My stomach twinges as I run through the woods with Quinn. All around us, more snow falls. I’m dizzy from all the twists and turns. ‘Morgan.’ She doesn’t answer.
‘Diggerty,’ Quinn calls. ‘He might bark if he hears me.’
I don’t hear Morgan or a barking dog. We’re nearly at the den. Every step is hard because the snow is getting deeper. My sides hurt and I’m out of breath as we plough through but I don’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve found Morgan.
My eyes start tearing up. She must have run off into the woods, upset and alone. An image of the past comes to my mind, Jasmine lying unconscious in the woods. I gasp as I imagine it’s Morgan.
Whoever is playing us left that smashed plaque. They’ve been sneaking around spying on us, all because they think I know what happened to Jasmine. They posted on the neighbourhood app, and they put the article in the hamper for me to find. I have to save my daughter. The truth has to come out. Somehow my aunt killed Jasmine and buried her in Clover House. Thinking about the bones again makes my stomach churn. All the time we’ve been in that house, Jasmine has been there, silently haunting us in more ways than one.
I can’t get Ruby out of my mind. I knew there was something off about her. She has this look. It’s intense and then there’s what happened with Ethan. She chose to hurt me.
As I trudge through even deeper snow, I think back to when I returned to check on Jasmine. The shock of not seeing her there hits me now. Somehow she’d got up and walked away, so what happened after that? I can’t reconcile how Jasmine ended up behind a wall in Aunt Dorette’s house. Why?
We’re here. The door to the first shed is slightly ajar and light bleeds through the gap. My stomach twinges again so I place my hands over it, hoping that Beanie is okay but knowing I must save Morgan.
Quinn steps in front of me. She’s spotted me holding my stomach. ‘I’ll go.’
I’m right behind her. She nudges the door open. That’s when I see my daughter being held at knifepoint.
‘Zoe?’ I’m taken aback. Ruby isn’t behind all this. I know Zoe was off with us but I trusted her. She called the police and told them the truth about Ethan. She looked after our children while I was in hospital, but then she had the nerve to blame us and Morgan for the letters when it was now so obviously her. The knife is pressing into Morgan’s neck and my shivering daughter looks a little blue. Diggerty sits in the corner munching on a huge pile of treats like nothing’s going on.
‘Diggerty, out,’ Quinn orders, but Diggerty remains where he is and wags his tail.
‘Good boy.’ Zoe shrugs. ‘I guess he likes me better than you. Where do you think he is every time you let him escape?’
‘Zoe, what’s going on?’ Quinn takes a deep breath.
All I can do is keep eye contact with Morgan and mouth how much I love her. I clear my throat and find my voice. ‘Zoe, you’re hurting Morgan. Please let her go. We can talk about this.’
‘Too right we can talk. Both of you, start talking. We’re not leaving until I know exactly what happened to my daughter.’ She pauses and lets out a tiny laugh. ‘I found your aunt’s notebook. It told me that she’s dead. She’s an angel.’ Zoe presses her lips together. I can feel her pain, really I can. I can feel Morgan’s pain, too, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. ‘What happened back then? Quinn, you first. If I even sense a lie, Gemma will get to know exactly how I felt when Jasmine never came home.’
Quinn starts to mumble incoherently. She stops a couple of times, takes a deep breath and starts again.
‘Come on, Quinn, you can do it. You’re normally so full of confidence.’
Quinn starts talking, her voice quivers. ‘We were hanging out here, that summer. We didn’t see Jasmine, she made us jump. She said something mean…’ She stares at me.
I have to be the one to tell the next bit. ‘I pushed her, then we ran away.’
‘You left her to die.’ Zoe presses the knife again, and Morgan shrieks.
‘No,’ I say. Hoping that she stops. We don’t have time to overpower her. By the time we’re upon her, Morgan could be killed.
‘Why did you do that?’ Zoe’s brows furrow and her hands shake. She scores a tiny dot on Morgan’s neck and Morgan flinches.
Quinn speaks fast. ‘Gemma and I kissed. Jasmine was sitting on a log?—’
‘Skip that bit, I’ve seen the pictures in the stupid notebook. I saw it on Dorette’s worktop one day, open at that page. I couldn’t grab the thing in time. Stupid woman had no idea who I was. After the log, fog, dog, bit. Go on.’
‘We didn’t know she was there and she laughed, telling Gemma and me that she’d tell everyone at school, and I got upset. Jasmine stood up and started mocking us.’
‘I pushed her and she fell backwards,’ I say. ‘Then we ran away.’
Zoe shakes her head slowly. ‘And neither of you checked on her. You left her to die and what? You asked your aunt to cover everything up, to save you?’
Tears stream down Morgan’s face. It’s breaking my heart for her to hear all this. ‘No, I went back a while later but Jasmine wasn’t there. I thought she’d gone home. I went back home to my mum’s the next day and didn’t think about her again.’
Zoe shrugs and raises her brows. ‘You never thought about her again. How about you, Quinn? You live here. I came looking for Jasmine and I knocked at the houses on Clover Lane, including your house. Your mum answered. She watched as I fell to the ground. I also lost my baby that day, did you know that?’
