Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Seventy-Five

She shouted until there was barely anything left of her voice. Next to her, Trinity wept. At long last, as her cries receded into helpless croaks, Josie heard a door open and close, and heavy footsteps approach. She heard another door swish open, and the air in the tiny room changed. Josie’s heart paused, and then kicked back into motion. “Josie,” Trinity whispered. “I think I wet myself.”

“Shhh,” Josie said. “I’m going to get us out of this.”

Josie had to crane her neck to see a fat pair of ankles beneath the hem of a white cotton dress approach. She had just enough time to notice Lila’s feet were crammed into a pair of ugly, black flats before she was yanked up by the bicep and tossed onto the bed. She fell on her back, her hands and feet crushing painfully beneath her. Lila’s face loomed above her.

Josie saw immediately why Noah had not recognized her, how he couldn’t possibly have recognized her as the woman in the photo Dex had given her. Now in her sixties, Lila Jensen’s long, silky black hair had gone shock white. Gone was the sheen, replaced by a straggly mane of thick, dry strands that tumbled down her back. She had gained weight. A lot of weight. Her flesh spilled out from the shapeless white dress draped over her form. Her once smooth, youthful, pale skin was stretched taut from the added pounds, her cheeks so chubby they seemed to swallow her eyes. Sophia had said Lila was sick, and Lila herself had said she didn’t have much time. Josie wondered with what. Cancer perhaps?

“Little JoJo,” Lila said.

It was the eyes that gave her away, though. They narrowed as Lila smiled the smile that had filled Josie with unbridled terror for as long as she could possibly remember. The little girl inside of her recoiled, but the adult inside her—the chief of police—fought back.

“My name is Josie,” she said.

Lila cackled. “No. It’s not. That’s not even your name.” She kicked out a leg, and Josie heard Trinity grunt. “Hey princess, what’s your little bitch sister’s name again?”

There was only the sound of Trinity weeping.

“Why are you doing this?” Josie asked, trying to draw Lila’s attention away from Trinity. “Why did you do it? You took away my life. Everything. My real mother thought I was dead. My whole family. Why?”

“Why not?” Lila said.

“You could have walked away,” Josie said. “At any time.”

Lila’s face flushed, and her eyes glowed with anger. She pointed a pudgy finger to her chest. “You think I get to walk away from this life? Is that what you think? That I ever had a chance to walk away? All those godawful foster homes with their degenerate foster parents? What a joke. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. Everyone else got two parents, money, loving homes. Bullshit. I got nothing. Even that slut, Belinda. She got to live in a nice foster home with a woman who loved and protected her girls. What did I get? Every shitty home I went to, someone hurt me, and no one did a damn thing about it. When I left the homes, it didn’t stop. Why should other people get to live perfect lives while I get shit on over and over and over again?”

Josie watched in perfect stillness as spittle flew from Lila’s mouth. She had a feeling that Lila had been waiting a very long time to unleash that particular tirade. When she finished, Josie asked, “But why me? Why did you take me?”

“Because I could. You were there. I kept waiting for the police to come for you, and they never did. Then I didn’t know what the hell to do with you, so I came and found Eli. I knew he would take care of you if I told him you were his. Except he went and fell in love with you, didn’t he?”

“He thought he was my father,” Josie said. It hurt to say it out loud; Eli Matson was the only father she had ever known. Her memories were old and out of focus now, but what she remembered most about her father was how much he had loved her and how safe she had felt whenever she was with him.

“He was mine. He was supposed to love me more,” Lila said. “After I gave him the baby he so desperately wanted, he turned against me, he hated me in return. How’s that for sense?”

Josie remembered her father uttering those words in the hospital after her mother had taken a knife to her face: “I hate you.” The battle for Josie had started a while before that, but that was the first time she’d ever heard him say those words. Other memories came flooding back to Josie. The conversation she had heard from her bedroom the night her father killed himself was eerily similar to the exchange she had heard earlier between Lila and Sophia when they had been arguing—suddenly Lila’s tone changed completely, became calmer and a little nervous. Josie’s skin prickled, goosebumps erupting all over her flesh. She might not have believed it before, but after what she had learned about Lila in the last few weeks, there was no doubt in her mind now that she was capable of something that unthinkable.

“Did you kill my father?” Josie asked quietly.

