The Forgotten Girl

“Safe from what exactly?” I ask, watching her mess around with the alarm system on the living room wall.

She sets the alarm and it beeps as it prepares for lock down. No going in or out any of the doors or windows without the siren shrieking like the devil himself. “Maddie, that poor girl was murdered only twenty minutes from here,” she says. “We need to be safer with all the craziness that’s out there.”

“Out there?” I lean against the wall with my arms folded as I stare out the window at the frosted grass, the grey sky, the trees, the “out there” she’s referring to. “You’re the one being crazy. You can’t just lock us in the house and expect us to stay here.”

“I’m being crazy,” she says unfathomably. She has dark circles under her eyes, her hair is pulled into a messy bun, and her clothes are wrinkled. She looks like a hot mess—a hot, stressed out mess. “You’re the one laughing about this. This isn’t funny, Maddie.”

I shake my head, aggravated. It’s not like I mind missing work—I’m worried about going there after the detective talks to River. But being locked up in the house. There’s no way I’ll survive. “Well, can I have the passcode in case I need to go somewhere?”

“No.” She closes the lid to the security box. “If you need to turn it off, you can have me do it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Anger burns venomously in my veins. This can’t be happening.

I can’t be a prisoner again.

“No, I’m not kidding you.” She breezes by me quickly, striding toward the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “It’s safer this way. I promise.”

I think there’s a hidden meaning in her words and I have to wonder whether she got the alarm to lock the bad out or to lock me inside—lock Lily inside.

***

Things only get progressively worse from there. My mom takes my car keys away while I’m getting something to eat one day. She actually goes into my room and gets them from my bag. While I’m looking for them, pretty much tearing my room apart, she walks into my room.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, watching me dig through my dresser drawers.

“I can’t find my car keys,” I say, searching the pockets of a pair of jeans.

“That’s because I took them,” she replies, leaning against the doorframe. She has a pair of slacks on a peach sweater that matches her shoes and her posture is portraying confidence, but there’s a lack of it in her eyes.

“What the hell for?” I ask, tossing the jeans onto the floor. I’m more testy than usual, but that’s because I haven’t slept in days, afraid once I shut my eyes, I’ll be relinquishing control to Lily, handing it over to the killer side in me.

“Because I don’t want you going anywhere,” my mother says simply. “Not until things have blown over with this Sydney thing and you quit dressing like a whore.”

You’re a whore!

You’re a whore!

I have to bury my instinct to slap her when she calls me that name. The good inside me tells me to respect her, but that part has been rapidly dying over the last few days and the bad easily takes control over my mouth. “I’m twenty-one years old, mother. I’ll go wherever I want whenever I want and be a whore if I want to.”

“You may be twenty-one,” she replies curtly. “But you have the maturity of a fifteen year-old and so I’m going to treat you like a fifteen year-old.”

“You have no idea how mature I am.” I kick some clothes out of the way and walk toward her. “Mom, please stop doing this. You can’t just keep me locked up in the house. It’s not right.”

Her eyes skim up my short skirt and tight shirt that barely covers anything. “Maybe you should take a good hard look at yourself before you say that.” She backs out of my room, almost if she’s afraid of me and I have to wonder if she knows what I am. Not Lily, but potentially a psychopath. “And I’m not giving you your keys back. Not until you can get your act together and be the daughter I used to know.”

“And who exactly would that be? Because I honestly don’t know.” I reach the doorway, my voice raising and filling with a silent warning. I grip onto the doorframe, fighting to hold myself in my room, because every muscle of mine is yanking me toward her. If she keeps it up, I might have to teach her a lesson. Chase her down and make her give me the keys.

My mother’s expression snaps cold, but there’s a hint of nervousness there beneath the surface. She hovers back, picking up her pace as she backs up the hallway. “This is for your own good. You’ll thank me one day for it,” she says, then turns around and goes into her bedroom, shutting the door.

As soon a she disappears, I calm down, like a fire simmering out. Prying my fingers away from the doorframe, I step back into my room and shut the door.

You’re going to get her back for this. You can’t let her control you like this.

“It might be for the better,” I say. “It keeps me from doing anything bad if I’m trapped here.”

That’s not entirely true. You’re worse than you want to admit, Maddie Asherford. You’re just afraid. And being bad isn’t necessarily bad in certain situations. You need to stop fearing yourself so much.

I don’t argue with her, because it feels too much like the truth.

I sit down on my bed and call Bella, but there’s still no response. I’m starting to worry that rumors are getting around that maybe I had something to do with Sydney’s murder and that maybe Bella’s afraid of me and that’s why she won’t answer. I also haven’t heard from River and other than that, I haven’t conversed with anyone for the last few days besides my mother. My next appointment with Preston is in a couple of days, but I’m concerned what will happen if he tries to pick my brain about stuff—what might spill out.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore. When my mom turns off the alarm to go outside and chat with the neighbor, I sneak out the backdoor and make a beeline for the bus stop at the end of the block. I need to go talk to Bella and hopefully she’ll give me some answers.

Answers that tell me I’m not a killer.

Chapter 13

Maddie

Bella lives in an apartment complex on the more rundown side of town. It’s still way too early for her to be at work, so I’m hoping that she’ll be there. But after knocking on the door for several minutes, I realize she’s not. I think about just waiting on the steps until she comes home, even if it’s tomorrow morning after she gets off work, but there’s a large Rottweiler barking at me from the window next door, a sketchy looking guy across the street smoking and drinking who hasn’t taken his eyes off of me this entire time, and two very large guys screaming at each other near the corner. It’s making even the inside of me nervous. I should leave, but instead I find myself wandering around the side of the complex and to the back door of Bella’s place. At first I just stand there, staring at the doorknob, wondering what I’m doing, but then I realize that I do know what I’m doing. I don’t know how I know, but I just do.