Help roared toward me on a silent wave, sirens swallowed by the house alarm. I watched through sheets of fun-house glass—struggled to focus on the night-black road, the swirls of blue and red lights pouring from the dark cup of the tree line.
The lawn filled up with squad cars, and Darrow was there, yanking me off the porch, yelling at me to tell him what under God’s blue canopy was happening inside that shrieking house. I blinked up at his narrow, horrified face and it all came out: Uncle Peter’s raving. The truth about him and June and Nat. Aunt Mattie’s slow descent into madness, sparking to life in a child’s too-familiar face, ending at the bloody hands of her own husband.
It took four cops to pry Ben away from his mother.
“It’s for his own safety, honey,” Darrow said as they guided him past us—the wreck of my cousin, quivering and handcuffed. “I’ll get those bracelets off him as soon as he’s calm.”
He didn’t bother extending that promise with regards to Ben’s parents.
The ambulance arrived next, followed by my grandmother. More wailing, more explaining, all through the barrier anchored around my mind. Aunt Mattie rolled by, strapped to a stretcher, semiconscious and struggling to speak. Expending what remained of her strength in a vain attempt to shake off the policeman’s grip as he cuffed her wrist to the gurney frame. The ambulance doors slammed on her wail. My uncle, at least, went quietly.
Still more vehicles rolled up the driveway, bearing plainclothes detectives and white-coated, stone-faced technicians. Then, the hospital. The submission to bright lights and blood pressure cuffs, one image after another, blipping in disconnected, clinical flashbulbs.
“You’ve got a nasty bump, some bruising and laceration, but no concussion. Nothing too serious.” The voice was a soft, sweet drawl. Its owner loomed into view, a bright-eyed nurse wrapped in cheerful scrubs. “We’ll give you something for the pain, get you on your feet in no time. What did you have for supper tonight, honey?”
“I didn’t.” I hadn’t even gotten around to eating the sandwich at Ben’s earlier that day; what with the events of the afternoon, I’d been running on little more than adrenaline, force of will, and endorphins. All of which were slowly, finally, ebbing.
“What about dinner? Breakfast? When was the last time you ate something? Honey?” The smile faded from her face as she checked my color, shone a light in my unfocused eyes. Dropped off altogether at my muttered reply.
Shit got real after that. The oxygen and IV needles, the cold compress shock to the back of my neck. Discussion of acute stress reaction, of possible dissociation, depersonalization, the risk of PTSD. The blink in and out of consciousness when they finally let me rest. My grandmother’s quiet tears.
“I didn’t know about any of this. Lord, if I’d known, I’d—dear, tell me the truth. Did you know how bad this was?”
“No, ma’am.” Teddy’s broken voice pierced through my slow-drip haze. “Ben said she had trouble with her mother, but I didn’t know details before today. She never told me. I’m so sorry.”
“This is not your fault, young man. As for Eleanor…” Grandma’s voice seethed over the name. “She will reap what she’s sown. Pass me my handbag, please—I need to use the FaceTime.”
I drifted out again, woke to Darrow, a flurry of fury, of gestures and whispered profanity as he paced the room with his ever-buzzing phone.
“A misdirection, sir. She all but confessed to her family—the son’s and husband’s stories match up. Waiting on the third witness to wake up, but she’s—yes, sir. Said a bit during transport last night—enough to piece together a probable—yes, I’ll get her official statement as soon as I can. We think Mrs. Hansen struck the victim with her vehicle unintentionally, then took her on up the driveway and dumped her off the edge out there. No, the cliffs—the ones at the top of the property. Coroner’s report notes pre- and postmortem injuries consistent with sudden impact, which we’d previously assumed was sustained on rocks or boulders. Very likely that was the intention, yes. Carried her things down to the woods afterward. Yes, sir—a hair clip of some kind, beneath the driver’s seat. Yes, trace amounts. A few strands, but—I’m on it. I’ll get that to the lab today if I have to drive it over myself.”
I shut down at that, closed my eyes and slid back into painless slumber before he noticed I’d stirred. Woke later to Teddy asleep in the bedside chair, his face marred by tearstains and fatigue. Woke again to Grandma’s vicious snarls, jerked fully awake all at once at my mother’s hysterical protests, closer than any FaceTime call. Their voices drifted in from the hallway, through the partially open door. She was here.
