isn’t mine. The description that doesn’t fit. Sweet girl, she said, and Ted’s voice bellows in my head: Don’t you want to be a good girl and help?
“My name isn’t Lily,” I seethe. “It’s Fern.”
There’s a surge of adrenaline inside me. A deep swell of anger—something I haven’t fully felt until this moment. I’ve been numbed by the news, stunned by finding Astrid in the last place I’d expect. I’ve been buried beneath the day’s pileup of discoveries—but I can feel myself breaking through.
“And that’s not—” I start. “Wanting to be parents—that’s not a good enough reason for what you’ve done.”
I stand up. Look down at them both, at their surprised faces that seemed to assume I would just shut up.
“This is illegal,” I go on. “It’s fraud. And don’t you… do you even care that people are worried about you? That I’ve been sick to death with worry for you? I’ve done everything to find you. Gone through every possibility. God, I-I even went to your church in Foster! I talked to your priest!”
“Father Murphy?” Rita jumps in. “He’s not her priest. He’s the reason she walked away that day. He’s why she was taken in the first place.”
“She was taken because my father is a narcissist.”
The term flies out of my mouth. No forethought. No warning. But as soon as I hear it, hissing in the air, I know it’s true. It’s the name for people like Ted—not just a label that means selfish and arrogant, but shorthand for a personality disorder. For someone with a dangerous way of viewing himself and those around him.
“I’m offering you the opportunity to see justice served,” I tell Astrid, “for the both of us. So how can you want me to lie? How can you even take such a risk with all this? Just to have a child? You know what the world is like. What can happen. I mean…”
I hear my voice softening. It crumbles at the edges. Caves in at the center.
“Aren’t you terrified?” I ask. “To bring a child into a world like this?”
Astrid’s eyes drill into mine. After a moment, she reaches forward to take my hand. She’s tugging, just a little, trying to coax me back down onto the couch. I keep my feet firm.
“The world is terrifying,” she says. Then she cocks her head to the side. “But don’t you think it’s beautiful, too? I mean, look at us—we’re together. After all these years. We survived.”
I stare at the freckle. Even now, it’s hypnotic. I feel my anger blunting. The sharpness inside me becoming so dull.
“I refuse to be held captive by anything ever again,” Astrid says. “Whether it’s by a man. Or society. Or my fears of what could happen.”
She strokes my hand. Her freckle is small but dark. A perfect, unending circle.
“Because fuck fear,” she adds. “I’d rather live.”
I breathe in slowly. Feel the air pass between my lips like a drink I need to survive.
Could it really be that simple? Just ignore the fear and live? Even if—
“Even if the life you’re living is all because of a lie?”
Astrid smiles. Clasps her hand around my wrist.
“I don’t think of it as a lie,” she says, glancing at Rita. “I think of it as a means to a beautiful end.”
I look at her hand. Her grip is gentle. But it’s a grip nonetheless. Might as well be a rope.
“That’s exactly something my father would say,” I tell her. Then I snatch my hand away. “My whole life, he’s justified every bad behavior by saying it’s in service of his work. Even when it broke my family apart. Even when it broke my heart.”
Astrid shakes her head. “There’s a huge difference between lying to bring a child into the world and kidnapping someone for… for revenge, or for research, or whatever it was. What we’re doing—it’s not hurting anyone!”
“It’s hurting me,” I say.
And isn’t that enough?
I take a few steps backward, mumbling that I have to go, but I stop when Rita stands and puts her hand on my back.
“Wait,” she says, and Astrid stands too. “You’re not going to tell the police, are you?”
I stare at Astrid, whose eyes widen as she stares back. For a moment, I see the girl who reached for me, who tried so desperately to save me from the man who dragged me up the stairs.
My throat swells. Becomes hard.
The things Ted did to her. To us. He almost ruined us both. But she’s right about one thing.