“Oh, I am,” I assure her.
“Good.” She seems thrown off by my indifference.
“I need to leave the house,” I say calmly with my arms resting at my side. “And need you to come unlock the alarm so we don’t draw the police here.”
She shakes her head, her face reddening with anger. “You’re not allowed out when it’s so late, especially when you were so upset earlier and you’re probably still going to feel a little groggy from the sedative.”
Patience, I tell myself. “There’s somewhere I need to be.”
She steps forward, to intimidate me, but she’s scared of what I’ll do to her. Maddie doesn’t see it clearly, but I do. She’s afraid I’ll hurt her and I’m guessing I have once in the past. I’m guessing that’s why she kept who I used to be hidden. The blond in the photo, the girl who was once me, not her sister. I understand that, can see past the blindness unlike Maddie sometimes.
She raises her chin, appearing confident. “Maddie Asherford, you aren’t going out and that’s final.”
My patience vanishes. “Oh dear Madison, how ridiculous you are,” I say and her face drains of color. I think she knows who I am. I’ve suspected all along that she might have; the obsession to make her daughter good based on the fact that she knows me and what I’m like. “You better be ready.”
“F-for what?” she stammers, her knees wobbly and she almost falls to the floor. She has to grab on to the sides of the doorframe for support.
I let a slow grin expand across my face then turn away toward the front door. She follows me, demanding for me to stop, but I disregard her, walking out of the house. The alarm screams and she starts shouting at me over the loudness. I shrug her off and go outside into the cold air and walk away beneath the stars and the crescent moon. By the time I reach the end of the driveway, the alarm has silenced. I pause, waiting to see if she comes out of the house, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me from the window and I can picture how relieved she looks that I’m out of the house.
Smiling at her, I give her a little wave and then stroll out into the night, breathing freely.
Chapter 29
Maddie
As soon as I realize I’ve fallen asleep, I jump up in a panic. They drugged me. Preston drugged me and I fell asleep and I… no… My anxiety goes up a notch when I realize I’m lying on the floor on my side in front of the mirror, surrounded by mud tracks. There’s also mud on my skin, my clothes, my hair. My shirt is torn and I have a cut on my finger. And the worst part is my hair is blond, like in the pictures. I’ve transformed overnight into someone else.
Into Lily.
“You dyed my hair.” I shake my head in denial as I touch strands of it. “No… I didn’t… this is just a dream.”
“More like a nightmare,” my reflection says from the mirror, looking just as wrecked as me, yet in more control. “Calm the f**k down, would you? It’s not as bad as it seems.”
I narrow my eyes as I let go of my hair. “What did you do?” I ask, sitting up and tucking my legs under me. “While I was out?”
She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t do anything, except…” She pauses and it’s the longest pause ever. “Well, your mother might be a little upset with you today, more than she already was.”
I clamber to my feet. “What did you do to her?”
She shrugs, but there’s a wicked glint in her eyes, “Honestly, do you really care?”
I briefly pause, deciding. The good rises in me and I dash out of the room and down the hallway. “Mom,” I call out. “Mom, are you here!” I reach her door and try to turn the doorknob, but it’s locked. “Mom, are you okay?” I ask with a desperate knock.
It takes three more knocks before I hear her moving toward the door. She doesn’t open it, but just says, “I’m fine. Now go back to bed.”
“Okay, but…” I scratch my head, wondering why she won’t unlock the door. “You’re okay, right?”
There’s a pause. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
It gets quiet, but I think she’s still standing on the other side of the door. I wait for her to say something about the sedative, thinking maybe I should say something, but Lily tells me not to worry. That she already took care of it.
I always take care of you.
I wander back to my room and shut the door. “What did you do?” I ask aloud, noticing that my window’s wet. It’s been raining outside, the grass is muddy and the streets are puddled. Lily’s been outside somewhere, doing God knows what.
Of course, she decides to play the silent treatment and doesn’t respond. I check the time—four thirty in the morning. I’ve been out for twelve hours. She could do so much in twelve hours. I have to check—have to know. Reaching into my pocket, I hold my breath, waiting to see if I feel a button. I exhale loudly when I don’t feel anything and move my hand to the other one. There is something in this one, but not a button. A piece of paper. I pull it out. No, not paper. A photo of a man. In the picture, he’s just sitting there staring at the camera. Brown hair. Dark eyes. Maybe in his thirties. Not smiling. Not frowning. Not anything. He looks hollow empty. Yet he makes me feel full of emotions I never knew existed inside me and with no control of my own, tears flood from my eyes. I cry for what seems like forever, my shoulders shaking, my body frozen in fear, my heart beating a million miles a minute. Fear. Fear. Fear.
I know this man well.
This is the man who kept me a prisoner.
This is the man that hurt me.
Beat me.
Hurt others.
I’m afraid of him.
“Where did you find this?” I ask, shutting my eyes tightly, willing myself to forget the man. But he’s there in every one of my memories. Killing people. Making me watch. Trying to teach me about wickedness. Evil. When the evil is him.
“From your file in Preston’s office,” she says in the gentlest voice I’ve ever heard her use. “There were a lot of interesting things in there.”
“Like what?” I whisper, but deep down I think I already know. Pain. There’s a lot of pain. Caused by this man, who I know, as well as I know my own mother.
“You really want to see?” she asks cautiously. “Because you really need to make sure you’re ready. It’s worse than looking at that photo.”
I hesitate, opening my eyes and looking down at the photo. Do I really want to know? Pain. My chest aches. Vomit burns at the back of my throat. It’s just a man. Just a man. But I know it’s not. Deep down I think I know who he is, not just the man who kept me prisoner, but I’m not ready to admit it to myself anymore. The things he did to me… to all those people… to Evan. You’re the one who hurt Evan.