Chapter Forty

I waited until the Xanax did its work.

Ricky didn’t understand at first what was happening to him. Right to the end, he was a fool. His mind spun like a merry-go-round; his muscles grew thick and heavy; his words slurred. When he finally realized what I’d done to him, he came at me in a clumsy charge and wrapped his hands around my throat. Despite my plans, he nearly won. I kicked and fought him, but even drugged, he had the steel-strong grip of a mine worker. I was already blacking out when his fingers finally loosened from my windpipe, and he fell backward.

I stood over him, coughing and choking, as he lay unconscious on the floor. In his ridiculous costume, he was more beast than man. A bully. A brute. I felt no mercy toward him. I thought about him holding you by the neck, Shelby, and my heart turned ice cold.

I didn’t hesitate. I took my gun, and with two shots to his head, I made sure he would never hurt you again.

Afterward, I burned the photographs and negatives from seven years earlier. I brought my old camera to the lake and threw it out into the water as far as I could. There would be no evidence to tie me to the Ursulina murders. No headlines about the girl who became the monster, no publicity, no magazine covers with my face, no new Ben Malloy documentary on NBC. Actually, Ricky did me a favor by taking out his revenge on Ajax using my own disguise. No one would believe that Rebecca Colder, not even a month away from giving birth, had vivisected Ajax. So no one would believe I’d committed the other murders, either. They would remain unsolved. Four victims of a monster whose legend would only grow with time.

That was what everyone wanted. They wanted the myth.

Of course, that didn’t mean I was free. I knew that. I was still a killer.

When I got back to the trailer, I took a chair outside to wait for Darrell. I was calm at that moment. Serene. It was the middle of a bitter fall night, with snow swirling around me, but I didn’t feel cold. I breathed crisp air into my lungs and listened for the Ursulina, but the beast had gone away. I was my own woman again, ready for what came next.

Darrell arrived at dawn.

I could see his headlights approaching on the dirt road through the dusting of snow. He got out of the car, and when he saw me, a huge grin broke across his face, and he exclaimed in relief, “Rebecca, thank God! I’ve been looking everywhere. Are you okay?”

He rushed toward me, but he stopped when he saw the revolver at my feet. His smile vanished.

“You’ll want to bag that,” I told him. “It’s evidence.”

His eyes took on a stricken look. His face turned ashen. Without saying a word, without picking up the gun, he ripped open the trailer door and ran inside, and a moment later, I heard his howl of despair. The entire Airstream shuddered as Darrell pounded his fists on the walls.

When he came back outside to confront me, tears were rolling down his cheeks. He shook his head over and over. “Rebecca, why?”

“You know why. He was going to kill me. He was going to kill Shelby. Nothing you did would ever keep him away from us.”

“I would have put him in jail.”

“For how long, Darrell? Six months? A year? Then he would have gotten out and come back.”

“Rebecca, I can’t hide this. This is murder. I can’t protect you from it.”

“I would never ask you to. I knew what I was doing. I made a plan and carried it out. I drugged my ex-husband and shot him in the head. I’m guilty. I accept the consequences.”

With another awful groan, Darrell fell to his knees in front of my chair. He reached out and hugged me tightly, and I hugged him back. I felt miserable, seeing his disappointment in me. This was my sin, my crime, but he felt responsible, like a father who’d failed his child. Somehow, he should have been able to save me. Keep me from harm.

I understood how he felt. I understood only too well.

He kept his hands on my shoulders, with his wretched face right in front of mine. I watched dread spread across his features, a horror of things unknown and unsaid. Then he asked me the question I knew was coming.

“Rebecca, where is Shelby?”

“She’s safe, Darrell,” I told him, my voice cracking, my heart breaking. “My baby is safe.”

“Where is she? I have to know where she is.”

“She was in danger. I needed to protect her.”

“How? How did you do that?”

“I took her away from here.”

“Where? You need to tell me where you took her.”

“To a place where no one can ever hurt her again.”

Darrell put his hands on both sides of my head. He leaned his forehead against mine. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Rebecca, please don’t say that. You can’t tell me that. Rebecca, what did you do?”

*

What did I do?

I did the only thing I could do, Shelby. I saw only one way to save you. And to save myself.

I wasn’t going to be free to raise you. I was going to prison for murder, for years at least, maybe for the rest of my life. Even if someone from Black Wolf County agreed to take you in, that wasn’t the childhood I wanted for you. Do you think I could live with you seeing me once a month and putting your little hand against mine on the other side of a sheet of glass?

No.

My other choice was to let the state take you away. Except I couldn’t pretend or fool myself. I wasn’t going to have a choice. Murderers don’t get to pick the family to adopt their baby. That’s not how it works. The state was going to take my little girl away and give you to total strangers in some other part of the country, and I would never even know who they were. I would sit in jail, and for the rest of my life, I would have no idea where my daughter was, or what your name was, or whose family you’d joined, or whether they were good to you, or whether you were happy and safe. You were going to disappear from me as completely as if you’d never existed at all. I couldn’t bear that thought.

So I put you in my car, and I drove you far away from here. I drove for hours to the other side of the state. That drive is still so vivid to me, Shelby. That long, long drive. The road was ours, nothing but the glow of my headlights and the immense black forest and the stars overhead. You slept peacefully, with no idea that your little life was about to change forever.

