I Am Her Revenge (20 page)

We bound out
the back door and run through the alleyway. Once we hit the sidewalk, I pull Arthur into a walk and stuff the files he carries into the bag I took from Mike’s flat. I grab his hand as a police car speeds toward us, turning my head and smiling innocently at him. His eyes are still panicked, but he sends a quirk of a smile back. The car whisks right by us.

I drop his hand and quickly direct us to Hyde Park, where we lose ourselves in clusters of trees and crowds of people sitting on the lawns, soaking up the rare sunshine that makes the day warmer than it’s been in months. Only then do I breathe a sigh of relief.

Arthur sighs, too, and glances down at the bag I carry. “I don’t think I got anything good. The files are just tax returns from the first years of Collingsworth International, but I doubt he’d put anything useful in them about how he developed the avatar. And if he realizes that’s what we took—”

“He’ll know what we’re looking for,” I finish for him. “We have to figure it out quickly, then.”

“What’d you find?” he asks.

“A photo.”

He looks at me with raised eyebrows but says nothing.

I sit down on the nearest open bench, its wooden slats warmed by the sun. It rests along a wide dirt path with dozens of people strolling past, and it has a view of a large lake in the distance. “You look through the tax files,” I tell him, taking them out of my bag.

He nods, sitting beside me.

I take the photo delicately, looking down at the two people Collingsworth wanted to display on his desk. The only other people besides his son.

It was a stupid thing to grab, I think as I examine the two smiling faces. Maybe Collingsworth was friends with Adam and wanted to remember him. Maybe I only took this photo because I was drawn to their expressions, these two people clinging to each other as if the other was the only thing they would ever need in this world. Adam has hair almost as black as Rose’s. His face is round and his eyes are small, but the way he holds on to her and the way he grins out at the camera—there’s something beautiful about it.

I look over at Arthur, who sighs as he shuffles through the tax forms on his lap. He’s a study in concentration, his brow furrowed, his dark brown eyes narrowed and piercing. He doesn’t even notice me looking at him.

I remind myself that he has great reason to be focused, and if I don’t focus myself, my life could very well be in danger.

I glance back at the photograph, shifting away from Arthur. He feels too close.

And then my focus shifts. I don’t see Rose and Adam anymore. I see what’s behind them. Because there, just visible in the background, is something else I recognize: the house in Loworth that so enchanted me on my first visit to the village. That narrow, foreboding house looks more polished in this photo. There is no sign of the unkempt yard or the creeping vines slithering up the walls. This is the house in a happier time.

I flip the photo back over.
Rose and Adam Travers
. Adam. The name of the male avatar.

“I’ve got a clue,” I tell Arthur, drawing his eyes from the tax forms. “We need to go to Loworth.”

“Loworth? You’re sure?” he asks, glancing at the photo in my hands as I stand up.

I nod. “How do we get there?”

He stands up as well. “A train to York and a bus from there would be the fastest option,” he says, leading me out of the park. “How much money do you have?”

We take another foul-smelling, crowded subway ride to King’s Cross, where everyone seems in even more of a hurry than we are. We spend the bulk of my cash on two economy tickets to York and rush onto the three o’clock train.

The two hours
it takes to travel back up the country make me want to stick needles up my fingernails just to give me something else to focus on. I can’t sit still. I pace up and down the aisles, earning the curious glances of the other passengers and the glare of the ticket collector.

“Are you going to tell me why we have to find this Travers person?” Arthur asks me for about the tenth time.

I can’t talk about it, and I shake my head firmly. The idea forming in my mind is too strange to speak out loud.

I try to take in the world out my window, but I barely notice it. If I were to paint anything right now, it would be a swirling mass of confusion and color on the canvas.

Or maybe it would be Ben’s face in all its variations from the pictures on Collingsworth’s desk. The rounded baby face thinning to the face of the man he almost is. Those unchanging hazel eyes.

I try to push Ben from my mind. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to wonder what he’s feeling now that he realizes I’ve left him.

Finally,
finally
, the train pulls into the York station, and we bound off and look for the bus connection that will take us to Loworth. The five-thirty bus, the last bus of the day, is sitting at the curb, as if it’s waiting for us. I smile so widely when we spot it that I know my cheeks will ache. Arthur looks at me, his eyebrows raised, as if he’s never seen me before. We make it on just as it releases a loud squeak and gets ready to move.

