by Sharon Sala
“Stupid thumbs. Everyone should only have two thumbs—not three. You messed it up.”
Trey pointed at the paper.
“That’s right. They both had two thumbs on one hand. And the babies were both the same size, and they had the same thick dark curls and the same upturned noses. What happened? How did you get them confused?”
“I know my baby,” she muttered. “A mother knows her baby. Shut up. You’re wrong. You’re wrong.”
“Then read the report and tell me I’m lying.”
“Where’s my baby?” Anna said in a high, singsong voice. “I can’t find my baby.”
Trey slapped the table with the flat of his hand. By now, he was shouting.
“That’s because you stuffed her in a fucking suitcase and plastered her up in a wall. What the hell made you do something so evil? Tell me, Laree! Why did you kill your own child?”
Her mouth began to tremble; then the features on her face looked as if they were going to melt. Everything sagged as she began to take short, anxious breaths.
“It’s a lie. It’s a lie!”
“Read the damn report!”
She flinched, but she couldn’t look away. Olivia watched in disbelief as the crazy part of Anna/Laree disappeared. She saw anger. She saw fear. Then she saw something else. At that point, Anna Walden came undone.
“This is wrong,” she said, repeatedly jabbing at the paper with her forefinger.
“No. What you did was wrong, but the tests don’t lie.”
“You fixed it. You made them read this way.”
“No. Sheree’s tests came back the same thing as yours. The baby we found in that suitcase is the one you gave birth to. You killed Michael and Kay Sealy. You stole their baby, then you killed your own. Now you tell me how in the hell that was going to work for you? Tell me, dammit. I need to understand!”
Anna reeled backward, as if the force of his fury was physically painful.
She picked up the test result and read it again, and she started to cry. At first only a few quiet tears, then deeper sobs.
“There has to be a mistake,” she said. “I took the kid, and I wasn’t going to give her back. But Foster messed everything up. I was going to keep Olivia and in a few days give Sophie back to them. They looked enough alike that nobody would know the difference, and my Sophie would be in her rightful place as heir to the Sealy money.”
“What happened?” Trey asked.
“The babies were playing together. Just sitting on the floor in a patch of sunlight, laughing and poking each other in the nose, then the chin, then laughing and doing it all over again.”
Anna covered her face against the memories, but they wouldn’t go away.
“I left them alone for just a minute to fix them something to eat. I wasn’t cruel. They were hungry.”
“What happened?” Trey asked.
“I heard one of them crying. When I went in there, they were both naked, standing in the middle of a pile of clothes. For a moment, I couldn’t tell them apart. Then Olivia bent down and picked up her blanket, and I knew. My Sophie grabbed at the blanket, but Olivia wouldn’t let it go. I hit her. She fell backward against the corner of the fireplace. I heard the pop, like the sound a ripe watermelon makes when you split it. She didn’t move again. I hadn’t meant for it to happen that way, but it was too late to take back. She was so still. So I dressed her in the clothes she’d come in and then left her on the bed. I wasn’t sure what to do with her body, but I didn’t want her to be found.”
Trey wouldn’t let himself look at Olivia. He had to stay focused.
“But you killed the wrong one, Laree. You killed your own baby.”
“No. She grabbed the blanket Olivia came with.”
“That doesn’t mean a damn thing, but this test does. You killed your own child. Foster came along, and before you knew it, he had asked for a ransom, which messed your plans up considerably. Then he goes and gives the surviving baby back without any concern for your feelings.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Sophie was where she belonged, no matter how it happened.”
Trey pointed at Olivia.
“Only she’s not Sophie.”
“She is. When Marcus hired me, she quit crying. She was my baby.”
“She quit crying because she was all cried out,” Marcus said.
Anna began to tremble. She looked at Olivia.
“You’re my baby. Tell them, darling. Tell them you’re mine.”
Olivia stood up and walked out of the room.
Anna got up and tried to follow, but Trey stopped her, then turned her toward the mirror on the other side of the room, where a half-dozen people on the other side were watching the drama unfolding in mute horror.
“Look at yourself, Laree. Look good and hard. You murdered Michael and Kay Sealy out of nothing more than jealousy and revenge, but that wasn’t your worst mistake. You really screwed up when you took their daughter. What kind of woman is it who can’t tell her own child from another? What kind of mother does what you did?”
Anna tried to cover her face, but Trey wouldn’t let go of her arms. She closed her eyes, but the truth was still there, pushing at her, reminding her of that tiny body lying crumpled in the suitcase she’d found in a closet. It was the hell that had been hovering at the back of her sanity, pulling her under. She wanted to go back to that place in her mind where the truth had been deeply hidden.
Shadows beckoned to her. She imagined she felt tiny fingers pulling at her from the inside out, then heard a tiny voice screaming at her from afar.
“Here’s the kicker, Laree. There’s one more thing that the coroner discovered. One thing we didn’t catch the first time out.”
She couldn’t bring herself to look and didn’t have the guts to ask.
Trey shook her—hard.
“Open your goddamn eyes and look at yourself!”
Laree looked.
“You know that baby you stuffed in that suitcase… the one you buried behind that wall? Well, she wasn’t dead. There were tiny scratch marks on the inside of the suitcase and residue of the lining beneath her fingernails.”