“—and what you’ve done, Eleanor, will not be swept aside,” Grandma said. “You will ease up on that child.”
“What I’ve done? What have I ever done besides push her toward the best possible future? I was setting her up for a life. Independence. Self-sufficiency. So she’d never have to rely on anyone who’d fail her the way you failed me.”
Silence. I quietly scooted sideways on the narrow mattress, leaned over the railing as if closing such a miniscule gap would make a difference.
“I knew nothing of that before this evening,” Grandma finally said. “If you’d told me then—”
“I couldn’t tell you because I couldn’t trust you’d take me seriously. You barely believe me now—if I’d come to you when I was sixteen? Not a chance. So what does that tell you about yourself, Mother, when you really get down into the—”
The call button slid off the bed as I shifted my weight, hit the floor with a clatter that cut their argument short. Grandma appeared in the doorway for a split second before she was displaced by my mother, who flew toward me as if she’d been launched from a cannon. Her clothes were rumpled; her hair was held back from her flushed, bare face by a plum silk scarf. She smelled like coffee and hand sanitizer, no trace of her usual heady perfume. I must have been out longer than I’d realized if she’d had time to make it all the way back home.
“Amy. My God, are you okay? Your head—”
“I’ll be fine.” I slid a hand through my hair experimentally, cringed when my fingertips brushed the swollen, tender bump. She settled on the mattress beside me, hovered over me like a worried hawk. “Is Dad—”
“He’s on his way. We couldn’t get seats on the same flight, but he’s not more than a few hours behind me. We’ve both been so worried—what in the world is going on here? Natasha—did Madeleine really—” She broke off as I nodded, pressed her fingers to her mouth, then took my tired hand in both of hers. “God. This is so horrible, I just can’t—how are you, really? Please talk to me, Amy. Please tell me what you need.”
She was referring to my mental state, I could tell—she wanted information, maybe absolution; my side of whatever story Grandma and the doctors had told. That old news was the least of my worries, though. There would be plenty of time to discuss the complexities of both our psyches and our relationship, haggle over my future and my love life and whatever other bullshit we usually dredged up. My mother was right in front me, practically begging me to communicate. I wasn’t about to waste the chance.
“Why were you sneaking around River Run with your boyfriend the day Nat died?”
It wasn’t what I’d planned to say. It wasn’t even on my conscious agenda. But when you’ve spent your life braced for a moment of reckoning, what do you do when that moment finally arrives? How do you navigate it in any sense when it’s right there in front of you and looks nothing like you’d thought it would?
If you’re me, you apparently rip off the filters and sweep aside the expectations. You open your mouth and just let loose with whatever comes to mind.
My mother blinked at me, eyes wide, mouth a question mark of confusion.
“I’m sorry—what did you say? My boyfriend? Amy, what on earth are you—”
“His alibi.” I held her gaze, watched her eyes widen, swap confusion for comprehension, then settle into bewilderment as I ran through a heavily edited summary of our investigation. “Noah Franklin’s alibi, Mom. The police told us he was with you when Nat disappeared,” I concluded. “But why? And how? Is that why Dad’s gone? Are you having—”
The word stuck in my mouth. If I got even a waft of River Run off the bomb that blew apart my family, I was done with her forever, no matter what she said.
My mother waited, brow arched, for me to finish the question. When that didn’t happen, she filled in the blanks, voice calm and self-assured.
“Am I having what—an affair? With Noah Franklin? I hadn’t heard a thing from him in almost thirty years. We bumped into each other in the pharmacy completely by chance—I wasn’t ‘sneaking around’ anywhere, young lady, and I’m not having an affair of any sort. Neither is your father.” She fixed me with a careful glare, indignation tempered by an almost frantic cloak of fear. “Now, let me get this straight: your cousin thought Noah was a serial killer, and his first impulse was to launch an investigation into him? Are you kids out of your minds? Do you know how dangerous it is, the three of you playing detective in a case like—”
“Dangerous? Really?” That was a pretty big way to miss the point when there’d been a murderer right up the hill, smiling at us through her sister’s teeth. “It was for Nat, Mom. That’s all that mattered. Anyway, you try talking Ben down when he latches on to something like this.”
