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Maybe I’m running on the last vestiges of my sanity, but why on earth did that feel so ominous?
FORTY-NINE
Sunday August 16, 2010
I fought my way through the crowd, screaming at the onlookers to let me reach my daughter. A few people at the back ushered me to the front, and the police stopped the ambulance to let me in.
Amy was conscious but dazed, looking otherwise fine. When she saw me, her eyes welled up with tears and she stretched out a shaking hand. I held it tightly and leaned into my little girl, whispering reassurances that I wasn’t sure I believed.
She told me a few things I hadn’t overheard. That Lyle was the one responsible for breaking Dolly’s possessions, and for pouring water on Dolly’s bed. He wanted the twins to fight, so I would agree to have them sent away. Three Fates is a place where young girls were sent out and forced to do terrible things with men.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to listen and wondering how I didn’t see that Lyle had been gaslighting all of us all along. He had been the perfect husband and father. Until this morning, I thought he was completely devoted to our family.
Amy squeezed my hand and whispered that Charlotte was behind me, holding a knife to my throat. When I turned around, the back of the ambulance was empty.
I stared down at my daughter, coming to grips with the burgeoning horror. Lyle set out to destroy me, and he succeeded.
My baby was dead. My twins were bitter enemies. Amy was seeing things that didn’t exist. Dolly… I had no idea what the hell they were doing to her at Three Fates.
I asked Amy how to find the facility, but she was too distracted by an apparition to answer. She trembled and sobbed, repeating over and over that Charlotte was telling her to kill me to make up for her failure with Heath.
When we reached the hospital, I stood in her room, rooting through my phone for the number I’d saved for the Three Fates Therapeutic Boarding School. It kept going through to voicemail. I kept leaving messages for an address, so I could pick up Dolly.
I returned home to search through Lyle’s study for the number he had for Dalton, who turned out to be Mr. Delta. Why the hell would a former FBI agent run a boarding school? All I found were dossier upon dossier of children. Children with price tags.
Some came from overseas, others were marked as runaways whose backgrounds Lyle had carefully researched. Three Fates wasn’t a school and Lyle wasn’t arranging adoptions—he was running a child trafficking ring.
I called the police. They “escalated the case” to a high-ranking officer who exchanged all the evidence for a business card—one with a fake number. I hired a private detective, who took a cash deposit and then demanded an exorbitant daily rate. By the time I tried to withdraw more money, I found our bank accounts were depleted to their limit.
My world was crumbling, with my only anchor being Amy. She was still in the hospital, tormented by hallucinations of Charlotte. Then the hospital called about problems with payments, saying that our health insurance had expired.
I drove straight to Dr. Forster’s house to find him stuffing suitcases into the trunk of his car. Blocking his drive, I told him everything. That Lyle found out he’d impregnated me and then orchestrated a convoluted revenge plan to steal my daughters and kill our baby.
Forster tried to gaslight me about the affair, until I revealed I’d recorded our sessions, including the ones where he crossed the lines of professional conduct, using my vulnerability to obtain easy sex.
When he asked what it would take to get me to move my car, I was ready with a list: Help finding Dolly, help with Amy’s mental state, and help with Amy’s medical bills.
He called his colleague at a prestigious mental hospital to arrange a transfer and gave me a check for twenty thousand dollars. I asked for more, but he mumbled something about all his money being used up to fight another accusation of misconduct.
Despite my resentment, I took the check. The only other choice I had was to throw myself at the mercy of the Salentino family, who were more likely to put a bullet through my skull than help.
That evening, when I drove home, a man stood at the door, and a procession of people were carrying away our furniture. The man introduced himself as our landlord and said that Lyle had canceled our lease months ago. He had agreed to vacate the house by today.
Then the foreman in charge of the removal crew told me that all our furniture had been purchased on credit, and Lyle hadn’t paid.
My heart sank. Everything made sense. Lyle had insisted on a ridiculously extravagant shopping spree the moment I announced I was pregnant. Everything he’d done had been an elaborate scheme to strip me of everything I loved and leave me destitute. All I had left was one damaged little girl.
And by the time I returned to the hospital, Amy had already been transferred.
FIFTY
XERO
When Isabel and I planned the charade to ease Amethyst back to reality, I expected tears and even an outpouring of emotion. I didn’t expect her to make another escape attempt after we’d put her to bed.
We had to restrain and sedate her again. Part of her psyche still believes she’s in danger, although she won’t explain why.
I watched over her last night while she slept, noticing when the drugs wore off and her nightmares crawled to the surface. She thrashed within her restraints, whimpering and crying the same cryptic phrases over and over:It’s all my fault. I killed her.
