One for Sorrow (Isabel Fielding, #1)

by Sarah A. Denzil

Isabel shook her head, but she was soaked to the waist, and there was blood covering her hands and lips.

Owen Fielding walked with his head bent low, tears dripping from his nose. There was blood splattered on his trousers, but he was not wet, and he was not as covered in as much blood as his older sister.

And in the centre of it all, at the very centre of the pond, a little girl lay face down. She was stripped to the waist—the police would find her daisy-print t-shirt caught on a bush in the forest a few hours later—with her hair fanning all around her. Her loose, dark curls were as soaked as her jeans. Maisie Earnshaw was dead. Murdered.

When a child fails to form an attachment with a caregiver, they fail to learn empathy. That’s how you build a sociopath.

“Want to know a secret? I never killed that little girl.” And then she put her finger to her lips and breathed, “Shhhhh.”

i feel like it was her brother tbh

What if Owen was the mastermind of this entire murder?

“I’ve picked up a few stories working here, stuff that you’ll find on the internet if you really want to know. I guess I have some sort of inquisitive mind, you might say.” He turned to me and grinned, which made me shiver from head to toe.

i don’t trust this guy lol

But all I could focus on at that time was the fact that my parents were dead and I needed to look after my little brother.

For a brief moment I closed my eyes, and a headline popped into my head: Child Killer Covered in Blood as Young Brother Watched. What must Owen have been through that day? Had he forgiven his sister? Why did he visit her? Out of duty, or another reason?

i think he visits bc he feels guilty for letting her take the fall for something that he did 👀

One thing we do know is that Owen visits Isabel in Crowmont Hospital regularly. Isn’t that an odd thing to do? She is a convicted murderer, after all. Either Owen is a pretty forgiving fella, or he doesn’t care about what Isabel did when she was fourteen. Perhaps he’s a young lad falling apart at the seams, going out drinking instead of studying, self-medicating his guilt away. Perhaps there’s something more to all this. Perhaps he idolises his sister for what she did. Perhaps… Perhaps… COMMENTS: TrueCrimeLover: You’re bang on, James. Owen is suspicious AF.

He’s not the innocent little kid people think he is.

RedRose: It’s a conspiracy. All the adults were in on it. Don’t you know about the paedophile ring the Fieldings were running? Check the missing persons reports. They have a satanic basement for ritual killings, I guarantee it. The Fieldings were playing a sick game getting the children to commit murder. They framed their own kids!!

All the weeding, walking, and painting had paid off, and I was leaner and happier than I had been for a while. But there was an itch deep down that I couldn’t scratch with long walks in the countryside, or fresh air, or time with my little brother. It festered deep within my intestines, like a tapeworm, nibbling at my insides. I wanted to scratch it so bad, and I had hoped with all my heart that this change of location would have dealt with this pesky sense of unease. But the feeling persisted, despite my attempts to ignore it.

Later in the night, the owl calls gave out to the slow patter of rain on the window, leaving tracks down the dirty pane of glass. I turned on my lamp and watched the tracks as they travelled down the panelled windows. As I watched, my eyes began to droop, and I thought for a moment that the rain was running up the window instead of down. I blinked, and it went away. And then I fell asleep. I woke up to Tom placing a mug next to my head. “You’re going to be late,” he remarked. When I opened my eyes, I realised I wasn’t in my bedroom because the sunlight was coming from the wrong direction. My face was resting on a hard surface—the kitchen table—which I was slumped over as though I’d passed out. My laptop was a few inches away from my head, still open but now sleeping. I lifted my body and wiggled my finger across the mousepad to wake it and check the time. It was almost seven. “How did I end up down here?” I mumbled, my mouth dry and my jaw stiff from the long sleep on such a hard surface. “God knows. Were you drinking wine again?” I didn’t remember drinking any wine. “What were you researching? The Monster of York? Sounds, well, creepy.” I barely glanced at the screen before closing down the laptop and getting to my feet.

