Page 75 of Bad Mother

Her rib cage squeezed.Red crown.Yes, yes, now she remembered it too. She’d never gone inside, but she’d driven by. Her gaze locked on Mirabelle’s rough sketch. She felt breathless. “Thank you so much, Xavier. You’ve helped a lot. In fact, when this is all over, I’m nominating you for employee of the year.”

She could hear the pride in his voice when he said, “Wow, thanks. It’s no problem. I love this stuff. See you tomorrow.”

She hung up, her eyes going to the notes again, her brain attempting to merge and arrange all the information she had.

“Oh, Mirabelle,” she whispered. WassheViolet? Had she worked at Casino Royale with the murder victims? Violet... Danny Boy’smother?

The inspiration for the infamous “Mother”?

She didn’t understand. How could this be? Had Mirabelle had another son?

A son who was now strangling people to death? The writer of the notes? Oliver. Ollie.Daniel.

He’d been a child when his father had taken him.

She suddenly remembered something and headed to Mirabelle’s bedroom, where she opened the top drawer of her bureau. The box where she’d once kept that long-ago bracelet was near the back, and with trembling fingers, she pulled it forward.

Sienna set it on the bureau and opened the top, the tiny hinges giving the quietest of squeaks. The pictures she’d glimpsed so many years before were still there, and she pulled them out, moving the one on top to the back, looking at each in turn. They were photographs of a baby, then of a toddler, a little boy, all with the same dark hair and wide dark eyes and a timid smile. She turned the one that had been on the bottom over and read the back:Daniel, 7.

A tiny moan escaped her lips. She saw Gavin in him, but mostly, she saw Mirabelle. A little dark-haired version of Mirabelle.Oh God.She clenched her eyes shut, reeling. When she opened her eyes, she saw that underneath the place where the photos had been was a purple fabric drawstring bag, and she set the photos down, already knowing what was inside by the feel of the bag in her hands. She pulled the string and tipped the purse, the silver dollars she’d once given to Mirabelle for safekeeping spilling out onto the wood of the bureau. All of them still there, every last one. Mirabelle had kept them safe for her all these years, because she’d told her she would. Even before she’d moved to this house with the palm trees and the double oven and the en suite bathroom and the pool. Even when Sienna was gone, and surely, she’d needed one a time or two to make final ends meet.

Oh, Mirabelle.

She returned the photos and coins to the box and walked dazedly back to the kitchen.

She stopped in the doorway, her eyes going to a cookbook on a stand on the counter, closed but with a bookmark sticking out of the top. Her breath halted, and she moved toward it and flipped it open to the marked location, her breath gusting out in a sudden rush when she saw what was contained within. A folded piece of paper. Her hearthammering, she unfolded it, already knowing what it was and who had written it.Him.

He’d been here.

Sienna’s eyes flew over the words, her heart sinking like lead.

Yes, Mother was gone for good, or so I thought. And then one day, I turned on the television and there she was. Mother.

She was in the audience, cheering for another boy as he dominated in poker. I stood, watching. Absorbed. My mind whirled. Buzzed with... memories.Not dreams.And then, understanding dawned, like a black sun rising over a colorless sea. She was real, not the figment of my imagination I’d convinced myself she was. No... she’d been very real. Alive. She’d been living a double life. She’d been hiding, and she’d never stopped.

Once I found Mother, I could no longer pretend. I had to come to terms with the way things had really been.

The way things were.

It took me a long time. Years.

I looked for Mother in the audience as the other boy played his game, so much pride glowing in her eyes. I went to an event the big winner himself was advertised to be at, and Mother was there too. I followed her to a dingy little trailer, where she’d been hiding. How long had she been there? So close and yet so very far away.

There were pictures inside of both the boy and a girl growing up through the years. Mother was in the pictures too. Hugging the boy. Arms wrapped aroundthe girl. Smiling. So much smiling. There were pictures of the boy and the girl together, the boy staring at the girl like she’d hung the moon and all the stars. Where was she now, I wondered. Where had she gone? Mother had obviously loved her like her own child.

Loved her in a way she hadn’t loved me.

No photos of me hung on her wall or decorated the table next to the sofa. Not a single one. It was as if, to Mother, I’d never existed at all.

Later, the big winner bought her a huge fancy house. How happy she was. How satisfied with her life. How little she missed me or felt sorry for what she’d done.

Oh yes, I understood now. And I grew angry.

I realized that maybe Father was right about Mother. MaybeIwas the one who’d been wrong.

I thought about it all the time. I thought about it when I went home at night, eating dinner alone at the table where I’d once been raped, sitting in the chair where Father and Mr.Patches had sat as I stabbed them to death. I thought about it when I cleaned other people’s toilets and emptied their trash.

And I began planning.

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