“Adopted,” Erin whispered. “Lydia was adopted.”
“You got it.”
“She was never related to Maureen by blood.”
“Nope.”
“So we ... we aren’t ...”
“Oliver was guilty of plenty, but not, as it turns out, of incest. He only thought he was. Maureen and Lydia thought so, too. Neither of them ever knew about the adoption.”
Erin stared at the certificate until the words before her blurred with a rush of tears. Then she lifted her head to see Annie’s broad grin—not a tight, strained smile any longer, but a laughing expression of release.
She knew her own face looked the same. She could feel the tension sighing out of her body, the dull ache of her burden lifting, leaving her weightless and free.
“But ...” she began, then had to steady herself before continuing. “But Lydia had all these papers. Inherited them after the fire in ’73.”
“Had them, but never looked at them, any more than she looked at her photo albums. Just locked them away untouched. The past—any part of the past—was too painful for her to face.”
“She could have saved herself so much grief....”
Annie’s smile dimmed slightly. “I know. But she didn’t. And it’s too late now—for her. But not for us.”
“Not for us,” Erin agreed, her voice unexpectedly hoarse. She gazed down at the thin sheet of paper shivering in her hands. “Oh, God, Annie. It’s ... it’s a miracle.”
“Maybe not the only one,” Annie said cryptically. “Actually, it shouldn’t have come as a total surprise. We always knew Maureen was an accident; she was born thirteen years after Lydia. The way I figure it. Rose and Joseph Morgan tried to conceive a child, but had no luck.”
“So they adopted Lydia secretly and raised her as their own. Then when Rose was thirty-nine ...”
“Surprise.” Annie beamed. “Here comes baby Maureen, defying the odds. I’d say that’s one trait we inherited from her, wouldn’t you?”
Inherited. Erin’s mind seized on that word, the last of the pieces falling into place.
“Maureen never had seizures.” She was thinking aloud, putting it together as she spoke. “None of the Morgans did, or any of the Reillys, either. It was Lydia O’Hara who carried that gene. She passed it on to Oliver, and he passed it on to me.”
“You don’t have to keep convincing yourself, Erin.” Annie’s tone was gentle. “It’s for real.”
“I know it is, but ...”
But it was almost too good to be true. Childishly she was afraid of saying so and perhaps jinxing their good luck somehow, voiding the miracle.
Miracle ...
“Wait a minute.” Erin frowned. “What did you mean when you said this might not be the only miracle?”
“Oh. Well, there is one more thing.”
“More? More than this?”
“Yeah, but ... I don’t know how to feel about it. You see, when you told me the truth about Harold—about Oliver, I mean—there were some things that didn’t make sense to me.”
“Like what?”
“Take the way he set the fire in 1973. He poured gasoline everywhere in the house ... except our end of the hall. He left a clear path from our bedroom to the stairs.”
Erin shrugged. “An oversight.”
“Then he left us alone for twenty-three years. He killed other women, but never came near us, though he could have tracked us down at any time. And when he did come looking for us, what did he do? He got a job with me. He became my assistant.”
“And kidnapped me.”
“He went to a lot of trouble to prevent you from guessing his identity, as if he really intended to let you go. Even after you escaped, he didn’t kill you.”
“He wanted therapy. He needed my help.”
“But the truth is, he could have snatched any therapist. It would have been less risky to pick a total stranger. What he specifically wanted was to work with you—and, in a different way, with me. He wanted to be close to us.”
“Because he was obsessed with us. And when he realized what lay at the heart of his obsession, he wanted us dead.”
“Part of him did.”
“You’re saying there was a conflict?”
Annie reached into her purse again. “Look at this.”
She removed the key ring taken from Oliver’s apartment, the keys charred and melted now.
“The firefighters found it when they were sifting the rubble. Michael gave it to me tonight.” She handed the key ring to Erin. “And I remembered something.”
Erin ran her fingertips along the serrated edges of the two padlock keys, one of which had saved their lives. “The other miracle?” she asked quietly.
“Might be.”
Erin waited. When Annie spoke again, her voice was a whisper.
“I used those keys to open the door of the ranch house. They were still in my hand when you shouted from the cellar. I ran to my car. And somewhere along the way ... I lost them. Dropped them on the gravel. Dropped them and never picked them up.”
A beat of silence in the room.
“Later, in the fire, when I grabbed for the keys, it was just reflex. They shouldn’t have been in my pocket. But they were.” Annie looked across the table, green eyes sparkling faintly. “You see what I’m saying?”
Erin sat very still. Only her hand moved, fingering the ring of keys like the beads of a rosary. “Yes. I see.”
“He put them there. He put the keys back in my pocket. He gave us a chance, just like in 1973. Not much of a chance, but enough. Both times—just enough.”
“I guess he did.”
“But what I don’t understand is why. He was a killer. He murdered Maureen and Albert, Lincoln Connor and the real Harold Gund, and those three women up north. So why not us? What was special about us?”
Erin gazed into the shadowed corners of the room. Slowly she smiled, a thin, sad smile of wisdom and pain.
“We were his daughters, Annie.”
Nothing more to say after that. They sat together, lost in private thoughts; and sometime in that long silence, Annie reached out slowly and took her sister’s hand.
Author’s Note
As always, readers are invited to visit my website, www.michaelprescott.net, where you can find contact information, details about my other books, upcoming novels, film adaptations—and more.
Blind Pursuit was originally published by Penguin Books in 1997. I want to acknowledge the help of my editor at that time, Joseph Pittman, whose detailed commentary shaped the final draft; the many contributions of my agent, Jane Dystel; and the support shown by associate publisher Michaela Hamilton and publisher Elaine Koster.
For this new ebook version I did some line-editing, but did not make any major changes. I always have to resist the impulse to do a more substantial rewrite. I hope the story still holds up, and that you enjoyed it.
—Michael Prescott
Copyright © Douglas Borton, 1996 All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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