by Laura McHugh
“Now, I have a few standard questions that I need to ask,” she said. “This is confidential. Do you feel safe at home?”
My mouth opened but no words came out. I was used to smiling and cheerily replying that I was doing well, if anyone asked, but this question caught me off guard. I’d expected her to ask about the abuse I’d endured in captivity, or the interrogation afterward. No one ever questioned what went on behind closed doors in our home. Family matters were private, and living as we did, there was no one to intervene.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Just answer truthfully.” Her warm words were like a hand reaching out. All I had to do was grasp it.
“No,” I said. “I don’t feel safe at home. Or in this police station, or this town. I need to get out of here, but I don’t think my parents will let me leave.”
My words filled the room, floating in the air, swelling up like balloons ready to burst.
“You’re eighteen years old now,” the social worker said, squinting at her paperwork. “You don’t need permission.”
My birthday had come and gone without mention, forgotten in the chaos, but it hadn’t escaped the notice of this woman with her forms. I’d looked forward to turning eighteen for so long, thinking I’d finally be free, only to discover my parents had something else in store for me. But outside of their house, beyond their control, the number still had meaning.
Leah crossed her legs, the hem of her dress riding up above her knees. Her bare skin was dotted with bright freckles. “If you need a safe place to go,” she said, “we can help you.”
In the windowless room, I began to see a way out. It was a dark tunnel, and I didn’t know what lay on the other side, but all that mattered was that I’d end up someplace better. I thought of my bedroom, the bare shelf, the blank walls. I looked at these two women, both strangers, armed with nothing but paperwork and tissues. Angels, of a sort. The kind you could count on. I opened my Bible and removed the picture of Sylvie that I’d tucked between the pages. I wondered, when my mother handed the book to me, if she knew I wouldn’t be back.
CHAPTER 31
SARAH, NOW
Each room in the house glowed with color. My kitchen was the green of spring fields, my living room the blue of an old canning jar, my bedroom a soft shade of peach called Sunrise. When I had mentioned to Helen that I was finally going to paint over all the splotches, she’d told Melissa, who told everyone at work, and from there it turned into a painting party, with pizza and beer and music playing. Karim had come, and the other vet techs, and the girls from the front desk. The house looked different when we were done, and it felt different, too. Melissa couldn’t believe I didn’t have any pictures to hang on the walls, so she made us take a group selfie that she printed and framed for me. I’d hung it in the kitchen next to the chalkboard, which was no longer pristine: I had written down an appointment to do something very important with Helen. It fell exactly one month after the day that would have been Sylvie’s wedding.
Helen had offered to keep Gypsy when I returned from Wisteria, not wanting me to be overwhelmed after everything that had happened, but I missed her. She still hadn’t received any applications for adoption. When I asked Melissa if she’d allow me a foster fail, she said it was about time. She brought a doggy cake to the office to celebrate Gypsy’s adoption and sent us home with a new foster: Mr. Marmalade, the skinny orange cat who hated being locked up in a cage. He was gradually calming down with an entire house to roam through, though he still ran for the door every time I opened it. I couldn’t blame him.
Farrow and I talked or messaged nearly every day. He was busy with Abby, making sure she got the help she needed, working on a plan for what would come next. They were getting to know each other again, as family. He was in touch with Eva, too, who was in a temporary foster home along with Rachel. He hoped that I would be able to connect with both of them soon, that it might be helpful for the three of us to talk to one another about what we had been through. Three invisible girls whose families had never reported them missing, whose disappearances went largely unnoticed until they were found.
Abby and Eva’s treatment in the news was kinder than mine had been five years before. They had passed the test for Girls Who Come Back, their unbelievable stories proven beyond doubt by witnesses and evidence. Ronnie confessed to assaulting Eva, though he claimed he’d only done it at the direction of Pastor Rick, who told him it was a mission from God. He hadn’t touched Abby; the pastor was saving her for himself. I had evidence, too, finally, and belated vindication: five years after Sheriff Krieger had accused me of lying, the blood on my slip was matched to Minnie Blackburn.
I mourned the other invisible girls, the ones who remained missing, their bones hidden in firepits and basements and forests and farm ponds, betrayed by those who should have protected them. I wished that Destiny had not been among them. In her interrogation, Trina’s self-righteous rambling had yielded a motive, if not a confession. That day comes when a man’s eye slides past you and lands on your daughter. I had to protect her from all of that. It’s a mother’s job. I didn’t buy that she had killed Destiny to protect her. If she truly thought her boyfriend was preying on her daughter—and there was no indication that he was—it would have made more sense to kill Vance. Whether Trina was jealous of Destiny for reasons real or imagined, she had chosen her boyfriend over her flesh and blood, and set her own child on fire. I could still picture her singing hymns in the prayer circle, stoking the fire as it burned.
