Cross My Heart, Hope To Die

Emma stared down for a moment, picking nervously at the fabric of her still-damp tank dress. “The woman who escaped yesterday is my birth mom. Your dad’s been treating her.” She shifted her weight and blurted out the thought that had been bothering her more than any other. “Nice genetics, huh?”

Nisha’s eyes were soft behind her glasses. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m not really sure,” Emma replied. She was grateful for the darkness. It would have been too hard to talk about this if Nisha could see her face. “I mean, she’s obviously crazy. You don’t end up in the psych ward unless you’re crazy, right?”

“Crazy’s not exactly the word I’d use,” Nisha said carefully. “People have all kinds of problems that land them in treatment.”

“Well, whatever her problems are, I’m apparently one of them.” Emma sighed. “Nisha, would you mind not telling anyone about this? No one knows any of it—that I’ve met my birth mom, or what she’s like. It’s a secret between me and my dad.”

“Of course,” Nisha said. She paused, a shallow frown wrinkling her forehead. “Why did she call you Emma?”

Emma fidgeted, her pulse surging. “Um, it turns out Emma was the name she gave me as a baby,” she said, thinking quickly. “My parents changed my name when I was a few days old.”

Nisha nodded. “You got lucky. Emma sounds like an old maid. Sutton’s way better.”

Emma pursed her lips, but I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

“Anyway, I’m sorry if I was prying,” Nisha said. “The whole thing just seemed really scary, and I wanted to make sure you were okay. It’s not the same, but … I understand what you’re going through. It’s tough to watch your mom not acting like herself.”

Nisha’s mother had died of cancer last year. Emma had gotten the sense that it had been fairly quick, but surely Mrs. Banerjee had undergone treatment—radiation, chemo—that would have made her unrecognizable.

“What’s it like, volunteering up there?” Emma asked. “I mean, isn’t it hard, being around all that … insanity?”

Nisha took off her glasses and polished them on the edge of her shirt. “To be honest, I signed on for the psych ward because my dad works there,” she said bluntly. “It’s the only way I ever get a chance to see him anymore. He’s always been a workaholic, but it got way worse after Mom died.” She slid the glasses back on, making her eyes look bigger and somehow more vulnerable. “It’s actually not so bad. I mean, there’s lots of creepy stuff that happens there. But sometimes you get to watch someone getting better. It’s like they come back to themselves or wake up from a really bad dream. It’s pretty inspiring.” She cleared her throat. “That sounds so cheesy.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Emma said softly. “I think it sounds amazing.”

The floodlight snapped back on. Emma flinched, squinting into the sudden glare. Nisha looked back toward her driveway. “Don’t worry, it’s probably just the neighbor’s cat.”

Emma exhaled heavily. “I’ve been jumpy ever since my mom escaped from the hospital. I just wish I knew exactly what was wrong with her. No one will tell me anything. What if she’s … violent?”

Nisha nodded slowly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Emma bit her lip, glancing at Ethan’s house.

“Do you know a way I could look at her records?” she asked. Nisha recoiled slightly. “I would never ask you to get them for me,” Emma said quickly. “I know they’re confidential. But if you knew how to get them … it would mean a lot. Maybe I could figure out where she’s gone. Maybe I could find her.”

Nisha tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. She fidgeted with a gold initial pendant on a chain around her neck, the letter D. Emma suspected it must have belonged to Mrs. Banerjee.

“I think I might be able to help you,” Nisha said. She ran her fingers through her hair. “Can you wait here for a second?”

“Sure.”

Nisha padded back across the driveway to the house. Emma heard her door open and shut. She leaned against her car, counting the seconds. Somewhere in the canyon a coyote was hunting, its short, shrill barks bouncing off the desert rock. The sound sent a shiver up her spine. She stared into the darkness in the direction of the park, trying to convince herself she had nothing to be afraid of.

A few minutes later, Nisha’s footsteps sounded on the gravel driveway. “My mother’s birthday is September seventh,” Nisha said cryptically. Then she slid something shaped like a credit card into Emma’s hand.

Emma opened her fist. It was a small white electronic passkey. The University of Arizona Hospital logo was stamped on the front.

She immediately pulled Nisha into a hug. For a few seconds, Nisha stood rigid and surprised in her arms. Then Emma felt her body relax as she tentatively hugged her back.

“Thanks,” Emma whispered, stepping away.

Nisha nodded. “I’ve gotta go. See you at the party, okay?” She went back into the house. Emma imagined her going into the Banerjees’ silent foyer, walking past all the things that her mother had bought for their household—a vase, a picture frame, a throw. The house must feel almost haunted.

I wondered about that. Did Nisha travel with her own invisible passenger? Did Mrs. Banerjee hover around her, cajoling and comforting a daughter who couldn’t hear her anymore? Somehow I doubted she had the same kind of unfinished business I did.