Lila laughed. “Took you long enough to figure that one out. A fine detective you are.”

“Why?” Josie asked, incredulous. “You could have left me with him and gone away. Started over somewhere else. And my gram—” Here Josie’s voice cracked, thinking of the grief and confusion that Lisette had carried around with her for decades, thinking Josie’s father had given up on them.

“You’re not listening to me, little JoJo,” Lila said. “He got what he deserved. He betrayed me. He said he loved me, but he didn’t. I didn’t mean to kill him. Not at first. But then we were walking out in the woods to ‘work things out’ after I showed him the gun I got from Zeke, and I just did it. I waited for the police to arrest me, but they believed me when I said it was a suicide.”

“And you kept me because you didn’t want Lisette to have me,” Josie said.

“You were a little bitch, but you had your uses,” she replied, smirking.

“Until my grandmother paid you to leave. Why did you come back? Why after all these years did you feel the need to ruin my life? And Trinity’s?”

Lila glanced down to where Trinity lay at her feet. “Two years ago, I’m sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office watching the TV. There the two of you were—being interviewed about all the ‘good’ you did up in those mountains. You’re a famous police chief. The other one is a famous reporter. Then they call me back to the exam room and tell me I’ve got cancer. That’s not how things were supposed to end.” She kicked out again, and Josie heard Trinity yelp. “And this bitch. Every time I turned on the television, I saw her face. Your face. I couldn’t go without making sure you knew what it felt like to be me. You don’t get a happy ending while my insides rot to hell.”

“Then why did you dig up Belinda?” Josie asked. “It was you, wasn’t it? You got the boys to find her. That’s why there were so many foxholes.”

Lila nodded. “Took those little idiots a week. I didn’t think they’d ever find her. I needed money.”

“You squeezed Sophia Bowen for twenty thousand,” Josie pointed out.

“Yeah, but there’s this experimental treatment I could get if I had enough money. It might be my only chance. I can’t get that much from Sophia. Maybe close to it, but it wouldn’t be enough. I pulled every con I could think of, but I was running out of time. Then I remembered Belinda kept saying she had a big payday—she just had to cash it in. She always said that. She begged for me to help her when Sophia was after her, and she said she would share it with me. I didn’t pay her any mind back then. She was a stupid kid. But then I remembered that locket she always wore, and I thought, ‘Holy shit, did I miss that?’ Sophia always said it was cheap costume jewelry, but I got to wondering, what the hell was Belinda always talking about? Did she mean the locket? So yeah, I paid a couple of kids to dig her up.”

“You have the locket,” Josie said.

“I tried to sell it, but turned out Sophia was right. It was cheap costume jewelry. All it had inside was a lock of hair. Stupid bitch. All that for nothing.”

It must have been Andrew Bowen’s hair. Judge Bowen had given Belinda the locket and had obviously promised he would take care of Andrew. The “payday” Belinda had bragged about was what she could get by threatening to expose the judge.

“Anyway,” Lila said, “I think I can get it from Sophia now, especially after that business in the mill the other night. I saved her ass again. I depleted my funds with these little projects of mine.” At that, she laughed again and reached down, pulling Trinity upward. “The drug lackeys around here got expensive since I was here last.”

Trinity cried out in pain as Lila dragged her toward the door. “What are you doing?” Josie asked, unable to keep the panic out of her voice. “Where are you taking her?”

Lila dropped her onto her side, and Trinity’s body made a loud thud. Her strangled cries turned into an angry shout. “Leave me alone, you old twisted bitch!”

“What are you going to do with her?” Josie asked.

“You’ll be joining her soon enough,” Lila answered. She bent toward Trinity, eliciting more screams from her, and slowly untied her feet. She pulled Trinity upright, but she fell down immediately, her legs useless from having been tied in the same position for so many hours. “You better learn to walk real quick, princess,” Lila told her. When Trinity’s legs collapsed under her once more, Lila sighed, slid her arms under Trinity’s armpits, and dragged her out of the room.

Josie’s chest felt like it was being crushed. “Trinity!” she screamed.

“Josie!” came the answer.

There was a series of grunts and a couple of thumps, the front door opening and closing again, and then silence.

Lila was going to kill Trinity.

Josie opened her mouth and started bellowing at the top of her lungs once more.