"So he would not have discussed the case with outsiders. But his nurses would know."
"He only employed three during that time, and two have passed on--"
"But you've spoken to the third."
Dr. Escoda glanced my way. I met her gaze expectantly.
"Dr. Escoda," Ricky said. "If you have not spoken to this former nurse, then we will, whether you provide us with her name or not."
"I have, but . . . she's seventy and not in the best of health."
"Alzheimer's? Dementia?"
"No, but--"
"Any mental impairment related to her health issues?"
"No apparent ones, but--"
"What did she say?"
Now the doctor snuck a look my way, pleading with me to get her out of this, only to realize I was the last person who'd spare her.
"She said . . ." Dr. Escoda swallowed. "She remembered when the Larsens were arrested. She called my father, to make sure she was hearing right--she was certain she couldn't be. When my father found out, he immediately contacted child services."
"Child services?" I said.
"To be . . ." She swallowed again and cast another anxious look my way. "To be certain they knew how to care for you. Because of your condition. Because the Eden Larsen he had treated six months earlier had severe spina bifida."
--
Ricky did not back down once he got his answer. If anything, it snapped off the leash, and he went after poor Dr. Escoda with everything he had. There was no shouting, no threatening, no intimidation. But that was all implied in his voice, in his expression, in the very way he held himself on that chair. You want us gone? Answer my questions.
He asked whether there was any way the damage could have been repaired. She said no, and he pursued every loophole there. Could the condition have been less serious than her father thought? What were the medical procedures at the time? What about experimental procedures? Even now, twenty years later, could it have been cured? She was adamant it could not. He had her check my back. There wasn't even a pucker. My spine was perfect, my skin unblemished.
Was it possible that somehow, after the Larsens left her father's care, something happened to their daughter and I replaced her? Dr. Escoda stared at Ricky as if he was crazy. He made her answer the question. No, it was not possible. Her father and his nurse had seen my photo following the arrest. I was the child they'd treated. To be sure, Ricky had her bring the file of the girl with spina bifida and compare every identifying factor in it. Hair color, eye color, blood type . . . it matched down to a tiny scar on the back of my elbow that had needed two stitches.
I was the girl in that file. The girl who couldn't walk. Who'd been sentenced to life in a wheelchair. Who'd spent two years of her life in and out of doctors' offices and hospitals and then been taken out of her doctor's care. Who reappeared, six months later, running and jumping and playing like any other toddler . . . after her parents murdered six people.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I needed to speak to Todd. Except, apparently, I couldn't.
"Bullshit," I said to the prison clerk, my temper flaring as he smirked. "I don't know what's going on, but there is no way in hell my father is refusing to see me."
He shrugged, and kept that satisfied little smirk still playing on his lips. Ricky stood behind me. When I looked back, his expression agreed this was complete and total bullshit, but he had no more idea what to do about it than I did.
"I'm going to contact my lawyer," I said. "See if he can straighten this out."
"No need," the man said. "He's already here."
"What?"
The man threw open the door of the tiny room where we'd been brought to "discuss" the matter. As it opened, I heard Gabriel arguing with a guard. He caught sight of me and strode our way.
Gabriel came in and argued the matter, but he got no further than I had. Finally the clerk walked out.
"I came after receiving your text," Gabriel said after the man was gone. "I'll pursue this, of course. While it is possible that Todd himself is blocking us, perhaps unable to face you after yesterday, that doesn't seem likely. Unfortunately, with no way to contact Todd and ask . . ."
"We can't prove it."
"So our next move--" Ricky began as we walked out the front doors.
Gabriel flourished his wristwatch. "Don't you have class?"
I swore Ricky bit his tongue before saying, calmly, "If Liv needs me, I'm not worried about classes."
"Perhaps, but your father will expect--"
"Gabriel? I'm not a child."
He snapped on his shades. "You misunderstood--"
"Nope, don't think I did." Ricky said it casually, almost cheerfully, but there was a warning note there. He turned to me. "I'm guessing your next move involves Cainsville?"
