She found me.
She prepares herself, turns around toward Samantha, but Samantha isn’t whom she finds—it’s a young woman with her friend waiting at the service counter. She holds a cup of coffee in one hand, and with the other points to an empty table several feet away. When the girl notices Riley staring, she offers a neutralizing, sorry-just-trying-to-get-settled smile. Riley smiles back, then takes her wary gaze around the patio.
“Looking for someone?”
A whumping pulse pumps through Riley’s veins, and she whirls around. Samantha sits directly across the table. She smiles a jolly smile. Riley tries to speak, but shock prohibits it. She was expecting the Female Antichrist to show, but not like this. She should have known better.
“Hate the hair,” Samantha remarks with a snort.
“Figured you might,” Riley says, then crosses one leg over the other.
Slap, slap, slap.
Samantha glares at the red pump snapping on and off Riley’s foot—the same shoe Samantha stole from the store and Riley subsequently stole from her.
“They looked better on me,” Samantha says, flicking her gaze away and toward another table. She comes back to Riley and, without missing a beat, says, “So, I’ll go first. After careful consideration, I’ve decided to give you a second chance.”
For obvious reasons, the offer provides Riley with not a sliver of relief.
“You know,” Samantha goes on, “take the high road. Forgive and forget. It’s the right move to make, and I’m thinking with a little work, you and I can move past all that ugly stuff. We had something special that most moms and daughters can only dream of. Let’s not throw it all away.”
She’s got to be kidding.
Samantha brings her hands out from under the table. She rests them on the surface, fingers intertwined, locked . . . and clad in a pair of latex gloves. She blinks and smiles. Blinks and smiles again.
Riley tries her best to conceal the fright jackrabbiting up through her esophagus.
Samantha extends her gloved hands across the table and says, “So what do you say, Mom? Forgive and forget?”
Riley hoicks her hands out of reach and tries to channel calm, despite the spiny heat that, like a hungry flame, spirals through every part of her.
“Come on now, Mother. Don’t be like that,” Samantha says, her pout of disappointment both playful and sinister, latex-clad fingers wiggling like worms at Riley.
Don’t let her intimidate you. Do not.
Riley pulls from her purse Patricia’s billing statement. With a flat look, she holds it up.
Samantha’s grin is flippant.
Hold steady. You’re doing fine.
“That’s all you’ve got for me? That’s your big”—Samantha makes air quotes with her fingers—“game changer? Damn it, I was hoping for a lot more fun than this.”
Riley regards the paperwork. “I can have you arrested with these.”
“For what? A little maintenance therapy?” Samantha snorts. “No crime in striving for self-improvement.”
Riley pulls out Patricia’s notes. “This doesn’t look like self-improvement. This looks awful suspicious, like a desperate act to hide something.”
She can see Samantha trying hard not to show a reaction, but her wretched vulnerability plays like a chink in the armor. She flaps her attention away and says, “I’ve never seen those notes before in my life.”
“They came from your place.”
“Prove it.”
Riley doesn’t know how to prove it, and telling the cops she broke into Samantha’s apartment to steal them certainly won’t fly. So she punts with a bluff. “I’ll let the police do that. It won’t take long for them to figure it out.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Riley.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you were Patricia’s last appointment for the day. It means I’m not the one holding that nasty little hot potato in my hands. If they suspect anyone, my guess is that you’re stuck dead center in their crosshairs.”
“You set me up for the murder.”
“Say you love me and I’ll unset you. Come on. How about it? Some of that awesome mother love?”
“I am not your—”
“Bup, bup, bup, bup,” she interrupts. “Do not finish that. You know what happened last time. I’ve got skills you haven’t even seen yet. Don’t make me use them.”
“Is that what you’re calling all those atrocious personality disorders these days?”
Without warning, Samantha snatches away the notes, shoves them into her purse, then seizes Riley’s wrist. With the gloved hands, she begins mercilessly twisting.
Riley tries to yell for help but chokes on air, skin burning to the command of torqueing latex. All she can force out is, “You’re . . . hurting . . .”
“Not nearly as bad as you’ve hurt me,” Samantha says, sounding grisly and deep—deadly, even. The tips of Riley’s fingers are purple and throbbing. Samantha’s eyes water, but there’s no sadness in them. All Riley sees is unadulterated anger. With her free hand, she latches on to Riley’s ring and pinkie fingers and, with the other, adjusts her grip around the next two.
“So many ways to break you,” Samantha says, pulling the sets of fingers apart. Then through gritted teeth and a blazing-hot stare that could burn down a city, come these snarling words: “Say you love me.”
The pain is unbearable. Tears crawl down Riley’s cheeks, but in her belly there is nothing but base fury when she says, “I am NOT your mother!”
That’s when she feels the crack between her middle and ring fingers, but a silent scream is all she can get out.
“Fine, have it your way,” Samantha snarls as she releases Riley’s wrist. “I’m going to crucify you.”
