Wyatt’s turn to nod.

“Maybe twenty-two years seems like a long time. She should’ve come forward sooner, contacted her mother sooner, but she’s trying now. Isn’t that what matters?”

“She says she drew some pictures this afternoon?”

“My own attempt at memory therapy. Here.” Tessa lifted the cover of the sketch pad, withdrew half a dozen oversize sheets. “As you can tell, she’s a good artist, with a great eye for detail.”

At first, Wyatt wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A rounded room with a rose mural and gauze-enshrouded bed. A marble fireplace in a formal parlor. But the third sketch presented the big picture: a vast, wood-shingled Victorian, the kind built by wealthy families in the nineteenth century as summer homes for their families away from the heat and stench of cities. The house included a gorgeous wraparound front porch, a three-story turret, and an expansive right wing dotted with multiple dormers. Impressive house. Expensive house. And indeed, given the diamond-paned windows and gingerbread trim, a dollhouse.

He looked up from the sketch, eyed Tessa thoughtfully. “You think it’s real?”

“I think she thinks it’s real.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

He flipped a page, coming to a portrait of an older woman, hair up in a bun, face stern, eyes cold. He couldn’t help himself. He shivered.

“Madame Sade,” Tessa provided.

“Looks like a woman who could kidnap small children,” he agreed.

“I asked D.D. to examine past missing-kids cases,” Tessa mentioned. “I’m curious. Given the databases we have now, maybe we can determine if thirty years ago there was a spike in missing-girl cases in the greater New England area. It would give Nicky’s story some weight.”

“It would.”

“And as long as we’re entertaining the notion this house exists, look at the background. The view through the window of the tower bedroom.”

He had to flip back. He hadn’t noticed it at first, still getting his bearings and all, but sure enough, the round room included several impressive windows. Nicky had meticulously drawn in each diamond pane of the glass. Then, behind that . . . the mountains. A view so familiar he felt that if he studied it just a minute more, it would come to him.

“The White Mountains. You think this is New Hampshire.” He glanced at Tessa.

“She asked to move here, not Thomas.”

“Because Marlene Bilek is here.”

“Maybe. But you heard her talk. She’s looking for answers. I think instinct brought her here. Closer to the truth.”

“Sheriff asked me a good question this morning,” Wyatt said abruptly. “If Thomas is the one responsible for the accidents against his wife, why? Only a few reasons a husband tries to kill his spouse. Revenge, money, power. After twenty-two years, what changed in their marriage?”

He knew the answer, but Tessa did the honors: “Nicky decided it was time to move forward. She was tired of being sad.”

“A move toward independence can be threatening to any man, but especially to a husband who likes to tend as much as Thomas wants to tend,” Wyatt agreed.

“I don’t buy the story of them meeting in New Orleans,” Tessa stated.

“Me neither. Always sounded rehearsed.”

“I tried to get her to talk more about Thomas while she was sketching. It sounds to me like there is part of her that loves him. But more than that, she believes she needs him. He takes care of her. I’m guessing for his own reasons. Think of their pattern: always on the move. That seems less like a couple who’s living happily ever after, more like a pair on the run.”

Wyatt turned back to the picture of the madam. “If Nicky was truly kept in this dollhouse, and Thomas was somehow part of it, I can think of at least one person who’d never want them talking to the police.” He tapped the cold-eyed woman. “Tessa, if this is all true . . . How’d Nicky, Vero, get out? That’s what bothers me the most. An operation like this, a woman like this, she didn’t simply let one of her girls go. Something happened. And I’m not just talking Vero learned to fly, and all that nonsense.”

Tessa hesitated. “I have a theory. Maybe I’m biased, having my own . . . past and all. But I think Vero was kidnapped thirty years ago. I think she was held by this woman in this house. And I think . . . I think something really terrible happened that enabled her to escape. No. I suspect Vero did something really terrible that got her out. And all these years later, that’s what she can’t stand to face. Except.” Tessa shrugged, that sad smile back on her lips. “The past has a will of its own. It wants to be heard. Her own purposefully blocked memories are starting to break free.”

“November is the saddest month,” Wyatt murmured. “A woman twice returned from the dead.”

“I think Nicky’s trying to remember. I think some part of her even wants to tell us what happened, get it off her chest. She just needs a push.”

“Another scented candle?” Wyatt arched a brow.

“No. I think we put her face-to-face with her mom. Let them finally speak.”

Wyatt thought about it. “All right. I’ll call Marlene, break the news. She’s already taken an interest in Nicky. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t want to see her missing daughter after all these years. We’ll need to keep it under wraps, though. God knows the press is about to descend upon us any minute.”

“True.”

“But it’s gotta be tonight. And I don’t just mean because the feds will change everything in the morning. Thomas Frank fled from his burning home nearly twenty-four hours ago, yet we pinged him only forty miles from here. Know what that tells me?”

Wyatt paused.

“He still considers Nicky a threat. And he isn’t finished with her yet.”

Chapter 29

VERO AND I are sipping cups of tea. The rosebush mural has been obliterated on the wall, scribbled over in angry black marker. The pink gauze that once surrounded the bed is now sliced into ribbons. The mattress has been reduced to a gutted pile of shredded foam.

I can’t even look at what she did to Fat Bear.

“You’re scared,” I tell her knowingly, though it’s my own heart pounding in my chest.

“Fuck off.” Vero hasn’t bothered with clothes. Or the memory of skin. I sit with a grinning skeleton, bits of hair and decaying flesh plastered to her skull. When she drinks, I can watch the scotch cascade down her moldering spine.

“She’s your mother,” I try again. “You’ve dreamed of this moment for years and years. Remember?”

“I liked this room best,” she says abruptly. “Of all the places in this stupid house. This room looked like it was meant for a princess. All little girls dream of being a princess.”

“Your mother still loves you,” I tell her.

She suddenly smiles. “Don’t you mean your mother?”

“It’s okay,” I hear myself say, to her, to me, to the sad remains of eyeless Fat Bear. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Vero smiles again, tosses back another shot of scotch.

“Ah, Nicky,” she assures me. “You always were an idiot.”

*   *   *

BY 9 P.M., I can’t stay on the bed anymore. I get up, pace around the hotel room. Sitting on the second bed, Tessa does her best to give me space. She is checking all the news channels, trying to see if the story has gone national. There were news cameras arriving when Wyatt hastily shuttled us out of the back of the sheriff’s department hours earlier, word of the discovery of a missing child, thirty years lost, having finally leaked out.

I’d just returned to the conference room, mesmerized by my black-stained fingerprints, when Wyatt dropped his second bombshell: Marlene Bilek wanted to meet with me. Immediately. Tonight. Not a discussion, not a debate. He’d already set it up. End of story.

I would speak with my mother. After all these years, doubts, wonderings . . .