Page 130 of The Witch's Orchard
Lucy grins and claps her hands.
“Remember,” I say. “The closet.”
She nods again.
In the main room, Deena continues, “He tried to get more out of me but, eventually, I managed to convince him that I was already paying as much as I could. That he would either have to keep taking the thousand a month or turn me in and get nothing. Thankfully, he accepted. He and his wife moved out of town, and each month I withdrew one thousand dollars from the bank and sent it to a post office box in Charlotte.”
“But then they moved back,” I say, opening the linen closet door so it’s ready for Lucy.
“Yes,” she says. “And I had the feeling that the longer that man was around his cousin again, the more he might decide to tell the truth. I couldn’t have that. I was trying to figure out how I could get close enough to them to… Well, I didn’t have to, in the end. You took care of that. I had no idea they’d turned the old factory into a drug lab.”
There’s a little laugh, and I breathe out a long sigh. I’ve just about had it with Deena’s trip down memory lane. I’ve been on high alert for too long. I’m exhausted, my adrenaline running thin. My head throbs. My vision is hazy. The room spins. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I realize Deena is talking again.
“… happy, but I worried the girls would become homesick. What could I do? Someday they would be big enough to question their life with me. Maybe even overpower me, run away. So, I gave them the tea and I told them they were sick. That if they went home, they would make their families sick, and that I was the only one who could take care of them. They belonged with me. I simply had to make them see that. And, of course, it worked. They were only four. I knew that, eventually, they would forget all about the family they had before.”
I think about Jessica Hoyle. Think about the fact that she wasn’t four. Like me, she was undersized, underestimated. She was weeks away from her sixth birthday when she was taken, about to begin school, already reading.
I test the weight of the pipe in my hand. It’s awkward and S-shaped, not optimal for whacking. Still, I bang it against my palm a few times. At least the Drakes didn’t skimp on fixtures. The pipe is heavy. It’ll do.
“But I didn’t take Lucy,” she says. “She was a gift.”
“From Jessica,” I say.
“Yes,” Deena says. “I think she missed her sister, Molly.”
“What happened to Molly?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “One day she was here and then… you came. And she was gone. Like a bird, she flew away.”
Her voice still has that airy, dreamy quality, and I think Deena Drake probably broke in half the day her twins came silent into the world. With her husband already dead, all alone in this house, no one to talk to, she buried one half of herself with her family and lived on like a ghost. Half a person, no sense of right or wrong.
I hear clicking in the room and gesture for Lucy to get into the linen closet. She goes, squatting down deep against the inside corner.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I whisper. She looks up at me and nods, but there are tears in her eyes. I take a deep breath and close the closet door.
I give my palm another whack with the pipe, then shove it down the back of my jeans, go into the main room, stand behind Deena.
The door opens. Jessica comes back inside. She has my gun.
She is pointing it at Deena and me, erratic, unfocused. She is wearing one of Deena’s dresses now instead of the long velvet doll dress with the lace frills. Her hair is pulled away from her face and braided into a plait that hangs most of the way down her back. She looks beautiful. And terrifying.
“Okay,” she says. She looks at me. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought for sure once I’d shot you, you’d go to the hospital, leave, die… At least you’d stop this foolishness. But, no. You told Deena. You said you wouldn’t stop searching. I heard you. And I knew it was true.”
“Jessica—” I start.
She points the gun at me and smiles.
“Don’t talk to me,” she says softly. “It’s your fault Molly died.”
I must make a face, because Jessica smiles even bigger and waves the gun around like I’m being silly. Like she’s talking to a child. I realize this is probably the only way she’s been spoken to her entire life.
“Don’t you know?” she says, clicking her teeth.Tsk.Tsk. Tsk.“I thought you must have figured it out. Molly and I used to sneak outall the time.Poor Deena. No clue. Molly, though, she loved Deena. ShebelievedDeena. She thought our families had sent us to Deena because we were sick. Deena would let us write letters to our families—which she never sent—and our families would send us letters—which Deena wrote—back. Deena kept all of it in a drawer in her bureau. I found them years ago. But, no matter how many times I tried to tell her, Molly always believed Deena. She was like that. So trusting. She loved Deena. More than she loved me. But then, one day, we were in the kitchen, eating strawberries. We knew Deena would be in the garden the whole afternoon—she always is when she’s planting. That’s when you came and stood right out there on the front porch and ruined everything. Talking about how sad poor Max was. Oh, poor Max. Whatever happened to poor Molly?”
She laughs.
“Silly,” she says. “Silly Molly. She ran away. I had to catch her. Stop her. I couldn’t let her ruin what we have, could I? Not when I’m so close…”
“Close to what?” I ask.
