The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,364

“When did we see each other last, I mean?”

Becky’s mouth twisted downward. “When you were five years old, Emma.”

The fluorescent light flickered again, its electrical hum deafening in the silence. Emma leaned over the bed. “My name is Sutton,” she insisted softly.

But Becky’s head rolled from side to side on the pile of pillows, her eyes far away. “You used to love doing my scavenger hunts when you were little. Did you like the one I left you at the hotel, Emma?”

“I’m Sutton,” Emma said again, but Becky ignored her.

“Remember the princess dress I bought you at Goodwill? You used to dance around the motel room.” Becky raised her hands as if she were directing music only she could hear. “You’d twirl around and around and around … so pretty.”

Emma focused on breathing slowly, carefully. If she didn’t, she might scream, or burst into tears.

“You were a good little girl, Emmy, but a bad little girl, too. You were too much to handle.” A single tear rolled down Becky’s sunken cheek.

Emma gritted her teeth. “I’m Sutton,” she said. “My name is Sutton. So one more time. When was the last time you saw me?”

Becky edged up on the pillow. “At the canyon,” she said, her voice suddenly steady, the words no longer slurred. “That night at the canyon.”

Her hand grabbed Emma’s forearm, her nails cutting into Emma’s skin. A scream tore from Emma’s throat as she tried to pull away. Becky’s fingers clenched, her face staring and blank. Bubbles of foam gathered at the corners of her lips and trickled down her chin.

“Help!” Emma screamed. She fumbled to pry Becky’s fingers away, but it was like a bad dream—Becky’s grip just got tighter and tighter. The door flew open and nurses quickly flocked into the room. The man who’d escorted Emma earlier helped release her wrist. “She’s convulsing,” he shouted at the others as he pushed Emma back toward the doorway. Emma saw one woman deftly preparing a syringe, flicking it with her forefinger.

The place where Becky had squeezed Emma’s arm throbbed, and I could feel it, too. Then, without my willing it to happen, the heat of my birth mother’s touch blossomed into a memory. A memory of that night in the canyon, when I’d met Becky for the first—and last—time …

19

MOMMIE DEAREST

The woman’s smile broadens as she reaches out her hand to help me to my feet. “Hello, Sutton. I’m your mother. Becky,” she singsongs again. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

I stare at her outstretched palm. Something tells me not to take it. I try to get up on my own, but I stumble again, my shirt snagging on a branch behind me. I immediately curse my decision to come back here to this pitch-black, end-of-the-earth place. Why didn’t I go to Nisha’s, or call a cab to take me home?

I sneak a peek at the woman who claims to be my mother and take in her tangled hair, her glowing eyes, her jittery mouth. My stomach tightens the way it does when Thayer and I watch horror movies. The air crackles with tension.

“It’s okay,” Becky croons softly, kneeling down to me. Sticks and leaves cling to her torn clothes, as if she’s been wandering in the desert for days. Then I see a shallow gash across her forehead and a smear of blood on her cheek.

“What happened to you?” I ask, pointing. My voice is pitched too high, like a scared little girl’s.

Becky’s hand flies to her wound. “Oh. Just an accident.” She giggles cagily. “A little stumble.” But it doesn’t look like a cut from a stumble to me. It looks like the type of gash a steering wheel might make if one’s head were to bash into it after ramming into a seventeen-year-old boy.

Down in the subdivision, the thumping party music stops abruptly. It’s suddenly so silent I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the quick and panicked sound of my breathing. The woman in front of me shuffles a little closer. “Sutton,” she whispers, and reaches out an arm to stroke my cheek. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful.”

I want to jerk away, but I feel paralyzed. Her hands are cold, sandpapery. I can smell her sour breath. “You’re so beautiful,” she says again, the woman who thinks she’s my mother. But she isn’t. She can’t be. My mother is someone else, someone beautiful and soft and tragic. Not this dirty mountain woman, this freak. For whatever reason, my father—or whoever