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What did it say about me that the first time in my life I had an easy time making friends, it was on a haunted island in the middle of nowhere?
“Be careful when you meet Hardcastle and Kapoor,” Abby added. “You don’t know how far people might go to protect their secrets.”
“But if whatever happened was supernatural, then they didn’t do anything,” I said. “Why would they need to hide it, other than people not believing them?”
“We don’t know what happened,” Abby said gravely. “And we don’t know who’s to blame.”
INTERVIEW
Sophia Novak
SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
ASHFORD: Abby told you she’d stolen the bird.
SOPHIA: She told me that you’d hidden it from her.
ASHFORD: It was for her own protection.
Sophia looks unconvinced.
SOPHIA: You took her and Miranda in after their parents were killed. You raised them. I imagine you got to know them pretty well in that time.
ASHFORD: What is your point?
SOPHIA: How exactly did you think that forbidding Abby from going to that island, and refusing to tell her why, would play out? Of course she went.
ASHFORD: I hoped that she would trust me.
Sophia sits back. Her gaze is cool, unimpressed with this declaration.
SOPHIA: And should she have trusted you, Dr. Ashford? Or was she right to question?
Ashford doesn’t answer. He folds his hands.
ASHFORD: Do you know how Abby and her sister came to be in my care, Ms. Novak?
SOPHIA: Their parents died.
ASHFORD: Their parents were torn apart. I was already pursuing the creature responsible, but I was too late. I found the girls on the road, screaming for help. By the time I got to the house, there was little left. Their father had to be identified through DNA. I did everything I could to keep them safe, but the Beast found them again. Killed Miranda. So perhaps you can understand why I might have been a bit overprotective of my other—
SOPHIA: Daughter?
Her voice is soft, not cowed but kind.
ASHFORD: Charge.
SOPHIA: Except you weren’t just protecting her. Maybe it started that way. But by the time Miranda gave you that bird, you’d been lying to protect her so long that you had to keep lying. You had to lie to protect yourself. Because if she found out the truth, she would never trust you again.
6
I STOOD OUTSIDEDr. Kapoor’s office, the muffled voices inside offering only scattered intelligible words. Liam leaned against the wall opposite me, his arms crossed and his tongue worrying at his lip ring in a nervous habit. Every once in a while it clicked against his teeth. I should have found it annoying, but on Liam it was endearing.
“What do you suppose her odds of survival are?” I asked him, trying to break the tension.
“Oh, fifty-fifty,” Liam said. “In her position, I’d rather try swimming back to the mainland than be in there with Kapoor.”
The door opened, and Abby stepped out, followed by Dr. Kapoor. Dr. Kapoor looked distinctly irritated, which Abby seemed accustomed to.
