“I have someone looking out for you.”

Words you never want to hear your sister say—not when she’s spending the rest of her foreseeable future in a private correctional facility—not when you just got off the phone with your mother who keeps threatening to come out and complicate an already complicated situation. I can only take so much familial meddling. Normally, familial meddling would be welcome under such circumstances, but with my sister’s bloodstained history and my mother’s psychotic need to control the world—familial meddling is very much unwelcomed.

“What did you do?” Blood rushes through my veins so fast it heats me up, feels as if I’m burning alive from the inside.

“That’s not for you to worry about.” Jane’s voice comes in clear and measured. “Just focus on getting my niece back where she belongs. How is that husband of yours? Does he need his nut sack rearranged?”

“No.” I stomp my way into the closet and shut the door. “God no. Please, please, please, Jane—call off your dogs. The public hates me. My mailbox is brimming with notes confirming this fact on a daily basis. They think I sold my daughter into sexual slavery. People have accused me of chopping her up and eating her. They think I actually care about that GoFuckingFundMe.”

“You should care. It’s at a hundred seventy-two thousand.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want it. I won’t touch it. I want Reagan back.” I sink to the floor amidst my collection of wool jackets, their ghostly arms petting me softly over the head. It reminds me of Reagan and her feather-like hair, her velvet skin. A horrible choking sound comes from me instead of a cry. I’ve lost all ability to do so, cried so many damn tears I’m fresh out of them these days. A strangled sound breaks free. “Janey, I need you. Dammit, why aren’t you here? Don’t send someone else—come yourself. Why can’t you be here with me?”

A hard sniffle comes from the other line, and it sends a sobering alarm through me. Janey doesn’t cry. She doesn’t whimper or feel emotions on the same level as other human beings. It’s a part of her charm as much as it is a part of her disease.

“Don’t cry.” I pull it together enough to evict the words past that painful fist lodged in my throat. “She’s coming back to me. I can feel it.”

Silence. That’s almost as bad as hearing my sister sniff back her emotions.

“I have to tell you something, Ally.” Her voice sounds strangled, huskier than usual, as if she were ashamed of what comes next.

“You got knocked up by the guard?” I had to go there. I think we both needed some comic relief, and yet neither of us bothers to laugh.

“Heather came to see me.”

“What?” I squawk so loud that I bury myself further in the forest of coats I’ve yanked down from their posts. “When? Today?”

“Months ago. Before Reagan went missing.”

“Oh my God.” I try to process this, make sense of it on some level, but it’s too out there to wrap my head around. “I didn’t know that you knew her.”

“I remembered her vaguely, and only after she plied me with information. She’s that batshit chick who turned you into a turd, that your friends wanted nothing to do with.”

“That would be her.” My hand wraps around the wool belt of a pea coat, snapping the hanger and sending it crashing on top of me.

“She named her kids after you.”

“She told you that?” I told Jane about the first Allison years ago, but the fact Jane knew about the second ode to my name blindsides me.

“Ally and Allison. That about says it all.”

“Amen. So what happened? What did she want?”

“What do you think she wanted? She heard you moved.”

More silence. My mind fills in the topographical blanks at lightning speeds.

“Oh shit.” I drop my head between my knees. The room sways and my stomach churns in its own hot juices. “And you told her?”

“Well, I didn’t think she was going to up and move her whole family to Butt-Fuck Idaho!”

“Oh my God, I can’t breathe. You don’t think—”

“I don’t know what to think. You said she came to your house. She knows exactly where you live. I didn’t give her that kind of info.”

“It probably wasn’t hard to get. I have a media spotlight over my roof that you can see from space. And then when she showed up—I gave her my number that first day I saw her. I wanted to keep tabs on her from afar. But she’s not leaving town. She hasn’t even hinted of it.” My mind tries to pin down all the possibilities. What the hell is Heather Evans up to? She found out where I lived before Reagan disappeared. There’s no doubt in my mind her fingerprints are all over my daughter’s missing case.

