Page 104 of The Girl from Widow Hills
“Did I what?” she asked. “Hurt who?” She filled the mug with water from the sink.
My throat was dry. I didn’t know where to start. “Sean Coleman.”
Her face turned hard, angry, and I remembered the mood swings, how intense she could be. “Sean Coleman had been blackmailing us for years. He was . . . a drain. A leech. Taking something that wasn’t his. You know I saw him last week? Walking into the hospital lobby? He did a double take, called my name. My old name. He was coming for us, baby. You’d never be free.”
She had it wrong. Sean Coleman had been looking for me because he thought his son was going to come to me, the same way he’d come to Sean. The same way he’d come after my mother ten years earlier. Sean was coming to help me, and then he saw my mother.
Was that why he’d been watching? To see what she would do?
This.Thiswas what Sean Coleman had been warning me about with his letter. Not his son. But this: my mother. And now she was here.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t him.”
She turned, looked at me hard. “Don’t be naive, honey.” She turned back to the kitchen cabinets, heated up the mug of water in the microwave. “I have always, always been there to help you. Who do you think called the police when Nathan followed you?”
That anonymous call, I suddenly understood—when she said she had kept me safe. She had called it in, made sure the police came after us. And now Nathan Coleman sat in jail, the case circling around him instead of me.
“His father was blackmailing us for years. Well, like father, like son, it seems.”
“It wasn’t his father. All those years, the letters, the blackmail—it was the son. It was always Nathan,” I said.
She stared at me blankly and then took a deep breath, her shoulders pressing back. “No, he was watching this house, Arden. He was watching you.”
“No,” I said, my voice rising, “he had come here to warn me. Not about his son. Not that at all. He was coming here to warn me aboutyou.”
I stood up too fast, the chair pushing back.
She tipped her head, momentarily confused. “Arden, calm down. You’re not acting like yourself.”
She was right. I needed to calm down. Couldn’t let the panic settle in, rendering me useless, telling me to run.
Six steps to the back door; thirteen steps to the front door. Could I make it to Rick’s house? To his shed? To his guns? With a stiff knee and one good arm?
No one was here—no one could help.
The microwave beeped, and I saw her fingers find the amber vial of my prescription from Dr. Cal in the space beside it. I saw her read the label, then quickly turn it back.
“Mom, I need to know. I need to know what happened back then.”
She sighed. “Go lie down, Arden. Rest, I’m making you a hot chocolate.” She pointed down the hallway, and I complied.
I started walking down the hall, then heard the gentle rattle of pills, like I had so many times in my memories. My mother, at night, making me hot chocolate—to calm me. The rattle of pills to stop me.
A chill ran down my back. Had she always been this person—even before? Like Emma Lyons had said? Had she drugged me long ago, before the episodes? Dr. Cal had said that sleepwalking was, unfortunately, a side effect of other medications.
Whom had I been living with all those years? A monster?
I kept moving, barefoot, quietly—by the glow of the television—peering around the living room for something I could use.
“Arden,” she said, voice closer. “Where are you going?” The squeak of a hinge, a click, and then the last of the lights went black.
She had just cut the electricity. And I understood: She knew exactly what she was doing. We were bathed in darkness, and then all I could feel were the walls on either side of me closing in. I couldn’t run from this anymore; couldn’t ever be free of it if I did.
I stood perfectly still, my eyes unaccustomed to the dark. I couldn’t tell where she was—could hear only my own rapid breathing, my own heartbeat, until the shock of her cold fingers at my elbow, her grip tightening.
She jerked me toward her, and my arm pulled. I yelled out—the flash of another memory then, another time, another possibility.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked, her voice in my ear.
