The Life She Stole

by S W Vaughn

  “Fabulous. We’re having Bel Votre cater the reception,” Missy says, giving Dan’s arm a light squeeze. “Oh, Celine, I almost forgot. Can you come with me sometime next week for a fitting? I can’t wait until you see your bridesmaid’s dress,” she gushes.

  “Sure. Just let me know when,” I say with a smile that doesn’t rise quite as high as it should. Bel Votre. The place Jill lied about going to when she went to see Brad, while they planned their horrific schemes.

  Too much still reminds me of her, or Hannah, or Brad. I try not to let it bother me, but it’s hard. I feel so betrayed — especially by Jill.

  And she’d hurt Alyssa too. Badly. My bright, outgoing little girl is sometimes shy and quiet now, nervous around strangers. She was too afraid to go to school for weeks after it was all over. She’s easing back into it now, but it’s still devastating to watch her struggle.

  If Jill wasn’t already dead, I’d have happily killed her. But both she and Hannah are in the ground, and Brad is locked away at the Seton-Frischer Clinic, the place where Hannah spent all those years. Unlike her, though, if he ever gets out of there, he’ll go straight to jail for kidnapping, aiding and abetting, and attempted murder.

  Ollie keeps close tabs on him. And I know that if Brad somehow escapes, he’ll be dead before he ever gets near me.

  “So, speaking of weddings,” Missy says, leaning forward with a smile. “When are the two of you going to tie the knot?”

  I laugh and glance at Ollie, who’s wearing a funny crooked smile. “It’s been less than a month,” I tell her. “Give us a little more time before you try to ring the wedding bells. I don’t even know what kind of toothpaste he uses yet.”

  “The kind that’s on sale,” he says with a grin. “I’m a cop. They don’t pay us very much.”

  “Hey, what a coincidence,” I say. “That’s the kind I use, too.”

  “Well, then. I guess we’re perfect for each other.” He looks into my eyes, and a deep, pleasant shiver tugs at my gut. “We should get married.”

  I’m already thinking that someday soon, we will.

  “Mommy!” Alyssa’s small but enthusiastic shout precedes her as she races out of the bedroom, the yellow plastic pony she got last weekend clutched in one hand. Izzy is right behind her. “Mommy, can I give Izzy this one?” she says. “She doesn’t have any yellow ones yet, only pink and blue, and I have two yellows.”

  I’m proud of my daughter for being so generous, and at the same time a little uneasy that she’s so quick to give her brand new toys away. There’s being kind, and then there’s being generous to a fault. It’s been so hard for me to stop doing the latter. I don’t want my daughter to grow up a pushover like me, and stay spineless until something horrible forces her to change.

  But she’s so earnest, and still so young. It probably won’t hurt for now.

  “Okay, munchkin. That’s very sweet of you to share,” I say.

  Izzy cheers and nearly snatches the pony from my daughter’s hand. “Thank you,” she says quickly. It’s almost an afterthought.

  There’s a gleam in the little girl’s vivid blue eyes, so much like her mother’s. She stares at Alyssa for just a moment too long and cocks her head — with the exact cold, calculating expression I saw on Hannah’s face, seconds before she ordered Brad to kill me.

  “Come on, ’Lyssa. Let’s play some more ponies,” Izzy says, and the moment vanishes as the girls giggle and tumble their way back to the bedroom.

  But I wonder just how much of her mother is in Alice Isabel Byers … and how much of her father. Because now I know who that is: Brad Dowling.

  The girls are sisters.

  They don’t know, and Missy and I have agreed not to tell them yet. The trauma of what happened at Hannah’s house is still too fresh, and neither of them will really be able to understand what it means, that Brad is their father.

  Maybe Izzy will turn out to have some of the same mental afflictions as her parents, or maybe not. A stable upbringing might help her overcome a lot of what had affected both Hannah and Brad — her a spoiled princess, him an idolized man-baby who was protected from everything. Maybe she’ll be just fine, and the girls will stay best friends forever.

