one believed her,” Ms. Miller muttered. “Again.” She closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head.
Reed regarded Ms. Miller with sympathy. It appeared as though she’d tried her best to help her daughter. And now she lived with the regret of the decisions she’d made that might have played a part in her child’s demise. But Sophia had made her choices too.
“The boyfriend you mentioned, ma’am,” Ransom said. “What was his name?”
She frowned in thought for a moment. “I don’t remember. I only met him once. She just seemed happy. Maybe she was. I like to think so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The early morning sky stretched before Liza, pearlescent and glowing above the charred remains of what once had been her family home. A juxtaposition of heaven, shining and gold-tinged, spanning far and wide over the desecrated lair of a long-dead demon.
She didn’t think she was being overly dramatic. True evil had resided there. Who knew that better than she did?
She got out of her car, closing the door and leaning against it as her eyes roamed over the blackened shell. Grief swelled in her chest, an expanding balloon that moved up her throat, causing her to gasp out a breath. She could feel it, standing there—her old life. Her old self. The scared and traumatized girl who had once walked those floors, surviving, and not much more, day after day after day. It hurt. God, the memories hurt.
And she could feel her sister. A piece of Mady remained as well. So while these ruins spoke of horror and pain, this was also hallowed ground.
“You can do it, Liza,” Mady said. “Go look at it. You don’t live there anymore.”
“You’re not really here, Mady," she murmured. “I wish you were.”
“Oh, but I am.” And Liza swore she heard her sister’s laughter, a sound that existed outside the darkened recesses of her mind.
Although she knew it was only the wind that gusted over the hard-packed earth, swirling into the copse of trees beyond, it was the memory of Mady’s laughter that allowed Liza to take in a full breath, convincing her feet to move forward.
It was only a forty-minute drive, but she felt like she was worlds away. She’d never traveled there before, and she wasn’t sure what had compelled her to do it that morning, other than that she’d checked out of the hotel but wasn’t quite ready to go back to her apartment. Then again, maybe she did know. Maybe it was Reed’s words repeating in her head: Don’t deny your past. It’s not your shame to carry. Grieve it and then use it to strengthen others.
She wanted to do that. She did. But how? She’d diagnosed herself a thousand times over. She was well aware of the fallout her traumatic past had caused. It was the moving forward part that kept eluding her.
Monsters don’t get the final say.
But don’t they? Don’t they always?
Her eyes followed the line of the brick chimney, still standing despite the blaze that had practically leveled the rest of the house. She squinted around at the overgrown bushes, practically as tall as the trees at each corner of the property.
She wasn’t surprised that the land had remained empty. There was little in the area to attract buyers. The once thriving small town in the Rust Belt had been decimated by deindustrialization and any remaining life was quickly being killed by the opioid epidemic.
Grief and ruin hung heavy in the air, even regardless of what had occurred on the Nolan land fifteen years before.
You made it, Liza. You’re here, and I have no idea how, but you are. That’s the story I really want to hear. Maybe someday you’ll tell it to me.
A bird began to trill in one of the trees behind the house and the broken silence spurred Liza forward, to the front door where she’d once stood, her hand pressed to her throat, blood flowing between her fingers as a blazing inferno raged between her and the only person she’d ever truly loved.
She put her hand on the blackened frame, hanging her head as pain gripped her heart, seeming to penetrate clear through to her bones. She ached. God, she ached. “Oh, Mady,” she breathed. “Please forgive me.”
Liza stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of the wind. It brushed past her cheek, a caress, and she opened her eyes, this deep sense of inexplicable peace washing through her. She felt it. Mady was there. But not in the burnt-out husk that