emotion I’ve been trying to hold back. It flows out of me. In tears. In snot. In saliva that drips from my mouth as I moan.
“You didn’t mean to,” my mother says. “I’m sure of it.”
I look at her through tear-clouded eyes. “We have to tell the truth.”
“We don’t, Maggie. What we need to do is pack your things and leave. We’ll sell this place and never come back. This time for good.”
I stare at her, appalled. I can’t believe she still refuses to do the right thing. That after all these years and all these lies, she still wants to pretend none of this happened. They tried that once, and it damn near destroyed us.
Something breaks inside me. Surprising, since I didn’t think there was any part of me left unscathed. But my heart was still intact, just waiting for my mother to shatter it. I can feel it disintegrating—a shudder that makes my chest heave.
“Get out,” I say.
“Maggie, just listen to me.”
My mother reaches for me, and I recoil. When she comes for me again, I strike, my open palm whipping across her cheek.
“Get out!” I scream it this time, the words echoing off the wall of bells. I keep screaming until I’m red-faced and frothing.
“Get out! Get out of my fucking house!”
My mother stays frozen on the floor, her hand to her cheek. The tears glistening in her eyes tell me her heart’s also broken.
Good.
Now we’re even.
“If you want to throw your life away, I can’t stop you,” she says. “But I refuse to watch you do it. Your father’s not the only one who loved you unconditionally. I feel the same way he did. About everything.”
She stands, smooths out her slacks, and leaves the kitchen.
I don’t move until the sound of the front door closing makes it way down to the kitchen. By then I’ve already decided what I’m going to do.
I’ll wait.
By now, Chief Alcott is probably grilling Dane about the night Petra died. Unlike me, she’s going to realize it doesn’t add up. That there’s more to the story. Then she’ll come back here, armed with questions.
I’ll answer every single one.
With my mother gone, I stand and climb the kitchen steps. It’s a struggle. Shock has made my legs heavy and my body sluggish. It doesn’t get better on the first floor. The great room seems to shift with each step. The walls sway, as if buffeted by a stiff wind, rocking back and forth. Beneath my feet, the floor buckles. I trip, even though the floor isn’t really buckling. Nor are the walls truly swaying.
It’s me who’s doing the changing.
An internal shift in which everything I thought I knew about myself is suddenly upended.
I came here wanting to know the truth. Now I do.
I am a killer.
A fact I’ll need to get used to. Because right now the realization is so heavy that I can no longer stand. I end up crawling up the stairs to the second floor. There’s more crawling in the hallway. Even then I’m so dizzy I continually bump into the wall on the way to my bedroom.
Inside, I throw myself onto the bed, too exhausted to move. I want to sleep for a long time. Days and days.
Maybe forever.
Before closing my eyes, I look to the armoire opposite the bed.
It occurs to me how just a few hours ago I’d planned to demolish it. Yet here it is, still standing, a strange sound coming from within.
Hearing it cuts through my wooziness enough to make me sit up, startled.
The armoire doors slowly open, revealing someone standing inside.
I want to believe I’m dreaming. That this whole experience is nothing more than a night terror from which I’ll wake any second now.
But it’s not a nightmare.
It’s reality, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
The armoire doors continue to open, revealing more of the dark figure within its depths.
Mister Shadow.
He’s real.
I know that now.
He’s always been real.
Yet when the figure at last emerges from the armoire, I see that I’m wrong. It’s not Mister Shadow stepping gingerly into the room.
It’s Miss Pennyface.
She takes another step, and the coins fall away from her eyes. Only there are no coins. There never were. It was moonlight coming through the bedroom window and reflecting off a pair of spectacles.
Now that it’s gone, I see Miss Pennyface for who she really is.
Marta Carver.
“Hello, Maggie,” she says. “It’s been a long time since we’ve met like this.”