Chapter 17
W hen I came to, I was lying on a bed with a white blanket. I was drenched in sweat. For a moment, I thought I was six years old again at Mount Sinai Hospital, but after a few seconds, the realization dripped into me like bitter, sharp moonshine. I was in my Southern room.
Dad had said Isaac was still alive and that had knocked me out or done something to me. Maybe I had a panic attack and fell into an exhausted sleep. But I had dreamed or remembered… I remembered…I awoke with a start.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Oh God, Mom!” Tears welled up in my eyes. I felt sick and barely made it to my bathroom to throw up in the toilet. I gagged until I was spitting up not Danny’s Burger but green bile and bright stars.
You did that on purpose!
I saw the four large pans, brimming with oil. My stomach clenched again. Dad…no-no-no …
I braced myself on the toilet seat, straightened up, and staggered past the gray pillars to the sink. Dad, what did you do?
Then it hit me. Dad wasn’t my dad! I repeated it several times in my head. Dad isn’t my father! But that didn’t make it any more real.
I thought of the copy that was under my mattress. STR analysis, mother’s DNA sample… Dad must have ordered a paternity test not long after Mom’s death. And even without reading the letter, I knew the result.
Today, I would have believed Mom. I had nothing in common with Dad. I didn’t have his eloquence or his lust for power and I didn’t look like him at all.
Even Isaac had been more like Dad than I had been.
I clung to the sink for dear life, afraid I would topple over without it.
Again and again, the memory flashed before my eyes.
Dad had let Mom drown! He had never intended to save her.
Of course not. He had set the fire. And he had always made me believe that I owed him, not with words, but with his looks.
I shook my head. All those years trying to please him, doing everything he wanted just to free me from that guilt…
And Mom…I thought of how desperately she had cried.
My heart wanted to shatter into a thousand pieces.
I wanted to throw my arms around her and hold her close, bring her from the past into my present, and beg for forgiveness—for all my childish anger from back then.
“Oh, Mom…my dear mom…” Tears streamed down my cheeks.
I had been so angry with her that day and my anger was the last thing she had seen.
My anger and my fear. I had screamed for Dad…
How terrible that must have been for her.
What had she thought as she sank into the silence of the sea?
That I would forget her? That Dad would feed me a false truth?
How long had she fought before she realized it was pointless and that she was losing everything? Her life and me.
I took a deep breath and tried to stop the tears, pressing my fingers against my eyelids.
Mom had never lost me. At least, not my love.
Deep down, I had always known the truth even if my subconscious had swaddled it in a cocoon.
For a moment, I thought about the silver webs, the Spanish moss of Louisiana.
On Lost Memories, it had seemed to me as if the swamp held a secret that was tied to my past. You are my everything .
Did I know these words from my biological father? Had Mom taken me to see him?
I touched my forehead. Oh my God! My head felt like it was going to explode. I automatically turned on the golden tap and splashed ice-cold water on my face. I had to clear my mind and think about how I could convince Dad to let me out. I had to go to Nathan. And to my grandma.
I had to report Dad for what he had done!
I raised my head determinedly and peered into the gold-framed mirror above the marble sink. When I looked into my eyes, my heart beat even faster. Seconds turned into an eternity in which I looked at myself, then found myself, but didn’t find myself.
For so many weeks, I had dreaded looking in the mirror, not wanting to see the broken, violated, tortured girl.
As if her eyes could tell me more about the suffering that she had experienced, as if there was more horror and deeper terror there.
As long as I didn’t look at myself—I had believed—I could push what had happened away from me, from Willa, the little girl from before, whom I had to keep pure, as if I could protect her.
Now I blinked.
I looked the same as before. Like a completely normal girl, a young woman. With smoky-blue eyes and coral-red lips, porcelain-white skin, and thick cinnamon hair that fell to her shoulders. Maybe a little more jumpy and thin, but still me. Willa Nevaeh Rae. My heart pounded with relief.
I look like Mom , I thought. And like Grandma in the pictures when she was young .
We were—no, we are—a whole generation of clones.
And Nathan loved this girl in front of me, who was now looking at me as if she had seen a ghost. He loved this strange girl no matter how broken she was inside, no matter how long it would take to allow closeness and touching again, and to regain trust. He would wait. Because he had a good heart.
