“Kylie,” I hear and, all of a sudden, incomprehension edges out fear. The voice is not Daniel’s, though it belongs to a man, someone whose voice I don’t recognize. Slowly, I lower myhands from my face. I open my eyes to find him standing just on the other side of the door looking in, straight past Emily and to me, his attention rapt.
It’s in the way he looks at me that makes the fear come instantly back.
His eyes are damp. His chin trembles, his mouth falling open.
His voice is full of emotion, shaking and in disbelief as he says, “It’s you. It really is you.”
He steps in, over the door’s threshold, so that he’s in the cottage with us.
Emily’s laugh is strangled. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says, trying to be polite, stepping in front of him to stop him from coming all the way in. But Emily is something like five foot two and this man is tall, his chin at the top of her head.
He comes in anyway. He steps easily past her so that when she speaks again, her voice has changed, becoming firm. “I think you’re mistaken, sir. This is my daughter, Reese. You must have her confused with someone else.”
She reaches for his arm, which he shrugs off.
The look of recognition on his face and in his eyes is beyond doubt.
He puts a hand to his mouth. He lets out a sob, something involuntary that sends me to my feet, that makes me go around the back side of the sofa so that there’s something between him and me.
It doesn’t stop him. He comes across the room, his head cocked, staring at me, not blinking.
He says, “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?” his eyes wide and bright. “Do you know how longwe’vebeen looking for you? Your mother and I. We’ve looked everywhere for you, Kylie. We never stopped searching.”
My voice trembles when I speak, my whole body shaking. “Mom.”
He crosses the room, scrambling around the arm of the sofa, moaning as he comes right up to me before I can run, touching my hair, Emily’s frantic voice in the background telling him no, to stop, that he has the wrong person, that he needs to leave, her hand grabbing for his, though he brushes her off harder this time so that she falls back, bumping into the edge of the coffee table and losing balance.
“Mom,” I say again, fear in my voice. He sweeps me into his arms and then he pulls back, cradling my face in his hands.
“We’ve searched everywhere. For years. I never gave up. Look at you,” he says, running his hands over my hair again, the clamminess of his hands pulling at my hair. I sob and he says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, baby,” his voice wild as he lets go of my hair, setting his hands on my shoulders. “You’re all grown-up.”
My eyes bulge. I can’t blink, I can barely breathe.
“Mom.”
Emily comes forward again. She lays her hand down on his arm, pulling as hard as she can. “Get away from my daughter. Get your hands off her. She’s not who you think she is.” In an instant, the man throws his elbow back. It hits her square in the face, her head snapping back with such momentum that I don’t know how her neck doesn’t break. I gasp, watching in horror as she rights herself, her eyes dazed, blood leaking from her nose.
But the man is unaffected. He never once looks at her to see if she’s hurt. He doesn’t ask. He never takes his eyes off me as Emily stumbles backward, her hand pressed to her face.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks, as I try backing away. “Do you remember me, Kylie?”
“Leave me alone. Don’t touch me. You’re scaring me.”
Emily stumbles. She finds Wyatt’s baseball bat leaned by the front door, where someone left it. She jacks it up over her shoulder with both hands. She comes after the man, grunting from the effort. At the same time, he looks back. He hears her or seesit out of the corner of his eye, sensing the blow. At just the right time, he turns; he catches the barrel of the bat in his hand as it comes raining down. He tugs once. That’s all it takes. Because Emily’s hands are wet with blood, they’re slippery and weaker than his. They can’t grip the bat.
He takes it with ease. He drives it instantly backward, plunging the knob at the end of the bat into her stomach. She cries out, clutching her stomach, crumbling to her knees, gasping like she can’t breathe. I start to cry, “Get up, Mom. Get up,” wanting to help her, but instead backing further away, putting distance between myself and him, because the man is reaching for me again. He’s telling me we have to go, that this woman isn’t my mom, that my mom is waiting for me at home, that this woman stole me, that she took me from him. He starts to cry then, actual tears. “God,” he says, “Joanna is never going to believe it’s you. She’s never going to believe you’re home.”
I can feel my heartbeat thrash in my ears.
Emily’s voice is rasping as she tries to get up. “Run, Reese,” she puffs out, using what little strength she has to reach out, to curl her hands around his ankle, holding on to him so I can go.
She says it again. “Reese. Run,” and I do. I turn, running onto the porch, where I try to break out through the screens, tearing one from the frame, thinking that if I can get out, I can get help. But in the few seconds I have before the man kicks Emily’s hands off of him, before he grapples with her for the baseball bat and I hear the dull, horrifying sound of the bat against bone, the rip doesn’t become big enough for me to get out.
As footsteps approach, I turn, looking for a place to hide. I throw myself under the bed, lying flat on my stomach beneath it, my whole body trembling.
It’s darker on the porch, though it’s not black because the light from inside the cottage reaches it. He carries the bat whenhe comes, setting it gently on the floor. He doesn’t see me at first. He only sees the tear in the screen, which he goes quickly to, fingering it, examining the size of the hole, peeling it back to look out into the dark night on the other side.
My heart thumps against the wooden floor. I hold my breath. I see Emily through the open door as she struggles to get up, pushing against her body weight, but then losing her grip so that her hands slide out from under her and she falls back down.
