She staggered back in shock. Clara hadn’t known that. She’d never once thought of Tommy as a potential love interest. He was a good friend, almost like a brother to her. How had she missed that Tommy was in love with her?
Offering a half smile, Mrs. Karl murmured, “I take it you didn’t know.” Noticing Naomi for the first time, she said, “You must be one of Clara’s sisters. Naomi or Agape?”
“Naomi. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Karl.”
From the look on her sister’s face, Clara could tell that Naomi was thinking about the third sister in their weird little set of triplets. After she and Naomi had connected, they had reached out to Agape, but she hadn’t wanted anything to do with them. Maybe they should try again; they'd talked about it, both of them wanted a relationship with their sister.
“Call me Donna, dear. I'm always telling Clara to call me that, but she won't.”
“Because you're Tommy’s mom,” she protested.
“May we come in?” Naomi asked.
“Oh, of course, I’m sorry dears, when I heard the doorbell I thought you were the police. They said they were coming by this morning. They want to talk to me about Tommy.”
Clara clearly got the message Naomi’s eyes all but screamed at her. Don’t mention the Doll Killer case. She wanted to, but if Naomi thought it was better not to, then she would go with that—for now at least.
“I still can't believe he carjacked you,” Mrs. Karl muttered as she led them to the cozy lounge room. “Why would he do that?”
The old lady, who had been so kind to her, looked so forlorn that Clara hated that Jonathon and his partner were going to hurt her by telling her they thought Tommy had started abducting and killing children. She wanted to be the one to break the bad news. She would do it much more gently than Jonathon would. Naomi gave her a warning nudge, and Clara kept her mouth closed, instead sitting beside Mrs. Karl and wrapping an arm around the woman’s shoulders. She had spent so many happy hours with Tommy and his mother in this very room. Watching movies, playing board games, drawing pictures, and building things with Lego blocks. This place had been a safe haven for her in the months and years following her kidnapping—it was the one place she hadalwaysfelt safe. And that was solely because of Mrs. Karl.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. The part she had played in Tommy’s death and the pain it had caused his mother ate at her.
“No, dear, you have nothing to be sorry for. I just don’t understand. Did Tommy say anything to you?”
“Just that he wanted to show me something.”
“I was wondering,” Mrs. Karl began nervously, “if maybe he tried to show you how he felt about you, and you rejected him, and that’s why he hurt you, why he shot at the cops knowing they'd shoot back. I know you said you didn’t know that Tommy had a crush on you, but if you were just trying to protect my feelings, because . . .”
“No, nothing like that,” Clara assured her. “I didn’t know Tommy had a crush on me. And I truly don’t know why he carjacked me. But I want to understand; I thought you might be able to help me.”
“Help you?” Mrs. Karl echoed listlessly.
For a moment, anger at Tommy flashed through her. How could he be so selfish? Hurting her, hurting his mother. He should have known better. Mrs. Karl and her husband had struggled for years to have a baby before finally conceiving and carrying Tommy to term when they were in their mid-forties. From what Tommy had told her he had been quite spoiled as a child, even before his abduction, and following it, he was treated like a prince who could do no wrong—his every whim catered to. After his father’s sudden death about ten years ago, Tommy had grown even closer to his mother. Clara couldn’t imagine him causing her pain. “The Tommy I knew would never pull a gun on me or cut me or put me in danger by making me run from the police, and yet he did all those things. I need to know why. Have you noticed anything different about him lately? Something that would explain this sudden change in behavior?”
“Well . . .” Mrs. Karl looked around nervously.
“We’re not the cops,” Clara reminded her. “I’m Tommy’s friend. Please, if you know something, then please tell me. I need to know.”
“A couple of months ago I got a call from his doctor—his psychiatrist—to ask if I’d heard from Tommy because he’d skipped his last appointment and hadn’t returned any of the doctor’s calls. I was the emergency contact that Tommy gave, so he called me to make sure Tommy was okay.”
“He’d been seeing a psychiatrist again? Why didn’t he tell me?” That he hadn’t confided in her, hurt her deeply. She and Tommy had always been completely open and honest with one another about how they were feeling, and both of them had talked the other out of a deep, dark hole more than once. Why wouldn’t he have come to her if he was facing another battle with depression? Instead, this time he’d pulled away from her. She hadn’t heard from him in months. Was he embarrassed that he was struggling again? She saw no reason why he should be embarrassed around her.
“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Karl patted her knee comfortingly. “He didn’t tell me, either.”
“There was more, though,” Naomi spoke up. “The doctor told you something else, didn’t he?”
Surprised, Mrs. Karl turned to her with a wry smile. “Now I see why you brought your sister.”
“Naomi’s good at things like that,” Clara acknowledged. “Is she right? Did the doctor tell you something else?”
After another hesitation, Mrs. Karl began, “The doctor was concerned because Tommy hadn’t picked up his prescription.”
“He was back on antidepressants?”
“I think he was supposed to be. But I was cleaning his old room the other day, and I found something.”
“Found what?” she prompted when the old woman didn’t continue.