Pauline is handcuffed and led out of the Birds’ apartment to a patrol car below. She’s confessed everything to us and the police officers are wanting to interrogate her.
The rest of us sit, shell-shocked. We’ve moved into the family room, the door to the dining room and the silent carousel closing behind us.
A pair of police detectives sit across from us and ask a litany of questions. Mr. Bird does most of the answering, and I find myself turning away every time he so much as looks in my direction. The detectives ask me several questions too, but I struggle with what to say. Stephen takes over and fills in the gaps.
“We had no idea,” Stephen tells them.
And Collette? She’s in a chair in a corner of the room, still smiling that strange smile of hers. I want her to stop—it’s unnerving. Yet part of me is fighting the urge to run toward her and place my head in her lap.
Freddie hands her a cup of tea. But we lock eyes for a second before he disappears back into the kitchen. He knew about Aunt Clara, about her dying. Did he come to the funeral like Stephen suspected? Is that why he acted so odd toward me when we were introduced, did he recognize me?
But I don’t get a chance to ask Freddie any of these things—not yet—because the door to the kitchen swings closed and he’s leaving me with these people. These people I don’t know, whom I don’t trust.
Collette in the corner, smiling eerily and thanking her lucky stars she’s reclaimed her long-lost daughter.
She is…my long-lost mother.
I’ve been in her presence for two months. Playing board games on the floor. Watching movies on the couch. Taking “Patty” to the playground and caring for the ghost of her child when that ghost had been right in front of her the entire time.
It’s unimaginable—a scenario beyond Jonathan’s worst suspicions. If only I could tell him what’s happened.
Mr. Bird can’t stop staring. He’s answering the detectives’ questions but steering clear of the cocaine incident in Jonathan’s locker, I notice, and my blood boils. How the man continues to lie and dodge bullets is beyond my comprehension.
His face is a whirlwind of conflicted emotions too. He’s terrified of me, but he also wants to beg my forgiveness. Will I ever be able to call him Dad? When the dust settles, what will we say to each other?
I feel as if my soul has been separated from my body. My brain too. The conversations swirl around me. Collette stares maniacally—and I tell myself this isn’t happening. It’s someone else’s mess now since I’m leaving. Patty’s birthday party is over and I can go soon.
But Stephen’s and Mr. Bird’s eyes are shifting to me every few seconds and I have the doomed, sinking feeling that I will never be able to go—unless there’s something I can do about it.
I have parents now. A brother. I have money.
All of this is mine.
But I don’t want any of it.
My mother is insane. My father and brother are manipulative assholes. Stephen knew exactly what he was doing, especially when the DNA results came back. So why act like such a monster? Why threaten me into silence and talk about me and Jonathan in such a horrible way? That last-ditch attempt at rescuing me from Patty’s bed, a little too late.
If that was his way of trying to get back on my good side, of keeping me around, of having his little sister return to his life, he’s royally screwed in the head. He knew how vindictive his father could be, how threatening, and he didn’t do anything to stop him. They never defended Jonathan.
But in Collette’s messed-up way, she meant well. She cared for me and was terrified I would leave, but she cared for me nonetheless. Especially after Jonathan died. But she wasn’t someone I could depend on, her emotions were too erratic.
She thought she could depend on Pauline—the whole family did. And look how terribly that turned out.
She could have killed me. She tried to kill me before as Collette’s daughter.
She killed my fiancé. She also killed Therese.
If I’d stayed as the nanny, she would have tried to get rid of me too.
Oh, in the beginning, how I’d thought this was going to be an easy gig. If only I could go back to that day two months ago and throw out that flyer. If only I had never seen it, if someone else had taken it from the bulletin board instead.
Would Stephen have returned to the apartment and posted another flyer until he finally got my attention? Probably.
His selfish plan for bringing me back into the house has cost me so much. Sure, he regained his sister, and perhaps one day Collette can be made well again. But what about me? I lost Jonathan. I’m not sure how I feel about Aunt Clara—that one hurts. Not to mention finding out I belong to this crazy family.
I wish I’d carried on working at Hearth instead of coming to this place. We could have made ends meet, Jonathan and me. We would have struggled, but we would have found a way.
I should have tossed that flyer in the trash and never spent a single moment wondering about this family. I never should have assumed their world would be so much better than mine.
The family that warned, Special conditions apply. Their need for utmost discretion. They’d meant it, and I’d fallen for it.
