Page 135 of The Witch's Orchard
“If she’d gone to Max, she would’ve told him everything. And Deena would’ve been arrested and they’d have taken all her beautiful things and her beautiful castle and I’d have hadnothing.Just like before. She ran away before I could stop her. She got all the way down the mountain. I tried to talk to her. I tried to take her home. She fought me. I never… I didn’t know she could fight me. She never had before.”
Jessica looks back at me, and even though her face is red and swollen from crying, she is still beautiful. Her features are cool and sharp like a diamond.
“I loved her,” she says, her voice steady. “I loved Molly.”
I nod.
“I tried…” She stops and falters, her voice strangled with feeling. “I tried to give her a pretty death. She looked just like a doll. A beautiful dead doll.”
“I know,” I say.
We sit for a long moment, Jessica staring at her hands.
“Jessica,” I say. “Tell me why you took Lucy.”
She looks at me again, bites her lips together, and then says, “I… I took Lucy because, well, at first, I took her for Deena. I thought a new little dolly would make her interested again. And, I knew if I took Lucy while Deena was with someone else that no one could say it was her who did it. Everyone would have to stop looking at our house.”
“You took her car?”
“Yes.”
“How did you learn to drive?”
“The internet,” she says. “Deena’s computer. Easy.”
“Okay.”
“I dressed in some of Deena’s old clothes, a nice coat and hat. I went to the Fall Festival and went around the edge of the woods and there was a little girl just sitting there. I said I was a princess and asked her if shewanted to see a real castle and she said yes and followed me. It was nothing. She got into the car and we drove back to the house. By the time Deena came home in that man’s car, I’d given her some of Deena’s tea and she was asleep.”
Jessica sighs, looks away again.
“I thought Deena would be happy. But she didn’t even seem to care that Molly was dead. She… she was just interested in that man. Like we were never even her daughters to begin with.”
Her voice breaks again, and she hiccups into a burbling cry.
“I… I missed Molly.”
She bites her lips together, and they are two bright, bruised petals when she releases them.
“So, I was just going to take Lucy for myself. A new sister. We would take the money I’d saved and we’d go away. Disappear. I was taking the bags out to the car when that man came. He saw me. So, I had to hurt him. And then you came. I tried to think what I could do. I thought if I shot both the man and you and then made Deena drink all her Ambien mixed in her tea, then maybe it would look like suicide. Like she had shot both of you and then killed herself. I even wrote a note on her computer. Put her name on it. Everything. That’s what I was going to do. But then… that woman shot me.”
“Yes,” I say. “Mothers can be like that. Protective.”
“Not my mother,” she says.
“Do you mean Deena?”
She shakes her head and looks toward the door where Mandy had just exited.
“Did your father hurt you?” I ask. “Did you tell your mother about it?”
She shakes her head.
“I don’t… I don’t know,” she says. She closes her eyes tight in frustration. “I don’tthinkso. But I was so little. I remember being in the house with them. I remember my big brother, Tam. I loved Tam. I remember him always being with me. Always watching over me. But then he went to school. And then I… Everything got so messy. I still don’t… Everythingis like being lost in the woods. I don’t know what is dreams and what is memories. I can’t figure it out.”
“You will,” I say. “In time. It will take time. But you have people who love you. People who will want to help you.”
She shakes her head. I get up and AJ opens the door for me, and I take a deep breath when I get into the hall. A few FBI agents in black jackets mill around anonymously, here to finish unraveling the tapestry that Deena and Jessica have spent the last ten years weaving.