“I’m sure I can imagine,” she said, the corner of her mouth forming a half smile. “And I understand. I didn’t know Natasha well, but I do know how much she meant to you. That poor, sweet girl.”
“But you were with Noah Franklin when she went missing,” I pressed. “Your River Run boy. I found pictures of you and some kid down in the cove. It was him, right? The pictures in your desk?”
“I know exactly which pictures you mean. The day I took them was almost perfect in every way. It’s one of my last truly good memories, both of Noah and of River Run. I couldn’t just toss them out, even after—but I suppose I eventually forgot where I’d left them. Now that I think about it, I’m surprised you didn’t find them ages ago.”
“Mom. What happened?”
It was a simple question only on the surface. The answer, I knew, would go one way or the other—a dreamy reflection in a calm, glassy river, or every dark and deadly ghost beneath. There had never been a middle ground in my family.
Still, I wasn’t sure which path my mother’s words would take, until she met my eyes. Hers were lifeless, drained of even the usual bite of sarcasm. My mother, blank as a paint-stripped canvas. Retreating, in the same way I so often did from whatever she was poised to say. Was that how I looked when I shut down? Would that be my face thirty years on if nothing ever changed?
“I don’t know where to start. You know the Franklins were our closest neighbors. Noah and I were in the same class, went to the same church. Our mothers were friends. She was a good, Christian lady—organized the charity collections and food drives, always ran the church fundraisers. Collected winter coats for impoverished kids, that sort of thing. A genuinely kind and caring person. She got cancer when we were small, and after she passed, Noah started coming by the house now and then, when he needed a button sewn on, or his pant legs let down. Some little thing that a widower couldn’t be bothered with. After a while, we started meeting up in the woods to play. Swam in the river, climbed up to that tree house, just like you and the boys always did. I expect you can guess how things evolved from there.”
“I expect I can,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. After the metric shit ton of grief I’d caught from her over the years regarding my own evolving feelings, I wasn’t about to let her little River Run romance slide without comment.
“Noah was so sweet,” she continued, ignoring my attitude. “To everyone, not just me. But he was terrified of his father. I never understood it; Gerald seemed perfectly normal. He worked out at the quarry, went to church, hunted on the weekends like every other man around. He was a bit quick to discipline sometimes, but not to an extreme—no worse than most parents were back then. And then, one day… I caught him.”
“You—what?” I sat up too quickly, winced at the ache in my head and the tug of my IV needle. “Mom—”
“We were supposed to meet at the cove after supper. Noah and me, I mean—we were ‘sneaking out.’ ” Her laugh was an empty ache. “It was so forbidden, so exciting. But when I arrived—he was there. Noah’s father, coming off the path that led from his house. Carrying a little girl toward the water.”
My heart went into free fall, dropped from my body and kept on sinking. Her eyes were wasteland blank, free of deception or exaggeration. Marked by nothing but the hollow where her light had been.
“I was so stupid. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, and I ran toward him, thinking he needed help—by the time I saw her, and it registered that she was… very clearly dead, it was too late. I knew that man my whole life, and he’d never so much as frowned at me, but he dropped that child and ran at me like a bull. Chased me all the way up the trail. I could see our kitchen door through the trees when he caught me by the hair. Put a knife to my throat before I could call for help.”
I felt her skin change in my grip, felt her palm go clammy as she relived the moment. Her mouth tightened; her jaw flexed. Then, as I watched, the tension melted from her face and shoulders. Her back straightened and her chin lifted, as her expression reset into one of quiet neutrality, the way mine so often did. I watched her disconnect.
It took every shred of my resolve not to do the same.
She spoke her next words carefully, as if she could shape them into something less horrendous before setting them free.
“He dragged me back to that cove and made me sit there while he cut off a piece of that girl’s hair and dumped her in the water. Once she was out of sight, he cut a piece of my hair and stuck it in his pocket. Said if he got so much as a bad feeling that I’d said a word, he’d come in the night and finish the job—slit my throat and burn our house to the ground, with my family inside. Then he’d do the same to Noah.” Her eyes slid closed over the memory. “I truly thought he’d kill me right there in that cove. But he let me go.”
