Then I led Agent Nelson and the forensics crew into the cellar, where I secretly discovered a plucked clover. And the shame evaporated.
I knew that Grayson had been there to remove any incriminating evidence of me from the cellar. What little they might discover would only corroborate my story. My father’s blood still stained the concrete. The story that cellar told matched my own.
I realized that’s why Grayson wanted the details of mycrime. Having me go over and over what transpired back then. I presumed it was for his own gratification—but he also needed to know what to remove from the scene so I wouldn’t be implicated.
Grayson and I…we were apart, but we were working in tandem. Our moves choreographed and calculated, the rest of the world unable to follow our lead. We were above them. We were apart, but it was the closest I ever felt to another person.
I stare at the house. Rotten and decaying. The windows shuttered with planks nailed to chipped siding. I cross my arms, deciding my childhood home looks far more abandoned than when I was last here. Then, the yard was crawling with forensic techs and law enforcement. Federal agents infested the tiny farmhouse like the termites I see fluttering around the exterior.
Yellow crime scene tape marks off the front yard, stretching the perimeter. In the back, empty graves scatter the field. No one will fill them in.
Lydia Prescott doesn’t belong here. Not the way London Noble does.
I fought the connection so hard, for so long, but the blood soaking this earth stains my bones. Swims in my marrow. It’s a part of me just as much as Grayson.
We’re connected.
I feel Agent Nelson’s presence before he’s close enough to speak.
“You always know where to find me,” I say, keeping my gaze on the house.
“There’s no reason to stay here,” he says, expertly dodging my accusation. “The state isn’t releasing Mia. Not yet.”
I wrap my arms tighter around my midsection. The tall pines cast a dark, looming shadow across the house, their branches stretching across the sky like spindly spider legs. Just like when I was a child.
“What are you looking for, London?”
Nelson still refers to me by that name. It’s similar enough, isn’t it? Lydia/London. I can see how Malcolm might’ve chosen it. He always told me that my mother named me after her favorite soap opera before she died.
For the first time, I wonder who’s buried in the unmarked grave in the Mize cemetery that I used to visit.
I never had a mother.
“Nothing,” I finally respond as I turn away from the house. I meet Nelson’s squinted gaze. “Let’s go.”
We make a slow progression toward our vehicles. His standard FBI-issued SUV, and my rental sedan. What was I looking for? An answer? A clue? Another piece of the puzzle?
Grayson won’t return here.
He’s a master puzzler, and he’s already figured out every secret kept at this place. There’s nothing more to tell, or uncover.
“I had blond hair as a kid,” I say suddenly.
The agent sends me a guarded look. “I think everyone does. Don’t they?”
I think back on my dyed-blond hair. Platinum blond. I had believed that I wanted it—that I begged my father for it. But like most of my memories, this one is skewed. “Yes, but mine was very blond. He dyed my hair up until I was twelve. I guess by that point, he figured no one would recognize me.”
Thirteen is the age of accountability. I don’t recall Malcolm ever having been religious, but this has also become an abstract belief by society in general. Simply meaning a person becomes of age to grasp right and wrong.
Like the tree of knowledge that bore the forbidden fruit, the man who raised me was preparing to offer me an awareness that would transform me from a child into a woman in his eyes. He’d grown too attached to the little girl with blond hair. It wasn’t an emotional attachment; Malcolm wasn’t capable of forming a parental bond. It was an association of familiarity. A psychopath can learn this behavior in order to employ it.
Especially on their victims.
Lydia is forming this familiarity—this bond—with a sister she never knew. Lydia could love Mia. Lydia would’ve been capable of the deepest love.
She doesn’t belong here.
Nelson walks me to the rental and braces his hand on the roof over the driver-side door. “It’s not your fault.”
