I fought to steady my breathing, to slow my racing heart. I desperately wanted to believe her, to cling to this other possibility, this other killer, this ghost. "You think someone did this? Took the rock from the bluff and put it here in your room, among your things?"
"I didn't! Why would I crawl down there after and… and take the rock that she hit her head on and bring it back with me? And put it in my room, like a… like a trophy?" She looked at me with desperation. "Someone stole my camera. They came into our house and slashed Leah's painting. Whoever really killed her did this stuff. They hate me. They want me to go to jail forever, not them."
Guilt speared me. How could I have doubted, for even a second? What the hell was wrong with me? How could a mother doubt her own daughter? What kind of mother was I?
I took a breath. I had to think clearly.
This was Mia. This was my daughter.
No, I would not believe this of my child. I could not. I must not.
Because I couldn't lose Mia, too. Not after Marcus.
"Could the rock have been here before tonight? Yesterday? Over the weekend?"
Mia shrugged helplessly. "I haven't collected anything on the beach since... since it happened. I haven't looked closely at anything. I dunno. Maybe."
I felt the presence of the rock behind me. Pulsing with a dark sinister energy. "Think, Mia."
Her voice rose in panic. "I don't know!"
The locks had been changed on Friday morning. Yesterday. So, the rock had been placed before then, by someone who used the spare key. Or someone had put it here whom we had invited inside ourselves.
This was intentional.
The slashed painting with GUILTY painted across it. The stolen notebook. The break-in when nothing was taken, just moved, just wrong.
My breath came faster.
The rock wasn't evidence Mia kept. It was evidence that someone planted. Evidence timed perfectly. Sitting here for hours, for days possibly, waiting to be discovered by police with a search warrant.
Or by Mia, so she'd touch it, move it, contaminate it further. To leave her prints in the grooves where blood had dried.
Or by me, so I'd think exactly what I had. That my daughter was guilty.
This was a plan.
Someone wanted my daughter in prison.
What if the rock had fingerprints on it? What if it had Mia's prints on it? The thought sliced through my mind like a blade. "You're sure you never touched this?"
"I never touched it. I promise, Mom."
I sucked in a deep breath and forced my frazzled thoughts to clarify. "Okay."
"Should we call the police?" Mia asked.
"I'm not sure."
"What if the police come here and look in my room? That's what whoever did this wants to happen, isn't it? The police will think I went down the bluff and took it, for some kind of sick trophy or whatever." Mia looked like she wanted to throw up.
What would happen if I called Detective King right now andinvited him in? Attempted to explain the bloodied rock among my daughter's things. It would go about as well as the slashed painting incident had. I hadn't heard an update from the police. I doubted reporting it had done anything but make them more suspicious of us.
It wasn't ours. We didn't do it. It just appeared tonight. She's innocent, Officer, I swear. She just looks guilty as hell.
I didn't have faith that the police would realize someone must be trying to frame Mia. Because she was right. Why would she place it on the windowsill like a prize? Unless she was a sociopath? Or stupid.
But perhaps the police wouldn't care. They were already building a case against her. They already had her DNA, the scratches, the blood on her dress. This would be the final straw.