This was the second time I’d woken up on the kitchen table instead of where I’d drifted to sleep. Was there something wrong with me? Why would I start sleepwalking now of all times?

I needed to keep a closer eye on Isabel. She wasn’t as stable as she’d first seemed.

The human mind is fragile, built upon tiny impulses of electricity sending signals to the rest of the body. Our thoughts, our feelings, our language, it all comes from the brain, so when one of those little electric impulses goes haywire, we follow suit.

Could someone truly capture a subject’s inner beauty if they themselves were a true sociopath? Was Isabel even capable of murder?

But the person behind closed doors is not always the person out in the world.

Some fathers didn’t deserve the title of ‘dad,’ and he was one of them.

Did any of us have much choice in life, or were we all marching to the beat of our own circumstances?

“Now, remember what I said. Just because Isabel is innocent doesn’t mean you get to prioritise her.

Owen sighed. “All right.” He flashed me a megawatt smile. “You’re too sweet a person, do you know that? You’ve won me over.”

i don't trust him at all

“Don’t feel bad,” Owen said. “No one can say no to Daddy.”

It was an odd thing to do, toasting to Isabel. Why would he do that? He hadn’t visited her for years, according to Isabel. I certainly hadn’t seen him visit in the weeks I’d been working at Crowmont. Perhaps he wanted to put me at ease. Or perhaps he’d merely found the perfect excuse to get me to drink the wine.

i don't trust him AT ALL

“Do you live in Rotherham?” he asked. “No, I live in Hutton. It’s close to the hospital.” “Yes, I know it is,” he said. “Which hospital?” Anna’s wide eyes regarded me, and for a moment there was a shine to them like she’d come out of a stupor. “It doesn’t matter,” David said sharply, without looking at his wife.

Then he rolled his sleeves back down and crossed the space between us, pushing me back against the kitchen cabinets. With his face a mere inch from mine, he lifted his hand and wrapped it gently around my neck, squeezing very slightly.

WHAT THE HELL

“You’re not the first moron to think Isabel is innocent. Do you think I haven’t had psychologists, police, doctors, nurses, all kinds turn up at my door with conspiracy theories about how I’m the real murderer and I should be in prison? Do you think I haven’t heard it all?” He squeezed tighter, his thumb beginning to dig into my windpipe. “Don’t presume I’m an idiot, and never presume you can walk into my house and play pals with my son. Don’t ever come here again, and keep your nose out of my family’s business.” David let me go and stepped back, leaving me standing there with sweat sticking my top to my shoulder blades, and tears in my eyes.

holy shit

James Gorden had been right that there was a rotten core at the heart of the Fielding family, and it was David, plain as day.

Innocent men did not put their hands around the throats of women.

!!

I’m alone in the cottage. Tom was taken to a foster family while I was under psychiatric care. Even at the time, I knew it was for the best, because I want Tom to be safe, and being around me isn’t safe anymore.

NO WHAT

At least now I understand that the wine doesn’t fix anything. It’s a masking-tape patch that only works until the corners begin to peel again.

The man in the photograph was an older, fatter image of the man I’d shared every cigarette break with. Oh, I’d managed to change a few things—the slightly more narrowed eyes, thinner lips, thicker hair. But it was him, all right. All this time, I’d been haunted by the man I hated most on the world, and I hadn’t merely conjured him with my broken mind. I befriended him, too. “I feel sick,” I said. “All those conversations with… with Alfie. They were all in my mind.”

i did NOT see that coming

“The first thing you need to know is: Tom isn’t just my brother. He’s also my son.”

