Now You See Her Page 0,37
the reason your sister opted not to have any children of her own?”
“She tried to talk me out of having any. She said I’d always be waiting, watching for signs. She was right.”
“When did you first know?”
“Soon after she turned seventeen.” Marcy thought back to that awful night when she’d found Devon in the kitchen, a broken flower vase at her feet, handfuls of salt at her mouth. She could see her daughter as clearly as if it were yesterday. “I’d suspected it for a while,” she admitted. “Her moods were getting blacker. Her behavior was becoming increasingly erratic. There were times she’d talk so fast I could barely understand what she was saying. But after this one incident, I couldn’t deny it any longer.”
“What did you do?”
“Not enough. Oh, I took her to the doctor, got her started on medication and therapy, tried to comfort her as best I could.…”
“Nothing helped?”
“She didn’t like the way the drugs made her feel.” Like doing the butterfly stroke through a vat of molasses, her mother had said. “She hated her therapist.” Marcy paused, swallowing the catch that was forming in her throat. “She hated me even more.”
“I’m sure she didn’t hate you.”
“How can you not hate someone who looks you right in the eye and still doesn’t see you?”
“I think you’re being very hard on yourself.”
“I lied to her, day in and day out.”
“You lied to her? How?”
“I told her everything would be okay. I told her if she’d just cooperate and take her medication, then everything would work out, that she just had to be patient, give the haloperidol a chance.…”
“Which is what anyone in your situation would have told her.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Tears began falling the length of Marcy’s cheeks, a few sliding between her lips to rest against her tongue. “I had no patience for any of it, for the crying jags and the craziness, for the guys she’d bring home or the trouble she’d get into. You’d have thought that after everything I went through with my mother, it would have made me more understanding. But the exact opposite was true. I didn’t have the stomach for any of it. And I felt so guilty and helpless and angry all the time. I hated her for making me have to go through it all again.”
“What kind of trouble?” Liam asked.
What kind of mother hates her own child? Marcy was thinking. “What?”
“You said Devon got into trouble. What kind of trouble?” he repeated.
“There were a few incidents.” Marcy sighed with the memory. “One day she got into a fight with a neighbor who’d complained she was playing her radio too loud in the backyard. Devon swore at her and threw her shoe at her, just missed her head. And then she stole an expensive bracelet from one of her friends’ mothers, and the woman threatened to go to the police. Another time she got involved with this guy I tried to tell her was trouble.…”
“But she wouldn’t listen.”
“And Peter was no help. He didn’t know what to do or how to cope. Devon had always been a daddy’s girl, and now here she was, his little angel, this child who’d worshipped him her entire life, and he couldn’t get through to her. He couldn’t help her. It made him feel so impotent. Which I guess explains Sarah. The other woman,” Marcy clarified, and Liam nodded, as if no explanation had been necessary. “Anyway, he blamed me. He said he didn’t, but I know he did. And he was right. It was my fault.”
“How do you figure that?”
Marcy shrugged. “They were my genes.”
There’s no mental illness on my side of the family, she remembered Peter saying, although he’d apologized later.
Marcy told Liam the story of Devon’s “accident,” how she’d faked her own death and disappeared.
“And you thought she was dead until—”
“I never believed she was dead. Not really,” Marcy insisted. “And then I saw her walk by your pub.”
It was Liam’s turn to shake his head. “And I thought you were a cop.”
“What?”
“When you came back to Grogan’s, when you showed me her picture and asked if I recognized her, I assumed you were some sort of copper or private investigator. Even after you told me she was your daughter, I didn’t really believe you. I just assumed Audrey’s past had caught up with her.”
“Her past?”
“Well, like I said, I’ve only talked to her a few times. I don’t know that much about her. But I’ve heard rumors. You