Page 99 of Is Anyone Listening?
"No. She wouldn't do that. She just told me about them, about the ones that made her sad, the ones who were all alone in the world, the ones who looked like you. She had no idea she was helping me choose."
"Choose?" I echoed, my voice barely above a whisper as the horror of it all settled in on me.
"Natalie wanted to be loved, to have someone obsessed with her, to feel that passion, and I provided that."
"She didn't choose you," I said, certain of that.
"She didn't know what she wanted. I did. I needed her. I needed all of them."
"Why?"
"You ask a lot of questions, Cassidy."
"If I'm never leaving this basement, then what's the harm in answering them?"
"You're right. It won't matter."
"Why did you pick women who looked like Natalie?"
"Because I couldn’t have the one I wanted. But I could have them."
"Who did you want?" I asked.
He stared back at me for a long minute. "This is actually perfect that it's you."
"Why?"
"Because you're David's daughter. And David was one of the reasons I couldn't have her."
Realization dawned on me. "Are you talking about Lily?"
"They fought over her all the time—Tom and David. Lily went back and forth between them. She couldn’t say no, even though they didn't treat her right. Tom hurt her physically, and David hurt her heart because he was going to leave her. I was right there, but she didn't see me; she only saw them."
"You killed Lily because she didn't want you?"
"No," he shouted, anger raging through his eyes, making me inch back toward the wall behind me. "She killed herself. Because of them, because of what they did to her."
"Then why didn't you kill your brother? It sounds like it was his fault that she committed suicide. Why hurt innocent women? Why are they paying for what Lily did?"
"Because they were just like her, running away from men who loved them, choosing the wrong person to make them happy. When the right person is there in front of them."
He was sick, delusional, definitely not in his right mind. I didn't know if that condition came and went, if he was normal sometimes and other times not, but it didn't matter. Right now, he was nothing but pure evil, and he was going to kill me. I couldn't let that happen. Not just because I really didn't want to die, but because I couldn't let him get away with another murder.
"Trying to think of a way out, aren't you?" he asked, his momentary rage turning back to confidence and a nauseating interest in me. "They all did. They all got the same look on their faces that you're wearing now."
"How many?"
He shrugged. "Not that many fit what I wanted, what I needed."
"And you've never felt any guilt about taking their lives?"
"Well, they didn't really want to live in the end, but, sure, sometimes I thought I was sick, that I took after my old man more than I wanted to. He used to beat us up, you know. And there's a good chance he killed my mother. I didn't want to be like him, but sometimes the dark takes over."
"You can choose something else," I said.
"That's what Natalie said, too."
"How did you get her to this house?" I asked, desperate to stall as long as I could. "Did you use Dorothy to lure her here?"