“Listen, Ally, and listen good. There are a lot of people here on the inside that don’t have all their marbles. But that girl—that chick is certifiable. Stay the hell away from her.” A thick lull sags between us. “Or better yet—ask her where the hell she’s hiding your daughter.”

“I have to go.” I hang up the phone and sit in the dark, in the back of the musty closet wondering if Heather Evans would have the brains, the brawn, the balls to pull something like this off.

She certainly has the daughter.

---

The sun crawls out like a coward late in the afternoon, and I make up an excuse to head into town. James is so distracted, so distraught at the thought his father might be in any way connected to his mother’s death, it’s been eating him alive ever since McCafferty left that evening.

Charles is off doing his part for the community, so I avoid Beacon Street where the homeless shelter is. The no-tell motel Heather is holed up in just so happens to be in that seedy part of town.

I was going to surprise her. Me, her favorite person, showing up unannounced. It would have probably killed her. But that scenario never panned out because she texted about twenty minutes ago letting me know she has a bombshell to drop.

My phone pings just as I pull into the lot.

GET DOWN HERE NOW!

I pull the phone with me and hightail it to her seedy motel room, annoyed that I’m actually anxious to hear what she has to say.

Last night, James lamented to me how much it sucked knowing there was a nutcase out there following us around and I didn’t put him out of his misery. I wondered about that this morning. Don’t I trust my philandering husband? Haven’t we crested the worst of it? Why can’t I trust him? And then I realized it was because I knew he couldn’t fully trust me. After all, I have him thinking Reagan contains equal parts Price DNA. I’m the monster of the bunch. For so many years I thought it was James. After the Hailey incident, I was sure of it. But in the light of the disillusioned day, after Reagan’s disappearance, I can see myself for what I really am—a liar.

Nevertheless, half the town is following us around, and that’s what I did tell him. James nodded because in the lie was buried a truth. Little does he know, it was my own personal stalker who captured that cozy moment for two that he and his ex partook in. I don’t feel half as threatened by photographic incrimination as he does, but that didn’t stop me from driving in a maze-like pattern on my way here just to throw off even the slickest of paparazzi.

With a brisk knock to the door, I note its slightly ajar. I give a quick glance around before letting myself in.

Heather’s cheap self-imposed dungeon smells thick of sweat and old farts. The desk lamp is the only illumination in this depressing den of depravity and she pops up next to me like an apparition.

“I’m keeping the windows closed.” Heather pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “We can’t risk getting caught.” She slips her hand inside the sleeve of my sweater and I pull away, but the icy trail of her fingers lingers long after she’s gone.

“What is it you wanted to tell me?” My eyes flit to the unmade bed, the covers in a violent disarray as if a war had broken out over the mattress.

She shuttles me over to the small table for two in the corner. “I made us some joe so we can have a real old-fashioned coffee klatch. I’ve always wanted to say that, and I’ve always wanted to have one with you!” The whites of her eyes expand, burning through the dim light like ghostly beacons.

I’ve always found it remarkable the way her enthusiasm never wanes, at least where I’m concerned.

“Boy, do I ever have stuff to tell you!” She pounds her hand over the table and the coffee crests the lip on both of our mugs. “Which do you want first? The bad news or the—” She rolls her eyes to the ceiling like a thirteen-year-old—and dear God, I’d much rather deal with your average thirteen-year-old. “Oh heck, Allison, it’s all bad news from here.” Her rusty teeth bite down over her bottom lip as if that in itself were the best news possible. I’ve always wondered if Heather got her rocks off on turning my world to shit. If her first order of business was to ensure no one ever spoke to me again in high school, what lengths would she go to out in the real world? Considering the fact James and I are still in the running for public enemy number one, I’d say she’s off to a fantastic start.

My stomach drops. Against my better judgment, I take a sip of the coffee, the color and taste of mud—God forbid, antifreeze.

