“It must be seventeen years since he last killed someone,” I say.
“Eighteen, actually. Eighteen years ago this month, his last victim disappeared.”
I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together in my head. As always, Millicent does it for me.
“Remember when Lindsay first disappeared? When people were looking for her?” she says.
“Of course.”
“So what do you think will happen when another one goes missing? Like one of the women on our list.”
One by one, the loose ends start to come together. If another woman disappears, the police will start to think we have a serial killer. Millicent has resurrected Owen to blame our work on him.
She is setting up our future.
“That’s why you kept Lindsay alive for so long,” I say. “You were copying him.”
Millicent nods. “Yes.”
“And he strangled his victims, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
I exhale. It is both physical and psychological. “It was all a setup.”
“Of course it was. When the police start looking, and they will, they’re going to look for Owen.”
“But why wouldn’t you tell me? For a year?”
“I wanted to surprise you,” she says. “For our anniversary.”
I stare at her. My lovely wife.
“It’s demented,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow at me. Before she can speak, I put my finger against her lips.
“And it’s brilliant,” I say.
Millicent leans in and kisses me on the tip of my nose. Her breath smells like the dessert we had tonight. Not vanilla this time. Chocolate ice cream and cherries.
She slides over the center console, straddling me in the passenger seat. As she pulls off her sweatshirt, the clip in her hair comes loose and her hair tumbles out. She looks down at me, her eyes dark as a swamp.
“You didn’t think we were going to stop, did you?” she asks.
No. We can’t stop now.
I don’t even want to.
Twelve
When it started, it was about Holly. And it was because we had to.
On that brisk fall day when the phone rang, our world shattered. The phone call had been about Holly. She was going to be released from a psychiatric hospital.
I was not hearing right. That’s how I felt when Millicent first told me her sister had not died in an accident at the age of fifteen. She had been committed to a psychiatric hospital.
It was late that Saturday night, after the kids had been calmed down and fed, and had gone to sleep. Millicent and I sat in our living room, on the new couch we were still paying off on the credit card, and she told me the real story of Holly.
The first time was the paper cut. I already knew that story, about how they had been making collages of their favorite things.
“She did it on purpose,” Millicent said. “She grabbed my hand and sliced it with the paper. Right there.” She pointed to the spot between her thumb and index finger. “She convinced our parents it was an accident.”
A month passed, and six-year-old Millicent had almost forgotten about it. Until it happened again. She and Holly were in Holly’s room, playing in what they called the Purple Pit. Millicent and her sister had created their own little world, using dolls, stuffed animals, and plastic model horses, and they called it the Purple Pit. The name referred to the color of Holly’s room. Hers was lavender, and Millicent’s was yellow.
While they were in the Pit, Holly cut her again. This time she used a sharp piece of plastic she had broken off another toy.
The cut was on Millicent’s leg, down near her ankle. She screamed as the blood trickled onto the rug. Holly stared at it until their mother came into the room. Then she started to cry right along with Millicent.
The incident was dismissed as another accident.
Over the next couple of years, Millicent suffered a number of other accidents. Her father thought she was clumsy. Her mother told her to be careful.
Holly laughed at her.
The more Millicent told me, the more horrified I became. Some of what I had seen now made sense.
The bite on her arm, blamed on the dog. Two small discolored marks that never went away.
A broken finger slammed in the door. It was still a little bent.
That tiny chip on her front bottom tooth, from when she tripped and fell into the doorjamb.
The long, deep cut in her calf from broken glass in the street. The scar is still visible, a tan stripe almost six inches long.
The list went on for what seemed like hours. And as they got older, it got worse.
When Millicent was ten, Holly pushed her down the stairs. Millicent broke her arm. Six months later, Holly crashed into Millicent with her bike. After that, she fell out of a tree in the backyard.
Her parents believed they were all accidents. Or they saw what they wanted to see. No parent wants to believe their child is a monster.
Part of me could understand that. Nothing would make me believe Rory or Jenna could act like that. It just isn’t possible, isn’t feasible. And I was sure Millicent’s parents felt the same way about Holly.
That didn’t make me any less angry. As I sat and I listened to what Millicent had endured growing up, I could not reason away the rage.
The treatment—no, the torture—continued into their early teens. By then, Millicent had long given up trying to be nice to her sister in the hopes she would stop. Instead, she tried to hurt Holly back.
The first, and only, time she tried to hurt Holly, was when they were both in middle school. When the day was over, they headed out front with the rest of the children, to the line of parents waiting to pick up their kids. They walked together, side by side, and Millicent stuck out her foot.
Holly fell flat on the ground.
The whole thing happened in a second but was seen by half the school. Kids laughed, teachers rushed to help, and, inside, Millicent smiled to herself.
“It sounds sick,” Millicent said. “But I really thought it was over. I thought hurting her would make her stop hurting me.”
She was wrong.
Hours later, Millicent woke up in the middle of the night. Her wrists were bound and tied to her headboard. Holly was in the process of tying a gag around Millicent’s mouth.
Holly didn’t say a word to her. She just sat in the corner, staring at Millicent until the sun came up. Just before their parents woke up, Holly untied her and took the gag out of her mouth.
“Don’t ever try to hurt me again,” she said. “Next time I’ll kill you.”
Millicent didn’t. She continued to take the abuse while searching for a way to prove she wasn’t clumsy and she wasn’t hurting herself by accident. Holly was too smart to get caught on camera, too clever to get caught by anyone.
To this day, Millicent is convinced it would have continued if it hadn’t been for the car.
The car accident she told me about did happen. Holly was fifteen, Millicent was thirteen, and Holly did decide to take their mom’s car out for a spin. She ordered Millicent to come along for the ride, then purposely drove into a fence, passenger side first.
It would have been written off as an accident if not for the video.
Two separate security cameras recorded the accident. The first showed the car driving straight down the street when a sudden turn right made it plow into a fence. The second video showed the driver’s side of the car. Holly was behind the wheel, and it looked like she turned the wheel on purpose.