Page 98 of The Truth in My Lies (Secrets of Suburbi 1)

I could barely breathe. The memories flying through my mind screeched to a halt. My stomach churned. I leaned over and threw up into the hole I'd just dug. God. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

I could still hear my husband’s words. I could still feel the weight of the gun in my hand.

But there was no time to be swallowed by grief. I knew what I had done. And I knew perfectly well that any sane person wouldn’t have been pressured into pulling the trigger. I was about to close the passport when I noticed the last name. Bell. His name was Richard Bell. What?

The side of my face twitched. Bell? My maiden name was Evans like my mother’s. I was Adeline Evans before I married my husband. And my husband’s last name was Bell. Adeline Bell. I threw the passport down and rummaged through the remaining ones until I found the one I was looking for. One with a sticky note for Katrina Nash. I lifted it up. Adeline Thompson?

I shook my head. No. I was never Adeline Thompson. No, no, no. It was nonsense. All the passports were nonsense. I threw it on the ground. I’d have to tell Ben to call off his search for Juanita Howe. There was no way that person was really her. Just like Jennifer Clarke wasn’t me. And Dr. Nash wasn’t me. And Adeline Thompson wasn’t me. But I couldn’t stop lifting up the passports. Scanning the sticky notes and names. Tossing the ones I had searched into the mud.

Until I found my husband’s. Montgomery Thompson. What a pretentious name. It was the stupidest name in the history of names.

No. That wasn’t his name. He was… I pinched the bridge of my nose. His name is… My mind was coming up blank. My husband’s name is… I pinched the bridge of my nose harder. What the hell is my husband’s name? My hand started shaking, slipping off my nose. Well his last name was Bell, that much I was sure of. Because my last name was Bell. I had married him and taken his last name. These passports were lies. All of them lies. But the cruelty in his eyes was captured in the image perfectly. And his handsome features and flawless smile that had tricked me all those years ago.

Montgomery Thompson. The name flipped around in my mind until suddenly it settled. It was coming back to me now. I had been Adeline Thompson. Had been. I had been all these people. I had been running for so long. It hit me like a wave, just like Dr. Nash had warned. Like I had warned.

And I wasn’t at all surprised that there was no sticky note for him. My dear husband was dead. I had killed him four years ago. I smiled. His blood had felt like the rain falling down on me now. Except it was hot and sticky when it splattered on my face. But still cleansing. Still freeing. I laughed into the emptiness, a laugh I didn’t recognize.

No. I dropped the passport onto the ground. No, he was alive. He’d be home soon. He was going to jail for killing all those people. He was a monster. He deserved to die. But I hadn’t killed him! And his name is…damnit what the hell is his name?!

I

felt the trigger beneath my finger. I could see my father in front of me. My husband’s words running through my head. And I pulled it. Twice.

No. Once. I had pulled it once. No, you turned and you…

Stop it. I was losing my mind. I lifted up the second to last passport. It was mine before I got married. When I was Adeline Evans. When I thought I needed a man to save me. I threw it in the mud.

There was one last one. I lifted it up. Adeline Bell. There was no sticky note. 27 crosses. 27 passports.

Adeline Evans. Adeline Thompson. Katrina Nash. Jennifer Clarke. My father, Richard Bell. And my lovely husband, Montgomery Thompson.

26 murders. And then there was Adeline Bell. But I’m still alive! It felt like my mind was zigzagging in every direction. I’m still breathing. My husband was still breathing. And he was trying to make me think I was insane.

I lifted up the letter at the bottom of the box. No. I would not fall for my husband’s tricks. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t have these past lives. And I certainly hadn’t killed the twenty women in that box. I would have remembered killing them. Because I was haunted every day by my father’s death. I remembered it like it happened yesterday. I’d remember taking another life. And I certainly would have remembered killing my husband because I so desperately wanted to.

I felt his blood splatter against my face again. And the leaves crunch beneath me. And the weight of his body.

No. I didn’t remember that. It didn’t even align with my first memory of killing him. I was imagining it. I was imagining everything. And even if I had shot him, it didn’t mean I killed him. Obviously I hadn’t killed him. I’d been trying to get away from him for years. He had been hurting me for years. I’d remember if he was dead.

I needed to get all of this to Ben. He’d help me. He was the only one that would believe me. I threw all the passports back into the box and placed the letter on top before closing the lid. I picked up the box of passports and the box of pictures and stood up.

I was about to run back to the house, but turned back. Something made me stomp on the little crosses that remained, burying them beneath the leaves. I wasn’t sure what made me do it. I was tampering with evidence. I smashed the last one. Stop it. I took a step back. What was wrong with me? The ache in my head returned.

All I knew was that I needed to run. I followed the path, trying to ignore the searing pain in my ankle. There were two things I was sure of. I was good at dealing with pain after years of torture, and I was damn good at running. Those two things were true. Everything else? I wasn’t sure of any of it. But I was pretty sure I knew how to find out. The proof was in my husband’s files. If the handwriting on them matched the ones on the passports, I’d know he planted evidence. That he was setting me up to take the blame for his crimes.

I threw open the back door and trudged inside. I was completely soaked. My feet left muddy prints on the sparkling clean tiles. A few weeks ago I would have stopped everything to clean up the mess. But I wasn’t sick. The medicine made me sick. It gave me OCD. It gave me nightmares. It numbed me.

It changed me.

I looked down at my watch. My husband would be home in 15 minutes. Shit. I was so tired. The boxes fell out of my hands. Again, my body seemed to move without my brain’s permission. I lifted up the closest box of files and picked one up, smearing mud across the folder.

My name was Adeline Bell. And before I had gotten married, I had been Adeline Evans. I was not Dr. Nash. I had never been anyone else. The date on the file was clearly my husband’s handwriting. I had seen him make these files. I had him now. That stupid bastard. I caught him red-handed. I opened up the file and stared down at the words that the Dr. Nash imposter had written about me. Wait. They were in the same handwriting.

What? That couldn’t be. I grabbed the box of passports. The sticky notes had the same handwriting. I tore open the box of pictures. The backs of them with the names and dates had the same handwriting. No.

I picked up the open file. It was a session from five months ago. Listing my problems. All my problems that didn’t exist. Problems that had never been real.

But I did have one problem. One huge problem. The handwriting was mine. The file shook in my hands. Not my husband’s. Not some mysterious imposter. It was mine. All of it was in my handwriting.

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