“Just give it to me straight. All of it at once,” I demand. The truth is, I can’t breathe in here. I can’t stand the echo of the feel of her hand crawling up my sweater. Maybe that’s what has always made me uneasy around Heather? She secretly wants something on a sexual level that I can’t give her. A quick visual of her rolling around on top of me naked makes my stomach boil.

“Len Lewis.” A Cheshire cat grin breaks out over that demented face, and as soon as she says his name a shiver runs through me, a real toaster in the bathtub moment of electrocution. “Let’s start there.”

“Tell me what you have.” My breathing grows erratic. As hard as I’ve tried to repress all thoughts of Len for the last seven years, he’s always been there, adhered to the backdrop of my mind like unwanted wallpaper.

“He’s dead.” She nods like a loon, a choo-choo train laugh percolating in her throat as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

But I don’t join her giggle-fest. Instead, a swell of relief fills me. If that’s all she’s got, I’ve got nothing to fear. “Yes, I know that. We talked about that, remember?”

“Well, so are his parents.” Her head ticks to the side as if this news had the capability to blow me out of the water. “And if you go back far enough, you have to dig pretty deep to find a single living relative.”

More relief. “That crosses the Lewis family off the list.” A list they were never on as far as I’m concerned.

“Not so fast.” She lifts a finger an inch from my nose, and for a second I think she’s going to slap me. “What exactly do you know about the Lewis family?”

“Nothing really. Len worked down at the docks. He never talked about his family.” True—but in all fairness Len and I kept our mouths fused together amongst other far more fertile body parts. Len was hauntingly beautiful. A god among men. He seemed nice enough for the month I knew him.

“He’s a Black Stone Indian.” She cuts the air with the caustic sound of her voice.

“Yes, I do know that.” The Black Stones were an offshoot of the Cherokee nation that splintered off when they managed to escape the Trail of Tears. They were later disenfranchised from their roots completely and something akin to a turf war ensued and all hell broke loose. Len told me that much, and I remember being fascinated by it. It turned this man, this mere mortal into something almost mythological in nature. Len was already larger than life in my eyes, but this bolstered him to some kind of a hero—orgasmic hero to be clear, but that’s neither here nor there. It was a rebound relationship, and like all rebound relationships it did not last. And tragically, no sooner did I break up with Len than he passed away in that horrific accident. I’d like to think he would be pleased to know that a piece of him lives on through our beautiful daughter—the one I no longer know the whereabouts of. On second thought, he would be markedly pissed.

“What’s new with this?” I motion for her to go on.

“His family hailed from Idaho.” She nods as if it should strike a chord, and horrifyingly enough it does. “They all died some gruesome death.” She pretends to gag. “Isn’t that freaky? All of them?”

“That’s just a terrible coincidence.” It feels as if I’m reading off a cue card. All my mind wants to do is ruminate over the fact everyone in my husband’s family has met an equally ironic fate. It can’t be related. It’s too weird. “It happens. Anything else?”

“I’m going to drive out to Saginaw County tomorrow. I did some research and the librarian there is a Black Stone herself. She said I was welcome anytime to ask any—”

“No!” I reach forward and bind her wrists in a fit of fury. “If you tell her my name, she’ll know who I am. And if she says anything at all, the media will eat this up. I have to be the one to tell James that Reagan isn’t his biological daughter, not you, not some smiling librarian from Saginaw.”

“Fine. I’ll tell her I’m asking for a friend.” Her hands fold over mine, and I’m quick to free myself from the vise.

“Anything else? Anything about James?”

“James, James the cheat,” she chants as she pulls out her phone.

More Monica news no doubt. I don’t fear her. In fact, if I wasn’t such a public interest at the moment, I’d probably beat her senseless.

Heather snickers. “Caught again, this time at the market. I’ve made it a habit to camp out at night in front of the house. The midnight hour seems to fit his perverted schedule, if you know what I mean. Looky here.” She cues up a photo of him at that police station.

“He mentioned something about seeing Rich. His cousin works there.”

“Don’t I know it. That boy is C-U-T-E.” She gives a quick wink and tosses the lesbian theory right out the vaginal window. However, a part of me is well aware she’d swing both ways for me. “But did he tell you he went to the store?” She shows me a picture of James walking into the Sunshine Market.

