Chapter 41
TROY
Sage is sitting quietly, reading a bloodied notebook. She’s covered in blood from head to toe, and on the desk next to her is the dead body of her father, with his wrists slit open wide, and two pools of blood, like twin suns, growing brighter with each second that passes.
I’m too late.
But then, am I?
She looks up as I walk in. “I’m not crazy,” is the first thing she says to me.
My eyes flit to her dead dad and then back to Mercy on her lap, next to the book. “Alright.”
“He deserved to die.” She indicates the book in her hands, and the loose, ripped-out pages scattered like falling leaves on the floor. “I documented every crime he committed when I was Nell. When he found out, I was already in the hospital with severe brain trauma, and he took her away from me.”
I must have frowned at that because she shook her head. “I mean, he took those memories away. And when I woke up, it was like a hole was missing in my life because the diary only had parts of it.”
“That hole was Nell?”
“Me, when I was pretending to be Nell, yes. I wasn’t crazy, I just gave myself an alter ego to carry out the darker things I was ashamed of, like you do with Sweeney.”
“Sweeney is me.”
Her brow furrows.
I sigh. Of course, she doesn’t know that. “Sweeney is what my family name was, before my ancestors anglicized it to Swanley when they came from Ireland in the 1400s. Mac Suibhne became Swanley so we’d sound properly English.
She nods solemnly. “Oh, I know, Laine showed me your family tree. But why did you change your name a third time?”
“Because.” I sit down on the sofa because I’m tired of standing, and this feels like it’s going to take a while longer than I anticipated. “Severin sounds cool.”
She laughs then, and it’s music to my ears.
And then she tells me everything about stealing the evidence at Grayfleet before her father sold it off at auction, but someone was there, Darrow maybe.
Her father wouldn’t admit anything about that night.
But she remembers parts of it, from dreams of Nell she thought weren’t real, dreams of hiding the letter and the proof for me to find, leaving clues no one else would figure out, and then trying to run. But she never made it home.
She somehow fell and hit her head, and forgot everything.
Forgot being Nell.
And forgot me.
I share too, telling her what her father did to my family and me, some of which she’d already pieced together.
“Richard had our house burned while my parents slept, because they wouldn’t sell to him so he could excavate the land for stone.
The only reason I escaped was that I was out looking for my sister, who had gone after her horse after someone let them loose in the forest. When we got back, the entire house was in flames, and it was too late.
They arrested me because it was arson, and they found my clothes covered with accelerant.
Richard’s friends in high places sent me down, and Joanna, my sister, into care.
But she ran away from her foster parents, and I lost everything. ”
“So it was your sister whom you were searching for?”
“She blamed me for it all, but I told her I had proof that I just had to find it.”
Sage’s shoulders slump. “That’s the only thing. I don’t know where I hid it.”
I go to her then and gather her in my arms. Of all the things, she smells of death and lavender. “I don’t need it anymore.”
“But what about your sister?”
“I’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way and beg for forgiveness.”
Her mouth flattens. “I still hate you.”
“Then I’ll beg for forgiveness from you, too. I should never have let you go.”
She wraps her arms around me and clings to me tightly. “Well. That’s a start.”
I carry her out of there, making sure to take the files from Richard’s safe, the diary, and Mercy, but leaving his red notices and demands for money with his body.
Dawn arrives just as the staff’s screams do, following us to where the SUV is parked, with Mundel waiting behind the wheel. I set her gently in the back and then climb in with her. I don’t want to be presumptuous and take her home, so I ask her where she wants to go.
“Take me to Laine’s.”