by Mia Sheridan
Law enforcement officers were only human. They couldn’t approach crime and victimhood as emotionless robots who felt nothing. Still, their job was to be as impartial as possible, gather the facts, and hand the decision-making over to a judge and jury.
Charles Hartsman had made the choice to be a one-man judge, jury, and executioner. On some level, Ransom’s question scared Reed, because it forced him to wade into waters his father had drowned in.
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of a single-level family home in a quiet neighborhood in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. They walked to the door, Ransom pressing on the doorbell. They heard the chime ring within, and a minute later, footsteps could be heard approaching the door. When it opened, a forty-something woman with blonde hair streaked with gray and pulled up in a bun opened the door, her expression morphing into confusion when she saw them.
“Ma’am, I’m Detective Ransom Carlyle, and this is my partner Detective Reed Davies. We’re here to ask Sophia Miller a few questions.”
The woman blinked at them, bringing her hand to her chest as she swallowed. “I’m Sophia’s mother, detectives.” She looked back and forth between them. “But my daughter, she’s deceased. What is this about?”
“Deceased? Oh, I’m sorry.” Ransom glanced at Reed. “Ma’am, may we come inside?”
The woman stepped back. “Uh, sure. Yes. Please.” She closed the door after they’d entered and then led them to a living room right off the small front foyer. The furniture looked new, but the room was obviously lived-in, made homey with throw pillows, knickknacks, and photographs adorning the cabinet that held the television. A high school graduation photo of a smiling girl with long blonde hair caught Reed’s eye, and he wondered if it was Sophia, but didn’t ask, not yet.
“I’m Arleen Miller, by the way,” she said as she sat in a chair across from the small couch where they each took a seat.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,” Ransom said. “And I’m sorry I was unaware of your daughter’s passing.”
“Thank you. Yes, Sophia passed a little over eight months ago.” She looked back over her shoulder at the photo of the girl in the cap and gown, confirming for Reed that it was in fact her daughter. “An overdose,” Arleen Miller said softly. She sighed, glancing at her nails for a moment, a frown lining her brow. “She’d had problems with drugs in the past, but she was getting her life back on track. She had a good job, seemed happy about the new man she was dating. And then, I came home from work one day and found her unconscious in her room. She’d overdosed.” She looked between Reed and Ransom. “I’ll never know if she meant to do it, or if it was an accident. Maybe in the end, it doesn’t matter.”
“Either way, it’s a terrible loss,” Reed said. She nodded sadly and he gave her a moment before asking, “Ma’am, your daughter had lodged a complaint against a staff member at Valley Children’s Hospital?”
Ms. Miller looked surprised for a moment. “Yes. That was years ago, though.” She looked behind them for a moment, her brow creasing again. “Sophia had . . . issues, detectives. She’d been sexually assaulted by a coach when she was in middle school. She’d never told anyone because he told her no one would believe her. A few other girls ended up reporting him and Sophia admitted she’d been one of his victims too. He got jail time, but Sophia was never the same after that. We tried counseling, even some medications to help her anxiety. Some of it worked, but only for a while. When she was seventeen, she almost overdosed and I checked her into Valley Hospital.” Sadness took over her expression. “I did it to help her, and I came to regret that decision deeply.”
“Did she tell you about this staff member?” Ransom asked, his tone gentle.
Ms. Miller nodded. “She told me she’d caught him in the women’s showers snapping pictures with his phone. She told me she was going to turn him in.” She shook her head. “She wasn’t taken seriously by the hospital. I’m ashamed to say that even I questioned whether she was lying or just being paranoid. Sophia had whittled my trust down by that point, detectives. She lied when it suited her needs, she . . . twisted things. She was ill.” Ms. Miller’s shoulders dropped. “Anyway, my suspicions were confirmed when she later dropped the charges.”
“We don’t think she was lying, Ms. Miller.”
Her eyes widened as she tilted her head. “What?”
“One of the victims of a recent homicide was the man your daughter accused. There was a collection of photos found on his computer.”
Ms. Miller stared at them for several beats before she sank back into her chair. “Oh my God.” She appeared to digest that information before looking up. “Then why did she recant it?”
“We don’t have the answer to that.”
“No 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 rem
aining 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 had once served as her coffin. No, everywhere, all around. Free. She was perfect now. No longer chained by the circumstances of her birth and her cruel disease.
With a deep intake of breath, she pushed off the blackened piece of timber, walking slowly around the side of the foundation, overgrown with weeds and vines, toward the hole in the ground that had once served as her personal hell. She’d climbed out of it that night, but in some ways, she still resided there. In some ways, maybe part of her always would.
You didn’t let the monsters in. And you didn’t retreat into yourself either. You focused on Mady. You turned your mind to her, down there in the dark, didn’t you? You focused on your love for her.
Did she? Was that true? She’d never thought of it that way but . . . maybe.
As she rounded the corner, a glint of metal in the trees caught her eye and she looked up, frowning when she saw a small silver trailer situated between two tall buckeyes, obscured from the front by the trees and the parts of the house still standing.
As she stood staring at it in confusion, the door swung open and a man appeared.
No, no, it can’t be. A moan came up her throat. Don’t hurt me.
Liza stepped back, almost tripping over her own feet. Her father, it was her father. She picked up a stick lying on the ground and began backing away.
He put his hands up, his eyes seemingly as wide with alarm as her own. “Wait, stop, I won’t hurt you, Liza. Don’t go.”
Julian?
Oh God, it was her brother. The surprise of that realization caused her to halt.
He was moving toward her, only a few feet away now, and she saw that while the man Julian had become resembled their father, it was also clearly not him. But that didn’t mean this man wasn’t dangerous.
Liza waved the stick, calculating her chances of running back to her car and making it inside if he took chase. “Don’t come any closer.”
