Child of Mine: a psychological thriller

by Chambers, V. J.

  She peered down at the screen.

  “She didn’t mean it, I know she didn’t mean it,” said Jordan.

  “You knew all along,” said Simon. “And you let me get taken into the jail for questioning and everything.”

  Jordan started to cry. “She’s my mom.”

  “She abuses you,” said Simon. “She’s crazy.”

  Lorelei was looking at a detailed list of all of the things that Dylan Wayne Ross had done to his victims. The list was titled, Things to Remember. She shifted on her feet. “I don’t understand.”

  A key turned in the front door.

  Lorelei dropped the phone to her side and turned.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Mia came inside the door, dripping wet. “Listen, I’ve been checking to make sure that the shelter we built is still stocked, and if the flood gets bad, we can go there. It’s a bit of a hike, but it’s on higher ground in the woods…” She trailed off. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s your car,” said Lorelei. “Parked out back?”

  “My family’s car,” said Mia.

  “Care to explain why Dylan Wayne Ross’s ID badge is in there?”

  Mia looked startled. “Lorelei, whatever you’re thinking—”

  Lorelei thrust the phone at Mia. “What’s this list?”

  Mia swallowed. “I knew I should have deleted that. But it took a lot of time to put together just right, and even though I’m sure I never would have needed it again, it’s really better safe than sorry, and—”

  “Needed it? For what?”

  Mia hung her head. She started to cry.

  “You always grilled me about serial killers,” said Lorelei. “You wanted to hear everything about them. You’d make me go over and over it, telling you all the things they did and how they did it. You knew Ross’s profile by heart.”

  “Probably,” said Mia, sniffling. “I really should have deleted that list.”

  “You’re the woman in the security photos,” said Lorelei. “You let him out. Why?”

  “I needed a way out,” said Mia, and tears were now pouring down her face. “I didn’t know what to do. I never meant to kill that girl, that Brittany girl. I was just going to teach her a lesson. She was a little whore, and I saw how she confused Jordan. Jordan looked at her, and she… It was that Brittany’s fault. That’s why you were wearing those awful clothes.” Mia looked at Jordan, pleading with the boy. “You’re a girl. I always told you it was okay to be a girl. But that girl—and then the other one, that Calico—they were putting pressure on you to be something you’re not.”

  “Mom,” said Jordan, who was crying too. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” said Lorelei, holding up both of her hands. “Don’t you dare apologize to her. Jordan, this is not your fault.”

  Mia hiccuped. “It was so fast. I was so mad. I just grabbed that Brittany girl.” She mimed putting her hands around someone’s neck. “And I squeezed and shook her and shook her and squeezed. I didn’t think I had enough strength to-to kill her. But, well, then she was dead. And so, I thought to myself, what serial killer do I know of that strangled people, and how do I make it look like that? I tried to think of one of the unsolved ones that you told me about, Lorelei, but I was in a panic, and all I could think of was Dylan Ross. I thought maybe everyone would think it was a copycat or something. But no one even made the connection. Part of the problem was that sister of his, though.”

  “Whose sister?” said Isaac.

  “Ross’s sister,” said Mia. “I took him straight to her door after I broke him out of Stonebook. I figured Kendra would report him missing right away. But she didn’t. I don’t know what she did. Maybe she turned him loose or maybe she tried to hide him or—”

  “At her door?” said Lorelei. “What did you do, ring the doorbell and run away?”

  “No, I just told him to stay there,” said Mia.

  “Well, maybe he wandered off before she found him,” said Lorelei. “It didn’t seem like his sister knew about his whereabouts when we talked to her.”

  “Yeah, and Ross was still in his Stonebook uniform every time he turned up,” said Isaac. “If he’d been staying with his sister, surely she would have given him clothes.”

  “At least we know how he got across the state lines,” said Lorelei. “You brought him.” She pointed at Mia.

