Page 96 of The Truth in My Lies (Secrets of Suburbi 1)

I was all alone with the thoughts tumbling around in my head. Mashing together in illogical ways. I wasn’t allowed to work. I wasn’t even supposed to leave the house. So how could Maria Gonzalez have worked for me?

Chapter 47

The crunching of the leaves was driving me insane. Almost as much as the clock ticking down in my head.

Something had gone terribly wrong with my brain. Incomprehensible flashes of memories screeched through my mind. Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Everything was garbled together and flipped upside-down, careening off the edge of reason.

I felt a raindrop land on my forehead. I looked up past the trees to the darkening sky. It felt like the storm clouds were fusing with my brain.

The proof is in the images.

Dr. Nash’s words turned over and over in my head. What proof? They were just pictures. Pictures proved nothing. I knew that better than anyone else.

I didn’t know where the box was. I had turned in so many circles the other day that I couldn’t possibly find it. But my feet seemed to remember. Like they had walked this path hundreds of times.

I stared at the ground. No, my feet didn’t remember. There was an actual worn path in the dirt. The leaves were matted down, and not just from the rain. Someone had definitely walked this same path through the woods over and over again. And recently. I turned around. If I squinted, I thought I could see my house in the distance. The path led directly to my backyard. How had I missed that the other day?

My husband must have been coming out here. That explained it. My vision blurred as I turned back to the path. It’s him. It all went back to him.

But you knew Maria Gonzalez. I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to erase the pain searing through my forehead.

I saw the mound of dirt to the side of the path up ahead. I ran as fast as I could and started digging.

I lifted off the lid and sifted through the pictures. Tons of them. Mostly of my injuries, but there were pictures of other women too. Gashes, bruises, pain in their eyes. They had all been terribly hurt. Their stories swirled around in my brain, colliding with everything else that made no sense. Had my husband killed these women? Had he told me about them?

No. He hadn’t hurt them. I shook the thought away. How could I know that? He had hurt me. What would have stopped him from killing these women?

I found the image of Maria Gonzalez. I could hear her laughter. I could hear her sobs. It didn’t feel like I had heard stories of her. It felt like I had known her. That maybe we’d been friends. But that wasn’t possible.

The proof is in the images.

“What proof?!” My words echoed around me. I thought I heard a crunch of leaves and lifted my head. But there was nothing. Nothing except for the path that continued farther into the forest. It hadn’t been leading to the box.

These pictures meant nothing to me. They were proof that my husband abused me. But the other women? I had no idea what he'd done to them. The fact that their names came easily to my lips was disconcerting. My husband had clearly told me what he had done to them. Told me their names. So why couldn’t I remember? I could help save them if they were still alive. Remember, Adeline.

Berating myself wasn’t helping. I slammed the lid of the box back on and tucked it under my arm. My husband had walked this path countless times. Finding where it leads might give me answers.

The box felt heavy in my arms, weighed down by secrets I didn’t understand. My ankle throbbed with each step I took. I was exhausted and soaked when my feet reached the end of the path.

But it wasn’t really an end. It just…stopped. Right in the middle of the woods. I turned around. I could no longer see my house or any houses from my neighborhood. There was nothing anywhere. Just a dead end.

I wanted to scream. I had been so scared of these stupid woods. If I had ventured out here sooner, maybe I would have found what I needed. Maybe my brain wouldn’t hurt.

I kicked some leaves and heard the snapping of twigs. The ground was covered in leaves and sticks. But there was a pattern of sticks. Every few inches one stuck up out of the fall foliage. I dropped to my knees and pushed some of the leaves aside. A tiny cross made of twigs stuck out of the ground.

I pushed more leaves aside to reveal another cross. It felt like my heart was beating out of my chest. There were so many of them. It was a mini graveyard. The thought churned my stomach.

20 murders. Wasn’t that what Ben had said? That the serial killer had murdered 20 people? I scanned the crosses. So why were there 27 crosses?

I thought about the women in the pictures. Please don’t have hurt them. I dug into the dirt in front of one of the crosses, but there was nothing there. I tried another. And another. Damn it!

I knocked some of the crosses over into the dirt. I lifted up and threw a few of them as far as I

could. I was about to scream when my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

I pulled it out, smearing mud across the screen. It was Ben. How long had I been out here? He wanted the files. But I needed more time. I needed answers. Talking to him would buy me that time.

“Hey, Ben,” I said as calmly as I could muster.

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