5. Missy #2
I’m vaguely aware of him moving my body, of the sound of Daisy’s tears joining my own. That makes me sob even harder. I’ve never felt like a worse mom than I do in this moment. How can I keep doing this? How can I keep running? Will we ever be safe?
“It’s OK, my beautiful girls. Cry it out,” he murmurs, rocking the two of us. “Pour it all out. I’m here. I’m holding you. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again.”
Somewhere in my brain, the sound of a door banging startles me, but he squeezes me tighter. “It’s Luke. He’s going to help you and Daisy. That’s what he’s here for.”
He calls out where we are, and Luke comes to hover in the bathroom doorway. I can only imagine what he’s seeing. I’m red-eyed, my face tear-streaked and beside me, Daisy is still wailing. I take her from Griffin’s arms, rubbing her back in a soothing circle.
“Whoever it was, they’re gone now,” he tells Luke.
The sheriff nods, and I swear in that one gesture they have an entire conversation. I guess when your life might one day be in someone else’s hands, you learn how to communicate wordlessly. “I’ll check around see what I can find.”
I hold Daisy. She’s still softly crying, but she seems to be calming.
My body is wracked with hiccups and tremors.
Griffin is holding onto both of us. I thought he would let us go when Luke appeared.
The man is his boss, but he made no move to release us.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Either of you.”
I stay wrapped up with him on the cramped bathroom tile, borrowing from his strength and letting it become mine.
I have to explain everything to him now.
I have to hope he believes me. I don’t know what’s going to come next, but I can’t keep doing this.
I have to find a way to keep Daisy safe forever.
“I’ll tell you everything. You have to help me protect Daisy. I can’t let anything happen to her.” I will away more tears. “She’s my whole world.”
“And you’re mine. I’ll do whatever it takes,” he promises.
The sound of the back door opening has me freezing, but Luke immediately calls out to let me know he’s the one in the house.
Griffin gently squeezes my shoulder. “Tell both of us. Let us help you with this.”
I nod and get to my feet. “I’ll get her a bottle, then I’ll answer all of your questions.”
After Daisy is settled in my arms, I sit at the rickety kitchen table while Griffin sits across from me. Luke leans against a nearby wall, his curious gaze on me. But he lets his deputy take the lead, a small kindness I’m grateful for.
Griffin reaches for my free hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “There were footprints in the mud. Two sets of them. Do you know who might be after you?”
“I’m not sure of their real names. The tall, lanky one goes by the name Roulette, and the other is Jagger. They’re involved with drugs.”
He swears under his breath then exchanges a look with Luke. “Where did you meet these people, honey?”
“Through my best friend. Former best friend. Late best friend,” I correct myself and pull the bottle from Daisy. I pat her back to burp her as Luke watches me.
“Do you have little ones?” I ask him over the sound of her crying. Maybe it’s what we’ve been through tonight, but she sounds extra pitiful.
He nods. “One already. A second on the way.”
“She’s the most important person in my world,” I tell him as she lets out a big, wet burp.
I settle her with the bottle again and start my story at the beginning. “I was a foster child. My parents passed before I was even old enough to remember them. I bounced around. Stayed with a lot of good families, but no one ever wanted me for long.”
Griffin squeezes my hand in a silent gesture of support.
“I did meet one girl, Shelley. She was in the system too. We sometimes ended up in the same placements or the same group home. The thing about is that we looked like sisters. Close enough to be twins even. Sometimes, we used that to our advantage, taking tests for each other or showing up at jobs as each other. It was funny. It was kid stuff. Nothing bad,” I say, glancing down at Daisy.
She’s fighting sleep, her eyelids drifting closed only to pop back open every few seconds.
“But while I got placed with a lot of good people, Shelley didn’t. She, um, she struggled. She started using drugs. I didn’t know that. We’d always agreed that when we turned eighteen, we would rent an apartment together.”
I stop there and blow out a breath, relieved to see sleep claiming Daisy. She’s had more excitement in six months of living than most people do in six decades.
“Shelley got clean while I was pregnant. I thought things were getting better. She even had those little patches on her arm that they give you at the clinics when you’re trying to get sober. Sub something.”
“But she didn’t stay sober,” Luke guesses.
“When I was eight months pregnant, she took all of the belongings in the apartment and pawned them. I thought it was because she was using again. I mean, she was. But it turns out, she owed money to the wrong people. About a week after I gave birth, she confessed to everything. She’d been pretending to be me around her friends.
She stole my identity and opened credit cards in my name.
Wrote checks in my name. It was awful, the things she’d done. ”
“What made her break down and tell all of this to you?” Griffin asks.
“She stole drugs from the wrong people. Said the three of us should get out of town for a little while. But then…there was the car accident.” I pause there and swallow hard.
Griffin nods. “So, they don’t realize that you’re not the one that died. They must think you’re Shelley, and they want their drugs back.”
“That’s what I’m guessing. I don’t think they’ll believe anything I say.” I don’t tell Luke that I haven’t exactly tried to have a conversation with these men. I’m pretty sure their idea of a conversation about outstanding debt is very different from mine.
“What’s her name?” Luke asks, tapping on his phone.
I give the sheriff her full name and rattle off her birthday and other identifying information. Luke pulls up her picture and lets out a slow whistle. “You weren’t kidding. You could pass as twins.”
Something occurs to me, a question I hadn’t thought about asking before. “I don’t think it was them who caused the car accident. You don’t kill the person you’re trying to get money from, do you?”
The two exchange another look, and the sheriff says, “We’ll look into this. See what we can find out.”
Panic claws at me, making me cold and numb at the same time. “You can’t let anyone know that I’m here.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” Griffin says. “They know you’re here.”
Luke grimaces and looks at the cardboard taped over the window. While I was making Daisy’s bottle tonight, Griffin took pictures of the damage and swept up the glass. Then he taped a piece of cardboard over the broken pane.
“Hale is going to be so mad,” I mutter.
“I’ve already dealt with him. Don’t even worry about it,” Griffin reassures me.
“I’d give some serious thought to staying somewhere else tonight,” Luke says. “If you want, you could?—”
Griffin interrupts whatever Luke was about to suggest to tell him in a firm tone, “She’s staying with me.”