  “Well, I don’t see the harm,” said Mia. “He didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Yet,” said Lorelei. “He’s still at large.”

  “And you hurt people,” said Isaac.

  Mia sniffed. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Right, you accidentally murdered three girls,” Simon spoke up, his voice dry.

  Mia turned to Simon. “I never wanted them to go after you. You’re a good boy. I know you love my Jordan deep down, and when she’s back to being the good girl she is—”

  “He’s a boy,” Lorelei snapped. “A boy.”

  Mia made a face. “Those girls had to die. They were corrupting my daughter.”

  “Your son,” said Simon quietly.

  “No,” said Mia. “She’s a girl. She’s always wanted to be a girl.” She went over to Jordan and patted the boy on the cheek. “Right, honey? Tell mommy just how much you want to be a girl. Tell me.”

  Jordan just shook his head.

  “Tell me,” said Mia.

  Lorelei snatched Mia by the arm and pulled her away from Jordan. “Stop that,” she whispered.

  Mia turned round eyes on the other woman. “What’s going to happen to me, Lorelei? Oh, dear, I think I probably ought to have a lawyer, shouldn’t I? And I should be quiet. For my own safety, I probably shouldn’t say anything else.” She went over and sat down on one of the couches.

  She didn’t speak again, not while the storm raged that night, not the next morning, when the police were finally able to get over the bridge to officially arrest her. She went with them silently, her head bowed, her dark hair hanging down and obscuring her face.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Weeks passed, and there was no sign of Dylan Wayne Ross. The FBI sent in a special task force to look for him, partnering with local law enforcement in both Maryland and Pennsylvania, and they still didn’t turn him up.

  Mia had her lawyer, someone who’d been representing the Dawson family for years. However, the lawyer hadn’t been able to get Mia out on bail. Instead, he’d recommended she be put in a hospital, claiming she was mentally unable to understand the true extent of her crimes. The judge had agreed, and Mia was transferred—ironically to Stonebrook. (That was ironic, right?) She would stay there for some time, while her lawyers delayed the trial with continuance after continuance.

  Meanwhile, Ross turned up along the side of the interstate. He was apprehended by a cop looking for speeders, and apparently, Ross didn’t put up a fight at all. He was docile while he was handcuffed and taken back to Stonebrook. Once there, he immediately settled back into his routine of staring out the window wordlessly.

  He was a puzzle, Lorelei thought. She didn’t know exactly what had caused Ross’s violent outburst all those years ago, when he’d rained terror down on his sister’s sorority house, but it did seem as if he’d never lifted a finger to harm another person since. Ross seemed hollowed out now, as if the violence of that night had drained him of his personality or his will.

  Without Mia at the helm, the Woodlands Evergreen Resort didn’t have a leader. But Mia needed the place running to fund her legal battles, so she immediately promoted one of her senior managers to the top spot. The hotel stayed open, and it thrived, in spite of the controversy of Mia’s arrest. Maybe because of it, in fact. People were curious. They came to stay in the place the crazy woman owned.

  But Lorelei didn’t stay on. She put in her notice and moved out.

  Isaac asked her and Simon to stay with him, but Lorelei was a little hesitant, not because she didn’t trust Isaac. She did. But only because everything was changing so fast, and she didn’t want to overwhe
lm herself or Simon with the changes.

  Instead, she rented a three-bedroom apartment in Rockville, and she got a job as a manager in a bar and grill. All her bartending experience seemed to pay off. She didn’t start drinking again, though. She just worked hard and enjoyed her job.

  She enrolled Simon in a new high school, a place where no one knew he’d been accused of murder. A place that had its own chess club.

  The third bedroom stood open for a little while.

  It was meant for Jordan, of course, but there were some roadblocks to having him move in. At first, Lorelei tried to get status as a foster parent so that she could have custody of Jordan, but that process was difficult and time-consuming, and meanwhile, Jordan was being placed far away.

