“I wanted to protect you,” she says, slowly getting to her feet. “From the pain of having a sister.”
“Pain of having a sister. Are you f**king crazy?” I grasp at my head. This isn’t how a conversation should go. She should be talking about the pain of losing a sister. I lower my hand to the side. “What happened to me mother? In my past? With Lily? Were we locked up once?” I pause. “Did you lock us up?” As soon as I say it, I know it’s not true.
“How dare you.” Her entire body is quivering, not with fear but with rage. She grips onto the back of the chair for support. “I would never do anything to hurt you or your sister.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say and I partially mean it. I don’t know my mother enough to know whether she would hurt me or not. All I know is that in my past I’ve been hurt by someone.
“How can you ever say that?” she says. “I would never, ever do anything but protect you. Even if it means causing pain to myself.”
The last part is a little strange. Why would protecting me cause pain to herself? “What do you mean by that exactly?”
She shakes her head, releasing the table, and squaring her shoulders. “I’m not talking about this anymore. There was a reason I never talked about it.”
“Because it caused you pain?”
“Enough,” she snaps harshly. “No more of this. I’m done.”
And with that, she runs out of the room and I’m left unsure what to believe. Who to trust.
You can always trust me.
Chapter 22
Maddie
I’m moving out of the house. I haven’t told my mom yet, but I can’t do it anymore. Crazy or not, being cooped up in the house with her lies, locks, and alarms is making my situation worse. I’ll get my own place. Go to work and spend the rest of the time by myself, trying to piece together my past, who I was, why I was locked up, and what happened to my sister. That I can do—I’m better at being alone anyway. Although I’m never really alone. I always have Lily. Part of me wonders if maybe I created her out of my sister. Perhaps when I lost my sister Lily, my Lily arose. But the idea is kind of frightening, because my Lily is frightening, which makes me wonder what my sister was like.
Over the next couple of days, I start looking for places to live and a new job, one that will satisfy my darker cravings, one where I can start over, and get some help from someone who isn’t my mother. I’m looking through the classifieds in the newspaper, trying to ignore the best that I can the picture of Bella on page nine, when my phone rings. River’s name flashes on the screen and I freeze. He never calls me, not outside of work, which makes me wonder why he is now. I think I know and even though part of me doesn’t want to know, the other part has to know, whether I need to be worried or not.
He starts off by asking me how I am, acting casual—too casual—I know something’s up and I think I know it before he even asks it—the real reason he’s calling me. He continues casually asking me why I haven’t been to work. “Is it because of Sydney’s death? Or because Bella’s gone missing?” he questions. “I know it must be hard for you, losing people you know.” The fact that he says it, tells me just how little he knows about me. Sometimes I think I’m numb to almost everything going on around me. I hardly feel any emotions except toward Lily. And fear when I’m put in a panicking situation.
“Yes and no,” I respond evasively, wondering if the police have talked to him yet. Perhaps that’s where the casualness is stemming from.
“Well, I hope you won’t stay away from work forever,” he says, then gives and elongated pause. “I kind of miss you… I know the place seems kind of cursed. At least that’s what people are saying right now, but I assure you the bar had nothing to do with either of their disappearances.”
I want to ask him how he can be so sure, but I bite my tongue. “How could you possibly miss me, River? You barely know me.” I barely know me.
“That’s not true…” he struggles for an answer. “I miss spending time with you… you should really come in today, even if it’s to talk. And your job’s still waiting for you, whenever you’re ready to come back.”
“I can’t do that,” I say, lying down on my bed and staring at the key on my nightstand, the one I found in my mother’s room. “Besides, I’m moving.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I’m figuring it out.”
He pauses, his breathing heavy on the other end. “Maddie, I don’t think you should go anywhere right now.”
“Why not?” I put the key in my pocket. I don’t even know why or if I’m the one who did it.
River pauses for the third time. “Maddie, we really need to talk,” he says as I roll over on my back and stare up at the ceiling. “It’s important.”
I tense. The way his voice deepens it carries a warning and it sends Goosebumps erupting across my skin and I uncontrollably shiver. He knows something.
“About what?” My voice is rickety just like my pulse.
“Come to the bar and talk,” he says, his tone lightening. “I’ll be at my office in about ten minutes.”
“I can’t do that,” I repeat as I sit up on the bed. “Trust me River, this is for your own good.”
“Maddie, this is important,” he stresses. “Just get down here as soon as you can.”
I grind my teeth in frustration, more with myself than anything. I should have been better with the detective, given him a better answer to why I was at Sydney’s crime scene that morning, because that has to be what this is about. Either that or it could be about Bella. Have the police gone to her apartment and found the bloody mess? Have they linked me to that somehow? But why would they go to River about that? I need to find out, just how much they—River—knows.
“Fine.” I get up from my bed, cross the room, and peek out the curtain at the sound of thunder. What will happen when I go back into the real world again? Around people. Around River. What if I lose control? What if I get arrested? Locked up again? What if the police show up? “I’ll be there in like an hour.”
You’re making a big mistake.
“Drive safe,” he says casually, his voice shifting to its normal, friendly tone. Like he didn’t just make things weird between us.