Page 105 of The Girl from Widow Hills
“Yes,” I whispered, but she didn’t release her grip.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got something to help you. Come. Come on.” And then we were moving, down the darkness of the hall, my free hand feeling for the wall.
A door opened, and I could feel the chill of cooler air escaping. “This way,” she said, pushing me toward the staircase. One way up. One way out. “Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
And then she closed the door.
There was no light in the stairwell, just darkness. The narrowed walls, the smell of wood. My entire body began to tremble.
Like so long ago—the only clear memory. Of walls and stagnant water and no way out. I did now what I must’ve done back then. Not going back the way I came, but forward. I went up.
I stood in the middle of the room, in front of those glass windows: the only way out. I could feel the panic brewing. Knowing the eaves were narrowed, and the space was finite, and there was one way out of this room. I held myself very still, and I sat in the single rocking chair in the middle of the room, staring at the beveled glass windows, until my eyes adjusted to the dark.
And I waited.
Because I needed to know. I needed the truth. I needed to come face-to-face with myself, and with her.
The door opened again; the scent of hot chocolate wafted through the room. She ascended the steps and walked around the rocking chair so she was standing between me and the window, the moonlight fracturing through the glass. Like she had been here before, knew her way around. I suddenly knew she’d been the one to remove that light bulb. She’d been here all along.
“Here,” she said, holding out the mug. “For the pain.”
“I don’t want it. I want you to tell me what happened back then.”
Her mouth was a thin line before breaking into a small grin. “All right. Drink, and we’ll talk.”
I took the cup from her hands, and she waited until I brought it to my lips, taking a sip.
The liquid burned. A piece of me in exchange for a piece of her. How far was she going to take me? Was she feeding me this in the hope that I wouldn’t remember? So I would remain compliant? Or did she want to hurt me?
“How did this happen?” I asked, gesturing to my left arm. “Back then.” Bennett had an opinion, the doctors had an opinion, Nathan had an opinion. But none of them knew for sure.
She cocked her head. “You really don’t remember?”
Emma Lyons had told me about that doctor—how he thought I’d been lying. Six years old and lying because my mother was in the room.
“Did you hurt me?” I asked.
She looked off to the side. “It was an accident. You had some reaction to a medication, it was making you wired . . . you were uncontrollable, Arden, truly, I had to—” Her arm flung out to the side as she spoke. “We were on the steps—I swear, you were going to take us both down, and I—it all happened so fast. I tried to pull you back, but you screamed and I let go. And you fell.” She shook her head. “I was trying to keep you from getting hurt, I promise. But a child’s bones are so fragile.”
A flash. Someone grabbing my arm—a pop, a crack. Bracing myself and falling.
Steps. The only steps could’ve been to the basement.
And then—a pain so bright and intense it stole my breath.
Her face. Her voice.Okay, okay, stay calm, take this—
It was her. Always her.
When had my omissions turned to lies? When I was six, in the hospital, with my mother standing over me? Had she believed even then that I understood and was complicit? A survivor, like her.
The medication must have caused the sleepwalking episodes—whatever my mother had given me at night, trying to keep me calm and complacent while she went on with her life. But children didn’t react the same way adults did. They were more prone to sleepwalking, to overexcitement.
“You staged the whole thing?” The whole story.A fraud.
She stared at my cup, waiting, and I took another sip.
“No, it all took on a life of its own. It was supposed to be just a few hours. Just a little while. Your shoe outside, to lead them to the woods, where you wandered off and could’ve gotten hurt all by yourself. But it all got carried away. It rained—itpoured, and the shoe got caught on a grate, and, well.” She shrugged. “It took on a life of its own, and we just had to seize it.”
