The Watcher Girl(27)

Sarah says nothing. Perhaps she thinks I’m about to question her about Autumn’s disappearance and the murder case the police tried to pin on her.

“First of all, I don’t believe you killed her,” I say, though it’s a lie. I don’t know what I believe, but she’s not going to give me a single ounce of information if she thinks I’m trying to build a case against her. “Just to get that out of the way. I’m not calling because of that.”

Sarah exhales, and I can picture her with vivid clarity—her sandy hair, her average build, the way she’d look at me and tell me I was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She was kinder to me than Daphne was. And she favored me over Rose and Sebastian—a first.

Of course it all made sense years later, when I discovered why she was in our lives.

“I just . . . I want to know what she was like,” I say. “My biological mother.”

“It’s been so long,” she says, the undercurrent of an apology in her flat tone. “But I can tell you she was . . .”

Sarah’s voice fades into nothing.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat anything,” I say. “If that’s what you’re worried about. I can handle the truth.”

I’m two blocks from the house, but I veer toward a street in the opposite direction, opting to take the long way home. I wish this conversation could last for hours, but I know all I’ll have are a few rushed minutes if I’m lucky. Already she’s a woman of few words.

“She was troubled,” Sarah finally says.

I release a breath I’d been holding since the last block.

“After she gave you to the McMullens, she was never the same,” she adds.

“Can you elaborate?”

“Sad eyes. That’s what I remember the most. She was always crying.”

There’s a tightness in my chest for a woman I’ve never known. It’s strange the way I’ve always pictured her as a woman, when she was nothing more than a fifteen-year-old child. I try to imagine her as a knobby-kneed teenager. Scared. Frightened. Running out of options.

“She loved your biological father,” Sarah says. “So much. She was really heartbroken over that whole thing.”

“What do you mean . . . that whole thing?”

I’ll admit I haven’t thought about him much. I suppose I chalked him up to being some blue-blooded, pimple-faced twerp who used my mother to get his rocks off and sailed away from responsibility on his father’s yacht.

“He was . . . older. Wish I could give you a name or something. I can’t recall if he was a teacher or someone from her parents’ church or a neighbor. I’m sorry. It was so long ago. I just remember it was pretty scandalous back then. I guess that sort of thing would be scandalous now, too, but her parents . . . your grandparents, I guess . . . they didn’t handle it well. Sent her away like it was the fifties.”

“Sent her away?” I had no idea about this. My adoptive parents always made it clear that I was adopted. They told me I was born to a fifteen-year-old girl who wouldn’t have been able to take care of me even if she wanted to. The adoption was closed. Not even my parents knew my teenage mother’s name was Autumn Carpenter—until Sarah waltzed into our life claiming she was her. Of course, at the time, that detail was shielded from me. Or maybe they were too busy worrying about my mother’s upcoming murder trial and what my father was going to do with the three of us.

Everything I know, I learned from that damned book.

“She was always so sad, you know? Like I said. I guess they thought she was going to hurt herself or the baby. They sent her to a private psychiatric hospital. That’s how we met. We were fifteen.” Sarah’s voice grows distant with every revelation, and I wonder how often she thinks about this chapter in her life. “I helped her choose your parents. The agency gave her this booklet with photos and letters from people in the area all wanting to adopt.”

“What made you guys choose the McMullens?”

She exhales into the phone, a laugh sort of a thing. “Honestly? Your father was a looker.”

I roll my eyes. So my entire fate hinged upon two teenage girls crushing on some twenty-something man in a photo?

“The letter they wrote was nice, too,” Sarah adds. “They talked about how they wanted a big family, and how important family was to them. They were both only children. You could tell they were . . . It seemed genuine. And the handwriting . . . the wife’s handwriting . . . it was so perfect. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. Pretty and neat, like she put a lot of time and effort into it.”

I turn the corner and slow my gait, as if it could possibly stall this conversation further. Uncovering bits and pieces of my own personal history is a foreign, if not exhilarating, sensation.

I don’t want this to end.

For every answered question, five more appear out of thin air.

“I didn’t kill her. I want you to know that.” Sarah’s voice has a sharper edge to it that cuts through the receiver. “They . . . they tried to say I did . . . because I was the last person who saw her before she disappeared . . . but honestly, Grace, I don’t remember what happened that night at the shore. I just know we went there together—but I came back alone. I wish I could give you some answers. I do. My memories of certain events, certain periods in my life . . . they’re not that reliable. And especially now . . . thirty years later? And I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t do something like that . . .”