"It does."
"In that case, since I'm not supposed to know their secrets, that is something you'll want to do with Gabriel. If there's anything I can pursue in the meantime . . ."
"Go to class. Take a break while you can."
He gave me a faint smile. "I don't need a break. Ever."
"I know. But you did more than enough this morning. Thank you."
"Anytime."
He headed off to his bike, leaving Gabriel and me walking deeper into the lot, where my car was still parked from yesterday.
As we walked toward the VW, Gabriel slowed. "Might I suggest that we take my car to Cainsville so we can talk? Your text message was hardly voluble."
"Such being the nature of text messages."
"That wasn't an accusation." He paused, as if mentally adding not exactly. "But clearly your inquiries with Ricky proved . . . I'm loath to say fruitful, as your mood inside suggests the information was not what you wanted to hear. You learned something that upset you, and it made you want to talk to Todd."
"We went to see Dr. Escoda," I said.
"The daughter of your former family physician. Yes. You should not have gone to see her after I've notified her of a possible intention to sue. If you hoped to speed up recovery of your files--"
"They were my files."
He stopped. Took off his shades. Looked at me. Waited.
"The girl in that file?" I said. "The one with spina bifida? That was me. Which means we finally know my parents' motivation. The purpose of whatever ritual they were enacting. They did kill those people. For me. Now we need to find out who helped them do it."
--
We took Gabriel's car and I explained.
"Ricky covered all the contingencies," I said as I finished. "Eyewitness accounts. Medical proof." I lifted my elbow. "And a teeny, tiny scar that I never knew I had, which rules out even the crazy 'twin sister' explanation. Someone--Cwn Annwn or Tylwyth Teg--told my parents that I would be cured if I did what they said. A ritual or a bargain. Magical intervention. Now here I am, walking around, good as new, while my parents have spent my life in prison."
Another mile passed. He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, took off his shades, and gave me a sidelong look, not making direct eye contact. "How are you doing? With that? The possibility?"
"Trying very hard not to think about the implications. Right now, my focus is on proving it. On finding out who did this. Who healed me . . . and destroyed my family."
--
There was little question of whom I needed to speak to in Cainsville. The person I was most angry with . . . who also happened to be the one most likely to give me a straight answer.
Gabriel fetched Patrick from the diner so I wouldn't have to face the elders.
I met Gabriel at the corner of Rowan and Main, and he told me Patrick would speak to us at his place.
"Do you know where he lives?" I asked.
"He provided the address." Gabriel waved for us to cross the road.
"But you didn't know before that?"
His brows rose above his shades. "Why would I?"
Why indeed.
As I expected, Patrick's house was neither large nor
ostentatious. While he had a flair for the dramatic, it wasn't in his best interests to call attention to himself. The other elders affected the personae of senior citizens to take advantage of ageism--we pay less attention to the elderly and lose the ability to judge their true age. In choosing to stay young, Patrick lost that advantage. So he wasn't going to own the biggest house on the block.
It was Gothic Revival. Larger than Rose's Victorian dollhouse, but not by much. One and a half stories done in a classic design--a rectangular structure, steep roof with cross gables and gingerbread, a porch that stretched along the full front of the house, and an arched window under the front gable. No garden. No porch furniture. No car in the drive, either. I'd seen the Clarks in Chicago, so obviously the fae could leave town, but I got the feeling they preferred not to. Cainsville was both their sanctuary and their source of power.
Patrick had the door open before we reached the porch. He didn't say a word, just stepped back to let us in. Once we got past the front hall, that quiet simplicity of the house's exterior vanished. Obviously, Patrick had money, and this was where he spent it.
The style was designer contemporary, with no attempt to preserve the look or feel of the house's original era. I caught a glimpse of a kitchen with granite counters, gleaming copper pots, and stainless steel appliances. Patrick took us into the living room, where he'd obviously had a wall removed to make one big high-tech bachelor pad plus library. He took us to the library side. The couch was white leather with dark wood trim. I resisted the urge to brush off my rear before I sat.
