Deceptions
Page 118

I raced out of the room and leaned against the corridor wall, panting and rubbing my eyes, the cold gun stock knocking against my cheek. Then I peeked in again. No fingers. No blood. Just our old footprints.
“Liv!” Ricky’s voice.
I shouted back, as loud as I could, but he just kept calling. I pulled up the map from memory and walked. Turn here and then here and I should be in the—
I was back in the room with the cribs. And one was rocking, back and forth, on its stand. Then a baby started to wail, and I could see it inside the crib, waving pale arms in the darkness.
I walked over, my feet moving as if of their own volition, and pulled the cover off the crib. It came away easily. Inside was a little girl, blond-haired and green-eyed, maybe almost a year, ready to crawl and walk, but lying on her back, waving her fists in the air, her cries howls now, enraged and frustrated howls, her face beet-red. There was a brace on her back.
“Shhh,” whispered a voice somewhere beside me. “Daddy’s here. Come on, sweetheart. Let’s take you out of there.”
I knew the voice. Todd.
“She gets so angry,” he said.
“Do you blame her?” Pamela’s voice. I turned, but they weren’t there, only their voices.
“No.” His voice broke on the word. “I keep hoping the brace will help—”
“It’s not helping.”
“God, why doesn’t something work? All that medicine, and they can’t fix her?”
“What if we could fix her?”
“Don’t,” he said, his voice low. “We’ve been to more doctors than we can afford, and I’d work three jobs if it would help, but they all say the same thing.”
“I mean us, Todd. What would you do to fix her?”
“Anything.” Anger in his voice. “You know that.”
“Anything?”
“Of course.”
“Would you kill for it?”
“What?” Voice sharp, as if he’d misheard.
“Would you kill someone to fix her?”
“God, Pam, don’t even talk like that.”
“So the answer’s no? Not even if it was someone who deserved it?”
He didn’t answer, only scooped the baby up, and my infant self disappeared from sight, my howls turning to soft sobs as he cooed and whispered to me.
“You said you’d do—” Pamela began.
“You’ve been working too hard. Go take a nap, and I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation. If you want me, I’ll be at the park with Eden. That’s what she needs from her parents.”
The baby stopped whimpering, and the voices disappeared. I looked down at the cradle.
Not Todd. It was never Todd.
Of course it wasn’t. No matter how much he loved me, he wasn’t that kind of person. He just wasn’t.
And Pamela . . . ?
“Olivia? Are you up here?” Ricky sounded closer now.
I dashed out of the room. “Here!”
“Where are you?”
I raced toward the sound of his voice, cutting through one room after another until . . .
I swung through the door of the crib room again.
I’m going in circles.
No, I wasn’t.
I must be.
A figure stepped from behind the door.
Fingers closed around my arm. I twisted to see a woman holding me.
“You aren’t real,” I said.
“I wish I wasn’t,” she said. “So many times I’ve wished it. Please let me be a figment of my imagination. But I’m not.”
She clutched my arm in a cold iron grip. I looked at her. She was a little older than me, with snarled dark hair and dark eyes. I knew the face, but the eyes threw me, because every time I’d seen her, there’d been deep pits there, bloody holes.
“Isolde?” I whispered.
“You know me?” A faint, sad smile. “I wish you didn’t. I wish you’d never seen me, not like that. Not you and not her, poor little duckie.”
“Pamela.”
“They’re wrong, you know. When they say you can control it. You can’t. When it goes bad, it goes so bad, and there is no control. Only madness. You’ll see that soon enough.”
I tugged again, but she held me fast.
“There is a way out. One I could never find. Or perhaps they were right—I wasn’t strong enough. But you are.” She gestured at my gun.
“Wh-what?”
Her dark eyes met mine. “Set yourself free.”
“Like hell.”
A sad chuckle. “You sound like your mother.” She lifted her gaze again. “Soon you’ll be like her. That’s your madness. The rage can go in or it can go out. Mine went in; hers went out. As will yours.”
“I’m not like—”
Isolde’s grip tightened. “You’re exactly like her. Fierce in your passions, fierce in your loyalties. That will become rage, and it will explode.” She lifted my hand, gun rising with it. “Fight back, child. Tell them you won’t play their game. End it now. You’ll save so many.”
I dropped the gun. It hit the floor with a clang. I looked at her straight on and said, simply, “No.”
“Then you are lost. The only question is, which will be your imprisonment? Here? Bound to a bed, screaming? Or like your mother, pacing her cell for a lifetime? One will come. You cannot fight it. Remember that I tried to help.”