Daisy Hollander walked toward them through the woods.
Holding the hand of a little girl.
53
Day seventeen
Irun like I’m on fire.
I run through the woods to find my daughter.
Now I hide behind a cluster of small trees. I do not know what I am seeing, but it has led me into a deep pool of confusion.
A well-groomed man, neatly dressed, holding a shotgun on Mick.
Mick, staggering from the poison, trying to steady a gun on the man.
And Nicole! How the sight of her makes me want to cry, makes me want to run to her and throw my body between hers and those men.
I force myself to stop. To think. I can’t afford another mistake.
I watch her move until she is almost safe, just beside a tree.
Go!I want to scream. Why doesn’t she take that last step?
And now I hear the voice I have come to know so well. To hate at times. To love at times. To fear at times.
“Mommy!” she says. Alice tries to pull her hand away from thewoman who holds her. The woman who was her first mommy until she left last spring. Whose clothes I wear even now.
Daisy Alice Hollander.
“What?” she scolds Alice. “They are pathetic. Both of them.”
“Daisy? Is that you?” The man with the shotgun looks as though he’s seen a ghost.
But Daisy doesn’t answer him. She walks to Mick, dragging Alice with her. He, too, is mesmerized by the sight of her, and suddenly another piece falls into place.
“What the hell have you done?” Daisy asks. “We need to clean this up. I never should have left. I can see that now. I’ve been watching for two weeks, hoping you’d stop this nonsense. Seriously—how did you think this was going to end?”
She was never a captive in this house. And she’s been watching us. All of us, through those cameras. Through Dolly’s eyes.
Daisy strokes his face, runs her hand down his arm to his fingers which release the gun without the slightest resistance. He is in a trance. And he is weak and sick from the poison.
She steps away, five or six yards. Alice is dragged along with her like a pet on a leash.
She points the gun at the man with the shotgun, who trembles. Her face is stone cold. It shocks me more than anything else in these woods.
She sees Nicole, she sees her, but now really sees her. And she laughs, loud and hard. She laughs at Mick.
“I get it now. You thought this girl was going to replace me? That she would want to live with you? My God, it is beyond pathetic.”
Mick stumbles, drops to his knees. I can’t tell if it’s the poison or his grief. But he lets his head fall into his hands and he begins to weep.
“You didn’t come back this time,” he cries.
Alice tries to pull away. She wants to go to him. She loves him. I can see that now. Even though she helped try to kill him to set me free.
Daisy sighs like she’s annoyed. “I told you if you kept getting into my bed I would leave for good. And that’s what I did.”
