Page 79 of City of Liars

Liv stopped reading. The journal trembled in her hand. “Oh my God.”

“Jesus.” I drummed my fingers on my knee, trying to contain the enormity of my emotions. “It’s his confession.” But to what? Stealing a child? Or murdering a man?

Ella didn’t say anything, and when I stole a glance at her, tears shone in her eyes.

Liv took her grandmother’s hand. “Are you sure you want to keep going, Grandma?”

“We found this for a reason. If I’ve been living a lie all these years, I need to know.”

“All right.” Liv turned the page. “Just tell me if you need me to stop. I don’t want to read more than you can handle.”

“Darling.” She raised her free hand to stroke Liv’s cheek. “I’m stronger than I look. Keep going.”

Clearing her throat, Liv went on.

From the moment we brought the child home, I had my doubts. And seeing May’s devastation compounded them. I don’t believe, as Elizabeth does, that the woman’s goal is to extort us or make away with our rightful child. Nor do I believe she is delusional. I believe she is heartbroken. I remember that feeling well, when we lost Ella. In fact, I feel it still, as I wonder if the child Lizzie tucks in each night is our daughter.

“Holy shit,” I said before I thought better of it. “Oh—sorry, Mrs. Carter… Ella.”

She shot me a rueful look. “There’s no need to apologize. I’ve heard worse. And given what’s in front of us right now, I’d say some foul language is the least of our concerns. Go ahead, Liv, sweetheart.”

Squeezing her grandmother’s hand in comfort, Liv obeyed.

I’ve been dreaming of the daughter I lost…of Ella. I’ve come to love the sweetheart I imagine might be Lily. Her face lights up with joy when I come through the door each evening. She sits on my lap, enraptured, when we take her to see the Philharmonic or the Symphony.

At night, though, I dream of the child Lizzie bore me. Not as my darling looked when she disappeared, all chubby cheeks and blond ringlets, but older...the age she would be now. The baby fat is gone from her cheeks, and her hair reaches past her shoulders in a fall of loose curls.

“Daddy,” she tells me each night in that sweet, high voice of hers, “Lily’s mama misses her; send her home. Tell Mama she has to let me go.”

I worry that she is dead, that this is her spirit communicating with me from beyond the grave. For surely if she lived, we would have found her.

“Oh,” Ella said in a small voice, a hand pressed to her lips. “Oh, my.”

Liv read on, her tone tentative.

I’ve tried to tell Lizzie this, but she weeps and tells me I’m being cruel. She says that regardless of whether my suspicions are correct, the child will have a better life with us. Why would I condemn a little one to an existence in the tenements, without enough food to eat or clothes to wear? We can offer the girl so much more, she says.

It’s true we can provide the child with material things. But if we have stolen her, is that any substitute for returning her to the bosom of her family?

Liv’s voice caught, and I looked over at her. She was wiping her eyes.

“Do you want me to read for a while?” I asked.

Wordless, she nodded, and I turned the page, willing my voice to stay steady.

I took Ella to the park—Lizzie refuses to trust a nanny with her, not that I blame her—and May was there again with her older child. Susi is her name. The girl tried to get May to come away, but she refused and cursed me in Yiddish. Ella was terrified, and I couldn’t help but wonder if some part of her understood the woman’s words. She hid her face and clung to me…

“I remember this.” Ella sounded amazed. “Seeing the woman, so thin and desperate, and realizing she wished my father ill. I remember she had a girl with her who kept begging her to leave.”

“You remember?” I slid my gaze to her, surprised.

“I didn’t—before. I was so young...only about four or five. But hearing you read this is bringing it all back.” She shook her head, pressing her hand to her lips again. “Go on. Please.”

I’ve spoken repeatedly to Lizzie of the woman’s distress, but she’s refused to listen. And how can I take the child from Lizzie against her will, breaking her heart twice? She grieved so in the year Ella was missing. Then she became overwrought from the trial, and insisted I use all my influence with Judge Wheeler. I did comply. But I fear May might be right, that the girl who sleeps in Ella’s bed might not be our precious child, though I have vowed to love her as if she were my own.

I cannot stop thinking of the call we received from the man who demanded a ransom, the one whose voice I could have sworn I recognized. But though we waited and waited, he never contacted us again. And now I realize, with all the racket at the Club about MacEwan’s disappearance: he was the one. He took our daughter, just days after I showed him her photograph. Did I plant the idea in his head?

All I know is, this is my fault. For now he is dead, doubtless at the hands of the ruffians to whom he was in debt, and I find myself perhaps complicit in treachery. Torn between my love for my wife and my moral compass, misdirected though it has become.