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Tears stream down my face and I can’t.
I can’t.
I just can’t.
I reach for my phone to call Maddy, and it’s not in my pocket. I’d left it in Pax’s study.
Taking Zu’s blanket, I rush back down the hall, and when I get there, Natasha is sitting at the desk. Her face is solemn, her hair pulled into a tight bun.
“Looking for this?” she holds up my phone.
“Yes, thank you,” I reach for it, but she pulls it back.
“No. You can’t have it.”
I’m confused, and because I’m so addled already, it takes a minute to see the look on Natasha’s face. It’s cold, perfunctory, and it’s not good.
She smiles, a slow grin. “Awww. You’re getting it now.”
“You’re in on this,” I saw slowly. “How…”
My voice trails off.
She smiles again.
“Let me tell you a story. Come sit down.” She motions to the two chairs in front of the desk and hesitantly, I sit down. “There you go. I want to share a story with you. Will you listen?”
I don’t have a choice. I nod.
“Good. There was once a girl. Let’s call her Natasha, shall we? She lived a dry existence, going to college and then working as an accountant. It was so boring, so lifeless. And then, one day, she saw a story on the news. A man was convicted of killing a young mother, but it wasn’t the man at all. It was her own son who did it, you see. I could see the kind look in his eyes, and I felt so sorry for him, that the justice system had failed him so miserably. What crime had he committed, really? Other than fall in love with a woman and try to show her? Her son overreacted and bumped the trigger and it was his fault she died. Not the kind man’s. So I started writing him letters in prison.”
I literally feel my eyes widen as I realize what she’s saying.
“So you’re… you’re…”
“Shhh,” she tells me, and she’s looking past me, her gaze unfocused. “He’s a wonderful man, Mila. He’s so kind, and so forgiving. He took his admiration of Susanna a little too far, and he shouldn’t have come into their house. He knows that. But that’s all he did that was wrong. Pax is the one who pulled the trigger. Not Leroy.”
“Pax was seven years old,” I say slowly. “Leroy broke into the house with a gun, and forced Susanna to give him oral sex in front of Pax.”
Natasha looks up at me sharply.
“You don’t know what happened. You weren’t there.”
“Maybe not,” I tell her. “But I was with Pax at the therapist’s office when he remembered. I was with him when he remembered aloud, everything that Leroy did that day. He carved Pax’s hand with an X. Did you know that? He tried to kill him, but he said he couldn’t kill a kid.”
“See?” Natasha is triumphant now, and her eyes have a strange light in them. “See? He can’t kill a kid, because he is a kind man. He just can’t do it.”
“Is he the one who arranged for Zuzu to be taken?” I ask her. “Did he escape? Does he have her?”
She’s disdainful now. “Of course not. He’s still wrongfully imprisoned. And I arranged it.”
She’s crazy. I’ve always wondered about the women who wrote to inmates after they’d been imprisoned. And Natasha is crazy. She had just done a very good job of hiding it.
“How did you come to work for William?” I ask her. “Was that part of the plan?”
“Everything is part of the plan,” she answers and she’s proud of that. “Originally, we thought we’d hurt Pax through William, but then we saw a better way. Once Zuzu was born.”
“You’ve been planning this for so long?” I’m breathless.