The bus lumbers along at the slowest pace imaginable, and the world outside grows dark: a cloudy night with only a sliver of the moon visible. When I look out the window, all I can see is a reflection of my own face and Arthur beside me. It would make a good portrait, a study of a girl on the cusp of something she doesn’t yet understand. My eyes are big, and my skin looks even paler than usual. Arthur catches my eye in the window, and for a second, I think I see something in his expression as he looks at me. Something intense and warm. Like he never wants to stop looking at me. I feel the scratchy wool of his coat graze my arm. My breath hitches in my throat, and I look away.

“We’ll be there soon,” Arthur assures me.

As soon as we reach Loworth, I’m running off the bus into the night, and Arthur is hurrying to catch up with me. I scurry through the slanted paths of the cemetery, only slowing when the house comes into view. It’s just as haunting as I remember it, its narrow body shooting up to the sky, covered in ivy and surrounded by a cluttered yard.

I plant my feet in front of the door and stare for a moment at its old cracked wood and the blackened window on top of it.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Arthur asks from behind me. His voice isn’t the mocking one he has adopted with me lately. Its softness nearly breaks me.

“Just follow my lead,” I order, not looking at him.

I finally knock on the door, three swift knocks. I notice the doorbell late and ring it, too, for good measure.

An older woman, someone in her sixties, at least, opens the door. Rose Travers would not be so old, and part of me is relieved that I don’t have to face her right away. I’m nearly trembling.

Whatever the woman expected, it wasn’t two young people on her porch. “May I help you?” she asks, looking at me curiously.

“I’m here to see Rose Travers,” I say, straightening my shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she says, though it’s clear from her sharply etched smile that she’s not. “Mrs. Travers doesn’t receive guests.”

“I think I know who killed her husband,” I say bluntly.

Her mouth drops open.

“Do you think she’ll see me now?” I ask with cutting politeness.

The woman, a maid or housekeeper, I’m sure, doesn’t know what to do for a moment. Finally, she ushers me in. “You can wait in the library,” she whispers. “I’ll—I’ll see what can be done.”

She leads me through a dark entryway into a large room. The shades are drawn, and even when she snaps on the overhead light, there isn’t much to see by. I make out the shape of bookshelves lining the walls, their contents barely visible between the carvings of the wooden doors. The wall with a dormant fireplace has no shelves but is covered instead with abstract swirls of dark color. I step closer to find they are oil paintings in unframed canvases, clustered so closely together that the wall has disappeared behind them. They have such a gloom about them; they must be Rose’s.

“What do you mean, you know who killed her husband? What’s going on?” Arthur asks, his voice low and urgent.

“Collingsworth did. With Mother’s help,” I tell him, my back turned to him as I continue to examine the paintings.

Finally, I turn and look at him to find his mouth almost open in surprise. I nod, answering his unspoken question. “I’m sure of it.”

Before he can ask any more questions, there’s a loud bang from somewhere above us. And then a rush of footsteps, someone’s bare feet running down stairs. I turn toward the closed door and brace myself.

The woman who bursts through it is no longer the happy girl from the photos. Her bright blue eyes have sunken into her skull and are surrounded by deep wrinkles. Her skin is almost a translucent white and looks papery thin to the touch. Her cheekbones threaten to cut right through the surface. She must only be around thirty-seven years old, but she looks on the brink of death. She wears a white nightgown and robe, which sag from a fragile, thin body.

But her long, thick black hair, the hair that invites your touch, identifies her clearly enough. It hangs down to her bare feet.

She stops at the sight of me, her hand flying to her mouth, resting there.

“Daughter,” she whispers. The word practically leaks from her throat, her voice is so rusty.

It takes me a moment to realize what she’s said, and I shake my head. “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m Vivian.”

Rose shakes her head right back at me, her gaze still transfixed on mine. “My baby,” she says, her tone incredibly insistent.

I look to the maid to find her gaping at me. “Oh, Lord,” she whispers. “You
are
her daughter.”

Beside me,
Arthur is flicking his eyes from Rose to me and back again. “Maybe you better explain what’s going on,” he tells the maid.

Rose answers, and she looks right at me as she talks. “You were stolen from me. When you were just five months old. It was a month after they killed my husband, your father, and someone came back to the house and took you.” She steps forward, a little closer to me. “I couldn’t find you. You were just . . . gone.”

My confusion melts into horror, swiftly followed by a reflex of denial. I can’t be her daughter.
Mother
is my mother.

