Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN ON THE PORCH
The door remained locked, but the knob continued moving.
Michael grabbed the pocketknife.
Margaret caught his arm again.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Then tell me.”
The woman outside struck the door once with something heavy.
The old frame cracked.
I pushed myself toward the overturned chair and used it to stand.
Margaret noticed.
“Stay down.”
I kept rising.
The baby shifted painfully beneath my ribs, but I stood with one arm around the chair and the other over my stomach.
The woman outside said, “Emily, move away from them.”
She knew my name.
Michael’s fear became rage.
He rushed toward the window and pulled aside the curtain.
His expression changed instantly.
A white-haired woman stood on the porch wearing a brown coat. Beside her was a younger man in a county sheriff’s uniform.
Michael dropped the curtain.
“Police.”
Margaret shook her head.
“That isn’t the sheriff.”
The woman on the porch held up a thick folder.
“I have the birth records.”
Margaret moved toward the back hallway.
Michael blocked her.
“You said all the records burned.”
“I thought they did.”
The deputy outside ordered them to open the door.
Michael looked at me.
“If you tell them anything, I’ll say you attacked us.”
I touched the bruise rising across my cheek.
“Then explain this.”
Margaret grabbed a small medicine bottle from the table.
“She’s been hallucinating.”
The story was already prepared.
A violent wife.
A frightened husband.
A caring mother-in-law.
Michael unlocked the front door but kept the security chain fastened.
“What do you want?”
The white-haired woman looked through the opening.
Her eyes found mine.
She began crying.
“Emily.”
I had never seen her before, yet something about her face felt familiar.
The shape of her jaw.
The small scar beneath her left eye.
I had the same scar.
The deputy showed his badge.
“Texas Ranger Caleb Morris. We have questions regarding three missing women connected to this property.”
Michael tried to close the door.
Morris forced his boot into the gap.
Margaret whispered, “Anna should be dead.”
The woman heard her.
“So should your daughters.”
She pushed the folder through the opening.
A photograph slid onto the floor.
It showed Margaret standing beside three pregnant women outside the farmhouse thirty years earlier.
One woman was the stranger on the porch.
Another looked exactly like me.
The third woman’s face had been cut from the image.
On the back, someone had written:
THE CARTER GIRLS — 1996.
Michael stared at his mother.
“You had daughters?”
Margaret’s face hardened.
“I had mistakes.”
Ranger Morris broke the chain and entered.
Before he reached me, Michael seized my arm and held the knife against my side.
“Back up.”
The Ranger stopped.
The woman called Anna stepped into the room behind him.
She looked at the rope around the pillar.
Then at my wrists.
Then at Michael.
“You became exactly like your father.”
Michael tightened his grip.
“Who are you?”
May you like
Anna’s eyes never left mine.
“I’m Emily’s mother.”