  But I’m watching. Just in case.

  And I’ll always choose my daughter first.

  Thanks for reading!

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  About the Author

  S.W. Vaughn cut her reading teeth on Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and James Patterson, and has been hooked on thrillers and horror since. She lives in fabulous Central New York, where there are only two seasons (Winter and Road Construction) with her husband and son. An award-winning author, copywriter, and blogger, she’s been writing professionally for the past 15 years.

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  More books by S.W. Vaughn

  WHAT SHE FORGOT – a standalone psychological thriller

  ** Read on for an exclusive preview of What She Forgot * * *

  TERMINAL CONSENT – a standalone crime thriller

  How do you stop a killer whose victims are volunteering to die?

  P.I. Jude Wyland books: crime thrillers

  DEADLY MEASURES – a prequel novella

  THE BLACK DIRECTIVE

  House Phoenix series: crime thrillers (written under Sonya Bateman)

  BREAKING ANGEL | Book 1

  DEVIL RISING | Book 2

  TEMPTING JENNER | Book 3

  SHADOWS FALLING | Book 4

  WICKED ORIGINS | Stories & Novellas

  Preview: WHAT SHE FORGOT

  I didn’t mean to kill her. Not like that. She just wouldn’t stop screaming, no matter how much I begged her to. She wouldn’t stop.

  Killing her was messy. But it’s done now, and I can’t take it back.

  This new one, she doesn’t scream. She’s eager, maybe a little too eager. She promises she’s never going to tell anyone what we do, what she saw me doing. She says I excite her.

  She says a lot of things. I’m not sure I believe any of them.

  I tell her that she’s special, that she’s my only love. It keeps her under control. I need to control her, even though we’re out here so far away from anyone and anything. She has to keep my secrets. I don’t want to kill another one. All she has to do is stay, and be mine when I want her, and things will work out.

  But I’m starting to think she’s crazy. Maybe crazier than me.

  Now I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s still mine — so young, so beautiful, so eager to please. She swears she’ll never leave, that she’ll always be here waiting for me. And I want to believe her. I really do.

  I just can’t be sure. After all, can I really trust a crazy person? It doesn’t seem like a good plan, with everything she knows about me. I may have to kill her too.

  I’m thinking maybe that’ll be okay. Maybe killing won’t be so hard this time.

  And I can always get another one to replace her.

  MADELINE

  I was the one who got away.

  His name was Stewart Brooks. They called him the Singing Woods Killer, and for five long, horrifying months, he made the quiet suburban town of Dayfield, New York, his hunting ground. His reign of terror cast a shadow that hangs over this place, even today, as one by one he claimed four mothers’ daughters.

  I should’ve been the fifth.

  Like his other victims, I was sixteen when he dragged me into the woods. They said he kept me for a week, but I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember the abuse, the pain, the starvation they told me I’d suffered. I remember nothing. They filled in those stories for me, the doctors and the shrinks and the police with their cold, invasive examinations and their droning, exhaustive interviews. I never read any of the news articles, not even the one
s they wrote about me. I couldn’t stand to risk seeing photos of his dumping grounds, of glimpsing those endless trees again.

  There’s only one thing I know must have happened. For that, I carried the painful, heart-wrenching proof, and I still bear those scars. But even there, my memory is a black hole, a complete and terrible blank spot where nothing lives.

  I remember the terror of being taken. I remember knowing I was going to die. I can still feel that awful hollow sensation, the idea that I would cease to exist, become nothing. And my memories would die with me. I would never remember my friends or my family or that camping trip with Carson and Tricia the summer after freshman year, or my tenth birthday when Mom got me a guitar and I obsessed over it fiercely for two weeks and then put it in my closet and never touched it again, or how much I love pistachio ice cream and walking barefoot on warm sand.