But in the next moment, I see—really see—Rose’s blue eyes. They are almost the same deep blue as my own, and, just like mine, they are a touch too far apart. Her face has the same heart shape as mine, her mouth turns up in the same bow. As she looks at me in shocked happiness, I recognize my raised eyebrows in hers.

It’s true. This ghost, this madwoman, is my mother. Our resemblance is too strong to be denied.

But . . . how? I can’t even sort through all of the questions and exclamations swirling around in my mind.

She steps forward, hesitates, then rushes to me, and I almost take a step back as she wraps her arms around me. “My baby,” she murmurs. “My baby girl.” And then she’s sobbing, and I stretch my arms around her tiny frame to hold her up.

We stand at this stalemate for several minutes. She will fall if I let go, but everything about me wants to run away. I don’t want this history. How could I be her daughter? How could Mother not be my mother? I feel as if the world has flipped upside down once more, and everything is chaos. Everything I have done, the person—the
people—
I have twisted myself into, has been for that woman in New York, because she was my mother. She was my blood, my family. But everything I thought I knew is wrong.

And now, just after I’ve repudiated my identity, I discover a new one. An identity that has been mine all along. That has been robbed from me.

I glance at Arthur, whose shifting expressions match my shifting emotions. He finally settles on sympathy as he meets my gaze, and that sympathy makes me wince. It’s sympathy for the years I’ve lost, thinking that a manipulative murderer was my mother. And for the loss of my father. Because he is the one who was killed all those years ago. Those bright, shining people I found in the photo on Collingsworth’s desk were the parents I always should have had.

I disengage myself from Rose’s arms quickly, and she staggers before righting herself. I watch her, shaking my head. “No,” I say. “It’s not possible. It doesn’t make sense.”

Rose opens and closes her mouth, shocked. It’s Arthur who says my name softly, trying to pull me back to myself. I look at him. “Mother wouldn’t have done that,” I say, my voice a high-pitched, pleading thing. “She wouldn’t have stolen me away from my family.”

He doesn’t say anything, but I can read his eyes. Because of course she would. She always taught me that if you want something, you should take it. So she took me. I was just a baby, and she took me.

I look back at Rose. My mother. She’s as much a victim as I am.

“Where have you been?” she asks, her voice cracking and creaking.

I clear my throat, unsure of my voice. “I’ve been living with—with a woman I thought was my mother. In America.”

“Who? Who is she?”

“Morgana Whitfield.” I spit the name out. “She knew William Collingsworth.”

Rose nods absentmindedly for a moment, and then suddenly, she blinks. “I know him, I think.”

I stare at this woman, imagining myself turning into her. Imagining her holding me as a baby. Nothing makes sense, and my breath rises unsteadily.

I try to focus on the questions I originally came here to ask. I have to. “Your husband was Adam?”

She nods slowly, and then her expression clears. “William was one of his friends at Madigan. When Adam and I married, and we moved here, William would visit us. When this house was filled with light.” She looks to the heavy drapes covering the windows, like she doesn’t know why they’re closed. Suddenly, she rushes to the fireplace and plucks a framed photo off the mantel. “See, here. This is Adam, and that’s William.” Adam looks the same way he did in the photo I found on Collingsworth’s desk, with black hair like mine and a pleasantly doughy face. He towers over Collingsworth, that miniature Ben. I focus on him now. My father. This man who was my age when I was born. And when he was killed.

I look back up at Rose. “I think William and the woman who raised me were the ones who broke into your house.”

“And . . . Adam? They killed Adam?” she asks, her voice sharp, thin.

I nod, swallowing hard.

She draws in a harsh breath and looks up at the ceiling, as if there are answers there.

“What happened that night?” I ask.

“We never found out,” she answers, still gazing at the ceiling. “Not really. The police finally decided that some addict had come in looking for prescriptions. There had been another break-in a few villages away around that time. We don’t know what the thieves took from here—I never found anything missing. Or why they killed Adam.” Now that she’s started speaking, her words come out in a rush, tumbling over one another. “So the police thought some addict had come in and Adam had surprised them, and they never found any evidence. With our baby in the next room. They killed my husband with our baby in the next room, and then a month later, someone came in and took her—you—and everything was dark, so, so dark.” She stops, pressing the back of her hand to her lips, staring at me with wild eyes.

The maid, who I realize now must actually be Rose’s nurse, takes her by the shoulders. “Look at me, love. That’s it. Deep breaths.” She waits as Rose gasps for air until her breathing finally slows and she closes her eyes.