WHAT

There’s no father filled out on the birth certificate, and I never told my mother who the father was. I never told her, so I can’t blame her for not knowing. I can blame her for not leaving when he continued to hit her, but I can’t blame her for what he did to me.

holy shit

“I was embarrassed!” I’d let out a hollow laugh that echoed off the walls and came back to me. “And I think some part of me still loved him, my father. I didn’t want him to go away. This was all before he became very violent. Before the drinking got worse. He was still… he could still be, sometimes, a loving father.” I inhaled loudly, sickened by my own words. Sickened by the fact that I missed him, no matter what had happened, no matter what he’d done. “It only happened one time, and sometimes I wonder if he even remembers what he did. Sometimes I feel like I made it all up in my mind. If it wasn’t for Tom’s existence, I think I might have blocked the whole thing out.” “You blame yourself for what happened.” It wasn’t a question because it was so obvious. I knew it myself, and I had for a long time.

:(

Do I blame her? No. She’s ill. She should never have been allowed to work. How could her mental illness go unnoticed? Why didn’t anyone see that this woman was unfit to be a nurse?” “But what do you believe happened in that room?” Kirsty prompts. “Did Isabel overpower the nurse?” David shakes his head again. “No. I don’t believe that. This nurse was just disturbed enough to let my daughter out. The nurse was deluded enough to believe that Isabel is innocent, and in her sick state she let a dangerous criminal into society.” “You think she acted out of some sense of justice? She freed your daughter intentionally?” “Yes,” David says. “That’s exactly what I believe.”

Do they know about Tom? Do they know what my father did to me all those years ago? Do they know that Tom is my son and my brother?

The picture is of a large, fat bird with a red chest. A robin. The bird’s head has been replaced with a picture of Tom, which I notice is the same picture of Tom used in a few of the other images. But more care has been applied to this Photoshop. The composition is more pleasing to the eye and the background is pretty. The bird is on a branch next to the window of a house that looks a little like the cottage. The position of the bird looking in the window of the house is unnerving and artistic. It’s too familiar. “Shut it down,” I say.

I can’t bear to think of Tom going through all this. Knowing he’s safe has been the one good part of this mess, and the one thing I think about when I’m on my own in that cottage that makes me happy. I miss him, of course I do, but knowing he’s safe is everything. Everything. Someone is trying to take that away from me, and I think it’s Isabel. And if I’m right, it means she was guilty all along.

I call DCI Murphy immediately and tell him everything I know. Part of me expects to be treated like a crazy woman, but he takes all the information and sounds serious when he says he’ll look into it. When I hang up the phone I feel both better and worse. Better because I’ve unloaded some of the responsibility I feel I owe to James, and worse because now my suspicions are being treated seriously.

Three dead birds are lined up on the outside windowsill, their lifeless bodies on their sides as though they’ve been placed there with care.

I run my fingers through my hair. “I’m hallucinating again. I can’t trust my own eyes.”

why do i feel like the birds were there fr and Isabel was just standing under the window so she could remove them after Leah saw them?

“Another possibility is that someone put them there and then removed them while the curtains were closed.” I don’t like that possibility; I think I prefer it to all be a hallucination.

“I wish I knew what was real and what wasn’t.” “It’s real to you,” he says. “And that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

aw Seb 🥺

There, on my doorstep, is the severed head of blogger James Gorden, and in his mouth is a dead magpie.

NO NOT JAMES

He’s staring down at James on the doorstep, and for a moment I actually believe that James is real, but then I remind myself that this is all in my head, and I let out a snort. “It’s not real.” “Leah,” Seb says again. This time he looks up at me with sad eyes, and I can’t bear the pity. “It is real. I’m going to phone the police.” “You’re not real either.”

this is breaking my heart :(

She walked the ten minutes it takes to get here, carrying a human head. I can’t even begin to imagine the darkness it takes to do that.

I’d wanted to help her, and she twisted that gesture into ugliness.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that Tom is my son.” “Okay.” I look up. Seb’s eyes are trained on me, a question across his face. Has he realised? “He’s my son and my brother. I was thirteen.” It’s miniscule, but it’s there—a ripple of anger spreads across his face, working its way from his clenched jaw to his throbbing temple. He takes a moment, a still, extended moment, and then he lets out a long sigh. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s okay. I just wanted to say it out loud.” “And now you have.” “Now I have.” This time, I reach across for his hand.