  That feeling — the terrible, shuddering black nothing of death — always comes back to me when it’s too quiet, and I have to watch television, turn on music, make up awful stories in my head. Anything to distract myself before the feeling can consume me.

  I remember running through the woods. Running from death.

  I remember that I killed death itself.

  I can still see my escape, if I close my eyes. The dark, thick silence of the woods, the trees looming out of the blackness from nowhere to slow me, scratch at me, as if they were on his side. His harsh breathing and heavy footsteps catching me, his weight falling on me. The broken branch I jammed into his throat to get him off, because all I could feel was death, the awful rotting empty spot deep in my stomach that I never wanted to experience again. I pretended all that blood was a warm shower, washing away the shivery ache of death.

  Twenty years ago on the evening of June 4, somewhere deep in the Singing Woods, I killed Stewart Brooks.

  He’s dead, long gone, reduced to dust and bones in a numbered pauper’s grave at the Woodlawn Cemetery. My psychiatrist keeps telling me it’s okay that he’s dead. It’s okay that I killed him. I can forgive myself for murder. Because now, he can never hurt anyone again.

  But this morning, I saw him again. Watching me. Taunting me.

  I’m crazy. Everyone knows it. I know it, but that doesn’t matter.

  He’s come back for me, and the vast, yawning empty is still waiting to claim me after all these years.

  The hunt is on.

  MADELINE — NOW

  The morning starts out like any other Monday, with Renata dragging and groaning her way through school preparations and finally hauling herself into the car five minutes late. It’s my week for the morning carpool, and like any other teenager, my daughter is mortified at being driven around by her mother.

  “Ugh,” she says as she flops into the passenger seat and hauls her backpack in behind her, as if it’s full of bricks instead of books. School is such a chore for the young. “How long until I can get my license, again?”

  I watch until she puts her seatbelt on, and then put the car in reverse and start backing out of the driveway. “Six months,” I say, as if I haven’t told her that a hundred times since she passed her permit test last week.

  She heaves a dramatic sigh. “Why do I have to wait so long?”

  “Because the state of New York hates teenagers.” I’m hoping to prod a smile from her. It almost works, but she actively fights the tug at her lips. Sixteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to laugh at lame mom jokes.

  God, how is she sixteen already? Sometimes I feel like all I did was blink, and my sweet little girl who used to love cupcakes with too much frosting, everything Harry Potter, and of all things, monster trucks, had traded places with this beautiful, distracted woman-child who has a phone permanently grafted to her hand, who whispers and giggles with her friends over real-life boys instead of fictional ones, who keeps secrets from me when we used to share everything.

  This year is going to be hard. I’m already overprotective, I know that — and sixteen is the banner year. The danger year, at least in my trauma-warped, disordered mind. I can see myself smothering her with my own fears, the ghosts of my past, all those dead girls and me. If I’m not careful, I could drive a wedge between us that will never go away.

  Renata keeps her gloomy, half-asleep silence until we pull up in front of the first stop, a pale green Colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac. This is the Klines’ place, and Jenny Kline is my daughter’s ‘bestest friend in the whole wide world.’ They’ve been practically inseparable since kindergarten. Jenny and Rennie. When I stop the car, Jenny comes bounding out the door, beaming as always despite the early hour, and vaults into the back seat. “Morning, Mrs. Osborn,” she says, and before I can say good morning back, she and Renata are chattering away like a couple of magpies in that nearly incomprehensible language every generation of teens seems to develop as a defense mechanism against lurking parental ears.

  We have two more passengers to pick up. Tonya Washington, three blocks from Jenny, is the shyest of the group and tends to spend the whole trip staring out the window, chewing on a thumbnail. The last stop is for Drew Ritter, who was Renata’s first official boyfriend. But since they were both six years old at the time, there’s been no lingering awkwardness from the ‘breakup.’ These days Drew wears more jewelry and makeup than my daughter. I’m no longer sure what that means for modern kids, but no one seems to mind, so I don’t either.