Riley finds her voice, lets out an excruciated groan. Holding one hand with the other, she rocks in writhing pain. People are staring. One guy snatches up his cell phone, probably calling for help. The madwoman rises from the table and grins.
“Do you ever think about how your husband really died?” she asks.
Riley is filled with horror and despair. Through her pain, she manages to say, “No, Rose. I know you killed him, too.”
73
Riley waits more than six hours at the clinic, nursing an agonizingly painful and throbbing hand until someone can see her. When the examination and X-rays are done, the doctor diagnoses a fracture between the middle and ring fingers.
She goes home with a cast on her hand, a sizable medical bill to add to her debt, and smoldering anger in her gut. The hand may be broken, but her determination is not; neither is her robustly bitter taste for retribution. She will destroy Rose Hopkins, no matter what the cost.
Now she stands before Clarissa’s grave. Not once since the funeral has she come here. It isn’t because she doesn’t care or that it’s too painful—it’s because her daughter doesn’t live in that box of bones beneath the plush lawn and crumbled granite. Clarissa’s light shines aboveground and through Riley.
And she didn’t come here to visit. She came to evade Rose’s surveillance. This is likely the last place the woman would look for her. Clarissa’s gravesite is also well hidden behind a mausoleum and surrounded by tall bushes. For added measure, she made sure Samantha didn’t follow her here, so hopefully, she’ll be safe.
Erin pulls up and parks next to Riley’s car on an adjacent frontage road. She gets out and turns stone-statue still, eyes traveling from Riley’s changed hair to the cast, then back to the hair.
“Whoa . . . ,” she says, “I’m not even sure where to start, but let’s hit the most pressing issue first. What happened to your hand?”
“Samantha.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I keep telling you she’s dangerous.”
“Did you call—” Erin stops herself short of saying the cops, then changes topics. “Why are we having this conversation at Clarissa’s grave, anyway?”
Riley loo
ks to her left, looks to her right. “Privacy,” she whispers, then motions for Erin to come closer.
Erin sends her perplexed gaze around the cemetery as if she’s trying to find a perceived enemy off in the distance. When she comes back to Riley, it looks as though someone snapped a towel in Erin’s face.
“She’s getting more dangerous,” Riley says. “I need that restraining order wrapped up.”
“Yeah . . . so, about that.”
Riley steps in closer to her sister.
“I did some research before filing the order to see what I could dig up on Samantha.”
“And?”
“Samantha Light doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean? Of course she exists.”
“Not on paper. No driver’s license. No registered vehicle.”
“What about her apartment? I know she laid tracks there.”
“None that I could find.”
Riley withdraws.
“Still with me here?” Erin asks. “Because I almost filed a restraining order on a phantom.”
“She’s not. She’s real.”
“Then explain this.”
Riley stalls, then says, “Samantha Light is an alias.”
“You’re kidding me, right? Withholding information? Again? I’m tired of this. Either tell the truth or I walk.” Erin starts to walk away.
Riley latches on to Erin’s sleeve, pulls her back, and says, “She’s Rose Hopkins.”
“Oh no . . .” Erin looks down at the lawn, puts a palm against her forehead. “We are not really doing this all over again, are we? Riley, listen to me.” She treads past the headstone, knits both hands through her hair, then looks back at her sister and says, “Rose Hopkins did not kill Clarissa, and I don’t for a minute believe she’s returned to terrorize you under this Samantha Light persona. Do you even realize how ludicrous that sounds?”
“It’s not! It was real. It happened. She even tried to throw me off track with a phony southern accent, then claimed she’d found Rose by pulling up some old photo of herself before the plastic surgery.”
Erin flinches. “The what?”
“She already admitted she got a boob job; it’s no stretch to guess she altered her face, too. But that doesn’t matter now. The point is that Rose turned our lives upside down.”
“You had nothing to prove that!”
“I tried!”
“And brought me to a vacant house! And the more you explained, the less it added up!”
“What did you want from me? Sworn affidavits? How many times did I have to tell you? The only other person who could support my story was Clarissa, and she was already dead. And while we’re on that, Rose killed Jason, too.”
Erin’s head rattles. “Every piece of evidence at the scene—every shred—pointed to an accident. An accident, Riley. He tripped on a rock. He wasn’t killed by a little girl. And that little girl hasn’t come back as a new person with a new face.”
“Maybe she put the rock there.”
“Again, where’s the proof?”
“Look at this.” Riley produces the bill she stole from Rose.
Erin spares her sister a cryptic glance before taking the paper. When she reads it, her posture deflates. “How did you gain access to confidential patient information? Please don’t tell me you broke into Patricia’s office, which, incidentally, would make you a suspect in her murder. Please don’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t take it from Patricia’s office.”
“Thank heavens.”
“I took it from Rose’s apartment.”
Erin’s spine stiffens as if someone has ordered her to straighten her posture. “Wonderful. Now you’re breaking into people’s homes?”
“That’s not what’s important here!”
“But what does this prove?”
“That she killed Patricia!”
Erin blinks twice. She tries to compose herself and says, “All it demonstrates is that you were both seeing the same therapist.”
