Lily glances at the gun in Bella’s hand, composed with no fear in her expression unlike me. I remember how she was always the composed one while we were in the basement and for a second I envy her steadiness. “Relax, I haven’t seen my sister in years.” She flashes me, a haunting smile, eyes lacking emotion—she reminds me too much of the Lily in my head and a chill courses up my spine because I honestly can’t tell if she’s real still. “How are you my dear Maddie?”
I look helplessly around me. “Fine.”
“You seem confused?”
“That’s because I am.”
“I don’t blame you.” Lily takes a leisurely step toward me, but stops still several feet away as if she doesn’t want to get too close to me. “It’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it? And it’s good for you—brings out what needs to be brought out.”
Confusion swirls inside my head. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh.” Her grin shadows her entire face, and I can’t help but think about when my mother said she was the bad one. But no… I still can’t believe she’s here. This has to be my Lily—I’ve lost all control and now she’s taken over everything, including the outside world. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you? What’s been going on?”
“That your dead and I’m hallucinating,” I say. “None of this is real.”
“No Maddie, I’m very much real and alive, but not because of you,” she replies, cocking her head to the side, studying me. “Tell me, why did you leave me in that cabin when it was burning down?”
“I didn’t.” I shake my head in protest. “We were running away together…” But suddenly the images rush through me that I haven’t seen before. A light. Gas. Fire. I lit the cabin into flames and watched it ignite, lying down in the midst of it. I thought I was going to die, but Lily woke me up. We ran. She shot our father, while I took off in a panic and the whole place roared into flames behind me. “But you survived.”
“Of course I did. I’m a survivor.” She pauses then looks at Bella who is just standing there with the gun in her hand. “Unfortunately, her son didn’t.”
“I’m assuming you still don’t remember me,” Bella inches forward, reducing the space between us. “And I mean, who I really am. Not who I pretended to be.”
It painfully clicks. I remember how she told me once she had a son once, but that he left her. I understand now, what she meant. He didn’t run away—he died. “You’re the woman that was in the cabin with us… Ryland’s mother and the person that was always talking to my father.”
She looks lost. “Ryland?”
“Evan,” I correct myself, trying to mentally guessimate how quickly I could get to the door. I’m close to the threshold of the foyer, just a few steps and the wall would block the bullet… maybe. “You’re Evan’s mother.”
That gets her to unstiffen and grin, but it’s an eerie sight to behold like it’s painful to get her lips to move that way. “Aw, so you do remember my boy.”
Just thinking about Evan hurts my heart, a fresh wound, still raw, that makes me feel sick, makes me want to run back to the cabin and beg him to come back to me. “Vaguely,” I lie.
Her nostrils flare and within moments she’s strode toward me and stolen most of the space between us. “Vaguely. That’s all you can say after he sacrificed himself for you—told you to run after you burnt the place down.”
“You’re the one who let him be tied up in the basement of a psychopath.” I’m treading on thin water, wishing Lily would step in because she’s always so much better at dealing with stressful situations than I am. I look over at the real Lily, who’s watching Bella with a bored look on her face.
“I’m over this,” Lily says, staring at Bella. “It’s time to get it done and move on to something else.”
“Get what done?” I ask Lily as she strolls around the sofa and stops beside Bella and I.
She shrugs nonchalantly. “You’ll soon find out.”
“I did what I had to do to survive in life,” Bella says hotly with her finger on the trigger. “Your father took care of me, loved me. I had to make a few sacrifices, but I did what I had to do to keep a roof over my head and yes his beliefs were a little hard to deal with, but it’s better than the alternative.”
“Survive life,” Lily and I say simultaneously, like our brains are linked and we’ve become one person again. Lily tips her head to the side, strands of her hair falling in her eyes as she assesses Bella. “That’s a ridiculous excuse.” She pauses. “You want to know what I really think? That you liked all that f**ked up shit—torturing people—just as much as my father did. You were both f**ked up in the head and were the perfect match for each other. No judgment here though.”
I’m so perplexed. What’s going on? Who’s really bad? Is Lily real? Is Bella real? Do they know each other?
“Shut up!” Bella cries and I flinch, but Lily is calm, the exact replica of the person living inside my head. Bella cocks the gun like she’s considering shooting me, right here in living room, when suddenly her eyes dart to the window. “Oh good, he’s here. Now we can finish this.”
I follow her line of gaze and my heart misses a beat. In the driveway is a car and getting out of it is River. He’s wearing his glasses, a flannel jacket and jeans, his hair messy.
“What’s he doing here?” I ask as I watch River walk up the path to the front door, looking at the house with hesitancy as if he’s worried about something.
“Oh, you haven’t figured it out yet?” Bella says and when I look at her, she’s grinning, tears streaming out of her eyes as if she’s emotionally overwhelmed. “The phone call at the bar. Getting you to come down there because my AA boyfriend got me into trouble. River helped me get to you. Poison your drinks. It was beautiful.”
I shake my head in disbelief, backing up until I bump the wall. “It was you the whole time… I was never… Lily was never… I’m not crazy.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bella say, her tears drying. “But it was rather easy… and Lily helped us tremendously.”
My attention snaps to Lily. “She can see you… you have to be real.”