Chapter 3 - The Woman the World BuriedThe police arrived before I could reach Olivia.
Vanessa immediately transformed.
She became the frightened wife.
The abandoned mother.
The victim.
“She broke into our home,” Vanessa told the officers.
Olivia stared at her.
“This is my house.”
“You abandoned your child.”
“I was kept from her!”
The officers separated them.
Sophie screamed when they tried to move her away from Olivia.
“That’s my mommy!”
I raised both hands.
“Please. Don't frighten my daughter.”
But the damage was already done.
The officers checked their database.
Olivia Bennett was legally dead.
The woman standing in our foyer was therefore, according to every official record, an impostor.
Vanessa produced a restraining order.
It named Olivia as a dangerous, delusional woman obsessed with stealing Sophie.
Olivia stared at it.
“I've never seen that.”
Vanessa's eyes were wet.
“She violates it every time Ethan travels.”
The police handcuffed Olivia.
Sophie screamed until her voice became hoarse.
As Olivia was led away, she looked at me.
“Ask Vanessa what happened at Saint Catherine's.”
I stepped forward.
“What is Saint Catherine's?”
“And ask her why your signature is on my commitment papers.”
Then she was gone.
I turned toward Vanessa.
“My signature?”
Her voice became barely audible.
“You should have stayed in New York.”
At the police station, Detective Lena Ortiz placed the restraining order in front of me.
She was calm, skeptical, and unimpressed by my name.
I liked her immediately.
“Legally, Olivia Bennett died three years ago,” she said.
“She’s sitting down the hall.”
“That creates a serious problem.”
“No. It creates a serious crime.”
Ortiz studied me.
Then she pulled up Saint Catherine's.
A psychiatric facility outside Santa Barbara.
Patient:
Anna Reed.
Birth date: Olivia's.
Blood type: Olivia's.
Emergency contact:
Vanessa Cross.
And the commitment petition carried my electronic signature.
“I never signed that.”
“It came from your email.”
“I was at the coroner's office.”
“Who had access?”
“My assistant. My attorney. My brother.”
Ortiz looked up.
“Adrian Bennett?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back.
“When did Vanessa enter your life?”
“Six months after Olivia died.”
The answer sounded different now.
Not romantic.
Strategic.
I asked to see Olivia.
Ortiz gave me five minutes.
She sat behind glass.
Her wrists were red from the handcuffs.
I picked up the receiver.
She did not.
“Please.”
After several seconds, she lifted it.
I asked the question that had haunted me for three years.
“Did you leave me?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
“No.”
“Then why are you afraid of me?”
She looked down.
“Because I don't know what's real anymore.”
She told me Saint Catherine's doctors had shown her messages supposedly written by me.
They had played recordings of my voice.
They had told her I believed she was unstable.
They had told her Sophie would be safer without her.
None of it was true.
Then Olivia told me something that changed the entire investigation.
“Rosa found me.”
“How?”
“She recognized me at a bus station eight months ago.”
“Why didn't she tell me?”
“She tried.”
Olivia looked toward the surveillance camera.
“Vanessa found out.”
She described the accident.
Vanessa had been in the passenger seat.
She had claimed something was wrong with the tire.
They pulled over.
Vanessa got out.
Then another vehicle struck them.
Olivia remembered cold water.
Then darkness.
Then Saint Catherine's.
“Why did Vanessa keep you there?”
“She showed me pictures of you and Sophie.”
Olivia swallowed.
“She said you were happy.”
I closed my eyes.
“What did you do when you escaped?”
“I came home.”
“To Sophie?”
“Yes.”
“And the little door?”
“Rosa gave me the old garden key.”
I thought of my daughter's words.
She comes here when you're gone.
Olivia pressed her palm against the glass.
“Ethan, Sophie is the only thing that matters.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Her voice hardened.
“You traveled while she begged you to stay. You saw her change. You saw her lock her bedroom door.”
Every word hurt because it was true.
“I failed her.”
“Yes.”
“I won't do it again.”
May you like
Olivia finally raised her palm to mine.
“Then get her away from Vanessa.”
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