by Abbi Cook
“Will you promise me something else?”
Nodding, I smile at how sweet she is when she asks me to do something I’d willingly do for her. She has no idea how much I’d give to see her smile for me and to make her happy.
“Promise me we won’t have any secrets between us? I don’t want to live like that anymore. No matter how bad it is, promise me you’ll always tell me the truth.”
“I promise, little bird. No secrets. You’re the only person in the world who gets to know every detail about my life.”
She leans forward and kisses me. “I love you, Alexei. And I promise not to ever be crazy like my mother.”
Whatever Natalie may be, she’s not crazy. I never thought that. She’s gentle and kind, and I can’t imagine my life without her.
Maybe that’s the craziest thing of all.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Natalie
Claire and I sit outside the Metropolitan Police Headquarters as the sun sets and the sky turns orange and purple along the horizon. It's just the two of us since Tess refused to stay once she heard what my mother is accused of.
My sister takes my hand in hers and gently gives it a squeeze. "I'm so sorry about Adam. I wanted to talk more after the funeral, but then all of this happened. Why didn't you call me to talk?"
I look over at her and smile. Claire, the one who always wants to mother all of us. What would we do without her? "Because you're already dealing with enough. You didn't need this too."
"This isn't a stubbed toe or a hangnail. This is your husband dying, Natalie. I know things were bad, but I wouldn't have fallen to pieces. I would have been there for you."
As much as I want to tell Claire the whole truth about what happened, I can’t. That is something only Alexei and I share.
"I know. Maybe I didn't call anyone because I felt guilty. I haven't even cried much. It's like I don't have any tears for him now. Maybe it's because I feel like he was a stranger to me. I realized I don't know anyone he worked with or any of his friends to call and let them know about his passing. I didn't even know what he wanted for the service. What kind of wife was I if I didn't know any of that?"
She gives my hand another gentle squeeze. "Don't do this to yourself."
Turning to face her, I wonder how much she knows about her husband. "Do you know all those things about Albert?"
After a moment, she shakes her head and smiles in that shy way that Claire always has ever since she was a child and got caught doing something she shouldn't have. "Not really. I mean, we have mutual friends, but I don't know a lot about his business. It's the way we were brought up, Natalie. Mom taught us that good wives don't intrude on their husbands' professional lives. We're only doing what we were taught to do."
"Why would she think anyone should be kept in the dark like that, Claire? Now my husband is dead, and I have not the first clue as to what he did when he wasn't with me. Well, other than cheating on me with some woman he was probably going to see when he died. Do you know how strange that feels? I don't know what his business was worth, who's in charge now, nothing. I know nothing."
And that's the truth. I've spent my entire married life in the dark, and I know nothing now at the very moment when I need to know so much.
"What's going to happen to Mom?" Claire asks in a small voice, tearing me out of my thoughts about my own problems.
"I can't believe it's not all a huge misunderstanding. Our mother would never take someone's child. They're going to have to prove it a whole lot more than just showing me a picture of some woman who looks like Lauren."
Even as I say that, I already believe my mother is guilty of this. Elizabeth Tarrigan is like Adam in my world. It feels like I don’t know anything about the two people who’ve been the most important figures in my life for so long. I don’t want to admit what I know to Claire because I worry she can’t handle it, but my mother stealing someone’s child doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore.
“I had such hopes that we’d see her again, Natalie. I still can’t believe she’s never coming back,” Claire says before burying her face in her hands.
She knows none of what I know about who killed her and why and the baby that died with Lauren. My sister doesn’t need to deal with those horrible details. It’s bad enough she has to handle the reality that our youngest sister is gone forever from our lives.
Wrapping my arm around her shoulders, I pull her to me as the last vivid colors of the sunset dip below the horizon. “I know. I had hoped she was living somewhere on a beach having the kind of life she deserved. Free and full of smiles and happiness.”
Claire rests her head on my shoulder and sighs through a quiet sob. “I always thought I’d get one more chance to see her again.”
As I hold my sister in my arms, I silently curse Adam for what he did. He made my life nothing but misery these past months, but I found a way out. Lauren never had that chance because of him.
I hope he’s rotting in hell.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Natalie
It's been three months since that horrible day when they took my mother away in handcuffs to charge her with kidnapping Cherise Singleton's baby. Tess abandoned the family that day, leaving Claire and me to stand by our mother.
As the only remaining sister I have in my life now, Claire has tried to be strong, but the news of Lauren’s death hit her hard. Albert continues to stand by her, thankfully, but I sense a strain on their relationship every time I visit her.
For me, I’ve had Alexei as my rock through all of this. He takes care of me when all I can do is cry in his arms and makes me smile when I don’t think I can go on. Every day, I wake up to a kiss from the man I love and the kind of life I always dreamed of. He may not be the kind of man all women would be able to love, but I don’t care about what others think of my life anymore.
