She was seeing the blood.
“Mom,” Rebecca whispered. “It’s over.”
Natalie’s head popped up and she fixed her daughter with a fierce gaze.“It will never be over,”she said through clenched teeth. “Someone did this to us. Someone—something—took everything we had. John and Laura. Erica—therealErica. Our home. Your parents. My marriage. My future. You’re all I have left, Becca. And youhaveto believe me.I didn’t do this.It may have been my hands, but I wasn’t the one using them. I wouldnever. Icouldnever...”
Rebecca believed her.
“They wouldn’t even let me go to the funerals. They put John and Laura in the ground, and I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to tell them how sorry I am. How, if I’d had any choice, I would have taken my own life before I’d hurt my children.”
“Don’t—” Becca cleared her throat and started over, pretending she couldn’t see the thin white scars on the insides of her mother’s wrists. Grandma Janice hadn’t told her... “Don’t do that. It won’t fix anything.”
Natalie nodded slowly. She cleared her throat, obviously trying to compose herself. “Have you seen Erica?”
“That child isn’t Erica.” Rebecca said the same thing to herself over and over again at night. Every night. “I’m not sure she waseverErica.”
“That’s what my attorney told me. He said they’re nearly through testing all those six-year-olds, and so far not one of them is human. I can’t... It’s a little hard to believe.”
Rebecca nodded. “I know. They’re calling them surrogates.”
“What they are isevil.” That understanding seemed to hang in the air between them, pulling them together while the glass held them apart. “What else could make a parent do something like this?”
Another nod, and Becca began plucking at the threads on a thin spot in her jeans. “The police arrested the Galanises, across the street from Grandma Janice and Grandpa Frank. They took the little girl, too. Delphina. No one knows where they went.”
“Yeah.” Natalie pushed limp brown hair back from her forehead with her free hand. “There were a couple of cryptids in my unit, and they were transferred two months ago, with no explanation. In the middle of the night.”
“And they got Mrs. Madsen.” The very thought made Rebecca’s chest ache. If not for Mrs. Madsen, her parents might have killed her, too, under whatever spell Erica-the-surrogate had cast. “I’m worried about her dogs. I hope someone’s watching them.” She frowned, studying her mother. “Do they think Mrs. Madsen was involved?” If she’d wanted Rebecca dead, she could have simply not answered the door.
Natalie Essig shrugged. “They know she’s not human, and they’re not taking any chances. I can’t really say I blame them, considering.”
“So...what’s going to happen? If this wasn’t your fault, are you and Dad going to get out?” Grandma Janice seemed to think that was an inevitability. Grandpa Frank seemed much less optimistic.
“I don’t know. My attorney is in contact with a bunch of the other parents’ lawyers. He says there’s never been a case like this. They seem to think that if they can figure out what all those surrogates really are—what they did to us—they can prove we’re not at fault. Most of the other parents don’t have any other kids to go home to, but we still have you.” Natalie put her palm flat on the glass between them, but Rebecca only stared at it.
She wanted to believe in her mother’s innocence. She needed to. But if Erica wasn’t human—if none of those surviving six-year-olds were—couldn’t the parents be cryptids, too?
Natalie sighed and pulled her hand from the glass. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you. But I’m human, Becca. So is your dad. I’ll tell our attorney to make sure you get a copy of the blood test if you don’t believe me.”
“Thanks.” Rebecca’s voice was a defeated whisper. She felt bad for distrusting her own mother. But she felt even more guilty for being civil to the woman who’d murdered John and Laura. “Did they test for drugs and stuff? Anything in your system that might have made you...do that? Or forget about it?”
“Yes. There was nothing in my blood but a little alcohol from the bottle of merlot your dad and I split on date night.”
Date night. Dinner and a movie, or bowling.
Normally her parents would have given her five dollars, plus pizza money, to watch her brother and sisters during their Saturday night out, but that night she’d gone to a sleepover. They’d left John in charge instead.
Grandma Janice said that sleepover had saved Rebecca’s life, but privately she wondered if it had actually cost John and Laura theirs. If she’d been home, would she have been able to protect them? Could she have somehow woken her parents up from the trance—or whatever—that they were in?
Would she have known, in that moment, that her little sister wasn’t human?
“Do you know where she is? Erica?”
“No.” Natalie seemed to have no trouble following the change of subject. “My lawyer says the government won’t say where any of them are. Right now, they’re trying to figure out how long we had her. And where we got her.”
Rebecca thought about that for a moment. Then she leaned forward, clutching the phone in her right hand, the thin spot in her jeans forgotten. “Mom, if that girl isn’t Erica...what happened to my real sister?”
Delilah
Exhausted, I stepped over Gallagher’s prone form, still stretched out on his pallet, and stumbled out of the bedroom into the main room of the cabin, battling an extrastrong craving for caffeine. I hadn’t brushed my hair or my teeth yet. But if I didn’t get food soon, I was fairly well convinced that the baby would come out just to demand a meal of her own.
