal at the time, someone getting a life sentence for armed robbery.”
Jos reaches into her purse, pulls out something. A photo.
“He was going to give you this,” she says, setting it on the bed in front of me. “I said I’d take it and keep it safe until I saw you again.”
I’ve never seen the photo before. I’m lying on my back, a swaddled pink thing with no hair. Joslin is bent over me, clutching her own baby doll to her chest. In the corner, my father is in his armchair, laughing.
“I used to pretend you were my baby.” Jos grins. “She—she never let me hold you, really. So he came home one night with the baby doll.”
My chest tugs. My father was surprising like that.
“He loved you so much,” Jos says. “You were the only thing, I think.”
“But it was all a lie,” I whisper. “We’re not even really sis—”
Jos takes my face in her hand. “Stop. You are my sister. Got it?”
I close my eyes and lean my forehead so it’s touching hers. Even though I doubted her, even though I suspected her of the worst thing imaginable, even though I convinced myself I didn’t love her anymore, I get it.
She gave up so much to keep me safe. I’ll never unlearn everything she told me about those years we were separated.
I meant it when I told Callie there are some things we can never forget, no matter how much we want to.
But for the first time in a long time, I want to remember.
I meet Joslin’s daughter, Alexa, a week before I have to start classes at Tampa. We go to Disney World, and she insists on holding my hand when we’re in the lines for all the rides. When she spots a princess in blue with a long blond braid that falls to her waist, Alexa clams up, her little preschooler cheeks morphing into two plump strawberries.
We wait in line to meet her, Alexa humming along to the movie sound track and cowering between my legs every time the princess moves into our line of sight.
“I have to hear this song twenty times a day,” Joslin says beneath her breath, rolling her eyes at me. “It’s like waterboarding for mothers.”
I flinch inside at the word, not quite ready to share my sister. Not after I’ve waited so long to get her back. But she looks the way I remember, now that she’s dyed her hair brown again. We’re both wearing sunglasses and baseball caps in case anyone recognizes us.
The media has been relentless—four ambushes, two changed phone numbers, and one creepy-ass woman who followed me down an aisle at Walmart—but Joslin says she’s never felt so free.
Think about it, she said. We can get passports now. See
the world.
They’re already writing books about my mother. When the story broke, the New York Post printed her mug shot with the headline WOMB RAIDER. Brenda Dean announced her two-million-dollar book deal for an account of the Monster murders and Lowell kidnappings, to be titled Stolen Lives.
I declined to be interviewed for it. I’m starting classes at Tampa soon, and I really don’t need to draw any more attention to myself.
Besides. No one stole my life from me. It’s always been mine. I just have to figure out what to do with it next.
•••
They found her when they started to tear down the cabin in the woods. They’d missed the cellar door in their initial raid, since Annette had covered it with leaves.
The girl was about six or seven, obviously well cared for. They found her on a sofa bed, the floor littered with snack wrappers and stubs of crayons.
Drawings of her and a brown-haired woman, holding hands and picking daisies.
She said only one thing to investigators.
“Mommy said to stay down here and not come out for anyone but her.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a story I didn’t think I had the guts to write. I might not have if Suzie Townsend hadn’t said, “Do it!” Thank you, Suzie, for always getting it.
This book wouldn’t exist without a huge leap of faith from Krista Marino, who is an editorial wizard. Thank you for helping me build this story from the ground up, and for loving it as much as I do. I feel like the luckiest author in the world to get to work with you.
To the team at Random House Children’s Books—Beverly Horowitz, Monica Jean, Kimberly Lauber, John Adamo, Mary McCue, Dominique Cimina, Adrienne Waintraub, Rachel Feld, Laura Antonacci, Aisha Cloud, Anna Gjesteby, Sonia Nash Gupta, and Stephanie O’Cain—thank you for the warm welcome and for your endless enthusiasm and support.
I am so lucky to have the support of the Dream Team at New Leaf Literary and Media—Kathleen Ortiz, Joanna Volpe, Pouya Shabhazian, Jess Dallow, Danielle Barthel, Dave Caccavo, Jackie Lindert, Jaida Temperly, and Chris McEwen.
This book was inspired in part by the West Memphis Three and their willingness to share their stories. To Margaret Riley, thank you for the encouragement, and for steering me toward the Paradise Lost documentaires.
Thanks also to Larry Salz and Lucinda Moorhead at UTA; to Kathy Bradey and Lindsey Culli, for tirelessly reading all my drafts; and to my family, for their endless support and patience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kara Thomas has written for everything from her high school newspaper to Warner Bros. Television. She is a true-crime addict who lives on Long Island with her husband and rescue cat. To learn more about her and her books, visit her at kara-thomas.com and follow @karatwrites on Twitter.
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