When Patrick offered tea or coffee, Gabriel's refusal came without hesitation. When Patrick asked me, Gabriel said no again, so fast and so sharp that Patrick chuckled.
"No food and no drink," I said. "I don't know if the old stories are true, but we aren't taking that chance."
Patrick settled in at the other end of the sofa. "As with everything else, what humans believe is adjacent to the truth. What's the lore? Accept food or drink, and you'll be trapped in a fairy party forever?" He leaned forward, voice lowering conspiratorially. "There's no party. Or, if there is, I've never been invited. Instead, it allows me to trigger a mental state of hallucinations. Permanent hallucinations, if I wish. In short, it drives humans mad. But neither of you is human, so it wouldn't work."
"Like the charms and compulsions don't work on us?" I said, giving him a withering look.
"They do, but only to a degree. Otherwise, you'd never have asked questions, would you? Once you understood what was happening, your fae blood overruled the compulsions, to the deep and abiding regret of the elders right now. But other fae powers will work not at all. Like the trigger of the food and drink. So if you'd like a coffee or an iced tea . . . ?"
"Shockingly, I'm not going to take your word for it."
He only smiled and settled in. "You're right to be cautious. Now, what secret business brings you here?"
"Spina bifida."
As soon as I saw the look on his face, I knew I'd come to the wrong place. He stared at me, as if replaying my words, wondering what else I might have said instead, because those ones made no sense in any context he knew.
Gabriel prodded with, "What do you know about spina bifida?"
Patrick tried to hide his confusion. "It's a medical condition, affecting the spine, I believe, and--"
"Thank you for your time," I said, getting to my feet.
Gabriel rose. When Patrick did, too, Gabriel sidestepped closer to me, his hand going to my back. As I headed to the door, Patrick intercepted me. Gabriel tensed, his fingers wrapping around my upper arm.
"I'm no threat to her, Gabriel. None of us are." Patrick's voice was low, odd, and unfamiliar without that jaunty, devil-may-care note.
"Perhaps not a physical threat," Gabriel said. "But not all threats are physical."
"Agreed, but I'm not any sort of threat to her." He met Gabriel's gaze. "I never will be."
Gabriel shifted behind me, his hand still on my arm. "If you can't help, then we're going to leave."
"I'd like to lie and say I know exactly why you're asking, but I've lost my chance at that. Whatever is making you ask the question, though, clearly you believe the answer is connected to Cainsville. Tell me what's going on. I can help."
He was still speaking in that other voice, the soothing and serious one, but he wasn't offering out of some sudden surge of altruism. He hated to be left in the dark as much as his son, and he always expected something in return. Quid pro quo. And I was all right with it. A fair exchange of services. That's how a bocan operates.
"Spina bifida is a severe congenital condition," I said. "At least, the form I had was."
"The form you had . . ."
"Up until the age of two. Then my parents murdered six people. And, miraculously, I was cured--of an incurable condition."
"You were--?" he began, slowly.
"Olivia?" Gabriel cut in. "We should leave."
"No, hold on." Patrick walked to his bookshelf. He ran his fingers along a row of books, the spines so old the leather seemed to flake at his touch.
"Olivia?" Gabriel said. "I really would like--"
"No." Patrick's tone was sharp and the look in his eyes made Gabriel blink. "Please. I'm not trying to trick you. I don't have a solution, but I can provide one answer."
He pulled out a book, and as he did, the worn leather mended under his fingers, becoming whole and smooth. He set the book on the desk and flipped through it, too fast to see what was written, and when he did slow, the ink seemed to shift and slide, the words illegible. He skimmed back two pages and stopped. His forefinger zoomed down the page, and the words stopped moving, but that didn't help--they were in Welsh.
He straightened and tapped a line. "There. It doesn't say the name of the condition, but I'm sure it's the right one. Spina bifida is a failure of embryonic completion, correct?" When I wasn't fast enough answering, he said, with some impatience, "The fetus doesn't fully form."
