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“Waiting,” she says. “Watching…watching for his car.”

  It looks like any other day outside. A man jogs on the dirt track that circles the park. Birds flit from tree to tree. A van passes, then another vehicle. But no sign of police presence. No Kevin. She wonders if he had been able to understand her, if he got the message.

  “Won’t you hear him when he pulls in?” her father asks. There’s more than a trace of suspicion in his voice, and her grip on the knife handle tightens.

  Before she can answer, a police cruiser enters her limited periphery, pulling into the driveway. Less than a second later, another cruiser follows the first.

  “Did you hear me, Hannah?” His anger’s returning now.

  She spins to face him, staring into his cold, hard eyes.

  Now! a voice echoes through her mind.

  Hannah shouts, “Turn away!” Then she twists the handle and yanks the door open. Fast as her feet will carry her, she runs toward the police, dropping the bloody knife on the lawn. Doors emblazoned with SPD shields shoot open, and a uniformed officer—a deep look of concern on her young face—reaches for her sidearm, her other hand in the halting gesture of a crossing guard. Guns are drawn, officers swarming into tactical stances, like cops on television, but Hannah can tell they aren’t aiming their weapons at her. Then the female officer’s eyes widen in shock, and that’s when Hannah turns back to the house.

  The thing on the walkway only half resembles her father. The rest of him—a gray, shapeless blob. His pained visage sinks into the darkening jumble of ooze that he’s become, then the quivering mass starts shrinking.

  Police radios squelch. Official commands are shouted. But Hannah understands none of what’s said. Her mission stands clear. She takes a deep breath, and—

  “Stop! Come back!” the female officer warns, Hannah racing in the direction of her father’s dwindling form. Footfalls thunder behind her, but still she runs.

  Looking down, she leaps onto the porch, and sees what her father has become.

  A cockroach.

  A strong hand grasping her shoulder, she raises her foot above the bug, which begins to scurry—

  Thud! Her foot slams down hard, rattling the porch’s floorboards.

  Then she’s pulled into the arms of a barrel-chested man. Through the crook of his arm, she spies Kevin’s SUV behind a wall of cruisers. Red and blue flashers spin. Onlookers gather in the park, the collective curiosity of their gazes locked on the scene.

  And the impact of everything collides with Hannah, who weeps without reservation in the arms of the officer.

  “Did…did I get him?” she mumbles.

  “No one got him,” comes his unexpectedly soft response. “But we will get him. I promise, we will.”

  She cranes her head, struggling to elevate her sightline above the officer’s muscular arm, and manages a backward glance at the porch. Yellow viscera oozes from a copper-hued shell. Upside down, the bug’s legs twitch and stab at the still summer air, fighting for life. But half the creature’s insides are outside, making survival impossible.

  She got him.

  Now, only suffering remains.

  CHAPTER 24

  Kevin’s arm draped over her back, Hannah stares at the house. The police are keeping the questions light for now, focusing their efforts on dispersing the crowd in the park, managing local news crews and dealing with the dead. One body bag has already been hauled into the back of an ambulance.

  “Does she have somewhere to go, someone to take care of her?” the female officer asks. Her soft face is filled with freckles, and Hannah senses this woman’s kind, that she became a cop to make a difference.

  “She has me,” Kevin says.

  “Are you family?” the officer asks.

  “I don’t have any family left,” Hannah whimpers.

  Stepping closer to the officer, Kevin explains the situation, his hand gestures frantic. And Hannah’s attention slides back to the porch, watching men in dark jackets trundle a second corpse toward a waiting ambulance. She doesn’t think she can watch the third come out of the house, but she knows she must. Her mom would be there for her.

  Kevin moves beside Hannah again. “They’re going to let you stay with me for a while.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know, Hannah. I just don’t—”

  “We found her,” a distant voice calls out.

  “I’ll do everything I can,” he promises, and she knows he’s telling the truth. Kevin will fight for her, because he loves her. They aren’t blood, and the person who gave them a tenuous familial connection is gone. But they are family, Hannah knows. They’ll always be family.

