“I don’t understand. If you’re going to kill me, and I guess I can’t blame you, I’ve obviously figured something out, can you explain to me what your relationship is to Kelly Leigh?”
Because holy identical twins, Wonder Woman. That’s what had stopped me cold when I was exiting the elevator. How much Susie looked exactly like Kelly. But she was much too old to be her twin.
Maybe she was her older sister? But Susie had said she grew up without a father and Margot hadn’t mentioned a sister, but she had mentioned Kelly’s parents…
That meant she had to be…
Oh-oh-oh.
I blanched as I put it together.
“She was your daughter…” I murmured, my voice shaking, my hands clammy and cold as I gripped my coffee cup and the strap of my purse. “You put Kelly up for adoption, didn’t you?”
In the year two thousand. I was sure of it. I didn’t need her to confirm what Artur had drawn. He’d drawn the hospital where Kelly was born and the year she’d been born.
Susie’s eyes narrowed, gleaming with malice. “I sure did. I was just a kid when I had her, and I was alone. So alone,” she said on a raspy cry. “I had a crappy mother and an even crappier father ,who’d all but abandoned me when I was still in high school. I was living with friends just so I could finish school, sleeping on people’s couches, sleeping on a park bench, wherever I could just to get by. There was no way I could keep her, Trixie. No way!”
“But then you found the Leighs?”
“Then I found the Leighs,” she said almost wistfully, her voice softer. “The Leighs paid for my food, my medical care. They paid for housing. They took care of everything, but I didn’t have a choice, Trixie. I had no choice! I had to give her up, but I swear to you, I loved her from the moment I saw her sweet little face. I swear I did!”
But I held up a hand and nodded. “I understand. I don’t blame you. No explanation needed. You did the right thing, Susie.”
“Did I?” she yelled, waving the gun in the air. “Did I do the right thing, Trixie, when she ended up dead because of that nasty, entitled, selfish monster, Mitzy? If she’d stayed with me, I could have taught her how to be tough. I would have taught her how to take care of people like Mitzy who pushed and pushed and took whatever they wanted! I thought I left her with people who’d protect her, keep her safe. I loved the Leighs. But look what happened! Look what they let happen to my baby!”
I blew out a breath and forced myself to think. “What happened to her, Susie? I mean…I know she committed suicide, but why? Do you know what Mitzy did to make her do something so awful?”
Her face screwed up until she was almost unrecognizable. “Oh, I hate her! The mere mention of her name makes me irrational!” she sobbed. “She pushed Kelly to do it. I know she did! I talked to her friends at school, and they told me the things Mitzy did.”
“Told you what, Susie?” I asked, my voice quivering. “What did they say Mitzy did?”
She sucked in a deep breath, her chest rising and falling as tears fell down her face. “Mitzy’s boyfriend liked Kelly. Liked her enough to make a pass at her, but one of Mitzy’s spies caught it on video and sent it to not just Mitzy, but everyone at the school. And that’s when Mitzy went after her. Day and night. Night and day. She taunted her. Kelly’s friends told me she couldn’t walk down the hall without someone calling her a slut. They posted horrible, horrible things on her Facebook page. All sorts of dirty messages and pictures—until she broke, Trixie. She broke in two!” she said on a cracked sob. “They crushed her. I read the suicide note. Her mother let me see it. My God, it was hideous, and Mitzy didn’t feel an ounce of remorse!”
My heart broke for a young woman so tortured, she’d ended her own life. I fought the hot well of tears and the tightening of my throat “Oh, Susie…Susie, I’m so sorry. How awful. I understand—”
“No, you dooon’t!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, hurling the blanket from around her shoulders as she hacked a cough. “You don’t know what it’s like to have to stand on the sidelines and watch someone else raise your baby only to have her end up dead because a rutting pig like Mitzy’s allowed to do whatever she wants! But that didn’t work out so well for Mitzy, did it?”
I had to try and make Susie understand she didn’t want to kill me. Or at least make her rethink killing me. “So Mitzy wasn’t ever punished, was she, Susie? And that made you angry.”
She gripped the gun with both hands now, to keep her hands from shaking. “It made me in-sane!” she sneered with a hiss. “Boy, her parents are really something else. Did you look them up, Trixie? Did you see how they hid their daughter’s insidious lies and paid people off to keep their mouths shut? Did you? Kelly’s adoptive mother told me. She told me what they did!”
I tried not to squeeze my coffee cup, but I had to hold it tight to keep my own hand from shaking. I wanted to appear calm in order to keep her calm.
“I heard a little of it. Margot told me what she read in an article. It was wrong, Susie. They were wrong.”
“Kelly never stood a chance. Never! Mitzy held all the cards…but I showed her. I showed