“She used a fake name. I also found Patricia’s session notes in Rose’s apartment. She stole them after killing her.”
Erin holds out a hand. “Let me see them.”
“I don’t have them anymore. Rose took them when she broke my hand.”
“Riley! This is a damned shell game. Nothing you’ve said is tracking. I need evidence!”
“I’m telling you what happened!”
Erin pauses to gape at her sister, then says, “Who are you right now? Do you even realize how paranoid you’re sounding again? Stop bending reality. Stop seeing people who don’t exist. Tell the truth!”
“I am!”
“Are you?” Erin looks at her sister with anger for a few seconds, then, “Riley, were you fired from your job?”
“I don’t see why that has anything to do with—”
“Were you fired from your job?”
“Okay, yes, but how do you even know that?”
Erin nods toward Riley’s car. “You shouldn’t leave employment circulars sitting on your dashboard. When did it happen?”
“Wednesday.”
“I came to your place that night. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because there were other pressing matters. Like the letter written to me in blood? By an extremely dangerous woman who nearly killed me on the freeway?” Her volume is rising. “Why does it matter?”
“Because it illustrates your continuing pattern of omission.”
“Here we go again. We’ve landed back in Erin’s Courtroom.”
“I’m just saying that if we were in front of a judge, your lack of accountability would get you torn into microbits.”
“What am I doing on the stand in the first place? Why aren’t you being my sister instead of—”
Erin’s phone goes off. She silences it, takes in a breath through her nose, then says, “So where were we?”
“Check your notes, counselor. I think you were exposing my pattern of omission.”
“Tell me something else,” Erin says, ignoring the snipe. “Besides you, has anyone you know ever seen Samantha?”
“Patricia did.”
“A witness who also happens to be dead.”
“Wendy saw her, too.”
“And Wendy is?”
“My neighbor. My friend.”
“Great. Someone else I’ve never heard of.”
“Are we really going back to your suspicion that Samantha isn’t real? You said you believed me!”
“That was before all this,” Erin mutters. “What else have you not told me?”
Riley starts to speak, then stops herself.
“What?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re one of them. You won’t believe me about it, either.”
“Oh, great. Now here comes the persecution complex.”
“Well? Ever since I left Glendale, you’ve been monitoring my mental competency, analyzing everything I do. And all these pointed questions and doubts? Those aren’t a beaming vote of confidence, either.” It’s Riley’s turn to scrutinize Erin. “And since we’re going there, tell me something. Do you remember how many times you came to visit me at Glendale?”
“I don’t exactly remem—”
“Three times.”
“But the first time they made me leave because you were having hallucinations that I’d killed Clarissa! I wasn’t allowed to come back until they stabilized you.”
“And the rest of the two years?”
Erin doesn’t have an answer for that one.
“Three,” Riley says, “while I sat there staring at cracked walls and breathing the smell of people’s filthy urine.”
“I’m pretty sure I came more than that.”
“And I’m sure you didn’t,” Riley says, eyes filling with tears. “And I know exactly why.”
“Okay, this is getting completely bananas.”
“Because not once during those visits—or an
ytime before or since—have you told me you believe I am innocent of killing my daughter.”
“You should know that I—”
“I’m not a damned mind reader!” The tears are no longer filling Riley’s eyes—they’re falling down her face, dripping from her chin. “Dammit, Erin! I needed to hear it!” Riley takes a gasp of oxygen so sharp, so deep, that it feels as though it could be her final breath. And, at last, as if she’s opened a mighty floodgate, her emotions come surging through in full force. A fearless tide of agony, of intense suffering, so raw, so real, that she collapses onto Clarissa’s tombstone as if it’s the only thing that can hold her up, body swaying to and fro, trying to rock away the punishing sorrow.
Erin tries to place a wavering hand on her sister’s shoulder, but just as fast, Riley shoves it away.
“My daughter was murdered!” Riley says, but it comes out as though she’s begging to be rescued. “And as if that wasn’t excruciating enough, they accused me of killing her! Me! The person who loved her the most in this world! They destroyed me.” Riley breaks into racking sobs. “But you did worse, Erin. So much worse. Can you even imagine what it felt like to realize that my sister might actually believe I killed my own daughter? Then you refused to talk about it. You left me alone, Erin! When I needed you most!”
“I never thought any of that. I never thought you killed her!” Erin says, nearly choking on her tears. “I swear I didn’t!”
“Then why didn’t you ever tell me that?” Riley says in an angry whisper. “Why did you leave me to fall apart in that place?”
“Because I was scared! Because after I saw you bleed out on your kitchen floor, and after I had you rushed to the hospital so they could save your life, and after I had to commit you to Glendale, you stopped connecting with me. You disappeared. And . . . and I thought you were angry. Angry at what I’d done!”
Riley doesn’t respond. Not because she doesn’t want to—it’s because she can’t. And the worst part: she’s not sure if it’s sadness or anger that throttles her words and holds them hostage. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s even more complicated than that.
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 21
