by Elle Gray
And then she remembered that she’d disappeared. She’d left her when she needed her most. When she was still coming to terms with her sister’s death, her mom was suddenly just gone without a trace. Did she simply abandon her? At that moment, her heart ached like she had. She looked up at Susan and she understood. She knew that being abandoned meant you’d never want to let the good things go ever again. No matter how destructive it became to keep them.
“But your daughter... she was safe,” Olivia told Susan gently. “She was living with her father in Baltimore, wasn’t she?”
“A girl’s place is with her mother,” Susan snarled, her hand clasping Lauren’s shoulder once again. “I lost everything when she was taken from me.”
“Why was she taken from you?” Olivia asked. Susan didn’t speak for a moment, wavering over her next choice of words.
“I—I don’t know.”
Lauren let out a cry of rage and began fighting the gag in her mouth. Without taking her eyes or her gun off Susan, Olivia quickly stooped down and removed it. With her lips now free to move, she looked Olivia dead in the eye.
“Because she’s a drunk,” Lauren snapped. “All she had to do was look after me. All she had to do was stay at home and make sure I was okay. But she used to leave me, all the time. She’d go out drinking. She’d leave me alone, hungry and in dirty nappies. I’ve heard it all over the years. Love didn’t take care of me, Mom. You didn’t know how to take care of me!”
“That’s not true!” Susan cried out, trying to reach for Lauren’s bound hands, but Lauren screamed at her and she moved away.
“It’s true,” Lauren snarled. “It took me a long time to believe it too, trust me. I used to love her regardless. Even after the divorce, I used to look forward to seeing her on our visits. She swore she got sober. She swore she was better. And then she took me to the seaside.”
Olivia’s mind cast back to the photograph she’d seen of Lauren in the blue floral dress, grinning on the beach. But now, it seemed the day in the photograph had more sinister undertones.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Susan sobbed. “I went into the arcade to get cotton candy while Lauren was on the beach. I—I stopped for a drink. Just one…”
“And then another, and then another,” Lauren snapped. “She couldn’t stop herself. She drank herself silly. Collapsed in the middle of the arcade. And the worst part was, I was left all alone on the beach, not knowing what had happened to her. It started to get dark. I didn’t know what to do. I was just a kid. Only fourteen.”
Silent tears of anger slid down Lauren’s cheeks and she glared up at her mother. “You ruined it all. I tried to forgive you, but I can’t. All my friends grew up with normal moms. All you ever did was let me down. And now we’re here. How the hell are we here? You have to let me go, Mom. I’m not yours anymore.”
Olivia’s heart ached for both of them. Susan’s lip wobbled.
“I tried,” she sobbed. “I tried so hard to do the things my mom couldn’t. I never wanted you to feel abandoned like I did. I never knew what love was. I tried to give all of mine to you. But everything got broken. It’s all still broken…”
“So stop trying to fix it! No one is asking you to!” Lauren screeched. “Let me go, Mom, I want to go home!”
“You don’t understand everything I went through,” Susan sniffed, seemingly unable to process that her daughter was talking to her. “I grew up alone. All I had was a doll to keep me company. She was my only friend in the world. Didn’t I try to give you a bigger world than that, baby? Didn’t I try to make you happy? That’s all I ever wanted, to make you happy. To make you love me back. I thought I could do it. I thought me and your father would be happy. I thought he could help me get better. But he was happy to watch me drown. I was depressed. I couldn’t cope. He just told me to get over myself, but I went to a dark place. Wasn’t it better to leave you alone for a little while than to drag you to the dark place with me?”
Olivia adjusted her gun in her hand. She didn’t know what to do, except let the pair of them talk. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves and put Lauren in danger. She just had to keep them in conversation to buy some time.
“I fought for you when I got sober,” Susan cried. “I just wanted you. My baby girl. The only thing in the world that is worth living for. But the world was against me. They wanted to keep us apart. This is the only way I could get us back together. No one else was enough to replace you. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see how much I love you? And I kept trying once you turned eighteen, didn’t I? I kept trying to get you to talk to me, but you kept rejecting me. I had to try and find some way to survive without you. Those lovely young girls... I took them to replace you, but they couldn’t fill the hole in my heart.”
Lauren stared at her mother in disgust. Olivia could tell she couldn’t quite believe what her mother had become, even despite all the issues she’d had over the years. Olivia saw before her a woman broken by her past, trying to fix her future. But everything she’d tried to do was wrong. So wrong. She swallowed.
“Susan... I can see how upset you are. I can see that you feel betrayed and alone. But this isn’t the answer. You can’t keep your daughter here.”
“I’ll do better this time,” Susan said, her voice high and shrill. “I’ve learned so much from the other girls. I know how to stop them from crying now. I hiked to them every single week to feed them and make sure they were okay. I thought about them night and day, cared for them as though they were my own…”
Something struck a chord in Olivia. She recalled the first time she met Susan. She remembered how she was hiking through the woods that day. She misdirected them, told them that she’d never seen any buildings in the woods. She’d lied to their faces over and over. Like her police interview. She’d inserted herself into the interview, giving herself the perfect alibi for when she was actually stealing Hayleigh away in the middle of the night. And then there was the brick through her window... was that just another way to throw Olivia off the scent? To get out of town that night and carry out her plans for the girls?
