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“When else do you expect me to go?” All day long, she’s home alone with their baby. She has no time to herself.
After the baby was born, she tried to quit, to be faithful, but it wasn’t worth the effort.
Ok...
’Cause most of my earliest memories have that man and that lady in them, and in them, they’re doing wicked things to me, things that I don’t like.
“Stealing kids,” she said, “is the easiest thing in the world.”
They try and negotiate with me, saying things like, “If you tell us where you are, we’ll give you a cookie,” as if I’m dumb enough to fall for that. No cookie is good enough to live here the rest of my life.
Lol
I curl more tightly into my pill bug ball. I hold my breath. I bite my lip and clench my eyes shut tighter, ’cause somehow not seeing makes it feel less real.
Josh is our neighbor. He lives next door with his wife, Meredith, and their two kids.
“Where’s Delilah?” Delilah is Josh and Meredith’s daughter. She’s six.
I glance down at the phone in my hand, expecting it’s my client with some conditioned reply. Thx. Instead: I know what you did. I hope you die.
Get home safe, it says.
Huh
His eyes are red and watery like he’s been crying, which is embarrassing as fuck: when kids at school see your dad cry.
excuse me
She tells Dad what you told them about where you’ve been. Dad nearly goes through the roof. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says, and he’s right, seeing as how Mom was found dead of a self-inflicted knife wound with a note: You’ll never find her. Don’t even try.
HUH
I know what you did. You’ll never get away with it, bitch.
I lock my door when I go to sleep. I don’t know what kind of person you are.
I’m scared of my husband, it says this time.
No one mentions me and my suffering.
It’s not like she could know about her husband, Marty, and me. Unless he told her, but he wouldn’t do that. We’d agreed to keep things secret, for Cassandra’s and Josh’s sake.
Excuse me
I think what another baby could do for our family, how it could bring us closer.
He puts his arms down, knowing you’re more of a trauma victim than his daughter. You may never be the daughter he used to know.
If I lied, Dad would take my internet away for a month. You lie and he babies you.
“It’s just that, I was, like, digging around on the internet, trying to figure out if cleft chins are one of those things that just goes away, you know? And they’re not.”
HUH
“And then the results came back. Negative. Not a match.
??????
Remember, I’m the only one who knows where Delilah is.
“Set it on the dresser,” she says. I do. “You understand, this needs to look like a suicide,” Bea says.
The scream that reaches my ears as the door bursts open is shrill, terrified, female. A girl. The girl Josh and Leo are looking for. But why? For what reason would Bea shelter this girl in her music studio? I can think of none.
The realization stuns me. Meredith chose Bea to watch over Delilah after she was gone. She entrusted Delilah to Bea. Bea was making good on a promise to Meredith; she was honoring Meredith’s last request.
bitch wtf
They were copycat criminals, inspired by Delilah’s story.
