Page 103 of The Girl from Widow Hills
CHAPTER 27
Friday, 9:20 p.m.
ICLOSED THE BEDROOM DOOR,grabbed the ladder from the closet, hand on the hook-and-eye latch. Ready, waiting, ear pressed to the wooden door.
Listening for the rattle of that back door. Or the sound of breaking glass. But there was silence.
I opened the bedroom door again, slipped out into the dark hall. Other than a dim bulb left on in the corner of the kitchen, only the television glowed in flashes of light. I padded barefoot down the hall toward the entrance of the kitchen, peered around the corner, but couldn’t see anything out the window, into the night—the back porch light was still out.
But I heard the moment the key slid into the lock, the latch turning, and then the creak of the back door swinging open.
I held my breath. Eight steps to the front door. Car keys on the entryway table. Three steps across the front porch. Seventeen steps to the car.
All I could see out back was her silhouette, illuminated, until she stepped inside.
I saw her before she saw me, clinging to the corner of the hall, in the shadows. Her long hair was pulled back now, and she wasn’t wearing the glasses from her photo. She was smaller than I remembered, all sharp angles. I saw her look to the counter, where the wine bottle sat, still open. She picked up the empty glass, peering inside.
“Mom?” I asked, stepping out of the shadows.
Because there was still the chance that this was the drugs and the wine; that this was the nightmare. Not that she’d sent me that box herself, setting up that call, convincing someone else to make it, convincing me that she was dead.
But then she spun around, setting down the empty glass, and there was no going back.
This was the person Rick had heard me yelling at—shouting to get away from me.
The familiar laughter I’d heard at the hospital; that voice leading the detective to my office. A moment I had been expecting, subconsciously, for years. So close and yet continually out of sight.
“Hi, baby,” she said, her face splitting open in that too-wide grin.
“Mom,” I said, “what did you do?” There were so many layers to that question. What had she done, to Elyse, to Sean Coleman—to me, twenty years earlier.
“I kept you safe,” she said, walking toward me. “You’re safe now. This can all be over. Here.” She gestured toward the table, expecting me to be malleable and compliant. “Sit, sit.”
She’d thought I’d finished the glass. She’d thought I was under the influence of whatever she’d been drugging me with. Watching, learning my routine. Had she sneaked into my unlocked office, copying the key to my house? It wouldn’t be hard. Anyone with a badge would have access. I’d been too trusting, too complacent, in my new life, thinking myself anonymous and safe.
I stepped back instead of forward.
“Arden, come here, come sit,” she said, hand at my back, guiding me to the table.
My feet started moving forward of their own volition. I sat in the chair she’d pulled out. Yes, I was malleable and compliant. She took the phone from my hand, sliding it into her back pocket.
“Mom. I thought you were dead,” I said.
“Did you, now?”
“You sent me that box.”
She smiled sadly. “I thought you would look for me. I thought you would speak. But you just . . . put it in the closet, went on with your life. I thought you would recognize things, and, well.” She shook her head, half a smile. “You always did surprise me.”
“You changed your name,” I said.
“You’re not the only one who can start over.” Her hand ran down my hair. “You and I are survivors, baby girl.”
My head was fuzzy, but I didn’t think it was the medicine. It was her, and the echoes of the past—the way I couldn’t differentiate between then and now.
She walked over to the counter, pulled down a mug, like she had every right to be here.
“Mom,” I said again. “Mom, did you hurt them?”
