Page 101 of You'll Be Sorry

“The town’s online forum. This morning, someone posted links to an article documenting your former life. You know, before you became Raquel Collins. Can’t blame you for wanting to distance yourself as much as possible. Why, if I’d been through all that, I would’ve changed my name as well.

“Is it true? What they found in your mother’s closet? The four shoeboxes?” Then, the older woman’s eyes widening. “Of course! That’s how you recognized those tiny little fragments as infant remains. I’d wondered at the time; I mean not even Chief Grady had any idea. But you…” Betty nodded to herself. “You’d seen such things before.”

Raquel set down the teakettle, picked up a spoon, gave each mug a little stir. So this was it—the moment had arrived. It’d always been inevitable. No one could hide from the past forever. Still, this was not how she’d imagined it would go.

She took a deep breath, then calmly met her neighbor’s eyes. Betty was still grinning excitedly. Probably the best gossip the woman had heard in forever. But now, looking more closely, Raquel saw something else in the woman’s gaze. Something darker, more predatory.

And she felt a cold trickle down her spine again. There was more going on here than idle chitchat. Another agenda completely.

“I don’t like to talk about those days,” Raquel stated. Even she was impressed by the steadiness of her voice.

“Because your siblings died? Such a shame, after everything you did to try to save them. I mean an axe.” Betty shivered slightly. “I must ask—one question, then I swear, I’ll shut up. But why an axe? That just seems so…gruesome. Why not a nice kitchen knife instead?”

Movement behind her. Raquel didn’t have to turn to knowTheo was now standing in the doorway, listening attentively. For a moment, she was tempted to shock them both, to burst out the simple, coldhearted truth:Because I wanted to get it right. A knife might’ve slipped or not gone deep enough. But chop off a monster’s head, and they definitely never come back again.

Those four battered gray shoeboxes. The kind other people might use to hold old photos or family keepsakes. Or in her mother’s case, the remains of the infants she hadn’t wanted. Wrapped up, tucked away, completely forgotten. Until the day Raquel had gone searching for an extra blanket in the back of her mom’s closet and made the gruesome find instead. Looking down at the tiny bodies and nearly translucent bones hadn’t even been the worst of it. Immediately wondering, if her mother could dispose of her own children so easily, why had she let Raquel and her siblings, Lilly and Charlie Boy, survive?

Then reconsidering Charlie Boy’s gaunt features and constant cough that required frequent trips to the hospital, followed by an impressive number of local fundraisers. Lilly’s own health now starting to fail. Black mold, her mother told everyone, voice hushed. Why, if they could just get out of that damn leaky mobile home and into a new house, imagine the difference for the children.

“Come on, Charlie Boy, eat up!”

Betty took a step closer, invading Raquel’s space. “Did you go to prison? I’ve never met anyone who did time in the big house before. What was it like?”

“Educational,” Raquel clipped out. “Before then, I had no idea how many things you could turn into a shiv.”

The older woman quickly hopped back, blinking rapidly.

Raquel squared her shoulders. Fuck sweet old ladies and neighborly concern. There was nothing kind about this conversation, and like hell Raquel was going to be pushed around by the town busybody. Betty thought she was manipulative? Raquel had grown upwith a parent capable of poisoning her own son to score better real estate.

She peered intently at the woman, then, keeping her voice totally devoid of emotion: “My mother murdered five of her own children. Six if you consider my sister never recovered from the trauma and OD’d a matter of years later. When I realized what my mom had done to four infants, and was now doing to my little brother, I took action to protect myself and my siblings. The legal system agreed with my assessment.”

“Then sent you to a locked-down mental ward anyway?”

“I spent time in a therapeutic environment. Needless to say, I had a few things to unpack. Upon completing the program, I moved on, built a life.” Raquel’s voice grew brittle, despite her best intentions. “None of my siblings ever got that chance. Four of them never made it to their first birthday. And Charlie Boy…he died aspirating on his own vomit; rat poison isn’t kind to the human body. So you can fake-gasp and pretend shock while poring over salacious newspaper stories all you want. I know better than anyone what my mother did, and I know better than anyone what my mother deserved. I don’t look back.”

Betty placed her hand over her heart, as if to steady herself. Raquel didn’t believe her little act for a second. The older woman had brought this up deliberately, pushed deliberately. True crime junkie, my ass. The woman was up to something. But what?

Movement, Theo coming to stand behind her, squeezing her shoulder gently.

There was more she should tell him. About a tiny plot of land in Pennsylvania where her siblings were interred, four of them nameless. That she didn’t talk about those days because she didn’t talk about those days. That she’d genuinely thought she’d left the past behind, until the day she’d sat in a doctor’s office hearing all abouther incompetent cervix and realizing the universe was having the last laugh, after all. Her mother, labeled Baby Killer across so many torrid headlines. Raquel, going three for three herself.

“Now you’re just like me.”

A sudden clatter of nails on hardwood as Mr. Man bolted upright, followed a second later by a sharp rap on the front door.

Thank God.

“I’ll get it.” Raquel bolted out of the kitchen, grateful to discover Chief Grady standing on the front porch, hat in hand.

“Hey, I need to talk to you about—” The chief’s voice broke off as Theo and Betty emerged into the great room.

“What are you doing here?” the chief demanded, her gaze homing in on Betty.

“Whatever do you mean, dear?”

“Why are you here?”

“Just being neighborly—”