Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes the mind refuses to accept horror and absurdity at the same time.
Claire lowered her gun slightly.
“You knew she was alive?”
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Margaret looked
at Claire.
“I knew more than any of you.”
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Hayes suddenly raised his weapon.
“Don’t move.”
Margaret didn’t flinch.
“Still afraid of me, Thomas?”
Thomas.
Mr. Hayes.
My alleged father.
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His jaw tightened.
“You should have stayed gone.”
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“And you should have stayed out of my daughter’s life.”
I looked between them.
“What is happening?”
Margaret’s gaze returned to me.
“I’ll explain everything.”
“You’ve had nine years.”
“Emily—”
“Nine years!”
My scream echoed through the basement.
“I watched you die!”
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She swallowed.
“No. You watched a woman with my name die.”
“What?”
Russell groaned on the floor.
Margaret rushed toward him.
Hayes aimed at her.
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“Stop.”
She ignored him.
“Russell’s bleeding badly.”
Claire’s gun shifted toward Hayes.
“Lower it.”
Hayes laughed.
“Now you’re protecting her?”
“I’m protecting my father.”
Russell looked up at Claire.
For the first time that night, something tender entered his expression.
“Claire.”
“Don’t,” she said. “I’m
still furious with you.”
“Fair.”
Daniel dropped beside Russell.
“We need an ambulance.”
“No signal,” I said.
Margaret opened her coat.
A satellite phone hung from her belt.
“I called one before I entered.”
Hayes stared at her.
“You planned this.”
“I planned for Thomas to panic.”
She looked at his gun.
“People reveal themselves when they think they’ve lost control.”
Hayes’s face hardened.
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Then don’t.”
I stepped between them.
“Enough.”
Everyone looked at me.
I was still shaking.
Still bleeding from Claire’s slap.
Still staring at the impossible face of the woman who had raised me.
“Someone is going to tell me the truth. **The entire truth. Right now.**”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Then she nodded.