“Who cares?”

“Maybe this woman cares?” Her thumb swipes erratically. “Here’s a good one.” She shoves the screen in my face and I back up as I struggle to make out the image. And then I see her, like some foreground background mindfuck portrait, a familiar face begins to take shape in the dark.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Hailey Oden—that little b”— before I can properly address her, I spot something on her lap, something voluminous and circular at the base of her belly. “No. Is she?”

“Preggers.”

I hate that word, and at the moment I hate Hailey far more than I hated her before. And suddenly, viscerally I hate James. “You don’t think…”

“Oh, hon, I’d bet every dollar I don’t have that your cheating manwhore of a husband is the daddy. You’ll have to leave him, of course. Nobody does this to you and gets away with it.” That crazed look in her eyes assures me she would gladly take care of James if I asked her to. Good God, if Jane doesn’t beat her to it, James is as good as dead.

“He can’t be the father.” I pull the phone from her and flip through the pictures. The one with Hailey’s hands dripping off his face leaves me shaking my head. “Women cannot seem to keep their hands off my husband.”

“That’s because he keeps meeting up with them after dark.”

“You got me there.” Holy hell does she ever. One of the pictures clearly shows some kind of confetti raining from the sky. “Is that?”

“Money. He must have gotten it from the ATM. I’m no idiot. That man has a thing for hookers, and if you keep doing the nasty with him, he’s going to give you the clap!”

I try to take it all in, absorb these pictures, memorize them for later so I can ruminate over how angry I am during all those irate hours that sleep eludes me.

She leans in panting. “So what are we gonna do?”

“We’re not going to do anything.” I push the phone away as if it were the source of nausea. “I’m going to take care of the bastard myself.” As if my life hasn’t taken enough heartbreaking turns in the past few weeks, I have to worry about James and the whereabouts of his dick once again. “Yes, leave him to me.” I bleed a black smile, short-lived but dangerous. “I’d better get going.” I wince at the opened suitcase lying in the corner. “Heather, don’t you miss your family?” My stomach tightens because McCafferty let me in on the fact her husband left her—not that I’m placing blame. “Your girls?”

She gives a solid blink. “How did you know I had another one?”

My fingers claw at the Formica table as if begging to dig their way out of this one. The last thing I’m going to tell her is that I stalked her on social media, that I spoke to my sister. “I don’t know. I just guessed. You used the word kids the first day I saw you.” I can’t remember if it’s true, but the important thing is that she doesn’t remember. Then it hits me. “College. You came to visit. You said you met a boy and you were knocked up again.” Thank God for the sparse brain cells I have left.

“That’s right!” She lets out a bleating laugh reminiscent of a dolphin. “You’ll never guess what I named her in a million years!”

“California?” I frown because I should at least get one answer wrong.

“Allison!” She jumps a foot in her seat. “I named both of my babies after you! My very best friend in the whole wide world!” Heather springs to her feet, clapping and spinning in a circle like the loon she’s always been, but in this moment it feels harmless. Her hair is matted in the back, and her sweatpants are dripping off her body as if she’s starving herself to death. I don’t know how she has the money to stay here night after night but if her choices are helping me or food, I think I know where her loyalty lies.

“Wow.” I feign enthusiasm. “That’s pretty amazing. I’m so very flattered. Thank you. I really don’t know what to say.”

She settles back into her seat, giggling like a schoolgirl who just landed her first kiss. “You’re amazing.” She leans in close, her entire face smooths out as she gazes at me with a marked level of admiration. “I couldn’t have done it without you. My girls know all about their favorite Auntie Allison. They love you so very much.”

My heart wrenches to hear her talk like this. Those poor girls have to recognize the fact their mother isn’t sane. Even at a young age behavior like this sends up a red flag.

“How is—big Allison doing with you here in Idaho?” I figure I’ll work my way to the younger version, the one I suspect might be Ota.