  “I love you,” she says.

  “I love you, too, sweetheart.” Tears roll down his face. “I love you so much, and—”

  “She’s alive,” another voice shouts.

  Hope lights Kevin’s eyes, and without a moment’s hesitation, he lifts Hannah, holding her close, and jogs for the house, no one stopping him. As they enter the small foyer, Hannah hears her mother’s distant wail.

  “Where’s my baby? Where’s Hannah?”

  Kevin puts Hannah down, and they sprint up the stairs, two at a time, then down the hallway into the bonus room above the garage, where they find Hannah’s mom on a gurney. A medic wraps her leg. Another starts an IV drip. A group of officers stands back, giving the triage team ample space to work—space that Kevin and Hannah are fast to fill. Again, no one stops them. This is their home. It’s where they belong. This is their reunion.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?”

  “I…I hurt,” she replies. “But I’m feeling better now…now that I can see you.”

  Hannah doesn’t know why her father lied about killing her. Perhaps he had meant to do it and convinced himself he had. Like Chelsea, he was the type of person who lied to himself. The worst kind, Hannah considers. But, just the same, he couldn’t bring himself to commit the atrocity. Does that mean a fragment of humanity had still lit the attic of his mind? Hannah doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. Whatever decency he buried deep wasn’t enough to spare the lives of Chelsea or Henry Sullivan. For those crimes alone, her father is better off dead.

  One of the officers steps toward Kevin, pointing into the unfinished closet. “We found her in here,” he says. “She was tied up, had a lot of duct tape around her head, which was covering her mouth and most of her nose. Lucky we found her when we did. In this unventilated space, it’s a miracle she didn’t asphyxiate.”

  Kevin nods, thanks the cop with a firm handshake, then crouches next to Hannah’s mom, his nose pressed against her face. “We thought you were gone,” he says.

  “I almost was,” she replies, then manages a wounded smile. “But I guess you’re stuck with me for a while longer.”

  “Thank God,” he says.

  But Hannah doesn’t think God has anything to do with it. She closes her eyes, and in the darkness, dimly illuminated, the ghostly image of a woman flutters. At once, she knows this spirit’s identity.

  Agnes. Her grandmother.

  But more. So much more. In many ways, she and Hannah are the same being. Although that’s not something Hannah fully comprehends, she knows that she one day will, when the time is right. In the meantime, she has a lot of living to catch up on.

  Her mom and Kevin smile at each other, making silent promises for the future, holding on to hope, their hands clasped together tight. And on each of those hands, a purple and yellow ring circles the fingers where married couples wear wedding bands.

  Hannah holds up her hand and gazes at her matching ring, her heart flooding with affection for her mom and Kevin, who she knows will love and protect her at any cost.

  And that’s more than enough.

  CHAPTER 25

  Alone in the sunroom, Tina sits in her wheelchair with her casted leg propped up, staring down at an arrangement of photographs in an album. The album was something Hannah had brought home one day from Walgreens, along with several p
ackages of photographs she’d printed at the store. “We’re a family now,” she said. “It’s time we start documenting our memories.”

  Five weeks have passed since Chet’s attack on their home, and Tina still doesn’t know what to make of the whole thing, but she can tell Hannah understands more than she’s ready to admit. She always knew her little girl was special, but she never suspected anything supernatural. It’s an issue she isn’t anxious to push. There’s a lot she doesn’t know, and she’s fine with that.

  In the living room, the cat figurine her grandmother gave her so many years ago rests safely on its shelf, reminding Tina that whatever strange magic her little girl possesses is inherited from her father, not her. She hopes she gave Hannah enough humanity to keep her odd heritage company, and when she considers the dark outcome of prying in her daughter’s business, she decides it’s best to trust Hannah unconditionally.

  That’s the only kind of trust that really matters.

  She flips the page and smiles when the change reveals a photo of Kevin with his arm around Hannah at the go-cart track. Both of them smile brightly in the image.