And Isaac…he wasn’t my half brother. He never had been. That too was a small relief. I wiped my eyes and shook my head.
The blood of Coldville isn’t on my hands. My last name is Farmer, not Hampton. I am Willa Nevaeh Rae Farmer .
How paradoxical. All the men from the village had hated me for something I had never been; that was only Isaac: Dad’s flesh and blood.
And Isaac was definitely buried somewhere in the swamp.
Suddenly, I was certain that Dad had lied on a whim to keep me here within his four walls. He wanted me to be afraid, so he had claimed that Isaac was still alive so that I wouldn’t dare leave the house now that I no longer believed his fairy tales and had grown up.
I went back to my bedroom. Where was Dad anyway? And why did I still call him Dad in my mind? I glanced down at myself. He must have put my nightshirt on me. He must have carried me up to the second floor and laid me in my bed.
Did he suspect that I had secretly been on his computer? I suddenly grabbed the pants I had worn yesterday before I slipped into the pink dress. I reached into my pocket.
“Oh damn!” The driftwood heart was gone. Dad must have searched my things, like the other day when I left my pants in the dining room.
However, if he had found the heart, he also knew that I had been in his safe. With his sudden appearance last night, I had completely forgotten to put it back. All I could think about was the letter I wanted to copy.
My thoughts were racing. Okay, calm down, Willa , I kept telling myself, but my pulse continued to race.
I had to get out of here before Dad…I had to swallow…
did something to me? Was I really thinking that?
But he loved me. Too much. Just like he loved Mom too much—but he had let her die, no, he had killed her.
You didn’t leave Nicholas Garrett Hampton. At least, not alive.
A new wave of nausea washed over me. For a moment, I felt like I was trapped in a cage. If he did something to me, no one would know the truth about everything that had happened in Coldville.
Swiftly, I made a decision and pulled all the documents out from under the mattress.
Luckily, Dad hadn’t discovered them, maybe he didn’t even know that I had these printouts, after all, I had restocked the printer with paper.
I took off my nightshirt, slipped on jeans and a loose sweater, and stuffed the folded papers into my waistband.
I crept into the gallery and from there down the stairs.
The grandfather clock in the entrance hall showed three in the morning.
Dad was certainly asleep—this was my chance to speak to the security guard on duty.
On the lower floor, I first tried to open the door but it was still locked. Of course!
I knocked softly on the heavy wood. “Hello? Please open the door for me.”
“Miss Hampton, are you still up?” It was Mr. Cox.
“Let me out, please!” He had to know the code, if only in case of a fire.
I heard him sigh. “I’m sorry, Miss Hampton, I’m not allowed to open the door for you.”
I had expected that, but it still frightened me. “Why not?”
“Strict orders from your father,” he said now.
Damn it! “He’s not my father and he’s keeping me here,” I shouted far too loudly, realizing how crazy that sounded.
“Mr. Hampton said you would say something like that. Go to sleep, Miss Hampton. You’re sick. You need to get better.”
I felt like I was going to lose it. “I have proof. I’ll slip it under the door so you can…”
The elevator dinged. “Is she awake? Did she ask you to let her out, Mr. Cox?” Dad! Oh no!
I turned immediately and fled up the stairs to the gallery. What was I going to do now? Put the papers back under my mattress and pretend I was asleep?
Don’t be naive! Mr. Cox will tell him what you said! Dad will know you have some evidence, one way or another .
I ran into his study. The windows there faced Greenwich Street where Isaac’s accomplices were supposedly hanging around. It was definitely not Billy and Maury as I first suspected, but Nathan and Ian.
Nathan and Ian . They had to be down there now! I locked myself in, tilted the window, and started frantically throwing the printouts out. However, they flapped wildly in the wind, not sailing down immediately as I had hoped.
I had to weigh them down.
I glanced around the study, but there was nothing except paperweights, Ming vases, books, scissors, glue, and pens.
Okay, pens would be good, I wouldn’t kill anyone with them.
However, there were only three ballpoint pens without clips.
And the stupid inkwell with the even stupider porcupine quill as a fountain pen.
Damn!
I didn’t have a cord either! I wanted to scream! Downstairs, I heard Dad talking to Mr. Cox. What should I do?