“She’s great! She’s in school, some fancy academy up in Highland.” She makes a face as if she’s openly disgusted by the place. “She calls me about once a week. But I got my baby.” She pushes up her glasses and nods.

“That’s great. And little Allison? She’s in school, too? I’m assuming back in Nevada? That is where you said you came from, right? The night I was on live with Gretchen MacAfee and you called in.” Damn liar. McCafferty said she was living in California, a stone’s throw from me right up until my sister tipped her off and helped shuttle her to Idaho. She’s been here for months. I want to shake her. Ask her what the hell she’s really up to. But Heather is far from brilliant. She shouldn’t be too hard to trip up.

“Nevada?” She purses her lower lip as if I’ve just made the whole state up. “It was just a cover-up. If my best friend can hide things from the world, so can I. Right?” She titters into her hand as if it were the funniest thing and my skin breaks out in goose pimples. Dear God, is she hiding Reagan?

“So where is little Allison?” My voice shakes and I do my best to iron out the rage building in me. “Do you have a picture? I’d love to see her.” Why do I get the feeling I’m about to stare into the face of Ota? I should have known. If that ridiculous pig Latin name didn’t tip me off, then that equally ridiculous pinafore and throwback clothing circa Heather Evans’ time traveling mind should have pointed straight to her insanity.

“Oh, hon”—Heather leans in with a curious look, her hair disheveled from the theatrics, her lipstick knifing into the hard lines around her upper lip, a cackle caught in her throat—“why would I need a picture? She’s sitting right there.” She points to the arid space behind her.

“She is?” I strain into the shadows to make out a human figure but come up empty. “Where? Is she hiding?” My body pulsates with a mixture of elation and fear. I’m going to catch her. I’m going to snatch that little devil and not let go until Heather surrenders my child.

“On the bed, silly! She’s sitting right there on the edge.” She points hard to a shadowed void, and I’m suddenly light headed, afraid I might faint. A bout of nausea rolls through my stomach as a paralyzing fear grips me. Heather hops up and wraps her arm around thin air as if it were a child. “Come here, pretty girl. Your favorite auntie finally wants to meet you! Oh, come now. Don’t you get shy on me.” She walks over with an arm still firmly secured to nothing. “Isn’t she pretty, Allison?” Heather takes a step toward me, her mouth squaring out in an elated, deformed smile. “Why, she looks just like you.”

My legs wobble as I struggle to rise. “I—I have to go.” I make a beeline for the door and Heather chases me down, snatching me by the wrist.

“What’s the matter, Allison?” Gone is the enthusiastic fervor that’s gripped her, replaced with a cutthroat rage. “Isn’t she pretty enough for you?”

I break free from her hold and open the door so fast I thump Heather in the face with it. The icy air welcomes me as my feet knife their way down the stairs.

“Is she being rude? I’ll punish her, Ally!” Her voice cries out into the sky as I bolt for the car. “Why! Why! Why!” she screams from the balcony in a choir of harrowing cries as I speed the hell out of the lot.

I glance in the rearview mirror just as she tosses that ball of nothing over the side of the railing—her face beet red with rage and fury.

Jane was right. I should have stayed the hell away.

And when I get home, James is going to wish he stayed the hell away from Hailey Preggers Oden.

---

The drive home is set with the white-hot embarrassment of ever trusting myself to be in the same air space as that woman. I’m calling McCafferty. I want Heather under full investigation. I demand she tell me what she did with her daughter and mine. Although, after that hallucinogenic display, it’s doubtful she’s competent enough to pull off something so well-orchestrated. God forbid, she even try. Poor Reagan might actually end up in a river no thanks to that loon.

The cul-de-sac is filled with bodies this afternoon, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to get my car through the crowd. News outlets that I haven’t seen in weeks have sprouted back up with their giant satellite dishes, an entire infantry of reports all butting one another in the shoulder for a glimpse of something near the house.

“Oh my God.” My adrenaline kicks in hard, fire burning through the tundra that has become my heart, and I stop the car and run out to the driveway, fully expecting to find James with Reagan in his arms.

