Miracle Creek(61)

The day Mary came out of the coma, Teresa had been alone. When she opened Mary’s door, she saw doctors surrounding her bed and, through the bodies, Mary, sitting up, eyes open. Young tackled her, the force of her hug pushing Teresa against the wall, and said, “She woke up! She is fine. Her brain is okay.” Teresa tried to return her hug, to tell Young how wonderful this was, a miracle, but it was as if invisible ropes were binding her arms, forming a noose around her neck, choking her and sending tingles up her throat to her sinuses, bringing tears to her eyes.

Young didn’t notice. Before rushing back to Mary, she said, “Thank you, Teresa. You are here for me all of the time. You are a good friend.” Teresa nodded and slowly backed out of the room. She went into the bathroom, walked into a stall, and locked it. She thought of Young’s words—“good friend,” she’d called her. She put her hand on her stomach, tried to swallow back the envy and fury and hatred she felt for the woman who’d hugged her so tightly it had hurt. She tried to remember that this was what she’d prayed for. Then she took off her jacket, balled it up, and screamed and cried into it, flushing over and over again so that no one could hear.



* * *



YOUNG ENTERED the courtroom just as Detective Morgan Heights started testifying. Young looked sick. Her normally peach skin looked coated in a dull film of ash, like a longtime hospital patient’s, and as Young shuffled down the aisle, her eyes so tired her lids drooped, Teresa felt a pang of guilt. She never went back to visit after Mary woke up from her coma. This had coincided with the start of Rosa’s cord-blood therapy, so Teresa had an excuse, but still, she knew the sudden drop-off had bewildered Young, and she felt a deep shame at having abandoned a friend because her child got healthy. Was that why she’d turned her support to Elizabeth, when Young needed her most—to punish her for Mary’s return to health?

A buzz of whispers erupted in the gallery. Shannon was standing, saying, “I renew my objection to this entire line of questioning, Your Honor. It’s hearsay, irrelevant, and highly prejudicial.” The judge said, “Noted and overruled. Detective, you may answer.”

Detective Heights said, “The week before the explosion, a woman called the Child Protective Services hotline on August 20, 2008, at 9:33 p.m., to report that a woman named Elizabeth was subjecting her son, Henry, to illegal, dangerous medical treatments, including one called IV chelation, which had recently killed several children. The caller stated that Elizabeth was starting a treatment involving drinking bleach, which worried her greatly. She did not know their last name, nor their address. I’m a licensed psychologist and our office’s investigative liaison to CPS, so I was assigned to investigate.”

“Who was the caller?” Abe said.

“The call was anonymous, but we’ve since learned that the caller was Ruth Weiss, one of the protesters.” Ruth. The one with the silver bob. Teresa looked at her, sitting in the back with her face flushed, and wanted to slap her. What a coward. Anonymous accusations, with no repercussions, no responsibility. Again, she thought of them lurking behind the barn, waiting until the perfect time to set the fire when they expected the oxygen to be off. She needed to tell Shannon her theory, how they knew the exact HBOT schedule.

Abe said, “How did you find Elizabeth and Henry?”

“The caller knew where Henry went to summer camp from online chats. I went there at dismissal the next day, but Elizabeth wasn’t there. A friend was picking up Henry. I explained why I was there, and asked if she knew about these medical treatments.”

“What did this friend say?”

“She wouldn’t say anything at first, but I pressed, and she admitted to being concerned that Elizabeth seemed obsessed—that was her word, obsessed—with treatments Henry didn’t need. She said Henry was a ‘quirky kid’—again, her words—and he had issues before but he was fine now, and yet Elizabeth kept trying every autism treatment that popped up. The friend said she had majored in psychology, and she wondered if Elizabeth had Munchausen by proxy.”

“What’s Munchausen by proxy?”

“It’s a psychological disorder sometimes referred to as ‘medical abuse.’ It involves a caretaker exaggerating, fabricating, or even causing medical symptoms in a child to get attention.”

“Was that the extent of this friend’s worries?”

“No. When I pressed for more, she said—again, very reluctantly—that the camp teacher said the cat scratches on Henry’s arms were hurting him, so they applied ointment and bandages. The friend was confused because Henry doesn’t have cats, but she didn’t say anything.”

Teresa remembered seeing scratches, too. On Henry’s upper left arm, dotted lines of red where the blood vessels had burst in spots. Elizabeth had noticed Teresa noticing and said Henry got some sort of bug bite and couldn’t stop scratching. There was nothing about cats.

“The friend was also worried about Henry’s self-esteem,” Heights continued. “She said she complimented him once, and he said, ‘But I’m annoying. Everybody hates me.’ She asked why he thought that, and he said, ‘My mommy told me.’”

Teresa swallowed. I’m annoying. Everybody hates me. She remembered Elizabeth telling him to stop talking nonstop about rocks. She’d crouched so her face was next to his, nose to nose, and whispered, “I know you’re excited, but you’re talking and talking, out loud to yourself. That’s extremely annoying to most people, and if you keep doing that, I’m worried that everyone will hate you. So you need to try really hard to stop. Okay?”