  Kevin finally returned to work that morning, and Hannah’s at school. This is Tina’s first morning alone since the attack. And, while she misses Kevin and Hannah deeply, she’s not feeling gloomy about their absence. She’s grateful for this time of reflection.

  Against all odds, she’s alive, and that means she will watch her little girl bloom into womanhood, and she will feel the many tender caresses of Kevin, the love of her life. Against her face now, she feels the cool breeze wafting through the open windows, letting her know that fall is fast approaching, and she hears baby birds squawking for their mother in the distance. She closes her eyes and presses the photo album against her chest.

  She doesn’t open her eyes until she hears a faint knock at the sunroom door. Standing at the door with a timid look on her face, Dee Logan holds a colorful bouquet of flowers.

  “What do you want?” Tina asks.

  “I just wanted to stop by,” Dee replies, “to apologize, and to see how you’re doing. I know Kevin went back to work today, and I was worried about you being all alone.”

  “I’m fine, Dee. Really, I am. Thank you for the gesture, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone right now.”

  Dee turns to leave, but then hesitates. She shakes her head for a moment, then looks up, staring at Tina through the screen door, tears filling her eyes. “I need to tell you something, but I don’t know if I can…”

  Tina doesn’t know what to think, but senses this is an important moment. “Come in,” she says. When Kevin’s mother opens the door and sluggishly enters, Tina says, “There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want a cup.”

  Dee lowers herself onto the chair Kevin has occupied these last few weeks. “Thank you,” she says in a quavering voice, “but I don’t drink coffee anymore…makes my heart race.”

  Tina nods and looks away. She has a hard time with the uninvited presence in Kevin’s chair. That’s where he belongs—her protector, her lover, her best friend. Not this awful woman with tears in her eyes, disrupting Tina’s peace.

  Dee places the flowers on a glass table. “Can I help you get these into a vase?”

  “I’ll manage, but thank you, and thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful.”

  “No problem, dear.”

  “So, there’s something you want to tell me. If you don’t mind, let’s bypass the rest of the pleasantries and get to that.”

  Tina expects her bluntness to alarm Kevin’s mother, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, Dee nods as tears stream down her wizened cheeks. “I waited until you were alone, because I wanted to tell you something that…well, something I don’t like to talk about. When I was a little girl, my father used to…he used to abuse me, and I don’t expect that to excuse my behavior at dinner. I was wrong, and I know that now. I know it in my heart, but you have to understand, he didn’t just hit me. He did unspeakable things to me—things I haven’t even told my husband. And…and your book just hit too close to that nerve for me.”

  Tina’s vision clouds with tears. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “How could you, dear. None of what happened was your fault, and I want to be close to you. I love my only son so much, and you mean the world to him. Please forgive this old woman for her poor social graces.”

  “Of course I forgive you,” Tina says. “And I’m so sorry I didn’t consider your perspective.”

  Dee smiles. “Thank you, dear. I didn’t know how this would go, so I left my other gift out in the car. Do you mind if I run and get it now?”

  “Go right ahead, and I’ll start getting these flowers in a vase.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” Dee stands. “And if you don’t mind, I guess a little cup of coffee won’t kill me.” She picks up the flowers and hands them to Tina, who takes them as she returns the woman’s smile. “Be back in a flash.”

  Tina trundles into the living room, where she grabs a white vase from a low shelf. Wheeling toward the kitchen, the vase in her lap, she whistles “Perfect Day,” and using the water dispenser from the refrigerator, which is much easier to reach than the sink, she starts filling the vase.

  And that’s when she hears the first of many barks.

  Swiveling her chair, Tina finds Dee Logan, standing in the living room, cradling a black lab puppy in her arms.

  “Every little girl needs a pet,” Dee says, “and Hannah seemed to adore Rascal, so I picked up this little girl from the Humane Society this morning. Please let me know if it’s too much of an imposition.” She places the puppy on the floor, and it scrambles across the slick ceramic tiles.

  When she reaches Tina, she looks up with sad eyes, tilting her head quizzically, as if asking, Am I home? Is this where I belong?