“I know how to take care of a child,” Susan insisted, raising her voice another level. “And everything turned out fine this time. The girls are home safe now. I figured out in time that I didn’t need them. I needed my daughter. And I can’t get in trouble for being with my daughter, can I? You don’t need to shoot me, Olivia. You can just walk away and pretend I was never here.”
“I don’t want to shoot you. Not at all,” Olivia said quietly. “But I do need to take you out of here. Lauren, too. We need to go.”
“No. This is my safe haven. I can’t ever leave,” Susan said. Her eyes were bloodshot now from crying. She was a mess. “I was doing so well here. You wouldn’t have ever found me, would you, Olivia? Not if I kept being careful. You see, Lauren? I learned to take care. Even if I do still drink. Olivia had no idea who was taking those young girls. I did a good job. I didn’t leave a single clue behind. It was so easy. All I had to do was find girls like you and figure out a way into their homes. My neighbor practically begged me to take a key from her so I could pop around and look after her child all the time. She couldn’t be bothered to do it herself, so I took Hayleigh here and I took care of her instead. And that Sophia girl? She couldn’t go a day without arguing with her awful mom. She was better off with me. They both were. It was so easy to take them away to somewhere better.”
“And Amelia Barnes?” Olivia asked. She needed to know, to understand. “I know you used to live in that house. How did you get in? How did you get all the way across the country with her, undetected?”
Susan gritted her teeth. “That was my house, once upon a time. We were going to start a new life in Seattle. I had a key. I lived there with my husband and my darling daughter. We only lasted a few months there before my husband decided to destroy our lives and file for divorce. He sold the house cheap, shipped off to Baltimore, and left me with noth
ing. Well, not nothing. Because I still had a key. They never changed the locks. I just walked straight in there and took what I needed. I deserved it. I deserved the same chance at happiness that that family got to have. The chance my husband took from me. I kept going back to that house over the years, just to watch those people playing happy families in my home. I’d tried it before, with other girls from different places across the country. But I could never get it right. Not until her. I just knew I was going to take her.”
“So you took Amelia Barnes and drove her back to Belle Grove.”
“I had to take her somewhere far away. Somewhere she could only depend on me.”
“And when that didn’t work, you had to find girls more locally,” said Olivia.
“I did what I had to do! I needed someone.”
“But you let them go,” Olivia said desperately. “You let the girls go because you knew it was wrong, didn’t you?”
“They were better off with me,” Susan repeated, looking off into the distance. “But they didn’t understand that. They didn’t want me. They wanted their moms. And I realized I didn’t want them. I wanted my baby girl. And now I’m here... well, I’m sorry, Olivia, but she’s never leaving. You’re going to have to make a decision soon.”
Olivia’s heart began to thunder as she watched Susan raise a pistol and point it at Olivia. Susan’s lip was wobbling.
“I’m not a killer, Olivia. I don’t want to have to kill you. But if you don’t leave us in peace, then you’ll have to leave. Or kill me first, if you want. If you take Lauren from me, then my life isn’t worth living. But do you really want that blood on your hands?”
Olivia wavered. She already felt like her hands were drenched in blood. The blood of her mother and sister, who she couldn’t save. How was she supposed to walk away from Lauren now? She’d wind up dead if she left her. Olivia knew that Susan thought her heart was in the right place, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t dangerous. Now that she was pointing her gun at Olivia, she’d have to change her tactics.
Olivia slowly lowered her gun. “I’m not going to hurt you, Susan. I want you to know that you can trust me.”
She put the gun back on her belt and put the flashlight on the floor. Susan eyed her up suspiciously.
“What are you doing?”
“I just want to talk to you,” Olivia said patiently. She felt naked without her gun in her hand, but she knew it was the only way she could level with Susan. “I know you’re hurting inside. I know you want your daughter back more than anything. But there’s something that you should know. You’re a mother. No matter what happens, you’ll always be a mother. No matter where Lauren is, you carry a piece of her around in your heart. That’s why you hid those things in the woods, isn’t it? The doll, the teeth, the hair?”
Susan nodded slowly. “They’re all I have left of her. That doll...it got me through my childhood. I gave it to Lauren, but she abandoned it when she got too old for dolls. It felt like the closest thing I had to her, though.”
“But that’s not true,” Olivia whispered. “Because Lauren is a part of you. You’ve messed up. You’ve upset her and now she’s pushed you away. And I know that hurts, but it doesn’t change that she’s your daughter. Do you ever... do you wish your mother hadn’t left you?”
Susan’s arm began to wobble, her finger on the trigger of the gun. “Of course I do. All I ever did was love her. I don’t know why she left me behind…”
“But you still love her, even though she left you? Even though she hurt you?”
Susan hesitated before she nodded. Olivia took a deep breath.
“Lauren will always love you. You’re her mother. But sometimes, children have to go away. They have to live their own lives. You weren’t well when she was younger. If you want Lauren back—if you want Lauren to love you—this isn’t the answer. You need to get better. You need to go somewhere where someone can help you. You can get better and then be a better mom to Lauren.”