  Lorelei was worried about the boy, who had never really had the chance to be himself and was now out in the world on his own.

  So, instead, they began the process of having Jordan declared an emancipated minor, which went more quickly. However, once Jordan was out on his own, he moved in with Lorelei and Simon.

  It was nice, actually, having a house full of two teenage boys. It was boisterous and fun and noisy. Of course, there was never any food left, because Simon and Jordan seemed to have bottomless pits for stomachs.

  She continued to date Isaac. They saw each other quite a bit.

  And she was happy to have a man around with two growing boys, she found. She wouldn’t necessarily say that Isaac was fatherly toward the boys. Maybe he was more uncle-ly or something. He was a positive older male figure in their lives, something neither of them had really ever had. Of course, none of her guys, not even Isaac, were particularly interested in sports, so this didn’t mean trips to ballgames. It did mean video game tournaments, however.

  And she grew closer to Isaac, closer than she’d been before Simon’s birth, closer than she ever thought she’d be with a man. It was a process, not a headlong fall down a chute. Week by week, month by month, she opened up a little more to him, and he to her. It was gradual. But it was good.

  A year passed.

  The boys started their senior year of high school, and Jordan had a girlfriend he asked to the homecoming dance. Simon didn’t seem bothered by this development. He said enjoyed having more time to himself to focus on his photography. Despite everything, his interest in that seemed to have stuck. He wasn’t taking pictures of people much now anymore, though. Instead, he constructed complicated still lifes made of twigs and nests and leaves.

  Another six months went by.

  Mia’s trial finally started. She had the gall to plead not guilty. Her lawyer was all over the place with the defense, claiming at once that Mia was mentally ill and unable to understand the ramifications of her actions and also that maybe she hadn’t done the deed at all, that Dylan Wayne Ross was actually to blame.

  It dragged on for months.

  The boys were antsy during that time, Jordan especially. Lorelei tried to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with him more than once, but the boy only avoided her gaze and gave monosyllabic answers to her questions.

  The worst of it was when some reporters hunted Jordan down. They were covering Mia’s trial and wanted to talk to the boy who’d been raised as a girl. They were rude and insensitive, and they hung out outside the apartment harassing them all for nearly three days.

  Lorelei, Isaac, and the boys kept quiet. They didn’t say a word to the reporters. But stories still ran in papers, complete with grainy candids of Jordan next to his last school picture, when he was wearing lots of jewelry and makeup.

  After that, Jordan only got worse. He seemed to retreat into himself, and he stopped seeing his girlfriend.

  Finally, Lorelei turned the whole thing over to Isaac, who said he’d take Jordan fishing, which Isaac said was the extent of his manly pursuits.

  It seemed to work, although Isaac was vague about what had happened when she asked him about the trip. “Oh, you know, we fished, we talked,” said Isaac.

  “Yes?” she said. “What did he say?”

  “Things,” Isaac said.

  “Things?” She was incredulous. He couldn’t be more specific than that?

  “Yeah, lots of things,” said Isaac. “Good things. It was a good talk.”

  Eventually, she let it go. Jordan seemed better, and that was all that mattered.

  It was early spring before the trial wrapped up. Both of the boys had already made their decisions about college. They were going to a small private school an hour or so from D.C., and they were going to be roommates. Through everything, they were still attached at the hip, the closest friends Lorelei knew. Jordan’s tuition was being paid through a trust set up from his Dawson inheritance—Mia was legally unable to touch it. And Simon had gotten scholarships. The two seemed excited about college and completely through with high school. Even Simon, the consummate good student, was a bit careless with his assignments.

  Lorelei went to the courthouse for the verdict of Mia’s trial. She hadn’t attended the rest of the trial, even though she’d followed it closely. She didn’t think it would be good for Jordan to know that Lorelei was so close to the woman who had hurt him for all those years.

  Isaac came with her to court.

  They sat in the back and they watched as the jury was brought in. They waited, both anxious.