  Tina lifts the beautiful creature and holds it close as it licks her face.

  “You’re home,” Tina whispers to the dog. “You’re home.”

  CHAPTER 26

  In front of a television, two men sit on metal chairs in a cramped, colorless room. The men, although dressed in leather jackets and jeans, have a tense, purposeful look. The younger man is soft and balding, but the older man is clean-cut with a hard, toned physique. He appears more like a cop than what he really is.

  He considers himself a monster hunter, and he’s driven by implacable principles and financed by crooked business. The United States government classifies his organization a cult, but what the government doesn’t know about him could fill the Grand Canyon.

  Prairie wind rattles the room’s sole window as the younger man aims a remote at the TV and presses a button. On the screen, a black-and-white image of a used-record store. Two young girls caught stealing. Nothing important, thinks Saul Chaplain, the elder of the two men. But Fred Stuart, the younger man, has seen this video and knows the score. He remains quiet while his leader absorbs the footage, slow-playing the reveal, because that’s the only way one convinces Saul Chaplain he’s wrong, if one plans to live.

  As the scene unfolds, Fred zooms in on the image of the girl clenching her fists, her eyes turning inward, then he expands the frame, allowing Chaplain to see the mayhem playing out in the store. When the video ends, he turns to his unamused compatriot.

  “Please tell me there’s more,” Chaplain says.

  “Do you think I’d waste your time if there wasn’t?” Fred hands Chaplain a manila folder. “The girl’s name is Hannah Mitchell.”

  Chaplain studies the photos in the folder: a young boy he remembers well, Chet Tremblay, and then the couple who purchased the boy, Ray and Molly Mitchell. He recalls how desperate they’d been for a child, and the deal they’d made for the chance to be parents. But Chaplain’s first priority has never been money, and he would never have sold the boy unless—

  “Are you suggesting I made a mistake?” Chaplain asks.

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Fred says, a hint of nerves creeping into his voice,
“I’m just reporting facts. One of our field agents secured this footage after he overheard a rumor in a mid-size Missouri town.”

  “How long ago did this record store event happen?”

  “Five weeks.”

  “And this girl’s father?”

  “The whereabouts of Chet Mitchell are unknown at this time, but I was able to dig up information on him. Petty thief who walked in on an occupant during a home invasion a few years ago. Ended with him killing the man. Strange thing, he resurfaced in his daughter’s town and tried to abduct her shortly after this video, but has since gone missing again. Vanished into thin air.”

  “Shifter,” Chaplain snarls.

  Fred nods. “Beyond a doubt, but what’s our next move?”

  Chaplain gets up and walks to the window. He gazes out at the barren landscape, his homeland, and mentally prepares himself for his next mission. He splays the weathered fingers of one hand, pressing them against the cool glass.

  The fault, he knows, rests entirely on him. If only he hadn’t compromised his code by allowing the boy to live. If only he hadn’t shown mercy.

  It’s a mistake he won’t make twice.

  PART FOUR: ONE OCTOBER NIGHT

  CHAPTER 27

  Hannah gazes around the dinner table.

  Kevin laughs at a joke told by his father, and, although she doesn’t understand the joke, Hannah laughs along, the shared response comforting. Her mom smiles down at her plate, twisting strands of fettuccini onto her fork. Her appetite’s coming back, and she’s taking fewer pills to quell the suffering caused by multiple leg fractures. She’ll walk again, the doctors say, but recovery comes slow. Kevin’s mother smiles, too, listening more than talking, frequently placing a gentle hand on the arm of Hannah’s mother, and the two women—now inexplicably close—share many smiles.

  Things seem perfect.

  Hannah feels a paw graze her leg. When she looks down, her new best friend looks up. She calls the dog Trust. That name hadn’t struck her right away, but after spending a few days with the puppy, no other choice fit. On her first night in the house, Trust slept beside Hannah, and when Hannah left for school the next morning, Trust whimpered. The dog’s attachment was immediate, leaving Hannah to question how any living creature could bond so fast with another. Then she considered her own feelings and realized the connection went two ways.