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Vanessa jumped to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Mr. DeWinter. I know it was wrong, and my conscience barely let me sleep last night. That’s why I went back there today, so I could be hypnotized the way she wanted,” she said, gesturing toward Mei-li. She gulped. “I didn’t mean to fight being hypnotized yesterday. But I was so afraid you’d find out that I...” She trailed off miserably.
Dirk suddenly found himself judge and jury. “Find out what?” he demanded in harsh tones.
Mei-li stepped forward and put a hand on Dirk’s arm, holding him back. “You did something,” she told the other woman with certainty. “But it had nothing to do with the kidnapping.”
Vanessa’s mouth dropped open. “You think I—” Her astonished gaze moved to Dirk, then back to Mei-li. “I love Linden and Laurel.” She choked on a sob. “I would never... How could you think I—”
“But you did something,” Mei-li insisted. “Something you were afraid would come out if you were hypnotized. What?”
Vanessa’s gaze darted from Mei-li’s understanding eyes to Dirk’s implacable ones, and a hot tide of color rose in her cheeks. The color of shame. “I...I...spanked Linden that day. Oh, I know it was wrong,” she cried as a thundercloud descended on Dirk’s face.
“I know when you hired me I promised I’d never spank your daughters, Mr. DeWinter. And I swear I never did it before. But Linden...first she wouldn’t drink her milk at breakfast, no matter what I did. So I finally gave up. Then when I gave the girls their midmorning snack at their little table—you know how they love to watch the harbor through the window—Laurel ate her half a banana, no problem, but Linden stubbornly refused. Said she wasn’t hungry. I never force them to eat if they’re not hungry—you should never do that with children,” she said as an aside. “So I told her, okay, if she didn’t want it, I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. I was going to eat it myself.”
She stopped to drag in enough air to continue. “Then a half hour before lunch, all of a sudden Linden plopped herself down at her table, said she was hungry and wanted a banana. I didn’t have a banana to give her. There were only two left that morning, and you ate one with your breakfast cereal, Mr. DeWinter, remember? The other one I’d cut up for the girls’ snack. But when I offered Linden a pear instead, she threw a screaming fit, carrying on as if I were starving her. I offered her an apple, some grapes, a mango, even. Usually Linden loves mangoes, but not that day. I even told her I’d make a marshmallow face out of those little marshmallows she loves, but no. She wanted a banana, and she was going to cry until she got one.”
Vanessa was practically in tears herself as she continued. “The last straw was when I brought her some strawberry-orange-banana juice in a sippy cup—she loves that juice!—and she angrily knocked the cup right out of my hand. Even with the lid, it leaked on the carpet, and I...” Vanessa buried her face in her hands. “I lost it. I just lost it,” she sobbed.
It had all the hallmarks of the unhappy truth, and Dirk glanced at Mei-li to see if she agreed with him. But her gaze was glued to Vanessa’s bowed head. “So you lost it,” Mei-li said. “What exactly did you do?” Though her words were a demand, there was an underlying note of understanding the other woman responded to.
Vanessa looked up again, misery in every line of her face. But there was a little relief, too, as if she was glad to finally get the truth off her chest. “I took Linden from her chair, turned her around and smacked her bottom twice.” She faced Dirk. “It couldn’t have hurt her, Mr. DeWinter, I swear! I didn’t hit her hard, and her pull-ups cushioned it anyway. Linden was so startled for a moment she stopped crying. But that didn’t last long. She started crying again, this time for Nana, and then Laurel did, too. I was at my wit’s end, so I...”
“So you...?” Mei-li prompted when Vanessa faltered.
“I put them in their cribs in their bedroom and left them there. Crying. I closed the door so I wouldn’t have to hear them and came back into the living room to clean up the mess. I was on my hands and knees, blotting up the juice from the carpet, when the doorbell rang. I thought it was lunch, so I quickly went to throw the dish towel in the kitchen. When I came back, Chet was already in the foyer answering the front door, and...from that point on, everything happened exactly as I told you the day the girls were kidnapped.”