Emma opened the door to the Volvo. As she was getting in, she saw a curtain flutter at a window in Ethan’s house. A moment later, a light snapped on in the front room, and his mother passed by the window in a worn gray bathrobe. Emma watched for another moment, wondering if she’d been eavesdropping on her conversation with Nisha. Then she climbed in the car.

Emma sighed. Maybe asking Nisha for help with the files was unethical. But if it helped clear Becky, it would be worth it. And if it didn’t—it might help her finally catch her sister’s killer.

I agreed with Emma. With Becky on the loose, we needed all the information we could get.

It was time to learn some of our mother’s secrets.

24

MEET ME AT THE PLAZA

Emma opened her eyes, blinking slowly in confusion. Her body felt strangely heavy, her arms like lead at her sides. She stared up at an unfamiliar tiled ceiling dotted with industrial fluorescent lights. The room smelled like floor wax and medicine. Strange monitors loomed over her bed, beeping and winking down at her.

She tried to sit up, but her body still wouldn’t budge. She looked down, and her heart began to hammer. Instead of Sutton’s polka-dot pajamas, she wore a thin white hospital gown. A plastic bracelet stuck to her wrist. Her arms and legs were strapped to the bed with stained leather restraints.

“No!” Emma screamed, pulling against the restraints. She thrashed back and forth, but that only seemed to make them tighter.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said a familiar voice. Emma gasped. Becky. “I’m so glad you could finally join me.”

A rustle of the sheets and a creak of the mattress springs indicated that her mother had crawled out of bed. Emma turned her head so hard that her neck felt like it might snap off, but she still couldn’t see her. “Mom?” she whispered.

“They tried to keep us apart,” said her mother. “But you and I are supposed to be together always, Emmy. And now we can be.”

“This is a mistake,” Emma said, struggling again. “I don’t belong here.”

“Of course you belong with your mother,” said Becky soothingly. “Don’t worry. You’re here now, and I’ll take care of you. Then you’ll realize.”

“Realize what?” Emma asked. Becky didn’t answer. “Mom?”

“It was so hard to watch you bounce from foster home to foster home.” Her mother’s voice sounded sad, tremulous. It was closer now. “I hated to see you so lonely. So miserable. All you ever wanted was a family.”

Emma lay in breathless silence.

“You thought that I abandoned you, but I was watching over you all this time. And I know. A mother always knows. I had a plan, and it worked. You waited patiently like a good little girl, and now you have a family.”

Emma shook her head frantically, straining against her bonds. “I didn’t want to get a family this way,” she insisted. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

“People get hurt every day,” Becky whispered into her ear. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to give birth to twins? I never knew there was going to be two of you. There wasn’t supposed to be two. But that’s okay. I’ve corrected the mistake.”

“Mom, stop,” Emma said, writhing again. “Please tell me you didn’t do this.”

Becky’s face suddenly appeared in front of her, more skeletal than ever. Her eyes were sunken and hollow, her lips thin and bloodless. She smiled down at her daughter sadly. A gnarled hand reached down to stroke Emma’s hair off her forehead, a gesture Emma remembered from when she was a little girl.

Then Becky picked up a pillow from the bed next to Emma and cradled it almost like a baby.

“Honey, you don’t always get what you wish for,” she said. Then, still smiling, she pushed the pillow down onto Emma’s face.

Emma screamed into the pillow. She tried to shake off Becky’s weight, but the cuffs on her wrists and ankles cut into her skin. Multicolored spots danced against the backs of her eyelids. Her lungs burned, and her mind went fuzzy, until the world around her became shiny and transparent. And there, in that surreal space somewhere beyond vision, she saw a girl around her own age. The girl was shouting something. She was pretty, with long brunette hair and blue eyes. Was she seeing … herself?

No. She was seeing me. “Emma,” I yelled.

Emma saw the girl’s lips move, but she couldn’t distinguish the words. Somehow, though, she knew that this was Sutton. Emma gazed at her sister’s face, so like her own. Then she felt a peaceful sense of detachment, as if she was deep underwater. Wait for me, Sutton, she thought. I’m coming. At least she would be with her sister now. Becky had seen to that.

Her lungs gave a final, desperate heave. Then she sat, bolt upright, in Sutton’s bed. In Sutton’s pajamas, in Sutton’s house. It was Saturday morning. The sheets had wound around her arms and legs so tight she could barely move. Daylight streamed in through the window.

Still breathing heavily, she grabbed Sutton’s robe and stepped into the bathroom connecting her room to Laurel’s. Locking the door, she turned on the water as hot as it would go. Steam filled the little pink-and-white room. She pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped in.

It was just a dream, she kept repeating to herself. But didn’t scientists always say that dreams revealed the truths that the waking self couldn’t face? Had her dream shown her the real truth about Becky? She wished she could talk to Sutton, just for a minute, so that her twin could tell her the name of her killer.