Chapter 14 - SHE CAME BACK
Harris drew his weapon before he went upstairs.
Two officers followed.
Dad pulled Caleb and me into the kitchen.
Every sound from above felt too loud.
A door opened.
A closet slammed.
Then Harris shouted, "Clear!"
No one was there.
But someone had been.
My dresser drawers were open. The mattress had been pulled halfway off the frame. May's collar, which I had placed inside a small wooden box, was gone.
I felt sick.
"Why take the collar?"
Harris answered immediately. "Evidence."
Vanessa knew the collar connected May to the shed.
She had come back for it.
An officer found muddy footprints beneath the open window. Another found a torn piece of black fabric caught on the fence.
She had been inside our home while we were downstairs.
Dad insisted we leave for a hotel.
I refused at first.
Then I found something under my pillow.
A note.
You took my life apart. Now I take yours.
We left within ten minutes.
At the hotel, Caleb stayed with Mark in the room across the hall. Dad sat beside me until after midnight.
"I failed your mother," he said quietly.
"Dad."
"I didn't know what was happening around her. Then I brought that woman into our home years later."
I reached for his hand.
"Vanessa chose what she did. Not you."
He looked at me with red eyes. "And May?"
That question broke me.
"I left her there. I told her to stay in my room."
"You gave that cat nine years of safety."
I cried into his shoulder until my phone buzzed on the nightstand.
A photo had arrived from an unknown number.
May's red collar lay on a concrete floor beside a burning candle.
Below it was an address.
I recognized the place.
The abandoned clinic where my mother and Vanessa had once worked.
May you like
And under the address were four words:
Come hear Rachel's confession.