* * *
—
Farrow and I finally got a chance to catch up in person, just the two of us, a few weeks after he’d raced to meet Gina’s van at the hospital in Branson. We greeted each other with a brief hug when he walked into the coffee shop, and I remembered how he’d swept me into his arms in the hallway at the hospital, how we’d clung to each other beneath the fluorescent lights. I’d thought about that moment a lot in the days since, the warmth of him, the way he looked at me. He had whispered that I was safe, and for once I believed it, felt it in my bones.
As we sipped our coffee and he filled me in on the progress of the case, he paused and looked at me with the same endearing half smile he’d flashed the first time I met him. “We make a good team,” he said. There was a palpable energy between us, and my breath grew shallow in anticipation. “Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?”
I stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“I’m not joking,” he said. “You’ve got the instincts for it. You’d be a natural.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I thought you were going to say something else.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s embarrassing.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting. “I hope you know by now that you can tell me anything.”
“Fine,” I said. “I thought you were going to ask me out.”
He set down his cup. “Would you have laughed if I did?”
“No.”
“Would you have said yes?”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
He laughed into his hand. “Okay. We can be completely honest with each other, right? I look forward to talking to you every day. I save all your texts, like some kind of psychopath, in case I want to go back and reread them. I couldn’t wait to get here this morning to see you. And I would love to take you out. It’s just that…I don’t know if that’s a line we should cross. Considering how we met, and everything you’ve been through…I don’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable, to pressure you. You deserve to have normal relationships that don’t revolve around criminal investigations. And you deserve to go on a real first date with someone you care about. Maybe to a restaurant where rolls aren’t being thrown at your head.”
“I didn’t mind the rolls,” I said. “They were good.”
“Yeah. They were.”
“I appreciate your concern,” I said. “And I think we should go for it. You said I could have a do-over, remember? I kind of feel like you owe me.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You sure about this?”
“It’s just a date,” I said. “It’s not like we’re getting married. If it doesn’t feel right, we’ll go back to whatever we are now.”
“All right. Where do you want to go?”
“You can’t laugh,” I said.
“I won’t.”
“You laugh sometimes when it’s inappropriate.”
“I promise,” he said.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Olive Garden,” I said.
“Why did you think I’d laugh? Endless breadsticks are no joke.”
“And…maybe roller skating after, if you’re up for it.”
“Sounds perfect,” he said.
* * *
—
Things remained unsettled with my family. My parents were sorry but not in the ways I wanted them to be. They still insisted that they’d done what they thought was best, fearing my soul was in jeopardy, and their own souls if they couldn’t save me. They had trusted the Blackburns to help me and had no idea what torturous methods they would use. Pastor Rick had called them the night I got away and fed them a story. That I’d fought every effort they put forth, that I’d harmed myself and threatened them and had to be restrained. That Noah had stumbled in and misunderstood the situation, and I’d suffered further injuries in my escape before ending up at the side of a road in such dramatic fashion. My parents worried that I was a lost cause, a danger to my own family. And that was why they let me go, believing they’d tried everything and failed. I wasn’t sure I could forgive them, but I buried their apology like a seed in my heart, to give it time.
I hadn’t spoken to Sylvie, though I’d tried. Mama would only say that she was distraught, and I didn’t know how much of that was due to the cancellation of her wedding, and whether she blamed me, somehow, for ruining her plans. Sylvie had been so close to Minnie, so excited to become a Blackburn. Part of me wondered just how much she knew about their ministry, how deeply she’d been involved. I pushed down a darker thought, that maybe she knew everything, including what they’d done to me.
Noah had helped me escape not once, but twice, and I would always be grateful, though I couldn’t help thinking how different things would have been if he’d turned his parents in the first time. In generous moments, I could understand why he hadn’t. He’d taken a risk as it was, getting me out of that house and setting me free, defying his parents. He’d been grazed by a bullet and returned fire on his own family to protect me and two girls he didn’t know. I understood now why he’d seemed angry when he saw me in the kitchen with Minnie. He knew what she’d done to me before and wouldn’t let it happen again. He hadn’t known about the other girls; Rick and Minnie had waited until he moved out to bring another one home. Noah had always seemed an uneasy fit in his family, uninterested in playing the role of the pastor’s son. His parents had been trying to draw him back into the fold, building him a home, pushing him to marry Sylvie, but now that they were in custody, maybe he could finally be free of their influence and expectation and live life on his own terms. He deserved that as much as anyone.