I married a man who was supposedly respectable. He hired someone to kill me. Now I’m choosing to be with a man who loves me.
Today, my mother intends on pleading guilty to kidnapping the child who became our sister and will finally tell the whole truth about our family and the daughters she raised.
The three of us—my mother, Claire, and I—sit together in a room at the county jail. Drab with grey painted cinder block walls and a concrete floor, everything about it screams prison. Our mother sits on one side of the grey metal table, her hands and feet in shackles that contrast so oddly with the navy blue designer pant suit and white blouse she's chosen for her court appearance an hour from now. Claire and I sit on the other side, desperate to hear something that will explain why she stole that poor woman's child.
With hope in her eyes, my mother watches the door to the room for a few minutes before she begins. "I guess Tess isn't coming?"
"She doesn't want anything to do with any of this," I answer, not trying to disguise my disgust for my sister's behavior. But it's so like her to leave everything to other people.
"Well, then maybe you'll be happy to know she'll have to deal with it after what I say in court today. You all will."
My mother's ominous tone frightens me and clearly startles Claire, who grabs hold of my hand and squeezes it tightly. I don't know what to expect she'll say, but she asked for this time to tell us first before she gives her statement in court.
"I can't believe you took that woman's little girl," Claire says on a sob. "You stole her child. How could you?"
"I've done a lot of things in life, honey. Some good, some not. God will judge me for my life and no one else."
In three months, my mother has found religion once more, so now only God can judge her. Of course, the state of Maryland intends to do its part to find some kind of justice for what she's done. I try not to roll my eyes at her mention of piety and listen for some explanation that will make sense.
"I married Edward Tarrigan when I was nineteen. My mother groomed me for him. He was forty-two and old before his time. I did what I was taught to do, but I wasn't happy. I was supposed to
have children, but my husband wasn't able to. So we adopted a little girl and I was happy for a little while. I knew what the future would hold for her, and I promised my mother I'd do as she'd done with me and as her mother had done with her."
My heart skips a beat at her mention of adopting a little girl. Then suddenly my mouth seems completely devoid of any moisture as the meaning of her words sinks into my brain. Was I adopted?
Frantically licking my lips, I manage to get them wet enough to ask, "What are you saying? You and Daddy adopted me?"
She turns toward me and nods. Without an ounce of emotion in her voice, she answers, "Yes. You were adopted two days after you were born. We brought you home and loved you more than you can imagine."
I feel Claire squeeze my hand tighter. Like my sisters, I'm adopted. Oh, God.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask as tears begin to fill my eyes.
"Why should I? You were my daughter. You've been with me since you were only two days old. Your birth mother couldn't keep you, and your father and I had a wonderful home and everything you could possibly need to grow up happy."
I want to scream, but somehow my voice can't figure out how to work, so I sit there silently as everything she says echoes in my brain. She continues on to explain that she wanted me to have sisters, so she adopted Claire and Tess. We were happy and life was good.
Until she wanted to adopt a fourth child.
"No adoption agency would allow me to have another child. They claimed that without a father, they couldn't. As if having a father was everything," my mother says angrily. "I needed another child, so when I met Cherise Singleton with her baby, I knew what I had to do."
"Why? Why did you have to take that poor little girl from her mother?" Claire asks as she begins to cry.
Calmly, my mother explains, "My mother had four daughters, and I had to have four. Four would be enough to take care of anything I could possibly need."
"What do you mean?" I ask, not understanding anything she's saying now.
As if she didn't hear my question, she continues. "I knew I had to find acceptable men for my daughters. I couldn't do to you what my mother did to my sisters and me simply because she didn't take the time and make the effort to find the best possible men available. My girls' husbands would be wealthy and virile so they would have children easily. I didn't want you to go through what I went through. The disappointment. The heartbreak over wanting something you couldn't have."
"What are you saying?" Claire asks in a tone of horror.
"So I found eligible men for you, Natalie. I made sure they were God-fearing men who were brought up in the Church of Genesis. It was only right. You deserved the best. I sent your sisters away to Europe so the men could come to the house and not have to deal with curious girls asking questions. After a lot of investigation, I decided Adam would be good for you. He had money, could afford you, and could prove he was able to have children. It all seemed perfect."
"What do you mean by could afford me?" I ask, unsure what she could mean. I've never had expensive tastes. She never allowed it.
"Great treasures cost great money, Natalie, but he could afford you, so I agreed to him taking you in marriage."
None of what she says makes any sense. She sounds like she's describing some old-fashioned marriage ritual done away with hundreds of years ago.
"Everything was in place. Then you didn't get pregnant. That was part of the bargain. I gave him five years to live up to his end of the deal, but he couldn't. He thought it was your fault, though. I have to admit I did too. He'd been tested before the marriage, but I didn't know about you. Things began to unravel. I told him no babies meant the deal was off. He wouldn't be getting any of my money when I died like we agreed to."
I sit there staring at her astonished by everything she's saying.