“And you cut your hair short,” I interrupted, the pieces of her story whirling through my head, finding one another like magnets and clicking into place. “So—the braid. Was that yours?”
“Braid? I don’t—how did you know I cut my hair?”
“Grandma told me. The braid was in the wall. The box. I mean—” I took a deep breath that did precisely nothing, not to clear my head nor to make sense of the words tripping around in my mouth. “We found a box in the attic of his old house. It was full of trophies—trinkets, jewelry. Locks of hair. Do you think Mr. Franklin might have kept the piece he took from you?”
“I don’t have any idea, Amy. It’s possible. But this is the first I’ve heard of any… box of hair.” She rubbed her temples. “God. I need to go to the police. There’s just so much. They’ll want to know why I didn’t come in thirty years ago.”
“It’s a pretty fair question, Mother,” I said. “What if he’d changed his mind and come after you anyway? What about the other kids he took? Did you ever think of them?”
“Did I? It consumed my life—to this day I see that girl’s face. But Noah made me swear to keep quiet, said it was the only way to—”
“Wait. He knew the whole time?” For all I’d dismissed Ben’s teen killer theories, had he actually stumbled onto some twisted version of the right track? “Mom, was Noah—involved with what happened to those kids?”
“Absolutely not.” The vehemence snapped back into her voice, startling us both. She reined it in to just above a murmur. “Amy, he would never. He was the most sensitive, gentle boy I’d ever met. But—yes. He knew what his father was.”
“And he never said a word? How? Mom, how could he sit there and let those kids die and just do—nothing? How could you?”
“It was her or me,” she said simply, terribly, “and she was already gone. Gerald said he’d kill us all, and I believed him—to this day I don’t know why he let me go. Maybe I was too close to home, or maybe he couldn’t go through with it—but I expect it was the best way he had to keep Noah cowed. And I didn’t know there were others, not until much later. Even the one, though—” Her voice caught on the words. “I should have said something then. I knew better. But Noah told me he’d take care of me… and he was my everything. I had to trust him.”
I couldn’t help the pang it sent through my body—the thought of her so freely in love, unencumbered by rules or expectations or pain-in-the-ass cousins. How perfect that love must have been, that she’d put her faith, without hesitation, in the boy whose father had been seconds from ending her life.
“He never told me any of it until afterward, when it was too late,” she continued. “I wanted to tell someone—our pastor, my parents—anyone who could help us. Noah said he’d been gathering evidence, planning to go to the police, but he wouldn’t do it until I was out of reach. I can only assume his father caught on to his plans—or maybe he just got scared, I don’t know. He was supposed to wait until it all blew over, and then come find me so we could be together. But that was the last time we spoke. By the time it really clicked—that maybe that girl wasn’t the only one—Gerald was dead, and Noah was God knows where. He’d joined the army as soon as I left, all but fell off the face of the earth, and I had no proof of any of it. So when I met your dad at Georgetown, I made the choice. I buried my head in the sand and tried to forget.”
“Does he know? Dad, I mean. About—”
“No. Oh no, are you kidding me? Even once I was safe at college, your grandparents, your aunt—they were still here. Mattie and Peter were on the verge of their engagement, building their house right up the hill. The Franklins were one of the first River Run families, a huge name in the community, and I was just a girl. What if I came forward and no one believed me—I couldn’t risk it. None of it holds up in hindsight, but at the time I was absolutely paralyzed by fear, and Jake would’ve chased that story to the ends of the earth. Blown the whole town apart in the name of justice—like you eventually did, I suppose. So much of your fire comes from him.” A soft smile quavered at the edges of her lips, disappeared too quickly into a quiet sigh. “It used to be good with us, Amy. Your parents were happy together—none of that is here nor there now, but you should know we had something real, however long ago.”
That idea was a fresh and different take on “real,” to say the least. She was the blaze in our household butting up against his frostbite sting. But was my father really carved from ice, or was he the blue core of a flame, burning with such intensity you could hardly feel its heat? I watched her warily, waiting for her next words. Wondering how much of me was me, not some strange mosaic of their flaws and virtues. When she didn’t speak, I pressed on, determined to tug at every loose end until my life was recognizable.
“Why did you stay that extra day?” I asked. “When Nat disappeared—you’re usually gone the same afternoon. And why would you bring me back here at all after what happened to you?”