  When the judge asked for the jury to hand over the verdict, Lorelei’s pulse started to race just beneath her skin.

  Isaac reached over and grabbed her hand. He squeezed.

  She squeezed back.

  The verdict was guilty. Mia wasn’t going to get away with what she’d done. She would be punished for the murders.

  Relief seeped into Lorelei’s bones. It didn’t make up for all the pain that Mia had caused, of course. Nothing would make up for that. But Lorelei was pleased. It was all as it should be.

  * * *

  Lorelei sprawled on the couch in Isaac’s living room, a glass of sparkling cider in one hand. Even though she thought that maybe someday she might have a glass of wine here or there, thus far, she’d resisted the urge. Sometimes, she mused that she only told herself it was okay to drink so that she could feel secure in the knowledge the experience wasn’t lost to her forever. Knowing she might drink someday seemed to make it easier not to drink today. She wondered if she ever would have another alcoholic drink.

  Perhaps not. She didn’t miss it.

  She was straightening Isaac’s coffee table, because they were going to eat takeout in front of the TV with a movie that night. It was the way they spent many an evening these days. The boys had both been off at college, living in the dorms, for over three months now. She’d be seeing them for the Thanksgiving holiday, but she hadn’t seen them otherwise.

  Things were quiet. Sometimes that was good. Sometimes, it hit her out of nowhere that Simon was so grown up, and it took her breath away in a sort of gust of pain and pride that hit at the same time with equal intensity. She missed him. But she couldn’t be more pleased with the man he was becoming.

  She had talked to both of the boys recently, because one of those horrible reporters who’d followed them around last year during the trial had decided to dredge everything up again, ambushing Jordan at school. The news report had shown both Jordan and Simon on campus, and Lorelei couldn’t have been more furious.

  She was only glad that both Jordan and Simon seemed pretty unfazed by all of it. When she’d spoken to them, they’d assured her that they were doing okay.

  She picked up a business card from Isaac’s coffee table. “Isaac?” she called.

  “What?” said Isaac from the other room. He was gathering up silverware and napkins.

  “Why do you have a business card for a realtor?”

  He appeared in the doorway to his living room. “Oh, I left that lying out? I meant it to be a surprise.”

  “What?”

  He strode into the room, set down the forks and napkins on the coffee table, and held up a finger. “One minute.” Then he disappea
red out of the room.

  She got to her feet. “Where are you going?”

  “Stay there!” he called.

  She sat back down on the couch, chewing on her lip.

  Isaac reappeared. He came over to the couch and sat down next to her. He looked nervous. “Uh, I was going to do this another time, but I guess since you found the card, I might as well do it all now.”

  “Do what?” she said. “What’s this card for?”

  “I’m selling this place.” He gestured.

  “What? Why?” she said.

  “It’s, um, it’s not big enough,” he said. “There’s only two bedrooms. They’re tiny. There’s nowhere for all your stuff or for the boys to stay when they come home.”

  “I don’t live here, though,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not going to live here either. We’re both going to live somewhere else.”

  “What?” she said.

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’m not doing this right.”

  “Doing what right?”

  He got something out of his pocket. It was a little black velvet case.

  Her heart stopped. “Isaac…”

  He opened it, and there was a ring. The diamond in the center of the white gold band glinted at her. “I want you to marry me,” he said, and his voice had gotten husky.

  She tried to speak, tried to grope for words. She couldn’t talk. She could only flit her gaze back and forth between the man who was looking earnestly at her and the beautiful ring. Her throat felt tight.

  He closed the case. “Look, maybe this was all just a bad idea.”

  “Isaac,” she said, and she shoved him. “What are you doing?”

  “Apparently having my proposal rejected.”

  “Well, you haven’t actually proposed, have you?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t ask me,” she said.

  He gave her a funny look, and then he grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He opened the jewelry case again. “Will you marry me, Lorelei Taylor?”