I’m alone for a minute or two, and the nerves flutter. Lee never talks about her visits here, and the nights after she comes back are the only times all year she drinks. Glass after glass of wine until she’s stumbling and I have to help her to bed. One time, as I covered her up with a blanket, I heard her whisper, I don’t want to, Mommy, as she curled into it, and my heart burned in my throat for days after, because I knew.
I knew.
The time alone gives me a chance to assess the room: the table and two chairs bolted to the floor, the metal loops on the table and floor for the chains.
Do they shackle her in here? Of course they do. What a naive thing to even wonder. I can’t think like that. I know better.
The back of my neck tickles from the wig, the weight of hair on my shoulders unfamiliar after all these years. I take deep breaths and keep my back to the door I know she’ll be coming in from, even as I hear the footsteps and the scrape of the lock, the clank of what I know are her chains, because I am not naive. I’m not.
I can hear her settle in the chair, the murmur of the guard’s voice, and then his footsteps, leaving us alone. Definitely against regulation. Absolutely not a surprise.
But I still don’t turn. I show her my back and the spill of long hair that looks real, and I wait.
“Natalie.”
It’s strange, to hear it. My name. But it isn’t. Not anymore. Natalie was the touchstone. She was supposed to be my secret forever. The name I kept for myself. For my family and no one else.
I had been Natalie longer than any of the other girls. I’d been Natalie much longer than I’ve been Nora, but someday, that won’t be true anymore.
And that is my new forever secret. Just like all the girls and names I carry.
The girl my mother loves, the girl she thinks I am? She’s no one’s touchstone. I let her go. She became something that needed to be killed so Nora could flourish.
I left some of her behind in the bloody sand, banished pieces of her with a bottle of hair dye in a dingy motel, and he doesn’t know it and I won’t ever tell him, but Wes’s love helped me destroy whatever was left of her, because my mother’s daughter can’t be loved or known by anyone.
Natalie’s gone. Nora’s become real. Stranger, more secret things have happened, I guess. But it’s knowledge that is mine and mine alone, and I know the value of things that belong only to me.
I finally turn. Her breath catches, and I know why. I look so much like her, like this. Looking at me must be like staring at a photo of herself at seventeen, and looking at her is like I’m seeing the path I would’ve ended up on if I hadn’t fought my way out.
“You’re so grown up.”
Walking forward, I slide into the chair across from her. I can see the guard in the hall through the tiny window on the door. I wonder how long we have. I fold my hands in front of me, placing them on the table. I meet her gaze head-on, but I stay silent.
Her eyes track all over my face, and anyone else would think of it as a mother drinking their kid in after so long apart, but I know better. She’s searching for clues. For tells. For anything she can glean and use.
“I’ve been so worried. I thought maybe . . .”
“I was dead?”
“On the bad days,” she says, and oh, it sounds so sincere. Her fingers knit together, but I won’t let it affect me. I’m glass. A reflection. Everything bounces off me instead of getting inside. “I searched for you. The best I could, in here.”
“I’m sure you did.”
The little twitch of an eyebrow—they’re not as elegantly shaped in here, a little wilder, just like mine—lets me know I’m getting to her.
“I wondered if they put you in witness protection. Your sister’s been trying to find you, too. Is that where you’ve been? With the marshals? Did you finally get away?”
Relief bursts in my chest. The trap I laid with Duane worked. Lee’s cover is still safe for now. My mother doesn’t know how I got out. She still thinks it was the FBI and the marshals.
“I could’ve slipped my handlers from day one,” I say. “I didn’t bother until now.”
“What are you doing here, baby? Do you need help? Are you okay?”
Her eyes swim with tears that’ll never be shed, because the only motivation behind them is information, not emotion.
“You know why I’m here.”
I take my hands off the table and lean back in the chair, unblinking, staring her down. She breathes, in and out, so damn steady, but her eyes are roving my face again.