I worried that things would be awkward at work now that everyone knew who I was and what had happened, but my first day back I realized it was actually easier to talk to people when I wasn’t trying to hide a secret. It helped that Melissa monopolized the conversation, focusing on the dogs that had been rescued from the Blackburns’ puppy mill and taking some of the spotlight off me. For the first time, I ate lunch in the break room instead of my office, something my counselor, Casey, had been recommending since I’d started working there. Karim invited me to sit with him and the other techs, and I only froze up for a moment before saying yes.
It was clear and sunny the morning Helen came to the shelter to pick me up for our appointment. Her car was every bit as glamorous as it appeared in foster photos, only instead of a carsick Chihuahua in the front seat, I was there, only slightly nauseated. I sank into the ivory leather, inhaling Helen’s vetiver perfume.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” she said.
“I hope so.”
Everything in the store was candy colored, pink and lavender and aqua. There were sparkly lip glosses, furry phone cases, unicorn headbands. Melissa had argued that I should go to a tattoo parlor downtown that had professional body piercers, but Helen said it was more than okay to indulge my childhood dream of going to a mall and sitting on a glittery throne to get my ears pierced.
As I watched the two little girls going before me, I heard my mother’s scornful voice, preaching about what kind of girl would do such a thing. I tuned it out. The girls giggled, grinning at each other. The young woman doing the piercing smiled brightly and told them they were brave. She held the gun with a steady hand. When my turn came, she gave me a stuffed bear to squeeze.
“You got this,” Helen said, taking out her phone. “We’ll get ice cream after.”
“Don’t tell me you’re taking pictures.”
“Come on, you know me better than that. This is a big deal! You can’t not take pictures. This is going on the foster page.”
I groaned and Helen laughed. At the last second, I squeezed my eyes shut, braced for the pinch, but it was over before I knew it.
“So?” Helen said. “How do you feel?”
“Different,” I said. My ears stung. I held up the mirror to see. The silver studs were barely noticeable, but I felt changed. Like I’d reclaimed a bit of my old self, the Sarabeth before the farm, and glimpsed a new me that I didn’t fully recognize—not quite the person I had been or the one I wanted to be, but still in progress, somewhere in between.
I returned to work afterward, where Melissa examined my earlobes and declared that the holes had been sufficiently centered. I was typing an email when the phone rang, the number unknown. I breathed in the scent of wet dogs and disinfectant, pressed my palm to the desk, focused on the enormous Lambert’s mug that Farrow had given me. It said heads up! in bold caps, and it made me smile to think of the flying rolls. The mug was filled to the brim with cold water, but I didn’t need it. My mouth hadn’t gone dry. I blew out my breath and reached for the phone, unafraid of what might await me at the other end of the line. There were no more secrets to be dredged up out of the dark, no more skeletons resting uneasily in shallow graves—only the same things everyone fears, the ordinary monsters that might come for anyone in the light of day.
For my sisters
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, as always, to my family—Harper, Piper, Brent, and all my supportive relatives and in-laws—and my dear friends. I love you all. I’m grateful to Lisa, Diane, Ellen, and Mom for being early readers and encouraging me. Special thanks to Elizabeth, Hilary, Angie, Amy, Emily, Sally, Liz, and Adonica, and many thanks to Mark and Emma Beary, who humor me when I text pictures of bones to ask if they are human. (So far, no, but I always feel like I should check.) Thank you, Mark, for generously sharing your knowledge of forensics.
I’m lucky to have great writing friends, and it all started with Jill Orr, Jen Gravley, Nina Furstenau, Ann Breidenbach, and Allison Smythe. Thank you to Amy Engel, Karen Katchur, Julia Dahl, and Jocelyn Cullity for always being willing to talk writing with me.
Thank you to everyone at Random House who worked on this book, especially my editor, Andrea Walker, Emma Caruso, Allyson Lord, Colleen Nuccio, and Amy Ryan, and big thanks to my agent, Sally Wofford-Girand.
Thank you to Lena Acton for surprising me at the library in St. Louis and telling me one last time that you were proud of me.
Special shout-out to reader Becky Sandusky, who had my first book, The Weight of Blood, tattooed on her arm. As a writer, nothing means more than knowing your
work has resonated with someone.
Finally, huge and heartfelt thanks to all the librarians, booksellers, bloggers, and readers out there. None of this happens without you and your love of books.
By Laura McHugh
The Weight of Blood
Arrowood
The Wolf Wants In
What’s Done in Darkness
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura McHugh is the internationally bestselling author of The Weight of Blood, winner of an International Thriller Writers Award and a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for best first novel; Arrowood, an International Thriller Writers Award finalist for best novel; and The Wolf Wants In. McHugh lives in Missouri with her husband and daughters.
Facebook.com/lauramchughauthor
Twitter: @LauraSMcHugh
Instagram: @lauramchughauthor
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