I drove to Mittel County. I drove to Tom Ginn.

I arrived after midnight at his house in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place, because the house looked like a church, glowing with stained glass, with high walls and a steeple rising over the white roof. But when I got out and checked the mailbox, I saw that this was where Tom lived. I took you out of your car seat and secured you in that silly little Easter basket among the paper curlicues. I couldn’t bear to go back home and see the basket sitting there, like a reminder that you were gone.

I put the basket—I put you—at Tom’s doorstep. And I rang the bell.

Part of me wanted to run. Drive away. I thought about leaving you there in his care anonymously, like a gift from God. I wasn’t sure I could bear to see his face again when he answered the door. What would he say? What would I say? I was terrified that he would reject me, that he would reject you. As I stood there in the cold, it all seemed suddenly absurd, that I could ask this man with whom I’d spent a single night nine months earlier to take my baby. To accept a child into his life from a woman who was about to confess to him that she’d killed three men and was planning to kill a fourth. By all rights, he should arrest me, not help me.

But I remembered how I’d felt in January—that if I were in trouble, I could go to Tom, and he would suspend everything else in his life to be there for me. I still believed that. I hoped I was right.

Except of all things, he didn’t answer the door. I rang the bell again and again before I had to accept the fact that he wasn’t home. I’d driven all this way, and Tom wasn’t there. I had no idea if he was on patrol, gone for the night, looking after his father, or on vacation somewhere thousands of miles away. I didn’t know what to do. I sat down on the doorstep next to you, listening to the wind, watching the night, wondering what I could possibly do next when I had nowhere else to turn.

How long did I sit there? I don’t know. It felt like hours. I took off my coat because you were cold, and I wrapped you up in it, and I shivered. Then I cried. And I prayed. God had no reason at all to listen to the prayers of someone like me, but I hoped that maybe, maybe, maybe, he would answer my prayers for you, Shelby. You had done nothing wrong. You were innocent, pure, and perfect.

To this day, I believe God listened, because it was in the midst of my prayers that Tom came home. Down the road, I saw a truck coming at high speed. He didn’t even pull into his own driveway. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, got out, and saw me. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He ran—he ran!—up the steps, and in the next moment, we were holding each other, kissing like lost lovers. If you ever wonder whether one night can change your life, Shelby, I swear to you it can. I’d spent one night with this man nine months earlier, and I was still madly in love with him. I’d been in love with him ever since that night.

Do I dare say it out loud?

He loved me, too. I saw it in his eyes. I felt it in how he kissed me.

When we breathlessly broke apart, he said in a rush: “I was at the lake. I was in my boat out on the water, and—this sounds crazy, crazy!—an owl flew down and sat on the end of the boat. It was like a sign that I had to go home. Someone was waiting for me. And here you are. God, here you are! What’s going on, Rebecca? Tell me how I can help you.”

I bent down to that little Easter basket and lifted you up and cradled you against my breast. “Meet Shelby,” I said.

Tom stared into your eyes, and you stared into his. Just like him and me, it was love at first sight for the two of you. He didn’t ask why I’d brought you there. He didn’t ask if you were his. He beamed at you with a sweetness I didn’t think was possible in this cruel world. He reached out in that moment and took you from me and pressed your cheek against his soft brown beard.

“Shelby,” he murmured, with a kind of reverence in his voice.

And I knew. There was still so much to explain, so much to tell him, so much I had to ask, so many questions and answers. We had hours ahead of us to talk, but I knew right then and there when I saw you in his arms.

Everything was going to be all right.

*

So you see, Shelby, by the time Darrell found me at the trailer, I was already at peace. I’d made peace with my past, with my crimes, with my choices. You had a father who would love you and care for you, and no matter where I was, I would know that you were safe with him.

That’s why I was able to tell the terrible lie I did.

Because I had to lie. We both did. Tom and I made a sacred vow between us, a promise sealed with a kiss and blessed by God, an oath to keep you safe. It was also a crime. He knew what I’d done, because I told him. I confessed, holding nothing back. By letting me go, he was risking his career and his future. If anyone found out about us, he would have been ruined. They would have put him in prison like me. They would have taken you away, too, and everything we’d planned would have been lost.

So he lied. He had to erase me from your story. There was no Rebecca Colder, no night of love in a blizzard last January. The woman who left the baby at his doorstep was a mystery. She put that sweet child there, thinking she’d left you at a church, and then she drove off into the night and disappeared. All that remained was the owl. The sign from God that brought Tom home to find you. The little girl who would become his daughter.

And I lied, too. I told the worst lie of all.

Rebecca, what did you do?

I lied to Darrell when he asked me that.

I lied again to Norm when he asked me the same question later that day. Rebecca, what did you do?

I lied to the judge when I pled guilty and accepted my punishment.

If I hadn’t lied, they never would have stopped looking for you. Rumors would have spread across the state. Questions would have been asked. Sooner or later, they would have found Tom, and they would have found you.

You wouldn’t have the wonderful life he gave you, Shelby.

So I had to lie.

Rebecca, what did you do?

I lied. No matter what it did to me to say those words, I lied.

I told them that I’d buried my little girl in the woods and that they would never, ever find her.