Outside, Olivia cupped her hands over her mouth, stifling a moan of disbelief. Chia Rodriguez slipped an arm around Olivia’s waist without speaking.
Marcus bowed his head, then stared at the floor.
But it was Anna, looking up into the mirror at the reflection of Trey’s face behind her, who had to face the hell of what she’d done.
“You’re lying.”
“Not about that. Never about anything like that.”
Anna moaned; then she started to scream, tearing at her hair and clawing at her face as she fell to the floor.
Trey looked at her there, then motioned at Marcus. Together, they walked out of the room.
Olivia was waiting for him just outside the door. Her face was streaked with tears, and the look in her eyes was one of desperation.
“Please, tell me this is finally over.”
“Almost,” Trey said, and together, they walked away.
***
Dawn came in four shades of pink, dragging with it a burst of sunshine that gave promise of a beautiful day.
It had been a month since the revelation. Olivia considered it the day she’d been reborn. Her identity was no longer a mystery, and her faith in herself had been renewed.
Grampy had resigned himself to the fact that she wasn’t leaving Trey’s house, although the renovations to the Sealy estate were almost done. He and Rose had both moved back home, happy to be there despite the hammering on the roof.
Laree/Anna had not been able to live with the hell of what she’d done. Less than a month after her incarceration in a prison for the criminally insane, she was found hanging from a bathroom showerhead. She had taken a coward’s route out of her guilt by committing suicide, and there was no one at her funeral to mourn for the loss.
But it was Trey who set the clock on Olivia’s world, and it was Tre
y who had stayed fast beside her when she’d been at her worst. With only a couple of months to go to the date they’d set for their wedding, there was still one thing Trey had vowed must be done. Something about keeping a promise he’d made to a baby called Jane Doe.
***
“Livvie, honey, are you ready?” Trey asked as he poked his head into the bedroom.
“Almost,” she said. “I still can’t reach far enough up to fasten the hook on the back of my dress.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Trey said, and lifted her hair aside, then fastened the dress. “All done.” When she turned back around, his eyes darkened. “And so beautiful.”
“Thank you, darling,” Olivia said, then laid a hand on the front of his suit coat. “I’m only going to say this once, but don’t think I will ever forget it.”
“Say what?” he asked.
“If you are as faithful to me for the rest of our lives as you were to the promise you made to Sophie, then I will consider myself blessed.”
The unexpected compliment brought tears to his eyes.
“Someone had to care,” he muttered.
“She’s blessed that it was you. Now let’s go put her to rest. She certainly deserves it.”
Epilogue
Through the years, they made an annual pilgrimage to the family plot in a small cemetery outside of Dallas where the baby had been buried, to the hillside where Marcus Sealy’s wife and parents, his son and daughter-in-law, as well as a brother and sister, then finally Marcus, had been laid to rest.
And always Trey would kneel down by the baby’s marker to pull away any errant strands of grass that had missed the lawn mower’s blades, while Olivia would place a small spray of pink roses on the ground.
Then they would stand back to look, with their arms around each other, and read to themselves the words carved into the stone. It was the only thing they could do to offer proof to the world that for a brief moment in time a tiny girl with dark curls, an upturned nose and a giggle always waiting to come out had lived.
Olivia had grown accustomed to the sadness she felt at having had a sister she couldn’t remember. But she made it a point to pay the visit just the same, so she wouldn’t forget.
Just as she’d done every year before, she laid the spray of pink roses on the grave as Trey pulled at the grass. As they stepped back to view their handiwork, their gazes fell on the words carved in the stone above the birth and death dates.
Sophie Sealy
Sleeping with angels
“Rest in peace, little girl,” Trey said, then put his arm around Olivia’s shoulders and pulled her close against him. He could smell the lilac scent of her shampoo and the sharp hint of frost in the air. Another year almost gone. Time moved too fast.
They locked hands as they started back to the car. Then something—some sound—caught Trey’s attention. He stopped and turned around.
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
A frown came and went, then he shrugged it off.
“I thought I heard something, but I guess I was wrong.”
They moved on to their car. Then, from somewhere off in the distance, so if they’d listened just a little bit longer they might have heard it, came a baby’s soft giggle, and then the sound of little feet running quickly through the leaves upon the ground.
Other Books by Sharon Sala
A Thousand Lies
A Field of Poppies
The Perfect Lie
Remember Me
Sweet Baby
The Chosen
Butterfly
Missing
Reunion
Snowfall
Dark Water
Mimosa Grove
Out of the Dark
The Whippoorwill Trilogy
Whippoorwill
The Amen Trail
The Hen House
About the Author
Sharon Sala is a long-time member of the Romance Writers of America, as well as a member of Oklahoma RWA. In 2014, she published her one-hundredth novel. A fan favorite, Sala is an eight-time RITA finalist, winner of the Janet Dailey Award, four-time Career Achievement winner from RT Magazine, five-time winner of the National Reader’s Choice Award, and five-time winner of the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, as well as Bookseller’s Best Award. In 2011 she was named RWA’s recipient of the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her novels have been on the top of major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly. Sala also writes under the name Dinah McCall.
