Chapter 7 - THE SECRET BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDSThe world tilted off its axis, spinning into a dark, chaotic abyss.
"Lily?" I repeated, the name tasting like copper and poison in my mouth. "What do you mean, Lily? You said Helen tried to drown her in 1986. You said social services took her!"
"We lied," my father choked out, his knees buckling slightly as he leaned against the hallway wall for support. "Social services didn't take her, Claire. Helen... Helen didn't try to drown her in the bathtub. That was a lie your mother and I fabricated with our lawyers to secure full custody and strip Helen of her parental rights before we got married."
I stared at him, my entire body shaking with a rage so blinding it burned behind my eyes.
"You lied? You framed a mentally ill woman for trying to murder her own baby just so you could take her life and replace her?"
"Helen was sick!" my father yelled, breaking down into ragged, broken sobs. "She wasn't stable! But Lily... Lily was healthy. And when Helen threatened to take Lily and run away to her sister's house in Maine... we panicked. We hid Lily with my sister in Cincinnati under a fake name to keep Helen from finding her."
I froze. The blood pounded in my ears like a war drum.
"With... with your sister? You mean Lily is alive?"
My father’s face crumpled into a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. He lowered his phone slowly, the screen still glowing in his trembling hand.
"She was alive, Claire," he whispered. "Until an hour ago, when the police broke open the concrete seal on the crawlspace under this house... and found the locked trunk that Helen kept hidden beneath the floorboards."
My breath caught in my throat. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak.
"What was in the trunk, Dad?" I whispered, my voice barely a human sound.
"Lily's baby blanket," my father wept, covering his face with his hands. "And a note from Helen, dated yesterday morning. It said: 'You stole my firstborn daughter and buried her in a lie. Now I have taken yours.'"
My heart stopped.
Mia.
I turned and bolted down the attic stairs so fast I missed the last three steps, crashing hard onto the hardwood floor of the hallway. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the sharp pain shooting up my ankle, and sprinted toward the front door.
"Claire! Where are you going?" my father screamed, stumbling after me.
"Mia!" I roared, throwing the front door open. "MIA!"
The driveway was empty.
My SUV sat idling in the gravel, the driver's side door standing wide open. The back seat window was smashed, safety glass sparkling like diamonds in the morning sun.
May you like
And lying on the passenger seat, smeared with a smudge of dark, wet earth, was Mia’s pink-and-white sneakers.
She was gone.