Olivia knew now that Susan wasn’t in her right mind. She knew she’d be able to get help in prison, so long as she was sent to the right facility. It was her last chance to get Susan to comply with her.
But it was working. She saw the fight leaving Susan’s eyes. She saw the tears return. She looked down at Lauren, still tied to the chair.
“Is that true?” she whispered. “If I get help... will you love me again? Will you come and see me after she takes me away?”
Olivia saw Lauren waver. It was a promise she clearly didn’t want to make, but it was the one that would save her life. Olivia silently willed her to say the right thing. Lauren swallowed nervously and she nodded.
“Yes, Mom. If you get help, I’ll come and see you. And... and I never stopped loving you. You’ve done things I might never forgive, but I’ll always love you. I can’t help it.”
Tears flowed freely down Susan’s cheeks. Olivia could see in her eyes that it was all over for her. Olivia flinched as she let the gun clatter to the floor, putting her hands in the air.
“You can take me now,” she whispered. “That’s all I ever needed to hear.”
Twenty-Seven
Olivia woke the following morning feeling strange. She’d finally solved the case. She could finally start to move on from all of the complicated feelings it had brought to her life. She’d managed to stop something awful happening to Lauren and she’d seen the three girls get home to their families safely. She knew she should be celebrating.
But somehow, she didn’t feel like celebrating at all. She wanted nothing more than to stay in bed all day and mope around. Because nothing about carting Susan away felt good to her. After everything she’d found out in the grotty cabin in the woods, her overriding feeling was that she pitied Susan. She had clearly been through a lot in her life. It would never justify her actions, but it cast them in a new sympathetic light, even as she was currently being brought up on several counts of felony kidnapping and child endangerment—which she deserved. She didn’t want to think about how many girls she’d mistreated and hurt over the years. She didn’t want to linger on the number of families she’d torn apart. In fact, she didn’t want to think about Susan at all. She just wanted her gone from her mind.
But it was never that simple in her job. She hadn’t slept particularly well, and by eight A.M., she’d left the house and walked into town. She knew that Brock would be in bed for a while longer, not passing up the chance for a well-deserved sleep-in. Olivia grabbed coffee in the diner, which was much busier than she’d seen it since the disappearances began. She guessed that people weren’t so scared anymore. Her usual waitress served her black coffee and gave her a blueberry muffin, insisting it was on the house.
She noticed that people’s attitude to her had changed almost overnight. People waved to her and said good morning, people who had usually walked quicker when they saw her on the street. She saw it as them accepting her as one of their own, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. Sure, she’d helped the town out, but she’d never done anything wrong in the first place. Belle Grove was a strange little place, but Olivia was learning to question its inner workings. She was just glad that she didn’t have to feel so alienated anymore.
She finished up her coffee and went for a walk around the town. She no longer had to worry that a kidnapper was lurking around every corner, which should have been a relief to her, but it strangely wasn’t. She still couldn’t believe it was Susan who’d fooled them all. She was clearly smart, but for as long as Olivia had known her, she was also out of sorts. Olivia found the story of her life to be pretty devastating. Abandoned by her mother as a child, growing up alone with nothing but a doll to keep her company, bouncing around the foster care system, and likely being abused herself. And somehow she made it all the way through that, only to inadvertently perpetuate the cycle of tragedy by mistreating her own daughter even as she suffered from addiction.
Olivia couldn’t understand why she was getting so sentimental. Susan wa
sn’t a good person. Maybe she wasn’t bad through and through, but she certainly wasn’t just someone who’d taken one wrong turn. She’d taken a wrong turn once and then continued down the wrong path for the rest of her life. Perhaps half of what Susan had said wasn’t even true. Maybe she was still manipulating her and lying like she had the entire time—the thought ran through Olivia’s mind yet again that the forensic perfection of the crimes could only have been done by a seasoned professional, not a desperate woman. But now that she’d been handed over to the authorities and she was set to plead guilty to her crimes, Olivia wished that someone had just taken the time to love Susan the way she’d so desperately wanted. Perhaps then, she would have managed to stay on the right track.
Olivia shook her head to herself and began walking back to the cabin. She knew she was being ridiculous. She shouldn’t be trying to see the good side of someone who had wreaked havoc for so long. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t get Susan to leave her mind.
When she got back to the cabin, she found Brock waiting for her on the porch. He smiled at her and straightened up.
“I thought I’d stop by for some of your famously crappy cups of coffee,” he teased. “They’ve really grown on me.”
Olivia smiled. She felt a little better already, having Brock around. But her happiness was short-lived as she opened the door and let him inside. She knew why he was there.
He’d come to say goodbye.
She watched him head into the kitchen, sighing to herself. She’d always known that her time with him was going to be short. He was only in town to help with the case. He couldn’t live in a B&B forever, after all. But the thought of him leaving made her feel hollow inside. Maybe she understood how Susan felt, after all. She’d talked about having a hole in her heart that only her daughter could fill. Olivia was used to having a gaping hole in her chest from all the things she’d lost. She knew she’d never fill it again. But with Brock around, she felt at least a little more complete for a while.