"Right." I moved up beside him and looked down at the page. It was handwriting, neat and precise. While the ink no longer moved, it seemed to shimmer, a kaleidoscope of color that drew me closer still, gaze fixed on the words.
"Which makes it one of a small host of conditions--" he began.
The words parted, ink flying from the page, sailing up around me as the blank hole on the page collapsed in on itself, pulling me with it. A flash of white, as if I'd fallen through the book itself. I hit the ground, my hands outstretched, grass beneath my fingers.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I expected to see the meadow again. Instead, I stared at a chimera head. I lifted my head. I was sitting outside the park behind the diner.
"Please. Please, just listen."
A woman leaned on the park railing. She wasn't more than fifty but looked older, wearing a shapeless housedress, her hair streaked with gray, the style as formless as her outfit. A white-haired couple was walking past the park. Though they had their backs to me, I only needed to see their stance to recognize them. Ida and Walter. They were dressed smartly in a style only found in vintage shops these days. The seventies would be my guess, and a glance down the walkway, at a huge boat of a car passing along Main, seemed to confirm it.
Ida and Walter turned to the woman.
"You can help him," the woman said. "I know you can."
Ida's voice was kind but firm. "No, dear. There's nothing--"
"I won't tell anyone," the woman cut in quickly. "I'll say it was a miracle from God. I won't even know what you do. I'll walk away and leave him with you."
Ida moved to the fence, her hands resting on the woman's. "You are mistaken. Whatever you think you know--"
"Nothing. I know nothing. But I sense . . . I can tell . . . You're special. You can fix him. Please."
"Special? Perhaps. But can you imagine that if we knew how to heal a child, we would not readily do it?"
"Can you do anything? If he could just walk. Please. With a limp or with a cane. My grandson h
as no other impairment--no mental or physical defect. If you could just ease his--"
"We cannot," Ida said. "Or we would."
The woman staggered back, her face crumpling, and I saw a boy in the swing, one of those meant for infants, though he was at least five. His rail-thin legs were bare and I could see the white of a diaper. Our eyes met, and the ground opened again, and I tumbled through.
I saw others as I fell. Other children. Other times. Other places. A toddler with half-formed arms. A teenage girl on crutches. A young boy with some form of hydrocephalus. And then, again, I hit the ground. Only it wasn't grass this time, but rough-hewn wood. I faced a small window without glass. The wall looked odd--like wood lattice, the spaces between filled with a clay-like substance. Wattle and daub. The phrase jumped from the back of my mind.
Behind me, a man spoke in a language I didn't recognize. As I turned, though, his words started coming clear, first one or two in a sea of babble, then fully English, heavily accented, forcing me to struggle to understand him, my mind latching on to words like a swimmer catching hold of a pool ladder, pulling herself up from the water.
"--changeling child."
I looked around a wattle-and-daub house that was little more than a shack. The voices came from a second room.
"Your true daughter was stolen by the fair folk," the same voice continued. "This twisted monstrosity--"
"--is my child," a woman said. "My child. Ask the midwife. There was something amiss from the start. A lump on her back. She is afflicted, to be sure, but she's not a changeling. She came from me. From my womb."
"I understand your distress," the man said. "But this is no human child."
"She's my daughter," the woman said.
"She's not mine." Another man. His voice raw and bitter. "She looks nothing like me."
I pushed up and walked to the door. Three people stood around a wooden cradle. The woman wasn't much more than a child herself, maybe seventeen. The younger man was at least a decade older, dressed in rough-spun cloth streaked with dirt, his boots and calloused hands caked with it. The older man was clean and more finely dressed, in a dark gown with a beaded chain around his neck. A wooden crucifix hung from the chain.
"Have you had any contact with the fair folk?" the clergyman asked.
"No, none."
"Are you certain?" he said. "I have heard reports that you were seen dancing in the forest on Midsummer's Eve, shortly before you realized you were with child."