The drugs worked quicker than Elizabeth had anticipated.
Jess was working hard to keep her eyes open, so Elizabeth moved frantically with the truth.
‘I could sense that you knew, dear, deep down. When we embraced… when I touched you… when you looked at me. The connections burned. So, I know that this isn’t as shocking to you as it could have been. I doubted you would’ve given me those keys to the storage room… or let me into your home… or into that imposter’s room upstairs… unless you knew. Unless you genuinely felt it.’
‘Dad…’ Jess managed, drool bubbling at the corner of her mouth. ‘Dad… is he okay?’
‘I’ve told you, dear, he wasn’t your father. A man, a beast, who paid my brother, your uncle, another creature, to take you from me. And that imposter has gone now, along with your uncle, and some of the others. These are people who believed they were above what nature intended. They weren’t natural… not in the sense that they should be… and we, too, dear, are the same. Must be the same. We carry the same genes. The same blood. We are both Sykeses.’
‘My life… a lie,’ Jess managed. Her eyes closed.
Elizabeth reached out and placed a hand to her cheek, attempting to rouse her.
Jess opened her eyes.
‘Not any more,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Be empowered by the truth as the truth empowered me, dear. It gave me strength, patience. It took me so long to untangle the web. KYLO… the government… they were sealed containers. For so long, the private investigators baulked at my requests because they feared for their own safety. But eventually, I found someone who helped. And he found threads… threads he could pull… and eventually, dear, the truth began to untangle. James lived far longer than I intended. He couldn’t die until I had everything, you see. Every part of the story. His death would risk my exposure before it was finished. But he suffered. He lived a life of wanting, a life of crawling around for pennies to survive. I told him this before I chained him to an old cart and listened to him beg for food and water for days… and then I watched him rot.’
She noticed Jess’s eyes were closed, so she squeezed her arm this time.
Jess opened her eyes, weakly.
‘There were times when I considered failure, quitting, ending myself before it was finished, but I persevered. A few strokes of luck there, and several people who emerged in later years, now willing to help, and the truth just came faster and faster. And I found you. I found you, Jess.’ She leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘Twelve months ago… I found you. You were the hardest and final piece. The best for last. And with that, it began, and today, it ends.’
Jess’s eyes were closed now, and Elizabeth was disappointed with the speed of the drugs. ‘What a thing for you to find out. I’m sorry for that, but you deserved the truth. The life they gave you was, as you said, a lie.’
Jess managed to say something.
Elizabeth leaned in. ‘What was that, dear?’
‘Circumstances… aligned…’
‘Circumstances?’
‘Aligned,’ Jess said, and her head slumped to the side.
Elizabeth sighed. Maybe, after all, it was for the best, that Jess didn’t know what came next.
Elizabeth had believed it may have offered her peace, closure, in this final moment, but Jess had been different from how she’d always imagined her. Reserved and awkward. With a range of idiosyncrasies that made her anxious.
The closure may have caused her fear.
She stroked her sleeping daughter’s face. ‘Maybe it’s for the best. You’re so loveable, dear. So unlike the rest of our kin. But I know it lies within you. It lay within me without my knowledge. And it most certainly lay within my parents, and James. I wish I could have been there to prepare you for the burden you carried, but I wasn’t allowed that. And now it’s too late. I can’t protect you, like no one protected me. I’ll give you peace. You’ll never face the rage I faced. The devilish instincts. It’s my responsibility to stop you evolving into your uncle… your grandparents… into me…’
Elizabeth stood and moved to the front door, thinking of all the truth that was coming to those stolen children, and the judgement that was coming to the fraudsters who’d paid her brother.
She also thought of Robert Thwaites, trying to erase the truth, predicting that he’d die where he belonged. In jail.
She hoped the world would find a way to tear down KYLO, too, but knew that was rather ambitious thinking, considering their power.
Outside, she retrieved the petrol container she’d left by the front door on the way in and took it into the house.
As she drenched the rug in front of the two-seater sofa, she looked down at her sleeping daughter.
Gentle… innocent… harmless, even.
Hard to believe that the same blood is in your veins as mine.
Elizabeth thought of the night she’d killed her parents, and her belief that the world would benefit when the Sykeses no longer sucked like leeches from the world around them.
She pulled out her lighter. ‘I won’t leave you to the same fate… but, at least, dear, you can finish your life in the same way you started it. With me.’ She knelt and lit the rug. ‘Your mother.’