“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I would have. But then that night, he brought her home. She was so small, so scared. She needed me.”
“He brought you another little Amy, to keep you quiet. A replacement Amy for the one he broke. That’s why you never told the police. Why you gave him an alibi for the night he kidnapped her, all so you could keep your new little girl. But she wasn’t yours. Did Bruce ever tell you how he killed the mother? How he wrapped his hands around her throat?”
“He said he panicked. He said when the child screamed, the mother woke up, and all he could do was—”
“Strangle her, with the only weapon he had. His hands.”
“I don’t know how it happened! All I knew was this little girl needed me to love her. Take care of her. It took time for her to forget the other woman, but she finally did. She learned to love me. She learned I was her mother.”
“She also had a father, Julianne. A father who loved her too, and would never stop looking for her. So you and Bruce packed up and left Maine. You changed your names, moved on to Massachusetts, to New Hampshire, and finally to upstate New York. That’s where you finally managed to leave him. You took your little girl and you moved to Boston, and here, for the first time in your life, everything finally goes right for you. You marry a decent man. You live in this nice house. It’s all perfect—until Amy has her accident. It’s a completely random bit of bad luck that put her in the hospital. But it changed everything.”
Julianne’s face revealed no nervous twitch, no glint of panic in her eyes, and Jane suddenly wondered if she’d gotten this all wrong. If Julianne would somehow pull out the proof of her own innocence.
No, I’ve got it right. I know I have.
“Amy ends up in the intensive care unit, where Sofia Suarez is her nurse. Sofia sees the scar on Amy’s chest from a childhood heart operation. She sees that Amy has a rare blood type, AB negative. And she remembers a patient she took care of nineteen years ago. A three-year-old girl with AB negative blood who had heart surgery. She remembers that girl very clearly because of the shocking thing that happened to her. Little Lily Creighton was abducted from her home and never found. Now, nineteen years later, Sofia sees Amy’s surgical scar, from an operation that’s nowhere in her medical record. She notes her rare blood type.”
“How can you possibly know all this?”
“Because Sofia Suarez left the clues I needed to put it all together: Her online search for blood types. Her search for James Creighton. Her call to an old nursing colleague in California, who also remembers the kidnapping of Lily very well. But Dr. Antrim was Sofia’s friend, and she couldn’t raise her suspicions with him. So she asked her questions quietly, questions that must have alarmed you. About why Amy’s heart surgery wasn’t mentioned in her medical record.”
“It’s because we moved so many times! Amy and I lived in different places, different states. Records get lost.”
“And why didn’t you donate blood to your own daughter, when she clearly needed it? Sofia must have wondered that too. I don’t know what excuse you gave, but I do know the real reason. You couldn’t give her blood because you’re O positive, Julianne. Something Sofia found out when she called a friend in medical records to look in your chart. If you’re not her mother, then who are Amy’s real parents? Sofia knew the only way to find out is with DNA.
“So she searched for James Creighton. She tracked down his old address and sent a letter that was eventually forwarded to him. That’s how he learned his daughter, Lily, might be alive. The man wasn’t stalking a random woman. He was trying to find out if Amy was his own daughter.”
“Mom, I’ve got it,” said Amy. She’d come back downstairs and she walked into the kitchen holding a photo album, which she set down on the table.
“There,” said Julianne, pushing the album to Jane. “Open it. Look at it.”
The binding was about to fall apart and the pages were brittle. Gently, Jane opened the album cover and saw a faded photo of a young Julianne cradling a black-haired infant in her arms.
“You see?” said Julianne. “That’s me and Amy. She’s only a few months old there, but she already has a head full of hair. Beautiful black hair.” She looked at her daughter. “Just like she has now.”
“Courtesy of Clairol,” said Jane.
Julianne frowned at her. “What?”
“I saw a box of Clairol hair coloring in your lake house. At the time I assumed it was yours, to touch up gray roots. But it was really for your daughter, wasn’t it? To keep her hair black.” Jane looked at Amy, who stood mute and frozen. “Another detail I missed, but a nurse would have seen it. A nurse who bathed her, washed her hair, and noticed that blond roots were starting to grow out.” She looked back at Julianne. “When did Sofia finally confront you? When did she tell you that she knew Amy wasn’t really your daughter?”