“No. Not when you’re not allowed.”
“Not allowed? I don’t understand.”
“Fred wouldn’t let me discipline them. Not for anything. That was his job, he said. His girls, his job.”
“He wouldn’t let you discipline your own daughters?”
Susan glanced up from her thumb, where she’d been at work again on her polish. A tear spilled down her left cheek. “That’s just it. They weren’t mine. Not legally.”
Lizzy blinked at her. In all the coverage of the Gilmans eight years ago, that little detail had somehow escaped notice. “He was married before?”
“Christina. His high school sweetheart, if you can believe that. She died in a fire. Faulty wiring or something. Fred had taken the girls to his mother’s for supper. By the time he got home, it was over. They found her in the bathtub. They think she must have been trying to protect herself from the flames.”
Lizzy suppressed a shudder, trying not to picture the scene. “How old were the girls when you and Fred married?”
“Heather was three. Darcy was a year and a half.”
“You raised them.”
Susan nodded, brushing away another tear. “I’m the only mother they ever knew. Except I was never really allowed to be their mother. Fred never let me forget they were his girls, or that I was an outsider.”
Lizzy felt her anger at Fred Gilman bubbling up all over again. “But he married you.”
“Turns out he didn’t want a wife so much as a housekeeper. Lucky me. I qualified for the job. By the time I realized what I’d signed up for, I was too in love with his daughters—our daughters—to leave. I’d have no right to them if I left. I’d never see them again.”
“You never formally adopted them?”
“No.” She wiped at her eyes, smearing her mascara. “I wanted to, but Fred wouldn’t even discuss it. They had a mother, and I wasn’t her. It didn’t matter that they didn’t remember anyone but me singing them to sleep, or holding their heads when they were sick. He remembered.”
“That sounds a little . . .”
“Obsessive?” Susan supplied bitterly. “Only because it was. It was like she was a saint or something. It didn’t help that the girls were the spitting image of her—Heather especially. Every time he looked at her, he saw Christina. I think that’s why he couldn’t deny her anything. Even when he should have. I tried to tell him. I warned him that she was growing up too fast, that they both were, but he wouldn’t listen. He’d just give me that look and tell me to mind my own business.”
Susan’s cheeks had flared a dark shade of red as she spoke. Lizzy was almost relieved. It was easier to witness her anger than her pain. Still, she needed to tread lightly if she wanted her to keep talking. “I know this is hard, Susan, and that it’s the last thing you want to talk about, but I truly want to find out who hurt your daughters, and talking like this might help me piece something together that the police missed. Do you feel up to answering a few more questions?”
Susan was starting to look a little ragged around the edges, but she managed a nod. “Ask whatever you need to.”
“You said Heather was growing up too fast. What did you mean?”
“Exactly what you think I meant. She was breaking curfew, sneaking around with boys, wearing trashy clothes, drinking. All the things a girl does right before she comes home and tells you she’s pregnant.” She paused, shaking her head. “Can you believe that’s what I was afraid of? That she’d come home one day and tell us she’d gotten herself in trouble? Back then I thought that was the worst thing that could happen.”
“Did your husband know all this was going on? The drinking and the boys?”
“Yes, he knew. I told him—or tried to. He wouldn’t listen. The night they . . .” Susan closed her eyes briefly. “The night they disappeared, I wanted to call the police, but Fred wouldn’t let me. He said we didn’t need the police in our business, and that the girls would come home when they were ready. We argued. It was awful. I couldn’t believe he was being so cavalier. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I got in the car and drove around. I hit all the spots I knew the kids went, but there was no sign of them. I knew something was wrong. A mother knows. I went home and ransacked their rooms, looking for something—a diary, a phone number—anything that might help us find them. I found a box of condoms in Heather’s nightstand. Three were missing. When I showed Fred the box, he told me he bought them. He bought our fifteen-year-old daughter . . .” Her eyes welled with fresh tears. “To keep her safe.”
Lizzy stood and went to the counter, returning with a handful of paper napkins. She waited while Susan blotted her eyes and pulled herself together.
“I’m all right,” she said finally, still clutching the crumpled napkins. “Please go on.”
“Do you know any of the boys she was seeing?”
“I wish I did, but Heather and I were barely speaking at that point. You know how teenage girls are. As far as she was concerned, I was the enemy. And she’d gotten very good at covering her tracks. She’d even recruited Darcy as an accomplice.”
“What about her friends? Did any of them know who she was hanging around with?”
“She’d split off from most of her regular friends by then, and was hanging with some new kids. Older kids I didn’t know. I talked to several of the parents. Fred was furious. He accused me of trying to paint his daughter—his daughter, like I had nothing to do with raising her—as a tramp.”
This brought Lizzy to the question she’d really come to ask, uncomfortable though it might be. “When I spoke to your husband the other day, I was struck by the