I clear the wall of reporters, pushing and shoving, threading my way through a wall of limbs, only to find a thing of horror planted on my front lawn.

Standing next to James and Rich are Ann and Walden Greer, my parents. My mother has her hair cropped short around her jaw and she’s dressed in a baby blue wool dress with a matching pillbox hat pressed over her neat dark tresses, doing her very best to channel her inner Jackie O. My father, the retired teacher, looks every bit the part with that slouched suit jacket, that worn basset hound look on his face that mirrors my own. But it’s my mother who looks ready for war, pumped to tell the media and the world her two contentious cents on the subject. For all practical purposes, it would seem this is a good thing to sic my mother on the public at large—on the bastards that did this—however, that’s not how my mother operates.

My mother is a sopping wet towel of a human being, prone to use her devices to smother those around her. And now that she’s here, I will most certainly smother under her weight.

“Holy hell.” I run up the side and my mother stops the woman dusting powder over her face from continuing her task. “What are you doing here? What are all these people doing here?”

James starts to say something and my mother clips him as she pulls me in.

“Come here.” Her voice is stern, no nonsense, and this rattles me right down to that three-year-old inside of me who still very much fears her. “I’m going to straighten this whole mess out,” she gruffs while patting down my shirt, ironing it with her hands. “Just stand next to your husband like God intended, and we’ll have this taken care of like it should have been weeks ago.”

“What? No. I don’t want you to do this.”

“James?” she shrills like a drill sergeant and thrusts me into his arms. “Man your wife. This will only take a moment.” She stalks off, a few feet to the makeshift podium, and the crowd bleeding into the street quiets and stills.

My mother dips her head into the microphone like a seasoned pro. “Good afternoon.” She pulls the equipment closer and my father shoots me a quick wink.

“What’s going on?” I whisper to James, my philandering husband. After all, I seriously doubt Hailey Oden traveled across three state lines to show off the new figure Faulk gave her.

“She insisted. You know your mother. You can’t stop her. She had every media outlet here twenty minutes before she arrived.” He winces, looking disarmingly handsome, and seeing him this way makes me wish Hailey Oden had never existed. We could have been something great if his penis hadn’t intervened.

Rich comes over and lands a quick tap to my arm. “How do you think this is going to end?” He gives my mother a quick glance.

“Badly,” I say. It’s the only real answer.

My mother clears her throat. “I want to thank everyone who has thus far committed in the search for our precious little Reagan. I want to apologize for the lack of direction and organization on the part of the Concordia Police Department and that of my daughter and her husband.” A faint gasp circles the crowd, but the bigger news crews simply lean in as if the real story were about to unfold.

“Shit.” James looks to Rich. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think it would go this way.”

A dull huff escapes me. “It’s my mother we’re talking about. It’s mandated it go this way.” A part of me wants to get Janey on the phone. I’d hate for her to miss the show. God Almighty, if Jane was going to use her jail-issued superpowers for good, why couldn’t she use them to stop this woman?

My mother turns slightly to glare at me as if she heard. She spins back around, offering her full attention to the waiting crowd. “I’m here to assure you that there has been a changing of the guard. No more of this hurry-up-and-wait strategy that has gotten us absolutely nowhere.” She raises a hand as if she were about to slap every person in this crowd, and knowing my mother this isn’t a far-off possibility. “We are reissuing new posters, updating all our technological resources. I, myself, have hired the best PI firm in the country to assist the police department, to assist you the people, and to assist my family in bringing little Reagan Price home!” She raises her voice as if to rally the masses but is met with a stony silence instead. You can feel the judgment stemming from the peanut gallery, hot as a nuclear wind.

“Welcome to my world, Mother,” I whisper.

James leans in, his breath hot in my ear. “Half the country will hate her by midnight.”

I look up at my handsome husband, with his hair slicked back to perfection, his dimples cutting in without even trying. “And what will they think of you once they discover Hailey Oden is having your child?”