Healy sighs. “She already told us the baby was hers. She talked before her lawyer even showed up.”
She thinks of her morning with Annabelle. How she had seemed torn: desperate to tell someone the truth, and desperate to keep her secret. Had a part of her been relieved to feel the cuffs cinch around her wrists? Been relieved to just say it?The baby was mine.
She can’t think of anything else to say. She has no right to tellhim that he’s not allowed to do his job. She’s the one who asked him to look into this case in the first place. But that was before… before she had sat in Annabelle’s living room. Before she knew there had been a second sister. When she thought she was chasing down a double homicide, when she thought she would emerge from the whole process triumphant and self-righteous, carrying the banner for justice. Redeemed.
And now. Now she’s ruined a woman’s life. Her children’s lives.
Another text from Jane when she hangs up:
I guess you’ve been busy. I just saw this.Another link to TikTok.For real, Jane?she thinks.This, now?But then her eyes focus on the title of the video.Cold Case, Mother Abandoned Infant: SOLVED!
The user is Rebecca Nixon.
She didn’t, she wouldn’t. “No,” she says out loud. “No no no no no.”
“What’s wrong?” Adrian asks. He pulls over, leans across the console. She hits play on the video, a wave of nausea already rising from her gut, sweat prickling at her hairline.
Rebecca claps her hands together. She’s got her nails done to match her lipstick. Crimson. The video has already gotten over 500,000 views.
Do I have one for you all today. A monster was walking free among us. A monster who murdered her newborn child. I have conclusive DNA evidence that a woman abandoned her baby to the elements and has been living as the perfect mother up in Westchester, New York.
This case has gone unsolved for over thirty years. And now, with the power of technology, I’ve blown it wide open. The authorities made their arrest of the suspect this morning. I will be cooperating in any way I can to bring justice to this life lost too soon.
By the timeshe finishes watching the video it has ten thousand more views. Callie watches it again, and it’s got fifteen thousand more. Nixon didn’t give Annabelle’s name, but it’s been leaked in the comments. Callie had promised discretion and now the whole world knows.
The commenters are feverish, dogs snapping at the smell of blood.One of them posts Annabelle’s address. Another, a link to a local news article about her volunteer work. Even her daughter’s name, her husband’s bowling league, the daughter’s Instagram handle tagged in the comments. Callie hitsreporton the comments as fast as she can, even as she feels how futile it is. None of it can be undone.
She can’t breathe. She’s vaguely aware of Adrian’s hand on her back. A pack of motorcycles blow by them and she’s relieved for the noise, the way the sound outside the car feels exactly like the roar inside her head.
There’s nothing she can do. And everything is her fault. She should know better than anyone that control is always just an illusion. That the truth always seeps out, no matter what you do to keep it close.
Part III
BLAIR
Aunt Margot drives her to school. She hadn’t come over all week but Blair had been too afraid to ask her father where she was, what she had said. Was too afraid that it would mean this was their life now, that they would need to sever ties with anyone they had once loved.
And then she came down for breakfast and Margot was there in the kitchen, hugged her hard enough Blair felt it in her bones. She made Blair eat a bowl of cereal, toast for her father. Her hands were as fast and as busy as ever but there were purple circles under her eyes.
Blair’s phone chimes and she winces. An email. Someone put her email address on a Reddit forum. It was taken down but not before it was screenshotted, shared, pinged from inbox to inbox, reposted on new threads, in Instagram stories, in Reels and TikToks. The true-crimers send her inquiries, thinking nothing of asking her the most personal of questions:I read that it was your DNA profile that linked your mom to the baby. Is that true?? Hi! I’m interested in your mom’s case, how is she doing? Did any of you know?? Are your parents going to get divorced?? Will you maintain a relationship with her? Did you know her real name?And because she’s eighteen, even journalists are reaching out to her. No one has to ask her father for permission to speak to her, to try to get her on the record. Their inquiries are phrased a little more delicately—I want to understand this story from your perspective. It must be so difficult. I’d love to arrange a time to speak at your convenience.—but the essential thrust is the same. Turn yourself inside out for us. We’re all owed the truth. Hand it over.
Her family’s address has been posted and in the night someonewrote the wordsBABY KILLERin red paint on their driveway. Her father has covered it with a tarp until they can get it repaved. Blair has never seen anything like the look on his face when he came in. A little shake of his head at Blair and her brothers, which they understood—don’t tell her. When he sat at the kitchen table to swallow down the coffee and toast Aunt Margot forced on him, Blair was taken aback by the shock of gray hair that came through his brown overnight.
If she wereto talk to any of these people, she would tell them the things that actually matter. How Blair’s youngest brother, Jake, came home yesterday with his left eye swollen shut. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it at first, but apparently some kid shot off his mouth about his mom going to jail and Jake shoved him against a wall. Things escalated from there. He’s been suspended for the rest of the week. Her other brother, Kyle isn’t eating, twelve years old and new hollows in his cheeks. None of them know how to talk to one another anymore, just pass one another silently like ghosts. Her father is on the phone all the time—with lawyers, friends, who knows who else—holding the phone in one hand, his other raking hard at his hair. She hears scraps of conversation that scare her.Temporary insanity? Postpartum psychosis? No? Would she be tried as a minor because—You really think she should take a plea? But she says—No. I don’t… I don’t know what to believe.
In the carwith Margot she sifts through the emails as they wait at the light on Main. Some are angry, the subject lines in all caps, expletive-laden, urgent. Delete, delete, delete. It doesn’t matter how fast she makes them disappear, they pop back up in a new form an hour later. The tags and the DMs and the texts. It makes her heart race, makes her ribs feel too tight in her chest.
Margot shifts next to her, her winter coat rustling. “Give me that. I’ll be out front to get you at 2:45. If you need me before then borrow someone’s phone or have the office call me, and I’ll come getyou. But take a break from these people. They don’t know you, they don’t know her. What they think doesn’t matter.”
Blair holds her phone out to Margot. She doesn’t think about how she will be cut off from her friends, or how she won’t be able to get in touch with Henry. She doesn’t worry about checking her email to see if her early application to Columbia was accepted, or whether Sephora is having a sale she wants to know about. Those questions belong to the Before times. She just passes the little brick of steel and glass and feels the lightness when Margot takes it from her.
“There are the facts of what happened and what the internet thinks about it, which in most cases, are very different. Let’s focus on the facts.”
“I just want to know what’s going to happen to us. To her.” The words come up hard and aching, and Blair starts to cry. The tears turn into open-mouthed sobs, ugly, wracking, closer to vomiting than crying. Her body at war with itself trying to get the toxic thing out of her. Margot pulls over to the side of the road.
“Oh Blair,” Margot says, wiping her eyes. “This is so hard. I’m sure it is especially for you and your brothers, your dad. We all love her so much.”
“You didn’t come over. I thought you were gone from us.”
