Coop dropped Darby off and headed home. She entered the kitchen, looking for her mother. The nurse said Sheila was out in the backyard.
Sheila was sitting near her old flower garden. The early evening air was cool and crisp as Darby trotted across the grass with one of the deck chairs. Sheila wore Big Red's Red Sox baseball cap and his blue down vest over a polar fleece jacket. A heavy wool blanket covered her lap and much of the wheelchair. She looked so incredibly frail.
Darby placed the chair next to her mother, in a patch of dimming sunlight. Spread across Sheila's lap was a photo album full of baby pictures. Darby saw a picture of herself as a newly born infant swaddled in a pink blanket and matching cap.
Her mother's eyes were bloodshot. She had been crying.
'I saw the news. Coop told me the rest.' Sheila's voice was quiet as she stared at the bandages on the side of Darby's face. 'How bad is it?'
'It will heal. I'm fine. Honest.'
Sheila grabbed Darby's wrist, squeezed it. Darby held her mother's hand and looked out across the backyard, at her mother's white bedsheets flapping in the early evening breeze. The clothesline was planted a few feet away from the basement door where Evan Manning – not Victor Grady – had entered over two decades ago.
Darby thought back to the day she found Evan waiting in the driveway. He was there to see how much she knew about what she had seen in the woods. Was Evan the one who had found the spare key? Or had Boyle cased the house earlier?
'Where have you been?' Sheila asked.
'I went down to the police station with Coop. Banville – he's the detective running the case – he called and said he found some pictures.' Darby turned back to her mother. 'The pictures were of Melanie.'
Sheila looked out across the yard. The breeze picked up, shaking the branches overhead and blowing the leaves across the yard.
'Helena Cruz was there,' Darby said. 'She wanted to know where Mel is buried.'
'Do you know?'
'No. We'll ever know unless someone comes forward with new information.'
'But you know what happened to Mel.'
'Yes.'
'What happened?'
'Boyle kept Mel in the basement of his house and tortured her over a period of days, maybe even weeks.' Darby shoved her hands deep in her coat pockets. 'That's all I know.'
Sheila traced a finger along a picture of Darby sleeping in a crib.
'I keep thinking about these pictures – about the memories behind them,' her mother said. 'I keep wondering if you take these memories with you, or if they just vanish when you die.'
Darby's chest was fluttering. She knew what she had to ask.
'Mom, when I was in the basement with Manning, he said something about where Mel was buried.' It seemed to take a long time to get the words out. 'When I asked him where she was, what had happened to her, Manning told me to ask you.'
Sheila looked as though she'd been slapped.
'Do you know something?' Darby said.
'No. No, of course not.'
Darby squeezed her hands into fists. She felt light-headed.
She removed the folded piece of paper – the color copy of the picture of the woman from the bulletin board. She placed it on top of the photo album.
'What's this?' Sheila asked.
'Open it.'
Sheila did. Her face changed, and then Darby knew.
'Am I supposed to know this person?' Sheila asked.
'Remember the picture the nurse found in the clothes you donated? I showed it to you, and you said it was a picture of Cindy Greenleaf's daughter, Regina.'
'My memory is very foggy from the morphine. Can you take me back inside? I'm very tired, and I'd like to lie down.'
'That picture is posted on a bulletin board down at the station. This woman was one of Boyle and Manning's victims. We don't know who she is.'
'Please take me inside,' Sheila said.
Darby didn't move. She hated this. She had to do it.
'After Boyle left Belham, he headed out to Chicago. Nine women disappeared and then Boyle moved on to Atlanta. Eight women vanished there. Twenty-two women disappeared in Houston. Boyle kept moving from state to state while Manning set up people to take the fall. We're talking close to a hundred missing women, probably more. Some of them, we don't even know their names. Like the woman in this picture.'
'Leave this alone, Darby. Please.'
'These missing women had families. There are mothers out there just like Helena Cruz who are wondering what happened to their daughters. I know there's something you're keeping from me. What is it, Mom?'
Sheila's gaze was lingering over a picture of Darby, her two front teeth missing, standing in the upstairs bathtub.
'You need to tell me, Mom. Please.'
'You don't know what it's like,' her mother started.
Darby waited, heart quickening.
'I don't know what, Mom?'
Sheila's face was pale. Darby could see the tiny blue veins in her mother's eggwhite skin.
'When you hold your baby for the first time, when you hold it in your arms and nurse it and watch it grow, you'll do anything in this world to protect your child. Anything. The kind of love you feel… It's like what Dianne Cranmore told you. It's more love than your heart can ever hold.'
'What happened?'
'He had your clothes,' Sheila said.
'Who had my clothes?'
'The detective, Riggers, he told me he had found clothes belonging to some of the missing women inside Grady's house. And there were pictures. He had pictures of you and he had taken some of your clothes.'
'He didn't take any clothes that night.'
'Riggers told me Grady must have come inside the house at some point and took some of your clothes. He didn't say why. It didn't matter. None of it mattered because Riggers botched the search – it was an illegal search, and all the evidence they found was worthless because these men, these so-called professionals, they blew it, and Grady was going to walk.'
'Riggers told you this?'
'No, Buster did. Your father's friend. Remember, he used to take you to the movies and -'
'I know who he is. What did he tell you?'
'Buster told me how Riggers had botched the case, about how they were watching Grady's every move, seeing if they could find something before Grady packed up and moved away.'
Sheila's voice was trembling. 'That… monster came into my house, for my daughter, and the police were just going to let him go.'
Darby knew what was coming, felt it speeding toward her like a train.
'Your father… He had an extra gun – a throw-away piece, he called it. He kept it downstairs in his workbench. I knew how to use it. I knew it couldn't be traced. When Grady left for work, I went to his house. It was raining out. The back door underneath his porch was unlocked. I went inside. He had been packing. There were boxes everywhere.'
Darby felt cold beneath her clothes.
'I was hiding inside his bedroom closet when he came home,' her mother said. 'I waited for him to come upstairs and go to sleep. The TV was on, I could hear it. I figured he must have fallen asleep in front of the TV, so