“After my parents died,” she says finally, slowly, opening her eyes, “my life became all about waiting for you, always waiting for you to come back to me.”

“What he was like? My father?” I ask, my voice hardly more than a whisper.

She nods, as if she’d been expecting the question, and takes another deep breath before answering. “He was kind and caring. He could light up a room just by walking in it. He lit up my whole life. And he was smart. He knew computers so well that all kinds of high-profile tech companies in London and in America were offering him internships and jobs that summer—that summer that he was killed. He had been working on this idea that he said would change the way kids grew up, but I never got to find out what it was. He was going to be something big, special. But more than all that, he loved you. Even before you were born, even though we were so young. He loved you.”

She reaches out again for my arms, and I let her pull me close, but not before I shoot a glance at Arthur.

It really is true. Collingsworth killed my father. His own best friend. And the woman I thought was my mother helped him. While I was in the next room.

I shiver, and Rose’s grip on me tightens. “Someone came a month later and took me?” I ask, and she nods.

I close my eyes, trying to construct the timeline that’s forming in my mind. Collingsworth and Mother robbed the house after the had graduated from Madigan. I was four months old. Adam must have developed the avatar program, and they stole the codes for it from this house. Collingsworth killed Adam and then cut Mother out of the deal as well.

Ben is only five months younger than I am, so his mother must have been heavily pregnant with him at the time. Ben must have been born right after the robbery. I imagine Mother standing over my crib the night my father was killed, staring down at the new life before her. Had that image twisted in her mind with her need for revenge against Collingsworth once she heard about his betrayal? Somehow, she came to believe that I was the answer, that I would be the one to ruin him. Just like her uncontrollable, incoherent periods of rage, this delusion was a symptom of her madness. The madness I tried so hard to ignore.

Everything clicks into place, and I open my eyes. Before I can censor myself, I tell Rose everything I know about the woman I thought was my mother, my anger building with every word. As I recount my childhood, she sinks into the sofa, looking up at me with round, horrified eyes.

When I have told her everything about Collingsworth and Ben and the journey that led me here, she pushes herself off the couch and hugs me. I’m nearly thrown off balance by it, because there’s nothing weak about her now. Her arms are strong as they enfold me. “It’s not your fault,” she whispers. “You’re not a bad person, I know it.”

I close my eyes and will my tears to disappear, taking a deep, shaky breath.

Arthur has retreated to a corner of the room, leaving Rose and me as much space as possible. He has taken in my story with impassive eyes—a stark contrast to the emotion skittering across Rose’s face.

I step out of her hug and try to regain control. “Is there anything—a fingerprint, maybe, or a scrap of clothing—that the robbers or the kidnapper left behind?”

“The police looked for weeks, but we couldn’t find anything.”

“We can’t stop them without evidence,” I mutter, trying to think of something, anything that might help.

“You’re the evidence,” Arthur says softly.

My eyes snap to his.

He looks at me with a gentleness I haven’t seen since we were children. I suddenly have to remember to breathe. “Do a DNA test to prove that you’re Rose’s daughter, and it will be clear that Morgana stole you,” he says.

“We should go to the police right away,” Rose murmurs.

I nod. But there are questions I need answered first. “What was my name?”

“What?” Rose asks.

“My name. The woman named me Vivian. What did you call me?”

She opens her mouth, but it takes her a few tries to get it out. “Sarah.”

Sarah. What a soft name. A name for a girl who worries about getting her homework done in time for class and making sure her clothes are in fashion.

I don’t feel like a Sarah. I don’t look like one. It unsettles me.

I think of Ben, wondering if he would have fallen in love with that Sarah version of me. He deserves someone more like her.

I sigh. He has to be panicking about where I am, wondering if I’m safe. I have to let him know not to worry. “Can I use your computer?” I ask. “I need to let Ben know I’m okay and tell him to stay put for a few days until all of this dies down.” I owe him that much, at least.

Rose nods, gesturing at her nurse. She brings me a laptop, and I settle down at the desk in the corner to use it while she hurries to the kitchen to see if there’s anything she can offer me to eat.

When I log in to my school account, I see I have several emails from an irate administration and one email from Ben, with the title “Help.” I open it, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Vivian, your mother’s got me. She’s going to take me to our cottage. She’ll kill me if you don’t come, and she’ll kill me if anyone calls the police. Please come. Ben.