Lightning forking across the sky. The feel of rain upon my head. And air, pure, blessed air, which I draw into my lungs over and over again. I laugh, I cry, then I curl into a ball and completely break down. Because I am alive. And all it cost me was my best friend, my only friend. The sister of my heart.

I let go of Marlene’s hands. Suddenly, violently, I push away from her. “I knew what would happen.”

She doesn’t know what to say. Standing near the table, Wyatt takes a step closer, as if thinking he should intervene.

“I knew she would overdose. She was tired, depressed. She was an addict, unable to help herself. And still I let her see where I hid my stash.”

“Baby,” Marlene begins.

“Don’t! You knew there were dangers in a park. You knew what could happen to unattended children. Still you drank and took Vero there.”

She shrinks back, doesn’t say a word.

I’m wild. My head is on fire, but worse, my heart is breaking. I’ve let the memory in, and now it’s that day all over again. “Just like I knew, if I hoarded the drugs, of course she might take them. Only one way out of the dollhouse, and she’d had enough. I knew. And still I did it. Because her death gave me the best shot at freedom.”

“Vero—” Marlene tries again. I shake off her hand.

“I’m not Vero! Don’t you get it? She’s not me. She’s just a ghost inside my head. She’s a past I’m still trying to save, a mistake I’m still trying to face. I don’t know; I don’t completely understand it. I wanted to see you, but I never wanted to talk to you, because I can’t do this. I can’t . . . go back. I can’t . . .” Words fail me; I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I take two steps forward, rustle beneath the pillow and grab the photo I’d found in Thomas’s jacket. “Here.” I practically throw it at her. “You want your little girl? This is all that’s left.”

Marlene takes the photo. She holds it closer, then frowns. “Who is this?”

“Vero, of course. Surely you recognize—”

“No, it’s not.”

“What?” My turn to draw up short. I blink my eyes, scrub at my temples. Finally remembering what I once worked so hard to forget has hurt me. I know I’m disoriented; I know I’m not functioning on all cylinders. But still.

“That’s Vero,” I insist. “Taken at the dollhouse. I found it in Thomas’s pocket.” I say the last sentence without thinking. Now both Wyatt and Tessa have closed the gap between us, studying the photo intently.

“No, it’s not,” Marlene insists. “I understand this picture was taken later, but that girl still isn’t Vero.”

“Are you sure?” Wyatt asks Marlene. “It’s an old photograph, not the best resolution, but the hair, the eyes . . .”

“Look at her left forearm,” Marlene instructs him. “There’s no scar.”

“What scar?” Me again, my voice strangely high-pitched.

All of a sudden . . .

Vero is back in my mind. Vero is grinning at me with her gleaming white skull. Vero, who has always felt separate from me.

“Wait for it,” she whispers. “One, two—”

“Vero has a scar,” Marlene says. “From, um, an accident, when she was three. She was pretending to be an airplane. She um, hit the coffee table.”

Except that’s not how Vero tells the story. In Vero’s story, told night after night to her roommate, Chelsea, Ronnie the wicked knight tossed the princess into the air. He hurtled her into the table: “You wanna cry, little shit? I’ll give you something to cry about . . .”

Marlene turns to me now. Real time. Real life. No memory to forget.

“Show him,” she instructs me. “Your left arm. The scar.”

I move in slow motion. I raise my left arm. I roll back my long sleeve.

I expose what I already know will be there: a long, pale expanse of perfectly unblemished skin.

I realize at last, the final secret remaining in that yawning black box of memory. The tidbit I withheld even from myself, because all these years later, I still didn’t think I could handle it. Vero lives inside my head, not because she is some dissociated version of my past. Vero lives inside my head because I’m the one who killed her.

As Marlene gasps. “You’re not my daughter.”

And Vero, triumphant as ever, yells: “Surprise!”

Chapter 30

WHO ARE YOU?” Marlene Bilek had her hand wrapped around Nicky’s wrist, gripping tight. Across from the older woman, Nicky winced in clear discomfort. “You know things. How do you know such things? What did you do with my daughter?”

“Ma’am, please.” Wyatt hastily inserted himself between the two women. He had to forcefully pry Marlene’s fingers from Nicky’s wrist.

The older woman turned on him. “What kind of sick game is this? You told me you had found my daughter. You said you had proof!”

“We have fingerprints, Mrs. Bilek. Fingerprints that match your daughter’s—”

“But she’s not Vero! She doesn’t have the scar. Vero has a scar—”

“Okay, okay. Everyone, deep breath. Let’s take a step back for a second.”

Wyatt got Marlene to one side of the room, Nicky to the other. Marlene appeared nearly wild-eyed with grief, rage, betrayal. Nicky simply looked bewildered. And she was already rubbing her temples, a telltale sign of an impending migraine. Wyatt could feel a killer headache coming on himself, and he hadn’t even suffered three concussions.

Tessa took over Nicky, helping the woman into one of the wooden chairs to one side of the room, while Wyatt positioned Marlene Bilek in a chair on the other side. Tessa retrieved cold bottles of water from the mini-fridge. She handed the first to Nicky, the second to Marlene.

Both women took a long drink.

Wyatt used the minute to regain his own composure. It was creepy to him, but watching the two women, sitting in one hotel room, not just their similar coloring, but the way they moved, the way they held themselves. He could believe they were mother and daughter, no problem.

Except according to Marlene Bilek, that was impossible.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, after another moment had passed. He turned to Marlene. “You’re saying Veronica has a scar.”

“Left inside forearm. Right below the elbow. Two to three inches long. From the coffee table.”

“Ronnie threw her into it,” Nicky intoned. “Picked her up. Vero was just a little girl and he tossed her into the wooden table like a piece of trash. The table broke. One of the legs gouged her arm.”

“How do you know that?” Marlene demanded.

“Vero wants to fly,” Nicky whispered. “She just wanted to fly. How could you stay with him? How could you let her suffer like that?”

Marlene paled. She didn’t say another word.

“You’re sure about the scar?” Wyatt asked again. He couldn’t help himself. Vero couldn’t have a scar. Because if Vero had a scar, none of this made any sense.

“Check the missing persons report,” Marlene informed him crisply. “It’s listed under identifying marks.”

Tessa did the honors. She pulled her copy of the report from her computer bag, gave it a quick perusal. When she glanced back up, Wyatt saw the answer in her eyes. She nodded once, an affirmation that, yes, they had passed into the land of crazy.

He turned to Nicky. “Who are you?”

“I’m lost. No one wanted me, even before the dollhouse. No one loved me, even before the dollhouse.”

“You’re Chelsea,” Wyatt put the pieces together. “You’re the roommate.” He thought he got it: “Who killed Vero in order to escape.”

“Except I’ve been trying to save her for the past twenty-two years.”

Wyatt shot a glance at Tessa. She’d tried to warn him there had to be a reason Nicky had buried her past. This sounded good enough to him.

“Chelsea—”

“Nicky.”

“Nicky. Did Vero die that night?”

“There is only one way out of the dollhouse.”