“So is this what she would have looked like?” I asked. “Best-case scenario for that condition?”
Belle put her arm round me. “Ali, my love, this is her. This is your baby girl. I took her picture. To give you the option. I took all their pictures, until they caught me.”
I grabbed the phone out of her hand and starfished the picture as big as it would go.
“But it’s true,” I whispered. “She really is perfect.”
“No,” said Belle. “I puffed up the blanket around the top of her head to make the shape look better. She wasn’t perfect, but she was beautiful. Wouldn’t you say so?”
“She looks like my mum,” I said and kept gazing. Her nose was as smooth and round as a seashell washed by endless tides. Her lashes were as neat and soft as if someone had brushed them. And that determined little mouth, shut tight on all her secrets. If I could have this picture on my bedside table in a silver frame and a little one laminated in my wallet, I knew I’d never hear her crying out for me again.
“She’s not who I thought she was,” I said. But then neither was I. Single mum of two kids, the boy more trouble than his sister, close to my family, over my ex.
Well, that wasn’t exactly who I was just yet, but I was on my way.
Postscript
Sylvie and Julia sold the cube house. Got a good price for it, too, from some ghoul who actually liked the fact that a body had once been buried there. The girls bought a cottage on the other side of the bay, quite near my brother’s farm and the annexe he rents to me.
The last day I visited, Sylvie was gardening. A cherry tree was newly sunk in a mulched hole. It had three bare branches, gnarled and scaly as chicken’s feet, and the dark tips only just beginning to swell where the buds would be. I watched her pour a Coke bottle full of water carefully around its roots and then stand up and watch the puddle seep into the soil.
“There,” she said. “As long as Julia doesn’t back the car into it.”
I sighed. Of the three of them, we never could say who was worst. Dido was teaching Julia to drive. Julia was teaching Dido to drink. I suspected Angel was teaching both of them things I’d rather not know. I tried to care when the school called me in but, deep down, I reckoned if those three wanted some wild times, they had my blessing.
Only Lars ever managed to keep them in line. Lars was in from the start with Dr. F. Co-owner of the new drop-in clinic, co-chairman of the funding board. It was only his good name that got them accredited at all, since no one quite believed that Dr. F knew nothing of what had happened at Howell Hall.
Tamara Ferris got twelve years. Mona Swain just fifteen, with a domestic abuse defence for the murder. If I was a better person I would try never to think about either of them. But, being who I am, I like to imagine them passing in the halls at Cornton Vale, the women’s prison. I like to think maybe they work together in the laundry, despising each other and still having to face each other every day.
Angel tells me Marco still lives in the cottage at Dundrennan. Fine by me. I don’t suppose I’ll ever need to drive down that way again. Howell Hall is closed. The army have the run of the headland now.
I saw Sylvie raise her head and glance over that way. Then she turned resolutely back and watched the last of the water soak away.
“By the time I can sit in its shade,” she said, “all of this will feel far behind me.”
I said nothing, but she heard me at it and sighed. “I don’t want to remember any more than I remember already,” she said.
“And you’re still sure you don’t want someone to talk to?” I asked her. “Professionally?”
She shook her head with a shudder. “Just time,” she said. “I have my new home and you, my good friend. And I have this to take care of and look forward to.”
She had, in other words, a house, a tree, and a person.
“And Julia,” I reminded her.
“Mmhmm, mmhmm,” she said. She was new at it, but every time I heard it, it made me happy. The sound of Sylvie laughing.
the end
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank: Terri Bischoff, Nicole Nugent, Katie Mickschl, Kevin Brown, Bill Krause, and all at Midnight Ink; my agent Lisa Moylett and all at CMM; the cast of thousands that are Criminal Minds, Femmes Fatales, the coven that cannot be named, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, the CWA, and the merry online band who make me giggle every day no matter what’s in the headlines; my family, more than ever—so that’s Audrey Ford and the gang, Wendy Keegan and her gang, Jean and Jim McPherson, Sheila McPherson (still) and her small but growing gang, Nan McRoberts and that gang, and Neil McRoberts (my gang); and all of my friends, old and new, here and there.
Facts and Fictions
Galloway is a real place … but something about it is just unreal enough to make it perfect for fiction. This time, Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbright, and Dundrennan are borrowed whole. The Abbey is pretty close, but Historic Environment Scotland looks after the real one far too well for any of this to happen there. There is a Ministry of Defence training area near Dundrennan, but it’s not much like my one. Howell Hall is entirely imaginary. Indeed, none of the houses, businesses, or individuals in the book are based on real places, institutions, or people.
House. Tree. Person. Page 30
