Chapter Sixty-Six
When Talia was four or five years old, she got into her mother’s secret candy stash while Natalie was busy in another room. She remembers unwrapping a jawbreaker and popping it into her mouth, remembers the delicious sugary slick, remembers swallowing the whole damned thing . . .
Rather, trying.
It lodged in her throat. She couldn’t get it down, and she couldn’t get it up. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t make a sound.
Then her mother was there, grabbing her hard from behind, squeezing and squeezing until the candy was ejected.
To this day, Talia refuses to eat hard candy, even cough lozenges, and she never allows her kids to have it. On Halloween, she sorts through their trick or treat bags, confiscating and throwing away anything that might cause them to choke.
Natalie often recounted the episode. She was in the midst of some chore when she was seized by the inexplicable and urgent need to check on Talia. She dropped what she was doing, rushed in, and saved her life.
“I just knew she needed me,” she’d say, wrapping up her story.
“But how did you know?” the listener might ask.
“Mother’s intuition. Don’t ever doubt that it’s real.”
Talia never has.
Jumping out of the car at Haven Cliff, she wants to believe that her daughter is safe inside, soaking and sulking in the bathtub. But she knows with chilling certainty that she isn’t, because nothing is as it seems. Hayley keeps things from her. She has secrets.
Secrets can be deadly.
Talia races through the rain, up the steps, and across the stone terrace. She tries the door, and it’s locked. Good. That’s good. It’s supposed to be locked.
Ben is right behind her, Kelly’s spare keys already in his hand. He unlocks the door and opens it.
Talia barrels past him. “Hayley? Hayley!”
The house is silent. It feels empty.
She rushes up the stairs and down the hall toward her daughter’s room, her panic mounting when she sees that the door is ajar.
“Hayley!” She takes in the unmade bed, the clothes on the floor. The adjoining bathroom is empty. “Hayley!”
She can hear Ben downstairs, shouting their daughter’s name as well.
Then he shouts her own, in a tone that makes her blood run cold.