  It’s not far from Drew’s house to the high school, and when we arrive, the drop-off line is relatively short. I pull up behind the distinctive canary-yellow Humvee that happens to belong to my obnoxiously perfect neighbors, the Clarks, and turn to Renata while we wait. “What’s going on after school today, honey?”

  A stricken look flashes across her face, and I realize I’ve committed the cardinal sin of calling her ‘honey’ in front of her friends. “Soccer practice,” she mumbles, sinking down in her seat with a huff. “Seriously, Mom, I already told you that last night. Jenny’s mom is picking us up. I’ll be home around five.”

  “All right. That’s fine, then,” I say. I can’t apologize for the slip now, because that would be even more embarrassing. “Do you still have a game Friday night? Your father said he should be home in time to make it. He’s only working a half-day on Friday.”

  “Really? That’d be cool, if you can both come,” she says. “Yeah, it’s at six.”

  I nod and smile, glad she’s still at least somewhat interested in having her parents involved in her life. My husband, Richard, owns a very successful landscaping business and often works long hours, but he makes a constant effort to stay involved in our daughter’s life so she won’t feel his absence. He’s a wonderful father, a wonderful husband. My rock, even after what we went through in the early years, when my condition was not as controlled as it is now. Unlike my mother, he stuck by me through the hard times, and now we’re better than ever.

  We married young — I was only twenty at the time, although Richard was twenty-eight — and everyone said it would never work out. But here we are, and I couldn’t be happier with our family, our life. Sullen teenager and all.

  This too shall pass, I tell myself. Again.

  Finally, the two perfect Clark boys get out of the Humvee and it drives away, and I pull forward into the drop-off section. Renata pops her door at the exact same time Jenny opens the back passenger door, but the back driver’s side door stays closed. Even at the high school, the kids aren’t allowed to exit a vehicle on the traffic side. “Bye, Mom,” Renata calls reflexively over her shoulder, just before she shuts the door and moves away from the car, as if she’s hoping no one saw her getting out of it.

  When they’re all out and the last door closes, I grip the wheel and hold back a sigh. I can’t believe how hard it is to let her grow up. Everybody tells you that’s your job, to raise your children well enough so they don’t need you, but no one mentions how much it hurts to actually succeed, to no longer be needed.

  Parenting might be the only job where success can make you mi
serable.

  The crossing guard waves me on, and I pull away slowly and complete the gentle arch of the circular drive in front of the high school, signaling to turn onto the main road. I have an appointment at nine, but that’s still over an hour away. Not enough time to go home and do anything, too much time to sit in the lot at the office park and wait. So I decide to run a few errands in the meantime.

  Dayfield isn’t big enough for our own Wal-Mart or Target, or any kind of mega-center, but we do have a twenty-four-hour supermarket, and it’s only a few miles from the office park. Price Cutter dominates the mini-plaza at the north end of town, taking up three-quarters of the frontage while a nail salon, a liquor store, and a former pet supply place that’s been available for lease for two years huddle in its shadow.

  This early in the day, there are plenty of decent parking spaces available. I pull into one next to a cart return near the front end of the lot, where I’m facing the strip of scrub pine and birch trees that separate the plaza parking lot from the homes on the other side. It’s something I don’t think about often, how many trees there are around here. This town is surrounded by forest on all sides, and randomly sprinkled with patches and swathes of trees throughout.

  In fact, the eastern border of the Singing Woods is right behind this very plaza.

  Goosebumps race across my skin, and I close my eyes and breathe slowly. I clear my mind the way Dr. Bradshaw taught me. White light in, dark thoughts out. The danger is over. Stewart Brooks is dead.

  Finally, I feel steady enough to get on with my day. I get out of the car, push the key fob button to lock it, and head for the store. As I’m passing the cart return, a flash of movement catches my attention and I glance toward the trees edging the parking lot. I’m thinking it was probably a squirrel, a bird, someone’s cat out for a morning stroll.