"You look surprised, Natalie, but be honest. He turned out to be a real bastard to you. I mean, a man who would exchange one woman for another just to make money isn't really a great man."
"Are you saying Adam was cheating on me with someone who could make you money?"
My heart slams into my chest as I wait to hear the answer to the question I've wondered about for months. What I don't understand is how my mother could know.
"It wasn't so much cheating as proving to me that it wasn't his fault you two hadn't had a child. It all worked too well, in retrospect, I guess."
She stops talking and stares across the table at me as if I should understand what that means, but none of it makes any sense at all. What am I missing?
Then, in a flash, it all comes together. She knew what he did to Lauren. She knew and she let it happen. She let her daughter’s husband, a man of forty-one, rape a sixteen year old girl.
My stomach tightens, and I can't stop myself from vomiting. I turn my head just in time to throw up onto the floor next to me. Everything I've eaten that day comes up as my brain processes the reality of what my mother has done.
"Mom, what are you talking about? I don't understand," Claire says in a pleading voice.
But I know now.
"Natalie, you're overreacting. Your sister was the same way. I don't know why she didn't just come to me about it."
"Because she thought you would kill her for getting pregnant!" I scream. "How did you do it? That's all I want to know. Did you drug her? How did she not have any idea who got her pregnant? She thought you were doing something to her, putting something in her food. Was that it?"
My mother takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly, as if all of this confession time is grating on her nerves. "The same way I did with all of you. I put it in your drink and once you ingested it, you wouldn't remember anything but it looked like you were completely aware of what was going on. Years ago, it was much worse. I wasn't even awake when Edward took me the first time. Modern medicine made that a thing of the past."
"You drugged all of us? Why?" Claire asks, still not understanding.
"How exactly was I supposed to show you off to prospective men and have you act appropriately without some way to control you? You shouldn't be unhappy. You and Tess got excellent husbands capable of having children and giving you the kind of lives you deserve."
"You did this with Albert?" my sister asks in that tone of horror that's become all too familiar to me.
Tilting her head up toward the ceiling, my mother blows the air out of her lungs with a whoosh. "I am sorry for what's going to happen to him and Carl. Your sister is going to be beside herself."
Claire begins to sob, so because she's unable to speak, I ask, "Did you know Lauren was pregnant when Adam killed her?"
"Yes," my mother answers, lowering her gaze to meet mine. "If only she'd just remained calm. Everything would have worked out, and you would have had your child after all."
My mouth drops open at hearing she planned to have me raise the child conceived by my sister when my husband raped her. Every cell in my body screams for me to reach over this table and kill her like she let Adam do to poor Lauren. This is almost too much to take.
"You're a monster! You stole her from her mother, and then you used her to prove that my husband wasn't infertile. You used her as a guinea pig for your twisted goals of me having children.”
All my mother can do is shrug at my outburst. Lauren and I always were too emotional, according to her.
“You've created lives for all of us that you believed we should live, but none of it's real. My husband never loved me. It was all part of a business deal. Those things my therapist thought were hallucinations weren't my mind creating stories that never happened. They were flashbacks, weren't they? You auctioned me off to the highest bidder who could pay you the money you wanted and give you the grandchildren you demanded, and when that didn't pan out, you offered your youngest child up as a sacrifice. And for what?"
With a misplaced sense of indignation, she answers, "For what my mother got and her mother before her. Don't feel so bad. Now that he's dead, everything will go to you,
so it's not like you'll be destitute. He did one thing right by dying of a heart attack, thank God. Albert's money will go to Claire, and Carl's will go to Tess. My attorney tells me they won't get too much time for what they did, and if they have good lawyers, they might not get any time at all. Either way, fraud is a white-collar crime."
The door opens and a guard walks in to take my mother to her court appearance. Claire holds her head in her hands and cries like I've never heard her cry before. I want to scream to anyone who will listen that Elizabeth Tarrigan is a monster who deserves to be locked up for the rest of her life, but instead I sit there in state of shock as she smiles at me and stands to leave.
"Take care of your sister, Natalie. You're all she has now. Tess will need someone too. Don't give up on her."
So now I'm supposed to take advice from the person who's ruined our lives?
"I need to know. Did you know Adam hired someone to kill me because he was cheating on me with some woman who lives in that apartment complex where he was found in the parking lot?"
With a tiny smile, she whispers, "I had a feeling he was cheating on you. He denied it when I asked, but he looked guilty. He turned out to be a son of a bitch. You deserved better."
"I hope they lock you up and throw away the key. Lauren's death is on your hands," I spit out as she walks out of that cold, drab room in the basement of the county jail. "I'll never forgive you for what you've done."
I sit there alone with Claire as she sobs and all I can think is all of it was real. The scenes that played out in front of me all those times weren't things my mind made up. I wasn't going crazy.
And in that moment, I feel sick as the memories of what both my mother and Adam made me do flood my brain.