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“Some people just aren’t fit to be mothers,” she says at last, like that’s an explanation I should somehow understand.
“What did you do to him?”
I try to imagine it, those little tastes of a life she got with Ben—areallife, not the hidden, secret thing she had—before they were ripped away from her over and over and over again. The adrenaline pumping through her chest that very first time she stepped into our home, trailed her fingers across my vanity. Ran my brush through her hair, leaving her own strands tangled in with mine and smiling at the knowledge that I would never know. Looking into my mirror and seeing her own reflection, her confidence growing as she flipped through my closet, tried on my clothes. Imagining herself in the pictures with Ben instead of me.
“Neither of you wanted to be parents,” she says. “Not really. Not when it came down to it.”
I imagine her lying in our bed, fingers dancing across Ben’s bare chest. Mason’s cries erupting from the other room—and him having to get up, leave her there.
He was always a fussy baby.
“There are so many people out there who would love to have a child,” she says. “You have no idea, Isabelle. People would kill for it, but it’s not for everybody.”
She didn’t want to share Ben anymore. She didn’t want to share him with me, with Mason. With anybody.
“Tell me where he is,” I say, hands shaking. I take a step forward, closer to her. She’s backed up against the coffee table now; there’s nowhere left to go. “If you tell me, I can forget about this. I can forget about you.”
“It’s for the best,” she says. “For everybody.”
I take another step, closer. “Tell me where he is.”
“Ben told me what you did to your sister,” she continues. “It was only a matter of time before you did something to your son, too. You know that, right?”
“Tell me where he is!” I shout, a blinding rage coursing through me. It feels just like that last time—my arms, my hands, tingling withadrenaline; the roiling anger building and building right before I lost control.
“It’s okay,” she says, smiling. “Isabelle, he’s in a better place.”
I hear those words, and I suddenly see it so clearly: Valerie on her computer, reading that article, staring at that picture of me onstage. My bloodshot eyes soaking in the scowls and the stares for just the tiniest chance at the truth. Looking out at the audience, pleading into the microphone, and eventually, just absorbing the whispers so deep that finally, I believed them, too.
I think of Valerie knowing that—knowing the truth, what she did, what she took from me—and still typing that comment anyway, dangling it in front of me before coming to her senses and erasing it forever.
I think of her looking at me in that church, head tilted to the side as she gestured to the candles flickering in the dark. The pity in her eyes—the nerve, thearrogance—and suddenly, I feel my body lunge at her before I can even realize what I’m doing, those words ringing loudly in my ears.
He’s in a better place.
I feel the sudden jolt of impact, our bodies tangling together and falling in unison until we collapse onto the coffee table and it buckles beneath us, the sound of glass shattering mixed with a sickening skull crack.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
TWO DAYS LATER
Thump-thump-thump.
My pupils are drilling into a spot in the carpet. A spot with no significance, really, other than the fact that my eyes seem to like it here. I listen to the thumping, the beating, the steady thrum of a heartbeat in my ears. A rhythmic echo, like slipping beneath the bathwater and listening to it pulse.
Thump-thump.
I look up, blink a few times, the spot dissolving into the carpet again.
“Isabelle?”Thump-thump-thump.“Isabelle, I see your car outside.”
I realize now that someone is at the door, knocking. Roscoe is barking, his tail wagging heatedly against the hardwood floor, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to squelch the stinging. Then I stand up from the couch and make my way over.
“That’s enough,” I say, patting down his ears. My chest squeezes as I reach for the door, even though I already know who it is. Even though I’ve been expecting it, expectinghim, while I’ve watched the world go by through my window like a time-lapse video for the last two days.
“Detective Dozier,” I say, cracking the door open and registering his familiar frame on my porch: the heavy limbs and hardened eyes. “Good to see you.”
“Yeah, hi,” he says, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops again. “I’ve been out here for five minutes. You didn’t hear me knocking?”
