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He took a step into the kitchen and the story unfolded. Annabelle lay on her back, one leg bent backward at the knee, arms crumpled at her sides, and a pool of dark red blood encircling her body. Standing next to Annabelle’s body was his mother. She held a serrated kitchen knife smeared with blood in her right hand. When Preston looked at her, she dropped the knife and it clattered to the floor, the noise momentarily overcoming Charlotte’s screams.
“She attacked me, Preston,” his mother said. “You must believe me. She attacked me and I defended myself.”
Charlotte continued to wail in her bassinet.
“What did you do, mother?”
“It was self-defense.”
Preston reached his hands to his head and grabbed his hair as he stared down at his wife and the blood and the knife. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
“She attacked me, and I defended myself,” his mother said again, this time with anger in her voice.
Preston shook his head and reached for the phone, lifting it off the wall jack.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling an ambulance.”
“No,” Tilly said. “You can’t do that.”
Ignoring his mother, he began to dial. Tilly ran over and swiped the phone from his hands. It skidded across the floor.
“You can’t. She’s already gone. It’s over, son, and it’s better this way.”
Preston’s eyes filled with rage, and he shoved his mother backward. Tilly stumbled and fell onto the floor next to Annabelle, barely missing the pool of blood. As the anger bubbled from him, Preston climbed on top of his mother and placed his hands around her neck.
“What did you do?” he said through clenched teeth as he violently gripped his mother’s neck. “Did you kill her in front of my daughter?”
Preston saw his mother’s face turn a deep purple. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“You hated her. Even though I loved her, you hated her. I’ll kill you like you killed her!”
He spat the words out in a craze-filled scream before he heard a loud crack and felt the concussion of something striking the back of his head. The blow took the strength from his arms, like a spigot had been opened that bled all the energy from his body. Although he tried to continue squeezing his mother’s neck, his hands and arms would no longer cooperate. After a second, Preston slumped to the floor and, just before his eyes closed, saw Ellis standing over him. There was a baseball bat in his hands.
Charlotte screamed and Preston looked at the child. Her feet continued to flail, her right heel striking the camera a final time.
PART VI
Soaring
CHAPTER 65
Bend, Oregon Friday, August 2, 2024
SLOAN AND NORA STARED AT EACH OTHER AS NORA HELD THE PHOTO showing Tilly with a knife in her hand.
“She killed her,” Nora said. “Tilly killed Annabelle.”
Sloan swallowed hard and looked back to the photo, trying to process what she was seeing, how these photos came to be, and who had taken them.
“I’m still . . .” Sloan said, shaking her head. “Who took these photos?”
“And what happened to Preston?” Nora said. “And you. What happened to you that night?”
Slowly, as if the answer dawned on them at the same time and from the same place, they looked to the drying rack and the final photo that hung there. Enough time had passed so that the image was clearly formed. Nora pulled it off the clip. With her mouth agape, she reached over to the wall and clicked on the overhead light. In her hand the photo showed Ellis eerily staring into the lens of the camera and holding a baseball bat. Sloan’s mind made the connection to Dr. Cutty’s impression of Baker Jauncey’s head wound, which she believed had been caused by a baseball bat.
“Nora!” a voice yelled from somewhere outside the darkroom.
