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“She doesn’t know, does she?”said Jane. “Who her real father was.”
The two women sat facing each other across the kitchen table, the teapot and cups and the plate of lemon bars spread out between them. Such a calm and domestic setting for an interrogation.
“I’ll show you her birth certificate,” said Julianne. “I can show you photos of me holding her, right after she was born, and photos don’t lie. I can prove I’m Amy’s mother.”
“I’m sure the photos are real, Mrs. Antrim. I’m sure you really are Amy’s mother.” Jane paused, her gaze fixed on Julianne. “But the real Amy’s dead. Isn’t she?”
Julianne went very still. Jane could almost see tiny cracks starting to form in that mask she had so carefully maintained.
“How did your real daughter die?” Jane asked quietly.
“Sheismy daughter.”
“But she’s not Amy. The remains of your daughter—the real Amy—were found two years ago, in a state park in Maine. They were just a short distance from where you once lived with your boyfriend, Bruce Flagler. A carpenter who helped renovate the kitchen of Professor Eloise Creighton. Bruce had a record of domestic abuse and we know he assaultedyou. Is that how little Amy died? Did he kill her?”
Julianne said nothing.
“The police didn’t know who those bones belonged to. To them, she was just Baby Girl Doe, left in a shallow grave in the woods. But now we know she did have a name: Amy. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been for you, losing that little girl. Knowing you were never going to hold her in your arms again. After something like that, I can’t imagine even wanting to be alive.”
“He said it was an accident,” Julianne whispered. “He said she fell down the stairs. I could never be sure what the truth was…” She took a deep breath and stared out the window, as if looking back to that day. To that moment of loss. “I did want to die. Itriedto die.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Iwouldhave. But then that night, he brought her home. She was so small, so scared. Sheneededme.”
“He brought you another little Amy, to keep you quiet. A replacement Amy for the one he broke. That’s why you never told the police. Why you gave him an alibi for the night he kidnapped her, all so you could keep your new little girl. But she wasn’t yours. Did Bruce ever tell you how he killed the mother? How he wrapped his hands around her throat?”
“He said he panicked. He said when the child screamed, the mother woke up, and all he could do was—”
“Strangle her, with the only weapon he had. His hands.”
“I don’t know how it happened! All I knew was this little girl needed me to love her. Take care of her. It took time for her to forget the other woman, but she finally did. She learned to loveme. She learnedIwas her mother.”
“She also had a father, Julianne. A father who loved her too, and would never stop looking for her. So you and Bruce packed up and left Maine. You changed your names, moved on to Massachusetts, to New Hampshire, and finally to upstate New York. That’s where you finally managed to leave him. You took your little girl and you moved to Boston, and here, for the first time in your life, everything finally goes right for you. You marry a decent man. You live in this nice house. It’s all perfect—until Amy has her accident. It’s a completely random bit of bad luck that put her in the hospital. But it changed everything.”
Julianne’s face revealed no nervous twitch, no glint of panic in her eyes, and Jane suddenly wondered if she’d gotten this all wrong. If Julianne would somehow pull out the proof of her own innocence.
No, I’ve got it right. I know I have.
“Amy ends up in the intensive care unit, where Sofia Suarez is her nurse. Sofia sees the scar on Amy’s chest from a childhood heart operation. She sees that Amy has a rare blood type, AB negative. And she remembers a patient she took care of nineteen years ago. A three-year-old girl with AB negative blood who had heart surgery. She remembers that girl very clearly because of the shocking thing that happened to her. Little Lily Creighton was abducted from her home and never found. Now, nineteen years later, Sofia sees Amy’s surgical scar, from an operation that’s nowhere in her medical record. She notes her rare blood type.”
“How can you possibly know all this?”
“Because Sofia Suarez left the clues I needed to put it all together: Her online search for blood types. Her search for James Creighton. Her call to an old nursing colleague in California, who also remembers the kidnapping of Lily very well. But Dr. Antrim was Sofia’s friend, and she couldn’t raise her suspicions with him. So she asked her questions quietly, questions that must have alarmed you. About why Amy’s heart surgery wasn’t mentioned in her medical record.”
“It’s because we moved so many times! Amy and I lived in different places, different states. Records get lost.”
“And why didn’t you donate blood to your own daughter, when she clearly needed it? Sofia must have wondered that too. I don’t know what excuse you gave, but I do know the real reason. You couldn’t give her blood because you’re O positive, Julianne. Something Sofia found out when she called a friend in medical records to look in your chart. If you’re not her mother, then who are Amy’srealparents? Sofia knew the only way to find out is with DNA.
“So she searched for James Creighton. She tracked down his old address and sent a letter that was eventually forwarded to him. That’s how he learned his daughter, Lily, might be alive. The man wasn’t stalking a random woman. He was trying to find out if Amy washis own daughter.”
“Mom, I’ve got it,” said Amy. She’d come back downstairs and she walked into the kitchen holding a photo album, which she set down on the table.
“There,” said Julianne, pushing the album to Jane. “Open it.Lookat it.”
The binding was about to fall apart and the pages were brittle. Gently, Jane opened the album cover and saw a faded photo of a young Julianne cradling a black-haired infant in her arms.
“You see?” said Julianne. “That’s me and Amy. She’s only a fewmonths old there, but she already has a head full of hair. Beautiful black hair.” She looked at her daughter. “Just like she has now.”
