Page 46 of Mimic
And she reminded me of how our mother protected us. How she’d hidden us away from everyone to keep us safe. How she’d fought against him the day she disappeared.
Everything Rose said about our mother contradicted everything Dakota had said. I didn’t want to believe him, but I wasn’t sure what was true anymore. My own memories warred with the information that had been beaten into me. In my mind, I knew Dakota was full of shit. But years of conditioning, of being told the same thing over and over—that the woman who was supposed to give her life for her children had turned and sacrificed them for her own selfish wants—it was hard to just walk away from.
And knowing she was gone. Knowing I would never get to hear her side of things. What really happened that day and every day since. Never having had an explanation about how she could just leave us didn’t help with the battles I fought in my mind.
Jack disappeared through the door of Sam’s room, taking Charlie with him. Rose paused, her hand on the door, and looked at me.
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head. Rose let the door close softly and came to stand in front of me, wrapping her arms around me.
“It’s okay to love Sam. I was wrong when I got here. I didn’t understand. Val isn’t like her. Val raised me, but she was never really a mom. Not like Sam. I know it hurts. I know you feel like you’re replacing her, but she’s gone. If it helps, I think she’d really like Sam. I think she would be happy there was someone to stand in her place and do all the things she didn’t get to do. She would be happy we have someone in our lives who will love us the way she would.”
I clung to my sister. She was trying to help. There was no way she could know she was making things worse, and I would never tell her that. I would never tell her that I didn’t believe a word she said. That I didn’t believe our mom would be happy we had Sam. Because I believed—no, I had been conditioned to believe that our mother was a selfish bitch.
I could never tell Rose that I wanted to replace our mother. That I wanted to stop thinking about her. Stop wondering what the truth was and just accept what I had believed for the last decade.
She would never understand how the memories of our childhood and the woman I knew loved us had been replaced with what might be lies or might be the truth.
We would never know, because Dakota Stone had taken away the only person who knew the truth. There was a saying: there are always three sides to every story.
His side.
Her side.
And the truth.
The truth was somewhere in the middle. Only the middle didn’t exist. George let me go when I was sixteen. He’d given me a job to do, and I did it without question. Every week until hedied, I’d called him and reported back what I had learned about Amber. Who she spoke to, what she knew.
It wasn’t much, because she had no idea who she was. But every week he would give me a little more information about my mother. Sometimes he told me about the woman I knew. The woman who gave birth to me and loved me. Sometimes he told me about the woman Dakota said she was. I’d been convinced Dakota was right, because George had given me enough truth of what I’d thought I’d remembered about my mother, mixed with what Dakota had told me, that I believed it must have been real.
But now, here in this moment, did it really matter anymore? Did I need to know the truth? The truth would confirm one of two things. My mother was the woman I remembered, in which case I would feel guilty for all the horrible things I had believed of her. Or she was the woman Dakota convinced me she was, in which case I didn’t want to remember her at all.
I didn’t have the answers. I never would. My mother was gone. My father was gone. All that was left was me and my sister.
And Sam.
Chapter Seventeen
Mimic
Entering the room, my eyes sought hers. Her eyes were easy to read; it was how I’d known she was lying that first time. I didn’t look at the room. I didn’t look at the babies. I needed to look into her eyes and know she was okay.
The moment she saw me, a smile spread across her face. My eyes closed with the relief that she really was okay. She’d survived.
“No more babies,” I blurted out.
Her eyes went wide before she laughed. “Were you worried?”
“Of course I was fucking worried.”
She held her hand out to me, and it took Rose giving me a push before I could move closer and take her hand in mine. Feeling her fingers wrap around my hand did nothing to ease the anxiety I felt.
“You’re worse than Jack, you know that? I promise I’m fine. Everything went exactly how it was supposed to. And now your baby sisters are here.”
Hearing the words from her mouth, knowing she was telling me the truth, eased the lump in my throat.
“Would you like to hold her?” Jack said behind me. I turned and looked at the bundle in his arms. My hesitation made him frown. “Sit down, Mimic,” he ordered. And before I could object, he placed the baby in my arms.