Julian stopped, putting his hands in his pockets. He was wiry and tall, just like their father, but Julian didn’t appear to have the same strength their father had had. She could see his ribs beneath the white T-shirt he wore, and his cheekbones were starkly defined, causing shadows, and making him appear much older than his thirty-two years. He lowered his head, looking up at her with raised eyes. “I won’t hurt you,” he repeated.
“You broke into my home,” she said, because she knew now it had been him. There was no doubt.
He dug his hands further into his pockets. “I didn’t think you’d agree to see me. I just . . .” His words faded away as he raised his head, squinting up at the sky for a minute. “I feel her here. Do you?” He looked at her. “Mady.”
Anger ratcheted through Liza and she stood straight. “Don’t you dare say her name,” she hissed. She used the stick to indicate what used to be their home behind them. “You left her there to burn to death!” The last word emerged on a choke.
Julian shook his head. “I smothered her first. With a pillow. She was already dead when I set the fire.”
Liza shook her head, her brow knitting together. “What? No, you never said that at the trial.”
Julian shrugged. “Didn’t matter.”
Liza regarded him. He appeared small. Broken. Old. His eyes had that look that she recognized sometimes in her patients. He wasn’t all there.
Didn’t matter, he’d said. And maybe it didn’t matter. He had killed Mady, regardless. Taken the one person Liza had loved—an innocent child. He’d left Liza for dead.
She didn’t necessarily want it to, but her anger began to drain, and along with it, her fear. Still, she kept her distance, and she didn’t drop her makeshift weapon. “Why did you leave me the rose, Julian? And in my house? You scared me to death.”
He licked his chapped lips, chewed at them for a second. “I didn’t want to scare you. I just wanted to see you. To know you . . . survived.”
Her mouth fell open slightly. She didn’t even know what to say.
“I left you that rose because I wanted to say I was sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
He lowered his gaze again. “Yeah. I shouldn’t have done it that way, all those years ago . . . that night. It wasn’t right. I get that now.”
“Why did you do it?” she whispered. “Just tell me that.”
He tilted his head, a line forming between his eyes. Eyes so much like their father’s, and yet so different too. Her father’s had been filled with malice, Julian’s were empty. Lost. He’d served time in that hole in the ground too. But he’d given in to the monsters. He’d let them lead him away. “To set you free,” he said. “I wanted to set you free.”
Liza stared, transfixed, barely able to breathe.
“I heard the things he did to you,” he said. “I saw your blood. You bled a lot.”
Liza’s stomach seized. Yes, she had bled, especially that first time. Her father had beaten her the next day, made her clean it up. She’d bled sometimes after that too, but only when he was especially angry. Especially violent. Her heart felt like it was shriveling. God, the memories were ugly. Brutal and graphic. What she’d lived through was so incredibly unspeakable. She’d told Reed some of it, but she knew, she knew that there would be small pieces she’d never share with another living soul. Because some of the things she’d done just to survive were so abhorrent and personal, they would never leave her lips. She wouldn’t even have the words. It was a kind of loneliness she’d carry all her days. Liza wasn’t certain of much, but she was certain of that.
“He would have done it to Mady eventually,” he said. “You know it’s true.”
No, she thought. Not if I could have helped it. Never.
“Why didn’t you just kill him then, Julian?” she choked. “Why not kill our father and let us live?”
He squinted off in the distance for a moment. “He ruined you. And me. He was going to ruin her too. It was better that I set you free.”
He ruined you. Yes. He had, hadn’t he?
Ruined.
And there was no coming back from ruined. It was vile, and filthy, and permanent.
How could she ever have a normal relationship? How could anyone see her sexually after knowing the way she’d been victimized? Picturing it? How could she ever make herself worthy of someone’s love? Wouldn’t her filth rub off in a hundred different ways, leaving him defiled too? And how could she ask someone to make such a sacrifice?
That, that was what ruined meant.
Julian met her eyes again. “I’m not going to hurt you again, Liza. I see things differently now. I see that what I did hurt you too. That’s what I was trying to tell you with the rose.” He glanced at the burnt-out husk of a house. “It was like this place . . . infected me. And then I got away and I wasn’t infected anymore.”
“But now you’re back,” she said. “Why?”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Her gaze moved away from him, to the trailer
in the grove of trees. “You’re living there?”
“Yeah. You own this land, you know.” He dug his boot-clad toe into the dirt. “Suppose you could kick me off.”
She let out a humorless laugh. “You can have it. It’s all yours.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
When he didn’t take that thought anywhere, she cleared her throat. “What will you do?”
Julian shrugged again. “Try to get some work. Hope people in this area will give me a chance.”
Liza was doubtful of that. The area was already struggling. And he was a felon. But Julian’s biggest obstacle was going to be his name. Small towns remembered things like that. “This probably isn’t the place for second chances, Julian. You should move away. Start somewhere new.”
“I can’t. Like I said, nowhere else to go.”
Liza thought about that, thought about the turns her own life had taken since that horrifying night, and a seed of something fragile and tenuous sprouted inside of her. Thankfulness, maybe, though that didn’t feel quite like the right word, not in the midst of all she’d lost. Maybe the best word was recognition. Recognition that he’d been a victim too. Recognition that he’d made a choice he’d believed would set his sisters free. And now? Recognition that in his very broken way, Julian had given her a future. A chance to start again.
“I’d better go.”
Julian met her eyes. “Okay. It’s good to see you, Liza. You grew up real beautiful.” His eyes shifted away as though the words had shamed him.
She nodded once and then turned, tossing the stick to the side. She hesitated for a moment, turning back to her brother. “Hey, Julian? You did.”
“Did what?”
“Set me free.” She nodded at him. “You did do that.”
His lips turned up ever so slightly.