“Why did I—Amy, I wanted to help. Your grandpa had an appointment—you know it’s hard for him to get around, and Mom’s gotten too frail to manage him on her own. Mattie usually handles it, but she had that event, so I changed my flight. Once Natasha disappeared, I pushed everything out again to the last possible second. I wanted to be there for June and your grandparents while I could. And Pete.” She shook her head. “He’s always been useless when it comes to his women, but he loved that little girl. I can’t fault him for that. And I needed to make sure you were okay. I need you to be okay.”
“I was. I am.” It wasn’t the truth, not technically; more a prophecy in progress, stumbling its way toward accurate. I would be okay again, someday. The idea that she could truly be a part of that—it was a wish too fierce and deep to voice, its origin in roots far stronger than resentment. “It makes more sense now, at least. How much you hate this place. Why you never want me staying longer than a summer.”
“I never set foot in this town again while that man lived. When I heard he was gone, I thought I could finally go home. Your father was open to it for a time, before our careers took off. We even talked about moving back, building our own place on my land. But it wasn’t what I expected. Living away from here opened my eyes to a lot of things I never realized growing up. The politics, the toxic viewpoints and behavior—all the old family grudges. All the dark, ugly secrets. You know how isolated it is; very little has changed since then. I wanted you to know your family, but I couldn’t let you get pulled into River Run. I had to make sure the things about this place that hurt me never had a chance to reach you.”
“And Noah Franklin…”
“Was my best friend, and my first love, and inextricably tied to the person who destroyed everything I was. He was always so set on getting out—he hated this town so much, and I never understood why. These were our roots. Good family names, built-in social circles, money, land—why would we leave when we had everything we’d need?”
Ben’s words from my mother’s mouth. Entitlement passed down through my family like heirloom jewels, throwing their sparkle across River Run like sun on water. Gleaming so brightly on the surface you’d never think to check for sinkholes beneath.
“I can’t fathom his childhood in that house,” she whispered. “He must have known about the others—seen unthinkable things living with that monster. But he loved me. He loved me, and his father used that love to keep him quiet. Made him submit to save my life.” Her face folded; the facade cracked and collapsed as she pressed her palms to her eyes, too late to catch her tears. “Which is why it scares me so much to see how you are with Teddy. It’s utterly illogical, but it brings back what I had with Noah, and triggers fear beyond my control.”
“He’s not Noah, Mom. And I’m not you.”
“I realize that. I do. My issues… they’re mine. It’s not fair to project them onto him—or onto you. I’m so sorry for so many, many things.” She rubbed her face and raised her head, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, made sure I met her sorrowful gaze before continuing. “I want you to be happy, Amy, no matter what it does to me. I owe you years of penance—and I know we can’t go back. I know that. But I will do the work to move forward. All I can hope is that you’ll give me a chance to try.”
I could see it on her as she sat beside me—the way that childhood sticks. How the things that happen when we’re small cling to everything else, each memory burst of pain traveling like an electric current, hopping from point to point. Engulfing every fragile thing we touch.
“Okay,” I whispered, finally curling my fingers around hers. “I think I can work with that.”
My mother had left it all behind. She’d given up her hopes, cut herself out of her own family to protect me, and still it hadn’t been enough. Nothing that happened back then had been her fault—she’d been a girl, coping in the only way she could. But she’d fled her home with demons scuttling beneath her skin, let the fear that drove her away cling and shift and grow within until it wore a normal face. Until it infected everything she did.
And Noah Franklin had gone his own way, ceased to exist beyond those photographs—a dark-haired memory with gentle, timid eyes. The polar opposite of the man my mother ultimately chose to be her partner. She might as well have built him from scratch, my father—customized his features and temperament and personality, forged and shaped them into the perfect antithesis of her childhood love. As if she’d never stopped trying to outrun that boy, long after he’d faded into the past.
It wasn’t perfect. It never would be perfect, not by my family’s standards, or by the world’s. Still, I let her pull me into a hug, let my eyes dampen the collar of her silk blouse as my heart overflowed. Her arms circled me gently, as if unsure which of us might shatter. Cradled me closer as I squeezed her tight, for once not waiting for her to let me go.