Confidential(96)

No. My mother was no killer.

“I’ve done a terrible thing,” she said.

Oh my God.

She started to cry. “When you told me you weren’t the only one, it made me think of what happened to you when you were little, and then with Adam, and I just went into this spiral. It was like your therapist had become every man who’d ever hurt you, and he was out there doing this to other women, damaging them or preying on the damage from when they were little girls, and I can’t even tell you what happened to me. It was like something took over my body. I just started driving.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as she continued. “The outer door to his office building was propped open, and I went upstairs to his office. He was alone. I told him who I was, and he turned away from me and went to the window, almost like he didn’t want to look at me, like he was ashamed, and I saw that heavy statue; it was the perfect weight, and it was like, this might not even make sense, but it was like he was giving me the opportunity. Like he wanted me to do it, you know? Like he wanted it to be over. Like he couldn’t stop himself any other way and I needed to do it for him.”

She was shaking, and I couldn’t speak. There was no way Michael wanted to die. She was rationalizing.

But maybe it didn’t matter what he’d wanted. Maybe he’d deserved to die. She was right; he was destroying people, and she’d stopped him. For me. “Mommy,” I whimpered.

We were in each other’s arms, sobbing. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I meant to be a good mother, and I wasn’t. And now I’m . . . Now I’ve . . .”

“You protected me,” I said. “Because the truth is, I would have gone back to him. I would have kept going back because he had this hold over me.”

“You were addicted to him, and I could feel that. I get that. One of the scariest things was how I felt when I went to his office. I had all this fury and adrenaline and excitement. I was high, like I hadn’t been in years. And I’d missed it, Lucy. Later, I was so horrified by myself. I still am.”

“No one would blame you if they knew what he’d done.”

She pulled away. “Do you think I should turn myself in? I will, if that’s what you think I should do.”

“Do you think anyone saw you?”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s not like he and I were yelling, and when I did it, it was quieter than I would have thought.” She swallowed and stared down at her hands. “I can still feel the weight of that statue. I can see what he looked like lying there on the floor.”

At the image, I should have felt horror. I should have felt something. I’d loved him, or thought I had. But knowing that my mother had risked her future, and her freedom, to stop Michael—that put everything else to shame.

I laced my fingers through hers. “We’ll get through this together. Should I be your alibi?”

“No. That’s too risky. This is what I had to do for you. And if I go down for it, I can be okay with that.”

For the first time in my entire life, I felt truly and completely loved. All those pies and showing up for dance recitals and being everyone’s favorite cool mom hadn’t done it, because deep down, I’d known that she had failed at her primary job: to keep me safe. But she’d changed the narrative.

My book just got a whole new ending.





THREE MONTHS LATER





CHAPTER 79

DETECTIVE GREGORY PLATH

The Michael Baylor case is still open, but the active investigation is done. The killer’s still out there, and in a way, that eats at me, and I still have my suspicions, but I just couldn’t reach any conclusions and I certainly couldn’t make any arrests, not without going into those records. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Flora, which makes it a toss-up between Lucinda and Greer, and I have to content myself with maybe never knowing.

I suck at not knowing. You would have thought I’d improve over the years, but I don’t get a ton of practice. The majority of cases are easy: you find the most obvious suspect and they wind up confessing. Sometimes you have to dig deeper, and then you solve it, and you get to pat yourself on the back. And then there are cases like this one.

Dr. Devers and I went through her consultation book case by case, and you know, Dr. Baylor really did seem like a hell of a therapist. None of the initials she was using corresponded with the list I had of his current and former patients, and for a while, I was a dog with a bone. I started working my way through all of them, attractive or not, just to see if I could get at what made this guy tick. To see if he’d been inappropriate in other ways or maybe he’d slipped and told one patient about another, like maybe he’d somehow mentioned my three suspects.

Sure, there were some who’d ended treatment early or who thought Dr. Baylor was just okay, but no one said anything too bad. They all thought he’d tried hard to change their lives. And for most, he had. Changed their lives. They raved about him. They had stories of how he’d gone above and beyond for them. A bunch had abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends and fathers, and he’d helped them see that men could be good and kind, that they could want nothing but the best for you. “He saw me for free,” one woman told me, “for years. I got away from my ex, and I got back on my feet, and I learned to love myself and to be someone my kids could look up to.” Her eyes were full of tears. “How could anyone do this to Dr. Baylor? He was like an angel on Earth.”