Alex Bird is walking toward me now. He’s crossing the living room and sitting beside me as the detectives turn their attention to Collette. She’s still sipping her tea in the corner and hasn’t spoken much, unable to peel her eyes away from me.
I want to push Mr. Bird to one side. Shove him to the floor. He let his wife carry on like this for far too long. He bullied Jonathan and planted drugs in his locker. He blamed me for every misstep.
I jerk my body away from his, but his voice is soft. Low, like he’s trying to be tender, or maybe just pretending—I don’t know anymore, don’t care, still have no idea who to trust—as he stretches his hand toward me and says, “I’m so sorry, Patty…” I flinch. “Sarah,” he corrects himself.
He pulls back his hand. It’s too soon for hugs or consoling, for any sort of father-daughter relationship. I’m not sure if that can ever be possible. He leans forward instead.
“Sarah, I realize this has been a lot—”
I glare at him.
“It’s a lot for us too…” His voice breaks. “Finding out who you are. What Pauline has done…all of it. It’s overwhelming.”
I grit my teeth but keep my voice to a whisper. “I want nothing to do with any of you.”
He shakes and then tries to recover. “Your mother?” He nudges his chin toward Collette. “She needs you.”
“She doesn’t see me,” I tell him. “She only sees Patty, age four.”
“We’ll help her.”
“You’ve done a shit job of that already.”
“We’ll provide for you and your mother for the rest of your lives.”
“More money?” I twist away again, willing him to leave, not wanting to feel his breath close to my skin. “I don’t need anything more from you.”
“Don’t say that,” he pleads. “We’re family. You’re our family.”
“I’m fine on my own.”
I stand abruptly. There’s enough jerk in my stance to catch the detectives’ attention, and they pull their eyes from Collette to study me. Both are giving me a wary look as they try to guess my next move. Am I about to jump off the deep end?
Maybe I am.
Staring hard at the detectives, I point to Collette and say, “This woman needs help.”
The detectives don’t move an inch.
“She needs serious medical attention.” I hiccup, the tears flowing from my eyes now—dammit, Collette—at the hurt and anguish my mother has gone through. What she’s done to herself. What no one has been able to give her until now. I wipe at my eyes. “There’s no way she’s going to get better if these people remain involved. She needs to see a doctor.” I gesture at Alex and Stephen. “They’ve never been able to properly take care of her.”
Mr. Bird protests, but I wave my arm to silence him.
“These men, what I could tell you,” I continue. “The threats they’ve made against me. The drugs they stashed in my fiancé’s locker. Their culpability when they stood by and let that woman”—I shudder thinking about Pauline—“how they let that woman do what she did right under their noses. Twenty years ago she tried to hurt me and she would do it again now.”
One of the detectives cracks a smile, and it’s not one of those mocking grins where he’s undermining me. Where he’s going to get paid off by Alex Bird to drop my accusations. No, he’s smiling because he’s realizing the ammo I’m sitting on. The details I’m willing to spill about the uber-wealthy Mr. Bird and his glass castle. How I’m willing to shatter it and let everyone see this family for who they truly are. The other detective, I’m not so certain.
I cross the room until I’m standing before the detectives. “This isn’t the kind of family I want to belong to,” I tell them. “I’m not staying with these people a second longer. I’ll tell you everything.”
The other detective, the one who’s more cautious, darts his eyes from me to the Bird family as he asks, “Are you sure, Ms. Larsen?”
“I’ll be fine on my own.”
But behind me, and so eerily out of touch with what’s happening, with reality, is Collette’s voice. The words send a chill over my body as I hear her announce wholeheartedly, “That’s my girl.”
And I turn to her, expecting to see the familiar glazed-over look in her eyes, the confusion, but there’s something else. The flicker of wheels turning, her eyes locked on me—is that recognition?—but I can’t be sure because the light in her face only lasts half a second. It was there briefly, and now it’s gone.
But I think I see Collette. And more important, for the first time, I think she sees me. And something stretches between us, over time and space and every year we were separated. The understanding that only a mother and daughter can feel. We’ve made a connection.
I walk straight out of that room and leave the Birds, the detectives too. Slamming the front door, I head for the elevator, all the while wondering if that was my mother’s way of telling me to move on, her way of saying goodbye.
Her way of telling me that while she’s still trapped in her cage, I need to get the hell out of there.